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THE

ALCHEMY KEY

Unraveling the Single Tangible Secret in all Mysteries

STUART NETTLETON

St George & the Dragon

Treasury of the Munich Residence, 1586 ©

The Philosophers’ Stone was sought as a wonderful medicine that had the

power to repair the human body thereby increasing human life almost

indefinitely. The Bible itself had declared that Melchizedek the King of

Salem, who first possessed the Philosophers' Stone, would live forever…

Here is a key. Perhaps you will

use it to open a new door.

Beware! Once through the door

you will find the pursuit of

Wisdom demands either your full-

time attention or none at all. If

you become a philosopher, your

friends may think you have

become a little mad. Indeed, what

would be made of you? Glassy-

eyed, preoccupied, strange friends,

muttering about ancient history,

the Good and the Righteous, and

chemistry. Things most people

simply don't think about.

Those who have preceded you for at least five thousand years would

smile: ‘How you come to terms with this is no concern of ours. We don't

even know if you are serious.’

ISBN 0-646-34022-0

I dedicate this work to the Alchemists, Rabbis, Historians, Philosophers,

Freemasons and other friends who have encouraged my search for truth

and helped me in so many small steps.

Stuart Nettleton’s interests lie in the mysteries and sciences of alchemy.

The Alchemy Key

The Mystical Provenance of the Philosophers' Stone

Stuart Nettleton

Published by Stuart Nettleton

ISBN 0646340220

Edition 1998; 2

& 3

Edition 1999; 4

Edition 2000;

to 7

Edition 2001; 8

to 11

Edition 2002

Nettleton, Stuart 1952-

The Alchemy Key: The Mystical Provenance of the Philosophers' Stone

1. Alchemy

2. Gold

3. Philosophy - Ancient

4. Philosophy - Medieval

5. Hermeticism

6. Holy Grail

7. Freemasonry

8. Rosicrucianism

9. Judaism

10. Egypt - Religion - Influence

11. Bible - Old Testament Criticism, Interpretation etc

12. Bible - New Testament Criticism, Interpretation etc

13. Chemistry - History

14. Chemistry - Modern

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All drawings and

diagrams are the work of the author unless otherwise indicated.

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by

any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Permissions: The publisher has made every effort to trace and contact all

publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Frontispiece: Statuette of St George, Munich & Augsburg, 1586-1597 &

Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Garten und Seen, München

Dear friend, theory is all grey,

And the golden tree of life is green.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Pt.1

Two souls dwell, alas! In my breast.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Pt.1

The outcome was philosophical dualism with all the tragic-comic woes

attendant on spiritual dichotomy.

Robert Graves, The White Goddess

The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us, but in the

course of time through seeking we may learn and know things better. But

as for certain truth, no man has known it, nor shall he know it, neither of

the gods nor yet of all things of which I speak. For even if by chance he

was to utter the final truth, he would himself not know it: For all is but a

woven web of guesses.

Xenophanes of Colophon, 500BCE

There were several roads nearby, but it did not take her long to find the

one paved with yellow bricks. Within a short time she was walking

briskly toward the Emerald City, her silver shoes tinkling merrily on the

hard, yellow roadbed…The next morning, as soon as the sun was up, they

started on their way, and soon saw a beautiful green glow in the sky just

before them. ‘That must be the Emerald City’ said Dorothy.

L Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The word ‘rose’ is manna to the lyricist.

John Fisher, The Companion to Roses

Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not mutually

contradictory. Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance…

Shankara, Father of the Swami Order

The only honour that man can pay his Creator is to seek Him.

Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri

Stibnite: Sb

Antimony Sulfide Gray-metallic with orthorhombic,

slightly flexible crystals, often radiating blades. Associated with gold,

cinnabar, galena, barite and quartz. From the Greek name ‘stibi’, used

to describe antimony, which was used to separate gold by the ancients.

Mineral Gallery

Before enlightenment you chop wood and carry water…

After enlightenment you chop wood and carry water…

Contents

Chronology iv

Preface 1

Introduction 6

Chapter 1 Arcane Alchemy 11

Chapter 2 David Hudson’s Alchemy 17

Chapter 3 Enigma of King Solomon's Temple 25

Chapter 4 Crucibles of Humanity 45

Chapter 5 Anatolian Commagene & Israelites 64

Chapter 6 Hyksos Invasion of Egypt 95

Chapter 7 The Name of God, the Merkabah and Liberality 113

Chapter 8 Sabians of Harran and Yemen 127

Chapter 9 Hasmonaeans, Pharisees & Zaddoki 140

Chapter 10 Zaddoki & Jesus 145

Chapter 11 Melchizedekians and Merovingians 153

Chapter 12 The Tribe of Dan 162

Chapter 13 Corpus Hermeticum & Gnosticism 192

Chapter 14 Ancient Alchemy 201

Chapter 15 St George and the Dragon 224

Chapter 16 Green and Lilac 244

Chapter 17 Roses and Rosicrucians 258

Chapter 18 Architecture, Freemasonry & Knights Templar 292

Chapter 19 The Philosophers’ Stone and Manna 336

Chapter 20 The Ancient of Days 352

Chapter 21 Et in Arcadia Ego 362

Chapter 22 The Holy Grail 378

Conclusion 383

Appendix 1 Preparing the Philosophers' Stone 386

Appendix 2 Roger Bacon’s Method 392

Appendix 3 King Solomon's Method 402

Appendix 4 The Virgin of the World 404

Appendix 5 Bacon's Description of the Goddess 406

Appendix 6 Ovid's Metamorphoses 408

iii

Appendix 7 Crata Repoa 412

Appendix 8 The Perfect Pyramid 416

Appendix 9 A Note on the Scholar Robert Graves 425

Appendix 10 Atbash Cipher 426

Appendix 11 Triangular Manuscript of Comte St Germain 428

Appendix 12 Painted Ceilings at Crathes Castle 433

Appendix 13 Jewish Rites of Tammuz 438

Footnotes 460

References 492

Index 504

Chronology

Yrs Ago Indo-Hittite Afro-Asiatic

125-65 mi Rat-like Mus is common ancestor of humans and mice

40 million Ancestors the Dryopithecines live in trees.

Amphipithecus in Asia Aegyptopithecus or

Propliopithecus in Africa

30-20

million

Human descent splits

from Gibbon descent

Human descent splits from

Gorilla/Chimpanzee

8.2-12

million

Human descent splits

from Orangutan

7 million Fossils absent as hominoids become waders

5.8

million

Ethiopian Ardipithecus

ramidus kaddaba

(Earliest human ancestor)

5 million Human descent splits

from Gigantpithecus

3.75 mill. Ethiopian ‘Lucy’

Australopithecus afafensis

3 million Fossils again found - Homo

Habilus

1 million Java Man Invention of Fire

500,000 Sangiran or the Peking

Man in Java

250,000 Asian Neanderthal Solo

Man or Tien Shan

40,000 Asian Homo Sapien

(Sapien)

African Homo Sapien

(Sapien): Cro-Magnon

26,000 First Ice Age

20,000 Indo-Hittites eliminate Neanderthals of Europe

15,000 Indo-Hittites populate

Asgar in Northern India

14,000 First Ice Age thaws

12,000 Snap Ice Age

10,000 Caucasian migration to

Sumer, Bactria, Europe

BCE Indo-Hittite Afro-Asiatic

9,000 Early Copper Working

5,000 Urban civilization in

Sumer with copper

smelting, goldworking,

beer and wine

4,250 Kurgans (Barrow) enter

Europe above Black Sea

3,400 2

wave Kurgans to

Europe

Egyptian Urban civilization

3,000 3

wave Kurgans to

Europe

2,500 Early Iron Working

2,000 Beakers invade Ireland &

Wales

1,700 Kurgan (Barrow) people

in Ireland

1,300 Picts invade

Ireland/Scotland

BCE Mesopotamia Egypt

2630 Pharaoh Djoser &

Architect Imhotep

2340 Akkadian King Sargon I

invades Sumer

2120 Gutians from Zoreb

Mountains conquer

Agade

2020 Semitic Amorites attack

Sumer

1979 1

-Dynasty Pharaoh

Amenemhe I

1959 2

-Dynasty Pharaoh

Sesôstris I

BCE Mesopotamia Egypt Israelite

1950 Sesôstris I exerts suzerainty over

Anatolia and Palestine

1917 3

-Dynasty

Amenemhe II

1900 Hittites invade

central Anatolia

1884 4

-Dynasty

Sesôstris II

1878 5

-Dynasty

Sesôstris III

1859 6

-Dynasty

Amenemhe III

1848 King Hammurabi

1814 7

-Dynasty

Amenemhe IV

1805 8

-Dynasty

Sebeknofru

1801 Hyksos Invade Egypt.

1800 Abraham

1750 Isaac

1648-

1628

Eruption of Thera (Santorini)

1628 2

eruption Hekla III in Iceland

1567 Hyksos expelled from Egypt

1480 Tuthmose III's Palestine campaign

1466 Conventional Date for Exodus

1406 Conventional Date Moses’ death

1400 Jerusalem ruled by Semitic vassal

of Egypt

1364

1347

Pharaoh

Akhenaten

1361

1352

Pharaoh

Tutankhamun

vii

BCE Assyria Egypt Israel

1300 Assyria controls

the Commagene

1291 Ramses II re-exerts suzerainty over

Palestine and Syria

1250 Latest Date for Exodus

1250

1200

Joshua

1159 3

eruption of Hekla III in Iceland

1048

1015

David

1015

975

Solomon

721 Assyrians

conquer

northern Israel

10 tribes

deported to

Assyria

597

586

Exile to

Babylon

549

529

Cyrus the Great

529

522

Cambyses II Persians Conquer

Egypt

538 Return from

Exile

522

486

Darius the Great

486

465

Xerxes

330 Manetho &

Hekataios of

Abdera

viii

BCE Greek BCE Israelite / Jewish

760-

681

Amos, Hosea, Isaiah &

Micah

638-

559

Solon

Athenian Philosopher

624-

546

Thales & Anaximander

Milesian School

626-

571

Jeremiah & Ezekiel

570-

510

Pythagoras

Italic School

530 Daniel & Haggai

530-

456

Xenophanes &

Parmenides

Eleatic School

484-

420

Herodotus

The Father of History

480 Zechariah

468-

347

Socrates & Plato

Athenian Philosophers

430 Nehemiah

400-

350

Eudoxus of Knidos

384-

322

Aristotle

Athenian Philosophers

Schools of Greek and Israelite/Jewish Philosophy

Preface

Colleagues often ask me why I wrote this unusual book. At first,

it was simply so I could sleep at night. It was a way to marshal the

extraordinary facts and histories that constantly rotated in my mind and

became graphically alive at bedtime! Now I think my reason is to restore,

in a humble way, richness to the mystery tradition at a time when the old

arts of the philosopher are all but lost.

There are many paths to the mysteries. The most predominant

organizations in western societies are usually composed of people we

might call literalists. They would not like the more accurate label of anti-

philosophers. Literalists believe their traditional histories are unique,

explain everything and provide enough wisdom to make the rest of

civilization irrelevant. Usually, they treat their stories as fact rather than

myth and rarely think about it any further. These people often join many

societies; yet groan at the mention of a lecture. Archeology provides

them interesting asides but discoveries are rarely important enough to

change the faith.

Then there are capital P and small p philosophers. Capital P

philosophers deride literalists and small p philosophers alike as

fundamentalists, a dirty word. These capital P philosophers know all

myths are just that, myths without a historical basis. Unless archeology

proves something happened then it did not, and the myth is just a story

having no more merit than a fairy-tale.

This book is for the small p or Gnostic philosophers who have a

bit each way when it comes to myth. They see myth as having merit and

are not surprised when archeologists discover a Troy, or if they hear a

story in the Bible is proved true. Most think that Atlantis will eventually

be located. Small p philosophers see myths representing important

elements of culture and if not based on facts then often based on soft

facts. One such soft fact is alchemy. Its goal is the Philosophers’ Stone.

This book traces the chemistry and philosophy of the

Philosophers’ Stone from first dynasty Egypt and Mesopotamia through

the Commagene region of Turkey, to Israel, France and England. It

particularly focuses on mystery religions and philosophical schools that

co-existed over thousands of years.

The keys to understanding the Commagene region are metallurgy

and alchemy. There is a remarkably close connection between metals,

alchemy, perhaps the true Holy Grail and many esoteric traditions of the

Israelites, Freemasons and Rosicrucians. Surprisingly, these traditions are

once again contributing to leaps in modern medicine and industrial

technology.

Many will see the topics in this book as forbidden territory. Even

today, in this age of science, the subjects of alchemy and mystery religion

remain fused with intolerance. It is only in today’s postmodern western

democracies, freed from religious oppression, superstition and master

theories that we can listen to the cacophony of simultaneous voices

without declaring enemies or being declared an enemy.

Throughout history, many lives have been lost in pursuit of the

illusive Philosophers' Stone. Few have found the wisdom to truly behold

it because it is a process and not an end in itself. The reader should

therefore regard this book as a philosophical base station at the foot of the

highest mountain of Wisdom. It seeks to understand the philosophy of

alchemy, its peculiar chemistry and the surprising and pervasive role it

has played in the development of human culture through the mystery

religions.

In a sense, alchemy has come full circle since translation of the

great Arabic texts into Latin in the tenth century CE. Alchemy was the

precursor to chemistry and pharmaceuticals. Now the sciences of

chemistry, physics and information are on the threshold of making the

hidden benefits of alchemy widely available.

David Hudson, a farmer from Phoenix, Arizona, has been

carrying out technical research into the Philosophers' Stone for two

decades. His work has helped galvanize many of the themes in this book.

Hudson’s influence is everywhere through this work as much as that of

Robert Graves and Sir Karl Popper.

Stephen Skinner’s excellent book

Lapidus – In Pursuit of Gold also proves to be a treasure on alchemy.

The author would also like to thank Tom Simms of New Brunswick,

Canada, for his discussion of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate

Period in Egypt. Tom’s research has assisted dating the Exodus in

Chapter 5. The author is very grateful to Robert Word, of San Francisco,

for his excellent translation of the Triangular Manuscript of St Germain,

the only translation known to exist.

Turning to perhaps the most intensively investigated region in the

world, Egypt and Syro-Palestine, we find modern archeology has not yet

conclusively unraveled their chronologies. Of the many difficulties

encountered by archeology, none is more confusing than the Biblical use

of archetypes. An archetype is a model, projected paragon or ideal.

Archetypes in old stories are not literal. Authors apply the technique in a

midrashic sense.

Compound characters display all the traits that the

author seeks to convey to the reader. Some aspects of the characterization

are indeed fact but others merely fantasy. Historical archetypes often play

a role in many eras, sometimes under alternative names.

Closely associated with the issue of archetypes is the art of

double meanings or entendres. Dual and even poly-meanings give rise to

a phenomenon called hermetic drift. Umberto Eco has spent much of his

career in teaching and writing about hermetic drift. He argues that the

hermetic tradition underlying much alchemical literature relies on

physical similitude. This means that everything is similar and closely

related to everything else. These relationships are inexhaustible and

include every element of this world and heaven. Deliberately and with

considerable delight, authors in the sacred arts of alchemy use Hermetic

Drift to slip from similarity to similarity and meaning to meaning. The

content of every expression and symbol becomes a further enigma, more

mysterious than the previous one and the ultimate meaning is inevitably

postponed. Linguistics and symbols entangle the whole subject. The

esoteric elite smugly escape analysis and criticism. As a result, their

theories are never testable and have very low levels of dependability,

known as verisimilitude. At the end of it all, the content can often be an

empty secret or something time has otherwise reduced to common

knowledge.

Presenting written ideas for positive and constructive criticism is

relatively modern. While many Jewish authors showed admirable candor

in post-Medieval times, Western authors were far more clandestine. They

had little accountability and were economic with the truth. The extensive

use of Hermetic Drift in the West means we can only understand their

slippery allegories with good humor, healthy skepticism and a few

traditional tools such as Occam's Razor.

The English philosopher William Occam developed Occam's

Razor in about 1310CE to cope with archetypes and hermetic drift. His

principle of economy in logic simply states that the smallest number of

entities achieves the best theory. The principle demands categorization of

theories for maximum impact. This increases the probability of truth, or

verisimilitude. A good theory has predictive value while a poor theory

can explain everything but predict nothing. Limiting the number of

entities usually helps to collapse a large number of threads into a

surprisingly small number of themes that can more readily be cross-

vectored to hook a new theory from the pool of conflict and plurality.

Mathematically this is the pattern recognition process of cluster

and factor analysis in statistics. A top-down, helicopter view overcomes

the problem of being unable to see the forest because the trees are in the

way. Occam's helicopter, rises above the trees to see the forest and even

the pattern of light in its glades. Occam's helicopter will be very useful to

us throughout this book because our aim is physical, chemical,

mathematical and social analysis rather than description.

Notwithstanding the conciseness of this analytical approach, the

reader may correctly perceive the method of Occam’s Razor, applied to

the arcane characteristics of alchemy, rambles around the subject. The

author has tried to keep a traditional approach to the issues but the

labyrinth ahead will be a challenge with chapter headings that seem more

for convenience than classification. Be of good heart because it promises

to be a grand tour of life, death, the universe and everything, at least as

far as we know it.

Sadly, the author cannot promise packaged Wisdom from the

journey, only that the reader will pass by many sites where it is possible

to begin the process of discovery. The reader will need to work quite

hard to recognize Wisdom for his or herself. Whether in alchemy or the

mysteries, practical involvement is the key to Wisdom. The alchemists

would say Ora et labora, or God through Labor. It remains for the reader

to choose any of the many practical possibilities.

This book meticulously references sources of information

wherever possible. While some of these references are unconventional

and present hypotheses that lead in radically different directions, the work

of these authors broadens the scope and spectrum of understanding and

provides many useful insights.

Advancement of knowledge in the kaleidoscopic environment of

esoteric philosophy and mysteries is perilous. The cardinal rule is that

evidence must always exist for any hypothesis. The main purpose of this

book is to assemble and cross-vector arcane knowledge in a new way, to

underpin a new and better understanding of the subject. As in a court of

law, some evidence is more reliable than other evidence. The author will

attempt to warn in advance of the more contentious areas.

All errors are of course the author's responsibility alone. The

author hopes that any minor aberrations will not obstruct the reader from

grasping the richness of alchemy in its historical context.

The great alchemist Zosimus said that everyone should have a

book of chemistry. The Alchemy Key will reveal to you works that have

been unfamiliar to many contemporary readers. Perhaps you will even

discover your own book of chemistry.

Alchemy, the Mystical Provenance of the Philosophers' Stone, is

before you. To this day, it remains an exciting frontier of science with

adrenalin pumping intrigue. Please plunge into the stream and join in the

search for that which was lost.

Introduction

Leaning on my elbow, I turn to my own thoughts.

The pages of my life, I have cast, on the great millwheel of fortune.

In my hunt for the golden crown, I have sought clues, in labours long

and wide.

I am resolute in my dangerous pursuit.

Dangerous you laugh?

Yes, I say, for Wisdom is demanding.

She does not release her captives readily, but demands inconsiderate

labor in searching her ciphers.

So as the millwheel turns, I entrust myself between the columns where

the University of Antiquity awaits.

There I am sure the dance of the labyrinth will lead me to the emerald

city.

And Ariadne's silken thread, woven from chains of light, will support

my journey to the midnight sun.

The turn of the millwheel has brought me luck, I cast again…

…God goes with the brave.

The alchemical Philosophers' Stone is the main subject of this

book. It has many names including the Elixir of Life, occult gold, manna

and dew. For thousands of years the knowledge of this marvelous Stone

has been the sole province of mystical brotherhoods including Egyptian

Priests and Pharaohs, Melchizedek Priests, Arabian Schools, Rabbis,

Kabbalahists, Indian Yogis, Rosicrucians, Freemasons and lone Jewish

alchemists.

The subject embodies a mix of religion and politics that has

fermented throughout history, occasionally erupting. The earliest traces

we have of this are with first dynasty Egyptian Pharaohs. The trail tracks

the devastating Hyksos invasion of Egypt and the Exodus of the Children

of Israel from Egypt.

Ancient sanctuaries such as Harran and Jerusalem emerge as

warehouses of arcane knowledge. So esoteric is the knowledge that it is

from lone Jewish alchemists, who perhaps knew the least that we learn

the most. Jewish scholars persistently worked at alchemy and around

tenth century CE translated the great medical and alchemical treatises of

the Arabic world. In looking at the Philosophers' Stone, we have cause to

refer to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the Jewish Zohar as

particularly fine mystical records.

From the sanctuary of Harran, there was a transfer of alchemy

and metallurgy to Islamic Sufism. During the Italian Renaissance, the

same knowledge became available from Constantinople through the

enthusiastic acquisition of manuscripts by Cosimo de Medici. From

Renaissance Italy, it made its way to Britain where the Elizabethans

received it enthusiastically.

Ancient Harran generated chains of alchemy and architecture.

These led through French cathedral building to the definition of Scottish

and English Freemasonry. Links in the chain include the Phoenician

Dionysian Artificers, the Roman Collegia, the Magistri Comacini of

Como and the Compagnonnage.

From Jerusalem, the Jewish stream split into the Rabbinical

Kabbalahists of the city of Alexandria, the Qumran Essenes and the

Gnostics. The Alexandrian stream spilled into Greece, Spain and Ireland

where it appears to have all but petered-out. The Essene stream ended

abruptly with the total Roman suppression of Jewish nationalism in the

first and second centuries CE. Yet, there are faint but intriguing lines of

survival of Melchizedek Priests in the Diaspora of Southern France

through to today. The Roman Catholic Church suppressed both the

Gnostic stream and the Great Heresy of the Bogomils. The former

culminated with the Albigensian Crusade and violent assault on

Montségur in 1245CE. Yet, again, stories emerged from the Inquisition

that four Parfaits smuggled the Cathars' treasure to safety.

Another chain commences around 1128CE with discoveries by

the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. Sheltered in Scotland after their

dissolution, the Knights Templar traditions fused into Scottish guilds of

the Compagnonnage and later into English Freemasonry. Subsequently

the German Rosicrucians fled to the protection of James I of England

during the Thirty Years War in the early 1600s. From there, the

Rosicrucians developed a very close affinity with English Freemasonry.

They were to amalgamate with the upper degrees of Freemasonry,

bringing organizational structure to the whole movement.

Alchemy has fundamentally influenced Western society,

particularly in medicine and religion. In religion, for example, the

Eucharist ceremony symbolizes alchemy. We find the rituals of the

Roman Catholic Church, involving the congregation as the living church

in a yearly cycle, embody the complex symbolism of alchemy and the

Mysteries.

Yet, the infamous Faustian objectives of unbelievable wealth and

the Elixir of Life have also kindled the worst of human greed and avarice.

The outcome was often disastrous for all involved. Loss of money,

counterfeiting, swindles and murder. As a result, alchemy’s daughter,

Science, led the world to believe that she had abandoned the pursuits of

her mother in the sixteenth century. However, chemistry, physics,

metallurgy, medicine and pharmaceuticals all flourished.

This book analyses the closely related development of alchemical

metals and glass technology from the earliest known practices in

Anatolia, Syro-Palestine and Egypt. The Sabians of Harran and Yemen,

and the Melchizedek priests of Jerusalem contribute a great deal. Using

knowledge from Hermetic philosophy, we investigate the wet method of

alchemy to find the green and lilac Philosophers' Stones.

The importance of Light and Dew emerges from many diverse

sources such as garden roses, the orders of Rosicrucians and the historical

milieu of the Knights Templars. We find that the Ancient of Days could

be much more than a vision of Ezekiel. The romances of the Holy Grail

integrate all of our knowledge of the Philosophers' Stone into a

consummate whole.

Yet, our historical background can never be more than informed

conjecture based on abundant circumstantial evidence. Considerable

Jewish evidence is contained in the Bible and Kabbalah, both of which

are deeply mystical and archetypal. Even these sources have more

objective coherence than those of the other major group, the Rosicrucian

descendants of the Indo-Hittites. The Rosicrucians prized oral over

written tradition and have kept almost no records. The Elizabethan

canons of literature are prominent exceptions.

A new, modern element has abruptly changed this duopoly of

knowledge. Whitegold, the modern Philosophers' Stone, now exists as a

scientific fact. Many countries even granted patents. Whitegold spans the

gulf of physical credibility in alchemy and integrates biblical mysticism

with the oral traditions of the Rosicrucians. It is the one and only tangible

element in a sea of subjective cleverness. The chapters that follow build

on this newfound bridge of understanding.

Four major theories integrate this work. These are the dynamics

of population interfaces in the Crucibles of Humanity, the emergence of

the Israelite race, their early homeland aspirations and the ancient heritage

of the Philosophers' Stone. The Knights Templar rediscovered the ancient

Jewish heritage while the Rosicrucian heritage flows from the Indo-

Hittites and more particularly the Indo-Iranians.

The establishment of the Israelites has traditionally been a

controversial subject for scholars. This book presents a new theory. This

is that the unique characteristics of the Israelites arose in the east of

Bronze Age Anatolia. Here the two great language groups of the world,

the Indo-Hittites and the Afro-Asiatics, were culturally compressed or

fused.

The outcome was a unique people with interwoven cultures. The

Alchemy Key unlocks the door to this Anatolian cultural compression.

Inside we find answers to many questions preserved by different groups

throughout the millennia.

Chapter 4 presents a new theory of the Crucibles of Humanity,

which encompasses the most modern understandings of population

movements in history from biological analysis.

This book increases the understanding of our rich heritage. In

solving esoteric mysteries, we can appreciate the underlying themes in

many religions. Ultimately, the strength of this book lies in delineating

physical as well as philosophical advances. Whitegold is with us and the

medical and technological possibilities are breathtaking.

There are at least three ways to read this book. The traditional

linear way, front to back, past to present, is the journey of an Adept. To

reach the end of the book it is best to defer exploring the many diverging

sidetracks that entice one from the main path. Those seeking mystery and

surprise might instead sample what is on offer by simply opening the

book at random. Finally, the thoroughly modern reader might prefer

instant knowledge rather than Wisdom, by reading the first chapter and

then all the others in reverse order.

We begin our journey with modern alchemy, and then plunge into

understanding alchemy’s role in the history of society. Humans have a

unique ability to think about their own thought. To understand the shared

belief systems of history is to understand the meaning of life as conceived

by man. We are really taking a unique cut through the belief systems,

power structures and objective disputation mechanisms that constitute

culture.

Glossary Note: In common with the practice of Biblical scholars, the term

Israelite refers to the people of ancient Israel up until the return of Israel from the

Babylonian Exile.

After their return and until the present time the term Jew is

used, which derives from Judah. The term Israeli means a modern citizen of

Israel. Hebrew refers either to the ancient language of Canaan or to the

contemporary language of modern Israel. All Biblical quotes are from the

Authorized King James Version. Dates following 1 BCE, are referred to at CE

for the Common Era, which in the past was AD for Anno Domini or the year of

our Lord. BCE means Before the Common Era.

Chapter 1 Arcane Alchemy

This might shock you, but in my hand, as I write, I’m holding the

Holy Grail. I have just made the Philosophers’ Stone in a crystal wine

glass.

The High Priest Melchizedek might have felt the same awe, when

he first made the Philosophers’ Stone around 2000BCE. Have you seen

the sculpture of him at Chartres Cathedral, welcoming initiates at the

North Entrance, beneath the Rose Window. This is the famous Gate of

the Initiates. He’s there, along with Aaron, David and Solomon, holding

a goblet containing the Philosophers’ Stone.

The Melchizedek Priests at the Temple of Jerusalem were adepts

in many aspects of the chemistry of gold. It strikes me now how easily

they could have made shrewbread, manna or whitebread just as I have,

scooping Jordan River water from the Brazen Sea in front of the Temple,

then mixing it with alkali from a bowl to create the Philosophers’ Stone in

a golden bowl.

Yes, right then and there because it doesn’t take more

than a few minutes.

I have the advantage of pure chemicals, but I too use the Jordan

water or rather reconstituted Dead Sea. The Jordan River and salts from

the Dead Sea are hugely prospective for making the Philosophers’ Stone.

In fact, they are ten times better than other seawater, and considered

especially good because they do not seem to have the poisonous heavy

metal precipitate called a Gilcrest Precipitate.

Actually, any seawater, from well under the surface, will also do,

especially if you are near an undersea vent. It is said that a skilled

alchemist can even make the Stone repeatedly from the same bucket of

water.

I made my Philosophers’ Stone by heating Dead Sea water and

then titrating it with Sodium Hydroxide to form a precipitate at about pH

8.5, drawing-off the salt water with a syringe and washing the precipitate

a few times with distilled water. As it settled in the bottom of the wine

glass, my precipitate looked just like Melchizedek’s stone. I gazed at my

precipitate, knowing that the thirty-day Egyptian rite of passage required

five hundred milligrams of this substance per day.

My stone is probably seventy percent gold and thirty percent

magnesium hydroxide, which is Milk of Magnesia. I can isolate the gold

if I want to, by drying the precipitate to a powder and then mixing it with

hydrochloric acid. Anything that does not dissolve is the pure manna or

Philosophers’ Stone.

Alchemy using dissolved elements is simple and effective. It

differs from the Great Work because it starts with water already

containing the necessary elements. Traditional alchemists would consider

it the lightweight end of the Art. The Great Work focused on the reverse

direction, converting metallic gold into the Philosophers’ Stone. For the

ancients this involved three major technological hurdles. The first was to

make a solvent for gold. No easy achievement. The second hurdle was to

eliminate the impure elements, particularly Nitrogen, introduced in

dissolving the gold. The third major hurdle was to create a gold chloride

that could be dissolved in water. When the gold dissolves, we have

potable gold, or gold that can ingested to purify the body. It was said that

with this Elixir of Youth, the old could become young again; and life

could be extended to at least the natural limit of one hundred and twenty

years. After all, the Bible said that Melchizedek, the King of Salem, who

first possessed the Philosophers’ Stone, would live forever.

I mentioned that dissolving metallic gold was no easy matter.

Alchemists needed a Secret Fire. They created nitric acid by reacting

ammonium chloride or sal ammoniac, the Salt of Ammon, with niter or

potassium nitrate. Many chemists would be surprised to know that in

antiquity priests distilled ammonia from dung, bones and horns at the

Temple of Amun in Libya. The name ammonium even derives from the

Egyptian deity, Amun. Egyptian Priests used this in their chemical works

at their nearby Temple of Amun in the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt. Nitric and

hydrochloric acids were combined to form Aqua Regia, that unique

combination of oxidizing and non-oxidizing acids that together can

dissolve metallic gold.

Nitric acid is amongst the most dangerous of substances to work

with. This acid blinded many alchemists, or they met a painful

respiratory end from the fumes, splashes and spills. Many inadvertently

created poisons or explosives. Fulminating gold and silver are highly

unstable explosives, quite probably the deadly Shamir. Many military

devices use fulminate of Mercury as a detonator.

Once alchemists overcame the issue of dissolving gold, they

eliminated troublesome compounds of nitrogen with antimony. The

ancients derived antimony from a variety of sources, which they called

Prima Materia. Two popular starting points for the Egyptians were the

minerals of lead oxide called galena, and tin dioxide called cassiterite.

Antimony was purified with iron or Mars, just as in the modern industrial

process of extracting antimony from stibnite ore. When they saw the pure

white vapor of antimony rise, the alchemists likened it to a white virgin

queen, the moon goddess, and called it the Philosophers’ Mercury. This

Mercury should not be confused with metallic Mercury, which is always

poisonous if used alchemically.

The white virgin indeed brought relief to the injured. A fragrant

cream made from a precipitate of antimony became a universal unguent

of the alchemist doctors. Crusaders used this salve or universal medicine

to heal wounds and it has been used right up until very recent times. The

secret ole of antimony was so intriguing that the metal, although very soft

and less bright than silver, was often used for tableware such as salt

salvers and gravy boats. Adepts could display these openly in public,

with few knowing the real meaning of the white virgin in the metal.

Finally, Mercury, white virgin of alchemy, was married to the

Sun King. A rainbow of colors appeared in the alchemist’s flask. A

green dragon battles a Red Man. The blood of the green dragon is the

necessary sign that the son of love will be born. Finally, in the faeces of

the reaction, a rock appears. It is the green lion tinged with lilac. This

royal color signifies Horus rebirth as king.

I will not dwell on these celebrated reactions. They can be

demonstrated but never scaled-up to any useful volume for medicine or

industry. I would now like to turn to another paradigm of alchemy.

There is a man in Phoenix Arizona by the name of David Hudson.

He recently patented a version of the Philosophers’ Stone called Orbitally

Rearranged Mono-atomic Elements (ORMEs) in many countries such as

Australia and UK, although the US Defense Department vetoed his patent

in the USA on the grounds of national interest. Gold, silver, rhodium,

iridium and eight other Transition Elements can exist as ORMEs.

ORMEs are virtually undetectable by conventional means

because they lack a d-orbital electron. However, they do show a

distinguishing infrared doublet located between 1400 and 1600 cm

-1

We tend to focus on gold as the most valuable ORME. Yet,

rhodium and iridium may be more important for health applications

because they represent five percent of a mammal's brain by dry weight.

When referring to ORMEs we are really talking about the Transition

Metal complex that includes gold.

In other words, ORME technology produces many Philosophers’

Stones from the Transition Metal complex. The end is the same as for the

Great Work of the alchemists, but it eliminates the prohibitively

expensive Precious Metal complex, such as gold and platinum. David

Hudson’s process extracts the Transition Metals directly from basic and

inexpensive sources such as volcanic rock. These are then processed to

potable metals, whose primary uses are in medicine and industrial

technology.

Take gold for example. Typically, metallic gold extracted from

ore is only two percent of the available gold. The other ninety percent is

in an ORME state. This provides plenty of potential for technical

recovery, or ORMIC recovery. It also has major ramifications for the

supply and demand equation in the gold market.

Creeping through a wall into a modern alchemist’s cellar

laboratory, a colleague and I experimented with David Hudson’s patent

method. We dissolved gold in Aqua Regia and then worked straight

through for two days and nights. You can see a pH neutralization graph

of mine on a web site called Whitegold. Although we were very careful,

we could not get past a certain stage. David Hudson merely comments

that while his method is written down, the art requires additional

knowledge of things like timing, and he is not about to give this away

while striving to build a pilot plant.

I hope that this discussion of pure chemicals and pilot plants has

started to dispel your image of the author as a medieval puffer. The main

point I want to get across is that modern alchemy exists as a scientific

frontier and that it is very important. Let me tell you just how important it

is.

Empirical evidence indicates that Hudson’s chloride form of

iridium and rhodium ORMEs can cure cancer, pronto. David Hudson

believes that gold is associated with the pineal gland, rhodium with the

thymus, while iridium seems to relate to the spinal chord and pituitary

gland. There is also some anecdotal evidence from non-Hudson sources

that a mix of seventy percent rhodium, fifteen percent iridium and fifteen

percent gold is the most effective in achieving remission of cancer.

The healing process of ORMEs is not one of killing the cancer

cells but of denaturing, or simply retarding their action to the point where

cancer cells are indistinguishable from normal cells. The cancer no

longer shows up on scans. It is still early days but there is considerable

work going on under US National Institute of Health Alternative

Medicine funding to establish the bona fide of this substance in many

areas such as breast cancer, AIDS, Lou Geri’s disease, Parkinson's

disease, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and arthritis.

Industrially, the great application of ORMEs is as an electrode

and catalyst material for fuel cells. In a few years fuel cells are destined

to replace batteries in everything from mobile phones to automobiles.

The market for fuel cells will be enormous and their use is only being

held back by the lack of a suitable electrode material. The special

characteristic of ORMEs is that it is a superconductor and therefore

suitable as an electrode material. This was in fact the specific basis that

the US Defense Department vetoed David Hudson’s US patent

application.

I would like to end this chapter on a philosophic note because the

study of alchemy and philosophy has always gone hand-in-hand. Much

of the chemistry of gold and ORMEs can be understood on a purely

scientific level, but not yet everything. Some of the thinking is tied-up

with the most recent of scientific discoveries such as the behavior of

superdeformed nuclei, Cooper pairing, superconducting microclusters,

superfluids and Bose Einstein condensates, which were first created in

1995. Nobel Prizes are still being awarded for new learning about this

area of science. Yet strangely the ancients seemed to know about it five

thousand years ago.

I will now suggest a challenge. The complementary way to

understand the new science of ORMEs and jump ahead of the scientific

frontier is to understand what the ancients knew. This can only be done

through a study of classical literature and the culture of religion. Take

Shakespeare’s plays the Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and King Lear. The

Bible is a great but enigmatic reference. The Jewish Zohar or Book of

Splendor is superb, especially that 3% in the Book of the Concealed

Mystery and the Greater and Lesser Holy Assembly. Scientific alchemy,

for me, is the final piece in the jigsaw. I believe that I have perhaps come

closer to understanding the eternal enigma of the meaning of life.

I am sure you are wondering if I can make gold. Well, I have not

tried, but a number of people I know have and they were successful in

plating out gold or electrum, which is a combination of gold and silver.

No, its not trickery, but scientific extraction. However, the quantities

have been very small.

The great alchemist Zosimus said that everyone should have a

book of chemistry. I sincerely hope that you will find yours. In the next

chapter, we delve a little further into David Hudson’s extraordinary

alchemy.

Chapter 2 David Hudson’s Alchemy

More than a decade ago, David Hudson, a farmer in Phoenix

Arizona, stumbled upon the fabulous Philosophers' Stone while trying to

mine and refine gold on his farm. He realized with some excitement that

he had discovered a repeatable formula. Even better, his formula could be

scaled-up from a laboratory to a chemical plant. This was something that

had eluded alchemists for at least three thousand years.

Hudson's discovery is now a controversial subject at the forefront

of pharmaceutical and industrial technologies based on high spin state

mono-atomic or single atom elements of iridium, rhodium and gold. He

has developed high spin mono-atomic states for many of the transition

elements including gold.

David Hudson quietly patented his process in England, Australia

and other countries around the world. He was unable to do so in the

USA. The patent application fell foul of standard US Department of

Defense objections relating to superconductivity, a technology of national

importance.

Another explanation is that the process simply did not work,

although this is normally not a basis for rejection. A convenient

conspiracy theory is that the US Government realized that Hudson might

have rediscovered the Philosophers’ Stone and concluded it was far too

important for humanity to allow any individual a patent. An X-Files

variation of this conspiracy theory holds that the US military does not

want anyone else in control of the substance. David Hudson points out in

good humor that his failure to patent the process in the USA at least

meant that no one else could.

Ultra fine metallic colloids of gold, platinum and silver are one

form of pure metals used medicinally. To be effective, these colloid

molecules need to have a diameter of between one to ten nanometers.

These colloids give rise to some surprising claims. Gold colloids

reputedly help the nervous system and relieve depression, anxiety and

arthritis. Silver colloids are reputedly effective against over six hundred

and fifty viruses, bacteria, fungus and yeasts. Many recommend care with

silver because the element can build up in body tissue and become toxic

to the bacteria required for normal body function.

Rhodium

Iridium

Monatomics

Cost per

Gram

(approx.)

Aloe leaf 0.17 0.07 0.24 -

Shark cartilage 0.24 0.04 0.27 -

Emprise Plus /

Mexican wild

yam

0.49 0.49 - -

St. Johns Wort 0.8 0.60 1.40 $15

Blue-green algae 1.00 0.54 1.54 $15

Man-aloe (freeze

dried aloe)

2.1 2.10 - -

Ultimate Aloe

flash dried

2.2 2.20 - -

Blood root 0.6 2.20 2.80 $1

Calf and pig

brain

2.50 2.50 5.00 -

Ourco Nigel

maritime pine

bark

3.09 2.06 5.15 $5

Vitali-Tea

(six herbs)

2.56 7.98 10.54 $5

Acemannan Hi-

purity aloe

90.00 90.00 - -

Common Sources of Monatomic Elements

Powders containing trace metals like iridium and rhodium occur

naturally. For example, flax, almond and apricot oils and grape juice

contain both of these elements. Moreover, there is some evidence that

carrots and aloe grown in volcanic soil have detectable monatomic

rhodium and iridium. Those grown in non-volcanic soil have no natural

monatomic elements.

There are a number of natural sources of therapeutic substances

based on metals. These include a popular powder found in California that

comes in various colors, including white. Homeopathic curers claim that

clay from a Navajo reservation has special cancer curing properties.

Others claim similar remedial properties for dark green aloe leaf essence

and Californian Manchurian Mushroom Tea made from Kabuchi or

Chinese mushrooms found under pine trees.

According to David Hudson, a commercial high-purity aloe is the

most concentrated product. It is a freeze-dried polysaccharide powder of

juices extracted from Aloe Vera grown on a volcanic island in the

Caribbean. The relevant authorities authorized this high-purity Aloe for

feline AIDS but not for cancer treatment in humans. In AIDS patients,

the thymus is usually shrunken. High-purity aloe in the blood stream

seems to increase the white blood cells and T-cells dramatically. The

increase in T-cells comes from recovered activity in the thymus, which

can grow by forty percent after treatment for one and a half months.

The table above shows the percentages of rhodium and iridium

elements in some common sources. David Hudson claims that none of

these substances has measurable amounts of monatomic gold, the most

important element.

Following is a Periodic Table showing the Transition Metals

thought to have this monatomic capability. David Hudson’s monatomic

gold or Whitegold is the scarcest monatomic element. It is thought to be

much more active than the other monatomic substances. The material is

called Whitegold because it has a modest grey-white color. It is not

platinum, which jewelers call whitegold.

The technical name for Whitegold is Gold in its Orbitally

Rearranged Monatomic Elemental (G-ORME) form. David Hudson’s

initial process for its preparation from metallic gold is set out in Appendix

1. The Appendix also contains a modern technical explanation.

1a 2a 3b 4b 5b 6b 7b 1b 2b 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 0

H He

LiBe BCNOFNe

Na Mg Al Si P Se Ci Ar

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fr Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

RbSr Y ZrNbMoTcRuRhPdAgCd In SnSbTe I Xe

Cs Ba La Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn

Fr Ra Ac Rf Ha ?

Periodic Table of Elements

Transition Elements thought to form ORMES

Scientists do not yet understand the process by which Whitegold

apparently repairs cells. David Hudson hypothesizes that nitric oxide

(

NO) attacks the monatomic atoms in body cells and deactivates them.

This causes the aging process and eventually death. As humans, we

breathe to live but in doing so we also draw in one percent by volume of

nitric oxide. This ages the body and eventually kills us by the process of

deactivating monatomic substances in our cells.

David Hudson suspects that when a cell dies, the bound

monatomic high spin atom falls to low spin by emitting a gamma photon

or burst of light due to electron pair annihilation. Nitrogen fourteen in the

nitric oxide absorbs this light and converts to radioactive carbon fourteen.

This is why living bodies produce radioactive carbon fourteen. The

technique of carbon dating uses the knowledge that living cells cease

producing carbon when a body dies.

Eating monatomic elements in our food such as carrots and grape

juice may recharge our system. Ozone and peroxide can also help

remove toxins.

Yet, the combined effects of recharging and cleansing

are insufficient to retard the aging process and so a natural life ends at

about eighty years of age.

David Hudson believes that Whitegold is unique among the

monatomic elements because it is able to correct DNA deficiencies by a

denaturing process. He hypothesizes that eating larger doses of

monatomic elements may decelerate the aging process and perhaps even

reverse it. Whitegold would relax the damaged DNA and allow it to

correct and recombine.

Researchers are rigorously scrutinizing genetic correction in

humans with the Kaposi Sarcomas of AIDS, liver and breast cancer, Lou

Gehrig's disease, Multiple Sclerosis and arthritis.

Although little research is available on the medical use of

Whitegold, there is some anecdotal evidence that the chloride form of

ORME iridium is effective in the remission of cancer.

Culture tests also confirm that rhodium chloride has some effect

on cancer cells with abnormal activity reduced by about sixty percent.

There is no effect on normal cells. The precise mechanism is not yet

certain. Retardation of cancer activity in the cells occurs even if the

rhodium is only in local proximity. David Hudson feels a resonant

vibration is at the center of the whole science of monatomic substances

and refers to it as the Spirit of life. In 1995, he set up a group to fund his

pilot plant called the Science of the Spirit Foundation.

Other test tube studies with pure monatomic metals on cancer

cells and with cancer patients have been inconclusive. In one cell culture

test, the cancer cells reverted to normal, while in other tests the cancer

cells simply continued without effect.

Seven women with breast cancer

took pure ORME materials with no effect.

It is now hypothesized that

the reason pure ORME-state elements have no effect is that they are not

absorbable into the normal digestive system in the same ready way that

chlorides are digested.

More extravagant metaphysical claims made by paranormal

sources are that the body has the ability to travel anywhere by just

thinking. This translocation or astral travel is called the rapture. Other

flamboyant claims are that a person can live eight hundred to one

thousand years with a perfect body in the state of a teenager and

communicate telepathically.

While not subscribing to paranormal phenomena, David Hudson

does claim that his monatomic substances are superconductors and that

this may provide a possible explanation for the amazing behavior of the

Ark of the Covenant.

Jewish Midrashim commentaries describe how the Ark of the

Covenant levitated and carried along some of the people who were

supposed to be carrying it.

The only known phenomenon that could

levitate in this manner is a superconductor's Meissner field.

A Meissner Field is a strong diamagnetic field, unique to

superconductors, that causes them to be repelled by an external magnetic

field. Heike Kamerlingh Onne, a Dutch physicist, first identified

Superconductivity in 1911. It is a state of zero electrical resistance,

usually exhibited at very low temperatures. It was not until 1933 that the

German team of Karl W. Meissner and R. Ochsenfeld showed that

superconductors possess a Meissner Field. Notwithstanding these early

successes, the phenomena of superconductivity was not properly

understood until 1957 when three American physicists proved that it was

due to the quantum effect of electrons moving in pairs. For this work,

they received the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics.

The Nobel Committee

again chose this strategic area of research for its Prize in 1987 and 1996.

As Whitegold is a superconductor with a Meissner field, the pot of

manna in the Ark of the Covenant could have contained a quantity of

Whitegold that produced such a field. There is some suggestion that

Moses placed an omer of manna, or Whitegold, in the Ark. David

Hudson’s theory is that a Whitegold's Meissner field would then have

surrounded the Ark causing it to levitate and glow with the radiance of the

Shekhinah. This would have also caused the ill effects on the Philistines

of Ashdod. The Ark caused hemorrhoids, from the Hebrew OPLIM

meaning tumors.

Josephus says of the diseases inflicted at Ashdod:

…for they died of the dysentery and flux, a sore distemper that

brought death upon them very suddenly; for before the soul could, as

usual in early deaths, be loosed from the body, they brought up their

entrails and vomited up what they had eaten…

Similarly, the peoples of Gath and Ekron at the time of Samuel

could hardly wait to return the Ark.

An unusual characteristic of Meissner fields is that another

Meissner field, which oscillates at the same frequency, can enter that field

of the first and not perturb it. Each week the High Priests of Melchizedek

ventured beyond the veil in the Holy of Holies. There they partook of the

Bread of the Presence of God. Then more Bread was set out for the next

week before the Ark of the Covenant.

A Melchizedek high priest who had eaten the Bread of the

Presence of God for some time could theoretically approach and safely

touch the Ark of the Covenant. The Priest would not perturb the Ark’s

Meissner field because of his resonance with it. Resonance avoids a

voltage difference.

The absence of resonance when an ordinary person approaches

the Ark could lead to a collapse of flux, a voltage difference and an

electrical discharge.

This phenomenon may have given rise to the

practice of tying a golden chain around the High Priest's foot. Priests

waiting outside the Holy of Holies could drag out the High Priest if the

Ark immobilized him.

The properties of ORMES have not been widely validated. Nor is

David Hudson's Whitegold precisely the same as the Philosophers' Stone

in any one of its traditional forms. Yet, the similarity in materials and the

derivation of processes is highly compelling. If traditional alchemists’

difficulties such as chemical fires are an indication of shared technology,

David Hudson’s pilot plant is certainly no exception.

The preparation of the Whitegold from pure metallic gold is an

expensive and time-consuming process. It is unlikely that there would be

sufficient produced in this way for many to undertake the Egyptian rite of

passage, which is to consume five hundred milligrams of Whitegold each

day for thirty days. Testing is not even possible until David Hudson's

troubled pilot plant provides the direct production of white gold from

volcanic ore.

His plant uses sixty five million year old volcanic ore

from the Arizona desert.

While the necessary ores are found in any place on the earth

where there has been volcanic action, the best source of material is the

Maui craters in Hawaii where the magma is highly enriched with iridium.

Iridium ore is a pink-orange color and that with rhodium is more of a grey

color. The metals are already monatomic but purification is a lengthy

process with 32 steps and it takes 100kg of ore to get 1kg of precipitate.

Before obtaining the privilege Whitegold may bring, it is well to

remember a Rabbinical warning that the powder can be used for good or

evil and it is incumbent upon all to learn to control our own dark side

before partaking:

Understandably, then, the absolute conditions for unlocking this

door lie in purity, selflessness, and the mastery of instincts.

In the next chapter, we look at Jerusalem as an ancient center for

alchemical technology.

Chapter 3 Enigma of King Solomon's Temple

King Solomon's reign was sometime during the period 1015BCE

to 931BCE. His father, King David, had consolidated Judah and Israel

into the United Kingdom of Israel, ruled from Jerusalem. By the time of

Solomon's kingship, Jerusalem had become a wealthy centre of trade.

The Books of I Kings and II Chronicles describe how Solomon

constructed a mighty temple to house the Arc of the Covenant. He

decorated it with the most sumptuous of stonework, woodwork and

metalwork using Phoenician artisans provided by the King of Tyre.

Although there were many older temples on Mount Zion, Jewish

and Biblical scholars consider King Solomon's Temple the First Temple

of Jerusalem.

The Babylonian King Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem at the time

of Hezekiah in 700BCE. Hezekiah paid him a tribute of a king’s ransom

including thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious

stones and antimony.

The next Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar

invaded Jerusalem in 597BCE and again in 587BCE.

In the latter

invasion, he destroyed the Temple and transported the population of

Jerusalem to Babylon.

King Cyrus of Persia later returned the descendants of these

Israelites to Israel in 538BCE. He financed the construction of the

Second Temple by Zerubbabel, albeit in an austere style. The name

Zerubbabel actually means Children of Israel and is probably an

archetype. The Jews completed the Second Temple in 515BCE. It

operated until 169BCE when plundered by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the

Illustrious. He allegedly removed both the visible and hidden treasures.

With permission from the Sanhedrin, Herod the Great demolished

Zerubbabel's Second Temple in 20CE and constructed a grandiose Third

Temple in only eighteen months. Fifty years later, the Roman General

Titus burned this temple to the ground on the very anniversary of the

destruction of the First Temple. His action was in response to fanatical

militancy by Jewish Zealots who murdered a garrison of surrendered

Roman troops in Jerusalem.

The Jewish chronicler Flavius Josephus and Roman historian

Tacitus both wrote that Titus had not wanted to destroy the Third Temple.

They did so because after heavily fortifying the temple, the Zealots

fervently defended it.

Flavius Josephus warrants a brief character sketch, as he will

often contribute to our research. Josephus was nobly born in Galilee as a

descendant of the Hasmonaean-Maccabees. He was educated as a Priest

of the Temple and became the revolutionary Governor of Galilee in the

Zealot uprising of 66CE. He commanded nationalist guerrilla forces

against the troops of Vespasian. The Romans captured him. However, in

front of General Vespasian he announced that Vespasian was the messiah

the Jews awaited and that both Vespasian and his son Titus would become

emperors of Rome. After Vespasian became emperor in 69CE,

conveniently proving Josephus a sage, Vespasian appointed Josephus part

of his entourage. Vespasian also gave Josephus an apartment in the

imperial palace and bestowed the citizenship of Rome on him. Josephus’

chronicle, The Jewish War, provides our only detailed account of the

Zealot uprising in 66CE and the fall of Massada.

Josephus gives a date for the commencement of King Solomon’s

Temple of 1060BCE, some one thousand one hundred years before his

own time. He does this by nominating the period from the laying of the

foundation stone of the First Temple to the destruction of the Third

Temple by Titus in 70CE as one thousand one hundred and thirty years,

seven months and fifteen days.

He then goes on to describe the terrible

destruction of the Third Temple in graphic detail:

While the Sanctuary was burning, looting went on right and left

and all who were caught were put to the sword. Such were the height of

the hill and the vastness of the blazing edifice that the entire city seemed

to be on fire, while as for the noise, nothing could be imagined more

shattering or horrifying. There was the war-cry of the Roman legions as

they converged, the yells of the partisans encircled with fire and sword…

Yet more terrible than the din were the sights that met the eye. The

Temple Hill, enveloped in flames from top to bottom, appeared to be

boiling up from its very roots; yet the sea of flame was nothing compared

to the oceans of blood.

The Romans continued to systematically quash the Jewish

uprising by eliminating Zealots in Jerusalem, Essenes in Qumran, the

Zealots and Sicarii occupying Herod’s Massada fortress and the entire

Jewish population of Caesarea.

Jewish militancy flared once more when Rabbi Akiva inspired a

Maccabee revolt under the brilliant Jewish revolutionary leader Simon

Bar Kochbar in 130CE. Simon Bar Kochbar was known as the Son of the

Star. This name has the same meaning as that of Zoroaster and implies he

was an initiate in the royal mysteries. He was a prince of Israel and

constituted a prospective messiah for the Hasmonaean royalty of Israel.

Bar Kochbar always fought in the front line at the most dangerous

points. He led two hundred thousand men to establish an independent

Jewish state, but it was to last only three years. The Romans lost an entire

legion regaining control. In retribution, the Romans leveled one thousand

villages, killed half a million people and sent many thousands of people

abroad as slaves.

After the disastrous revolt of Bar Kochbar, the Rabbis actively

discouraged political messianic hopes.

They denounced sects such as

the Judeo-Christians that calculated the Time of the End. The Rabbis

renamed Bar Kochbar son of a lie. They declared all messianic and

apocalyptic literature uncanonical and secular.

Bar Kochbar’s Hasmonaean uprising was not Christian but

Jewish nationalism. Massada’s fall exhausted it in 67CE and led Roman

Emperor Hadrian to order the total obliteration of Jerusalem. Absolutely

nothing remained of the city except for the western retaining wall. The

Romans dedicated a small temple to Jupiter on the desolate site.

We now turn to the archeological investigations in Palestine that

stand at odds with the early Biblical account of King Solomon's Temple.

The first hurdle is that independent records from Egypt, Mesopotamia and

Phoenicia do not confirm the existence of either David or Solomon. The

only king of the relevant period to have ruled over the legendary empire

of Solomon that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates was

the Egyptian Pharaoh Tuthmose I, as he recorded on the Tombos Stela

c1490BCE.

Tuthmose III was the next ruler of this region at the time he

campaigned to Naharin on the Upper Euphrates in 1480BCE.

As to the name David, the Essenes simply regarded the name

David as the generic name of the promised messiah.

Archeological digs provide the next set of hurdles. They have not

verified the magnificence of Solomon's city or his Temple. There are no

signs whatsoever of an advanced material culture having existed.

Buildings were not monumental works of carved stone ashlars but small

with clay floors.

None of the Temple's famed pomegranate decorations

has ever been discovered, although a small decoration in the archeology

section of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem shows that pomegranates were

at some time used as decorations.

If the era of King Solomon was relatively impoverished and

culturally desolate, we must ask if the Biblical accounts are fictional

archetypes or if the archeologists are mistaken. Two key factors help us

to understand this question. Firstly, it is widely thought that the Five

Books of Moses that form the Pentateuch and Old Testament derive from

King Solomon's time or shortly after.

The author, affectionately dubbed

J, would have been quite familiar with the near history of Israel and

particularly the temple of the city of Jerusalem. Given that archeological

evidence in Jerusalem and all of Judah and Israel does not conform to J's

description, literal interpretation is unwise.

One piece of evidence is conclusive in deciding that Biblical

accounts of King Solomon's Temple are fictional archetypes. This is that

Thutmose III plundered the legendary treasure of the Temple in

1480BCE. This is approximately five hundred and thirty years before

construction of King Solomon's Temple in 950BCE. Thutmose III

recorded his Palestine campaign and its spoils in a temple at Al-Karnak in

Egypt.

In 2134BCE, Egypt’s eleventh dynasty began building the

temples of Al-Karnak. Construction lasted for one thousand five hundred

years. Thutmose III's area records in bas-relief the same grand and

precious ornaments and furniture mentioned in the Bible. At odds with

this is the Bible, which says that David gave these things to Solomon.

The bas-relief shows the items and their quantities.

The top five rows of

the bas-relief are objects of gold, the next five rows show objects of silver

mingled with gold and precious stones. The lower rows show objects of

bronze and semiprecious stones.

The wealth is so extensive that it is easy to imagine it represents

hundreds of years of trading. Yet, these are only the sacral goods

presented to the Priests of Amun. Other Egyptian monuments attest to the

secular plunder retained by the Pharaoh and his viziers such as furniture

and chariots of gold and silver. The tomb of the vizier Rekhmire records

that Thutmose III transported the Israelite metallurgical and craftsman

skills to Egypt:

Bringing the Asiatic copper [-smiths] which his majesty captured

in the victories in Retenu … Making chests of ivory, ebony, … captives,

which his majesty brought for the works of the temple of Amon.

Various Rosicrucian orders such as the Brotherhood of the Rosie

Cross look to Thutmose III as their mystical patriarch and use Thutmose

III's cartouche in their symbols. There is some support for this claim as

Masonic symbols are apparent on Thutmose III's obelisk now located in

New York's Central Park.

Other Rosicrucian orders look back to an

even earlier time of 1950BCE and the twelfth dynasty Pharaoh Sesôstris I.

His profound maxim Know thou thyself! is the distinguishing

characteristic of a modest man engraved at the Temple of Delphos (an

imaginary temple of perfection).

The dimension of this statement

became very important in both alchemy and mystery religion.

The Book of the Concealed Mystery of the Zohar describes King

Solomon joining himself to the Daughters of Men. The apocryphal Book

of Enoch describes Azazel in a similar way.

The Zohar thus suggests,

surprisingly strongly, that King Solomon is descended from the ancient

Nephilim or their descendants the Anakim, of whom we shall have more

to say in Chapter 17. If this were indeed the case, there would have been

many opportunities for the famous Temple to be built before the

campaign of Thutmose III and perhaps even before the time of Sesôstris I,

who ruled five hundred years before Thutmose III.

In fact, Herodotus maintains that Pharaoh Sesôstris is the

unknown Shishak who sacked the First Temple, a millennium before the

biblical dates.

Sesôstris’ campaigns demonstrate that this is plausible.

However, Josephus vigorously denies this contention and he is probably

correct.

Herodotus’ Sesôstris is most likely Sese-Ramses II, who some

storywriters call Sesoosis.

Pharaohs such as Tuthmose III and Ramses II liked to compare

their acts to the great Pharaoh Sesôstris, who was the first Egyptian

Pharaoh to pillage Palestine and Anatolia. If Sesoosis is really Ramses II

then Herodotus is dating the destruction of the Temple to the era of the

Battle of Kadesh in 1291BCE.

The Bible dates the sack of the First Temple by an Egyptian king

named Shishak or Sheshech to the fifth year of Rehoboam, the son of

King Solomon.

Yet, this Pharaoh Shishak (SHSHK) is absent from

Egyptian records.

It is useful to review the background to the despairing legend of

Shishak.

Due to Solomon's idolatry, God declared through the prophet

Ahijah that Jeroboam, an official in Solomon's court, would receive ten

tribes from Solomon. Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam, who fled to the

protection of Shishak in Egypt. He returned after Solomon's death to

become the leader of the new northern kingdom of Israel. Solomon’s son,

Rehoboam, ruled the southern kingdom of Judah. After the split, Shishak

invaded both weakened kingdoms.

The inspiration for this story seems to be the splitting of Egypt in

1075BCE by the twenty-first dynasty. High Priests in Thebes continued

to rule Southern Egypt. Kings from Tanis in the far northeast of the Delta

ruled the new independent North Egypt. The Libyans took advantage of

the weakened kingdom with an invasion c945BCE that overthrew all

Egypt. Chapter 6 will show the Semitic Levant Asiatics in Egypt, who

came closest to power in the nineteenth dynasty, truly regarded Egypt as

their rightful possession. This was the grand heritage of Jacob on the

Ladder , which Ramses II recorded on his stele commemorating the four

hundredth anniversary of his dynasty.

Although the Exodus expulsion of Ra Meses, the Biblical Moses

of whom we shall see more in Chapter 5, was a temporary setback, it was

not decisive to Levant Asiatic involvement. Nor was loss of power by the

nineteenth dynasty. The second Pharaoh of the twenty-first dynasty,

Psusennes I of Tanis, reestablished it. He associated his lineage with the

nineteenth dynasty and, in doing so, reignited Semitic Levant Asiatic

ambitions for the Delta.

In stark contrast, Psusennes II’s disastrous loss of all Egypt to the

Libyan Shoshenq I after the foolish division of the kingdom by the

twenty-first dynasty was fatal to Levant Asiatic ambitions for Egypt.

King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, is therefore the luckless biblical

archetype for the two Pharaohs called Psusennes.

However, even Shoshenq I sought the traditional legitimacy of

Egyptian ultimogeniture for his family. Firstly, he recognized Psusennes

II by the dedication of a statue. Then his son Osorkon married the

daughter of Psusennes II.

Through this marriage and by the principal of

ultimogeniture, Osorkon’s own son became a legitimate Egyptian

Pharaoh.

Shoshenq I, the twenty-second dynasty invading Pharaoh, had a

similar name to the Biblical Shishak. An inscription in the Temple of

Karnak made in Shoshenq I's twenty-first year dated his rule at c925-

924BCE. He is contemporary with the Tel Dan stele and Mesha stone.

However, the perplexing name of Shishak is probably not simply

that of the Libyan Pharaoh who conquered Egypt as biblical writers of the

Severan dynasty and successive Massoretic revisionists to the tenth

century CE assume.

The Dead Sea Scrolls more often agree with the Septuagint than

with the Massoretic text.

Indeed, the Corpus found at Qumran contains

no mention of Shishak in either Kings or Chronicles. Even circumstantial

evidence implies that Shoshenq I’s Levant conquest produced little booty

from Jerusalem. While the bas-relief displays of his conquest at Karnak

are incomplete as regards the tally for Jerusalem, the total tribute is clear.

After eliminating the tribute from identified cities, there is little remaining

tribute to associate with Jerusalem. If there was a glorious wealth of gold

shields and other tribute from Solomon’s city, Shoshenq I certainly did

not triumphantly record it.

Using accepted Biblical chronology the fifth year of Rehoboam

would be about 917BCE, about five hundred and sixty years after

Thutmose III's conquest. The Atbash Cipher solution decodes Shishak to

Babel, meaning Babylon (see Appendix 10).

The Babylon connection

means the fifth year of Rehoboam could well be another three hundred

and twenty years later, in 597BCE. In this year King Nebuchadnezzar of

Babylon invaded Israel, destroyed the Temple and carried the people into

Exile.

We therefore have a dazzling array of dates some eight hundred

and eighty years apart, from the conquest of Tuthmose III to the time of

King Nebuchadnezzar. There must be another explanation.

While retaining the identity of Shishak, we need to dispose of the

derived Atbash Cipher solution as a date for the destruction of the

Temple. There were two traditional oppressors of the Israelites: Egypt

and Babylon. The archetypal Egyptian King Shishak represented the

kings of both lands. The biblical stories neatly combine the Israelites’

two aggressors Shoshenq I and Nebuchadnezzar into a single archetype

(later Rome was rolled in as well). The similarity of Pharaoh Shoshenq

I’s name to Shishak is a fortuitous device that greatly enhances the power

of the archetype because of its apparent internal consistency.

King Shoshenq I’s Palestine campaign also conveniently aligns

with the break-up of David’s empire. However, the lost empire was not

Israel. It was the Delta of Egypt and all the lands in Tuthmose I’s

kingdom that stretched to the Euphrates. The forlorn Israelites were

anxious to regain their domain:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a

Branch shall grow out of his roots … And it shall come to pass in that

day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the

remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt,

and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and

from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup

of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to

drink it. And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the

sword that I will send among them … Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah,

… Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all his

people … all the kings of the land of Uz, … the Philistines, … Edom …

Moab … Ammon, … Tyre … Zidon, and the kings of the isles which are

beyond the sea … Arabia, … Zimri … Elam … Medes …the north, far and

near and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.

We begin to suspect that the exact physical location, relevant time

and culture of the Temple are very uncertain because they are veiled

stories of Israelite political ambition for the Egypt’s Delta and the land of

Canaan. The synthesized archetypal history has drawn on many legends

over more than a millennium to create the famous Temple in the

Israelite’s city of last resort, Jerusalem, which became their icon of

nationhood.

The Babylonian conquest mercilessly destroyed the records of the

Judeans. Religious and political leaders were killed en-masse. The

remaining population, primarily women and children, marched to

Babylonia in slavery. This resulted in the loss of both oral and written

tradition. Only fragmented legends remained. The returning Jews at the

time of Cyrus assembled what they could into consistent stories of their

history. Rather than single events, these became medleys. Individuals

became archetypes. God’s arbitrary treatment of his chosen people led to

many explanations and conspiracy theories. Stories became didactic

rather than fact. They developed a revolutionary flavor. The only thing

constant about Jewish history was its frequency of redefinition.

Many Pharaohs troubled the Israelites during the one thousand

five hundred years from Sesôstris I to the writing of Chronicles and

Jeremiah in 450BCE. The historians of Chronicles and Jeremiah may

well have been unaware of the relevant Egyptian Pharaoh at the time of

the Exodus.

We only need to contrast the despairing paucity of their

information resources with our own acute lack of knowledge of events

over the last one thousand five hundred years. We are hazy about much

of the Dark Ages. We know almost nothing of the early Papacy. We

have not even solved the controversy of whether the greatest writer in the

canon of English Literature, William Shakespeare, was a real person or a

team of lawyers, poets and publishers.

A recently discovered Phoenician text on limestone at Tel Mikne,

the ancient Philistine city of Ekron, suggests how the histories of the First

Temple were developed.

The text commemorates that Achish

constructed the temple of Ekron and archaeologists place this at around

650BCE. Fifth century BCE Biblical authors similarly wrote that David

knew a Philistine king by the same name of Achish:

And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to

Achish the king of Gath.

Therefore, it is likely that the authors of Samuel and Kings used

the events of the 650BCE era and melded them with myths of earlier

times as the broad canvas for their histories of David, Solomon and the

First Temple.

By the time of Christ, a third national oppressor joined Egypt and

Babylon in the archetype of Shishak. At the time of Revelation, in 95CE,

Babylon represented Rome. The Revelation of John predicts the

destruction of Babylon. The celestial city of Jerusalem is to replace it.

Babylon is in this case the occupied terrestrial city of Jerusalem. It also

includes the Roman Empire and in particular, Rome itself.

From the paucity of evidence for King Solomon and his Temple,

we can only conclude that large parts of the King Solomon myth involve

the projection of an Israelite archetype. This has a mishnaic precedent or

midrashic scriptural interpretation.

Of what is King Solomon an

archetype? His own name tells us but we need to understand the ancient

code of subsumed names.

We need to look at one more mystery before moving on. This is

the real meaning of the name Solomon, given the heritage of King

Solomon’s city of Jerusalem.

In antiquity, the reason that a God could have many names was

that all-powerful gods regularly incorporated names from all other gods

they overcame:

Conquering gods their titles take

From the foes they captive make.

The Kabbalah observes this formula throughout. It allows us to

understand the linguistic form of Solomon.

Breaking names into

meaningful syllables is the priestly language also known as the Language

of the Birds, which was originally the shorthand technique used by priests

in carrier pigeon messages.

It renders the name Solomon as Sol-Om-On.

This indicates dominance over the sun god Sol, the divine mantra

Om or omnific word AUM representing the gods Brahma, Vishnu and

Shiva of the Indo-Hittite pantheon, and the Egyptian and Greek gods of

On.

The letters AUM also stand for the Latin Artifex Universus

Mundi, which means the Great Architect of the World and has the

numerical cipher sum of 33. While the sacred word of the Brahmins is

AUM, the Buddhists use O-mi-to and the Druids O. I. W.

Plato

identified the Tetragrammaton:

Tell me of the God of On, which was, is, and shall be.

Dominance over these gods also demonstrates that Solomon is

one form of the god Yahweh. The next chapter confirms that Solomon

knows one of Yahweh's secret names, Iahu. By dominance logic, Iahu is

one of Solomon's names, as it was also one of Horus' names in Egypt.

Furthermore, the name Solomon is but one part of the

Tetragrammaton JHWH in a greater whole. Freemasonry records the

legend of King Solomon, Hiram King of Tyre and the great architect and

master of building, Hiram Abiff, together building King Solomon’s

Temple. In these three characters, we find the Holy and Ineffable name

of God recorded.

The consonant W, or Digamma F, represents King

Solomon, whose name most simply means Peace. W is one of the two

secret letters of the Hebrew alphabet regarded by the Pythagoreans as

uncontaminated by the errors of the material universe. The other secret

Hebrew letter is H, representing the first day of creation. It is therefore

analogous to the creating architect, Hiram Abiff. Finally, JH, which

represents Sovereignty, equates to Hiram King of Tyre.

In Jewish tradition, the three consonants of the Logos

Tetragrammaton JH-W-H have additional meanings that relate to the

leading tribes of Israel.

JH is the letter of the tribe of Benjamin and its

precious stone Jerel, or amber. This is also Hebrew for electricity,

although Hashmal is the modern word.

In Ezekiel’s vision of the

Ancient of Days, Hashmal was the divine substance that provided the

fiery splendors of God’s Throne and Countenance, the Merkabah.

The letter W is the letter of the last day of creation and associated

with the phrase: Let there be rest. W is the letter of the tribe of Judah and

its precious stone is the fire garnet. Finally, the letter H is the letter of the

first day of creation associated with the phrase: Let there be Light. It is

the letter of the tribe of Levi and the associated precious stone is Lapis

Lazuli. The Talmud describes the Ten Commandments recorded on two

tablets of sappur and entrusted to the Levites for safekeeping. Sappur is

Lapis Lazuli.

Yet, the meanings of the Tetragrammaton extend even further.

The vowels AOUEI can be inserted into the Hebrew Tetragrammaton

YHWH to create the whole name of God. These vowels represent the

female spirit that moved on the face of the water.

Emperor Frederick

III, the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor who reigned from 1452CE

to 1493CE, adopted this vowel set as his personal motto or device.

We have seen that deconstruction of the name Solomon produces

three names and, alternatively, Solomon is one of three names making up

the greater whole of the Tetragrammaton. This same formula is common

with the Afro-Asiatic Triple Goddess. While a single Goddess, she has

three primary guises, each in turn represented by three Muses. This leads

to the famous Ennead of nine Muses or manifestations of the Triple

Goddess.

The three original Muses are the Triple Goddess in her

orgiastic aspect, while Three Fates and the Three Hesperides are the

Triple Goddess in her death aspect.

Every study of mythology must begin with a study of the many-

titles Mother Goddess, Triple Goddess or White Goddess.

Her worship

underlay the political and religious systems that existed before the Indo

Hittite invasions. When motherhood was the prime mystery of society,

the Mother Goddess took lovers for pleasure. Her victims feared, adored

and obeyed her. The cycles of the Moon, which aligned with her twenty-

eight day menstrual cycles, led the Mother Goddess to be identified with

the three phases of the moon: maiden, nymph or nubile woman and crone.

While the moon did not grow dimmer as the year waned, the sun died and

was reborn under her influence. The witches of Thessaly, a Mother

Goddess cult dreaded by everyone, threatened the sun with perpetual

night.

It did not happen because the Goddess raised another king.

The Priestesses at Delphi chose a nymph to celebrate the sacred

marriage by a foot race.

This forerunner of our modern Olympic

Games, Hera’s Games, took place one day before the main games.

The

victrix became the high priestess of Hera and one with the Goddess by

partaking of her sacred cow.

Another method was simply to award the right by ultimogeniture

to the youngest nubile woman of the junior branch of the royal house.

The nymph then chose an annual lover who was elevated to king.

After erotic lovemaking with the nymph, the crone sacrificed the

king to fructify the trees, flocks and crops with his blood. The college of

priestesses then ate his raw flesh wearing the masks of bitches, sows and

mares. In Europe, the ritual was amended so two kings reigned and died.

The king died at the summer solstice and his tanist, or supposed twin, at

the winter solstice. The tanist’s reward was reincarnation as an oracular

serpent of Wisdom. The phases of the moon governed time and the king

died at the seventh full moon after the shortest day.

When resistance

developed to this arrangement, the Priestesses substituted a surrogate boy-

king, called an interrex, who died in place of the king.

In Crete a kid was substituted for the human victim; in Thrace it

was a bull-calf; and the Aeolians substituted a foal. The rituals of the

Mother Goddess were firmly rooted in Arcadia. The Arcadians

sacrificially ate boys right up to Christian times.

With insight from the Triple Goddess into Solomon’s name, it is

hardly surprising that there is a long history of association between

Solomon and his city of Jerusalem. Josephus records that the first name

of Jerusalem was Solyma. The sun god Sol is the Jerusalem demi-god of

the sun, Salma, who was associated with both Jerusalem and Hebron.

Salma was also Reseph, the Canaanite Mikal, Michael, the Egyptian

Osiris and Salmon the ancestor of Solomon.

Salma’s father was Beli the

Willow God and the Lord of Light. His mother was Sal-Ma the Willow

Mother and Moon Goddess. In this context, Jerusalem was an important

shrine to the Son of the God of Light some one thousand four hundred

years before the time of Jesus.

Before Mosaic reinterpretation, Canaanites celebrated the god

Salma or Sal-Ma with an orgiastic fire and water festival in Jerusalem. It

was originally Anatha’s Bacchanal willow tree orgy for rainmaking.

The celibate Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles preserves this festival.

According to the Talmud, the Pharisees found it difficult to curb the

traditional lightheadedness of the women as they solemnly brought water

from the Pool of Siloam on the climax of the festival, the Day of

Willows.

The same harvest festival in Athens was the Oschophoris in

which male participants carried fruit laden boughs. They corresponded to

the lulab of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Effigies of Ariadne with

detachable limbs dangled from the Athenian boughs. They represented

Ariadne’s suicide in fear of Artemis. In the Mochlos hoard, archeologists

discovered delicate Borealis gold tiaras worn by priestesses who ritually

committed suicide and were dismembered in the same way as Ariadne at

the Oschophoris.

Salma is the original god of this festival. His name is part of

Jerusalem, Uru-Salim, from the Tell Amarna letters of 1370BCE.

Assyrian records of the same period show Jerusalem was Ur-Salimu. All

these names are referring to Salma God of Light.

Tuthmose III did not mention Jerusalem in his list of Palestine

conquests. This could mean a number of things. Perhaps Jerusalem was

not an important city at the time or it had another name. It may have

escaped sacking, or perhaps its record was lost or not recorded. Of these,

the most likely is that Jerusalem had another name at the time. This was

quite probably Kadesh, the Holy City of the God of Light.

The name Salim is also associated with the East. Its appearance

from Greece to Arabia shows that Salma was important throughout the

whole region.

Even today, the salt workers of the Ettore Saltworks on

the west coast of Sicily collect salt as their predecessors have for

thousands of years. They measure their labor in Salmas. One Salma is

equivalent to one and a half tonnes of wet salt. One hundred Salmas

make a much-celebrated Holy Sacrament.

The word Salma also occurs in the names of ancient kings. It is a

royal title among King David's ancestors the Kenites and appears as the

royal name Selim among the Phoenicians, Salman among the Assyrians

and Salmoneus among the Danaans of Greece and late Minoan Crete.

Salma also suggests the word saleuma, which describes the ritual

laming of the sacred king Dionysus of the mystery drama.

This was the

bulls-foot. Greek tragic actors who wore the cothurnus in honour of

Dionysus often imitated the swaggering gait of saleuma.

Mothers

chastised many a girl in Palestine for mimicking this peculiarly suggestive

manner of walking.

Dionysus also means the Lame God of Light, which is quite

similar to Salma.

The word lame in Syracusan is Nysos and identifies

places such as Nusaybin, in the Commagene of Turkey, as a shrine to

Dionysus.

The lame king Dionysus is often associated with the mysteries of

the metalworking smith. Ancient religions all over Africa and Europe

have a hobbling Smith-god. In their erotic Spring beer-orgy called

Pesach the Smiths wore wings and performed a hobbling spiral partridge

dance.

This ritual celebrated the marriage of the Smith-god Hephaestus

to the patron Athene. The Smiths performed their spiral partridge dance

in a maze pattern on a mosaic floor.

It is still a symbol of

Freemasonry’s second degree. Jerome wrote that in his time, devotees

performed the hobbling ceremony of Pesach at Beth-Hoglah, on the

threshing floor of Atad where they mourned the lame King Jacob.

Men from Troy, Crete and Northeastern Russia to Italy, Wales

and Britain performed the sacred labyrinth dance.

Even today, Greek

men will often exuberantly contest each other at celebrations and dinners

with the careful spiral Crane Dance of Delos, carefully trod with

measured steps of labyrinthine evolutions that Theseus first performed at

Knossos.

Daedalus built such a dancing floor in Knossos for Ariadne.

He marked the maze pattern in white marble relief, copied from the

Egyptian Labyrinth:

Daedalus in Knossos once contrived

A dancing-floor for fair-haired Ariadne…

Archeologists discovered an open space in front of the palace at

Knossos.

This open space had a maze pattern to guide the performers in

their partridge hobbling-dance. Knossian coins also showed this pattern.

A Cretan maze cut on a rock face in Bosinney in Cornwall shows that the

maze reached Britain. It is exactly the same pattern as the British turf-cut

mazes, known as Troy-towns, which schoolchildren trod at Easter until

the nineteenth century.

The Easter egg was a symbol of resurrection and

the counter-charm to the apple of the Goddess.

Traditionally, hunters captured partridges in a brushwood maze.

They caged a bird in the center of the maze, which offered food-calls,

love calls and challenges. As visiting birds arrived at the center, the

hunters knocked them on the head.

Jacob confirms he is a smith-god by his ritual laming:

100

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him

until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not

against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's

thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for

the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said,

Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast

thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

The sacred marriage of Salma and the Flower Queen Moon

Goddess at Jerusalem is in Canticles:

101

I am the Rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys.

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

Much has been made of this song because of seven references to

Solomon in the Hebrew text. These references skew the interpretation of

the Song to a love between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Yet, the

Solomonic verses are coarse in comparison with the sensitive poetry of

the Song and an ill fit with the tenor of the main verse. The new lines talk

not of pure philosophical and carnal love between man and woman but

soldiers, swords and State politics. These things are traditional concerns

of the Israelites but totally out of character with the simple beauty of the

lines that describe the sacred marriage of the sacrificial king. The Song is

the mystery of Astarte’s fertility rite and the death of Tammuz, which

returns life to the land (see Appendix 13).

102

Ecclesiastes is the inner

mystery of the rite.

103

The poetry of the unadulterated sacred marriage is purely a

fertility rite of Ishtar or Astarte, as the tree cipher in the text clearly

reveals:

104

The beams of our house are cedars; our rafters are firs.

The Cedar is the tree of sovereignty and associated with Ishtar or

Astarte. The fir is the tree of birth and motherhood of the Moon Goddess,

Ishtar or Astarte. In Mesopotamia, the fir tree substituted for the palm.

The cedar, fir, rose and olive are all characteristics of the Goddess of

Wisdom standing for her sovereignty, motherhood, beauty and

fruitfulness.

The biblical Rose of Sharon does not grow on the Plain of Sharon

between Jaffa and Mount Carmel. In the Song of Songs, the Hebrew

word habatstseleth translates as rose.

105

Conversely, in Isaiah it translates

as crocus flower.

106

These are the only two incidences of this Hebrew

word habatstseleth in the Bible. Neither semiotics nor botany provides a

conclusive meaning. The reason for this is that rose simply represents the

beauty and special function of the Goddess seen in the blood of her heroes

Adonis and Tammuz (see Appendix 13).

107

The eight-petal scarlet

anemones of Pelion, which redden the slopes of Mount Lebanon after the

winter rains, symbolize their blood.

108

The Goddess is the receptive womb that transforms the lover to

the new son, the God of Light. Repeatedly, the rose embraces and is

embraced by what it embraces. This is the philosophical logic of roses.

Later authors have adjusted the symbolism of Sharon's Rose to

represent Jesus. As we shall see in Chapter 16 and Chapter 17, the rose

represents dew, as does the Sumerian KUR-KUR, or crocus flower. The

difference is that the rose gives birth to the son or divine dew of Light.

This is the color of the bright lilac crocus and identifies with the

mysterious Arcanum arcanorum, the lilac Philosophers’ Stone, which is

often hallowed as Jesus for reasons that will also become clear later in

this book.

The importance of the crocus seems to derive from the abundant

presence in Colchis of both the false or meadow crocus, crocus colchium,

and the true crocus sativus.

109

Each was highly valued for different

reasons, the former as a unique Egyptian remedy for gout and the latter as

the source of golden-yellow saffron dye.

A similar approach that links the rose and the crocus to the

symbolism of Jesus applies hermetic drift to expand the context of the

rose to that of a generic flower, anthos in Greek. This image refocuses to

the bright lilac crocus as the symbol for Jesus.

These investigations have shown that the name of Solomon is part

of an Ennead such as Salma, Om and On, confirming his status as an

Israelite archetype. He is a Son of Light and by rose-logic, one

manifestation of Yahweh as well.

This recognition more readily helps us to accept the esoteric

traditions of Solomon's ability to command demons, jinn and other spirits

as described in the Talmud and a whole cycle of the Arabian Nights

legends. Jews and Arabs alike continue to regard King Solomon as one of

the greatest alchemists and in possession of the Philosophers’ Stone. An

old English poem preserved in Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum

Britannicum says:

110

… the Blessed Stone Fro Heven wase sende downe to Solomon

King Solomon is also reputed to have written a book about the

Philosophers’ Stone called HaMa

pen or The Compass.

111

He writes of

obtaining the Philosophers' Stone from the Queen of Sheba, who had

previously received it from her husband Seman.

112

Seman was a great

sage amongst the Copt or Nabateans. In Chapter 8, we shall have more to

say about the Nabateans as an integral link between the Sabians of Yemen

and the Sabians of Harran.

The Queen of Sheba joined King Solomon in Jerusalem for a

particular reason.

113

As we shall see in the next chapter, a Kingdom

passed from the King to the son of either the King’s youngest daughter or

youngest sister by the rule of ultimogeniture.

114

Thus, the Queen of Sheba

visits Solomon to deliver the wealth of Egypt to Solomon’s son

Rehoboam. The wealth of the Temple and the empire inherited by

Rehoboam is that of the Egyptian State. That unique icon of the pinnacle

of wealth, the Philosophers’ Stone, symbolized it. We shall see in

Chapter 6 how they obtained this wealth.

While King Solomon and his Temple are likely to be compound

archetypes, we can speculate as to what physical buildings might have

provided the model for the concept of the Temple.

The temple plans of nearby Hazor and at Tell Ta’yinat and ‘Ain

Dara in Syria suggest that the Jerusalem’s temple was architecturally a

generic, economic Syrian design.

115

However, the Bible gives it much

more prominence.

Locations in Egypt that provide enviable archetypes for every

aspiring religion are the magnificent Temple at Al-Karnak, Luxor,

Amarna on the Nile, Ramesses III mortuary temple at Medinet Habu,

Avaris or Tanis in the Delta, the Nile Island of Philae. There is a good

argument for Al-Karnak as the Israelites also took with then the prayers

inscribed on the walls of this temple to he Aten.

116

A particularly good candidate for the Temple of Solomon is in

Tanis. Before the loss of Egypt to the Libyan king Shoshenq I in

945BCE, Tanis was the northern Karnak and competed in grandeur with

its southern icon. Tanis built its temples from blocks transported from the

city of Ramesses, twenty-two kilometers away. The nineteenth dynasty

Pharaoh Ramses II who traced his dynasty back to the Hyksos king Jacob

on the Ladder originally built it:

117

His majesty has built a castle for himself. It lies between

Palestine and Egypt. It is similar to Thebes and it endures as long as

Memphis. In its western part is the Temple of Amun and in its southern

part the Temple of Seth; the Temple of Astarte is on the morning side and

the Temple of Uto is on the north side. The fortress, which is in its

interior, is like the horizon of the sky.

The city of Tanis arose without the sound of a hammer, as

reputedly did Solomon’s Temple. The cities of Ramesses and Bubastis

were its quarry.

118

Some of the blocks brought to Tanis weighed one

thousand tons and were nearly thirty metres high. These ashlars glorified

the new Temples to Amun, the Near Eastern Goddess Anat, Khonsu and

Horus.

The temples of Ramesses and Bubastis were already five hundred

years old before their transfer to Tanis. Statues of Ramses II guard the

gate of King Shoshenq at the Temple of Amun. Maned-sphinxes also

bear the name of Ramses II as well as that of Merenptah and Psusennes I.

The identification by the last user, Psusennes I, of his lineage from his

twenty-first dynasty to the nineteenth dynasty is a clear reference to the

reemergence of Semitic Levant Asiatic involvement. Excavation of his

intact royal tomb at Tanis in 1940CE brought to light the second most

valuable treasures of Egypt including his golden mummy mask.

Ramesses III (1194-1163BCE) Thebian mortuary temple, the

House of Eternity at Medinet Habu, and King Solomon’s Temple have

many common features.

119

It includes a Migdol Gateway (four-storey

fortress tower adopted for use in sacred architecture), two pylons, two

courts, hypostyle hall, an inner sanctuary or Holy of Holies for Amun and

a treasury. The colorful and well-preserved wall reliefs on the eight

pillars of the second vestibule colonnade, north of the second court, show

many arks and winged hawk-gods. These hawk-gods have their wings

outstretched in the same manner as the cherubim on the Ark of the

Covenant.

A more recent representation of the Temple of Solomon is on the

Island of Philae. Isis supposedly found Osiris' heart on the Island of

Philae. The Egyptians worshiped Imhotep there. The Jewish Temple of

Philae was the last Jewish temple that practiced sacrifice. It shows in bas-

relief an Isiac ark that fits the description of the Ark of the Covenant

including its two cherubim.

120

The arc of arcacia wood was sacred to Isis

and Ishtar as it was to Moses and the Israelites.

Surprisingly, the Temple of Philae was the only Egyptian temple

not destroyed by the Persian Cambyses II in about 525BCE. In stark

contrast to his father, Cyrus the Great, Cambyses II was a cruel despot

prone to rages and sacrilegious acts. His admirable restraint on Philae

shows the degree of respect Cambyses II held for the religion of the Jews,

which was at least consistent with his Indo-Hittite Zoroastrian beliefs.

Certainly, the period in Palestine after the expulsion of the

Hyksos from Egypt in 1567BCE was much more commercially advanced

than the narrow focus implied to us by the Biblical stories.

121

After the

expulsion of the Hyksos, Palestine enjoyed a period of prosperity as the

Israelites retained close cultural affinities with the Hurrians and

Mediterranean peoples of Crete, the Cyclades and the richer areas of

Mainland Greece.

This prosperity was to abruptly end with the decisive five-month

campaign by Tuthmose III to capture the strategic city of Megiddo from

the Canaanite kings and re-exert suzerainty over Palestine. Tuthmose III

promptly made Megiddo his stronghold for Syria and Palestine because it

guarded the trade route between Jerusalem and Sidon.

An impressive fortified ashlar gateway protected the town of

Megiddo. Such squared masonry, the work of a stonemason, is usually a

sign of royalty. The Bible claims King Solomon built it.

122

Excavations have revealed just how advanced the city had

become. Extensive apartments adjoined the palace and included a

seashell-paved room, thought to be for bathing. The royal treasury gave

archeologists a wonderful cache. It contained gold vessels, jewelry and

carved ivories displaying the richness of Canaanite art. The temple of the

city measured eleven metres by ten metres and had two fine pillars

flanking the portico.

Thutmose III's merit list of conquered cities placed Kadesh at the

head of the list, followed by Megiddo. Kadesh was a very special city

and superior to Megiddo. Yet, its exact location is uncertain. There are a

number of cities in Syro-Palestine called Kadesh. These are Kadesh on

the Orontes, the one-time Amalekite stronghold Kadesh-Barnea or Ein-

Mishpat in the lower Negev Desert and Merbah Kadesh in the wilderness

of Zin.

123

Thutmose III did not campaign as far as the city of Kadesh on the

Orontes River in northern Syria where Ramses II later won a major battle.

The other two sites of Kadesh seem to be little more than locations on the

map at the time of Thutmose III. Sadly we cannot check his diary that

recorded the campaign every day on a leather scroll in the temple of

Amon, however he did carve the Annals of the Battle of Megiddo on the

walls of the Temple of Karnak.

It is widely thought that the Palestine Kadesh plundered by

Thutmose III is Jerusalem. The name Kadesh actually means Holy City

and many biblical references identify it directly with Jerusalem.

124

For

example, in about 700BCE Isaiah said of the people of Jerusalem:

125

For they call themselves of the holy city.

This leads us to believe that Jerusalem was a holy sanctuary from

times pre-dating 1480BCE and probably also pre-dating about 1800BCE

when Abraham met King Melchizedek there. Chapter 11 investigates

King Melchizedek the Righteous in more detail.

Therefore, Kadesh the Holy City is most probably Jerusalem.

This would certainly be consistent with Jerusalem's position as the most

important city in Palestine, where Salma the Son of Light was

worshipped. As we have seen, Thutmose III plundered the legendary

treasure of King Solomon here in 1480BCE, at least four hundred years

before the conventionally accepted time.

After the 1480BCE conquest, Thutmose III and his immediate

successors firmly introduced the mystery cults of Isis and Osiris

throughout Palestine.

126

These cults ritualized Isis' search for her

murdered husband Osiris and the reassembly of Osiris' body together with

a golden phallus. They taught vigilance against Typhon through the

triumph of Horus over his father's murderer, Set. Horus represents all

immaculately conceived sons of Isis, philosophically born in her

mysteries. In days past, the nom de guerre of these initiates was sons of

the widow.

127

To some degree, Thutmose III returned the mystery religions to a

land where they had existed many centuries before. For example, the

main goddess of the Egyptian pantheon was Isis whose name derives

from the Indo-Hittite onomatopoeic word Ish-ish, meaning she-who-

weeps, the Goddess who weeps for her dying husband.

128

The roots of

Egyptian royal language and the religious concepts of the ruling society

suggest that a very early Indo-Hittite migration into Egypt established the

rulers of pre-first dynasty Egypt.

There is always the problem of hermetic drift inherent in myths

cobbled together for national identity. This compels us to rise above the

interplay of myths and legends in Occam's helicopter. Only then can we

begin to categorize the archetypal landscape. At the first level of

abstraction, the magnificent temple of King Solomon is Israel and Egypt.

Solomon is Salma the Son of Light and by rose-logic one

anthropomorphic equivalent of Yahweh. In true archetypal fashion, King

Solomon disappears from Biblical history as soon as his role in building

the Temple is finished. The treasure of the Temple is the wealth of the

whole region once controlled by the Israelites, from Palestine to the

Egyptian Delta.

At a higher level of abstraction, hermetic logic makes the First

Temple into the New Jerusalem, which can exist everywhere. It is within

us as our celestial soul. King Solomon is greater than any god defined in

relation to the earth. Like the transcendent Yahweh, Egyptian Amun and

Persian Ahura Mazda, King Solomon has an integral role in the

omnipresent order, harmony and balance of the whole universe. This

outstandingly important role is Peace, Mercy in Justice, Righteousness

and the Wisdom or Charity of Love, as we shall see in Chapter 7.

Chapter 4 Crucibles of Humanity

The last Chapter found that changing religious practices in the

Levant and Egypt are at the heart of the enigma of King Solomon’s

Temple. To unravel the mystery further, it is useful to review the broad

sweep of populations that carried different religious outlooks through the

region and to Europe and Britain. Modern advances in genetic mapping

have made this possible.

DNA loci in human genes now provide a rough evolutionary

profile. Nei and Roychourdhury completed a study of twenty-six human

population groups in 1993. The cluster diagram below shows their data,

as reprocessed by the author.

129

The dendrogram or phylogenetic tree shows the relationship

between population groups. The distance between various groups

provides an evolutionary time scale. It assumes a constant gene mutation

rate. Unfortunately this can also lead to some absurd results, such the

conclusion that South Asians and Polynesians developed long before the

Greater Asian Supercluster of the Tibetans, Japanese and Koreans, and

also long before the Caucasians groups such as the Germans, English,

Italians and Iranians.

A second major assumption in the phylogenetic map is that there

must be a distinct root race and an Eve, a single point start to humanity.

This assumption is incorrect. First, consider the age-old paradox of what

came first, the hen or the egg. Of course, the answer is an earlier kind of

hen.

130

Those of us that secretly harbour a romantic conception of Eve

might need to catch their breath because around 65 to 125 million years

ago, Eve was a rat-like creature called a Mus musculus. This Eve is not

only the ancestor of humans, but also the common ancestor of humans

and mice.

131

Cluster mathematics is a description technique, not a predictor. It

measures correlation and correlation does not mean causation. In fact, the

cluster diagram below shows Africa mathematically separated from the

remainder of the world. Of course, humans in Africa share the same

genes as humans elsewhere. There is simply more variance between

Africans and Asians than between Caucasians and Asians. To complicate

matters further, eighty-five percent of all variance occurs within

populations and only fifteen percent among populations.

132

This means

there is usually far greater genetic diversity between members of a

Cluster Analysis of Data by Nei and Roychourdhury, 1993

133

population than there is between populations. In other words, geneticists

are working with a little information in the midst of a lot of noise.

Neither noise nor mathematical debates deter grand theories. As

Africa has the most fossils, traditional geneticists claim the phylogenetic

map supports linearity to Africa. They believe mankind reached

fulldevelopment in Africa and from there spread to the rest of the world.

Scholars call this linear African root race approach the out-of-Africa

theory of humankind.

134

These traditional genetic evolutionists are pleased that the

phylogenetic map is generally consistent with data on morphological

differences, the geographic distribution of populations and archeology.

Yet, there is inconsistency with dental, cranial and other

paleontological factors and with linguistics that causes equal uneasiness

with the phylogenetic map.

135

A major enigma for those with a dogged belief in the

phylogenetic map is the Australian and Papuan groups. These have the

physical characteristics of the Africans (dark skin, frizzled hair, etc) but a

genetic mix more akin to Asians and Caucasians than Africans. This

genetic mélange remains highly controversial. Some rationalize it away

as the result of gene admixture between two interbreeding migrations.

Sadly, the Out-of-Africa theory and phylogenetic map do not

provide an elegant solution to evolution. To achieve closer conformity of

the phylogenetic map, researchers are drilling down to detail that is even

more microscopic. Study of microsatellite loci of DNA may shed

additional light on why the theory is inconsistent with physical evidence.

There are three additional problems in delving into these

microsatellite positions and codes. The first is that the microsatellite loci

can have a number of forms in some groups but only one in other groups.

The second issue is that the mutation rate is not uniform but varies

considerably from locus to locus.

A final issue is common to all genetic research in evolution. This

is that populations are rapidly blending through intermarriage, which

leads to diffuse homogeneity. In brief, it means that researchers are

rapidly running out of pure lineage for research.

It is useful to look at the same genetic data in the phylogenetic

map from the perspective of underlying factors. Factor analysis extracts

those few factors that statistically explain nearly all the variance observed

between populations. It is quite a robust analytical technique.

Factor Analysis of Nei and Roychourdhury Data, 1993

136

(each axis represents the correlation domain from +1 to –1,

see the previous Cluster diagram for more detail of particular groups in

each Supercluster such as the Greater Asians)

Factor Analysis of Nei and Takezaki Data, 1996

137

(Chimpanzees are not closely related to any of

Africans, Asians or Caucasians)

Factor analysis of the data from Nei and Roychourdhury shows

that ninety six percent of the variance is explained by just three distinct

factors. From an inspection of the data, we can call them geographically

an Asian Factor, Caucasian Factor and African Factor. It is interesting to

note in the three-dimensional plot above just how distinctly separated the

African group is from the Asians and Caucasians.

The three factors directly relate to the main regional population

groups we noted earlier in the cluster analysis. The main factor, which

explains sixty five percent of the variance in the data, is the Asian Factor.

This factor is closely associated with the populations of Tibet, Mongolia,

South China and Thailand through to Polynesia and Papua. It correlates

inversely to the African Pygmies, Nigerians and Bantus.

The second factor is Caucasoid, with population groups that span

from North India and Iran through Germany and Italy to Finland and

England. The third factor turns out to be composed solely of the African

population groups, the Pygmies, Nigerians and Bantus. The North and

South Amerindians show a strong inverse correlation to the Africans,

which may imply a closer relation to Caucasians and Asians than to

Africans.

Comparison with a Chimpanzee only highlights the major

differences between groups further. The clear genetic distinctions

between the three geographical population groups bring us to the main

opposing hypothesis to the out-of-Africa theory.

This second hypothesis is the multiregional theory. It is a linear

theory for pluralists. The theory suggests that over the last one million

years Homo Sapiens evolved from Homo Erectus more or less

simultaneously in Europe, East Asia, Australia and Africa.

138

There were

many migrations into and out of Africa. While this theory has greater

consistency with our modern understanding of the linguistic roots of

population groups, it leaves many traditional genetic evolutionists quite

incredulous.

The main elements of DNA and linguistics analysis necessitate a

new bridging theory of population crucibles. The elements of this theory

have been in existence since George Todaro and his team at the US

National Cancer Institute began investigating Type C virus antibodies

twenty years ago. Nowadays, evidence is rapidly accumulating to support

his surprising conclusions.

Amphipithecus / Propliopithecus / Aegyptopithecus

(all date back to 40m ya)

10m ya

40,000 ya

Pliocene

5m ya

20m ya

Proconsol Apes -

No fossil skulls of

Chimpanzees or

Gorillas have yet

been found

Many

Extinct

Lines

Proconsol

Types of Australpithecus: Telantropus Man

@ 1.5 m ya; Parantropus Man @ 3.0m ya

Australopithecus Boisei @ 1.5m ya

Others

Proto Australopithecus

Common Chimpanzee

Pygmy Chimpanzee

Most likely the

Australopithecus group was

hairy, retained estrus, non-

aquatic but nevertheless

relatively successful bi-

pedal hominoids

Boisei

Extinct c 1m ya

0.4m ya Homo Sapien

Homo Habilis 3m ya

1.5-1.0m ya Homo Erectus

Africanus

(gracile)

Robustus Others

PERIOD OF

MISSING

FOSSILS

APE-

men

c 5m ya

MAN-

apes

c 6m ya

'Southern' Ape

and Many

Diverse Types

Outnumbered

Aquatic Apes

Others

Ramapithecus

(Rift Valley)

c 14m ya to 7m ya

Extinct

Rama Ape

Proto Ramapithecus

Aquatic Apeman

'Estuarine Man

Loss of Estrus'

Africanus

Major

Afarensis

(Lucy)

0.04m ya Homo Sapien Sapien

MODERN MAN

Non-hairy, Non-Estrus,

Variable Build to Gracile

Gorilla

Formation of the Afro-Asiatic Supercluster (‘ya’ means years ago, ‘m’ means million years &‘c’ means circa)

Present

DNA patterns have shown us that modern man is very similar to

all the apes including Asian Orangutans, African Gorillas and

Chimpanzees. The time at which each of the various species diverged

from each other remains a matter of considerable uncertainty in academic

circles. Estimates are little more than tentative speculations based on

assumed average mutation rates and an arbitrary sizing of the time scale.

However, we can reasonably hypothesize that the separation with

Orangutans was about twelve million years ago and if so, the split with

the Gorillas and Chimps would perhaps have been about twenty million

years ago. Absolute timing is not as important as the geographical

coincidence.

The new Crucibles theory begins about forty million years ago

with our ancestral tree dwellers, the Dryopithecines, who lived in the trees

of Africa and Asia. In Africa they were called the Aegyptopithecus and

Propliopithecus and in Asia the Amphipithecus.

We know that in Africa the tree dwelling Aegyptopithecus sub-

divided into the Proconsol group of Gorillas and Chimpanzees, and the

hominoid Ramapithecus.

With the discovery of the fossilized remains of an

Australopithecus who lived about 3 to 4 million years ago, dubbed Lucy,

the theory that man developed from the Proconsols gained popularity.

Lucy was just over one metre high and walked upright. She provided a

unique insight into what a Man-ape in Africa might have looked like.

We must be careful to understand that Australopithecus was not

halfway on the path to modern man in any linear sense but rather one of

many hybrids that emerged, for a while, in parallel to both the Proconsols

and Man. Australopithecus became extinct about two million years ago.

The African proto-humans called Ramapithecus emerged in the

Rift Valley of Africa between fourteen million and seven million years

ago. This valley extends from the Danakil Depression, south of the Red

Sea, well into South Africa.

Ramapithecus then plunged into the period that gives modern

archeology its biggest headache because there are no fossils. This is the

Pliocene Era, a period of four million years where there are absolutely no

fossils of either hominoids or apes.

One tentative theory for the absence of human fossils in the

Pliocene Era is that a great drought in Central Africa forced the

hominoids to become aquatic waders, isolated in the Afar Gulf.

139

This

Gulf lies in the Rift Valley of Africa, south of the Danakil Alps.

140

Emergence of the Afro-Asiatic Language Groups

and the cradle of Man in the ‘Danakil Alps’ of Afar Gulf

of the Rift Valley at the southern end of the Red Sea

Some believe that in this aquatic environment female hominoids

lost the characteristic of estrus.

141

Estrus is the phenomena of going on

heat at a particular time of every month. We see it in all mammals except

modern woman and Orangutans, where it has all but extinguished. In

other coincidences, man and Orangutans are the only species to be ticklish

and use tools.

If the hominoids became aquatic waders, they seemed to return to

land about three million years ago. Researchers find fossils of Homo

Habilus at this time. The trail then leads confidently on once more to

Homo Erectus and to the black, hairy African Neanderthal called Homo

Sapien. He was characterized by an Occipital Bun or Skull Bone Ridge.

Then about forty thousand years ago the modern successor of

Homo Sapien emerged from the Rift Valley in Africa. He is Homo

Sapien (Sapien) and was very robust. Homo Sapien (Sapien) rapidly

spread to West Africa as Bantus and to Europe as Cro-Magnon Man.

We now turn to Asia where a separate crucible developed from

the Amphipithecus tree dwellers of forty million years ago.

Amphipithecus and Aegyptopithecus of the African Rift Valley are closely

related. Indeed, they were probably the same group for all genetic

purposes.

Around twenty million years ago, the same Proconsol split

occurred in Asia as in Africa. However, in Asia, Amphipithecus split into

the proto-humanoid Sivapithecus and the Gibbon line rather than the

Gorilla and Chimpanzee as in Africa.

As mentioned above, about twelve million years ago the hairy

Orangutans split from the hominoids. We call the hominoids of this

period Sivapithecus. Until eight million years ago, Sivapithecus gave rise

to many lines in Asia, such as the Siva/Rama Ape, that have since become

extinct. As in Africa, the Pliocene drought might well have forced

Sivapithecus to the water’s edge as an aquatic wading ape-man that we

might call Estuary-man. Similarly, the hairy Orangutan became the

aquatic Orangutan. As with Ramapithecus, the females of both the

Sivapithecus hominoids and the Orangutans became non-estrus due to

their aquatic environment.

Another result of the supposed aquatic phase in man's

development was that man's pheromones largely disappeared. In contrast

to other mammals, man developed eccrine glands for efficient sweat

control.

142

Residual apocrine glands in humans are now limited to scent

Oropithecus

EuropeanAquatic

'Swamp Ape'

Gigantopithecus

Ape

Proto Gibbon

Gibbon - Hairy / Estrus / Non-aquatic

Amphipithecus / Propliopithecus / Aegyptopithecus

(all date back to 40m ya)

Proto Sivapithecus/Ramapithecus

refer 'Proconsol's

Siamang - Hairy / Estrus / Non-aquatic

China

Ape

0.25-0.004m ya Solo/Tien Shan

1.0-0.5m ya Java/Proto Peking Man

Sivapithecus/Ramapithecus

c 12/14m ya to 7/8m ya

Siva Rama Ape

PERIOD OF

MISSING

FOSSILS

Yeti - Hairy / Estrus

/ Non-aquatic

Others

Aquatic Apeman

'Estuarine Man'

Many Extinct

Lines

Loss of

Estrus

Aquatic

Orangutan

10m ya

40,000 ya

Pliocene

5m ya

20m ya

SE Asia

Orangutan

Hairy / Non-estrus

0.5-.025m ya Sangiran/Peking Man

MODERN MAN

Non-hairy, Non Estrus,

1.8m ya Homo

Erectus

Formation of the Indo-Hittite Supercluster (‘ya’ means years ago, ‘m’ means million, ‘c’ means circa)

Present

production. Harkening back to an earlier time of evolution, pheromone

glands are still to be found all over a five month foetus.

There is a continuing similarity between Sivapithecus in Asia and

Ramapithecus in Africa implying that to this point they were both

practically the same. Yet, two distinct sub-groups were definitely

emerging, notwithstanding the similaritiesThis is where the work of

George Todaro’s team is important in upsetting the assumption of

linearity in evolutionary theory.

143

His DNA research has shown that all

African apes and monkeys possess Type C Virus antibodies of the highly

infectious baboon plague virus.

144

These antibodies are conspicuously

absent in Asian apes and man. In 2002, Dutch researchers found evidence

of a similar AIDS-related epidemic that wiped out huge numbers of

chimpanzees 2.5 to 3 million years ago, which is why current

chimpanzees don’t develop AIDS.

145

The uncannily monogamous Gibbon and the Orangutan are

distinctly associated with the Asian group. This provides compelling

evidence that the evolutionary path of man was in Asia for a long time.

A theory is gaining currency that Asian groups seem to have

migrated, or returned to Africa after populations in Africa were wiped-out

by airborne baboon plague.

This controversial version of the Multi-regional Theory dates to

1976 but is now supported by studies in Asia and Africa of the YAP

haplotype of the male Y-chromosome, passed from father to son, and the

beta-globin gene on chromosome eleven inherited from both parents.

146

Variations at chromosome twenty-one also suggest that there were three

distinct areas of human development.

147

These were Europe, Asia and

Oceania.

Sometimes DNA studies confirm what we already feel about our

proximity to the Asian Orangutan. For example, a visit to the Orangutans

at the local zoo provides a pleasantly unnerving communication

experience.

Now we have established the major population crucibles, we will

move as quickly as possible along to the importance of these crucibles for

our story of alchemy and religion.

Gigantpithecus or the Yeti Snowman split from Sivapithecus

about five million years ago in Asia. By one million years ago Java Man

emerged as the Proto-Peking man.

Sangiran or the Peking Man in Java followed Java Man. This

occurred between two hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred

thousand years ago. Solo Man, the Asian Neanderthal called Tien Shan,

followed in the period to two hundred and fifty thousand years.

At forty thousand years, the Asian Homo Sapien (Sapien) or

Modern Man emerged in Asia as in Africa. In contrast to his African

counterpart, Asian Modern Man was light skinned, non-hairy and had a

variable build.

In the period from one hundred thousand to twenty thousand

years ago, the hairy black skinned Neanderthal expanded from the Rift

Valley in Africa to the Middle East and Europe. He did not reach

Scandinavia. The DNA of a Neanderthal found at Düsseldorf differs

significantly from modern humans.

148

Other Negroid Neanderthals that moved east were the Australoid-

Caucasian Veddahs of Southern India and the hairy Australian Aborigine.

In the Middle East, Neanderthals dislodged the primitive

aboriginal tribes of the Ugric and the Kirgis. The Ugric people were

Finnish or Magyar and lived east and south of the Ural Mountains. The

Kirgis lived in Turkic, from the Kirgiz Steppes to an area between the

Caspian and Aral Seas and Lake Balkhash.

Possibly these Neanderthals were found in the east to Lake

Baikal and the Altai Mountains. These primitive Ugric and Turkic tribes

of the Kirgiz Steppes relocated north to the Siberian Plains. They became

the race we now call the Mongols. Remnants of these populations remain

today as the Mongol-Caucasoid Ugric Laplanders, Samoyed Voguls, and

Yukahir Eskimos.

About one hundred thousand years ago, Caucasians separated

from Mongolian races. The Mongols moved east to the Great Plain of

China, between the Huang-Ho and Yangtze Rivers. To the south lay the

Nan Shan Mountains beyond which lived Australoid-Caucasian people of

Negroid origin.

In moving into the Great Plain of China, the Mongols dislodged

the hairy Ainu who dwelled in Korea and Manchuria. The Ainu migrated

to Japan, the remote Kamchatka Peninsular of Siberia and the Bering Sea.

About thirty thousand years ago, they escaped even further to Taiwan and

the Philippines.

The Mongols then migrated to North America across the Bering

Strait land bridge, which at that time linked Siberia and Alaska. This

bridge closed some thirty thousand years ago but became available again

in the period from twelve thousand to ten thousand years ago. While the

The Indo-Hittite Crucible in the Steppes

and Major Population Movements into Europe and Persia.

land bridge was unavailable, the Mongols expanded west to the region

northwest of the Gobi desert.

Returning to the main Asian Crucible, we find that

anthropologists know little about the original homelands of the Asian

Homo Sapien (Sapien) in the Interglacial period between the Second and

First Ice Ages. Romantic, albeit pervasive myths of the Aryans suggest

that the Asian Homo Sapien (Sapien) enjoyed a Golden Age in their

Hyperborean pre-Arctic homeland. This Hyperborean means beyond the

North Wind and has a special relationship to Britain as the homeland of

the great teachers.

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Vedic Hymns praised this fabled homeland as The

Paradise.

A Tibetan legend tells of a city to the north of the Gobi Desert in

today's Northern China, called Shambhala or the Hidden City of

Goodness, founded by Manu the Priest King and Great Lawmaker of the

Indo-Hittite Aryans. In his merit or caste system of social stability,

Manu:

150

… clearly saw that men are distinguished by natural evolution into

four great classes: those capable of offering service to society through

their bodily labor (Sudras); those who serve through mentality, skill,

agriculture, trade, commerce, business life in general (Vaisyas); those

whose talents are administrative, executive, and protective (Kshatriyas);

those of a contemplative nature, spiritually inspired and inspiring

(Brahmins). ‘Neither birth nor sacraments nor study nor ancestry can

decide whether a person is twice born (i.e. a Brahmin)’ the Mahabharata

[Great Lord] declares, ‘character and conduct only can decide.’ Manu

instructed society to show respect to its members insofar as they

possessed wisdom, virtue, age, kinship or lastly, wealth. Riches in Vedic

India were always despised if they were hoarded or not available for

charitable purposes. Ungenerous men of great wealth were assigned a

low rank in society.

The exceedingly sophisticated Vedic social system, based on

agape or charity of fellowship, is unusual for a time many thousands of

years ago. Some would argue that our current democracies are only now

regaining the poignant elegance of anonymous philanthropy.

The environment of the Asian crucible was not to remain benign.

An Ice Age made the hyperborean homeland of the Asian Homo Sapien

(Sapien) uninhabitable twenty eight thousand years ago. The white

skinned peoples departed south to the Russian Steppes. By twenty

thousand years ago, they moved into Europe and eliminated the

Neanderthals there. In fifteen thousand three hundred, they populated the

city of Asgar (or Asgartha) in Northern India. The Brahmatmas emerged

as a priestly caste who venerated fire as the symbol of their godhead.

Asgerd was also the traditional home of the Norse god Odin, which was

thought to be near the Euxine or Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, thirty

miles north of Lake Van.

The Asian Homo Sapien (Sapien) called Aryans who plunged into

the Indus Valley in today’s Pakistan were a warrior society. They lived in

tents, were patriarchal and polygamous. Their sky gods were of lightning,

storm, sun, wind and fire. Culturally they placed great emphasis on the

oral transmission of mythology and they prohibited writing. These

characteristics will prove uncannily insightful markers for the Indo-Hittite

group in later chapters.

The Ice Age of twenty eight thousand years ago began to thaw

fourteen thousand years ago. In ten thousand BCE, another bitter ice age

called the Snap Ice Age quickly followed it. This forced more waves of

Caucasian Homo Sapien (Sapien) migration into Mesopotamia, Bactria

and up the Danube River into Europe.

Following the Snap Ice Age a warm interglacial period was

quickly reestablished that favored agriculture. About five thousand five

hundred BCE, an urban type Samara civilization arose at Eridu in Sumer

and in the Nile and Indus Valleys. First dynasty Egyptian society

emerged in about 3400BCE.

Studies of the Y-chromosome in European populations provide

additional evidence for population movements in the last twelve thousand

years. Factor analysis of European DNA polymorphism shows four

principal components that correspond to geographical and historical

population movements across Europe.

151

The most dominant component is consistent with the well-

documented wave of Neolithic farmers from the Middle East nine

thousand five hundred years ago. It accounts for twenty-eight percent of

population variation. The second principal component matches the arrival

of Finno-Ugric and Samoyeds speakers from the Western Siberian

Lowland, following the Snap Ice Age. This polymorphism accounts for

twenty-two percent of the geographic variation between populations in

Europe. The third and fourth principal components each account for

eleven percent. These are the westward migration of nomads from

Bronze Age Don-Volga, above the Caspian Sea, and Greek colonial

expansion in the first millennium BCE.

The Indo-Hittite movements came from Asian Homo Sapien

(Sapien) domination of the area around the Caspian and Aral Seas. This

developed into the crucible of the Indo-Hittite Language Group.

152

Its

two primary sub-groups were the Indo-Europeans and the Anatolian

group that included the Hittites, Etruscans and Lydians.

The Indo-European group is the Kurgan people. It included the

Celts, Italic Latins, the Gothic Anglo Saxons, Norse, Germans, Greeks,

Phrygians, Albanians, Armenians and Baltic-Slavs. It also included the

highly successful Indo-Iranians such as the Persians and the Modern

Indo-Aryan Indians.

Indo-European Kurgan (or Barrow) people crossed into Europe

above the Black Sea in about 4250BCE. They traveled on horses from

the Russian Steppes west of the Ural Mountains and followed the Danube

into Europe, razing relatively peaceful agrarian cultures everywhere they

went. The Kurgan people finally reached Ireland from Britain in about

1700BCE.

Other Kurgan waves followed into Europe between 3400BCE

and 2800BCE. The were joined by waves of Bronze Age Scandinavian

peoples traveling south down the Volga, Danube and Dneiper Rivers to

escape rapid climate deterioration in the Sub-Boreal Period of

2000BCE.

153

These were the tall, blond and red-headed seafarers who

founded the Mycenaean civilization in the 16

century BCE. Even prior

to this they had journeyed by sea to Britain where they established

Mycenaean civilization in Wessex from the beginning of the 2

millennium BCE, before it had arrived in Greece.

154

Gradually the Kurgans spread southwards into the Macedonian

plain and western Anatolia. They appear in Mesopotamia as Hurrians,

Mitanni and Kassites.

155

In Greece, they were the Achaeans who

established the Mycenaean civilization and subsequently the Dorians

from the small state of Doris, who destroyed it.

156

These early Anatolian and Mesopotamian Kurgans worshipped

the Indo-Hittite trinity of Mitra, Varuna and Indra.

157

Much later, in

1400BCE, the tough Hurrian Mitanni in Asia Minor still worshipped this

same male trinity.

The Achaeans, who were the first to invade Greece, ultimately

joined with the Pelasgians and Ionians. In doing so, they succumbed to

the religion of the Triple Goddess, which was the ancient religion of the

other main crucible, the Afro-Asiatics.

The Kurgans violently sacked cities in Europe as they had in the

Indus Valley. Their culture was highly mobile and war-oriented.

Everywhere they became the ruling class.

A number of invasions also reached Britain from North Africa.

The first was in about 2000BCE when the Beaker people made their way

via Libya, Mauritania, Spain and France to Southern Ireland and Wales.

The Picts departed North Africa by sea and invaded Northern

Ireland and Scotland in 1250BCE.

158

The Picts, who have Mongol traits,

are a good example of re-migration to Africa. Like the Dacians,

Thracians, Scythians and Moschians, the Picts were cannibalistic, heavily

tattooed and dyed their bodies with blue indigotin called woad.

159

Their

women also died their bodies in blue woad and were equally fearless in

battle. The Picts were somewhat renowned for copulating in public.

160

Ancient histories of the Druids also record the colonization of

England by the Indo-Hittite Hyperborean tribe of Albion in the fourth

millennium BCE, and later by the Trojans in 1115BCE.

161

The legends of

the Franks also claim that the Merovingians descended from the Trojans.

The Archangel Michael, St George and Minerva Britannia

became respectively the patron Angel, Saint and Goddess of God's

Countenance in Britain. Not surprisingly, they are also equivalent to the

patrons of ancient Israel being Michael the Protector, Moses and the

Shekhinah. The commonality of British and Israelite colonization

harkens back to a perceived common Indo-Hittite source in Anatolia,

which we shall look at in more detail in Chapter 17.

The warm interglacial period that followed the Snap Ice Age also

drew Semitic speaking peoples from the Ethiopian Highlands back to the

Near East and Asia Minor. These were now nomadic sheep and goat

herders and their routes to Canaan passed through Egypt, South Arabia

and Sumer.

The origin of the Semites is well understood from their language,

which forms one of six groups in the Afro-Asiatic cluster of the African

Homo Sapien (Sapien). The other groups are Berber, Beja, Egyptian,

Cushitic and Chadic peoples.

162

The Semites have four sub-groups. The oldest is the Akkadian or

Assyro Babylonian group that invaded the Arabian Peninsular and Sumer.

The North Central group is comprised of Modern Hebrew, Ugaritic,

Phoenician, Aramaic and Syriac. Arabic is a separate South Central

group. On the Southern periphery is the language of the Minaeans,

Sabians of Yemen and Ethiopians.

Drifting Semites from the Arabian peninsular initially entered

Mesopotamia in small peaceful groups. However, the Akkadians were

different. Although we do not have any evidence of when they first

appeared in the Zagros Mountains, in present day Kurdistan, it seems the

Akkadians were there at the dawn of prehistory. There they mixed with

Indo-Iranian warrior tribes. From this region, they massed invasions of

the fertile Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The well-armed Akkadian Semite

King Sharru-Kin, who we call Sargon I, eventually dominated, seizing

control of Upper Mesopotamia in 2380BCE.

163

Sharru-Kin did not erase civilization in the manner of the Indo-

Iranians but fused with Sumerian culture over his fifty-five year reign.

He adopted their system of writing and built a grand new capital in

northern Mesopotamia called Agade, which became the richest city in the

world.

The name Sharru-Kin means Righteous Ruler and is remarkable

for its concept of self-restraint and Goodness. The same belief underlies

that of Indo-Hittite Zoroastrianism that we will look at in Chapter 8.

From at least this time onwards in Sumer, as in Egypt, the code word

Righteous indicated the kingly right of divine rule. Righteous and Good

have become the common descriptions of an underlying esoteric current

or heritage that has continued to exist throughout recorded history.

With Indo-Hittite inspiration, the Semite-Akkadians then circled

above Mesopotamia to Damascus. There a group became the well-

documented tribe of Abraham. As such, Sharru-Kin foreshadows

Abraham, Melchizedek the Priest King of Righteousness in Salem and the

Essenes’ Teacher of Righteousness. We will look at these further in

Chapter 5 and Chapter 11.

Something dreadfull occurred around 2300BCE. It shattered the

earliers urban civilizations around the globe. The Akkadian Empire in

Mesopotamia collapsed, as did the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Early

Bronze Age civilization in Anatolia, Israel and Greece, the civilization in

India’s Indus Valley, the Hilmand civilization in Afghanistan and the

Hongshan civilization in China.

In Mespootamia, the barbarian Gutians conquered Sharru-Kin‘s

grand city Agade. They descended upon Mesopotamia from the Zoreb

Mountains in 2120BCE. They destroyed the whole of Sumer and the

Sumerians only managed to regain independence a century later. Even

then peace was not to last. The next wave of Semites, the Semitic

Amorites arrived from the western deserts just a decade later. This

instability in the north of Mesopotamia allowed the black-skinned

Dravidian speaking Elamites to enter the south and capture Ur in

2004BCE. The Elamites continued to exert influence over Babylonia for

the next 200 years.

Bitter internecine struggles ensued in Asia Minor until the

Babylonian King Hammurabi emerged as a successful military leader in

1848BCE. He zealously protected his borders from the Persian Gulf to

the Western Mediterranean Sea. Hammurabi was also highly regarded as

a cultural leader. His major achievement was to codify the laws of

Babylonian life. The legal innovations Hammurabi introduced were quite

similar to those that had just occurred in Egypt under Amenemhe I and

his son Sesôstris I. It was also about this time that Sumer became

Babylonia.

Innovative though it was, Hammurabi’s code was still based on

the crude law of retaliation and blood-feud: life for life, eye for eye, tooth

for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound,

bruise for bruise.

164

In this respect it was inferior to King Shulgi’s Ur-

Nammu Code.

165

King Shulgi, who reigned in Sumer from 2095-

2047BCE, introduced a very advanced form of law for Ur-Nammu. It

provided only for compensation to a wronged party. For example, If a

man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out one-half a

mina of silver.

Indo-Hittite Aryans called Hittites occupied the central plateau of

Anatolia in this same period. The language structure of Anatolia became

extraordinarily complex. Old Anatolian Indo-Hittite groups were

scattered into small pockets such as the Lydians to the West, the Palaic in

the North, and the Carians, Luvians of the South. The powerful Hittites

and Hurrians together with the Western Semitic peoples controlled the

prosperous east of Anatolia, which was developing mineral resources for

Bronze Age trade throughout the Middle East. We shall see in the next

two chapters that their wealth brought an avalanche of trouble to the

region. Enter the Egyptians.

Chapter 5 Anatolian Commagene & Israelites

The Commagene is a region of intense historical intrigue in

today’s Turkey. It lies on the upper Euphrates, in the centre of a

prosperous Bronze Age area famous for metalworking. It is here that

wool and flax production began ten thousand years ago and copper

smelting a thousand years later.

166

In 5400BCE, inhabitants of the nearby

Zagros Mountains of Northern Iran first produced wine.

Mt Ararat and Kurdistan border the Commagene in the east.

Colchis, sorceress Medea's country and the land of initiation, bounds the

Commagene in the north. Her rivers ran with gold. Her hero, Jason,

captured the mythical Golden Fleece.

Four great rivers flow from the flat alluvial plateau of the

Commagene. These are the Tigris, Euphrates, Murat and Araks. The

Tigris and Euphrates flow south to the Persian Gulf, the Murat River

flows into the Euphrates and the Araks River flows to the Caspian Sea.

The Biblical Eden has four similar rivers, the Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel

and Euphrates.

167

Commagene temple worship dates back to very ancient times. In

1996, a Heidelberg University team discovered a temple and village

dating from one thousand BCE in the Sanli-Urfa region of the Harran

Plain. It is perhaps the richest of all similar villages noted in world

archaeological literature.

The people of the Harran Plain used to go to this temple every

spring for religious ceremonies. The excavations have so far revealed a

sculptured lion, seven steles, three statues of people and flooring

consisting of four layers of mosaics. Excavation of the site will take two

decades.

The Commagene became known as Kutmuhi in Assyrian times

from 1300BCE to 612BCE. After this, the Commagene passed into

Persian control. It later became an important part of the Silk Road

because of its natural access to Asia Minor, Uzbekistan, Bukhara and the

Steppes of Russia.

The region effectively remained outside the Roman Empire until

67CE and this allowed it to retain a number of Indo-Hittite star cults

involving Magi. The most well know of these was the Royal Cult of the

Kings of Commagene.

168

Moving back in time by two thousand years, to early Bronze Age

Anatolia, we find the Egyptians taking a great interest in the metallurgy

and wealth of the area. In about 1950BCE the twelfth dynasty Pharaoh

Sesôstris I, Senwostre I in Greek, campaigned by land and sea as far as

the outer perimeter of the Black Sea.

Sesôstris I’s father, Amenemhe I, was the first Pharaoh of the

twelfth dynasty. At times father and son ruled as co-regents. Their

predecessor, Montjuhotep II, had reunited Egypt through a series of

Thebian wars just before two thousand BCE. The post-war economic

revival of a united Upper and Lower Egypt led to immense wealth and

power.

Sesôstris I consolidated the economic power of Egypt through a

series of aggressive military campaigns in both Lower Egypt and abroad.

He secured the richly fertile region of Wawat in Nubia, south of

Elephantine. Sesôstris’ military forts controlled all the desert and river

caravan routes up to the second cataract.

169

Together Amenemhe I and his son Sesôstris I reestablished the

old system of Pharaonic divinity in Egypt. They introduced law reforms

and a new and progressive administrative system based on state religion.

The Crata Repoa may describe their system of qualification for office

(see Appendix 7).

The seven liberal arts blossomed in Egypt. It was a time of

unusual literature such as the philosophical journey A Man’s Dispute with

His Own Soul and the popular Story of Sinuhe.

170

Monumental, ashlar architecture flourished. Amenemhe I

established a greenfields royal capital at Itjtawy, 20km south of Sakkara

and Memphis. Adjacent to it he built one of the most beautiful funerary

pyramid complexes in all Pharaonic history.

The wealth and grandeur of the twelfth dynasty came from

mineral resources. Amenemhe I mined amethyst in the Wadi el-Hudi,

which is east of Elephantine.

171

Sesôstris I entered the Wadi Hammamat

in the Coptos region to mine materials such as galena, the mineral of lead,

and dark colored sandstone called greywacke.

172

His expedition was

nineteen thousand men strong. Many other twelfth dynasty expeditions

exploited the turquoise and copper mines at Serabit el-Khadim, Timna

and Wadi Maghara in southern Sinai.

Campaigns of Sesôstris I to Buhen in the Nubian Wawat,

Thrace, Colchis, and the Commagene,

and into the Wadi Hammamat

Sir Flinders Petrie excavated Serabit el-Khadim’s temple of

Hathor-Baalat in 1905.

173

It dates from the time of Sesôstris I in

1800BCE and is one of the oldest rock-cut temples in Egyptian

architecture. These hard-rock underground turquoise mines at Serabit el-

Khadim were active as early as three thousand four hundred BCE. They

produced beautiful stones, some of which were set in the bracelets of

Egypt’s Queen Zer. These bracelets are amongst the oldest jewelry in the

world.

Serabit el-Khadim’s temple of Hathor-Baalat consisted of a

long series of courts leading to an underground sanctuary.

174

Bas-reliefs

and inscriptions show the kings of the Old and Middle Kingdoms as gods.

However, the front building of the temple is oddly un-Egyptian, being

asymmetrical and elongated.

Sir Flinders Petrie mentions fifty tons of mysterious white

powder that he discovered beneath the floor of the Temple. He thought it

was most likely wood ash from the burning of sacrifices but he was

unable to provide any reason why this odd white powder was apparently

stored under the floor slabs. The nearby Wadi Nasb produced evidence of

copper smelting works but different ash.

175

Sesôstris I’s remarkable 1950BCE expedition across the

Mediterranean Sea ventured into Thrace in Eastern Greece, Scythia and

Colchis in Georgia. He was most likely seeking, smelting technology for

the manufacture of tin and bronze, and possibly the source of Baltic

Amber.

Sesôstris was to leave a permanent reminder of his visit to

Colchis. In the words of Herodotus:

176

... For the fact is, as I first came to realize myself, and then heard

from others later, that the Colchians are obviously Egyptian. When the

notion occurred to me, I asked both the Colchians and the Egyptians

about it, and found that the Colchians had better recall of the Egyptians

than the Egyptians did of them. Some Egyptians said they thought the

Colchians originated with Sesôstris' army, but I myself guessed their

Egyptian origin not only because the Colchians are dark-skinned and

curly-haired (which does not count for much by itself, because these

features are common to others too), but more importantly because

Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians are the only peoples of the world

who practice circumcision and have always done so. ... The obvious

antiquity of the custom in Egypt and Ethiopia prevents me from saying

whether the Egyptians learnt it from the Ethiopians or vice versa, but

what convinces me that the other peoples learnt it as a result of their

contact with Egypt is that any Phoenicians who have come into contact

with Greece have stopped copying the Egyptians with respect to their

genitalia, and do not cut off their children's foreskin. And let me mention

one more way the Colchians resemble the Egyptians: these two peoples

alone work linen, and they do so in the same way. In fact, their lifestyles

in general and their languages are similar. The Greeks call Colchian

linen Sardonian, while the linen that comes from Egypt is called

Egyptian.

Powerful Sesôstris I destroyed many cities on his expedition. He

sent back to Egypt prisoners as well as metal such as lead and silver.

177

He also relocated Caucasian metalworkers to cities in the Levant and the

Sinai under Egyptian influence.

178

The famous Story of Sinuhe illustrates the extent of Egyptian

subjugation of the Levant and Syria. The story has always been highly

regarded.

179

Sinuhe was a courtier who unwittingly overheard state

secrets at the death of Amenemhe I, father of Sesôstris I. Fearing for his

life Sinuhe escaped into Canaan and traveled to Byblos (in the Lebanon).

There he turned homewards and traveled to Upper Rtnw, thought to be a

town in Southern Syria, and became an adviser to the local king.

Afterwards he became a rich man. In Rtnw, Sinuhe saw many messengers

arrive from Pharaoh Sesôstris I and the Syrian princes offer humble

deference to Egypt. He saw the resolve of the Pharaoh to smite the

Bedouin and Asiatics, such as the Hurrians, infringing upon his

suzerainty. Pharaoh Sesôstris I finally forgave Sinuhe. After many years,

the Pharaoh invited him back to Egypt and there saw out his days.

The proto-Israelites lived in the Anatolian Commagene after their

priestly tribe, a cult of Brahm called the Calani, migrated from Bactria, on

the border of Iran and Afghanistan.

180

Their godhead Yahweh was to

begin with the metalworking god Q're Adonai.

181

Q're means furnace or

metalwork.

We need to understand a little more of Q're Adonai’s widespread

importance. Qera (or Kt

r w hss) was the Western Semitic Ugaritic god of

metalwork and artisanship. At the time of Pharaoh Tuthmose III, the

Syrians worshipped him as the great god Kir.

Curetes are young men who shaved their hair at the feast of

Comyria and sacrifice these hair-trimmings to the God Q're.

182

Initially,

they were the sacrificial king’s armed companions who attended the

Triple Goddess Q're’s holocaust and in later times sacrificed a child to the

god Cronos.

183

Qouros was a god of Thera, today’s Island of Santorini.

184

After

the eruption of the volcano, the island was renamed Qera after this god.

185

Qouros and Qera have the same meaning of cauldron, melting pot or

furnace as the Canaanite kûr.

The Sumerian word KUR describes a cone-shape.

186

Baetylos are

similar omphali, or cone-shaped pillars that the Greeks worshipped by

anointing with oil, wine and blood.

187

KUR also represents an iron furnace, a round temple to Sabazios

with a hole at the top and a beehive. The same word KUR also means

mountain and the House that is like a mountain.

188

For example, the

Mesopotamian Inanna descended to the KUR, or symbolic chamber of the

underworld, risking all:

189

Inanna set out for the underworld. Ninshubur her faithful servant

went with her. Inanna spoke to her saying: ….I am descending to the

KUR, to the underworld. If I do not return set up a lament for me by the

ruins … Go to Nippur, to the temple of Enlil. When you enter his holy

shrine cry out 'O father Enlil, do not let your daughter be put to death in

the underworld … If Enlil will not help you, go to Ur, to the temple of

Nanna. Weep before Father Nanna. If Nanna will not help you go to

Eridu, to the temple of Enki. Weep before Father Enki. Father Enki, the

God of Wisdom, knows the food of life, he knows the water of life, he

knows the secrets. Surely he will not let me die.'

The symbol of the mountain KUR is three small hillocks in an

equilateral triangular pattern.

190

KUR-KUR also means holy plant, which

is the common lily of the field or bright lilac crocus flower.

191

protection from the fiery breath of the Minoan bull, Medea gave Jason the

blood-red juice of the two-stalked, saffron-colored Causican crocus, the

potent flower that first sprang from the blood of Prometheus.

192

The

ancients used this poisonous colchium or meadow saffron as a remedy for

gout.

193

The Indo-Hittite root KUR occurs in the name of the Kirgis

people who lived in Kirgiz Steppes of Turkic and the alternative name for

the Indo-Hittites, the Kurgan people. The root Kûr is also the same as

Car. It occurs in many place names, such as the ancient name for Harran

in the Commagene, Carrhae. The Caraïte sect was similar to the Essenes.

Ancient Caraïte is the language of the Damascus Document, an

excommunication text of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Quirites of Rome came from the Sabine town of Qures.

194

Sabian practices provide a unique insight into the unusual religion of the

Commagene but we defer this discussion of the Sabians until Chapter 8.

Both Indo-Hittite and Afro-Asiatic roots to Q're, or Quera, imply

that the same image of furnace is equally relevant to both cultural

groups.

195

The abundance of evidence leaves little doubt as to the

importance of this furnace-god or smithy-god to the Indo-Hittites and

more particularly to the Israelites.

Another of Yahweh's names confirms this. He was Elath-Iahu,

the Kenite Smith god. As foreshadowed in Chapter 3, the latter part of

the name, Iahu, had a very ancient provenance. It dates from about

2630BCE as a title of the god Set. Horus, the divine son of Osiris who

overcame Osiris' brother Set, was the Calf Iahu. The Hyksos Israelites

may well have heard this name for Yahweh in Egypt where he was

analogous to Set. We know Iahu is a divine name of Yahweh because

Solomon is specifically aware of it:

196

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding

much … and he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even

unto the hyssop that is upon the wall.

The hyssop is the tree of the winter solstice, IA, and the cedar

was the tree of the summer solstice, HU. Together they make the divine

name Iahu.

We see the metalworking influence continued with the subset

names of Tubal-cain and Hiram Abiff. In the Bible, Magog is a son of

Japhet and a brother of Gomer, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and

Tiras.

197

The ninth century Welsh monk Nennius summarized the sixth

century Alanic genealogies of the French noble houses:

198

Japheth had seven sons; from the first named Gomer, descended

the Galli; from the second, Magog, the Scythi and Gothi; from the third,

Madian, the Medi; from the fourth, Juuan, the Greeks; from the fifth,

Tubal, arose the Hebrei, Hispani, and Itali; from the sixth, Mosoch,

sprung the Cappadoces; and from the seventh, named Tiras, descended

the Thraces: these are the sons of Japheth, the son of Noah, the son of

Lamech.

Magog stands for Armenia and the brothers respectively to be the

Cimmerians, Medians, Ionians, Tibarenians, Moschians and Tyrrhenians.

The Tyrrhenians became the Etruscan civilization in parts of Italy.

199

The Moschians and the iron-working Tibarenians of Tubal were

tribes of the southeast Black Sea and the Commagene.

200

Ezekiel

mentions King Gog of Meshech and Tubal, who is most likely Mithridates

VI of Pontus.

201

Traditional histories hold that the Moschians became the Picts

and the Cimmerians became the Cymry and moved to the Artic cold

where they enjoy the midnight sun in June but is dark at midday in

winter.

202

The Indo-Hittite invasions dispersed both those peoples and

they eventually invaded Britain as we shall see in Chapter 12.

203

Turning now to Tubal, we find that Assyrian texts confirm

Tabalu or Tubalin in central Anatolia was famous for its metalworking.

204

Tubal-ki of the Hittite texts, somewhere in the Caucasus region, is the

Tabal of the Assyrian sources located in East Lycaonia, near Kayseri.

This is where Tûbal Qayîn or Tubal-Cain comes from. He is the

archetypal artificer in metals described in the Book of Genesis and known

as the master of all coppersmiths and blacksmiths.

The last surviving remnants of these ancient northern Iranian

peoples are the Ossetians in the Caucasus Mountains, who are

descendants of the Sarmatian-Alans.

205

Their lands are now divided

between the Russian Republic and the new state of Georgia. The

Ossetians are the famous blacksmith tribe previously called Kalybs. Its

name, Kalybs, became Latin for steel. Though threatened politically,

militarily, and culturally from many directions over a thousand years, the

Ossetians still speak their ancestral Iranian language with an archaic

dialect, called Iron, meaning “noble”. They maintain an oral narrative

referred to as the Nart sagas. These Nart sagas contain parallels with

Arthurian legend so numerous and so uncannily close that it is impossible

they are unrelated.

There is an Ossetain basis for most of the prominent elements of

the Arthurian cycle, including:

• all the characters Arthur, Lancelot, Perceval, Galahad, Gawain, Kay,

Tristan, Bedivere, Bors, Caradoc, King Ban de Benoich, the Maimed

King, St. George, Elaine (Helaine), the Lady in the Lake, Merlin and

others;

• sacred swords, the ‘sword in the stone’ episode, King Arthur’s sword

(Cali-burn) that bears a similar name to the tribe Kalybs, and

throwing of the sword into a lake, which causes it to seethe, and the

sword-rising-out-of-the-roiling-water;

• heads taken in battle and carried to the King for reward then scalped

and made into cloaks of human hair;

• sculls sliced, gilded and used as magical drinking cups; cauldrons of

heavenly splendor that never run dry and appear at feasts before the

bravest of the heroes;

• Scythian griffins and Sarmatians dragons as magical beasts. The very

name Sarmatian means lizard people;

• the Sarmatians dragon used as a as military standard. The Sarmatians

used a very particular battle standard, consisting of a silken windsock

sewn into the shape of a serpentine dragon, which hissed when it

filled with air as its bearer charged into battle;

• women as warriors. Greek and Chinese described the Amazon women

who were Scythian female warriors that fought alongside their men.

Adam of Bremen wrote that these women lived along the Baltic

Coast.

206

Saxo Grammaticus described the same women in

Denmark.

207

He said: their eagerness for military glory was so strong

that you would have thought they were no longer women; and

• women's chivalric role. An Iranian gold plaque from the Peter the

Great’s Siberian collection dated around 300 BC shows a woman

seated under a tree, holding a sleeping man’s head in her lap. Nearby

a groom holds a pair of horses. His weapons hang in the branches of

the tree. It is not difficult to recognize the scene of Arthur’s death.

Tubal-Cain is another Bronze Age forerunner of Freemasonry’s

Hiram Abiff, the archetypal architect of King Solomon’s Temple.

208

fact, the name Hiram Abiff may simply be a refinement of Tubal-cain in

the early Anatolian Iron Age because it derives from Abiff ‘Aram where

‘Aram means a metal ore from ayir or ayiram in Sanskrit and Dravidian

(iron is ayil). Abiff is the metalworker or artificer. The blow Hiram Abiff

receives imparts nobility. It is symbolically equivalent to achieving

perfection by the Colaphum, or Box of the Ear.

209

The Romans and later

the Germans and French conferred knighthood by the Colaphum as a sign

of sustaining future hardships.

Charles Gounod’s La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba) a

creation in the Opera, on 28 February 1862 builds on an alternative

history that directly connects Tubal-Cain with the legend of Hiram Abiff.

It is based on a Rosicrucian legend reported by Gerard de Nerval.

210

Three jealous workers disrupt Hiram casting his masterpiece, the

monumental bowl called the Molten or Brazen Sea. Tubal-Cain visits

Hiram and declares that Hiram is his descendant. He initiates Hiram into

the Mystery of Fire and the secret of bronze casting. Tubal-Cain gives

Hiram his great hammer and a Golden Triangle to wear as a pendant

round his neck. Hiram then successfully recasts the brazen sea. Hiram

and Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, fall in love. A jealous Solomon

instigates the murder of Hiram and the widow Balkis leaves, pregnant

with Hiram’s son. He is the son of the widow, whose many descendants

will complete the building of the Temple.

The knowledge of metals and explosive force has always gone

hand-in-hand with religion. The Shahnameh or Book of the Legendary

Kings of Persia demonstrates this relationship. The Arabian poet

Firdowsi wrote the Shahnameh in 1010CE. He describes the early Indo-

Iranian kings of the Persians Kiyumars and Jemshid. Chosen by Ahura

Mazda, their faces shone brilliantly with the Glory of God called the

khvarnah or farr-i izadi. It adorned Ahura Mazda as a large ring or

diadem. This Kingly Fortune gave the prince Jemshid an intimate

knowledge of God and the ability to carve hard substances without the use

of conventional tools.

211

In blacksmithing weapons, he was able to:

212

…mold iron into such equipment as helmets, chain mail,

laminated armour as well as missile-proof vests, to swords and horse-

armour.

Sadly, Jemshid became a tyrannical ruler. He delighted in the

words of falsehood and untruth and the Glory was seen to flee away from

him in the shape of a bird.

213

The next Iranian hero to possess the Kingly

Fortune was Feridun.

Mircea Eliade summarizes the connection between religion and

the smithy in the age of metals as follows:

214

There would appear to have existed therefore, at several different

cultural levels (which is the mark of great antiquity), a close connection

between the art of the smith, the occult sciences (shamanism, magic,

healing etc) and the art of song, dance and poetry … One element

nevertheless is constant - that is the sacredness of metal and … all mining

and metallurgical operations …It is in any case significant that in

contrast to pre-agricultural and pre-metallurgical mythologies, where, as

a natural prerogative, God is the possessor of the thunderbolt … in the

myths of historic peoples, on the other hand (Egypt, the Near East and the

Indo-Europeans), the God of the hurricane receives these weapons -

lightning and thunder - from a divine smith.

In Kenite lore, the divine smith Tubal-cain is also Baal Gad, the

goat-god who is the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Gad. He

epitomizes the ancient association of smiths with goat and horned gods.

A grotto sacred to Baal Gad exists at the source of the Jordan River.

215

is situated at the base of a high limestone cliff, over which perches the

city of Caesarea Philippi.

216

Kenite itself means welding or possessions in addition to

belonging to Kain. The Kenites were a tribe of Midianite copper miners

who lived amongst the warlike Amalekites, descended from Haggar.

217

On leaving Egypt, the Israelites met the Amalekites in flight to their

native lands.

The minor tribe of the Midianites was an Asiatic people of the

Arab/Palestinian Kush, called Kush Magan. In early times, Magan

extended over both sides of the Persian Gulf.

218

Later in 1100BCE, at

about the time of Israelite conflicts with the Midianites, Assyrian sources

note that Kush Magan was a region on the South side of the Euphrates,

not far from Karkemish. The Massorets regarded this Kush Magan as the

Babylonian Kish.

219

We digress for a moment to mention the Kushites because of their

importance in the Hyksos story. The Meluhha Kushites were a second

Kushite or Amalekite group. They were mercenaries and traders in

metals and weapons. Their mercenary activities continued long after the

Hyksos invasion. The Amarna letters show that Palestinian kinglets hired

them. Indeed, later Meluhha and Arab became interchangeable words.

220

The Mlecha in Vedic literary sources are the Meluhha Kushites

that derive from India or Pakistan.

221

Eusebius notes that the Ethiopian

Kushites came from India. The Musri in Egypt and in early Akkadian

literature are also Meluhha Kushites. The Hyksos title hekaw khasout is

an almost literal loan from the Akkadian sar kissati, the supreme royal

title of king from the hill country.

These Meluhha are the same as the maritime Kaphtorim who

maintained ports in the Mediterranean.

222

Kaphtorim or Caphtorim is one

of the two Biblical tribes of Mizraim that inhabited the region between the

Nile River of Egypt and Sile.

223

The other Mizraim tribe is Lehabim.

Mizraim led colonies into Egypt to lay the foundation of the Kingdom of

Egypt.

The Meluhha, Arabs and Hiskija or Hyksos formed an alliance

about the time of Bochoris (720-715BCE). Late antique sources report

that they returned to rebuild Avaris in alliance with the king of Jerusalem.

Texts speak either about the city of the Shepherds or about Rhinocorura

which is El Arish. Complicating the understanding of this event, the site

of Avaris is still in doubt despite the discovery of Tell ed Daba. Avaris, a

Greek rendition, derives phonetically from Mansion of the Desert Tract.

Now back to the Kenites. In surprising contrast to the poor

relations between the Israelites and Amalekites, so strong were Israelite

relations with the Kenites that the Israelites freely intermarried with them.

Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was a Midianite and priest of Yaho or

Iahu.

224

Yaho was the Midianites' god of storms and war who dwelt on

Mt Horeb in Sinai. Yaho was also the god of the Chaldeans and the

Babylonians.

225

His symbol was a Tau cross worn on the forehead that

later became known as the Yahweh Mark.

226

Until quite recently, and perhaps still today, a group of itinerant

Bedouin smiths and carpenters in Syria continued the tradition of marking

their foreheads with the Tau-cross of Yahweh.

227

At Hebron, Shiloh, Tabor and elsewhere until the time of Judges,

men marked with the Tau cross died as Sacrificial Kings. In all

Mediterranean countries and in Britain, the Mother Goddess received her

sacrifice each year. This took place on a terebinth-tree or kerm-oak.

228

The gory method of death for the Sacrificial King was crucifixion on the

lopped oak in the shape of a Tau. Castrated and torn apart, the raw body

of the sacrificial male became a Eucharist. The crow or raven was

believed to be Athene’s oracular bird that housed the soul of the sacrificed

king.

229

In Asia Minor, the kadosh or sacred men and women followers

of Astarte, released an eagle from the sacred king’s funeral pyre to

symbolize the ascent of the divine soul to heaven.

230

Orpheus for example, was torn apart by delirious women called

the Bassarids:

231

… a frenzied band

Of Thracian women, wearing skins of beasts,

From some high ridge of ground caught sight of him.

“Look,” shouted one of them, tossing her hair

That floated in the breeze …

The reckless onslaught swelled; their fury knew

No bounds; stark madness reigned. And still his singing

Would have charmed every weapon, but the huge

Clamor, the drums, the curving Phrygian fifes,

Hand-clapping, Bacchus screaming drowned the lyre.

And then at last, his song unheard, his blood

Reddened the stones.

Medea set out the same way to execute King Aeson, before restoring him

to youth. When the moon shone in fullest radiance:

232

Medea, barefoot, her long robe unfastened,

Her hair on her shoulders falling loose,

Went forth alone on her roaming way,

In the deep stillness of the midnight hour.

Procne set out to find Philomela in the same way:

233

It was the time of Bacchus’ festival,

Kept by the Thracian women each three years.

Night knows their sacraments; at night the peaks

Of Rhodope resound with ringing bronze;

At night the queen, arrayed to celebrate

The rites, went forth with frenzy’s weaponry.

Vines wreathed her head, a light spear lay upon

Her shoulder and a deerskin draped her side.

Wild with her troop of women through the woods

She rushed, a sight of terror, frenzied by

The grief that maddened her, the image of

A real Bacchanal …

Moses’ sister Miriam similarly led a band of women in a ceremonial rite

after Pharaoh’s troops drowned:

234

And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in

her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with

dances.

Josephus tactfully ignored this sacrificial rite in his Antiquities of

the Jews because the Romans would have recognized it.

235

The rite was a

key sign of the sacred marriage through which the Israelites needed to

pass in order to receive the new land of Israel. It is an allegorical

initiation. The Israelites had passed the test of water. They were to face

the bitter cup of Marah. Moses was Miriam’s sacrificial king. He bore all

the guilt for past actions and died so the new king, Joshua, could emerge

into Canaan as an Israelite Tabula Rasa.

One of the familiar symbolic codes for the sacrificial king is

Orphruoeis, which means growing on the riverbank.

236

An ear of wheat

growing near a stream of water is still the familiar depiction of the initiate

in a Fellowcraft Lodge. It refers to the ritual stew of the sacrificial king in

a cauldron on a tripod.

237

In Wales, the cauldron contained both the

sacrificial king and the Triple Goddess, represented by a white horse.

In response to the inhumanity of a male Eucharist, the first

Israelite dynasty of King Saul (1050BCE) outlawed cannibalism. Later,

Good King Josiah (640-609BCE) prohibited sacrificial crucifixion. He

statutorily converted the act from a magical means of immortality to a

felonious punishment involving the extinction of the soul. However, the

Jews were not to escape the tarnished background of sacrificial

crucifixion for many centuries. In Ptolemaic times, a majority of

Alexandrians still believed Jews annually sacrificed a Greek.

238

Picking-up again on the theme of goats, we find the Kenite Goat-

god, Tubal-cain, is the archetypal Freemason’s goat. Some say he is also

a prime candidate for the mysterious Baphomet of the Knights Templar.

There are however, two distinct but intertwined traditions associated with

the goat that make this unlikely.

The Afro-Asiatic tradition of the goat relates to the ancient annual

festivals of the sacrificial king. These were usually orgiastic and

celebrated in the Lesser Mysteries of Eleusis, English witch ceremonies

and the Swedish May-eve play Bukkerwise.

239

In these rituals, the

sexually mature he-goat, representing Lust, mates with the Goddess. His

sacrifice is a prelude to crowning the new king for the new year. Pallas

Athene similarly received her name from Pallas, the maiden she killed in

armed combat to win the right to join with the goat-king in ritual

marriage.

240

The lustful he-goat occurs in various guises all over Europe.

241

For example, the well known British legend of Lady Godiva carved in the

miserere-seat of Coventry Cathedral shows the goddess riding to the

ceremony on a goat’s back denoting her dominion over him. Often these

same stories show the naked Goddess Goda (the Good) with long hair,

wrapped in a net, riding sideways on a goat, preceded by a hare signifying

bold copulation and accompanied by a raven.

242

The Goddess used the

hunting or fishing net used in her murderous chase of the sacrificial

king.

243

Agamemnon, for example, died with a net over his head in the

peculiar manner of the midsummer sacrificial king. Stepping from his

bath, he was:

244

…neither clothed nor unclothed, neither in water nor on dry land,

neither in his palace nor outside…

The Libyo-Thracians gave the name of their Goat-goddess, Aegis,

to the Aegean Sea.

245

In the Egyptian Delta city of Mend s, the goat was

originally a well-endowed ram.

246

Herodotus later describes the Mend s

animal alternately as a goat and a ram. Herodotus tells us that he

witnessed a surprising incident in Mend

s: a goat had intercourse with a

woman, in full view of everybody.

247

Perhaps Herodotus is really telling

us that he attended an initiation ceremony where the initiate was the goat.

This may explain the much clichéd Freemason’s joke about the goat at an

initiation ceremony.

In Assyrian, Persian, Dionysian, Pythagorean and Orphist

initiation rites, the initiate bathes in the milk of the hidden doctrine. The

initiate discovers that Love is the luminous principle of Light, while Light

is the radiance of Love or Goodness, Charity and Truth.

248

When the Initiate reaches Hades, the guardians of the dead

challenge him to give the pass-phrase:

249

Like a kid, I have fallen into milk.

At the end of an initiation, the candidate is one with the god,

Dionysus for example. He drinks a cup of goats' milk and honey. New

York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art displays many of the two handled

cups used in the Greek ceremonies. Some of these cups bear golden sun

images.

In the seventh and final degree of all ancient Mysteries, which is

the fourth degree of the Greater Mysteries, adepts partook of the

ambrosial beverage Oimellas as a sign they had arrived at the final

threshold of all mysteries (see Appendix 7).

250

Zoroaster achieved his immortality through the Mysteries where

he drank something that resembled honey, after answering thirty-three

questions over a period of three days.

Plato drinks of the Oimellas before the last phase of his initiation

in the play Initiation of Plato:

251

It is the beverage of the lotus; drink and forget all sentiments of

hatred, envy, and intolerance; and put on this robe in sign of devotion to

science and virtue. Thou goest to be initiated into the last mysteries.

Honey was one important component of the heavenly soma

believed to intoxicate the divine beings. The Odyssey gives the Vedic

recipe: Circe blended cheese, meal and honey with Pramnian wine to

make a kind of brown beer.

252

Herodotus tells us that burial ceremonies

of the nobles often included embalming in honey.

253

Its sweetness relates

to the human hope of another life that would be eternally happy.

The bee was universally revered. In Egypt, the Pharaoh’s title of

Beekeeper was one of his main designations. The double image of the

bee and the reed symbolized the Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt. The

Egyptians believed that when the Pharaoh died, his soul joined Osiris in

the constellation of Orion. There he became one of the bee stars in the

Beehive or Prasepe, a group of stars in the constellation of Cancer

adjacent to Leo the Lion.

The bee has continued through the millennia as a symbol of the

soul’s survival after death and limitless existence in the harmony of

Golden Age of the world.

254

However, the bee also had a very dark side.

It remained a primary symbol of the Afro-Asiatic Triple Goddesses such

as Demeter, Hecate, Persephone, Aphrodite and the pre-Indo-European

aspect of Artemis.

255

Arcadians worshipped both Artemis and Persephone

under the name Despoina, which means mistress.

Aphrodite, the nymph-goddess of midsummer, would destroy the

sacred king by tearing out his sexual organs just as the queen-bee destroys

the drone.

256

Her Priestesses displayed a golden honeycomb at her shrine

on Mount Eryx.

Butes is the most famous beekeeper of antiquity.

257

He was a

priest to Athene on Mount Eryx who represented the love-god Phanes,

son of the Triple Goddess. The Greeks often depicted Phanes as a loudly

buzzing bee called Ericepaius.

258

Incongruous with Aphrodite’s beauty, the Greeks also knew her

as the Eldest of the Fates, Melaenis or black one, Scotia or dark one,

Androphonor or manslayer and Epitymbria, which means of the tombs.

259

Artemis was an orgiastic Nymph like Aphrodite. She was the

Maiden of the Silver Bow, which symbolized the new moon.

260

Her male

consort received the arrows of death. Besides the bow and bee, her other

emblems were the date-palm signifying birth and the stag symbolizing her

control of wild things. Artemis’ bees were the melissae priestesses who

daubed their faces with gypsum or white clay in honour of the White

Goddess. Artemis chief priest was, as we may imagine, the king bee.

261

A Treasury was a metaphor for a beehive or hive of melissae bee-

priestesses, as at Marmaria near Delphi.

262

The veiled Tholos trompe

l’oeil in Bedroom M of the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at

Boscoreale, near Pompeii, shows the melissae priestesses as a swarm of

bees on a pedestal in the foreground.

263

Nearby is the dour goddess

Hecate between two columns. The frescos are now in New York’s

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We saw earlier in this chapter how maenads were women who

practiced wild Mother Goddess orgies in the mountains and woods. As

late as the first century CE the Arcadian fertility or witch cult on Mount

Lycaeum held drunken maenad orgies after which they chased and killed

their lover, whom they had clad in a stag’s skin.

264

The women wore red

war paint boiled from ivy gum and urine, painted on like the stripes of a

Spartan Penelope duck.

265

The woof and warp pattern on their limbs

suggested a ladder. In Thrace, the Maenads tattooed themselves with

spider web designs. One Greek vase shows each maenad has a stag

tattooed on her forearm.

266

The maenads’ ferocious behavior involved strong

hallucinogens.

267

This included spruce-beer laced with ivy, sweetened

with mead, and the mild panaeolus papilionaceus mushroom. More

effective were the Priestesses’ laurel leaves containing potassium cyanide,

hippomanes, which was perhaps the slimy vaginal tissue of a mare in

heat, and juice from the mistletoe of the Eastern European Oak, called

ixias or loranthus.

268

One of their most powerful hallucinogenic substances was the

raw mushroom amanita muscaria. A. muscariae grows on conifers and

oaks. It has wide effects inducing berserker rage and feats of

extraordinary muscular strength. Following this physical ecstasy comes a

period of peace where the person touches the divine and believes that the

drug has opened a spiritual, or third eye.

269

In the fifth century BCE, Euripides wrote in The Bacchantes of

the frantic ceremonies of the Bacchanals or maenads. He described that

from every ivy-wreathed staff sweet rills of honey trickled. To crown their

revelries, the Bacchante raised loud his voice and cried:

On, on, ye Bacchanals, pride of Tmolus with its rills of gold.

Euripides was referring to the even more potent substance that the

melissae priestesses chose for their sacrificial king ritual, green or unripe

honey. This deadly honey came from plants of the heath such as

oleanders, azaleas, rhododendrons and laurel.

270

The dangerous element in green honey is acetylandromedol,

which is a grayanotoxin that acts on the central nervous system. Just two

tablespoons of this honey induces acute breathing impairment, perilously

low heart rate and hypnotics.

271

The green honey from Trebizond,

Colchis and the Black Sea region is particularly toxic. In 401BCE,

Xenophon’s Greek army behaved like lunatics after eating Colchian

honey. Seized with vomiting, they collapsed by the thousands. In

67BCE, Mithridates, the king of Pontus, won a battle against Pompey the

Great after the Romans ate toxic honey.

272

Pliny called toxic Black Sea honey meli maenomenon. European

taverns later used it as miel fou to intensify the intoxicating effect of

alcoholic beverages. This miel fou was probably the mandrake of the

witches and used along with opium and plants containing skin-penetrating

atropine such as hemlock, nightshade, hellebore, henbane and

belladonna.

273

Henbane is also called Jupiter Beans or apollinaris for its

god-like trance-inducing properties.

274

Pliny recorded that the people of

Gaul used the sacred plant veravain to prepare an ointment that was used

in fortune telling and uttering prophesies..

275

As with their Mediterranean counterparts, European witches

applied a green Oyl to induce states of ecstasy. They applied the Oyl to

their foreheads, forearms and underarms. They also used a broomstick

handle to apply the Oyl to their vulva and this is probably the source of

the flying broomstick myth.

In the sixteenth century, the physician Andrés Laguna

investigated the discovery of a jar of witch’s Oyl.

276

The jar still had

some of the green unguent used by the witches. He experimented with

the Oyl by smearing it all over a woman. She promptly fell into a deep

coma that lasted for thirty-six hours. Afterwards she described her erotic

coma with considerable delight.

A Homeric Hymn to Hermes describes how the melissae bee-

priestesses of Mount Parnassus consumed the honeycomb of the gods,

meli chloron, to attain a state of ecstasy:

277

Divinely maddened, they are inspired to speak the truth

But if they are deprived of the divine honeycomb

they cannot prophesy.

Toxic honey causes vertigo, delirium, nausea, vomiting, blue

skin, muscle paralysis and unconsciousness. Severe ventricular

tachycardia leads to death. This is an over-contraction of the lower

ventricles of the heart. The contractions fall out of phase with the heart’s

own pacemaker in its sinus node. In the second century CE, Plutarch

noted that the melissae priestesses often collapsed and died after frantic

disorientation and shrieking. In 19 BCE, Virgil described the effects on

the Cumaean Sibyl priestess as she foretold of grim war in Lavinium to

the legendary Trojan leader Aeneas at Euboea:

278

The threshold was barely gained when the maiden cried ‘It is the

hour to enquire your fates! The god – behold the god.’ And as she stood

by the doors and spoke, suddenly her countenance and hue changed, and

her tresses fell disordered: her bosom panted, her wild heart swelled with

fury, and she grew taller to the view, and her voice rang not of mortality,

now that the god breathed on her in nigher presence … in her cavern the

prophetess, intolerant of Phoebus’ will, raved in limitless frenzy, straining

to exorcise the mighty god from her soul: but all the more he curbed her

foaming lips to weariness, subdued her fierce heart, and molded her to his

constraint … the madness ceased and her raving lips were hushed.

The Indo-Hittite traditions of both the goat and bee are quite

different from those of the Afro-Asiatics. The goat, above all the young

kid, is the pure symbol of the initiate rather than the sexually craven he-

goat. Sexual proclivity could not be further from contemplation in Indo-

Hittite, hermetic and Zoroastrian rituals:

279

Sex is a thing of bodies, not of souls.

The Pauline Church, notwithstanding its embracing of the Afro-

Asiatic sacrificial king ritual, also adopted the goat or kid as a symbol of

purity. It is the Agnus Dei and signifies Christ.

280

When it came to masculine deities, Indo-Hittite religion was more

straightforward than the Afro-Asiatics. As herders, they did not see the

need to sacrifice their masculine gods or clan leaders for the agricultural

fertility of the land. While there were female gods, in their overtly male

dominated society there was no reason for dominant gods of the male-

principal to be subservient to a female. Such male-principle gods were

the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Ninurta, Persian Ohrmazd, Akkadian

Marduk and Vedic Indra.

The typical Indo-Hittite hero kills the Serpent of the Abyss to

disenfranchise the matriarch’s sacrificial ceremony. He then marries the

Serpent’s mother or sister, the Triple Goddess, and begets divine children

through her that are all manifestations of him.

281

For example, the Persian

Ohrmazd marries the Afro-Asiatic Triple Goddess and immediately

dispossesses her.

282

He then goes about clothed in her three colors of

white, red and dark blue. These colors symbolize creation and re-

creation, the eternal combat with evil and bringing forth fecundity.

Over time, the matriarchal sacrifice ceremony of the Afro-

Asiatics became less violent. Although it was still a sacred marriage and

rebirth ceremony, the Goddess did not kill the consort. Instead, she

rescued him from death in chaos. The Vedic Usas shows us the strong

Indo-Hittite side of the paradigm. She does not give birth but bravely

rescues her man.

In Mesopotamia, the new paradigm begins tentatively with

Inanna who brings Dumuzi back to life semi-annually. However, the

actions of the great Inanna are rather incipit. She acts like a fairy

godmother instead of her powerful former character of the Female or

Triple Goddess in decisive action. The paradigm of male rights later

gained more strength with Ishtar who demanded the release of her consort

Tammuz from the underworld.

Plato described the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice where the

male and female swap roles to assert the male paradigm.

283

Orpheus now

enters the underworld to seek the return of his bride. The symbol of the

ability to descend into Hecate ’s underworld is a single bronze sandal,

which later came to signify the Mother Goddess’ imprimatur to a contract.

Orpheus’s bride is the lovely nymph Eurydice, killed by a snake.

He wins back her life for the asking but his enthusiasm causes him to look

back into Hades, whereupon Eurydice vanishes. The act of looking back

is the traditional sign that the initiate lacks the courage so essential in the

further pursuit of Wisdom:

284

It is the way thou must take without looking back.

Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice tells the beautiful story of

Orpheus and Eurydice.

285

The acclaimed aria Che faro senza Euridice of

Orfeo ed Euridice became pivotal in the development of modern opera.

The metamorphosis of the festival of Lenaea, the Festival of the

Wild Women, in Athens demonstrates the attack of the Indo-Hittites on

the Triple Goddess.

286

At first, Hera tore apart an adult male. After the

Indo-Hittite revision, a male child substituted for the mature male

victim.

287

A kid then replaced the male child. Finally, orgiastic moon-

priestesses cut into nine pieces and sacrificed a bull representing

Dionysus.

288

The respective traditions of the Afro-Asiatics and Indo-Hittites

compress and merge in a peculiar fashion at the interface region of

Anatolia. A unique group emerged from this compression, the proto-

Israelites. They appear to be Semitic Levant Asiatics with Indo-Hittite

traditions of God.

For example, they abhorred the mystery religions of their Afro-

Asiatic clans and often repeated the analogy Thou shalt not seethe a kid in

its mother’s milk meaning that the initiate should not bathe in the milk of

the hidden Afro-Asiatic doctrine.

289

Notably, they did not have any

similar prohibition for cooking the young of other animals in their

mother's milk.

Even though ingrained, the Israelites and later the Jews deplored

the sacred marriage ceremony of the Afro-Asiatics. This is the reason

why Judaism regards the sacred son concept of Christianity as a great lie.

The Priests ruled that a Jewish girl should not become a holy prostitute

like Tamar. We return to Tamar later in the chapter.

Yet, the Israelites could not escape their heritage of Mother Right

entirely. They sacrificed and consumed the scapegoat at the beginning of

the agricultural year.

290

This true He-goat or Oak-king equivalent is the

Assyrian counterpart of Azazel. The Israelites later consumed the He-

goat as a Eucharist when Moses allowed the Israelites to substitute a kid

for the paschal lamb in the first law stipulated for Passover.

291

The Israelites were also highly suspicious of honey and bees

because of their place in the Afro-Asiatic mysteries of rebirth. In the

same way Jews prohibited seething a kid in milk, they deprecated the bee

as a filthy creature engendered in the rotting flesh of cattle. This was a

reference to Bull Mysteries. Ovid describes the same phenomena of bees

emerging from the rotting flesh of a prize bull, slain for sacrifice, in The

Doctrines of Pythagoras.

292

Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (20BCE to 50CE) who was the

greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher of his time wrote:

293

The Eucharistic bread must be without leavening and without

honey.

Yet, the Israelites drew a very fine line on bees and honey

because of its importance in early Indo-Hittite religion. In Israelite

mythology, Samson of Dan killed a lion and when passing later on found

a swarm of bees and some honey in the carcass. He scooped out the

honey and it gave him the idea for a riddle:

294

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth

sweetness.

The legend does not say that the lion’s body was the womb of the

bees. Neither does it imply that the honey was impure since both Samson

and his parent consumed it. Ancient doctors who prepared alchemical

medicines would immediately recognize that the lion is gold and the

sweetness is the sweet, universal medicine of gold that cures all diseases.

On another level of meaning, Samson is predicting Dan’s

universal hermetic religion will be born from the carcass of the Lion of

Judah. The bees are Samson’s Tribe of Dan and the honey is a golden

new age.

295

We can detect an Israelite attempt to reconcile the different

Afro-Asiatic and Indo-Hittite mystical interpretations of honey. There is

also a deeper esoteric meaning, which we will look at in Chapter 16.

The Israelites had great difficulty in maintaining amity or

harmony of culture with their fellow Semite tribes because of their

acquired Indo-Hittite influences, particularly patriarchal monotheism.

They had similar problems with Indo-Hittite attitudes to women's status,

agricultural castration and rebirth celebrations, sacrificial rituals and

ethnic cleansing.

Concerning the status of women, after Deuteronomy an Israelite

woman generally belonged to either her husband or father. The revised

testaments de-emphaised the heroines Miriam, Hannah and Debroah.

Miriam was the prophetess, who lead the congregation in prayer. Hannah

was a famed warrior leader. Perhaps the most famous woman leader was

the judge, Debroah. She was the daughter of Jasher and “the Mother of

Israel”.

Post Deuteronomy, the law permitted her only one husband, even

though her husband could have many wives. Women were to be chaste,

subservient and sexually ploughed or wrought by their husbands.

All of these were Indo-Hittite traits. The woman was a pure

chattel in the strict Indo-Hittite sense. Yet, the Israelites also regarded

women as ancient respected instruments of rebirth, revered for their

biological role. For example, although conviction for adultery required

stoning of the adulterous couple, the usual Pharisaic practice was for the

woman to plead ignorance of the law whereupon the Court set the couple

free.

296

Even today, Israel’s Rabbinical Court actively seeks to resolve

the objectively disadvantaged position of women in marital separation.

This requires it to track-down husbands who have deserted or separated

from their wife while continuing to penalize her by harshly refusing to

grant a divorce.

More importantly, land ownership continued through the

youngest of the royal female line.

297

This is ultimogeniture rather than

primogeniture. In royal succession, it was not to the son of the King that

the Kingdom passed, but to the son of either his youngest daughter or his

youngest sister.

298

For this reason, Egyptian Pharaohs would marry their

half-sisters in order to propagate the bloodline of the dynasty.

Even today, the mother’s bloodline incorporates the Jewish

heritage. This is a continuation of the Afro-Asiatic matriarchal religion,

with the womb as the over-riding regenerative principle. Judaism

considers all children of Jewish mothers as Jews and children of Jewish

fathers and non-Jewish mothers as Gentiles. This is little different than in

Isaac's time (c1750BCE) when an Israelite man who married a woman of

another tribe was considered to have transferred to that other tribe and no

longer be an Israelite. This is why Isaac returned to his tribe in Harran.

Isaac’s bride is Rebecca the water-carrier.

299

As with all water goddesses,

she is an analogy of the Mother Goddess procreative aspect. Isis is

likewise.

The Roman Catholic Church adopted the principals of female

beauty and procreation, incorporating them into the great Lady cathedrals

of Europe. The East lancet window is typically high and narrow

corresponding to the male principle of Spirit while the rose window of the

West is circular and primeval, symbolizing the womb.

300

The North entrance of Chartres Cathedral, beneath the rose

window, is the Gate of the Initiates. Melchizedek, Aaron, Anna the

Mother of Mary, David and Solomon welcome the Initiates there

(c1235).

301

Statues in stone of Melchizedek, Abraham and Isaac, and

Moses also welcome visitors through the Central Portal of the North

Transept (c1215).

The cathedral itself is a chamber or womb of spiritual rebirth, as

in the ancient Mysteries. After embracing the Church, the congregation is

reborn in the womb of the Church. This occurs in a set program

throughout the year. In Rome, on special days in a Holy Year, cleansing

of sin is even more efficient. It simply requires passage through the doors

of one of Rome's four great churches.

Rose logic explains this ancient cleansing process, which we look

at in Chapter 17. Most of the congregation would be unable to appreciate

the full significance of this cycle since only priests are educated in the

Church Mysteries at their Ordination.

St Bernard was an enthusiast of the cult of the Virgin embodied in

the cathedral. He declared of Chartres:

302

Leave your temporal bodies at the door, only the spirit may enter

here … The Son will answer the prayers of the Mother and the Father will

answer the prayers of the Son.

Another blending of the Afro-Asiatic rebirth mysteries with Indo-

Hittite masculinity occurs in the castration myths. Removing the fertility

of the old king disenfranchised him thus allowing the young king to rule.

In Egypt Set castrated his brother Osiris, in Sumer, Kumarbi castrated

Anu. In Greece, Zeus castrated his father Cronos and Homer writes of

Cronos castrating his father Uranus. In Israelite myth Canaan, the son of

Ham, castrated his grandfather Noah.

The continuation of the Israelites' castration myth as a halfway

position between the agricultural sacrifice myths and the Indo-Hittite

rescue myths shows their difficulty in completely breaking away from

their Semitic agricultural background.

The importance of castration is a sign that covenants were cut, not

made.

303

The contracting parties severed an animal in two and walked

between the pieces that this may happen to me when I break this

covenant.

304

This is why circumcision is reserved for a special promise.

The separation of the foreskin cuts the covenant that appeases the Mother

Goddess’ demand for the sacred marriage with its ritual castration, death

and rebirth. The Goddess demands every man’s phallus.

305

Jewish

women offered the foreskin as a substitute for their husband’s phallus.

For example, the substitute sacrifice of circumcision even saved Moses:

306

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him

[Moses], and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and

cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, surely a

bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, a bloody

husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

It is a custom observed by the British Royal Family who called

upon the Rabbi Jacob Snowman, the respected Mohel of the London

Jewish community, to perform the religious rite of Brit Milah with Prince

Charles at Buckingham Palace. This is also the Covenant of

Circumcision.

Israelite priests would sprinkle the blood of the covenant on oath-

takers to make a promise binding.

307

This blood came from an animal

sacrificed on the altar. The Male and Baka tribes of southwestern

Ethiopia still slaughter a beast to mark a contract. Blood from the

sacrificial animal smears the man who cuts the covenant. In emulation of

the combined importance of cutting a promise and involving the male

genitals, an Arab promise becomes a serious contract of honour by the

oath-taker placing his hand on the bare inner thigh of the person to whom

he is making the pledge. Some older Masonic rituals mirrored this form

of oath with the initiate placing his hand between the hands of person

receiving the obligation.

The Bible provides other grand stories of the sacrifice myth.

Moses died before Joshua received the fertile land of Israel. King David

similarly died before Solomon brought prosperity to the land with the

building of the Temple. In the same way, the wounded and impotent

Fisher King of the Holy Grail finally passes to his rest before prosperity

returns to his wasting land.

In contrast are the Indo-Hittite male-principle gods Gilgamesh

and Ninurta, Akkadian Marduk and Vedic Indra. Indra is the most

important god of the invaders of the Indus Valley.

308

He is eternally

young, strong, stormy and a cunning fighter. He has boundless energy

and bestows fertility on women and on fields. One of his names is he

with a thousand testicles. Indra neither ages nor is castrated so a younger

king can bring fertility to the land.

The Sumerian god Marduk was similarly fertile. Yet, he is even

more important to us because he graphically highlights the switch from

the matriarchal religion of the Afro-Asiatic Mother Goddess religion to

the patriarchal religion of the Indo-Hittites. Marduk is the only god with

both an old and a new paradigm legend. In the old legend, he is a

sacrificial king killed by the dragon Tiamat, while in the new legend

Marduk kills her with a sword.

King Solomon also possesses the Indo-Hittite character. His

fecundity was as legendary as that of his father, King David:

309

But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the

daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites,

Zidonians, and Hittites; Of the nations concerning which the Lord said

unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they

come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their

gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives,

princesses, and three hundred concubines …

David’s death was a precondition to building the Temple. His

passing allowed the younger and more fertile hero king, Solomon, to

ascend to the throne. In stark contrast, Solomon’s own death is an

anticlimax. He simply fades away at the conclusion of building the

Temple and his grand palace.

310

His son Rehoboam promptly forfeits the

glory of Israel. This ultimately has the effect of disenfranchising the

proto-Israelites’ forlorn claim to the Egyptian Delta. We will look further

into this claim in the next chapter.

The displacement of matriarchal rights in the mysteries of the

Great Goddess had the most marked effect on the roles of women. The

patriarchal religion of Yahweh decisively rejected the Mother Goddess.

As a result, women lost all control over religious celebration. They could

not participate; only view the ceremonies from the women’s gallery.

An often given rationalization for the ousting of women is that

females have an unsettling effect on men, who then tend to confuse

mystical ecstasy with erotic ecstasy.

311

The three main festivals of Judaism Pesach, Shovous and Sukkos

demonstrate the Israelites' difficulty in breaking free of the agricultural

cycles. These three festivals have themes of harvest and planting, as well

as the Exodus. The Israelites purged Afro-Asiatic sexual content from the

rituals. For example, in Jerusalem the celibate Feast of the Tabernacles

replaced the orgiastic Day of Willows where Salma celebrated his sacred

marriage with the Flower Queen Moon Goddess, as we saw in Chapter 3.

The purging of the agricultural festivals left a ragged edge,

evidenced by Yahweh's shifting demand for the sacrifice of the first male

from the womb. In Exodus:

312

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Sanctify unto me all the

firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel,

both of man and of beast: it is mine.

And in Micah:

313

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten

thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

And Judges showed that it was a common practice to sacrifice a

royal prince in return for a successful campaign:

314

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt

without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall

be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me,

when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the

Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

There are awful stories of sacrifices and the words of the scribe

show Yahweh lamenting for not having been clearer in his sacrifice

requirements:

315

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point

of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the

horns of your altars; Whilst their children remember their altars and their

groves [Asherah poles] by the green trees upon the high hills.

316

And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the

valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the

fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.

Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be

called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of

slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place.

317

These verses provide vivid images of Levite priests carrying out

the gruesome task of butchering the flowering youth of Israel. No

payment could substitute.

318

When they carried out ritual sacrifice, the

Levites always turned the victim's head to the north.

319

Yet, the practice of human sacrifice seems to have developed into

lamb substitution as favored by the Indo-Hittites.

320

What had originated

as a form of ritual sacrifice to renew the agreement with God for ensuring

the harvest, was already becoming less barbarous by two thousand

BCE:

321

All that openeth the matrix [the first borne] is mine; and every

firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the

firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him

not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt

redeem. And none shall appear before me empty [handed].

God spared Isaac. This was an important change. God had

decided to waive his craving for human flesh and accept a ram in lieu:

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou

lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a

burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

322

Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the

dead; from whence also he received him in a figure [he received Isaac

back from death].

323

By the time of the return from Exile, Zoroastrianism and respect

of life heavily influenced the Jewish leaders. They distanced their

religion from human sacrifice. This corresponded to Yahweh completing

his transformation from a devoted son of the Great Goddess, through a

supernal trinity with two attributes of the great Goddess' Anatha of the

Lions and Ashima of the Doves, to become the sole ruler of the

universe.

324

The post-exilic Jews, in their zeal for the one God, persuaded

themselves that they had never accepted the Great Triple Mother

Goddess, although their stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and

Moses might demonstrate otherwise.

325

After the return from Exile, the practices that prevailed at the time

of King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre, who was a priest of Melkarth

where child sacrifice was common, were no longer relevant. The new

Jewish approach recognized the absurdity and cruelty of murdering able-

bodied men. Annual male sacrifice became redundant with the cut of

ritual circumcision of the male phallus. It was sufficient evidence of

God’s Covenant with man:

326

And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As

for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of

many nations. … And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the

land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an

everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto

Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore … Every man child

among you shall be circumcised … and it shall be a token of the covenant

betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised

among you, every man child in your generations...

A final ill-fitting characteristic of the Israelites explained by the

Anatolian compression is that their Semitic background was one of

accommodation rather than subjugation. While the Indo-Hittites and

particularly the Indo-Iranians were at their best wading knee-deep through

blood in their campaigns, ethnic cleansing was unusual amongst the Afro-

Asiatics and Semites. For example, the Semites of King Sargon I merged

with subject populations in Sumer rather than eliminating them.

Much later King David chose not to eliminate Semitic

populations in and around Jerusalem but to merge with them. In doing

this, he countermanded Yahweh's specific order. Yahweh had ruthlessly

rattled the sabers of the Israelites as they departed Egypt for Canaan. He

directed them to mercilessly murder the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the elite

Hurrian Jebusites, and those of nearby cities:

Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before

you, … And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell

therein: for I have given you the land to possess it.

327

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give

thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But

thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the

Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord

thy God hath commanded thee …

328

The Hivites (Hebrew chry) are the Horites (Hebrew chwy) and

more generally Achaeans or Hurrians.

329

In other cities on the fringe of

the new state, Yahweh directed the Israelites to exact tribute or kill the

men and take the women and children as slaves:

And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands,

thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the

women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even

all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself.

330

David acted to the contrary and with impunity from Yahweh. In

fact, there is little archeological evidence to support the conquest of

Canaan by Joshua and the Israelites. All destruction in Palestine accrues

directly to recorded Egyptian campaigns in the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries BCE.

331

Furthermore, Joshua supposedly destroyed Jericho:

332

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and

woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the

sword … And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only

the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into

the treasury of the house of the Lord.

When David ignored Yahweh’s genocidal commands, Yahweh

said nothing. Nor did Yahweh say ought when Joshua flagrantly ignored

two of the Moses’ Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou

shalt not steal.”

Yet, it was not the Israelites but one of their tribal enemies, the

Amorites, who raised Jericho in 1480BCE and continued to harass

Thutmose III from their new base there.

CJ Jung cannot dismiss the absence of human morality in

Yahweh's commands to the Israelites.

333

He says that Yahweh

demonstrates a gross deficiency of reason and morality, the two

characteristics of a mature human mind. It provides an image of unethical

brutal force.

What Jung has perhaps overlooked is that these commands are

not of the personal god of the Israelites, Yahweh, but of storytellers

coming to grips with the Indo-Hittite god of war and trying to paint

Yahweh into the extremes. Exodus provides evidence for Yahweh

converting from a tribal deity to a nationalist one. In Exodus 3 Yahweh is

simply the god of the fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Exodus 6(3)

identifies him as the great El Shaddai. The power of the archetype is

destabilizing to the paradigm if pushed to extremes.

As we have noted, the Indo-Hittites favored oral communication

of myths and legends over written records. They developed verbal rituals

for transmission of their myths and Israelite emulation of this has resulted

in a profusion of Biblical archetypes later set down by Israelite and

Jewish authors. This has always been a particular trait of the illusive

Rosicrucians. Even today, it is usual in organizations such as the Scottish

Rite.

We have seen that the unique compression of Indo-Hittite and

Afro-Asiatic Semitic cultures produced the very unusual phenomenon of

the proto-Israelites. The Israelites and Indo-Hittites were then to join in a

cooperative commercial venture to secure the Commagene region of

Anatolia from the Egyptians. This was to have the most far reaching of

effects, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Chapter 6 Hyksos Invasion of Egypt

‘Tutimaeus. In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of

god smote us; and unexpectedly, from the regions of the East, invaders of

an obscure race marched in confidence against our land. By main force

that easily overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities

ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the gods, and treated all the

natives with a cruel hostility, massacring some and leading into slavery

the wives and children of others.’

So said the Egyptian priest Manetho in 330BCE about the Hyksos

invasion that took place some one thousand five hundred years before his

own time.

334

Savage evidence of severed limbs in grave pits seems to

support his claim.

335

Manetho also wrote that the Hyksos escaped to Syria where they

built Jerusalem.

336

Hekataios of Abdera similarly wrote in 300BCE that

Jewish tradition of the Exodus came from the expulsion of the Hyksos.

337

He maintained the Israelites were the Hyksos. Although the Exodus is an

article of faith, modern archeologists are still unable to confirm or deny

the Biblical traditions. We still do not know whether the Exodus was

mythical or it actually occurred as described in the Bible. If it did occur,

it could be the Hyksos expulsion (as Hekataios maintains) or a later event.

It is, however, well recognized that the Hyksos conquerors of

Egypt were overwhelmingly Semitic speaking Levant Asiatics, because

most of the Hyksos names are Semitic. For example, Jacob exists as both

a Hyksos Prince (Mr wsr R

b hr, Yaqob) and the Biblical Palestine

identity.

338

Yet the Semites of Western Palestine never otherwise

displayed the military might and war-technology necessary to mount a

sole invasion of Egypt.

The main war force of the Hyksos was Indo-Hittite and more

particularly Indo-Iranian Hurrian. These were the Haxa from Eastern

Iran. We know less about this military force because of their peculiar

characteristic of discouraging written records.

Because of their aversion to the written word, the Hurrians

seemed to leave non-military administration to the Semitic Levant

Asiatics, the proto-Israelites. This may well be the reason Joseph was a

vizier to the Pharaoh rather than a General. Tuthmose III similarly

Commagene Crucible for the Hyksos Invasion of Egypt

elevated the Amorites Meri-Re and User Min to key administrative

positions. In the same way, Amenhotep III relied on the Semite Yanhamu

as Governor of Palestine. At the time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten,

Yanhamu controlled the granaries of Yarimuta and governed the Egyptian

domains in Palestine and Gebal. The Amarna letters show the Syrians

petitioned Akhenaten asking for his help, suggesting that Yanhamu was

familiar with their circumstances. His position no doubt forms part of

Joseph’s complex archetype.

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The Canaanite, Ben Matana, was another

Semite who rose to prominence, becoming Pharaoh Merenptah’s Chief

Spokesman.

King Nebuchadnezzar similarly made Daniel and his companions

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego governors in Babylon.

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The practice

of appointing Semite administrators continued more than two thousand

years later when the Umayyad Muslims invaded Spain and Southern

France, 719-720CE.

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As each Visigoth fortress fell, the Saracens

installed Jews as administrators. The Saracens then pursued their

conquest to the next town. The Arabs in Tripoli adopted the same

practice.

While the Hurrian invasion is virtually silent in history, it is not

the only example of such a vacuum left by Indo-Hittites. Indo-Hittite

Aryans usually devastated culture in the regions they conquered and

brought little to replace it. The Huns, for example, had no long-term

influence on Europe. German culture eventually arrived through the

Western Roman Empire.

The advanced chariotry of the invaders graphically demonstrates

the Indo-Iranian influence within the Hyksos. This technology came from

the Hurrians whose large Trans-Caspian horses easily displaced the small

ass drawn chariots of the Egyptians.

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The Hurrians had been in Syria and East Anatolia for many

thousands of years. They originally spoke Urartu, a northeast Caucasian

language that was neither Afro-Asiatic nor Indo-Hittite. Later the

Hurrians became indistinguishable from Indo-Iranians. They took Aryan

Indian gods and Indian royal names. Their charioteering terms were very

close to Indian Sanskrit.

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Even today, the language of Georgia is similar

to Hurrian.

The Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni was contemporaneous with the

Egyptian eighteenth dynasty. The Mitanni was still a potent military

force at the end of the Hyksos occupation in 1567BCE.

Commerce drove this seemingly odd cultural combination of

Indo-Iranian Hurrians and Semitic Israelites. As explained in Chapter 5,

the Anatolian Commagene was the central interface where Indo-Hittites

and Afro-Asiatic Semites were geographically compressed. The races

had apparently learned to live together in relative harmony.

The region was the first to prosper in the Bronze Age as a centre

of metallurgical technology. Copper and lead smelting had taken place in

the region for five millennia - at nearby Jarmo, in Iraqi Kurdistan, from

6,750BCE and at Çatal Hûtûk in Anatolia, three hundred and fifty years

later. Çatal Hûtûk came to a sudden end in about five thousand six

hundred BCE for reasons not yet understood.

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The burgeoning economic affluence of the region in two thousand

BCE meant that it was no longer a zero sum game for the groups. Wealth

grew over a long period and, to some degree, peaceful trade provided

more prosperity than war. The Indo-Hittites proved able technologists

and the Israelites capable artisans and administrators. Even today,

business people of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia in the

upper Commagene are the most successful entrepreneurs of Turkey.

So, what happened to disturb this golden era? In short, twelfth

dynasty Egyptians seized their wealth and technology. Thutmose III and

Ramses II repeated this after the Hyksos invasion. The Egyptian Pharaoh

who initiated the first expropriation was Pharaoh Sesôstris I, who ruled

from 1959BCE to 1914BCE. The twelfth dynasty has been a confusing

period but we now know the dates accurately due to reliable European

and Chinese dating of the eruption of Thera in 1648BCE.

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Thera is

seventy miles north of Crete and its crater is now the romantic island of

Santorini. Using this as a reference point, the Hyksos period of

occupation in Egypt lasted from 1801BCE to 1567BCE.

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Pharaoh Sesôstris I upset the relatively stable commercial

arrangement of the Semitic Levant Asiatics and Indo-Hittites by capturing

and transporting to Egypt and Sinai, metals resources, metallurgical

technology and even the Semitic metalworking populations. Anatolia was

devastated for one hundred and fifty years. It is quite possible that the

Kenites of Sinai, the ancestors of David, were an Anatolian group

transported to the copper and turquoise mines in the south by this Pharaoh

of the twelfth dynasty.

The Semites of the area considered their position and resolved to

join the Hurrians to recover their interests with violence. The outcome

was a commercial-military joint venture, the invasion of Egypt, using the

new wonder Indo-Iranian technology of the fast light chariot. Even the

nearby Kassites thought it was an opportune time to invade the powerful

cities of Sumer in the same way.

As compelling as Manetho's description is of the Hyksos arriving

from the East by land, later exploits in the Mediterranean suggest that the

Hyksos were backed-up from the sea by the Phoenicians of Byblos.

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The Semite Byblians along with the Cretians had a major port at Pelusium

in the Nile Delta where they handled all of Egypt's maritime trade.

Due to convenient sea support and trading efficiency, the Hyksos

capital remained at Avaris in the East Delta, most probably Tell el

Daba'a. The graves at Tell el Daba'a contain many bronze weapons such

as axes, daggers and knives made with fine metalwork styles developed in

Syro-Palestine after the time of Pharaoh Sesôstris I.

The underlying reason for the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in

1801BCE by the combined forces of the Semitic desert princes and Indo-

Hittite Hurrians was to regain their commercial interests in mining and

metallurgy. Their hostile invasion of Egypt was highly successful. The

production of metals in Anatolia resumed and lasted six hundred years,

until the end of the Bronze Age in 1200BCE.

The Hyksos takeover of Egypt expanded into the Mediterranean

and Aegean Seas. Using their Phoenician maritime connections, the

Hyksos colonized both Crete and Greece. Chemical analysis of pottery

has confirmed that during this period there was active trade between

Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus and Nubia.

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Linguistics confirms this. The

enigmatic Linear A tablet of Knossos seems to be a mixture of Syro-

Mesopotamian Hurrian, Semitic and Luwitic. Early analysis of the

Etruscan language also suggests a consolidation of Indo-Hittite and

Semitic roots. Linear B is an early Mycenaean Greek dialect.

Expansion of the Hyksos into the Mediterranean had the most far

reaching of effects on civilization, as we know it today:

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What is today seen as 'Mycenaean' material culture could usefully

be seen as 'Hyksos' or at least the 'Hyksos of the non-Cretan Aegean' …

and it was from this society that not only the cultivation of the later

Mycenaean palaces but also Greek language and culture - as they survive

until today - first took shape.

The Hyksos lived mainly in the delta region and this area

continued as the focus for Semitic Levant Asiatic aspirations for a

thousand years. The Hyksos had limited control over Upper Egypt where

they permitted the true Egyptian Pharaohs to reign. Pharaoh Seqenenre’s

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sons Kamose and Ahmose ultimately raised an army in Upper Egypt and

rebelled against the Hyksos King Apophis in 1570BCE. In 1567BCE, the

Egyptians expelled the Hyksos from Egypt and established the prosperous

New Kingdom. With the expulsion of the Hyksos, Kamose wrote:

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Let me understand what this strength of mine is for! (One) prince

is in Avaris, another is in Ethiopia, and (here) I sit associated with an

Asiatic and a Negro! Each man has his slice of this Egypt, dividing up

the land with me... no man can settle down, when despoiled by the taxes of

the Asiatics. I will grapple with him that I may rip open his belly! My

wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatic! I went north because I was

strong (enough) to attack the Asiatics through the command of Ammon,

the just of counsels. My valiant army was in front of me like a blast of fire

... When day broke, I was on him as if it was a falcon. When the time of

breakfast had come, I attacked him. I broke down his walls, I killed his

people, and I made his wife come down to the riverbank. My soldiers

were as lions are, with their spoil, having serfs, cattle, milk, fat and

honey, dividing up their property, their hearts gay.

One of the commanders of Kamose's fleet wrote that after his

majesty had killed the Asiatics he sailed southward to destroy the Nubian

nomads.

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The Hyksos-Israelites escaped to Palestine. They remained there

from 1567BCE until the Palestine campaign of Tuthmose III in 1480BCE.

There was extensive fragmentation in Palestine during this period:

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Now at that time, the Asiatics had fallen into disagreement, each

man fighting against his neighbor.

Tuthmose III’s 1480BCE campaign capitalized on this disarray to

push as far north as Naharin on the Upper Euphrates and to the strategic

city of Mari where the Israelite Patriarchs had initially come from. There

the fierce Mitanni Empire of the Hurrians halted them.

Thutmose III's troops then occupied the strategically important

cities of Megiddo and Jerusalem, or Kadesh, in Palestine. A Hurrian-

Semitic vassal of Egypt called Abd-Khiba still ruled Jerusalem eighty

years later in 1400BCE.

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The dislodged Hyksos re-established in a Syrian town that they

also called Kadesh or Holy City. This was Kadesh on the Orontes River.

Today the Orontes River forms part of the border between Lebanon and

Syria just above Damascus.

In 1291BCE, Ramses II again re-exerted Egyptian sovereignty

over Palestine as Sesôstris I and Thutmose III had done. He pushed up

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towards the Commagene and won a decisive battle at the Orontes River

against the Semitic and Hurrian peoples lead by King Muwatallis.

Ramses II turned his victory battle against the Kadesh the

Deceitful into a symbolic battle against the allies of Seth the children of

Apophis, the impious who haunt the wilderness and the desert.

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recorded this battle in grand bas-relief compositions in the Temple of

Karnak, the Temple of Luxor, the Ramesseum and the Temple of Abu-

Simbel. The scenes show Ramses II bringing order to his land, single-

handed, as the personification of Amun. This is the same temple site

where his predecessor Thutmose III recorded his plunder of Palestine.

The Hyksos period of occupation provides the background to the

image of Hyksos invaders as the children of Apophis. The Egyptian

concept of order was Maat. It dominated the whole fabric of Egyptian

society.

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In his manifestation as Ptah, the Egyptians called Amun the

Lord of Maat. His three-step pedestal is the hieroglyph of Maat.

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opposition to Maat is Isfet, which denotes falsehood, injustice and

whatever runs counter to the rightness of the world.

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The leader of the

embodiment of Isfet was the gigantic evil serpent god Apophis. He had

no sensory organs, so could neither see nor hear.

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He could only

scream. We will see this serpent emerge repeatedly in mystery religion

and literature.

In Egyptian folklore, Set killed Osiris and Apophis reigned until

the resurrected Osiris chased him away. Osiris represents the rising sun.

The Hyksos provocatively identified their monotheistic Indo-Hittite god

with the Egyptian Set. The Hyksos King Apepi I went even further. He

associated himself with Apophis, the antithesis of order and stability in

Egypt.

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As a result, the Egyptians described the Hyksos invaders as the

Children of Apophis. This is the reason Kamose identifies with the

resurrection of Osiris attacking the Children of Apophis, the Hyksos, at

dawn.

The Persian region of Media provides additional evidence that the

Indo-Iranian Hyksos invaders were the Children of Apophis. Here the

Median kings took the title Mâr, meaning snake in Persian.

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This gave

rise to the tyrant dragon dynasty of Media. Herodotus describes the later

kings, in particular the last Median ruler Astyages (584-550BCE), as

having the royal demonic title Rshti-vegâ Azhi Dahâka. Nowadays

Azhdahâ, the abbreviation of Azhi Dahâka, is the only Persian word for

snake.

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The triumph of Ramses II at Kadesh on the Orontes River

symbolized the victory of Maat or stability and order over chaos. It

became the magnificent victory of knowledge over ignorance and good

over evil. Kadesh on the Orontes had a similar special significance to

Jerusalem. They both had the same Egyptian name of Holy City. Ramses

II treated Kadesh with deference. He did not overrun and destroy it.

Instead, he granted the Kheta Chief King Hattusilish III a generous peace

treaty.

The Hurrian King Tushratta of Urkesh had already set the

precedent for ultimogeniture transfer of property. He gave his daughter

Tatu-hepa as a bride to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. The Hurrian capital of

Urkesh has been located in Syria, as Tell Mozan near Nusaybin on the

border with Turkey.

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In the same way, after some aloofness that King Hattusilish III of

Kadesh was unable to placate by gifts of tribute, Ramses II finally agreed

to marry King Hattusilish III’s daughter and thereby accept possession of

the land by the principle of ultimogeniture.

Archeologists discovered the records of the 1258BCE peace

treaty with King Hattusilish III at both Karnak and in the Hittite archives

of Arinna.

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A seal on the treaty depicts the gods of the contracting

parties. In the Hittite rendition of the seal, Set is Teshub meaning Storm

God. His consort is Hebat meaning Lady of the Skies and Ra is Shamash.

We will return to the god Shamash in Chapter 18.

The Palestine campaigns waged by the Egyptians to stabilize

occupied territories provided a number of opportunities for the capture

and release of Israelites. From this we can speculate that an event

resembling the Exodus could well have occurred in the 320-year period

between 1470BCE and 1150BCE. Conventional Biblical dating at

1466BCE fits well with the earliest estimate. However, alternative dating

sources do not confirm it. An Exodus in 1466BCE would have been a

prompt release from the capture of Thutmose III rather than a release by

Ramses II.

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However, a release from Thutmose III is unlikely.

Jacob, or more correctly Iakeb Aarhu (Jacob on the Ladder) Mer

User Ra, was a Hyksos king that reigned immediately before Aa Pehti

Set.

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Many inscriptions on scarabs attest to him. Ramses II dated the

commencement of the reign of this king Aa Pehti Set. He erected a stele

in 1240BCE to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of his

dynasty commencing with Aa Pehti Set. From this, we can deduce that if

Jacob of the Ladder was indeed the primary biblical archetype for Jacob

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and he was present in Egypt in 1460BCE, then the early 1466BCE date

for Exodus is in some doubt.

On the other hand, there us another most interesting late date for

the Exodus. Amenhotep III (Amen Hetep III) held his first Jubilee in

1365BCE. Altogether, he had three Jubilees. The first son of Amenhotep

III, crown prince Thutmose V, died before this Jubilee. The Pharaoh

therefore selected his celebrated advisor Amen Hetep Son of Hapu to

conduct the Sed Festival. This advisor took the place of the First Son, or

Great One His Son (Aa Siph), in the role of the Sem Priest who deified the

Pharaoh. In gratitude, Amenhotep III provided Amen Hetep Son of Hapu

with a funerary temple in western Thebes, adjacent to his own. The

Egyptians later deified the great advisor Amen Hetep Son of Hapu, as

they had Imhotep. A Pharaonic decree inaugurated his mortuary cult.

Amen Hetep Son of Hapu was born of unimportant parents in

Athribis, the modern Benha, in Egypt’s delta. So great did he become

that numerous statues in the temples of Amun and Mut at Karnak marked

his illustrious career. These statues show him seated as a scribe holding a

papyrus. One statue made in his eightieth year records that he hoped to

live to one hundred and ten.

Although an outstanding and respected architect, Amen Hetep

Son of Hapu became renowned for his piety and turned to religious

duties. His main designation of scribe of goodly young men described

one who recruited for the Egyptian State Mysteries. As many young men

came to his temple for ceremonies and he was a Sed Priest, he was almost

certainly in charge of these initiation rites.

Amen Hetep Son of Hapu is an early archetype for the

Freemason’s legendary Grand Master, Hiram Abiff. The king Amenhotep

III is correspondingly an archetype for Solomon, as is the temple of Al

Karnak for the Temple of Solomon.

One of Amen Hetep Son of Hapu’s key projects was the Ophet or

harem for the God Amun, in the Temple of Luxor.

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Amun traveled

from Karnak to Ophet once each year to celebrate his sacred marriage

with Mut. A great feast followed in the name of the holy family of

Karnak. Far beyond the borders of Egypt, people celebrated the eminence

of Amun’s perfect son Khonsu, the Advice Giver.

Amun’s new Ophet or harem adjoined the temple’s existing

Pylon and first court built by Ramses II. It consisted of a colonnade,

second court, columned hall and innermost ceremonial temple. Chapter

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18 will provide more detail of Amen Hetep Son of Hapu’s building

activities.

The other reason Amen Hetep Son of Hapu undertook the Sem

Priest role in the Jubilee was that the second son of Amenhotep III, who

was Amenhotep IV, was too young at the time. Amenhotep IV became

co-regent and erected his own Jubilee-Coronation Temple at Karnak in

1364BCE. In the Jubilee, Amenhotep IV took the new name Akhenaten

(Akhu En Aten), meaning well pleasing to the Aten. The Aten (Pa Aten)

appeared in each of the forty-two shrines of Egypt in the Jubilee Temple

to bless the new king. At death, forty-two judges on earth and another

forty-two in heaven would assess a Pharaoh’s soul according to its actions

when in the body. Both the Israelite connection and the forty-two names

of God are quite apparent.

Akhenaten ceased work on the Temple of Amen Re in Karnak in

1350BCE. He switched to constructing the Temple of Aten in 1353BCE

and established Yahweh-style monotheism in Egypt under the High Priest

Meri-Re. In doing so, he rebelled against the ceremonies of the Afro-

Asiatic sacred marriage practiced by his father Amenhotep III. So close

were relations between the Amarna dynasty and the post-Hyksos kings of

Assyria that in about 1365BCE Burnaburias II of Babylon even accused

the Assyrian king Assuruballit of being vassal to Akhenaten.

Akhenaten’s new religion was not to last. Egyptians quickly

upset this Indo-Hittite innovation, which deplored the sacred marriage of

Amun and was associated with the miseries brought to Egypt by the

Hyksos. Although Tutankhamun returned Egypt to the traditional religion

of Amun, Tutankhamun’s death without heir in the ninth year of his reign

in about 1318BCE led to a crisis. Tutankhamun’s widowed queen

arranged for Prince Zannanaz, son of the Asiatic Hittite king

Suppiluliuma I, to be her husband and become the next Pharaoh.

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The Egyptians respected Hittite king Suppiluliuma I for defeating

the Mitanni, sacking their capital and creating a buffer state against the

Assyrians. After suppressing the Mitanni, Suppiluliuma I installed

Tushratta as a pro-Egyptian king to provide a Hittite buffer between

Egypt and Assyria. Following Tushratta’s murder the Great King of

Assyria, Assuruballit I, placed an Assyrian king called Artatama on the

throne. Suppiluliuma I then retaliated and set Tushratta's son on the

Mitanni throne. This created a Hittite buffer state against Assyria, which

lasted until Suppiluliuma’s death. Assuruballit I then annexed what was

left of the Mitanni kingdom.

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Although Tutankhamen appointed Horemheb a hereditary prince

and Lord of the Two Lands, Horemheb publicly disagreed with him and

answered back, which enraged Tutankhamen.

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A key reason may have

been Horemheb’s discomfort with the Pharaoh’s Asiatics mercenaries.

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With the prospect of another Hittite-Mitanni king in Egypt,

General Horemheb seized control in about 1315BCE. Horemheb

promptly expunged the whole Hyksos-friendly Amarna dynasty of

Akhenaten, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen from the records of Egypt. He

demolished Akhenaten’s sun Temple of the Aten in Karnak and used its

forty thousand blocks to build the Ninth Pylon of Karnak.

In 320CE, Eusebius recorded the Greek historian Euhemerus’s

visit to Manetho in Egypt in 300BCE. We only have St Jerome’s

commentary on Eusebius’ World Chronicle but it seems that Eusebius

may have described how Akhenaten’s daughter, Scota, escaped to Tara in

Ireland’s County Meath, with the Asiatic prince called Gaythelos.

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The

Irish and Scottish people adopted the legend as an integral part of their

traditional history. Scota may be Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s second

daughter of six, the princess Meritaten.

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She was Tutankhamen’s

stepsister, stepmother and should have become his wife. Instead,

Tutankhamen married her younger sister, Ankhesenpaaten. The Scottish

Scota legend says the Egyptian force buried Meritaten at Glenscota in

County Kerry.

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General Horemheb was Tutankhamen’s commander of the

Egyptian army. As Horemheb had no sons, he put another favorite

general on the throne as co-regent. This was General Ramses, son of the

court official Seti. General Ramses was to name his son Seti after his

own father. This son, Seti, inaugurated the nineteenth dynasty as Pharaoh

Seti I. It is also notable as the first occasion since Hyksos domination that

a Pharaoh took the name of a Canaanite god.

It demonstrates that while General Horemheb violently opposed

the military Hyksos of the Hittites and Mitanni, the Semitic Levant

Asiatic contingent of the Hyksos successfully integrated into Egypt as

high officers of state. These Semitic Hyksos married into Egyptian

royalty from the time of the famous founder Queen of the eighteenth

dynasty, Ahmose-Nefertari. Pharaohs' queens held the title of God's Wife

of Amen. The three most famous are Queen Tiye (queen of Amenhotep

III), Nefertari (queen of Ramses II) shown with pink skin and Nefertiti

(queen of Akhenaten) in an earlier bust. Eventually the female Semitic

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Levant Asiatic bloodline successfully gave rise to the nineteenth dynasty

of Seti I.

A surprising outcome of this lineage of kings and queens is that

these facts perhaps reveal the identity of Moses.

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Furthermore, this

theory supports an Exodus at the time claimed by Manetho and Josephus.

The Sem Priest at the time of Ramses II (Ra Meses II) was Kha

Em Uset, the fourth Crown Prince of Ramses II. He was a great restorer

of monuments and erected the four hundred year stele mentioned

previously, celebrating the king's first Jubilee in his thirtieth year (about

1249BCE). Kha Em Uset continued to celebrate the Jubilees until he

died in 1230BCE. At his second Jubilee, Kha Em Uset built a special

Jubilee temple at Memphis. This marked his position as High Priest of

Ptah and keeper of the Apis Bull. This funerary temple for the Apis Bull,

known as the Serapeum, was at Sakkara, just West of Memphis. With

new economy, the series of tombs for the Bulls at the Serapeum ended the

practice of separate tombs and Temples for each bull.

Kha Em Uset’s name was visible to the notaries on the

Serapeum’s Museum Notice, right down to third century CE when the

practice of burying bulls ceased. From this a demotic romance of The

Third Intermediate Period/Late Period, called the Setne Cycle, developed

with Kha Em Uset as its subject. It tells of the tomb work carried out by

Setne Khamwas and the tales of wonder of his magical son Si-Osiris, who

defeated the Nubian magicians before his grandfather Ramses II, only to

vanish from the court. His father grieved until another son called User

Mont Hor was born.

Crown Prince Kha Em Uset’s first son was also Ra Meses.

Although he grew to an age where he could accept the office of High

Priest of Ptah from his father, he did not do so for reasons we will

examine. These offices, along with others due to him, passed to the

second son called Hori. Hori then became the important Vizier of the

North and later of Thebes.

However, details of Kha Em Uset’s first son, Ra Meses, still

exist. These include his estate, the name of his scribe (Hui) and some

correspondence conveyed by the captain of his barge.

An unnamed person who seems to be Ra Meses tried to obtain

land in Per Ramesses, the new capital in the delta, by altering Temple

records. The Chief Accountant of the Temple of Ptah in Memphis, Mose,

inscribed the story in his tomb.

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The cult of this great man regularly

made offerings to him at the tomb. There they read of the one hundred

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year legal challenge in which Mose prevailed triumphant. The story also

made its way into another demotic tale of the Third Intermediate Period

where Mose described his father’s life, an oblique view of his own life

and the expulsion of the followers of Set.

Mose described the challenge of a powerful royal figure who tried

to steal his mother’s inheritance. In the process, this person altered the

records of the Temple. He fled in disgrace after the discovery. It is quite

possible that the Chief Accountant’s one hundred year battle for the land

of his mother was actually Egypt’s recovery of its Nile delta territories

from the Semites who were growing ever more numerous. These Semitic

Levant Asiatics in the delta were seeking land at a time when the borders

of Egypt were already under considerable pressure from both Palestine

and Libya. An attempt by Ra Meses to achieve the Semite goal by

deception may have been the last straw.

Notwithstanding what might have been Ra Meses’ reason for

leaving Egypt unexpectedly, he appears to have returned to Egypt from

Syria shortly after the death of Pharaoh Merenptah (Mer En Ptah) in

about 1203BCE, when Merenptah’s half-brother Amenmesse usurped the

throne of Egypt. Three years later, in 1200BCE, Seti II deposed this

usurper and gained the throne as the son and rightful heir of Merenptah.

The deposing of Amenmesse occurred at the same time that the

followers of Set called on the successors of the Hyksos in Jerusalem for

help. This has led some scholars to suggest that Amenmesse is Messui or

Moses. However, there is a more compelling argument.

On his return from Syria, Ra Meses becomes Ra Meses Em Per

Ra. The title meant he was a Prince of the Royal Dynasty the House of

Ra and therefore one of the seventy grandchildren of Ramses II. He

seems to have been active in deposing Amenmesse. Ra Meses, our

candidate for Moses, became Kingmaker (Arsu) for the rest of the

dynasty.

Ra Meses also became Chancellor with the name Bai/Bay, or Si

Osire, which is the same as name as the son of Osiris or Osarsiph who led

the followers of Set to Avaris.

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In 1188BCE, Ra Meses placed Queen

Ta Usert on the throne and prepared a tomb for her although she

subsequently abandoned it in preference for internment with Pharaoh

Sethnakht.

Sethnakht became Pharaoh in about 1186BCE. He promptly

expelled Ra Meses and all his followers.

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As noted with the story of

Mose, Sethnakht’s twentieth dynasty always made a great point of Ra

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Meses’ expulsion from Avaris, calling his people the followers of Set.

This expulsion was the same event that Manetho and Josephus understood

as the Exodus. The fleeing Israelites took with them a belief in the

importance of the rising sun as the rising soul of the newborn king and

also the prayers of the sun from the Temple of the Aten at Karnak.

376

500CE, Stephen of Byzantine wrote of an Edomite-sect in Petra. They

worshiped the honoured the rays of sunlight at dawn by focussing the rays

onto a ritual meal with a solid bronze dish.

377

Even today, an orthodox

Jew in his tallith and phylactery will orient his prayers to the direction of

the rising sun rather than to Jerusalem.

Sethnakht then provided co-regency for his son Ramses III to

continue the new dynasty.

In 1177BCE Ramses III, son of Sethnakht, vigorously defended

his northeast border against the Keftiu or Sea Peoples.

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These were

refugee families from the collapse of Suppiluliuma II’s Hittite empire. At

the time of Ramses III’s conquest the Israelites do not appear to have

reached Palestine although the famous Israel Stela of Merenptah, dealing

with a similar victory over a Libyan refugee incursion, had already

mentioned Israel as being in Canaan.

The argument can be summed-up as follows. The Semitic Levant

Asiatics, who were later to become the Israelites, entered Egypt as

Hyksos. They integrated into the administration of Egypt as Viziers and

Governors. Ahmose did not expel them, in contrast to the militaristic

Hurrians. Over the following centuries, the Semite female line

intermarried with the eighteenth dynasty and many Semites rose to

prominence.

379

These included the Amorite Meri-Re, Tuthmose III’s

armor-bearer. His brother was the Priest User Min. Another was Arper-

el, a Grand Vizier in Akhenaten’s government who was both an Israelite

priest and a Memphis high priest of Aten.

380

As mentioned earlier in the

chapter, Yanhamu was a prominent Semite mentioned in the Amarna

letters.

To continue, at the death of Tutankhamun without heir, General

Horemheb preferred Egypt’s throne to pass to the Levant Asiatics in

Egypt rather than to the Hittites. This created the nineteenth dynasty of

Seti I who was the first post-Hyksos king to use the name of a Canaanite

god. His son, Ramses II, commemorated the four hundredth anniversary

of the nineteenth dynasty, commencing with the Hyksos Pharaoh Aa Pehti

Set, in a stele of 1240BCE.

109

The Biblical Moses was Ra Meses, a grandson of Ramses II.

After political intrigue, dealings with the Jerusalem Asiatics and a land

grab in the Delta, the new twentieth dynasty Pharaoh Sethnakht expelled

Moses and the followers of Set from Egypt. Sethnakht’s son, Ramses III,

continued his father’s vigilance against all peoples seeking to occupy the

Delta.

Placing Exodus in the reign of Sethnakht, about 1186BCE to

1184BCE, followed by 40 years in the wilderness as an itinerant tribe in

fear of Ramses III, coincides precisely with the violent third eruption of

the Icelandic volcano Hekla III in 1159BCE. While the forty years in the

wilderness and the Exodus are most likely a metaphor of Afro-Asiatic

religious rebirth, it is interesting to follow the literal interpretation for a

moment.

Hekla III erupted in 1628BCE and again in 1159BCE, during the

rule of Ramses III, causing major global events and climate changes.

381

The 1159BCE eruption virtually depopulated northwest Britain causing

many extraordinary phenomena recorded by the Chinese. These included

double suns, pale suns, dry mists and frosts in summer. All around the

world there was a momentous as the upheaval in civilizations. The

Myceneans of Greece collapsed, as did the Hittite of Anatolia, the

Egyptian New Kingdom, the civilization of late Bronze Age Israel and the

Shang Dynasty of China collapsed.

The effects would have included extreme, unseasonable changes

in Egypt and Palestine. The shallow sand bar of the Dead Sea and Bitter

Lakes, which then formed part of the Gulf of Suez, was dangerous when

the North East trade winds abated allowing water to surge in from

Yemen. Unexpected changes in the tide across the sandbar between the

Great and Bitter Lakes could well have been the inspiration for a story of

the parting and closing of the Red Sea.

Another theory gaining support is that these tides allowed the

Israelites to ford the Gulf of Aqaba, enroute to Saudi Arabia‘s Jabal al

Lawz, the mountain of Moses and real Mt Sinai. Explorers Bob Cornuke

and Larry Williams showed that a crossing could have been made from

the in the shallows of the Strait of Tiran, where the Gulf enters the Red

Sea.

382

The intrepid biblical explorer, Ron Wyatt, is certain that the

Israelites crossed half way along the Gulf of Aqaba, on a sandbar some

300 meters underwater. He says he discovered a pillar on the Saudi

Arabian shore carved with ancient Hebrew text, which stated that

Solomon set up the pillar to mark the location of the transit and Pharaoh’s

110

defeat. He says he showed the pillar to officials of the Saudi Arabian

Government, who removed it.

The Exodus and effects of Hekla III would have been closely

associated in the minds of the scribes who seem to have recorded some

elements the story of Exodus in about 966BCE. However, Exodus 15:

16-17 may be the only part of the story written in early times as it is has

close parallels in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Conversely, Exodus 13:28 to

15:22 appear neither in the Dead Sea Scrolls nor in Greek Corpus LXX

Septuagint of about the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus in 250BCE.

All this confusion is because the Jewish alphabet did not develop

until after 1000 BCE, no Jewish history was committed to writing before

the ninth century BCE and very little history existed before Mishnaic

Hebrew or Assyrian-Hebrew in 725 BCE.

383

Reliable Jewish history only

began sometime in the period between 650BCE, when the Babylonians

overthrew the Assyrians, and 539BCE when the Persians conquerored the

Babylonian empire and Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Israel.

During this hundred years of upheaval, the Jewish priests incorporated

many Babylonina myths into the texts. Ezekiel rewrote Exodus about the

time Josiah (640 to 609BCE) sacked the Edomite shrine of Bethel

because the Edomites had sided with the Babylonians against Judah.

Ezekiel excised the Calebite Book of Jasher because it showed Edom as

the original religion, still practiced on high places instead of in

Jerusalem’s Temple.

384

The phenomena of the desert sojourn in Exodus 14:19-21 are very

much under suspicion as late insertions because these contrived verses

encode the seventy-two-letter name of God:

WHW YLY SYT OLM MHSh LLH AKH KHTh HZY ALK LAW

HHO YZL MBH HRY HQM LAW KLY LWW PhHL NLK YYY MLH ChHW

NThH HAA YRTh ShAH RYY AWM LKB WShR YChW LHCh KWQ MND

ANY HOS RHO YYZ HHH MYK WWL YLH SAL ORY OShL MYH WHW

DNY HChSh OMM NNA NYTh MBH PhWY NMM YYL HRCh MTzR WMB

YHH ONW MChY DMB MNQ AYO ChBW RAH YBM HYY MWM

Both the Zohar and Rashi’s twelfth century CE Bachir discuss

this encoding of the name. The relevant verses and their translations are:

WYSO MLAK HALHYM HHLK LPhNY MChNH YShRAL WYLK

MAChRYHM WYSO OMWD HONN MPhNYHM WYOMD MAChRYHM:

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel,

removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from

before their face, and stood behind them.

111

WYBA BYN MChNH MTzRYM WBYN MChNH YShRAL WYHY

HONN WHChShK WYAR ATh HLYLH WLA QRB ZH AL ZH KL HLYLH

And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of

Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night

to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

WYT MShH ATh YDW OL HYM WYWLK YHWH ATh HYM

BRWCh QDYM OZH KL HLYLH WYShM ATh HYM LChRBH WYBQOW

HMYM

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord

caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made

the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

Each of these three verses in Hebrew contains exactly seventy-

two letters. The seventy-two triplets of the great Name derive from one

letter taken from each verse. The Bachir outlines the process of

constructing the Name. The letters of the first verse apply in direct order,

those of the second in reverse order, and those of the third verse in direct

order. The first triplet is W (Vav) H (He) W (Vav).

Another mass movement of Semitic Levant Asiatics occurred in

752BCE. Josephus explains that Lysimachos sets his estimate of the

Israelites leaving Egypt at 752BCE in the time of Bokchoris ... Apion

within the time of the seventh Olympiad, to be more precise in its first

year.

385

This was the period when the Nubian Kushites from Napata

brought the whole of Egypt under their control following its internal

political collapse. At this time, there was a refugee exodus from the

Delta.

The defeat of the Semitic Levant Asiatic aspirations caused by the

twentieth dynasty and the expulsion of Ra Meses (Moses) was a

temporary setback. However, it was not necessarily decisive because the

Pharaonic dynasties of Egypt had already integrated the Semitic Levant

Asiatic bloodline. In stark contrast, the division of the kingdom about

1075BCE and its consequent loss by the twenty-first dynasty in 945BCE

was fatal to Semitic Levant Asiatic aspirations. The enormity of the

Semites’ loss affected the stability of their homeland until 1948CE when

the freedom fighters under David Ben Gurion gained control of modern

Israel.

Nevertheless, the Jewish presence in the Delta remained strong

until at least 250CE when Hippolytus reported the presence of Essenes in

Alexandria.

112

The next chapter provides the necessary background to the name

of God. We then turn to developments in the Commagene, particularly at

Harran where Abraham lived with his father Terah for many years.

113

Chapter 7 The Name of God, the Merkabah and

Liberality

Isis tricked Ra into revealing his name and this led to his

downfall. However, Amun was not to be deceived. The post-Hyksos

Egyptian deity Amun had learned invincibility from the god of the Indo-

Hittites. His real name remained completely hidden because the Priests

never defined it in the first place:

386

Your first form by which you have begun was Amun - namely, he

who hides his name from the gods … Amun is one! (He) who hides himself

from the gods … whose nature is unknown…His nature is not recorded

(or displayed) in sacred scriptures; he cannot be described and taught.

He is too mysterious for his power to be laid bare; he is too great even to

be asked about, too immense to be perceived. One would fall dead

suddenly, in fear, if one were to pronounce the god's mysterious name,

unknown to everyone. Not even a god can call him by his name, the vital

one, because his name is secret.

Three are all the gods, Amun, Ra and Ptah. Aside form these there

is none. He who hides his name behind the word "Amun" is Ra at his

head, Ptah at his body. His cities are eternal: Thebes, Heliopolis and

Memphis - forever.

The very best way of hiding Amun's true name was never to

define it in the first place. The Israelite’s Yahweh could not overcome

him; Yahweh could only join him in absolute ineffability. The more

Yahweh developed, the more he became a transcendent god like Amun

rather than a personal god. In recognition of his affinity and equality with

Amun, Yahweh became increasingly unknowable. Eventually, his priests

knew him by only the most fundamental of all existential statements:

Ehiyeh Asher Ehiyeh (

HYHA RShA HYHA), which means I am that I

am.

387

Along with Yahweh's change in character, his secret names of

Q're and Iahu became only partial labels.

Yahweh subsumed or incorporated in himself the other gods that

he defeated, and went on to embody the totality of Israelite' history in his

name. He became the terebinth-god or oak-god Bel, Cronos the barley-

god, Tammuz the harvest-god, Jupiter and Marduk.

388

In Jerusalem,

Yahweh was the scarlet oak-god El. At Mount Tabor, he became

Dionysus, the Daanan white-bull god.

389

He was Baal-Zephon, Baal-

Zubul, Lord of the North or Lord of the Mansions, and Atabyrius.

390

114

Atabyrius, he was the god brought out of Egypt by the Israelites and

worshipped as a golden calf. He was the son of the Goddess Io, Hathor

and Isis.

391

In a magical Egyptian-Jewish papyri Yahweh is Zeus,

Thunderer, King Adonai, and Lord Iaooue.

392

Yahweh was Nabu the

Babylonian god of Wisdom represented by the almond tree stem of the

seven-branched Menorah.

393

Each branch represented a planetary power

that symbolized one of the interests of the Mother Goddess: Sun (Helios)

for illumination; the Moon (Selene) for enchantment; Mars (Ares) for

growth; Mercury (Hermes or Apollo) for wisdom; Jupiter (Zeus) for law;

Venus (Aphrodite) for love and Saturn (Cronus) for peace.

394

The final conception of Yahweh as Ineffable derives from the

Indo-Hittite cosmic sky-philosophy. Yahweh, like Amun, is perfect. His

unknowable names are so all encompassing that they are unspeakable. He

contains everything including contradiction.

Contradiction is at the very core of secret knowledge. The

paradox of a bad, poor or even evil side to God is not a fault in God but

rather our lack of clear or perfect comprehension. The knowledge God

has of himself is unambiguous. All ancient polytheistic religions

eventually developed the same understanding that every junior god is

simply a different manifestation of the great hidden God. The Semitic

tribes knew the great God as the Moon God. In Egypt he was called

Atum or Amun and in Persia, Ahura Mazda.

395

The Moon God Sin was the Semitic form of the Sumerian Enzu

meaning Lord of Wisdom. The Luna cycle gave Enzu a special position

based on order and immortality. He was seen as the father of both the

Sun Shamash and Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. Enzu was the central

astral deity, father of the great gods and Lord of Heaven found in every

Semitic land.

396

This triangular relationship between Sin, Shamash and Inanna

can be rotated one hundred and twenty degrees clockwise to produce a

new internally consistent relationship based on the Indo-Hittite primacy

of the Sun god Shamash. If Yahweh, as the furnace or sun god Q're,

substitutes for Shamash, the Moon God Sin and Queen of Heaven Inanna

are the two subordinate deities to Yahweh.

The Israelites indeed recognized these two subordinate deities as

Yahweh's two wives Ashima Baetyl and Anatha Baetyl.

397

They

represented the Moon and Wisdom respectively.

398

The sex change of Sin

to Ashima is a fundamental subject of esoteric religion. Anatha was

equivalent to Ishtar, the Indo-Hittite Lion or Cat goddess of love and war.

115

She was the Queen of Heaven and Goddess of Plenty.

399

Together these

three represent the physical sun, the moon that lights the intellectual

darkness with wisdom and the light of love.

Strabo, who lived from 63BCE to 19CE, describes a similar

Persian triad of Mithras, Selené and Aphrodite. The triad exists in the one

true god Zeus:

Now the Persians do not erect statues or altars, but offer sacrifice

on a high place, regarding the heavens as Zeus; and they also worship

Helius [the sun], whom they call Mithras, and Selené [the Moon] and

Aphrodite, and fire and earth and winds and water.

The triangular group, representing a single deity, is also

analogous to the ancient Vedic One True Existence, Paramathika or

Brahm.

400

This single principle contains the three characteristics of

creativity being Power, Wisdom and Love. Love, as Aleph, pronounced

Ah, is the emanation of the ubiquitous heart, the first emanation or

expression. Aleph, written A’a, is the Hurrian rendition of the god Enki

and Ea.

401

The One True Existence is the Word or Divine Thought that is

BAL in each of Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Greek.

402

The sacred

Name of BAL has the cabbalistic cipher of 33 (

B=two, A=one, L=30), as

does the sacred word AUM.

403

Chapter 17 will investigate Aleph and the

AA expression.

In the Hebrew alphabet Aleph is the head of the three Mother

consonants, Beth of the seven Double consonants and Lamed of the

twelve common consonants. With sacred 3:7:12 proportions adding to

twenty two, the divine Name covers the whole of the Alphabet and thus is

inclusive of the Logos or Word of God. Thus, the twenty-two consonant

alphabet is itself a name of God and each consonant is a visible part of the

radiance of God.

The Logos or radiance of God is the dawn rays of sunlight

focused through a rose window, rock crystal lens, a water filled sphere or

concave mirror onto the altar.

404

In this way, at Petra, the ancient Israelites

focused the suns rays to light the sacrificial fire on the altar.

405

Nowadays

in Olympia, every four years, a woman dressed as a high priestess lights

the Olympic flame at the Temple of Hera altar. The priestess calls first on

the Gods of Olympus to witness her act, offers a prayer and hymn to

Apollo and uses a parabolic mirror to focus the sun's rays and ignite the

flame. She then presents the first flames to the skies.

The Druidic Bards used three rays of light /|\ to symbolise the

hidden vowels

OIU or OIV.

406

The three rays of light /|\ also symbolized

116

the goddess and muse Ave or Awen, who springs from sunlight in the

same way as do other goddess of death and love Aphrodite, Pallas

Athena, Venus, Ishtar, Isis and Sophia.

However, there are seven sacred vowels all together. The birth

vowel AA, written as a long O (Õ), stands for Omega or the birth of

birth.

407

The death vowel II is written Y or as the Royal consonant J. The

seven vowels, arranged as

ÕAOUEIY, represent the Divine wisdom or

invisible radiance of the Word of God.

408

These vowels are the female

Spirit of God. Even before the creation of the world, she moved over the

surface of the water. The combined effect of the birth of birth vowel and

the vowel of Royalty means the female Spirit of God that moved over the

deep is a Virgin with Child.

409

Plutarch said of the Mithriac mysteries: God is a male and female

intelligence, being both life and light he brought forth another

intelligence, the creator of the world.

410

Orpheus, the mythical Thracian

musician and poet who founded the ancient mysteries, sang of the

hermaphrodite god Jove. While Jove is a male, Jove is also a virgin

female. The Brahmins in the Sama Veda echo this with the will to create

existed with the Deity as his bride.

It was only after the return from the Exile in Babylon that

Yahweh ultimately gave up his triple character. Even then, it continued

into Christianity as esoteric wisdom of the vowels of his name.

Christianity characterizes Ashima, who can be either male or

female, as Jesus the Son. Anatha became both the Virgin Mary and Mary

Magdalene.

St Bernard referred to the Virgin Mary by Anatha's title of Queen

of Heaven and held that the great Lady Cathedrals of Europe embodied

Mary Magdalene. The Oath that the Knights Templar swore to St

Bernard required the Obedience of Bethany - the castle of Mary and

Martha (the Magdalene).

411

According to the preceptor Radulphus de

Gisisco, the Knights Templar sought and received the forgiveness

accorded to Mary Magdalene: Et Dieu qui pardona la Maria Magdalene

ses péchiez, les vos pardoient meaning the forgiveness of God who

pardoned the sin of Mary Magdalene.

412

Garcerandus de Teus gave the form of this unorthodox absolution

as I pray God that He may pardon our sins, as He pardoned St Mary

Magdalene and the thief on the cross. The concept of thief on the cross is

also quite controversial because Gnostics regard this person, the thief, as

Jesus.

413

The Johannites believe Jesus was a thief because he stole the

117

Ineffiable Name of God from the holy of Holies, as described in the

Toledot Yeshu. The original word for thief in Greek is lestai, which

Josephus uses for zealot-bandits.

414

The rose logic of embracing resolves the Magdalene's cardinal sin

and her apparent prominence over the Virgin Mary. It equates the two.

Chapter 17 examines the rose logic of embracing further.

Let us return to Yahweh. The reason Yahweh dropped his triple

character during the Exile was that in Babylon the image of Yahweh

became highly influenced by Zoroastrianism. There, like Ahura Mazda,

Yahweh became a holy being of Light. The priestly blessing of Aaron

spelled his name:

415

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall

bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto

thee:

The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will

bless them.

The first three verses of Priestly Blessing when written in Hebrew

consist of carefully prepared sequences with three, five and seven words

respectively. The first three verses also have fifteen, twenty and twenty-

five letters respectively:

KRMShYW HWHY KKRBY

KNChYW KYLA WYNP HWHY RAY

MWLSh KL MShYW KYLA WYNP HWHY AShY

MKRBA YNAW LARShY YNB-LO YMSh-Th WMShW

The last verse explains that this formula spells out Yahweh's new

code name, the Holy Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which the Jews call the

Shem Hamphoresh.

416

Chapter 3 showed that the consonants are Life,

Sovereignty and the Glory or Brightness (

JH), Peace (W) and Light (H).

The dimensions are Life on the horizontal and Wisdom on the vertical.

The two theoretical dimensions, Light and Life, have a deep

Biblical heritage. The Bible describes Moses' Midianite brothers-in-law

as Nahath, Zerah, Shammah and Mizzah.

417

These names symbolize

rising above, descending below, before and behind. Together they make

the sign of the cross, which is the same sign the priests of Aaron make

118

with their hand while giving their blessing. It is the start of the secrets of

blessing, the great Merkabah.

In an ancient method of sacrificial killing, the priests placed the

sacrificial king in a Birchwood box and suspended it between two tall

poles (Asherah poles).

418

Allowed three loaves, one for each aspect of the

deity or the Triple Goddess, he remained suspended at God’s mercy,

between heaven and earth, until he decayed and his remains blew away.

An esteemed Jewish scholar and Masonic Librarian once

congratulated me on my work. Old and frail, he has now passed-on. But

he generously gave me four great gifts that have since grown in value.

Second only to his friendship, was his gift of the major Arcanum of the

Merkabah. Showing me a piece of paper, which he had already cut into

the form of a cross, he silently formed a hollow, perfect cube. This is the

cubic throne, which is the vehicle in which one ascends toward the Light.

It is the cube or unfolded sacrificial cross of the sacred marriage. A

Druze candidate wears a blood sprinkled cube at his initiation ceremony,

symbolizing that the cube unfolded is the bloody instrument of perfection.

Similarly, a Masonic Knights Templar receives a cube.

419

The rose on the

cross of the Rose Croix is the emblem of the sacrificial king. In alchemy,

the new king emerges from the stone. The symbol is one of sacrifice and

equally applies to both the divine triad and the Triple Goddess. Often

priests symbolized the divine triad or the Triple Goddess by a cube

sculpted into a triple-head. For example, a triple headed ram represents

the perfection of the Egyptian God Amun.

After the death of the old king, the officials led the new king to

his coronation with a silk ribbon around his neck to remind the candidate

of his brief reign with divine power. This is similar to the Scottish Rite’s

33º degree ceremony.

420

In ancient times, the silk ribbon was a silken

strangling cord, which symbolized the sacred obligation to kill the king

after a nominated period, or when his vitality waned, so that the divine

power may find a more youthful and vigorous incarnation.

421

The

traditional period of the king’s rule was forty years. If he exceeded this

time by a single day, his subjects and attendants killed him, saying His

reasoning is already dimmed, and his insight confused.

Pythagorean numbers six and seven represent Light and Life,

respectively. The six by seven matrix has forty-two boxes. These

correspond to Yahweh's forty-two names, one for each combination of

Light and Life.

422

Perhaps this is how Douglas Adams, author of The

119

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, found forty-two was the answer to life,

the universe and everything.

A second horizontal crossbar represents the third dimension of

Peace. However, it has a bloody heritage because the second crossbar is

the arms of the fastened king.

423

Another way of showing this second

crossbar is in three dimensions as a St Andrew’s cross or Chi-Rho cross

of Emperor Constantine.

The Merkabah is also the meaning of the pillars at the entrance to

King Solomon's Temple. The spirally fluted pillar of Truth called Boaz,

Bolaz or Abolloneus ascends and is the green pillar of growth.

424

represents the strength of man’s Spirit. The name Boaz derives from the

metathesis (letter jumbling) of the Hebrew Zahab (

ZHB) standing for

gold, and for Mercy and Judgment.

425

It means, as we shall see below,

that there can be no righteous Judgment without Mercy.

426

Some associate Boaz with antimony instead of gold, because

Boaz was a Bethlehem landlord and the saturine old man Antimon, is the

gatekeep of the great mystery. However, it is the vertically fluted pillar

called Jachin that represents the daughter of Mesahab (

MI-ZHB),

antimony, who is the companion of Zahab (gold).

427

Jachin is the sere

pillar of Justice severity, sorrow and decay that descends.

These two bronze pillars each measured between thirty-four and

thirty-five feet and had a diameter of six feet at the base. The foundry

cast the hollow pillars with a uniform wall thickness of about three

inches. A sort of chain ornamentation covered the lower part of the

capitals, with representations of pomegranates in two rows of two

hundred. At the very top was a lily-work motive, an imitation of the

Egyptian lotus blossom.

Queen Hatshepsut built a red quartzite sanctuary in the Temple of

Amun in Karnak about 1470BCE.

428

She erected two magnificent

obelisks amid Pylons III to VI. These formed the entry to the chamber for

the sacred barque and were the first cult focus in the temple. Two

obelisks, together with four flagpoles, formed a classical temple front.

Tuthmose III dismantled Queen Hatshepsut’s red quartzite

sanctuary and the blocks subsequently became foundations for expansion

of the temple of Karnak. Archeologists recovered three hundred of the

blocks, which now form the famous Chapelle Rouge. One red quartzite

relief shows Queen Hatshepsut dedicating two great pillars to the god

Amun. The inscription says the Egyptians covered the pillars with white

gold and so high that they pierced the skies.

429

120

Canaanite Ugaritic texts from the fourteenth century BCE call the

two pillars cutter-twins. They are the Asherah poles called Shacharu and

Shalim, meaning integration and completion respectively.

430

These two

pillars support the deathly net of Asherah, the most ancient of all mother

goddesses.

In De dea Syria, Lucian described the two large phalli at the door

of Astarte’s temple in Heirapolis.

431

These pillars were thirty fathoms

high and hollow. Each year, a sacred king climbed inside and worked his

way to the summit as a human sperm. There he conversed with the Gods

to ensure fertility of the land. This means the priests killed him and

ejaculated his blood through the phallus.

This pillar later became the Rosicrucian tower of Mysteries and

mason’s lodge room. The Degree of Heredom of Kilwinning, a prelude to

Knighthood of the Rosy Cross, led to the building of many humble follies

euphemistically called hunting towers. An excellent example of the tower

is Lord Anson’s Tower of the Winds at Shugborough Hall, with its

delightful baby-blue and gold ceiling based on Nero’s Golden House in

Rome. Another notable tower is Dane Holger Rosenkranz’ Pirkentavl

Tower in Denmark’s Rosenholm Castle, which dates from about 1600.

The tower or Heredom had the same esoteric role as God’s Mountain, the

place of testing, as did the Tholos at Delphi. The Rosicrucians briefly

described it in the Chymical Wedding by Christian Rosenkreutz, Knight

of the Golden Stone, 1459.

432

The Danes know the tower as the first

University of Jutland. It was an important library of Danish national

treasures with an alchemical laboratory in the basement. The Rosenkranz

family still tells of how Holger the Learned Rosenkranz and

Gyldenstierne from Møllerup (the neighbouring estate) met Shakespeare

in an English inn. They told Shakespeare that ghosts haunted

Gyldenstierne's guest room at Rosenholm. Shakespeare probably saw

there a copy of Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum (The Feats of the

Danes), dated about 1100 CE, and the Odyssey in which Ulysses’ son

Telemachus feigns a dullard and then like Horus killed Set, Telemachus

killed his uncle to prevent his mother marrying a second time.

433

Interestingly, the root Telemach contains Hamlet’s name, reversed.

Shakespeare decided to relocate his play from Greece to Denmark.

Macrobius described how the two pillars represent the portal od

the sun, Capricorn and Cancer, with the Milky Way between them.

434

One is the portal of men and the other the portal of the gods. It was

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believed that souls passed through these portals when coming in light

beams from the sky to the earth and returning from the earth to heaven.

Another two columns, those of Osiris and Isis at Nysa in Arabia,

were famous in antiquity. Diodorus Siculus recorded in 45BCE that the

left column recorded Osiris' strength:

435

I am Osiris the king, who led my armies into all parts of the

world, to the most thickly inhabited countries of India, the North, the

Danube, and the Ocean. I am the eldest son of Saturn; I was born of a

brilliant and magnificent egg, and my substance is of the same nature as

that which composes light. There is no place in the Universe where I

have not appeared, to bestow my benefits and make my discoveries…

The inscription on the right column showed that Isis represented

establishment:

436

I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by Mercury. No

one can destroy the laws, which I have established. I am the eldest

daughter of Saturn, most ancient of Gods. I am the wife and sister of

Osiris the king. I first made known to mortals the use of wheat. I am the

mother of Horus the king. In my honour was the city of Bubastis built.

Rejoice, O Egypt, rejoice, land that gave me birth.

B and I, the first initials of Boaz and Jachin, are also the first and

last letters of the ancient Goidelic, Bronze Age Ogham alphabet, and

symbolically stand for inception and death.

437

Together the two pillars B and I represent the stability of the

universe and Gods One Body.

438

Their consummation with the keystone

of a perfect individual, the lintel or arch of Peace, Equilibrium and Joy, is

visible only to the initiated.

439

It is the royal or kingly secret. The

Knights Templar represented this arch by the Pillar of Beauty, nicknamed

the Apprentice Pillar, featured in Rosslyn Chapel.

The Zohar’s alchemical formula says that the pillars of gold and

antimony are to be firmly con-tempered and intertwined together. The

consummation is Justice (Tzedeq) herself coupled with Judgment

(Meshephat):

440

Come and see! When Tzedeq, Justice, is mitigated by that

Meshephat, Judgment, then it is called TzDQH, Tsedeqah,

Liberality.

This same Liberality is the abode of Gods throne, the Merkabah:

441

And sometimes they call the same. MLKI TzDQ MLK SHLM,

Meleki Tsedeq Melek Shalem, meaning Melchizedek, King of

Salem.

122

Liberality is fundamental to the highest degrees of Freemasonry.

General Pike echoed it in the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite:

442

The Royal Secret, of which you are a Prince, if you are a true

Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable, and Philosophy is, for you,

radiant with divine beauty, is that which the Zohar (Kabbalah) terms The

Mystery of the Balance. It is the secret of the Universal Equilibrium …

Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness in the

World, which assures us that all is the work of Infinite Wisdom and of an

infinite Love…

The thirty-two degrees also corresponds to the thirty-two paths of

wisdom in the Kabbalah. The correspondence that God’s Name, Elohim,

occurs thirty-two times in the first Chapter of Genesis intrigues

Gematrists. In the Kabbalah, these paths bring Binah or Understanding

from the heart. In the Sepher Yetzirah, the paths relate to Hochmah or

Wisdom.

We have an able demonstration of the Zohar’s expression of

Liberality in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1596). Portia, the white

maiden of Mercury discovered in lead, impersonates the civil doctor of

law, Balthasar, to argue the famous message of Mercy in Judgment to

Shylock the Jew:

443

Balthasar: The quality of mercy is not strain'd…

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much

To mitigate the justice of thy plea.

Greed drives Shylock the Jew to ignore Liberality. He therefore

loses his legal case. This play is not really about Christian-Jewish

relationships. While Jewish Rabbis would not be in wholehearted

agreement with Shylock’s ignominious fate, they would agree that his

intransigence justified the forfeit of his right to repayment. It is from the

Rabbis’ appreciation of Liberality that they earn their appellation of

Humanists.

The same Portia then lays intertwined with her alter ego, the civil

doctor of law, Balthasar. She is the severity of Justice and he, as we have

123

seen, is Mercy in Judgment. Thus merged we have the manna, the

ultimate consummation of Liberality from Wisdom:

444

Portia: I will become as liberal as you;

I'll have that doctor for my bedfellow…

…I had it of him: pardon me, Bassanio;

For, by this ring, the doctor lay with me.

Bassanio: Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow:

When I am absent, then lie with my wife.

Lorenzo: Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way

Of starved people.

The lines above are perhaps the most important philosophical

statement in all Shakespeare’s works. Portia is just Pallas Athena in

another guise. In Greek myth, Athene always displayed great mercy in a

criminal trial at the Areiopagus.

445

When the judges’ votes were equal,

she always cast her vote to liberate the accused.

In ancient Vedic terms, the two pillars B and I representing Mercy

in Judgment and Justice, are the first Principle of Creation and Truth

called Brahmâ and the third Principle of Transformation, Destruction and

Regeneration called Shiva. The consummate Pillar of Beauty that

represents Liberality is Vishnu, the second Principle of All Pervading

Light.

The Scottish Rite sees the ultimate expression of Liberality in

Christ’s unselfish dying words that seek Mercy in the judgment of his

enemies Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani meaning my God, my God, why hast

thou forsaken me, have pity on and forgive my enemies.

446

The play Initiation of Plato also explains the veiled nature of the

Wisdom of Liberality. Plato argues that Science can remove the veil of

Isis. The Priest or Patriarch counters it cannot:

447

First Patriarch: Approach without fear. Which is the most beautiful and

noble study to which man can devote himself in passing through

the world?

Plato: That which has for its object the knowledge of what he is, whence

he comes, and whither he goes; that which leads to a search for

the laws of nature within and without him.

First Patriarch: Isis and Osiris, the moon and the sun, both symbolize

nature; when they represent it by Isis a veil covers her. What is its

sense?

124

Plato: That of the inscription upon her statue in the Temple of Sais: ‘I am

all that has been, all which is, all that which will be, and no mortal

man has yet raised the veil which covers me.’

Plato: I think that is false.

First Patriarch: False! And how doth thy pride look upon this?

Plato: At each absolute truth; at each law of nature that he discovers,

doth not man raise this veil?

First Patriarch: No, the difficulty is not removed! Thou canst [i.e. can]

calculate the weight of the stars, their velocity, their distance, and

the paths which they overrun; thou canst investigate the laws of

light and electricity; and make the thunderbolt thy auxiliary; plane

down or pierce the mountain, cruise the abyss. Thou canst

transform the earth and loose the waves, but the great Unknown,

T.S.A.O.T.U. [i.e. God] is nonetheless incomprehensible, and

beyond the laws of nature!…

Third Patriarch: What is Morality?

Plato: It is the rule of right, and the duties which the conscience imposes,

and which man cannot violate without shame and disgrace.

Third Patriarch: And Justice?

Plato: It is the practical application of the law of rendering to all that

which is his due.

The Archbishop of Canterbury twice underlined the importance

of Mercy in judgment at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June

1953.

448

In her Coronation Oath, the Queen responded to the Archbishop

of Canterbury:

Archbishop: Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in

Mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?

Queen Elizabeth: I Will

Later in the Ceremony, the Queen sat clothed in the Pall of Cloth

of Gold called the Lord’s robe of righteousness with the armills or

garments of salvation.

The Archbishop invested her with the Orb, which he only delivers

to kings or queens actually reigning, and never to kings and queens

consort. The Orb represents the supreme political power of independent

sovereignty. It symbolizes the world in the form of the primeval mound

of Egypt. It also represents the star of redemption, which is the metal

antimony that redeems gold, and the Orb surmounted by a cross is the

chemical symbol for antimony. The Archbishop said:

125

Archbishop: Receive this Orb, set under the cross, and remember

that the whole world is subject to the Power and

Empire of Christ our Redeemer.

The Archbishop then delivered two sceptres into the Queen’s

hands, as in depicted in the enthronement of Pharaohs in Egypt. Into the

Queen’s right hand, the Archbishop placed the Sceptre with the Cross

saying:

Archbishop: Receive the Royal Sceptre, the ensign of kingly

power and justice.

This is the Royal Scepter of gold, representing kingly power,

complemented by the Scepter with the Dove with an Orb symbolizing the

forgiveness and redemption role of antimony. Then, into the Queen’s left

hand, he placed the Sceptre with the Dove saying:

Archbishop: Receive the rod of equity and mercy. Be so merciful

that you be not too remiss; so execute justice that you

forget not mercy ….

The British Crown Jewels date from Charles II and so are

relatively modern. Sadly, the Royal Sceptre lacks a magnificient rock

crystal orb, which is the ancient emblem of divine kingship because it

represents the priestly ability to compass the sun.

449

The orb in the Royal

Sceptre is often referred to as the Star of Jacob because in the prophecy of

Balaam, the Sceptre represents the Messiah:

There shal come a Star out of Jacob, and a Club or Sceptre

(Shaivet) shall rise out of Israel.

While the English Crown Jewels lack a rock crystalorb, the

Honours of Scotland include such an orb in the Royal Sceptre of King

James IV. Either Pope Innocent VII in 1491 or Pope Alexander VI in

1494 presented the Royal Sceptre to hum along with a Golden Rose.

After presentation of the Sceptres, a pivotal moment, the

Archbishop then crowned the Queen saying:

Archbishop: … God crown you with a crown of glory and

righteousness, that having a right faith and manifold

fruit of good works, you may obtain the crown of an

everlasting kingdom by the gift of Him Whose

kingdom endureth for ever. Amen.

It is worth also noting here that Mercy in Judgment is the reason

that a freemasons' lodge closes only when every Brother has received his

due.

126

With an understanding of the mysteries of Liberality, kingly

Righteousness, the name of God and the importance of the Moon God, we

can now look more confidently at the comings and goings of warriors and

philosophers in the Harran region of the Commagene.

127

Chapter 8 Sabians of Harran and Yemen

The Byzantine monk Eutychus, who lived from 387CE to 454CE,

wrote:

At the time of Abraham there reigned Shabib (Sheba), the wife of

Sinn, priestess of the mountain, who built Nisib and Edessa (Ur)

and surrounded them with walls. She founded also the sanctuary

of Harran, and made on idol of gold, called Sinn.

The earliest Biblical association with the Commagene is with

Noah's Ark landing in the mountains of Ararat, rather than on Mount

Ararat itself. Ararat is really the Akkadian word for the homeland of the

Urartu people. This feared Indo-Iranian civilization at Tushpa on Lake

Van in the Commagene existed from 1275BCE to 590BCE.

450

Josephus, the Koran, Kurdish Jews, Yezidis and Mandaean

Sabians all hold that the true resting-place of the Ark was actually on

Mount Judi, not Mount Ararat.

451

Mount Judi is probably the 2114-meter

high peak, Cudi Da

i, near Sirnak, one hundred and four kilometers south

of Lake Van and one hundred and sixty kilometers west of Harran.

Lake Van is the central feature of the Commagene. Tradition

holds that Noah’s son, Shem, dwelt on the west bank of this lake where a

mountain now bears his name.

452

Biblical scholars often identify Shem

with Melchizedek.

453

In myth, all Semitic speaking peoples descend from

him.

454

Shem’s son Tarban, his thirty brothers, fifteen sisters and their

husbands are reputed to have settled in the same area. Another of Noah’s

three sons, Japheth, had a descendant called Hayk.

455

This giant-man

reputedly helped build the Tower of Babel. Folklore suggests that he

became the patriarch of the Armenians in this province on the northwest

shore of Lake Van.

Genesis records that Abraham sojourned in Harran on his journey

from Ur of the Chaldees, which is Urfa or Edessa, to Canaan.

456

Rebecca

drew water for Abraham’s servant in Harran to show that she was the

chosen wife for Isaac.

457

Isaac’s son Jacob married in Harran. He spent

fourteen years there, seven for each wife.

458

Jacob was reborn in Harran

as Isra-El, meaning struggles with god, as described in Chapter 5. In

Ancient Egyptian the name Isra-El stands for the visible, manifest face or

soul of the Light of God.

459

128

The names Abi-ram (Abraham), Yasmah-El (Ishmael), Yaqob

(Jacob) and El-Laban (Laban) all appear at Mari near Harran, on the

River Euphrates. The town of Abraham's brother Nahor also appears as

Nakkur and Assyrian texts mention a town named after Abraham’s father

Terah, together with names derived from the tribes of Gad and Dan.

460

The city of Mari controlled the southern trade route from

Mesopotamia. Harran had equal strategic importance. It controlled the

northern route from Mesopotamia to western Asia. Abraham's family was

prominent in both these gateway cities so Abraham would undoubtedly

have been an important person. A Chaldean Priest called Berossus

prepared a history of the mythology of Babylonia in 280BCE. He says of

Abraham:

461

After the deluge, in the tenth generation, was a certain man among

the Chaldeans renowned for justice and great exploits, and for skill

in the celestial sciences.

Josephus agrees with this conclusion about Abraham. He tells us

that Abraham ruled Damascus where he was a foreigner having come

from the land above Babylon with an army.

462

We know little about

Abraham's reasons for swiftly moving to Kadesh-Barnea in the Negev

and the journey to Egypt.

463

He has military allies in the area and a

mobile corps of three hundred and eighteen fighting men under his

command.

464

Abraham’s Warriors of Jah (Yuddha or Yudh) mirror Brahm’s

legendary fighters, the Ayodhya.

465

Ayodhya are Yehudiya or Judea. In

Sanskrit, this means The Unconquerable. They remained aloof from the

Amalekites and other non-believers in the ancient Indian philosophy of

Yah, also called the Cult of the Material Universe.

It appears that Abraham's military movements relate to the

Hyksos invasion of Egypt:

466

Abraham and his family came from Ur in Sumer to Hebron in

Canaan, probably about 1850BCE and there are good reasons

for placing Joseph's migration to Egypt during the Hyksos period.

The presence of Abraham's half-sister and wife, Sarai, amongst

the Hittites who occupied Hebron confirms the Hittites were allies. The

Hittite respect for Abraham is apparent from the Biblical passage that

mentions the well-known field of Abraham:

467

And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these

were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-

arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham

129

came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham

stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth,

saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a

possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead

out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham,

saying unto him, Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince

among us: in the choice of our sepulchers bury thy dead; none of

us shall withhold from thee his sepulcher, but that thou mayest

bury thy dead. And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the

people of the land, even to the children of Heth … And after this,

Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of

Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of

Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made

sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying-place by the

sons of Heth.

Abraham's importance is also evident in early Aramaic

documents and widespread ancestor worship of Abraham among Semitic

peoples. This extended from Mari to Canaan and even to the Ka’aba, the

central shrine of Islam in Mecca.

468

In the tenth century CE, the Arab writer Al-Kindi agreed that

Abraham lived in Harran for four-score years and ten, worshiping the

moon deity. Certainly several of the names in Abraham’s family are

derived from the worship of the Moon God and seem to confirm this:

Abraham’s father Terah, Laban, Sarai and Milcah.

469

Abraham is a synonym for Ab-ram and Ab-Sin the Moon God.

This association was important because Abraham, like Sin, represents

water and therefore fertility.

470

He was the giver of time and the principal

ambassador of the unseen god whom the Mesopotamians called Marilaha

meaning lord of all or Be’elshamin meaning lord of heavens.

Kenneth Mackenzie's compendium of freemasonry, or rather

irregular freemasonry, the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia notes how the

association of Abraham and Light was widely accepted by Freemasons in

the early 1900's:

471

There is probably some truth in the statement that Abraham was

acquainted with the doctrine of Aur, or Light, as he is actually

described as coming from Ur, of the Chaldees, by which it is

probably meant, that he came from one of the ancient Chaldean

Colleges in which this mystical doctrine was taught.

130

The Hebrew word Ur means Light, fortress or castle.

472

All

Hebrew names commencing with Ur generally have some interpretation

relative to light. Uriel means fire of God, Urija the flame of Yahweh and

the Uriah the light of Yahweh.

The widespread honour accorded Abraham leaves us with an

impressive portrait of the man. In contrast, the Bible humbly paints him

as an unassuming herder and reluctant Patriarch. It is perhaps most

appropriate to regard Abraham as an archetype of the emergent proto-

Israelite political identity.

Harran became the most successful centre of worship for the

planetary gods from at least the time of Abraham until the Mongol

Genghis Khan destroyed its last temple in 1260CE. The priests of Harran

blended planet-worship with practical alchemy and with the Greek

philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato over a period of at least three

thousand years. Their gods included Hermes and the Good god

Agathodaimon. Hermes is also the Muslim Prophet Seth, the third son of

Adam. Agathodaimon is the prophet Idris or Enoch, and similar to Osiris.

The Caliph Al Mamoun of Baghdad called the unusual people of

Harran Sabians in 830CE.

473

When the Caliph noticed the unusual dress

of the people, he challenged the town to establish its credentials. After

some creative thought, the people gave their name as Sabians and their

sacred book as the Corpus Hermeticum.

The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204CE) had

nothing but contempt for the excesses of these Sabians.

474

He writes in

his Guide of the Perplexed that the Sabians believed the universe was

eternal rather than created and the stars were the only divine beings. He

confirms that they manufactured ridiculous stories about Adam, Seth and

Noah and attributed the metals and the climates to the planets. He says

that Abraham was the first to recognize the absurdity of the tales in which

he had been brought up.

475

Maimonides says Abraham opposed the

Sabian star religion, proclaiming the name of the Lord, the God of the

Universe.

The Sabians saw the planets as conduits for divine energy and

available for everyone to understand.

476

Within the walls of Harran were

seven temples. These represented the sun, moon and five known planets.

Construction of each temple ensured that the presence of the God infused

the entire structure. Additional temples existed to The First Cause, The

First Reason, World Order, Necessity, The Soul and to Hermes

Trismegistus.

131

The main temples indicate an advanced knowledge of metallurgy

and alchemy. The most important temple, indeed one of the most famous

in antiquity, was for the revered Moon god, Sin.

477

It was octagonal

although variously described as round. The Temple was white in color

and had a cult image made of silver atop three steps. Other planetary

temples were of different shapes, colors and had different numbers of

steps beneath the cult image.

The temple of the Sun was square, yellow and the golden image

stood on a pedestal six steps high. Pearls and a crown adorned the image.

Mercury’s temple was a square within a hexagon. The cult image was

cast alloy from a mixture of all other metals. Mercury filled its hollow

interior. The temple was brown in color and the cult image stood on four

steps. The brown color suggests philosophic Mercury, which is

antimony, rather than bright silver metallic mercury. The discovery of a

vase, or perhaps an electrical battery, made from antimony and small

amounts of iron in the Chaldean city of Telloh supports this.

478

The vase

dates from 3000BCE. The Discovery Channel program Mysterious

Universe presented in May 1998 showed that when filled with grape

juice, this battery produced ½ volt and enough energy to electroplate a

silver statuette with gold.

The temple to Venus was triangular and painted blue. It had one

long side. The cult image was made of copper and stood on five steps.

Priestesses dressed in white played musical instruments.

Mars’ temple was rectangular and colored red. Weapons hung on

the walls. The cult image was of iron raised on a pedestal of seven steps.

The temple to Jupiter was a triangular building, made of green stone, with

a pointed roof. Its cult image was made of tin and sat on a throne raised

on a pedestal of eight steps. Saturn's temple was hexagonal and built of

black stone. It had black curtains hung about it. The cult image was of

lead and stood upon a throne raised on nine steps.

The seven temples correspond to the number of planes of

existence from the material to the spiritual and the seven main degrees of

initiation (see Appendix 7). The seven temples are also analogous to the

seven gates of the Underworld and are an ancient path of ritual. After the

first two steps of preparation, the first proper initiation grade is that of the

Moon (three steps), the second Mercury (four steps), third Venus (five

steps), fourth the Sun (six steps), fifth Mars (seven steps), sixth Jupiter

(eight steps) and seventh Saturn (nine steps).

479

Ascending through all the

grades, equivalent to the seven parts of the soul, the candidate arrives at

132

the last or eighth part properly qualified with an understanding of

Righteousness, or Liberality. It was only then that the candidate is ready

to receive the rights of emancipation.

Harran was also the home of a school of translators who

specialized in Greek mathematics and astronomy. This was a privileged

sect under the well-known teacher Thabit ibn Qurra, a Sabian Syriac-

speaking translator and scholar working in Baghdad who became one of

the great names in the history of Islamic science, especially in

mathematics, astronomy and medicine.

His name derives from the same root, Kûr, as the furnace and

smithy-god. The school transmitted ancient Pythagorean wisdom to the

Muslim world until at least tenth century CE when visited by the Arab

writer Al-Masudi.

480

The school of Thabit ibn Qurra had a major part in

the preparation of the romances of the Holy Grail, which had such a

profound influence on the Knights Templar.

Another mysterious esoteric school called the Sarmoung

Brotherhood existed near Harran.

481

In his book, Meetings with

Remarkable Men George Gurdjieff claims to have met with the strange

Brotherhood in the late 1890s while living in Bukhara in western

Uzbekistan.

482

He approached their secret monastery blindfolded. This

secret headquarters was probably in the region of Nusaybin, also known

as Nisibis, which lies south of Lake Van, about 200km East of Harran, on

the Turkish border with Syria.

483

This school seems to be an archetype of

the many forms of esoteric schools that existed over thousands of years in

the same area.

The Persian word Sarmoung means both bee and purified head.

It is associated with traditional wisdom and those that transmit the

mysterious power of Zoroaster. Sufi adepts use the analogy to make a

head of gold to refer to ritual alchemy. We shall see in Chapter 18 how

the Knights Templar also revered a metal head.

Zoroaster was most probably born in the region of Uzbekistan

around 1800BCE to 1600BCE. Uzbekistan is north of Bactria, the Jewel

of Iran, where the priestly proto-Israelite tribe, called the Calani, lived

before moving to the Anatolian Commagene.

484

Northern Afghanistan,

then called Uttara Kuru, and was a great center of learning.

485

The red sand deserts of Kiz'il-Kum in Uzbekistan and Kara-kum

in Turkmenistan also lie in this region. The Afghan Hindu Kush and

Tajikistan Pamir extensions of the Himalayas border these vast deserts in

the west and south respectively. In the north, the deserts cease at the great

133

Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syrdarîya) Rivers and the Aral Sea. By

100BCE, the famed cities of Bukhara and Samarkand were part of the

Silk Road. Yet, as we saw in Chapter 4, itinerant groups crossed these

deserts many thousands of years before this time. Hundreds of ancient

ruins in this early crucible of the Indo-Hittites are yet to reveal their

secrets.

Zoroastrian cosmic dualism is the earliest form of dualism

exemplified by Zoroaster. His name means the living star or stream of

the star. Zoroaster bears a great affinity with the Egyptian Thoth and

Hermes Trismegistus.

486

Simple Zoroastrianism is cosmic or monarchical dualism. The

Good Religion of Ahura Mazda maintains the world, which is a Good

creation of God.

487

However, evil, sin and death constantly assail it.

Ahura Mazda originally had a perfectly good son called Spenta Mainyu.

Later, this Good son amalgamated with Ahura Mazda as the Holy Spirit.

Ahura Mazda also had a perfectly bad son called Angra Mainyu or

Ahriman who later became the rebel Watcher Azazel and ultimately

became Satan. Angra Mainyu cannot help being evil because it is his

predestined fate.

The Good Religion of Ahura Mazda maintains that throughout

life the moral choice between Truth or Good, and Untruth or Evil,

confronts man. Death brings judgment. Those found Good are elevated

to the House of Song. The House of Worst receives those who chose

Untruth. A mixed region called Hamistagan awaits those people whose

deeds are in precise balance.

Shakespeare had an excellent grasp of the Good Religion. In

Hamlet, the King's ghost could not pass to its rest because the poor king

had not completed the task of shifting the balance of his acts toward

Good. He was condemned to a long age of misery, darkness, ill food and

the crying of woe.

488

Indeed, it was a vile crime to put any person into

such a heinous situation, even worse than regicide.

Through adherence to the Good Religion, through good deeds,

piety and righteousness, man cultivates the divine element in himself to

become a Good Man, friend and helper of the gods.

489

Good is destined to overcome Evil at the end time. This is twelve

thousand years from the creation of the world. At this time, Ahura Mazda

will resurrect the dead for final Judgment by pure fire and molten iron.

490

Man is an intrinsically Good creation destined for immortality in

Paradise. A virgin born savior called the Saoshyant will save humankind

134

from evil with the elixir of salvation. This elixir will purge all deceit, evil

and untruth.

In this elixir of salvation, we can see the Philosophers' Stone,

manna or dew. An early proto-Jesus also emerges from the amalgam of

Ahura Mazda's perfectly good son Spenta Mainyu and the virgin born

savior, the Saoshyant.

East of Harran is the famous Hierothesion temple, built by the

Commagene's most famous king, Antiochus I Epiphanes. He succeeded

his father Mithridates in about 69CE. The Hierothesion displays a

famous relief of Antiochus I shaking hands with Hercules in a way

familiar to Freemasons. An abundance of evidence leads to the

conclusion that Antiochus I was a leader of one of the mystery

brotherhoods of the Commagene, such as the fabled Sarmoung

Brotherhood.

491

Yet, there are many other possibilities of brotherhoods because

the religiously tolerant Persian nobles had widely settled the interior of

Anatolia after the invasion of King Cyrus in 546BCE. The successors of

Cyrus claimed divine kingship through the grace of Ahura Mazda. For

this reason the nobles would have enthusiastically supported the tolerant

Zoroastrian philosophy. This same tolerance saw the Jews repatriated to

Jerusalem, protected from the Samaritans and with sufficient funds to

rebuild the Second Temple.

Ostanes the Mede, Xerxes’ (519-465BCE) brother-in-law, was a

well-known Persian Magus and local administrator or satrap. Pliny the

Elder and Georgius Syncellus of the ninth century CE note that Ostanes

was known as the master of all magi, a father of alchemy and of

medicine, mineralogy and botany. He taught priests and philosophers at

Memphis in Egypt.

492

The great Jewish alchemist Maria the Jewess was

reputedly a student or fellow instructor of Ostanes. She gave her name to

the ubiquitous cafeteria bain-marie, the vessel of Mary. A cook fills a

bain-marie with hot or boiling water and then places another vessel in it to

slowly cook or keep hot.

Another prominent sect in the area was the School of the

Persians. Expelled from Edessa by the Romans in 489CE, the school

relocated to Nusaybin.

493

The Christian Emperor Justinian closed down Athens’ Platonic

Academy in 529CE. The philosophers Damascius and Simplicius

relocated close to Harran. Simplicius was a follower of Xenophanes’

Eleatic School. These philosophers would have greatly enriched society

135

in and around Harran, strengthening its focus as the epicenter of hermetic

thought.

The work of Eudoxus of Knidos showed that the philosophies

from Persia, Greece and Egypt combined in Harran. Eudoxus was a

contemporary of Plato in four hundred BCE but known only through the

writings of Aristotle and Simplicius. Studying in Heliopolis, he prepared

sections of Euclid's Elements of Geometry and was renowned as the

greatest of all Greek astronomers. He reputedly introduced Persian

Zoroastrianism to the Greeks. Pliny the Elder noted that Eudoxus

believed Zoroaster lived six thousand years before his time. The presence

of these great men in the Commagene demonstrates a depth and breadth

of religious and philosophical tolerance that is arguably as great as in any

other country at any other time in history.

The city of Harran has always had the special and mysterious

status of a sanctuary. The Crusaders who held Edessa until 1146CE never

invaded nearby Harran. Crusader arches and Gothic structures in the city

may pre-date the introduction of Gothic architecture into France.

494

Sir Christopher Wren, the renowned architect of St Paul’s

Cathedral in London, attributed the majesty of Gothic architecture to

Knights Templar and other Crusaders in bringing back Muslim ideas on

science and architecture from the Near East:

495

What we now vulgarly call Gothik ought properly and truly to be

named the Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians.

Yet, religious tolerance in Harran had effectively ended some one

hundred years before the Crusaders. The Seljuk Turks occupied Baghdad

in 1055CE. The Sabian Schools of Baghdad and Harran made their way

to Constantinople where Michael Psellus was leading a Platonic

revival.

496

Michael Psellus later became Prime Minister of

Constantinople.

Although the Sabians of Yemen are quite distinct from the

Sabians of Harran, there are many reasons to consider a strong connection

between the two groups. The Sabians of Yemen claim to have derived

from the prosperous city of Ma'rib in South Arabia. Many Arab tribes at

the time of Mohammed claimed they took to the desert when their old and

wealthy civilization in South Arabia declined. They were the Musri,

which we discussed in Chapter 5.

This region in South Arabia was Saba to the Israelites and

pronounced Sheba.

497

Saba or Tsaba referred to an Arab version of Hindu

Brahmaism. Tsaba, in Sanskrit, means Assembly of the Gods. The name

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Saba also relates to Caba as in Kabbalah.

498

A colony of Brahmins from

India founded one of the shrines in the Kaaba in the Temple of Mecca.

The Brahmins made pilgrimages to worship Brahm and Abraham for

several centuries after his time.

499

Today, some Israeli-born people are proudly nicknamed Sabras,

meaning tough on the outside and tender on the inside.

From a Biblicallament for the city of Tyre, we know that both

Harran and Saba or Sheba traded in similar goods:

500

Harran, Canneh and Eden and merchants of Sheba, Asshur and

Kilmad traded with you. In your marketplaces they traded with

you beautiful garments, blue fabric, embroidered work and

multicolored rugs with cords twisted and tightly knotted.

Two other groups of Sabians also lived in Mesopotamia. These

were the Soba, or Syriac Semites of Northern Mesopotamia, and the

Subbhas who moved from Harran to Southern Mesopotamia. The

Sabians also include the Mandaeans that followed John the Baptist and

the Nazarenes.

501

All of the Sabians of Yemen, Soba, Nabateans and the Sabians of

Harran followed a similar complex system of astral worship. The premier

god was the Moon God who ruled over the god of the sun and the seven

planetary gods.

Ma’rib, the capital of the Sabians of Yemen, had an imposing

temple to the Moon God Sin. The Moon God was known by a number of

names such as ‘Illumquh by the Sabians, ‘Amm and ‘Anbay by the

Qatabanians, Wadd (or love) by the Minaeans and Sin by the Hadramis.

502

The Moon God is the progenitor of the ancient Arabian high God al-Llah.

Like El, his name simply means God and it is represented by the crescent

moon. This is the symbol we see on the Arabic flags and in many

paintings of the Virgin Mary based on the vision of John of Patmos:

503

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed

with the sun and the moon under her feet and upon her head a

crown of twelve stars.

Diodorus Siculus notes of the Sabians of Yemen:

504

This tribe surpasses not only its neighboring Arabs but also other

men in wealth and in their several extravagances besides. For in

the exchange and sale of their wares they, of all men who carry

on trade for the sake of silver they receive in exchange, obtain the

highest price in return for things of the smallest weight.

Consequently, since they have never for ages suffered the ravages

137

of war because of their secluded position, and since an

abundance of both gold and silver abounds in the country, … they

have embossed goblets of every description, made of silver and

gold, couches and tripods with silver feet, and every other

furnishing of incredible costliness, and halls encircled by large

columns, some of them gilded, and others having silver figures on

the capitals. Their ceilings and doors they partitioned by means

of panels and coffers made of gold, set with precious stones and

placed close together, and have thus made the structure of their

houses in every part marvelous for its costliness; for some parts

they have constructed of silver and gold, other of ivory and the

most showy precious stones or of whatever else men esteem most

highly.

The Nabatean group was a second prominent Arab culture,

centered on Petra in the Southern Sinai in the land of the Edomites. They

traded with the Sabians of Harran over the period six hundred BCE to

four hundred BCE.

The Sabians of Yemen and the Nabateans had a very close

affinity because both claimed the crucial female line of descent to Ishmael

through Bashemath, the wife of Esau. Esau and Bashemath gave birth to

Ruel the Midianite. Also called Jethro, he was Moses’ father-in-law.

Ruel then became a priest of Yaho the Moon God. Many biblical scholars

believe that Moses was also a priest of the Moon God. The headdress of

the Levite priests seems to confirm this as it displayed the crescent moon

of Sin.

The Nabatean storm god was Duchares who was later identified

with Dionysus. Like Yahweh, the Nabateans worshipped Duchares on

high rocky places. However, both Duchares and his consort, the fertility

goddess, were subservient to the Moon God. We continue to see the

triple character of God represented by three deities.

A perfect ashlar or square block of stone often represented the

three dimensions of this divine triad. Similarly, the Holy of Holies was a

perfect cube in King Solomon's Temple that symbolized the wholeness of

God.

A Rabbinical tradition joins the Sabians of Harran and the

Nabateans through one of the Kings of the Edomites who reigned before

there were any kings over the Israelites.

505

The King was Mezahab after

mezahah, which means the water of gold or aurum potable.

506

The

138

Israelites never bestowed an important name such as Mezahab at random.

It was in recognition of an important event or connection.

507

From aurum potable and the words of Diodorus Siculus, we can

detect a metallurgical link of gold between Harran and Ma'rib.

Mezahab may also be a half-hidden cipher name of Yahweh. In a

similar way, modern computer encryption halves its cryptographic key for

security. At least one thousand years ago Massoretic authors halved

Yahweh’s name and encrypted it with the Atbash Cipher. The last four

letters of Mezahab make Ahab, which is Hebrew for like the Father. The

Atbash Cipher hides the first two letters MTz, which are Yd He, and the

first two letters of YHWH (see Appendix 10 for a description of the

Atbash Cipher).

Similarly, Mitzvah (

MTzWH), which means Commandment,

deciphers to Jehovah (

YHWH). Like the Egyptian God Amun, the name

of YHWH signifies He Causes to Become. Yahweh achieves this from

the Hebrew verb hawah (

HWH) that means to become. Again, as with

Amun, the priests hid from view Yahweh’s full name.

508

There is still a tribe of Sabians of Yemen in Oman on the Arabian

Peninsula. They claim to descend from a great race comparable to the

Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. The tribe gathers

frankincense resins in the old way. Frankincense resin was in such

demand that it was equal in value to gold in ancient times. Due to the

wealth from frankincense, the Romans designated the land Arabia Felix

or Fortunate Arabia.

There is a final intriguing parallel between the Commagene and

Yemen. As we have seen with the dual Sabian populations, there were

also two cities of Dilmun. One is on Bahrain Island and the other in the

Commagene in Anatolia.

The Sumerians believed they came from the former, the island of

Dilmun, where the kings lived before the flood.

509

Geoffroy Bibby

located this legendary Dilmun on Bahrain Island, just off the Sinai

Peninsula, in 1956. This Dilmun was a city, the size of the Babylonian

city of Ur, with its own seals and other commercial objects similar to Ur.

It had a sophisticated underground water supply that allowed it to become

a large trading centre between Ur and Mohenjo-Daro on the West Bank of

the Indus River in Pakistan.

510

Sites on the coast of Pakistan at Dwaraka, in the Gulf of Kutch,

and on India’s coast in the Gulf of Cambay, suggest a long tradition of

advanced pre-inundation civilizations in the region. The underwater city

139

in the Gulf of Cambay raised considerable excitement when India's

National Institute of Ocean Technology discovered it in January 2002.

Marine archeologists speculate that it is at least 7,000 years and perhaps

9,500 years old.

The second Dilmun lies at the headwaters of the Tigris River, just

beneath Lake Van, near Bitlis.

511

The Dimila (Zâzâ) Kurds still live in

this ancestral homeland of Dilamân or Daylamân.

We look in more detail at the turbulent period up to the time of

Jesus in the next chapter. This will underpin the Gnostic and hermetic

interpretations of alchemy that are to come.

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Chapter 9 Hasmonaeans, Pharisees & Zaddoki

By the time of King David, the power of the sacrificing Levite

and Aaronic priests was waning. David created an additional High Priest

position alongside the High Priest of Aaron who was Abiathar. He

installed a local Jebusite called Zadok in this position to administer the

religion of Yahweh.

512

The Jebusites were elite Hurrians. Zadok, or

Sadak, a supernaturally endowed snake priest of Brahm, traced his

ancestry to the legendary Melchizedek, Abraham’s teacher of a

millennium before.

513

About four hundred years after David, King Josiah and the

Zaddoki expelled the Aaronic High Priesthood altogether.

514

After the

return from Exile, Zerubbabel and Jesus ben Yehozedek, the Son of the

Zadokite High Priest who had recommenced control of the Temple,

rebuilt the Second Temple.

Then, in 444BCE, Nehemiah ejected the Zaddoki from Temple

Mount. His reasons are unknown although the implication is that the

Zaddoki were out of touch with the assembly in Jerusalem. However, the

Zaddoki were still present one hundred and fourteen years later when the

Assyrian Greeks forcibly removed the High Priest Onias III in about

330BCE. The Zaddoki continued to support the Onian High Priesthood.

The Dionysian Artificers who settled in Israel sometime before

one thousand BCE founded the Cassidens or Assideans that later became

the Chassidim.

515

They claimed to possess a special knowledge unknown

to the mass of the people and the true knowledge of the scriptures

transmitted to their order by Moses on Mount Sinai.

516

While this knowledge relates to Liberality, discussed in Chapter

7, it would also have included those laws first revealed to Moses in the

wilderness. These were the Mosaic rules governing tithes, shewbread,

wine-libations and sacrifices.

517

The Chassidim developed a particular system of written and oral

law that brought them respect as a school of interpreters of the Law. On

return from the Exile, the Chassidim adopted a moral code formulated by

the descendants of the Aaronic Priests.

518

From the Chassidim arose the

Pharisees and Rabbinical Judaism. The Sons of Zadok are mutually

exclusive; the line of Zadok does not include any of the twenty-four

Aaronid clans.

519

The commitment of the Chassidim to the common law led them

141

to resist all Greek and other foreign influences that undermined their

depth of tradition. Consequently, the Chassidim of this period supported

the Maccabee Revolution because the Maccabean-Hasmonaeans upheld

Divine Law.

The Hasmonaeans led the tribe of Jehoiarib, which was the

premier priestly family of the twenty-four families that constituted

Judaism. They took their name from Hasmon, or Asmon, the great

grandfather of Judas ben Mattathias. For his success in the 167BCE

Jewish War of Independence, Judas ben Mattathias earned the nom-de-

guerre of Maccabee, meaning Hammer of God. The term Maccabee

derived from the shape of the Tau-cross. The makkabah, which is a

hammer or pick, is similar.

520

With the Jewish War of Independence won, the Maccabees

claimed the priesthood of the Temple. Syria, although defeated, accorded

them religious freedom in 163BCE and in 142BCE granted political

independence. With this Simon, son of Mattathias achieved recognition

as High Priest Ethnarch of the Jews (142BCE-134BCE).

The Maccabean-Hasmonaeans grew even stronger. Following

recognition of Simon as the High Priest Ethnarch of the Jews, the

Maccabees gained royal aspirations. They assumed the throne as Priest-

Kings with popular encouragement by the fourth generation 103BCE to

76BCE.

In contrast to the Chassidim who supported the Maccabean-

Hasmonaean High Priesthood, the Zaddoki party rebelled against these

interlopers. The Zaddoki claimed they profaned the Temple.

Circumcision and sacrifice were two of the main issues at stake. The

Zaddoki again found they were out of step with the Great Assembly.

They introduced their eponymous ancestor Melchizedek into the Book of

Genesis and Psalms and moved to the wilderness of the Dead Sea.

521

There the Zaddoki society lived in the exile of Qumran and other Dead

Sea villages as the purified Melchizedekian sect of the Temple.

A separatist group of Chassidim called Parushim, or Pharisees in

Greek, evolved about the time of the Maccabee John Hyrcanus I, who was

High Priest and Ethnarch from 134BCE-104BCE. These Pharisees were

deeply affected by Zoroastrianism as implied by their Hebrew name

Farsi, which means Persian. The Pharisees directed and measured all

state, public and political affairs by the standard of Mosaic Law. They

disregarded the Hasmonaean-Maccabees and the priestly-aristocratic

Zaddoki. Mosaic Law and Pharisee interpretation formed a new cosmic

142

system of Jewish common law.

The Zaddoki or Jewish Christians sect was originally a subset of

the Pharisees.

522

Yet, there was little empathy between the Pharisees and

Jewish Christians or Zaddoki, whom the Pharisees regarded as sectarian

despite their common heritage.

Even though the Pharisees were an offshoot of the main body of

Chassidim, they regarded the Chassidim with the same suspicion as the

Zaddoki. However, the Moreh Tzedek had taught the importance of the

future Zadokian High Priest, the Meshiach of Aaron. His followers

originally formed the Zaddoki Party. The Pharisees believed that the

Chassidim who came after the Moreh Tzedek improperly denied the

importance of the Temple and daily sacrifice. In addition, they

improperly maintained that a righteous life and prayer should satisfy the

needs of sacrifice.

Criminal jurisprudence was rigorous under the Maccabee-

Hasmonaeans. When Herod the Great seized power from the Maccabees

in 36BCE, he replaced the Great Sanhedrin with a Pharisee-orientated

Sanhedrin, most likely under the great humanist Pharisees Hillel and

Shammai. Herod declared a festival on the day he abolished the Great

Sanhedrin.

After gaining control of Jerusalem, Herod the Great ordered the

drowning of the last Maccabean High Priest Jonathan (Aristobulus III) in

36BCE. Jonathan was Herod’s own brother-in-law. Herod then executed

all Hasmonaean-Maccabeans within his reach. This included Herod’s

own wife, the Maccabean Princess Mariamme, and their two sons.

Herod promptly appointed Boethus from Egypt as his High Priest

and married the daughter of Boethus, another Mariamme. He then made

political appointments of non-eminent families to the Temple and the

Great Sanhedrin. The Pharisees called them Sadducees, again meaning

sectarian. Thus began a rigid and uncertain period of Herodian-Sadducee

administration.

The newly aristocratic Herodian-Sadducees included absentee

property owners who lived in splendor while their tenants absorbed taxes

on agricultural production. The Romans imposed a tax of twenty-five

percent in addition to a twenty-two percent levy imposed by the Temple.

There was a running stream of abuse between the Herodian-Sadducees

property owners and their tenants, the Galileans. Talmudic commentaries

advised true Jews not to let their daughters marry the people of the land

because they are unclean animals. Rabbi Eleazar said The enmity of a

143

common person toward a scholar is even more intense than that of the

heathen toward Israelite. He suggested butchering common people on

the most holy day of the year, a day forbidden to kill animals. Rabbi

Joahanan added that one may tear a common person to pieces like fish.

The Herodian-Sadducees had little empathy with the spiritual

mission of the Jews. They upheld the importance of sacrificial rituals,

regarded the literal Torah as sole authority and denied the immortality of

the soul, resurrection after death and the existence of angels.

523

Josephus

notes that the Herodian-Sadducees even showed a harsh and disagreeable

spirit in their relationships with each other.

524

The Herodian-Sadducees proved no friends to the Zaddoki whom

the Maccabean-Hasmonaeans had supplanted. The office of High Priest

carried with it presidency of the Great Sanhedrin and responsibility for

suppression of revolutionary doctrine. Herod and his Sadducee High

Priest turned a ruthless blowtorch on their opponents including the

Zaddoki.

525

As with the Jonathan in 36BC, all potential claimants for the

position of High Priest were marked for particular vengeance.

This policy was still in force when Annas, father-in-law of the

High Priest Caiaphas, led the Great Sanhedrin to condemn Jesus the

Nazarene to death for blasphemy. His crime was revolutionary

insurgency and a valid Zaddoki claim to both the throne of Israel and

position of High Priest. The same set of circumstances had already led to

the death of Hezekiah and his son Judas the Galilean. It was also the

reason that John the Baptist was beheaded. In 62CE, the High Priest

Ananus ben Ananus had the next leader, James the Righteous, stoned for

the same reason. Josephus wrote that their persecution was not so much

because they claimed the throne, but because they were entitled to it.

At the time of Herod, the Pharisees administered the Jewish legal

system as Presidents of the Pharisaic High Court. There they dispensed

Mosaic Law, ran the world system of synagogue worship and were

responsible for suppression of heretical doctrine. Due to their absence

from the political arena and importance in maintaining the fabric of

Jewish society, the Pharisees became the only religious group tolerated by

the Romans after the destruction of the third Temple in 70CE. Almost by

default, the Pharisees became the sole religious authority of Israel. The

absence of the central Temple was not an issue for the Pharisees because

they were a cult of the legal system, not of the Temple. From the Roman

perspective, the most important point was that they were not nationalistic

militants.

144

Rabbinical Judaism subsequently developed from the Pharisees.

The Rabbis continued to demonstrate three of the characteristics we have

come to expect from the Indo-Hittite compression. They supported oral

tradition, believed in the immortality of the soul, and sought to eliminate

the matriarchal religion of the Great Triple Mother Goddess and frowned

on so-called messianic bloodlines.

The Pharisees developed standards of jurisprudence to such a

degree that they recognized man as fallible and an unlikely paragon of

virtue. They defined greatness in a sovereign as mercy in the judgment of

others and greatness in a man as overcoming one’s own inherent bad side

and doing Yahweh’s work. Indeed, the Pharisees took pride that many of

the Torah’s great personae were seriously flawed.

526

Awkward Moses

depended upon Aaron for strong leadership. After disobeying Yahweh,

Moses died before reaching the Promised Land. Lecherous David

coveted his neighbour’s wife and sent the unfortunate cuckold to certain

death. So stained with war and death was David that Yahweh prevented

him from building the Temple of Peace. Solomon tolerated many foreign

wives sacrificing to false gods. Fratricidal Cain, fraudulently misleading

Jacob, cowardly Jonah, inept Rehoboam, the list goes on.

Now, the Pharisees descended from Benjamin. This provided

them with a great depth of tradition and legitimacy because Benjamin was

the last son of Jacob and Rachel in Harran. Another Benjamite, King

Saul, was the hero who delivered Israel from the Philistines.

527

Finally,

Judah and Benjamin were the only two tribes that remained faithful to

Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.

We have seen that the term Sadducee, as used by the Pharisees,

means sectarian and potentially heretical. This generic term encompassed

all sectarian groups including the widely differing Herodian-Sadducees,

remaining Maccabean-Hasmonaeans, Chassidim and Zaddoki. These

various groups were so completely unrelated in philosophical perspective

that it is not very helpful to refer to all of them as Sadducees.

In the next chapter, we use this background to understand Jesus

the Nazarene from political and religious perspectives. He was one of the

many brave messiahs of the Hasmonaean-Zaddoki in the turbulent time of

Roman occupation.

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Chapter 10 Zaddoki & Jesus

All the priestly preservers of the holy traditions, including those

of the Canaanite holy traditions, traced their heritage to Zadok. In his

work about Phoenician religion, Eusebius of Caesarea described the

association of Sydek (Zadok, the Just One) with Taautos (Thoth) and

Esmun, who is Asklepios (Asclepius):

From them were born Misor and Sydek, which means agile and

righteous. From Misor was born Taautos ... From Sydek were

born the Dioscurs or the Cabyrs … Sydek, who is called the

righteous ... became father of Asklepios. These events were

written down for the first time by the seven sons of Sydek,

together with their eighth brother, Asklepios, following the

instructions of the same god Taautos.

The sectarian Zaddoki groups during the turbulent Herodian times

were harsh and uncompromising in their Judgment. Many biblical

passages can be read either as ritual mysteries of rebirth or as messianic

nationalism. The Zaddoki chose the latter. They were messianic,

apocalyptic and believed in Holy War.

The Zaddoki were comprised of four main sub-groups. These

were the Essenes, Zealots, Sicarii and Nazoraeans. The purist

Melchizedek Zaddoki was a smaller, less defined group that practiced the

Mysteries. They took their name from the root

Z-D-K, meaning

Righteous, and wandered the Dead Sea communities such as Qumran

teaching the Kabbalah and passing on arcane knowledge by word of

mouth.

528

The scholarly Essenes had Academies at Engedi, Callirrhoë &

Modein. The Essenes were pacifists in the same as way as the Edomites.

Diodorus Siculus says of the Edomites:

529

They have no poor amongst their kind, they honour the meek and

disposed, and they value mercy, peace and forgiveness of transgressions.

Although closely related, there were many significant points of

difference between the Essenes and Zaddoki. One was the Essenes’

abhorrence of Temple sacrifice.

530

Thrice daily, the Sadducees pleaded

with God to: “Send thy curse, O God, upon the Nazarites!”

531

The Zealots constituted the Lower Priesthood of the Essene

Order. Josephus called the Zealots the fourth Philosophy. The other three

were the Herodian-Sadducees of the Great Sanhedrin, the Pharisees and

146

the Essenes.

As fanatical Maccabean-Hasmonaean royalists, the Zealots

sought restoration of the Hasmonaean monarchy. Their name came from

the Zeal for the Covenant of Aaron's grandson Phineas. In sparking the

Hasmonaean-Maccabee revolution, the High Priest Mattathias cleaved the

head of an Assyrian official. In doing so, he established the Zealots with

his command:

532

Whosoever is zealous of the law, and maintaineth the covenant,

let him follow me.

Two hundred years later, in the 66-70CE uprising, the Zealots

decimated the High Priesthood of the Herodian-Sadducees. A proactive

wing of the Zealots, called the Sicarii, held out for six years against the

Romans at Massada. It seems that amongst them was Jesus of

Gennesaret, aged eighty. He was the last rightful inheritor of the

Hasmonaean Kings of Israel. Some people believe Jesus of Gennesaret is

the same person as Jesus the Nazarene.

His faithful general Mennahem, grandson of Judas the Galilean,

failed to recapture Jerusalem in 66CE. With Qumran reduced to ruins in

68CE, Jesus of Gennesaret and nine hundred and fifty Zealots awaited the

Roman onslaught at Massada. It came on 15 April 73CE, after three

years of exhaustive Roman earthworks. Jesus of Gennesaret reputedly

prepared a scroll on the eve of Massada’s defeat. It disappeared from

excavations at Massada in 1964. However, General Yigael Yadin, who

was in charge of the excavation, strenuously denies that this missing

fifteenth scroll of Massada ever existed.

533

Even more challenging, followers of Buddhism, Hindu and

Mohammedan Islam believe Jesus escaped to India via an Essene college

at Mayuam-i-Isa, meaning The place where Jesus lived, five kilometers

from Damascus, and Anatolian Nisibis.

534

The last of the four Zaddoki groups is the Nazoraeans. Also

known as Rechabites, they reputedly provided daughters for the Sons of

Zadok to marry. Jeremiah is the first recorded person to have called these

Zadokites by the name Rechabites and to note their Zeal.

535

At different

times, the Nazoraeans were Nozri, Nazarites, Nazarenes, Naassenes,

Palestinian or Jewish Christians, the Jerusalem Community, Ebionites or

The Poor.

The Nazoraeans have also been associated with the Nasurai

priesthood of the Magi of Media, in present day Azerbaijan. Legend

holds that their first priest was Enoch. He taught legendary King

147

Kiyumars, the first Indo-Iranian king who ruled from the Mountain of

Madai.

536

Mount Elburz or Harra are other names for Mount Madai. It

is located in the Taurus Mountains between the Commagene of East

Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains of Azerbaijan.

537

While the four main Zaddoki groups of Essenes, Zealots, Sicarii

and Nazoraeans have significant inter-sectarian differences, they are

collectively the Sons of Zadok, Zealots, Essenes, Jessaeans and Ossaeans.

The traditional meaning of the enigmatic letters I.N.R.I on the

titular of Jesus’ cross is Iesus Nazareus Rex Iudaeorum or Jesus

Nazarene, King of the Jews. In the context of the Gnostic ritual of St

George, which we shall investigate in Chapter 15, the letters could also

mean the deceptively harmless In Nobis Regnat Iesus meaning Jesus

reigns within us. The Jesuits gave these letters the exceedingly odd

interpretation Justum necare regis impios, meaning Just killing of the

ungodly king.

Another meaning, more alchemical, is set in the context of the

temple Kur. I.N.R.I could mean Igne Natura Renovatur Integra, which

translates to Fire renews Nature.

538

The Vesica Piscis is this fiery furnace

of divine love and light. It is the flame vessel of the Fish.

539

The Visica

Piscis has an obvious relationship to the female genitalia. It also suggests

the old legends of the aquatic heritage of man, which we looked at from

the perspective of genetics in Chapter 4 and will further investigate in

Chapter 17.

The alchemists also noted that in Hebrew each letter of I.N.R.I

represents one of the four elements.

540

I is Iammim, Water. N is Nour,

fire. R is Rouach, the air. I is Iebeschah, earth.

Another major alchemical meaning is Igne nitrum raris invenitur,

translated as Fire is discovered in nitrum.

These many esoteric religious and alchemical meanings illustrate

once more the seduction of hermetic drift. Occam’s Razor requires the

simplest interpretation consistent with the facts. This is that Pontius

Pilate insisted in the titular INRI to demonstrate the fate of future political

and messianic leaders. The least complicated meaning of INRI is its

traditional interpretation of Jesus Nazarene, King of the Jews.

Rabbis generally believe Jesus to be the messianic hopeful Y'shua

ha Meshiach, a Nozri who lived for many years among the Essenes, who

was born in about 100BCE and died in 70BCE.

541

The Nazarenes

believed Jesus was the son of Judas of Gamalas, a Jewish prophet and

military commander. Gruff rabbinical humor associates Judas of Gamalas

148

with Ben Panthera or Joseph Panther. A Ben Panthera of the first century

was an auxiliary archer in the Roman infantry. His tombstone was at

Bingerbrück in Germany and is now at Bad Kreuznach. It is inscribed:

542

Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40

years' service, of the 1st cohort of archers, lies here.

The legend in the Sepher Toldos Jeshu relates that Ben Panthera

violated Mary (Mariam) the betrothed of John (Iohanan).

543

Mary

conceived Y'shua, or Jesus ben Panthera. The child was an important

person because he was the nephew of Queen Salome.

544

Iohanan deserted Mariam and her newborn child so his uncle, the

Rabbi Jehosuah Ben Perachiah, adopted him. Rabbi Elhanan initiated

Y'shua into the secret knowledge of the Kabbalah.

According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the

Sanhedrim, when King Janneus ordered the killing of all initiates,

Jehosuah Ben Perachiah and the young Y'shua fled to Alexandria in

Egypt. There a rich and learned woman received them. Y'shua found her

beautiful, notwithstanding a defect in her eyes. This is a reference to

Y'shua gaining the secret wisdom of Egypt. Y'shua declared his thoughts

to Jehosuah Ben Perachiah who cursed him for following Egyptian ways

and drove him away. Y'shua studied the Mysteries in Egypt for six years

and the Egyptian priests consecrated him a High Pontiff of the Universal

Secret Doctrine.

545

When King Janneus’ persecution ended, they both Y'shua and

Jehosuah Ben Perachiah returned to Palestine. Y'shua practiced magic,

which is interpreted as preaching there as an Essene priest,. Due to his

illegitimacy, Y'shua was driven from the Synagogue and he took refuge

for a time in Galilee.

The Rabbis wrote that Y'shua stole the Holy and Ineffable Name,

the Schamhamphorash, from the cubic stone in the Temple’s Holy of

Holies. It had been placed in the Holy of Holies by King David, who

found it in the foundations of the Temple. Y'shua copied the characters

on the cubical stone onto a piece of parchment and hid it in his thigh.

This refers to Y'shua’s ritual laming, as we shall see below.

Then Y'shua went abroad, disclosing the great mystery of the

Temple to ordinary people and astounded people with his miracles:

raising the dead and healing the leprous and the obsessed. The Sepher

Toldos records the allegory that Y'shua was unable to displace the cubical

stone of the sanctuary so Jesus fabricated one of clay, which he showed to

the nations and passed off as the true cubical stone of Israel, leading led

149

the people into idolatry.

546

In 70 BCE, forty days after his messianic proclamation, the

Sanhedrin imprisoned Y'shua for forty days, flogged him for sedition,

stoned him for blasphemy and crucified him. This was in Lud, Ludd,

Lydd or Lydda, a town about 25 miles from Jerusalem.

The Rabbis valued the law and always investigated their sources

meticulously. They attributed great authority and antiquity to the Toledot

Yeshu, also called the Sepher Toldos Jeschu. Ideas contained within this

blasphemous tract can be traced to Celsus’ second century CE attack on

Christianity through Origen’s rebuttal in the middle of the third century

CE.

The Toledot Yeshu was only removed from the Talmud in

1520CE because of Christian indignation. Even then, the text was only

replaced by circles and the story continued to be taught orally:

547

This is why we enjoin you, under pain of excommunication major,

to print nothing in future editions, whether of the Mischna or of the

Gemara, which relates whether for good or evil to the acts of Jesus the

Nazarene, and to substitute instead a circle like this O, which will warn

the Rabbis and schoolmasters to teach the young these passages only viva

voce. By means of this precaution the savants amongst the Nazarenes

will have no further pretext to attack us on this subject.

The Talmud writes of Jesus Nazarene as both Jeshu-ha-Notzri

and Balaam the Lame:

548

…Commentators refer to Jeshu-ha-Notzri [i.e. Jesus] by mention

of the wicked kingdom of Edom, since that was his nation. … He

was hanged on Passover Eve. … He was near to the Kingdom

[i.e. in order of succession].

Balaam the Lame [i.e. Jesus] was 33 years old when Pintias

Robber [i.e. Pontius Pilate] killed him. … They say that his

mother was descended from princes and rulers, but consorted

with carpenters.

Jesus’ royal lineage was important for his coronation as King of

the Jews. His coronation used the ancient formula described in Psalms:

549

I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my

Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee

the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the

earth for thy possession.

The Jewish Nazarenes and Essenes considered this violently

laming coronation essential in the creation of a Messiah. Through this

150

ceremony, the priests physically crowned Jesus as king of the Houses of

Judah, Benjamin and Levi. However, until his anointing at the

completion of the coronation, Jesus was merely a man. The act of

coronation conferred upon him the incarnate status of perfect man, Son of

Man and the Second Person of the traditional Indo-Hittite male Trinity.

550

Thomas’ Gospel defined Jesus’ rights as those of a Messiah, mutually

exclusive to both Caesar and God:

551

They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to Him, "Caesar's men

demand taxes from us." He said to them, "Give Caesar what

belongs to Caesar, give God what belongs to God, and give Me

what is Mine."

The unusual personal reception of Jesus, a non-Roman citizen, by

Pontius Pilate confirms Jesus as more than just a local insurgent. The

I.N.R.I titular placed on the cross by Pontius Pilate was not derisive but

exactingly affirmative of his political status as a King and a dire warning

to those that might follow.

Yet, in the end, Jesus did not fulfill the prophecy of Ezekiel. He

did not die by the sword as expected. Instead, he was crucified somewhat

like his namesake predecessor Jesus ben Panthera.

552

For the Jewish Nazarenes, their Messiah Jesus had fallen short of

millennium expectations. In contrast, the Greeks, led by Paul, saw not all

was necessarily lost.

553

He was an initiate of the Mysteries and reverted

to the ancient Afro-Asiatic definition of kingship in lieu of the Indo-

Hittite. This meant that Paul defined Jesus as perfect from birth, rather

than from his coronation. He was One with the Father, as in the Afro-

Asiatic religion of the Mother Goddess. Jesus’ death by crucifixion was a

recognizable part of her age-old sacrificial king ritual.

In crucifying Jesus, the Herodian Sadducees made a dreadful

tactical error that has haunted them for two thousand years. Good King

Josiah (640-609BCE) had prohibited crucifixion, declaring that it

extinguished the soul. In undue haste to send Jesus’ soul to oblivion, the

Herodian Sadducees failed to recognize that crucifixion made Jesus’

mode of death an Afro-Asiatic celebration of the sacrificial king ritual.

Ironically, this was the very ritual Jesus sought to annul.

Over the next forty years, the Romans ruthlessly purged Jewish

nationalism. They nevertheless saw Paul’s intellectual version of

Christianity as very close to their own Mysteries such as those of Mithras.

Jewish and international Christians who moved from Jewish nationalistic

militancy to Paul’s new Afro-Asiatic and pro-Roman framework

151

survived. A combination of Pharisee Rabbinical law in Israel and

international Pauline Christianity abroad became an expedient political

solution to the Jewish Question. As we saw in Chapter 6, this situation

had its roots in a failed coup in the Egyptian Delta over one thousand

years before.

Indeed, the holy unspeakable Name of God JHWH supported

Paul’s Afro-Asiatic conclusion.

554

As we saw in Chapter 7, the First

Person of the male Indo-Hittite Trinity is Light, meaning God, indicated

by H. W meaning Peace represents the Second Person, Jesus, begotten by

the Father before the entire world. The Third Person of the Trinity given

by the letters JH is Light and Life, the formula for the Virgin and Son.

The determination to identify Jesus with the Trinity, a heresy in

itself to the Jews, had the unanticipated result of exploding into a plethora

of Christian heresies. Some related to the righteous indignation that non-

Jews had deified a man. Stubborn messianic zeal regrouped where it

could. Cults of the Triple Goddess also adapted to the new paradigm and

perpetuated the myth as a legitimate disguise for their practices. The

Mysteries practiced around the known world looked on with

condescension but mild support.

The Gnostics subscribed neither to the theory that the Trinity is

One, nor that Jesus was a myth. The Gnostics believed that Simon of

Cyrene, the Traitor, died in place of Jesus.

555

They followed Basilides of

Alexandria who taught that Simon Magus had written:

556

There is no resurrection of the flesh but that of the spirit only.

And that the body of man is not the creation of God; and also

concerning the world, that god did not create it, and that God

knoweth not the world, and that Jesus Christ was not crucified but

it was an appearance, and that he was not born of Mary, nor the

seed of David.

The Gnostics saw Simon of Cyrene as the Messenger of the God

of Justice who sought to inflict a harsh and impossible law on man. In a

curious anti-cosmic interpretation, they believed that Lucifer had Simon

of Cyrene slain to protect men from oppression. This extraordinary

interpretation will become clear in Chapter 15 when we look closely at

the Gnostic Knight Rose Croix in his role with St George and the Dragon.

The plethora of Christian heresies also included Virgin Worship

called Hyperdulia, Marianity or Mariology. Despite the bloody efforts of

both the Church and Puritans to eliminate it, Virgin Worship is still

widely practiced today.

557

152

Virgin Worship later became integral with Church theology. This

was apparent at the coronation of Medici Pope Leo X. He paraded from

the Vatican to the Church of the Lateran for the ceremony. The

Florentine physician Gian-Giacomo Penni described how this grand

procession passed through a magnificent new arch endowed by the banker

Agostino Chigi. Priceless marble, alabaster and porphyry treasures of

pagan Rome adorned it. On the approach to the arch, Pope Leo X read a

message written in gold:

558

The time of Venus has passed: Gone, too, is Mars

Now is the rule of Minerva.

Immediately through the arch, Pope Leo X encountered a

beautiful Greek statue of Aphrodite with the rest of the message in gold:

Mars has gone and Minerva Reigns

But Venus still our worship claims.

Indeed, in 1964, the Roman Catholic Church finally succumbed

to popular pressure for Virgin Worship. Pope Paul VI elevated the Virgin

Mary to Mater Ecclesiae, the Mother of the Church.

559

From that

moment, those of the Roman Catholic faith could only speak to God the

Father through Mary the Redemptress.

Perhaps the Medici Pope Leo X made the greatest Papal faux pas

of all time when ebullient and jesting, he quipped to the Venetian scholar

Pietro Bembo:

560

How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through

the ages.

We look at the survival of ancient Melchizedek traditions in

Southern France in the next chapter.

153

Chapter 11 Melchizedekians and Merovingians

King Mel-chi-zedek the Jebusite is one of the most mysterious

characters in all biblical myths. The Book of Genesis identifies him as a

sacred Priest-King of Salem at the time it was in Hurrian or Amorite

hands. The Hindu’s know him as Melik-Sadaksina, the great son of a

Kassite king and magical priest of Brahm, who was Abraham’s teacher.

561

Another of Melchizedek’s names is Adoni-Zedek after the city

god of Salem and King of Righteousness.

562

The Ammonites called him

Zaduk.

Melchizedek welcomed Abraham to Canaan after Abraham had

returned from defeating Kedorla'omer:

563

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine:

and he was the priest of the most high God.

He is a famous immortal:

564

Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither

beginning of days, nor end of life.

Priests after the Order of Melchizedek are prominent over the

millennia. One of the last Biblical references is when King David

appoints Zadok as a joint high priest with the Levites. The final

identification with Melchizedek occurs with Jesus. Among the many

messianic aspirants of the time, Jesus was a particularly special messiah

because he was a priest of Melchizedek.

565

The precise geographical location of Melchizedek's Salem is

unknown. Biblical publishers readily assume Salem is the current

Jerusalem because of the forthright deconstruction of Jerusalem into Jeru

and Salem.

566

Josephus records that Salem became Jerusalem after the

time of Abraham.

567

As we saw in Chapter 3, Jerusalem was the city of

Salma the Son of Light. It therefore seems logical that Salem would have

been a sanctuary town similar to Harran in the North and perhaps Ma'rib

in the South. Certainly, Abraham had a compellingly similar relationship

of familiarity, sanctuary and tribute to both Harran and Salem.

The Teacher of Righteousness or Moreh-zedek of the Dead Sea

Scrolls seems to be very much like Mel-chi-zedek.

568

Moreh and Moriah

are the places of Yahweh's Covenant with Abraham. The Hebrew word

Marah means salt sea.

569

Therefore, Mor-Iah and Mor-Jah translate to

God of the Sea or God of the Salt Water. From this same root, Moreh-

zedek translates as the Water of Righteousness or Dew of Righteousness.

154

In the Damascus Document, known since at least the ninth

century, the Qumran Covenanters swallowed the Teacher of

Righteousness. He brings them a new Covenant with God.

John Allegro first recognized the importance of swallowing (from

teval

a) in 1970.

570

He related the names Jesus and Joshua to dew and the

semen that heals and saves.

Swallowing is important in the Habakkuk Pesher (XI 4-5). The

Wicked Priest pursues the Righteous Teacher to swallow him.

Swallowing is again mentioned in connection with Wisdom in Aaron A –

4Q541 (2.8):

571

Behold a wise man will understand that I am seeing and

comprehending deep Mysteries, thus I am speaking …. parables.

The Greek will not understand, But the knowledge of Wisdom

will come to you, for you have received … you will acquire

Pursue her (Wisdom) and seek her and gain possession of her to

swallow (her) down. Behold you will gladden many … many (will

have) a place.

A most important function of the Melchizedek priests at the time

of the Exodus was to set out the Bread of the Presence of God on a golden

table in front of the Ark of the Covenant, also called the Ark of Alliance.

Moses decreed that the Ark should contain a quantity of the Bread of

Heaven or manna found by the Israelites in the wilderness so future

generations would see what it was like.

572

And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it

was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers

made with honey. And Moses said, This is the thing which the

Lord commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your

generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed

you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of

Egypt. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer

full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for

your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid

it up before the Testimony, to be kept.

Somewhat oddly, Moses commanded a renowned goldsmith and

architect called Bezaleel to prepare the Bread of the Presence of God.

Indeed, Bezaleel was the same goldsmith Moses had commissioned to

create the Ark of the Covenant. Coincidently, the renowned architect of

King Solomon’s Temple, Hiram Abiff, was not an architect in Biblical

texts.

573

He was an expert artisan working in gold, brass and dyes.

155

Bezaleel and Hiram Abiff are also similar archetypes in other

ways. Bezaleel’s father is Uri, which means Light. This makes Bezaleel

a Son of Light. Hiram’s mother was a Naphtali woman from Dan. This

probably identifies her as an Oracle or Priestess of the Benjamites. The

Bible is more evasive with Hiram’s father, only commenting that he was

also a master artisan. Josephus gives us the information we expect, that

Hiram’s father came from Ur of the Israelites.

574

He confirms that

Bezaleel and Hiram Abiff are precisely the same archetype, embodying

an important story. In fact, Jesus’ father Joseph is the same archetype.

He is not simply a carpenter but an artisan in the archetypal sense.

Bezaleel also bears a remarkable similarity to Azazel (‘Azâzil in

Arabic) or Shemyaza, the leader of the fallen Watchers in the Judaic-

Christian apocryphal Book of Enoch.

575

Just as Prometheus presented

man with fire, Azazel released to humankind the secrets of metallurgy, the

manufacture of weapons and jewelry, and the use of antimony in art and

medicine. He also taught women the art of cosmetics, to be promiscuous

and to enjoy sex. For these transgressions, God condemned Azazel to

remain forever bound in the desert of Dûdâêl. As Shemyaza, he hangs

upside down between heaven and earth in the constellation of Orion. The

only known statute of this leader of the Watchers is in the choir of

Rosslyn Chapel, in Scotland.

There seems to be a distinctly alchemical key in the Qumran and

Biblical documents. For example, the duality of the mysterious Sceptre

and the Star is analogous to the red man of gold and his wife, the star of

antimony. They correspond to the coronation’s Scepter of gold and Orb

of antimony. Furthermore, they are comparable to the Messiah of Aaron

and Israel. It is not surprising that the Covenanters had a metallurgical

foundry with twenty-six tons of gold and forty-eight tons of silver at

Qumran.

Using the philosophical circular-saw of Occam's Razor to limit

the entities, the Moreh-zedek or the Teacher of Righteousness can be seen

as a common alchemical archetype with the dew or Bread of Life. In the

same way Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness, is an archetype for the

priest that manufactures the sacred bread. He provides this sacred bread

to Abraham in a rite of kingship.

A statue in the North Porch of Chartres Cathedral shows

Melchizedek holding a long-stemmed chalice or cup in his left hand. It

contains a solid cylindrical object that is the Moreh-zedek. Many think it

is the Holy Grail or Philosophers' Stone.

576

The stained glass window on

156

the North Façade shows Melchizedek again. An inside window of Paris’

Notre Dame Cathedral also shows alchemy in action.

577

The blessing of Abraham with holy bread and wine at Salem

suggests Salem was a special alchemical or metallurgy site from early

times. The Palestine campaign of Thutmose III indeed confirmed this in

1480BCE. Jerusalem, or Salem, was Kadesh or the Holy City and seen as

the most important city in Palestine long before King David made

Jerusalem his capital.

Chapter 9 described the ascendancy of the Pharisees over the

Melchizedekian Sadducees. This was a major change in the power

structure of religion in Israel. It marginalized the Melchizedek Priests,

who retired to the wilderness. The ever-vigilant Pharisees recorded in

Talmud that the heretical Melchizedekians continued to frequent Hebron

to visit Abraham’s cave of Machpelah.

578

The contents of the cave have

remained a mystery for eight hundred years.

579

The mosque that now

conceals it admits neither Jews nor Christians. Benjamin of Tudela

visited the cave in 1163CE and wrote that its innermost reaches contained

six sepulchers. Josephus noted that these were of the finest marble.

Perhaps a rabbinical tradition that formed part of an old lecture in the

Masonic Degree of Knight Rose Croix holds the key. It described how

Abraham discovered the sepulcher of Adam and Eve in a cave of the

Jebusites.

580

They were lying on couches with lamps burning before

them, which spread a rich perfume.

The Melchizedek traditions along with those of the Calebite Dog

Men were some of the very few to remain fresh with the remnant that

evaded the Exile in Babylon.

581

In about 750BCE Amos prophesized the

return from Exile with the Lord’s words:

582

In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen,

and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins,

and I will build it as in the days of old: That they may possess the

remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my

name, saith the Lord that doeth this.

The Damascus Document then tells us that God:

583

Left a remnant to Israel, and did not give them over to

destruction. But in the Time of Wrath He visited them (three

hundred and ninety years after He had given them into the hands

of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon). And He caused to

spring forth from Israel and Aaron a root of His planting to

inherit the land.

157

However, in response to the fanatical uprising of Zealot

nationalism, the Romans systematically eliminated militant nationalistic

groups, such as the Zealots, from Jerusalem and surrounding strongholds.

Josephus records that over 1,350,000 people died at this time. The

resilient Zaddoki and Essene cultures survived in Damascus, Alexandria

and in other regions of the Diaspora.

After 200BCE, the Jewish Diaspora accelerated with the decline

of Hellenistic Egypt and Syria. Jews migrated to Italy and to Spain via

North Africa. One of the far-flung lands of the dispersion was Gaul. In

about 12CE the Romans exiled the brother of Herod Antipas, Archelaus,

Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. He settled in the Jewish district at Vienne,

near Lyons, in France.

584

Some twenty-eight years later Herod Antipas

joined him in exile as punishment for beheading John the Baptist. Jewish

migration continued to Lyon, Arles and Bordeaux, culminating between

five hundred CE and six hundred CE with a mass Diaspora movement to

Marseilles and Barcelona.

The Zaddoki-Melchizedek line enjoyed great prominence in the

Diaspora of Gaul, especially with the Merovingian Frank Kings who

defeated the Visigoths at Vouillé, near Aquitaine, in 510CE. The

Visigoth territories in Gascony, Languedoc and Provence and in Northern

Spain provided fertile ground for both Zadok-Melchizedek and

Rabbinical-Cabbalistic streams of Judaism.

The French Merovingian Royalty maintained that it was of a

royal Trojan lineage that antedated the Roman Catholic Church. They

rejected Church sponsored coronation. They also claimed to derive from

the tribe of Judah through Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

The Merovingian kings placed great value on their long hair and

believed that it gave them strength.

585

Samson’s name was common in

the Royal Merovingian Household. The longhaired Monarchs identified

with him as the hero Judge of the Tribe of Dan.

586

The Merovingians buried their last ruler, Dagobert II, in a cape

studded with golden honey bees. Napoleon removed the honeybees from

Dagobert's tomb and placed them on his own coronation cape.

Displaying the same independence from Papal authority that characterized

the Merovingians, Napoleon lifted the crown from the Bishop's hands and

placed it upon his own head.

Merovingian claims of Davidic succession were an anathema to

the Church. In 751CE, Pepin III the Short deposed the Merovingian King

Childeric III with Papal support. He thereby established the Carolingian

158

The Jewish Princedom of Septimania

at the time of Charlemagne, 814CE, annexing the Spanish March.

Also showing Rennes-le-Chateau, Montségur and Mt Cardou.

159

dynasty. Eight years later Pepin III himself faced military defeat at the

hands of the Islamic Saracens at Narbonne.

The Jewish population came to his aid and opened the gates of

Narbonne for his protection in return for Pepin III undertaking to elevate

their principate city-state of Septimania to the status of an independent

Davidic Princedom. Pepin III complied for reasons that seem to include

the creation of a buffer state to keep the Umayyad Saracens at bay.

587

The granting of ancient privileges, high office, freehold land, the Jews’

own system of law and royal protection to the Jews of Southern France

invoked a bitter rebuke from Pope Stephen III in 768CE.

588

The grant of

hereditary freehold tenure of land called allodial hereditamenta was

particularly controversial.

589

It was contrary to both Papal and

Carolingian policy.

The Septimanian Jews established Davidic succession in their

Princedom. The Nasi, or Jewish Prince in perpetuity, was to be

descended from the line of David.

590

The first Nasi was Rabbi Natronai-

Makhir. He was formerly the Exilarch of the Jews in Baghdad and a

scholar-prince of the House of David, who the Caliph of Baghdad sent to

Septimania.

591

Natronai-Makhir accepted the name Theodoric and took

Pepin III’s sister, Alda, for a wife.

592

In return for the elevation of Septimania to a Princedom, the

Rabbis endorsed Pepin III's own claim to Davidic Succession of the Holy

Roman Empire for his son Charlemagne. Charlemagne later confirmed

the status of Septimania in 791CE by establishing it as a permanent

State.

593

The Princedom had grown in power and influence with the

campaigns of Natronai-Makhir’s son, the great Guilhelm de Toulouse de

Gellone, or William of Toulouse, into Spain. At this time, the Princedom

encompassed a vast area from the Rhone to the Albères of the Pyrenees,

including Nimes and Roussillon, and the Catalan counties in the March of

Spain. These Catalan counties were Gerona, Vich (Ausona), Urgel,

Pallars, Ribagorza and Barcelona.

594

Natronai-Makhir died in 793CE. His son Guilhelm de Toulouse

succeeded him. In turn, Guilhelm’s son Bernard of Septimania became

Prince.

595

Septimania then became a Jewish Kingdom, rather than the

Princedom, which thrived until the end of Carolingian rule.

The seed of David was to multiply in Southern France and

produce one of its most famous sons, Godefroi de Bouillon. Godefroi’s

admirers elevated him to a hall of fame called the nine nobles. The other

great warrior-kings in the hall of fame were Hector of Troy, Alexander

160

the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, Judas Maccabeus, David, King Arthur

and Charlemagne. In Crathes Castle, between Balmoral and Aberdeen in

Scotland, the 1602 owner asks (see Appendix 12):

Gude reder tell me or thou pass

Whilk of thir nyn maist Valliant was?

The nine nobles theme was popular amongst surviving Knights

Templar groups in Scotland. A number of castles depict the same theme

in their ceilings, including at Glamis in the Vale of Strathmore. The

theme derives from the beliefs of the Ishmaelite Assassins and the Druses,

the old followers of Tammuz.

596

The Druses are not orthodox

Mohammedans. Their heretical belief is that God constantly reincarnated

in a series of semi-divine prophets and warrior-kings, called Imam, and of

whom Christ was one but Mahomed was not. Only seventy

reincarnations occurred. The Druses believe that final reincarnation was

Hakim, the sixth Fatimate Caliph, after whom there can be no others. In

his second coming, Hakim, the Druze Messiah, will conquer the world.

The Assassins’ beliefs were similar except that the Assassins considered

their founder, Hassan, the Shiek-al-Jabul or Old Man of the Mountain in

Lebanon, to be one of the reincarnations. In Chapter 12 and Chapter 17,

we will see the importance of Mount Hermon in Lebanon. It is worth

adding that at Crathes, the room of the nine nobles leads directly into the

Green Lady’s room where the first image on the painted ceiling is that of

the Triple Goddess. The floor of this room contained a skeleton and this

led to legends that the ghost of girl carrying a baby haunts the room. At

Glamis, a Grey Lady haunts the strikingly unconventional chapel, which

has a magnificent window of St George and the Dragon.

On his father's side, Godefroi descended from the Merovingians

and on that of his mother and grandmother, the Carolingian. His

Carolingian grandparents bequeathed Godefroi the title of Duke of Lower

Lorraine. Storming the wall of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, Godefroi de

Bouillon was to shout the famous phrase expressing the Zaddoki belief

that they were the only legitimate High Priests of Jerusalem Deus

Meumque Jus, meaning God and my Right.

597

The thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite adopted Godefroi’s

motto. A gold ring worn by each member of the degree has the motto

engraved within it.

598

It is also the Latin version of the motto of the royal

arms of England Dieu et mon droit, adopted by Richard I the Lionheart at

the siege of Gisors in 1198.

161

Following Godefroi de Bouillon’s successful assault on the walls

of Jerusalem, he assumed the title of Guardian of the Holy Sepulcher.

This title was Godefroi's preference over King, an uncharacteristically

modest choice, continuing the tradition that there should be no king of

Israel until the second coming of the Messiah. His brother Baldwin of

Lorraine had no such inhibition. One year later, he became King Baldwin

I of Jerusalem. Oddly, the circumstances surrounding the death of the

glorious Godefroi de Bouillon remain a mystery to this day.

Hugh of Champagne and his vassal Hugues des Payens explored

Jerusalem in 1104 and in 1114. The second visit generated considerable

excitement. Thirty-three members of the Fontaine family of St Bernard

promptly joined the Cistercian Order. Hugh of Champagne donated land

to the Order for the Abbey of Clairvaux with similar enthusiasm. His

protégé St Bernard became Abbot of Clairvaux at the remarkable age of

twenty-five years. St Bernard’s father Tescelin belonged to the family of

Chevalier de Châtillion, who held feudal lordships in Burgundy and

Champagne.

599

His mother Aleth was of the house of the Dukes of

Burgundy.

Having successfully infiltrated the Church and established a

comfortable niche as Cistercians, the Melchizedek houses of Champagne,

Anjou, Gisors and Flanders arranged for nine knights to journey to

Jerusalem in 1118.

The knights chose St John as their protector and called their

Temple lodgings St John’s Hostel. They excavated the Temple’s

foundations under the patronage of King Baldwin II, a cousin of Baldwin

I. Hugh of Champagne joined the excavations in 1124CE.

The Church had thought it was welcoming the troublesome

Zaddoki-Melchizedek houses of France into the fold of Pauline

Christianity, just as the Celtic Church successfully enjoined in 625CE.

Instead, it had drawn fundamentalist, unshakeable heresy to its bosom.

The Melchizedek houses of France regarded the unusual treasure beneath

the Temple as their personal property. They set about recovering it for

their own purposes, as we shall see in Chapter 18.

The next chapter focuses on the tribe of Dan and its connection

with the Melchizedekians and Rosicrucians.

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Chapter 12 The Tribe of Dan

In his desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon and remarry, Henry

VIII lobbied the Pope on grounds of whether a man could marry his

brother's widow. To strengthen his case, Henry sent the secret agent

Richard Croke to Venice in 1529 to consult with the Jewish Rabbis and a

Christian Cabalist theologian called Georgi.

600

The Pope declined so Henry VIII wrenched the English Church

from him and declared himself both the supreme political and spiritual

leader of England. In the ensuing cold war with the Vatican, the English

monarch sought to justify his break from Catholicism by claiming a

legitimate Davidic spiritual destiny to uphold Christianity by divine right

– known as British Imperial Christianity.

Geoffrey of Monmouth had written that the kings of Britain were

descended from the Trojan Brutus.

601

The Tudors glorified Brutus’

descendant King Arthur as the epitome of British Imperial Christianity’s

kings who rule by divine right.

John Dee was the son of one of Henry VIII's court officials. Dee

believed that he too was descended from the ancient kings of Britain. He

believed that he was a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth I and it is true

that the Queen seemed indulge him, keeping him near as her personal

astrologer.

John Dee wove together the threads of British Imperial

Christianity from Trojan and Arthurian legends and the Hebrew Kabbalah

into the Elizabethan Rosicrucianism.

The real imperative in Elizabeth I’s time was to counter the forces

of Catholicism and finance the defense of Britain through Amsterdam’s

Jewish merchants and bankers. In 1290, Edward I had expelled the Jews

from England. To reunite the English in a common identity with the

Jews, Dee renewed the old legends of Britain’s Davidic heritage.

The first record we have of this new British-Israelite identity is

from John Sadler in 1649. In his book, Rights to the Kingdom, John

Sadler proposed that the English descended from Israel's ten lost tribes.

Sir Francis Bacon continued John Dee’s Rosicrucianism. He

discussed a new British-Jewish alliance in his book titled New Atlantis. It

was influential in having the Jews readmitted to Britain in 1664.

The Welsh Triads are among the earliest of all British records that

relate to the origins of the Celtic peoples. Although imperfect due to a

163

mixture of history and tradition, these writings give us much intelligence

respecting the aborigines of Britain. Eminent scholars support the

authenticity of these Triads.

However, we need to move to Ireland for much of Britain’s

sacred history. Ireland preserved ethnic legends due to an absence of

foreign invasions over many centuries, the continuity of tribal government

and the existence of a special class of sages, the Druids, whose duty it was

to maintain genealogies and keep alive the deeds of their ancestors. Their

ethnic legends are wonderfully colorful and broadly consistent with

western religion and archeology.

The Book of Invasions, or Lebar Gabhala tells of the arrival of the

five principal peoples: Partholan, Nemed, the Firbolgs, the Tuatha-De-

Danaan, perhaps the lost tribe of Dan, and the Scots or Milesians.

In Genesis, Jacob foretold what would befall each of the tribes.

Of Dan, he said:

602

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves

together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last

days … Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.

Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that

biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have

waited for thy salvation, O Lord.

The Tribe of Dan became lost to the Torah, along with that of

Dan’s female twin, Dinah.

603

Scholars characterize them as lost because

the Book of Chronicles omits to record their descendants.

604

Scholars normally mean the ten lost tribes when they refer to ten

tribes that the Assyrians dissipated in 721-718BCE. Judah was never lost.

The other tribe that was never lost was Dan. After Genesis, the Torah

simply excluded Dan.

The tribe of Dan originally entered the promised land of Israel in

the time of Joshua. They occupied a strip of coast country on the

Mediterranean, west of Jerusalem. From the beginning of their

settlement, they seemed to have played no major part in the internal

affairs of the new nation, but preferred to engage in shipping and

international commerce.

The Bible says they were principally seamen:

605

Dan abode in ships.

Deborah complained that the people of Dan preferred to remain

with their ships, rather than taking to the field of battle in order to assist

the other Israelites in the defeat of their enemies.

164

Dan, Asher and Naphtali began to participate with the maritime

enterprise of the Canaanite Phoenicians and it seems likely that inter-

marriage took place. Their ships of Tarshish (ancient Spain) created the

Golden Age of Phoenicia:

606

For the king's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram:

every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold,

and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. And king Solomon

passed all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom. And all the

kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his

wisdom, that God had put in his heart.

An entire chapter of the Bible lists the trading enterprises of the

Phoenicians and the numerous nations that shared in this commerce.

607

The Tribe of Dan expanded its territories by invading the north of

Israel, just above the Lake of Galilee:

608

The Danites took Kirjath-jearim, and called that place

Mahanehdan unto this day.

Six hundred Danites then took Laish:

609

And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for them:

therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem,

and took it and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their

father.

One can still visit the ancient city of Dan (or Layish) city in Tel

Dan Park, near Kiryat Shemona. The city contains the world's oldest

known arch.

The northern city of Dan or Mizvar Dan (Fort of Dan) was a

Canaanite sanctuary for the worship of Baal-Hermon.

610

The Greeks

called it Paneas because of the cavern where they worshiped the god

Pan.

611

Pan was their universal god and his name meant All Things

because he represented fertility. The meaning of Jor-dan is the going

down of the Dan and the Greeks thought the Jordan River rose in the

grotto of Pan.

612

Biblical authors dropped tribe of Dan because the tribe became

pagans. They inherited the tradition of pre-flood Canaanite Baal worship

from the descendants of Canaan who occupied the northern area of

Palestine at Mount Hermon. Canaan was the Phoenician hero Chnas.

613

The Danites captured the sacred idols of Micah including a silver

phallus that Micah set up in his house:

614

And the children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image;

and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his

165

sons were priests to the Tribe of Dan until the captivity of the

land.

These lines mean that for generations Moses' own grandson

Jonathan and his descendants acted as priests of idol-worship in Israel.

Jerome wrote of the Book of Enoch:

615

We have read in a certain apocryphal book that when the sons of

God were coming down to the daughters of men, they descended

into Ardos, which is the summit Mount Hermon.

For those interested in UFO theories, Mount Hermon is where it

all happened. Ancient legends attribute a sacred character to Mount

Hermon.

616

It was supposedly the residence of the children of Seth at the

beginning of human existence.

617

The Valentinians regarded these sons of

Seth as Sons of God who led a pious and secluded life on Mount Hermon,

musing about paradise.

618

Hermon is also the mountain of God, called Bashan:

619

The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the hill of

Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? This is the hill which God

desireth to dwell in; yea, the Lord will dwell in forever.

Modern surveys have located more than twenty temples on

Mount Hermon, an unprecedented number in comparison with other

regions of the Phoenician coast.

620

The Mount abounds with shrines to

the Canaanite goddess Asherah or Astarte.

621

This led the Church father Jerome to write that Hermon was an

anathema, by which he meant a forbidden place.

622

The name Hermon derives from the Laconian dialect for stone

heap.

623

Hermon is He of the stone heap. Archeologists discovered such

a heap of hewn stone within the ruins of a circular wall on one of the three

secondary peaks. In fact, all monumental walls and buildings built of

ashlars, or cut stones, represent Hermon. He is also equivalent to Hermes,

or Thoth-Hermes, the biblical Ham. Pan or Mercury was Hermes’ son.

The Druids formed circles from monoliths and piles of stones on

top of hills or mounds. They called these circles Si'un (Sions or Zions) or

Caers. During their rituals, the Chief Druid stood in the center of the

circle at the large, central Stone of the Covenant. The Irish called the

central stone Bethel, meaning the house of God. Each May-eve and first

of November the Druids built great fires on these Sions so the people all

around could see the flames.

624

The same may be true of the many folly-

towers in England.

166

The Bible does not state that David's throne will always be

located at Jerusalem; it may be at Mount Hermon. In 1868 the founder of

the Eastern Star, Robert Morris, wrote:

625

… my eyes can scarcely withdraw themselves from Hermon

soaring on my right hand. The expression in Isaiah v.26 occurs to

me with added meaning. The Great Illumer describes Jehovah

seated yonder on that lookout, from which all Palestine is clearly

spread before the eye.

The standard of the Tribe of Dan is very interesting. Jacob

compared Dan to a serpent and the serpent became the tribe’s totem.

However, Ahiezer son of Ammishaddai, the Captain of the tribe of Dan

whose initials are AA, shrank from carrying the serpent on his flag.

626

Dan’s standard became a white and red banner with the crest of a

two-headed bird bearing a serpent in its talons.

627

This mysterious two-

headed bird is often mistaken for an eagle. It is really the phoenix, which

signifies the immortality of the Priests of Order of Melchizedek.

628

This

Order has as its object the permanent and hereditary duty to worship the

Most High God El Elyon, Yaho or Yahweh.

629

Many examples of early

Danish and Irish jewelry show this Danite tribal symbol of an eagle

bearing a serpent.

We turn to the legends one of the earliest Diasporas to Ireland. In

2069BCE, Partholan and a band of Israelite warriors arrived from the

Greek world, overcoming the aboriginal forest tribes called the Tuatha

Feda.

630

This was probably the arrival of the early Bronze Age Picts, a

branch of the Goidelic Celts.

They settled at Inis Saimer, a small island in the River Erne, at

Ballyshannon. Most of the colony died of plague after fifty years. Their

graves are at Tallaght near Dublin. Those who did not die from plague

fled.

In 1739BCE, three hundred and thirty years after Partholan’s

arrival, Nemed arrived from Scythia with thirty ships, each carrying thirty

warriors.

The Chronicles of the Kings of Briton tells the same story. They

record that a chieftain called Barthlome arrived in Ireland from Spain

with thirty ships. Barthlome told the English king Gwrgant that his party

had originally come from Israel.

The Domestic Annals of Ireland record that Nemed’s Irish name

was Nin Mac Piel, meaning Ninus or Nimrod. Nimrod was the legendary

167

son of Bel or Belus, who is the Baal, Bel, or Belial of the Old

Testament.

631

Nemed laid claim to Irish soil but he also died from plague at a

mountain called Ard Nemeid, at Queenstown in Cork Harbour.

About two hundred and seventeen years after Nemed, the

Phoenician Formorians invaded Ireland.

632

Just as Nemed’s people

started to repel these Formorians, another leader called Morc arrived from

Africa with sixty ships and occupied the country.

Only one ship with thirty survivors escaped to Grecian Thrace.

Among them were three of Nemed’s descendants.

The next wave migrants were the Firbolgs, who are through to be

British. Their five chiefs landed at different sites, subdued the whole

country and ruled it from Leinster.

Then in 1456BCE, about thirty-six years after the Firbolgs, the

tribe of Dan arrived in ships, drove out other inhabitants and settled the

land. This was the lost tribe of Dan. The Irish call them the Tuatha-De-

Danaan or children of the Goddess Danu. They symbolized her with the

moon.

The Tuatha-De-Danaan defeated the Firbolg’s king Eochaid Mac

Erca and drove his people from the country. Thirty years later, they also

defeated the Formorians in a great battle.

Nemedian legend says the Tuatha-De-Danaan were Nemed’s

descendents triumphantly returning from Greece led by Ibath, grandson of

the prophet Iarbonel, and great grandson of Nemed.

The Irish legends consider the Tuatha-De-Danaan demi-gods and

teachers of wisdom. They possessed a grail-like vessel and founded the

Druidic priesthood.

633

Sometimes the Tuatha-De-Danaan appears as

Tuatha De, meaning the people of God.

The Psalter of Cashel records that:

634

The Tuatha-De-Danaan ruled in Ireland for about two centuries,

and were highly skilled in architecture and other arts from their

long residence in Greece.

These Tuatha-De-Danaan were Danite-Phoenician seamen from

the coast at Joppa who struck out in their ships and sailed west through

the Mediterranean to Ireland.

From 1100BCE to 800BCE, the Phoenicians monopolized the sea

trade routes in the Mediterranean area and beyond. They settled the

coasts of North Africa, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Spain and Britain. One

can still visit the gleaming marble, limestone and porphyry columns in the

168

ruined and deserted streets of beautiful Phoenician cities in present-day

Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

The Tribe of Dan named a great many places along the shores of

the Mediterranean, Ireland and Britain after their patriarch Dan. In

Ireland, they left names such as Dans-Laugh, Dan-Sower, Dundalk, Dun-

drum, Donegal Bay, Donegal City, Dungloe, Din-gle and Dunsmor,

which means more Dans. In Scotland, we find similar names such as

Dundee and Dunraven.

Linguists have long been aware of a great similarity between

Hebrew, Phoenician and the early Irish Celtic language. The name Dunn

in the Irish language means judge, the same meaning as Dan in Hebrew.

This is important because Jacob said that Dan would judge Israel and the

Book of Judges is the history of the tribe of Dan.

Samson was a Nazarite of the tribe of Dan. He judged Israel

during the period of Philistine domination. In Paradise Lost, Milton

describes Samson as the Danite strong.

The Mediterranean coast settlers became independent of the

parent Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia (Lebanon) and

founded the Carthaginian Empire. These Carthaginians demonstrate the

Phoenicians' colonizing urge. A Greek historian, Heroticus, recorded

Himilco the Carthaginian’s claim that in 500-480BCE the Carthaginians

transported thirty thousand men and women in sixty ships on a colonizing

venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

According to the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, King David

of Israel invaded Ireland to relieve the pressure from a drought in

1016BCE, near the end of his reign. His invasion of Ireland was

successful and imposed a new line of Judah Royalty on the Tuatha de

Danaan.

The Irish hypothesis is that King David himself established his

throne in Ireland where the Irish knew him as Ollamh Fodhla. Irish

writers have not been able to identify the nationality of this most famous

king of early Ireland but were aware that he had not been born in Ireland.

Ollamh Fodhla means chief poet, as was David and Taliesin. The

Chronicles of Eri say that the Olam (prophets) brought him up and that all

eyes delighted to look upon him and that all ears were charmed with the

sound of his voice.

635

This mysterious and wise king also reigned at the very same time

as King David, and for forty years, the exact same length of time that

David reigned in Israel. David reigned from 1056-1016BCE whereas the

169

Irish histories record that Ollamh Fodlah reigned from about 1052-1012

BCE.

According to Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, Ollamh Fodhla

was also a great warrior-king. He besieged the city of Tara and killed the

king. Ultimately, Gede’s son, Ariel (Irial in Irish) ruled from Tara.

Interestingly, three miles north of Tara Hill is an Irish town

named Dowd's Town, meaning David's Town or Settlement of David.

The local Irish maintain that Tara Hill is sacred as the burial place of a

famous Hebrew Princess called Tea-Tephi, of whom we shall have more

to say shortly.

Like King David, the Irish recognized Ollamh Fodhla as a great

sage and wise legislator. The Annals of Clonmacnoise record that the

town of Ulster (Ulladh) took its name from Ollamh Fodhla and describes

him as soe well learned and soe much given to the favour of learning.

Ollamh Fodhla established a famous school of learning at Tara,

which may be the Irish form of Torah.

636

He also established the Feast of

Tara. This autumn festival lasted seven days and was very similar to the

Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. The Irish also knew Ollamh Fodhla as a

Cohawyn or a Cohen.

Ollamh Fodhla organized the nation for efficiency. His

governmental body consisted of the king for administration, the priests as

the judicial branch, and the representatives from the common people as

the Congress, or legislative branch. Thus, the separated powers of the

three branches of modern democratic government hark back to Ollamh

Fodhla.

God honored good king Ollamh Fodhla when his sons:

… succeeded him one after another as kings of this land without

any other coming between them, which good never happened to

no other before him.

Conservative scholars suggest that Ireland is too far away from

the Middle East for David to have traveled there. However, the romantics

are certain that David visited this remote outpost of the empire, where

Israelite peoples had settled in the days since the Exodus and which was

close to Cornwall, as part of his tin trade.

The Assyrian empire was at its peak in 718BCE and its armies

threatened all nations on the eastern Mediterranean seaboard. These

Assyrians were a brutal, fearsome people who plundered everything of

value. Their wall murals, some of which are in the British Museum,

depict scenes of horrible savagery and torture. One shows the Assyrians

170

skinning men alive and impaling piles of men on poles outside the gates

of a city.

The Danites and Tyrian Phoenicians each contributed ships and

men to two great trading fleets.

637

The coastal colony of seafaring

Danites used their fleet to escape persecution by fleeing to Ireland.

The armies of Jabin, king of Canaan, and a large Syrian fleet

engaged the Athenian territories in daily battles. When the Syrians

vanquished the Greeks, the tribe of Dan that dwelt in Greece at the time

fled to up the ancient amber route to Lochlinn, which is Scandinavia. The

legends of Scandinavia mention that the inhabitants of Scandinavia

welcomed the people of the Tribe of Dan because of their many sciences

and arts.

Danmark, which we now call Denmark, took its name from this

contingent of the tribe of Dan. The Danes elevated Dan to the father of

the most famous of the Norse gods, Odin, and said that Dan was the one

from whom the pedigrees of our kings flowed in glorious series, like

channels from some parent spring.

We now return to Israel in the time of Babylon’s King

Nebuchadnezzar. He conquered Judea but allowed the Davidic King

Zedekiah to live. In 586BCE, Zedekiah rebelled and Babylon returned to

crush Judea. Nebuchadnezzar captured the royal family, executed

Zedekiah’s Sons and blinded Zedekiah. However, Nebuchadnezzar failed

to realize that King Zedekiah’s daughters inherited the connection with

the land under the ancient Israelite custom of ultimo-geniture.

At first Nebuchadnezzar imprisoned the prophet Jeremiah but

gave him food, cloths and money, and released him to travel anywhere he

wished.

638

Jeremiah escorted his nieces, King Zedekiah’s daughters, to

Mizpah, which is Fort Dan.

Jeremiah found no peace in Mizpah. The Ammonites captured

and carried away everyone including King Zedekiah daughters.

639

The

glorious Captain of Dan’s Guard, Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai, raised

a small army and drove off the Ammonites. He released Jeremiah and the

daughters. Jeremiah, together with his secretary Simon Brach, Zedekiah’s

daughters and a small remnant of Dan escaped to Ireland. This was

fulfillment of the prophecy that Zedekiah’s daughters would take root

downward and bear fruit upward, that is to settle somewhere and have

children.

640

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Jeremiah took Zedekiah’s daughters and, it is said, the Israelites’

coronation stone to Spain and thence to Ireland. In Spain, one of

Zedekiah’s daughters married into the Spanish royal family of Zaragossa.

Jeremiah arrived in Ireland in 569BCE as an elderly, white-haired

patriarch. The Irish histories sometimes call him a saint. With Jeremiah

was the Zedakiah’s young daughter Tea-Tephi or Tephi for short. In

1301CE the Scots pleaded a case to the Pope in which they referred to

legends of Tephi as Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh and wife

of a Scythian nobleman who was among the Egyptians that pursued the

Israelites to the Red Sea.

As mentioned in Chapter 6, the legend of Scota’s flight seems to

have come through Eusebius in 320CE. Eusebius knowledge was in turn

based on that of Euhemerus, a Greek historian that visited Manetho in

Egypt in 300BCE.

641

From comparison of Pharaohs’ names, it appears

the relavent Pharaoh is the controversial monotheist Akhenaten. Scota

may be the princess Meritaten, his second daughter by Nefertiti.

We mentioned Tea-Tephi, the princess buried at Tara Hill in

Ireland, earlier in the chapter. She is the same archetype as an earlier Tea,

a daughter of Ith, who lived in the days of David. Similarly, Eochaide

Herremon seems to be the same as Gede the Herremon of David's day

who married his cousin, Tea.

Jeremiah’s royal party included Eochaide, the son of the king of

Ireland. Legend says he was in Jerusalem at the time of the siege where

he had become acquainted with Tea-Tephi. Eochaide married Tea-Tephi

at Tara, shortly after 585BCE when the city fell.

Eochaide was a descendent of Zarah’s family while Tea Tephi

was of Judah’s Pharez line. David himself was descended from this

Pharez line of Jewish kings.

642

The Irish believe Jeremiah died in Ireland and lies buried near the

ruins of Devenish Abbey, on Devenish Isle in Lower Loch Erne, near

Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.

Tea Tephi gave Eochaide the prestige of a Davidic title.

Succeeding his father, Eochaide became High King of Ireland with the

title Herremon.

Eochaide and Tea-Tephi’s 12-year-old son accompanied them to

Ireland. He succeeded Eochaide on the throne of Ireland and the dynasty

continued unbroken through all the kings of Ireland.

Simon Brach, Jeremiah's scribe or secretary, also traveled to

Ireland with Jeremiah’s group. Various writers give Brach’s surname as

172

Breck, Berech, Brach, Brec or Berach. He seems to merit special

importance as the person who originally set down Jeremiah’s story. One

legend says he was son of the Spanish King and a descendant of the

Pharaoh’s daughter, Scota.

Jeremiah reputedly brought other remarkable things to Ireland

including a harp, an ark, and a wonderful stone called lia-fail, or the Stone

of Destiny. The Israelites crowned their kings either standing upon or

next to such a pillar of stone.

643

Many European countries such as

Sweden and Denmark also crowned their kings on a coronation stone or

within a circle of twelve stones.

King James I of England expanded his Royal Standard to include

Ireland’s harp of Tara. He also combined the flags of England, Ireland

and Scotland to become the Union Jack. King James VI of Scotland

ascended to the English throne as King James I on the death of his cousin,

Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. The British struck a gold sovereign (called a

unite) to celebrate the United Kingdom of England, Ireland and Scotland.

The Latin motto on the reverse side of the sovereign reads Faciam eos in

gentem unam, or I will make of them one people. This is a quote from

Ezekiel, where God spoke of uniting the lost tribes of Israel under the

throne of David.

644

The British also struck a special medal to commemorate Queen

Elizabeth II’s coronation on 2 June 1953. It depicts the arrival of the

throne at the British Isles. The English kept this Coronation Stone, Stone

of Scone, or Stone of Destiny, in the base of the coronation chair in

Westminster Abbey. The official Westminster Abbey guide labels the

Coronation Stone as Jacob's pillar-stone. Jacob laid his head on this

Stone when he had the famous dream of a ladder reaching to Heaven.

645

The Coronation Stone, which is a six hundred and seventy

millimeter long block of dull reddish sandstone weighing 152 kg, may

come from near the Dead Sea where such sandstone exists in Petra,

Edom. However, the Dead Sea is one hundred miles from the white

limestone at Bethel, where Jacob had his dream. This type of reddish

sandstone exists within a few miles of Scone in Perthshire.

The Irish crowned Tea-Tephi’s descendants sitting over the

Coronation Stone until the 5

century CE, when Fergus MacEarca of the

same royal line took the stone to Scotland. His army invaded Scotland

from its landing on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland. Scotland then

crowned its kings sitting over the stone until 1296 when King Edward I of

England placed it beneath the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey.

173

The English finally returned the mystical Coronation Stone to Scotland on

30 November 1996, St Andrew’s Day, in preparation for Queen Elizabeth

II to open Scotland’s new Parliament on July 1, 1999.

The Coronation Stone is very important to Danite Britain because

the Book of Daniel represents God’s kingdom as a stone.

646

Underling

the importance of the Coronation Stone was the precautions taken for its

safety in World War II. In 1940, when the German invasion threatened

England, the British Government removed the stone from Westminster

Abbey to a secret hiding place and sent the details of its concealment to

Canada’s Prime Minister.

The Scythian population also migrated to Scandinavia and

ultimately to Ireland. This began with the Assyrian captivity of the ten

northern tribes of Israel in 741BCE to 721BCE. The Assyrians took

twenty seven thousand people to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea,

which borders on Northern Iran. Cuneiform tablets of Sargon discovered

at the ancient Assyria capital of Khorsabad, north of Nineveh record:

I besieged and captured Samaria, and carried off 27,290 of its

inhabitants as booty.

The Bible tells of the same event:

647

Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and

went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year

of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel

away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the

river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

Some escaped. The gravestone inscription of a member of the

tribe of Naphtali, among many in the Crimea, records that the deceased

was one:

648

who went into exile with the exiles, who were driven away with

Hosea, the king of Israel.

The power of the Assyrian Empire began to wane after several

decades. In 679BCE, some of the captives broke away and escaped into

the mountains of Asia Minor.

649

In 675BCE, within forty-five years of Israel’s captivity, the

Scythians first appear in the Assyrian Annals of Esarhaddon:

I scattered the Mannaean people, intractable barbarians, and I

smote with the sword the armies of Ishpaki, the Iskuza alliance

with them did not save him.

174

These Iskuza or Scythians may be the survivors of the ten lost

tribes of Israel. As their influence increased, they conquered the Medes.

Herodotus relates that:

A battle was fought in which the Medes were defeated, and lost

their power in Asia, which was taken over in its entirety by the

Scythians.

However, they never returned to Israel. In the late first century

AD, Josephus noted that the ten tribes had not returned to Palestine:

650

… there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the

Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and

are an immense multitude and not to be estimated by numbers.

In 609BCE, the Medes defeated both the Assyrians and

Scythians. The Medes drove the Scythians into Southern Russia and

toward the West. According to Herodotus, these people of South Russia

and the area of the Caucasus during the seventh century BCE were the

Cimmerians. As we saw in Chapter 5, traditional histories hold that the

Cimmerians became the Cymry.

The Scythians prospered in Southern Russia for three hundred

years. In 250BCE, the Sarmatians drove them from just west of the Black

Sea into Western Europe. They followed the rivers to Saxony,

Scandinavia, England and Ireland.

As the Scythians moved westwards across Asia Minor and

Europe, so the territory of Scythia moved west with them. In Roman

times, Scythia was located in Scandinavia.

A late Irish antiquary says the Irish named a part Ireland

Gaethluighe, which is Gothland, from the Goths or Scythians who took

possession of it.

651

People in the north of Britain, called these Scythian

people Caledonians after the people of Calydon in Peloponnesian Arcadia

whose emblem was a boar.

652

Herodotus notes that the Persians called the Scythians by the

name of Sacae or Saka from the ancient Persian name for Israel.

653

The

ancient Saxons took their name from the sons of Sukai, the Sakai Suna or

Saksun. Of course, the name Saxon may also derive from Sons of the

Sword or the archaic Latin word for a large boulder or stone, saxum.

654

Herodotus also mentions that the Scythians had a reputation for

being drunk. He mentions that other nations would use the proverb to

pour out like a Scythian, which seems to have been the equivalent of the

later saying as drunk as a Templar.

175

The church historian Bede wrote how these Scythians arrived in

Northern Ireland:

655

… coming from Scythia in their long boats, and, being carried by

tempest to the northern parts of Ireland.

According to Bede, the local inhabitants were relations of the

newcomers and they persuaded them to move on and settle in Scotland.

Scotland received its name from these Scotia or Scythae. The

Scottish Declaration of Independence of 1320CE states that the Scottish

people of that period traced their ancestry back to greater Scythia, which

included the territory between the Black and Caspian Seas.

As with the Trojans, there is considerable commonality between

the customs of the Scythians and pre-Roman Britons. The Scythians

buried their king together with his horses and various objects of gold and

silver. Deep freeze conditions in Siberia have preserved even perishable

items such as carpets. From these tombs, archeologists have found that

ancient Scyths wore trousers, belts and pointed caps. In common with the

early Britons, they had long heads and a fondness for tattoos.

Object of art provide another clue to the association between

early Britons and Scythians. A student on St. Ninian’s Island discovered

a rich hoard of Celtic objects inlaid with gold, silver and enamel, with

typical Celtic Zoomorphic decoration.

656

In 1988, a young Russian

archeologist discovered an equally skillful cache of Scythian work,

carried out in exactly the same style, in a remote spot west of the Caspian

Sea.

657

Another interesting co-incidence is that Boudica, in her battles

against the invading Romans, used the ancient Scythian technique of

equipping chariots with scythe blades on the hubs.

658

The Milesian Scots that followed the Tuatha-De-Danaan into

Ireland descended from the itinerant ten Tribes of Israel.

659

The Book of Invasions says that they originated in the Cretan city

of Miletus, fled to Syria in the thirteenth century BCE, sailed to North

Africa, traveled to Compostela in North West Spain and thence to

Ireland.

660

Another legend in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, the

Milesian Scots were knights who arrived in Ireland in the time shortly

after the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt and the conquest of

Canaan.

The Milesian Scots may be the descendants of Zarah, David’s

brother, who migrated into northwestern Europe and thence to Ireland.

176

The insignia of the Milesians flag and coat of arms was a Red Hand. This

red hand is the symbol of Zarah, the first born of Jacob. He was the first

to emerge from the womb and the mid-wife placed a scarlet thread upon

his hand.

661

Ulster has adopted the Red Hand as its symbol and the Northern

Ireland flag includes it with the six-pointed Star of David.

The Milesians also traced their ancestry to Gad, who was one of

the sons of the patriarch Jacob. The leader of the tribe, Gadelius, was the

grandson of the king of Scythia.

The famous Sacred Banner of the Milesians, which they carried

to Ireland from Asia and southern Europe, showed a dead serpent and the

rod of Moses. This serpent symbol was the early family heraldic emblem

of the Israelite tribe of Dan.

662

For the legend of how the Trojan Brutus landed in Britain, we

turn to the patriarch Joseph in Egypt. Upon his death, the sons of Judea

ruled according to the blessing of Jacob. The Keltoi Israelites fell from

power and fled from Egypt to Troy, thence to Spain and London. The

line of Zarah, the first-born of Jacob, arrived in Ireland from the Near

East in the days of David.

Earliest Greek legends about the son of Belus, king of the

Spartans, give the story of Danaus who arrived in Greece with his

daughters by ship. According to the legend, Danaus shared the throne of

Egypt with his half-brother Aegyptus.

Aegyptus drove Danaus, his 50 sons and his 50 daughters from

Egypt. While the brothers established Jerusalem, the daughters, called the

Danaides, traveled to the Peloponnesus via Rhodes. This was the

expulsion of the Hyksos, which we investigated in Chapter 6.

Manetho, Diodorus Siculus and other classic authors identify

Danaus with Dan of Israel. Manetho said the final expulsion of the

Hyksos from Egypt included that of a people known as the Danaoi.

The Hyksos Israelites therefore conquered Greece and laid the

basis for Mycenaean civilization. The arrival of the Danaides is the story

of how the cult of the Mother Goddess and the agricultural orgies in the

Mysteries of Demeter, called the Thesmophoria, arrived in Greece from

Egypt.

663

In the course of the proceedings, the devotees carried in a

basket the severed genitals of the sacrificial king or his surrogate. The

Priestesses made their basket from wild asparagus and rushes, which were

sacred and tabooed for ordinary use.

664

The Spartans called their festival

177

the Helenephoria after the Goddess Helen.

665

The priestesses called her

basket a helene.

The Mysteries of Demeter became the established religion of the

Arcadians and over the years developed into the worship of Diana. In

recent times, the women of Aegina re-established this ritual, most likely

in the spirit of protecting their husbands from the Goddess (see Appendix

13).

There is an opinion that the Danaioi formed a peculiar military

class amongst the Mycenaean Greeks. Diodorus Siculus wrote:

666

They say that those who set forth with Danaus, likewise from

Egypt, settled what is practically the oldest city of Greece, Argos,

and that the nations of the Colchi in Pontus and that of the Jews,

which lies between Arabia and Syria, were founded as colonies by

certain emigrants from their country.

In the Peloponnesus, Danaus ascended the throne of Argos. In

honor of Danaus, the local Pelasgian-Ionian Greeks renamed themselves

Danaioi. Homer’s Illiad often refers to the early Greeks as Danaioi.

Strabo quotes Euripides:

667

Danaus, the father of fifty daughters on coming to Argos took up

his abode in the city of Inarchos and throughout Hellas (i.e.,

Greece). He laid down the law that all people hitherto named

Pelasgians were to be named Danaans.

Historians believe the Philistines are a Cretan people who became

the Greek Pelasgians. The term Pelast in early Greek inscriptions means

Philistine. These Pelasgians together with the Anatolian Ionians from the

west coast of Turkey, Aeolians and the Danaioi formed the great

Mycenaean civilization.

The Anatolian Pelopid people subsequently destroyed the

Mycenaean civilization and the Mycenaeans fled to the north where

history records them as Dorians. Herodotus confirmed that these Dorians

originally came from Egypt:

668

...in what follows I give the tradition of the Greeks generally. The

kings of the Dorians (they say) counting up to Perseus, son of

Danae … If we follow the line of Danae, daughter of Acrisius,

and trace her progenitors, we shall find that the chiefs of the

Dorians are really genuine Egyptians ...

The Mycenaean Danaioi and the Trojans were some of the many

Pelasgian speaking Sea Peoples that became itinerant at the collapse of

Suppiluliuma II’s Hittite empire.

669

The records of Ramesses III, show

178

that a collection of marauding peoples, including the Danauna and Pulesti,

moved down towards Egypt from the Aegean, through Palestine.

670

The

Danauna are the Danaans and the Philistines are the Pulesti that migrated

to Palestine.

After the 1100BCE, the Dorians returned and re-established their

suzerainty.

671

The Dorians referred to their re-ascendancy as the return of

the Heraclids, meaning the return of the sons of followers of Hercules.

Hercules was a hero of the Danaioi based on Samson, the judge-hero of

the tribe of Dan.

The Spartans so loved their king that they called themselves

Danaans, long before they adopted the name of Spartans. Like Samson,

they wore long hair as a symbol of magical significance and great

strength. The king’s hair represents the rays of the sun.

While the Spartans considered themselves part of the tribe of

Dan, there appears to have been a relationship between the Spartans and

the Jews. In the Apocrypha, the Spartans say:

672

Areus, king of the Spartans, to Onias, the high priest, greetings.

It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews

that they are brethren and are of the family of Abraham.

In the Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus adds to our knowledge of

the letter:

673

It is but just, therefore, that you, who are our brethren, should

send to us about any of your concerns as you please. We will also

do the same thing, and esteem your concerns as our own, and will

look upon our concerns as in common with yours. Demotoles,

who brings you this letter, will bring your answer back to us.

This letter is foursquare; and the symbol is an eagle, with a

dragon in his claws.

The symbolism in last sentence strongly suggests that the letter

applied to the tribe of Dan. This could be why Onias of Judah ignored it.

The Spartan letter followed the invasion of Jerusalem by the

Syrian general Antiochus Epiphanes. Onias subsequently died. His

successor, Jonathan, wrote a letter of reply to the Spartans of southern

Greece fifty years later. Josephus described this letter:

674

Jonathan the high priest of the Jewish nation...to the ephori and

senate and the people of the Lacedamonians (Spartans), send

greeting: When in former times an epistle was brought to Onias,

who was then our high priest, from Areus, one of your kings,

concerning the kindred that was between us and you, as the copy

179

subjoined attests. Onias received the envoy with honor, and

accepted the letter, in which a clear reference was made to

friendship and alliance. For our part, though we have no need of

these, having the consolation of the holy books in our possession.

We venture to send, to renew our fraternal friendship with you, so

that we may not become strangers to you, for a long time has

elapsed since you sent us the letter. We may say that constantly

on every occasion, at our festivals and on other appointed days,

we make a remembrance of you in the sacrifices we offer and in

our prayers, as it is right and fitting to remember brothers.

Homer’s Illiad described the founder of Troy as named Dardanus,

the son of Zeus. Dardanus’ grandson Tros, was the namesake of the

ancient Trojans and of their capital city, Troy. Tros had three sons: Ilus,

Ganymede and Assaracus. Priam was the ruler of Troy at the time of its

destruction. He was of the line of Ilus.

The Spartans lived in Laconia, near Arcadia, in the southern

Greek peninsula called Peloponnesus. Over the centuries, some of the

group migrated northeast across the Aegean Sea to build the ancient city

of Troy at Troad, or Troas, in Anatolia. The Greek name for these

Pelasgian speaking Trojans was Pelasgoi. As they came from Hittite

Wilusha (Ilios), they were also the Wiliosioi or Weshesh.

The Greeks believed the first man on earth was Pelasgus, ancestor

of the Pelasgians, who sprang from Boreas’ teeth in the soil of Arcadia.

675

Boreas, as the North Wind, represented the primeval fertility, the

spirit that fertilizes women, animals and plants.

676

Even until Roman

times, educated men believed mares could turn their hindquarters to the

North Wind and breed foals without the aid of a stallion.

677

The North

Wind Boreas subsequently became the serpent of Israelite and Egyptian

myth, constantly consorting with the Mother Goddess.

678

The despairing Trojan War began when Paris, a Trojan prince,

fell in love with Helen who was the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis.

679

Paris abducted Helen from her husband, the Spartan king. The

Mycenaean Greek Spartans waged war on the Trojans for a decade.

Finally, as legend records, the Spartans successfully employed the ruse of

the Trojan Horse. They rescued Helen, killed many of the Trojans and set

fire to the city.

In reality, the Trojan War was the final contest for control of the

mercantile trade routes, which began with the fall of Knossos in about

1400BCE.

680

The Trojan Confederacy blocked Mycenaean access to the

180

Black Sea. This meant the Trojans controlled trade in gold, silver, iron,

cinnabar, ship’s timber, linen, hemp, dried fish, oil and Chinese jade.

681

With the Trojan War lost in 1185BCE, the Trojan Confederacy

disintegrated and its people dispersed.

Druid traditions support this dispersion and a second Trojan

migration from Thrace, Greece and Asia Minor to Britain in 1115BCE.

682

Arriving in Britain, the Trojans from Hittite Wilusha became the Welsh.

After 449AD, wealas, the Anglo-Saxon word for foreigners, came to

mean the dispossessed Britons in their own land.

683

Brutus and his father were among the Trojan royalty who escaped

to Rome. Brutus returned to Greece after accidentally killing his father

while hunting. In Greece, he freed the Trojan slaves and liberated the

Trojan fleet. The he sailed to Hibernia where his Trojan brothers were

already ruling. In 1115BCE, Brutus arrived in New Troy, which later

became London. Britain derived its name from Brutus.

In 60BCE, at the beginning of the Roman conquest of Britain,

Diodorus Siculus confirmed that the Britains and the Trojans had

common customs:

The Britons live in the same manner that the ancients did; they

fight in chariots as the ancient heroes of Greece are said to have

done in the Trojan Wars -- they are plain and upright in their

dealings -- the island is very populous -- the Celts never shut the

doors of their houses; they invite strangers to their feasts, and

when it is over ask who they are and what is their business.

Some years after the end of the Trojan War, surviving Trojans

moved north and west from the Black Sea. They followed the Danube

River into Germany, Belgium and northern France, eventually settling in

the Austrasia region of the province of Lorraine. The Spartans who

migrated into southern France perhaps became the Merovingians.

As we saw in Chapter 4, the ancient Druidic histories record the

colonization of England by a megalithic Hyperborean Bear Race via the

Aegean, in the fourth millennium BCE. This migration reputedly

occurred because the Black Sea flooded Peloponnesian Arcadia.

The Druidic tradition holds that Britain was Alba, Albania or the

land of Albion. Albion was the tribe leader who led this fourth

millennium BCE migration from the Aegean to Britain. Upon their

arrival, the White Land of Albion became a special country of Apollo.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that the White Goddess, Leto, was born in the

White Land where there is a grand shrine dedicated to her son Apollo

181

because she bore Apollo there.

684

. He noted that the British regularly

sent the legendary Hyperborean Gifts to Delos, which was a sanctuary of

Apollo until the seventh century BCE. In Delphi, Apollo was worshipped

as the wolf Lykogenos, equivalent to the British god Bran.

685

Diodorus continued that britains inhabitants are in a sense

Apollo’s priests, an idea taken-up by Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum

Organum.

The White Cliffs of Dover and the white hills of Wessex provide

a straightforward explanation for the name Alba or white land.

686

Gaelic

speaking Celts from Gaul made crossed the English Channel at the

shortest point. They arrived at the White Cliffs and called their new home

Albion. Himilco the Carthaginian referred to Albion in c500 BCE but we

only know of this indirectly. Circa 366CE, Rufus Festus Avienus

translated the works of the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes. Eratosthenes

(c276 BCE) had recorded Himilco the Carthaginian’s claim that he sailed

through the Pillars of Hercules to a Sacred Isle, which lay near the Isle of

the Albiones.

Conventionally, the Pillars are thought to be Gibraltar but

Plutarch’s De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet (the face that appears in

the moon’s circle) suggests the Pillars are northwest of Britain in the

Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean near the Gulf Stream.

687

Aristotle said that the Pillars of Hercules were the Pillars of Briareus.

Homer’s Odyssey refers to them as the Pillars of Atlas.

688

Tacitus wrote

that in 12 BCE, Tiberius’ brother Drusus Germanicus sailed into the

northern seas to find the Pillars because rumour had it that the Pillars of

Hercules still existed.

689

He turned back because of terrible weather.

In the Odyssey, Homer’s Ogygia was a magical a paradise similar

to the Eden of Genesis:

690

Clear water gushed out from four aligned springs,

Close together but turning towards opposite sides;

All around there were soft meadows of violets and celery

In bloom. Even an Immortal coming here

Would be enchanted in admiring this and be delighted in his

heart.

Shakespeare featured a Faroe Island in his play The Tempest. It

may have been Prospero’s magical island but his daughter Miranda

symbolized the Goddess Calypso and she was really the source of his

power. As in Macbeth and Hamlet, Antonio was a usurping brother that

introduced the ancient tree battle between the Kerm King and Terebinth

182

King (see Chapter 14). Caliban was the ever-present wickedness often

represented by a dragon or serpent.

Geographers such as Ptolemy Avienus abbreviated Albion to

Alba. Gaelic speaking Scots, the original Celtic Britons, still refer to their

Scotland (the eastern Border country and Wales) as Alba. Caledonia,

from the Caledonii tribe, is the old name for Scotland north of the Firth of

Forth and Clyde.

The Welsh Triads also relate that all but two people, of the first

inhabitants of Britain drowned in a great flood. A ship, containing a man

and his family, along with a male and female of every living creature

were the only ones to survive the flood.

The Triads then mention the arrival of the Cymry or Kymry. This

name means the first race and later the British. As we saw in Chapter 5,

the Greeks knew them as Kimmerioi. Others called them Cambria or

Cumbria. They derive from the Welsh word Cymru, pronounced as

Kumry or Kumri. Assyrian texts give the Israelites the same name.

The Cymry came from ancient Albania, then located to the south

of the Caucasus Mountains and bordering the western coast of the

Caspian Sea:

There are three pillars of the nation of the Isle of Britain. The first

was Hu the Mighty, who brought the nation of the Kymry first to

the Isle of Britain; coming from that which is called Defrobani …

Defrobani is Dyffynbanu or Dyffynalbanu, the deep vales or

glens of Albania. This is the country between the Euxine (Black Sea) and

Caspian Sea.

691

The Norse called this place Asgerd, the traditional home

of their god Odin. They believed the city of Asgerd was located thirty

miles north of Lake Van, in very area where the Assyrians settled the ten

lost tribes of Israel.

The British associated the ancient legends of giant Cornish

megalithic builders with the Cymry. These giants shared similar mythical

traits to the Watchers of the Book of Enoch, who were the Nephilim and

their offspring with the Daughters of Man called the Anakim at the Danite

sanctuary of Mount Hermon.

The Cornish sources of tin, so famous in Roman times, came into

production in about 1000BCE. The chief Phoenician port in Britain and

the center of the tin trade was probably St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall,

which is Strabo’s Ictis. The Odyssey also mentions a market for bronze in

a country called Thamesis, which may correspond to the region of the

Thames estuary.

692

183

The early name of the British counties of Cornwall and Devon in

southwestern England was Dumnoni, or Danmoni. The historian William

Camden said Cornwall was:

693

That region which according to the geographers, is the first of all

Britain, and... was in ancient times inhabited by those Britains,

whom Solinas called, Dunmonii, Ptolomy (called) Damnonii, or

(as we find in some other copies), more truly Danmonil which

name … derived from the ever-continuing mines of tin in this

tract, which Britains call monia.

The name Danmonia derives from moina, a tin mine, and Dan,

the people who mined the tin. They nicknamed this ancient tin mining

region Dan’s tin mines.

Phoenician or Hebrew influence seems present in many ancient

place names in Cornwall. These include Baal Rock, Boswidden and

Chegwidden. The latter both mean house of the Jews. Ywedhyon,

meaning of the Jews, is a suffix in several place names.

The Welsh Chronicle, sometimes called Annales Cambriae, refers

to a region in Wales near St David's or Mnyw (Menevia) as St. David's

Moni Iudeorum. This may identify the area as a tin mining settlement of

the Israelite tribe of Judah.

The Vetus Chronicon Holsatiae says the Saxons, Danes and Jutes

are Jews of the tribe of Dan.

694

These other Scythian groups arrived after

the Roman occupation.

In about 800CE, Nennius traced the Saxons back to Scythia. In

his account of the arrival of the Saxon leaders Hengist and Hrosa on the

Isle of Thanet, Nennius mentions that they sent their messengers to

Scythia for reinforcements.

Earlier in this chapter, we saw that Herodotus noted the Persians

called the Scythians by the name of Sacae or Saka from their ancient

name for Israel. The Saxons also attributed their own origin to the

territory in which the exiled lost ten tribes settled. Strabo confirms the

tradition that Sukasuna was part of the Roman province of Armenia.

The opening paragraph of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also says of

the earlier Celtic inhabitants of Britain, whom the Anglo-Saxons

displaced:

The inhabitants of this land were Britons, they came from

Armenia, and first settled in the south of Britain.

In addition, Milton says:

695

184

They (the Saxons) were a people thought by good writers to be

descendants of the Sacae, a kind of Scythians in the north of Asia,

thence called Sacasons, or sons of Sacae, who with a flood of

other northern nations came into Europe, toward the declining of

the Roman Empire.

When the Saxons invaded the British Isles, they established towns

with the Dans, Dons and Duns names such as Dundee and Dunraven in

Scotland. They are as prolific in Scotland as in Ireland.

We turn now to theories that the famed seamen of Dan reached

America. In the days of Oliver Cromwell, Mennaseh ben Israel

maintained that the descendant of the lost ten tribes of Israel were to be

found among American Indians. Mennaseh ben Israel was a Dutch

Cabalist Rabbi who petitioned Cromwell for the return of Jews to

England. The Mormons later revived his ideas.

In a public speech on May 10, 1844, Joseph Smith described how

he envisaged the Mormons as part of the kingdom of Dan:

I calculate to be one of the instruments of setting up the kingdom

of Daniel by the word of the Lord, and I intend to lay a

foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.

A Mormon group called the Dannites, or Sons of Dan, was

particularly active in Missouri. They developed the reputation of hard

men, which mirrored that of the early Danites in Greece. Originally, the

Mormons called this group the Daughter of Zion but later changed its

name to Dannites and more recently to the Strengthening the Members

Committee.

Mormon Elders formed a Priesthood of Melchizedek. They

claimed that in 1829, Peter, James, and John of the New Testament

appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and gave them the keys of

the Melchizedek Priesthood, which they had supposedly received from

Jesus.

The Mormons believed that sea-borne Israelites traded with

America, exploiting copper resources in the period from 1000BCE to

800BCE. To substantiate his belief, Joseph Smith sought evidence in red

Native American burial mounds. He found many bronze and copper tools

in the mounds, although the American Indians did not make bronze.

Radiocarbon dating of American copper working to 2000-1000BCE may

in fact be consistent with visits by Phoenicians and Israelites.

Plutarch provides a surprising confirmation that some of these

primitive Bronze Age seafarers may have found and settled the coast of

185

America in a time called the Atlantic period (5500-2000BCE) when the

climate was mild.

696

In De Facie quae in orbe lunae apparet (the face

that appears in the moon’s circle) he wrote that:

697

There are other islands beyond Ogygia [the Faroes] that are at

the same distance from one another.

Further across the great ocean:

One reaches the great continent which surrounds the ocean …

The coast of the continent is inhabited by Greeks along the shores

of a gulf having at least the size of Meotis, which flows into the

sea at about the same latitude as the mouth of the Caspian Sea.

The call themselves ‘the Continentals’.

Plutarch’s gulf with the size of Meotis, nowadays known as the

Sea of Azov, aligns with the Canadian Gulf of St Lawrence. The early

settlers were cut-off when the climate deteriorated in the Sub-Boreal

Period (2000-500BCE), whose peak in the middle of the second

millennium BCE corresponded with the Iron Age.

698

During this period,

the glaciers advanced and the ocean became wild and impassable. In

about 1300BCE the temperature began to rise again, which culminated in

the warmer Medieval Period around 1000CE when the Leif Eriksson

ventured once more to the continent he named Vinland. The cold set in

once more in 1200CE and the North Atlantic route quickly became

blocked. The temperature reached a minimum in the 18

century CE and

is now warming-up again.

The legends of Danites expand Irish history in a colorful and

romantic way. As we have seen, the legends form the basis of British

Imperial Christianity. Monarchial British Israelism and Radical British

Israelism follow as developments of the theme.

Radical or Postmillennial British Israelism builds a controversial

prescriptive paradigm around these same legends in quite a different way.

Radical British Israelism began with Jacques Abbadie. He was a French

Huguenot whom William of Orange elevated to Dean of Kilaloe in

Ireland in recognition of his support. In 1723, Abbadie published a book

Triomphe de la Religion in Amsterdam, which said:

699

Unless the ten tribes have flown into the air ... they must be

sought for in the north and west, and in the British Isles

Richard Brothers (1757-1824), a Canadian, applied these ancient

prophecies in a new radical paradigm. He sought to prove that before

Christ returns the English and Americans would establish the Kingdom of

God on earth. Later he received a vision that he was a descendant of King

186

David and the English were Israelites. Brothers’ delusion increased and

he claimed the right to be king of England. In short shift, King George III

convicted him of treason and confined him to an asylum.

Modern adherents of Radical British Israelism now draw on

Herbert W. Armstrong’s popular but controversial book The United States

and British Commonwealth in Prophecy where he promotes the

hypothesis that:

700

Our white, English-speaking peoples today--Britain and America-

-are actually and truly the Birthright tribes of Ephraim and

Manasseh of the lost House of Israel.

Some fundamentalist Christian groups and the Klu Klux Klan

promote Radical British Israelism along with the Protocols of the Elders

of Sion to provide divine justification for their anti-Semitic, or rather anti-

Judaic racial theories.

The key radical theme is that Biblical prophesies prove that the

tribe of Dan will judge Judah, which means today’s Jews. Jacob’s

deathbed prophesy is the most important of these:

701

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves

together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last

days … Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.

Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that

biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.

The second most important prophecy came from Ezekiel. He

prophesized the overturning of David’s throne:

702

And thou profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come,

when iniquity shall have an end, Thus saith the Lord God;

Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the

same: exalt him that is low, abase him that is high. I will

overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he

come whose right it is; and I will give it him.

Ezekiel lived around 600BCE and was a contemporary of

Jeremiah. God caused him to prophesy the downfall of the kingdom of

Judah of that time, Jerusalem and the land of Israel. He prophesied a

foreign invasion of the sword would come against Judah:

703

Let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the slain.

Scholars point out that Ezekiel’s prophecy applied to ancient

King Zedekiah, who Nebuchadnezzar conquered in 586-587 BCE.

Nebuchadnezzar executed Zedekiah’s sons and Zedekiah never regained

the throne. From that time, there has been no Davidic king of Judah

187

reigning over the Jews. Therefore, the throne was literally overthrown

three times in Judah, in 607-604, 597-596, and 587-586 BCE, just as

Ezekiel’s prophecy stated.

704

However, there has been no Davidic king sitting on that throne

ever the time of King Zedekiah and no king has sat on David's throne in

Jerusalem. For all practical purposes, the Davidic monarchy ceased to

exist in Israel.

However, the prophecy goes on: it shall be no more, until he

come whose right it is. British-Israelites teach that this passage refers to

the period after God sent the nation of Judah into captivity and punished

the wicked King Zedekiah of Judah. God used Jeremiah the prophet to

take the King Zedekiah’s Daughters to Ireland, where one of them

married into another royal line of Judah, Prince Herremon, and thus

David's line continued in Ireland. The radical British Israelites say that

was the first overturn.

The second overturn occurred when God moved the line to

Scotland. The third overturn was when God moved it from Scotland to

England. The Radical British Israelites claim David’s line will not be

overturned again until Jesus returns, whose right it is to sit on the throne

of His father David.

705

To the Radical British Israelites, Psalm 89 confirms that God

would not cut-off David’s descendants throughout the ages.

706

Furthermore, they say God promised David that his throne would endure

forever without any conditions or reservations. This means that the

throne of David would not cease to exist with the overthrow of King

Zedekiah but continue somewhere on this earth. They say this was in

Ireland, then in turn in Scotland, England and America.

In the context of these prophecies, the Radical British Israelites

interpret Samson's famous riddle as a prophecy that the descendants of the

tribe of Dan will one day destroy the tribe of Judah:

707

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth

sweetness.

From the carcass of the lion symbolizing Judaism, the tribe of

Dan symbolized by bees will produce a Golden Age symbolized by

honey:

708

And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to

see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of

bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And he took thereof in

his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother,

188

and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he

had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion.

The tribe of Dan has always been complementary to that of

Judah. During the Exodus, Aholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of

Dan had the same Master’s position as Bezaleel:

And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of

Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are

wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I

have commanded thee. The tabernacle of the congregation, and

the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and

all the furniture of the tabernacle.

709

In the wilderness: the standard of the camp of Dan shall be on the

north side by their armies: and the captain of the children of Dan

shall be Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai.

710

Jacob had said Judah was the old lion’s whelp:

711

Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up:

he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who

shall rouse him up?

Nevertheless, just before his death, Moses prophesied that the

new lion’s whelp was the strong young lion of Dan:.

712

Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan.

Psalm 22 echoes this, and in addition emphasizes the unicorn

totem of the tribe of Ephraim:

713

Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have

beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a

ravening and a roaring lion...Save me from the lion's mouth: for

thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

At the time of Solomon, the Danites were still a parallel force to

Judah. They exceeded Judah in skills of architecture and the arts, sending

Hiram to build the Temple. Hiram was the son of a woman of the

daughters of Dan:

714

And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding,

of Huram … The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his

father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in

brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in

fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving,

and to find out every device which shall be put to him, with thy

cunning men, and with the cunning men of my lord David thy

father.

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In summary, Jacob had said Dan would judge, Moses continued

that Dan would be the new lion and Samson the Judge that he would eat

from the carcass of the old lion’s whelp.

Obviously the Judah's Rabbi were not ignorant of Dan's

prophesies. Neither were they comfortable with the prophecy of

Jeremiah, which separates the children Israel from those of Judah.

715

Jeremiah says the Danite Messiah will judge of the sins of Judah. He

adds that this Messiah will reign from the territory of Mount Hermon

(Sion) in Dan rather than Mount Zion in Jerusalem:

716

And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come

out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from

Jacob.

This sequence of prophesies made the Church fathers such as

Irenaeus and Hippolytus very uneasy about Dan.

717

They developed a

novel theory that the Antichrist and Dan were one. This was because Dan

worshipped idols, Dan would judge the Jews and because the snorting of

His horses was heard from Dan.

718

Earlier in this chapter, we saw that God placed Dan in the north

because of its idolatry:

Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt

therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel …

Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold,

and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem:

behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land

of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in

Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship

before the one, even unto Dan … And he made an house of high

places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were

not of the sons of Levi.

719

They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan,

liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall,

and never rise up again.

720

The Church fathers saw their conspiracy theory confirmed in the

Book of Chronicles, which omitted Dan from the tribes of the children of

Israel.

721

Irenaeus suggested that this meant that Dan would not be among

the one hundred and forty four thousand saved ones of the twelve tribes in

the Apocalypse.

722

The full text of Jeremiah had said that the serpents of Dan and

cockatrices would bite the people:

723

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We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health,

and behold trouble! The snorting of his horses was heard from

Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his

strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and

all that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein. For, behold,

I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be

charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.

Isaiah added to the worry of the Church Fathers by repeating that

the cockatrice and serpent would scourge the land of Israel. He said:

724

Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that

smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth

a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent … Howl,

O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there

shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his

appointed times.

Jeremiah went further to say the whole land would be desolate:

725

For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from

mount Ephraim …I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a

wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the

presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the

Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a

full end.

Little wonder indeed that the Rabbis of Jesus’ time were highly

antagonistic to a potential Messiah who prima facie fulfilled the

prophecies of a Danite Messiah.

The Rosicrucians, of whom we shall have much more to say in

Chapter 17, championed the survival of the Danites, Nazarenes and

Melchizedekians. In theory, they also look forward to the second coming

of the Messiah.

Their Rosicrucian symbol is the phoenix of Dan, the mysterious

two-headed bird now called an eagle in Freemasonry.

726

As we have seen

in this Chapter, it symbolizes the immortality of the Priests of

Melchizedek. The standard of the tribe of Dan was red and white with

this phoenix crest.

The two-headed eagle emblem is often depicted in the colors of

the Tribe of Dan, red and white.

727

The presiding officer in the thirty-

third degree ceremony of the Scottish Rite robes in the manner of this

crest. He dresses in crimson silk, edged with white fur and holds a drawn

sword in his hand.

728

The officer represents heroic Ahiezer son of

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Ammishaddai, Captain of the children of Dan, who placed the serpent

killer, the phoenix, on the crest of Dan.

729

In Chapter 16 we shall see the importance of Ahiezer son of

Ammishaddai’s initials AA in secret Rosicrucian symbolism. Another

important AA archetype existed in the tribe of Dan at the time of Exodus.

As we have seen, this was Bezaleel’s fellow artisan, Aholiab son of

Ahisamach.

730

In the context of the enigmatic Rosicrucian thirty third degree, it

is interesting to note that the city of Dan and the nearby sacred Mount

Hermon both lie at approximately 33° longitude and 33° latitude

according to the French Zero Meridian in Paris. In 1884, by convention

the Greenwich Zero Meridian replaced the traditional French Zero

Meridian, which moved the longitude of Mount Hermon to 35.5°.

The existence in Rosicrucianism of the Danite philosophy, the

interpretation of ancient prophecies about the Second coming of Jesus,

and the radical philosophy of man establishing God’s kingdom on earth

before the Messiah returns, suggest an interesting conclusion. This is that

John Dee’s Elizabethan Rosicrucianism carries forward the ideals of

Monarchial British Israelism into a plan to fulfill prophecies of assisting a

Danite Messiah judge Judah from his seat at Mount Hermon. Fortunately,

the modern organization does not seem to carry this into the pitfalls and

racial bigotry of Radical British Israelism.

We now turn to examine the philosophical building blocks of

hermetic thought through the history of the great Corpus Hermeticum.

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Chapter 13 Corpus Hermeticum & Gnosticism

George Gemistos, known as Plethon, ran a Neoplatonist School in

Mistra in the Peloponnese.

731

In 1438CE, with the encouragement of

Cosimo de Medici, Plethon relocated his Platonic studies to Florence.

There he was outside the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and he

established a humanist movement with a belief in universal Platonic

religion.

Although Plethon never mentioned the Corpus Hermeticum, he

declared that within a few years the whole world would have one and the

same religion. This was not to be the faith of Christ or Mohammed, he

said, but another faith, which is not so different from the faith of the

Gentiles.

Shortly afterwards, in 1463CE, Cosimo de Medici’s scholar

Marsilio Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin.

732

The idea

that God had spoken directly to the pagan Egyptians, Sabians and Greeks

ignited intellectual Europe:

733

That God, however, has not cared for the Hebrews only, … The

Egyptians, counting up of their own race the names of not a few

sages, can also say they have had many who followed in the steps

of Hermes. I mean of the Third Hermes who used to come down

to them in Egypt. The Chaldeans also tell of the disciples of

Oannes and Belus, and the Greeks of tens of thousands who have

the Wisdom from Cheirion. For it is from him that they derived

their initiation into the mysteries of nature, and their knowledge

of divine things …

The Corpus Hermeticum that fell into the hands of Cosimo de

Medici was probably the personal copy of Michael Psellus, spirited away

from Constantinople in 1453CE before the Arabs captured the city.

Michael Psellus received this same copy from the Sabians of Harran in

1055CE.

The Corpus Hermeticum is composed of Greek writings

attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It is apparently a collection of

doctrinal and inspirational writings by several authors, as is the Bible.

734

The Corpus Hermeticum has a number of key themes. These include the

absolute goodness of God who is both One and All; self-revelation of the

Divine Mind in the cosmos; the universe as an emanation of living beings

193

in hierarchical order; a unique constitution of the human being as

microcosm; the way to regeneration; and a direct knowledge of God.

The close similarity of these themes with those of the Phoenician

School of Philosophy of Elea, in southern Italy, which prospered two

thousand years earlier, argues for their antiquity. Xenophanes of

Colophon founded the School of Elea in 536BCE. His pupils included

Parmenides and Zeno of Elea who developed the concept of metaphysics.

Xenophanes’ hermetic philosophy underlies that of Plato and

Aristotle. It refers to a real but secret initiatory tradition.

735

Xenophanes

advocated a single non-human deity underlying and unifying all worldly

phenomena. He satirizes the polytheistic manlike deities created by the

Greeks as athletic reflections of themselves. Some of the major points of

his doctrine taken from fragments gathered by Theophrastus are:

There is one God only, supreme among gods and men; neither in

form nor thought like mortals.

He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over.

But without toil he sways all things with his mind.

And he abides ever in the same state, moving not at all, nor does

it befit him to move about.

There never has been nor will there ever be a man who has clear

knowledge of the gods, nor of those things of which I speak; for

even if he does chance to say what is right, yet he himself does

not know that it is so. There is nothing but opinion everywhere.

A delightfully incisive rabbinical expression of this is:

God is ineffable; all the rest is man’s cleverness.

Both Greek philosophy and a free experimentation with Arabian

alchemy underpinned the doctrines of the Corpus Hermeticum. Both

components of the Corpus found a fertile environment in Renaissance

Italy and Europe. A minimalist summary of the doctrine was set down in

a treatise called the Emerald Tablet. It is brief to the point of obscurity.

We shall understand it better in Chapter 16 where we look at the hermetic

document Virgin of the World in an expanded alchemical context.

The Emerald Tablet is part of the Lost Wisdom of Lamech.

736

Lamech’s three sons were Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-cain, respectively a

mathematician, a mason and a metalworker. The sons preserved the

ancient wisdom of creative science on two pillars called the Antediluvian

Pillars. Hermes Trismegistus supposedly discovered one of these pillars

and transcribed its sacred geometry onto the Emerald Tablet. Pythagoras,

who came to prominence at Crotona in 529BCE, reputedly inherited the

194

Tabula Smaragdina

Hermetis Trismegistri

Philosophorum patris

1. Tis true without lying, certain & most true.

2. That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is

like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.

3. And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one:

so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

4. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,

5. The wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nourse.

6. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.

Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.

7(a) Seperate thou the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross

sweetly wth great indoustry.

8. It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it desends to the earth

and receives the force of things superior & inferior.

9. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world & thereby all

obscurity shall fly from you.

10. Its force is above all force. ffor it vanquishes every subtile thing &

penetrates every solid thing.

11(a) So was the world created.

12. From this are & do come admirable adaptations whereof the means

(Or process) is here in this.

13. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the

philosophy of the whole world.

14. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished &

ended.

See the ffrench Bibliothèque. Theatrum Chemicum Volume 6, P. 715, & Vol 1

p362 et p8 et p166 & p 685 et Volume 4 p 497.

195

tablet and discovered the second pillar.

The Emerald Tablet has been translated many times from Arabic,

Latin, allegedly from Chaldean and Phoenician, from French and even

from a purported Chinese original. Many say it contains the whole of the

alchemists' art. The inset provides a 1680 translation by Sir Isaac

Newton.

737

The Emerald Tablet is still the earliest of all alchemical works in

the West. It first appeared as the Kitab Sirr al-Asar, a book of advice to

kings of eight hundred CE.

738

Johannes Hispalensis translated this book

into Latin about 1140CE.

739

The earliest alchemical text in Chinese is the second or third

century BCE book XXV of Han-Shu in which Li Chao-Kiun tells the Han

dynasty emperor Wu-Ti how to change cinnabar dust into gold. In

142CE, Wei Po-yang wrote the next alchemical Chinese text Ts'an T'ung

Ch'i. It refers to alchemical experiments and using gold to extend life.

The color of emerald green holds a great fascination. The colour

is a kind of optical balm.

740

Pliny said no colour has a more pleasing

appearance.

741

If the Emerald tablet really existed, it was probably rock

crystal dyed emerald with copper sulphates. Diodorus noted that rock

crystal could be baptized in divine fire to create a smaragdos, an artificial

emerald.

742

The Wizard’s emerald city in L Frank Baum's The Wonderful

Wizard of Oz demonstrates its enduring delight. However, it is as well to

remember that the Greeks and Egyptians used the term we translate as

emerald to apply to gem quality emeralds as well as green granite and

green jasper. In medieval times, the emerald table of the Gothic kings of

Spain was made of emerald green glass.

743

Another green glass dish, the

Sacro Catino, is said to have belonged to the Queen of Sheba and been

used at the Last Supper.

Although it is wonderfully romantic to think of the Emerald

Tablet as a sparkling gem, the green color simply symbolizes Wisdom.

The Emerald Tablet is a formula of alchemy and messianic resurrection

theology. It is closely associated with the alchemical Green Lion of the

Philosophers’ Stone.

The discovery of the Corpus Hermeticum inextricably joined such

diverse pursuits as hermetic philosophy, alchemy, industrial chemistry,

glass making and medicine. Furthermore, the clandestine, scientific, anti-

papal nature of these liberal arts disintermediated the Church from

scientific pursuit based on inductive and deductive logic, and so

196

encouraged all sorts of more radical and heretical religions. One heresy

in particular, radical or extreme Gnosticism, led to many violent deaths.

The difference between Hermeticism and Gnosticism was far

more than terminology. Hermeticism conceived man as a rough stone,

the rude material for perfection. A philosophical chisel knocked-off his

rough edges, crafting him as a perfect human for the cosmic Temple. It

was analogous to the stonemason producing a perfect cubic ashlar for a

worldly Temple. This was the work of the supreme creator and goes back

to Plato's Demiurgos.

744

Hermetic beliefs were uplifting and life

affirming. Man is the image of the macrocosm and his body is the

garment and weapon of his soul.

745

The body is an essential and

indispensable part of the Good Creation. Celibacy and asceticism are not

revered but consistently renounced. Cosmic Zoroastrianism holds the

same belief.

Radical Gnostics, such as Manichaeists and Cathars instead

absorbed naive dualism, which lacked order from a vertically integrative

element. Scholars also call this Radical Gnosticism anti-cosmic dualism.

Through this odd framework, they perceived the radical Demiurge, or god

of the material world, was the god of the Old Testament Yahweh. The

Gnostics regarded him as mad and evil in the same way as the Egyptian

Set and Zoroastrianism Ahriman was intrinsically evil. The major

similarity was that both Yahweh and Ahriman received the material world

until the End-time.

Radical Gnostic religions twisted the elegant duality of pure

Zoroastrianism, called Monarchical or Cosmic Zoroastrianism into a

delaminated and intrinsically anarchical framework. They regarded the

material world and the body as bad and the soul as good. As the body

was bad, procreation was abhorrent. Death was welcome as a casting

away of worldly baggage.

746

This ascetic existence is the complete

antithesis of hermetic belief.

Today, we occasional see a cult falling into the same radical

Gnostic quicksand of soul is good and body is bad. In the 1990s, this led

to mass suicides in the Order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate.

The seeds of the association of body with evil seem to have arisen

with the Thracians who strongly believed in the beauty of death and

immortality of the soul.

747

They celebrated death in their Dionysian or

Bacchic Mysteries. However, the Thracians showed legendary bravery

on the battlefield because of this preoccupation with death. This

characteristic was so attractive to the kings of soldier states that it became

197

a state religion. It crystallized into the Greek Mysteries of Orphism, the

Eleusian Mysteries and even the Pythagorean movement.

748

The Radical Gnostics had their own form of the Emerald Tablet

called the pearl of great price. The Ethiopian Legends of Our Lady sets

out their belief:

749

Hannah, Mary and Sophia were three sisters and Hannah was the

Virgin Mary's mother. 'The Virgin first came down into the body

of Seth, shining like a white pearl.' Then successively entered

Enos, Cainan .. Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah ..

Abraham, Isaac, Joseph .. David, Solomon .. and Joachim. 'And

Joachim said to his wife Hannah "I saw Heaven open and a white

bird came therefrom and hovered over my head". This bird had

its being in the days of old .. It was the Spirit of Life in the form of

a white bird and .. became incarnate in Hannah's womb when the

pearl went forth from Joachim's loins and .. Hannah received it,

namely the body of our Lady Mary. The white pearl is mentioned

for its purity, and the white bird because Mary's soul existed

aforetime with the Ancient of Days .. Thus bird and pearl are

alike and equal.' From the Body of Mary, the pearl, the white

bird of the spirit then entered into Jesus at the Baptism.'

In Europe, the Papacy called the Radical Gnostic-dualist tradition

the Great Heresy of the Bogomils. The origin of the Bogomils is still

unknown. They emerged from the Indo-Hittite crucible and developed

close ethnic and cultural affinities with the northern Iranians. By the

seventh century CE, their great Bulgarian Empire spread from the

Ukraine to the Adriatic and Albania.

750

The Ottomans eventually

conquered this empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE.

Misrepresentation was common ploy in the Roman Catholic

Church’s struggle to eradicate competing strains of Christianity. Their

accusations of buggery vilified the Bogomils. If the accusations had any

basis, it may have been the infamous ritual kiss in ano practiced by a

number of esoteric societies to inculcate humility. Even today, the

Bulgarians remain smeared with the accusation of this unnatural vice. In

stark contrast to this reputation, the Bogomils may well have been the

greatest puritans of the Middle Ages.

The real sin of the Bogomils was to claim they represented the

true and hidden church, the Nazarenes of Bethlehem and Capernaum.

751

Underlying this dangerous claim seems to have been the legitimacy of the

Melchizedek tradition as with the Cathars in Southern France. To the

198

Roman Catholic Church, this was as alarming as the worst of the Gnostic

heresies, radical Manichaeanism.

752

The difficulty for all religious interpreters of the Great Heresy of

the Bogomils is that the cosmic strand (three are one) and the anti-cosmic

strand (one versus one) of Zoroastrianism are enormously convoluted.

Generally, the omnipotent God is Good, except in the Jewish Talmud

where he is both good and bad in the sense of being vengeful and

unpredictable. The second son is also Good except again in the Jewish

Talmud, which does not recognize him at all. The Qumran Covenanters

recognized Michael instead.

Satan is the real conundrum. Interpretations range from the

respected agent of God (the Accuser in the Jewish Talmud) to a son of the

Good God turned bad by his own choice, to a son of the Good God bad by

design, further to the bad son of an intrinsically bad primordial god.

Finally, Satan is a bad primordial god himself, the Devil of the New

Testament. To complicate things even further the Old Testament changes

its view of Satan at I Chronicles. At this point, Satan transforms from

Yahweh's subordinate into the evil, archenemy of God.

753

Finally, to

complete the mad mélange, the radical Gnostics identified Yahweh as

Satan.

In all this confusion of dualism, the Roman Catholic Church was

unable to differentiate between the various sects and eventually

condemned the Bogomils and Cathars alike as Persian Manichaeists. The

Cistercian papal legate Arnald-Almaric, General of Cîteaux, encapsulated

this at Béziers in 1209CE with his infamous order:

… kill them all, the Lord will look after his own.

Arnald-Almaric became Commander-in-Chief of the Albigensian

crusade when the King of France declined this doubtful honor. After

murdering seven thousand catholic women, children and priests

celebrating a Eucharist in St Mary Magdalene, Arnald triumphantly

reported to Pope Innocent:

Today, your highness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the

sword, regardless of age or sex.

Inquisition records show that the Cathars’ treasure was smuggled

away on two or three occasions during the siege.

754

The Cathar deacon of

Toulouse, Pierre Bonet, and a Parfait called Mathieu carried money and

jewels to Pons Arnaud de Chateau-Verdun, at his castle near Ussat.

Mathieu returned to collect some of the treasure that he had not been able

to carry on the first journey. On the night before the final massacre, four

199

Parfaits escaped, including Amiel Aicart, Hugues and Paytavi who

signaled their successful flight with a fire on Bidorta’s summit. The

Cathars’ Holy Grail may have made its way to an English college of

Cathars, called Bonhommes or ‘good men’, at the monastery of Ashridge,

near Berkhamstead. Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, maintained it. His

mother’s family, the Counts of Toulouse, were traditional protectors of

the Cathars. Edward III‘s son, the Black Prince, also marked the

significance of the monastery. He gave it a great table of gold and silver,

furnished full of precious relics, and in the middle of it a holy cross of the

wood of the rue Cross, and the said table is garnished with stones and

pearls, that is to say twenty-five rubies, thirty-four sapphires, fifteen great

pearls and several other sapphires, emeralds and small pearls…

The Albigensian Crusade and subsequent ethnic cleansing by the

Inquisition effectively eliminated both the Cathars of Southern France and

the misnamed Great Heresy of the Bogomils.

Notwithstanding the galvanization of heretical beliefs by

alchemy, the Roman Catholic Church remained as intrigued with alchemy

as the Gnostics. Alchemy was a widespread pursuit in the monasteries of

pre-Reformation England. There were two types of alchemists, the

monks and the secular licensees. Licensees practiced alchemy on the

understanding that they would not counterfeit. They were required to

report any success to the monarch. Prima facie, alchemy was not

heretical despite alchemical texts being attributed to people of suspect

faith such as Roger Bacon, Arnald de Villanova, Ramon Lull and Gerber.

Few of these alchemical texts were directly heretical in any case.

For example, Gerber, who was Jâbir ibn Hayyân, wrote the world's oldest

book on chemistry called Summa Perfectionis or Summit of Perfection. It

is so incomprehensible that its author's name gave rise to the word

gibberish.

Pope Alexander III banned monks practicing alchemy at the

Council of Tours in 1163. He bluntly forbade the study of physics or the

laws of the world. Following this, St. Dominic solemnly condemned all

research using experiment and observation. Between 1243 and 1323,

both the Dominicans and Franciscans prohibited the study of medicine,

natural philosophy and chemistry.

We see here the hardening of attitudes to Arabian chemistry and

philosophy that would ultimately result in the indictment of the Knights

Templar. Pope John XXII issued his Papal Bull Spondent pariter in 1317,

after the trial of the Knights Templar. It condemned all magic.

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Following this, in 1380, Charles V of France forbade the possession of

furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical processes. Finally,

Nicholas Eymerich decisively condemned alchemy as demonic in 1396.

Although suppressed, clandestine alchemy continued unabated in

the monasteries. Informally, the Church condoned its priors spending

monastery revenue on alchemy to manufacture counterfeit currency. The

Church never charged any of these priors with heresy.

The English Parliament finally outlawed alchemy between 1403

and 1404 because Edward II employed a number of alchemists to

counterfeit coin of the realm. Parliament legislated that the multiplication

of gold and silver was punishable as a felony with sentences of death and

forfeiture of goods.

Although the English Parliament had banned alchemy, the

Parliament itself sought to gain from it and established Parliamentary

Commissions in 1456 and 1457 to ascertain whether alchemy could be a

feasible method of paying off national debts. Shortly afterwards, Richard

Carter was issued a license for alchemy in 1476.

755

He experimented with

all kinds of metals and minerals. As late as 1680, Sir Isaac Newton was

quietly experimenting with alchemy, whilst administering the Royal Mint.

Success evaded Monarchy, Church and Parliament. Conventional

wisdom came to regard alchemy as foolish at best and simply too

tempting and wasteful because of the inherent greed of men:

756

Therefore the lesser evil is to abandon it, and to exert oneself in

other good arts.

Freemasonry eventually adopted this advice. Earlier on, this

same advice would have been wise counsel for the Knights Templar. We

shall soon see why they were condemned as heretics and their Grand

Master burnt at the stake. We will look at the processes of traditional wet

and dry alchemy before turning to these events.

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Chapter 14 Ancient Alchemy

The name Alchemy most likely derives from the Arabic al-kimia

or the Egyptian chem or khem meaning the stars.

757

In Greek, the root

Chymia means to fuse or cast a metal. The most literal meaning in

modern idiom is perhaps God’s mineralogy, metallurgy and chemistry.

Alchemy is the art of preparing the Philosophers’ Stone from

gold. The chemical symbol of gold is the same as that of God

. The

professed uses of the Philosopher’s Stone were to extend life and to

convert base metals to gold. Both objectives remain controversial.

Aurum potable was a synonym for the Elixir of Life:

Make gold potable, and you will have the universal medicine.

There are two traditional ways of preparing the Philosophers

Stone, the wet way and the dry way. The dry way takes only eight days

using double philosophic mercury. Nicholas to Flamel says the practice

begins as follows:

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9. Take thou in the first place the eldest or first-born child of

Saturn, not the vulgar, 9 parts; of the sabre chalibs of the God of

War [iron], 4 parts. Put this latter into a crucible, and when it

comes to a melting redness, cast therein the 9 parts of Saturn, and

immediately this will redden the other. Cleanse thou carefully the

filth that arises on the surface of the saturnia, with saltpetre and

tartar, four or five times. The operation will be rightly done when

thou seest upon the matter an astral sign like a star [the Star

Regulus].

10. Then is made the key and the sabre, which opens and cuts

through all metals, but chiefly Sun, Moon and Venus, which it

eats, devours and keeps in his belly, and by this means thou art in

the right road of truth, if thou has operated properly. For this

Saturnia is the royal triumphant herb, for it is a little imperfect

king, whom we raise up by a philosophic artifice to the degree of

the greatest glory and honour. It is also the queen, that is to say

the Moon and the wife of the Sun: it is therefore both male and

female, and our hermaphrodite Mercury. This Mercury or

Saturnia is represented in the seven first pages of the book of

Abraham the Jew, by two serpent encircling a golden rod. Take

care to prepare a sufficient quantity of it, for much is required,

202

that is to say about 12 or 13 lbs. of it, or even more, according as

you wish to work on a large or a small scale.

The ancient Egyptians reputedly used the dry method and called it

the Saturn Regime .

759

The black powder of Khemeia, derived from the

chemistry of the stars, acted on kmt, or the black soil of Egypt.

760

To the

priests of Egypt, Khemeia was the body of Osiris in the underworld and

said to have marvelous powers.

761

Fragments from the writings of Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek

philosopher who lived about 500BCE, suggest that the dry and wet

methods have the same result:

Pleasure of souls is to become wet

762

The dry soul is the best of all and the most wise

763

The way up and the way down are One and the same

764

The wet way, from Persia, is convenient because it only requires a

simple flask, although it can take up to eighteen months to complete.

Appendix 2 describes the wet way of the alchemist Roger Bacon.

Bakr Ibn Bishrun, who lived around about 1000CE wrote of the

wet method:

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With God's blessing, here is the treatment: Take the noble stone.

Deposit it in the cucurbit and alembic. Separate its four elements, which

are water, air, earth, and fire. They are substance, spirit, soul, and

dyeing. When you have separated the water from the earth and the air

from the fire, keep each one apart in its own vessel. Take the dregs - the

sediment - at the bottom of the vessel. Wash it with hot fire, until the fire

has removed its blackness, and its coarseness and toughness have

disappeared. Blanch it carefully and evaporate the superfluities of the

humidities concealed in it. It will thus become white water, which

contains no darkness, dirt, or disharmony. Then, turn to those primary

elements that are distilled from it. Cleanse them, too, of blackness and

disharmony. Wash them repeatedly and sublimate them, until they

become fine, subtle, and pure. When you have done this, God has given

you success.

Roger Bacon, like many other medieval alchemists, found the key

to alchemy in a book called Sirr al-Asrar or Secretum secretorum (Secret

of Secrets) by the great Arabic physician Abu Bakr Mohammed ar-Razi

(865-925 CE). After it appeared in about 1220 CE, Sirr al-Asrar became

one of the most widely read books of the middle ages. ar-Razi classified

minerals into six divisions:

1. Four spirits: mercury, sal ammoniac, sulphur and arsenic.

203

2. Seven bodies: silver, gold, copper, iron, black lead

(plumbago), zinc and tin.

3. Thirteen stones including marcasite, magnesia, malachite,

tutty, talcum, lapis lazuli, gypsum and glass (of sand and

alkali).

4. Seven vitriols including alum and white, black, red and

yellow vitriols (the impure sulphates of iron, copper, etc).

5. Seven borates including tinkar, natron and impure sodium

borate.

6. Eleven salts including brine, common (table) salt, ashes,

naphtha, live lime, urine, rock and sea salt.

Preparing the Philosophers' Stone by the wet method involves a

number of stages. The first three of these stages are:

1. Prepare the Secret Fire, a nitrate catalyst.

2. Elicit and purify the white vapor of Mercury.

3. Dissolve the Sulphur and prepare the Philosophers’ Stone.

Sulphur and Mercury are not the substances we know by these

names but metallic Gold and the vapor of Antimony respectively. Other

allegorical names for this regal pair are the red man and his wife, our gold

and silver, the Sun and Moon, Sol and Luna, earth and water and Star

and the Sceptre.

Preparing the Secret Fire was a major Arcanum of alchemy and

essential to the process. It has had an enormous number of allegorical

names such as:

766

The spirit; the spirit of life; the water of life; the water of our sea;

the mineral water; burning water; ardent water. The fire; the

secret fire; fire against nature; the invisible fire; our fire; the fire

of snowy whiteness; a fire continuous; digesting, not violent,

subtile, inclosed, aerial, surrounding, altering, yet not burning,

clear, close, circulating, penetrating and alive. The mover; the

first agent; philosophical vitriol; that subtle nature cleaned by

sublimation; the fat of the mercurial wind; our mercurial water;

the second sophic mercury; the venomous fiery dragon; Medea,

Theseus who had black sails to his ship; the 'unhappy spring' in

Ripley Revived; the porter or servant of Count Bernard;

Artephius' lamp fire; the eagles; the vulture of Hermes; the priest.

It is called Venus, the nymph Venus, born of the froth of the

ocean; because of the marine acid which enters into the

composition of 'the matter of our sea', which acid is the

204

alchemists 'Universal Lunar Mercury'….. They call it heaven,

celestial water and rain, parting water, aqua (water) regia, a

corrosive aqua forte, sharp vinegar, growthful green juice, a

growing mercury, a viridescent water, the green lion, quicksilver

[on no account use this], menstruum, blood, urine, horsepiss,

milk, virgin's milk, white arsenick, sulphureous vapouring and

smokey, a fiery burning spirit, a deadly poison piercing and

killing all, serpent, dragon, a scorpion devouring his children, a

hellish fire, a sharp salt, sal ammoniac, common salt, an eagle,

vulture, bird of Hermes, a melting and calcining furnace, birds,

beasts, herbs, juices.

The most elementary source of the Secret Fire is a salt nitrate

from man. From al-Razi’s eleven salts, we can see that urine is the only

salt from man. Urine is a very weak solution of ammonia and nitrates.

767

An average quantity of five hundred milliliters to two thousand milliliters

passed in twenty-four hours includes 4.6 grams of ammonia, seven to

seventeen grams of nitrogen and many inorganic and organic components.

An initiate in the mysteries of alchemy who did not recognize the

statement Know Thyself! was not an alchemist. Alchemists who did not

know where to start their chemistry were the same as Rosicrucians who

could not find their Order. They were simply initiates who had not yet

properly found and accepted themselves, and got on with life.

The only qualification for an alchemical Rosicrucian was to know

that the solution was literally within him. A true Rosicrucian knew the

philosophical mystery of I.N.R.I and that the hidden, nameless god

labeled Osiris or Amun was the god within himself. Chapter 10

introduced this topic, which is also the subject of the next chapter.

The philosophical use of urine has much in common with the

methods of eastern monks. Initiates learn to manufacture a medicine from

their own urine over a period of nearly 6 months.

After removing putridity from the stagnant urine, a white powder

remains. It is often mistaken for the alchemical Philosophers’ Stone.

Other homeopathic remedies recommend drinking urine or applying it in

a shatnez bandage.

The ancients, who didn’t have nitric acid, derived their nitrogen

from ammonia in urine and/or from distillation of dung and bones to get

sal ammoniac. Ammonium compounds behave as weak acids and

alchemists usually enhanced them with saltpeter (potassium nitrate,

KNO

205

Fishing for Coral

from Atalanta fugiens

206

To achieve a more intense reaction the alchemists of old increased

the ammonia and nitrate in the solution with niter. Ammonium nitrate is

very soluble and a concentrated solution will dissolve metals, although

the reaction is very slow with metals less active than iron.

This is where one of the Gnostic interpretations of I.N.R.I

applied: Igne nitrum raris invenitur, or Fire is discovered in nitrum. Niter

is saltpeter, the mineral form of potassium nitrate (

KNO

), found naturally

as an efflorescent rock salt in caves and as short fibers on rock surfaces.

Potassium nitrate oozes into the cellars of old buildings near stables or

barns with ruminant animals. When distilled with urine, saltpeter

produces glassy-white crystals of niter that are quite beautiful.

Distillation of excrement and bones produces ammonium.

Egyptian priests produced ammonium from dung, bones and horns at the

Temple of Amun in Libya.

768

Their product was the salt of Amun, sal

ammoniacus or ammonium.

The nearby Temple of Amun, in the Egyptian Oasis of Siwa is a

place of mystery. The Egyptian priests may have used their Libyan

ammonium for sacred chemistry involving an important substance used in

the Pharaonic Rite of Passage. The Egyptian priests mixed salts of niter

(potassium nitrate) and sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride,

Cl, then

given the symbol of salt, X) to produce a universal solvent. The presence

of ammonia in this Secret Fire is very important because of a polarization

effect that produces dipoles to increase the solubility of gold salts.

Ammonium chloride (

Cl) and ammonium nitrate (NH

) are still

used in modern cyanide-based gold leaching processes.

Stibnite, the mineral of antimony, dissolves in similar solvents:

ammonia hydrogen sulfide (

HS), potassium sulfide (K

S) and

hydrochloric acid (

HCl). The gases given-off can be very toxic.

Even though alchemists talked of a nitrate salt, it was actually a

synthetic mixture of oxidizing and non-oxidizing acids. Today we

produce this same odd combination of oxidizing and non-oxidizing acids

by mixing one part by volume of nitric acid (

HNO

) with three parts of

hydrochloric acid (

HCl). The result is Aqua Regia.

769

The great title of Aqua Regia derives from its ability to dissolve

noble metals, particularly gold and platinum. Gold is inert to either of the

component acids used separately. Aqua Regia is a powerful solvent

because of the combined effects of the H

, NO

, and Cl

ions in solution.

These three ions react with gold atoms to form water, nitric oxide (

NO)

207

and the stable chloride ion (

AuCl

), which remains in solution. The

chloride ion gives the solution a light green tint.

While the alchemists cheered at synthesizing a solvent for gold,

which they thought was the first step to the Philosophers’ Stone, many

failed to realize that they had created the highly explosive substance

fulminating gold. This compound results from adding ammonia to Auric

Hydroxide, which is the precipitate formed when potash (Potassium

Carbonate) is added to gold dissolved in Aqua Regia.

Really, gold is soluble in any solution that contains both a

chloride ion and an oxidizing agent. Even common salt (NaCl) or laundry

bleach (calcium hypochlorite) will provide a free chloride ion.

Hydrochloric acid and ammoniac solutions also directly dissolve

gold at seventy-five degrees Celsius. This requires an oxidizer such as

cupric ammine, oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, or sodium hypochlorite.

770

Even at relatively low temperature, hydrochloric acid and hypochlorite

produces chlorine, which provides a highly oxidizing environment.

Hydrogen peroxide oxidizes when added to metallic gold in

aqueous hydrochloric acid. Electron transfer directly creates the ion

species AuCl

, AuCl

(OH

), and AuCl

(OH)

771

Oxidation by hydrogen

peroxide is a dangerously exothermic process leading to explosions. The

advantage is that the process avoids nitrogen compounds, which are

difficult to remove in the traditional wet process.

A number of metals will dissolve gold, when the metals are at

their melting point, for example metallic mercury (Hg) will dissolve a

small amount of gold at room temperature. In about 1120 or 1150 CE,

Artephius wrote of a process for dissolving gold in a particular metal.

Shortly, we will look further into his method.

First, we must look for the prima material, the starting point for

Philosophical Mercury. An elusive alchemist called Fulcanelli riddled for

us the common name from which Mercury has traditionally been

prepared. He says it is an approximation, corresponding to the Oak tree

and to the ram.

772

We will try to solve this riddle because it provides us with a

unique insight into the fractal nature of hermetic drift. Fulcanelli

suggested that we focus on the gall apples on the leaves of the oak. The

Apple tree or Quert is associated with the Oak and the Oak is of the genus

Quercus and generally linked with the God Q're.

We know that apple trees have a deep mythical significance. In

Thessaly, visiting Hyperborean Druids noted the apple tree and associated

208

Dionysian goat-stag, the hiero-cervus, as their own symbols of man’s

resurrection and hope for immortality.

773

The apple tree is also the Great Triple Goddess’ symbol of

immortality. This apple is the Cydonian apple or quince.

774

From this,

the apple is elevated to the symbol of God because the Triple Goddess

gives the apple of immortality to the young goatherd Ida. He is the young

Dionysus, who was twice born.

775

The Greek words for apple and goat

are the same (melon) and one of Dionysus’ titles is the Kid.

776

Hercules, who combines Dionysus and Apollo into one, was also

Melon. This was because the three Daughters of the West, the three

guardian nymphs of the Holy Apples, really the Triple Goddess, gave him

a bough of golden apples.

777

The goddess of the sacred grove is Nemesis.

She carries the wheel of the solar year and an apple bough as a gift to her

Heroes.

778

In later myth, she became the instrument of divine vengeance

on proud kings.

779

The Greater Mysteries reiterated the symbolism of the golden

apples. The neophyte received a golden bough as the sign that he was

near the end of his testing. In the Initiation of Plato:

780

The Ceryce: Plato! Throw away that crown and take this golden branch,

and deign to follow me. Knowest thou who is the most

happy of all men?

Plato: The most – the most happy of all men. According to

Socrates, the most just; according to me the most liberal.

The Ceryce: And the most modest?

Plato It is he who understands himself the best.

And later …

First Patriarch: Who is this foolish mortal who comes thus to trouble our

mysteries?

The Ceryce: Sublime Patriarch, it is the Neophyte, Plato of Athens; he

bears the golden branch.

First Patriarch: Let him enter if his conscience is pure.

Only the apple tree mythically entangles the sacred white

unicorn.

781

It is the tree of immortality through Wisdom. The apple tree

represents the pure virgin called Wisdom. It is therefore the Tree of

Knowledge and symbol of consummation.

782

The Pomegranate Apple or Love Apple halved cross ways shows

a five-pointed star, the emblem of immortality. It represents the goddess

Venus in her five stations from Birth to Initiation, Love, Repose and

209

Death. Chapter 18 showed that it also indicates the order of the five

centre vowels in Yahweh's name.

783

Although the drift possibilities with the Apple tree are extensive

and engaging, we are no nearer the solution. We must return to the start

of the riddle find another drift or current that will lead to a solution.

Fulcanelli hinted that we should specially note the Oak tree that nourishes

the kerm. This is the Gaulish kerm-oak. It is the scarlet-oak or holly oak

ascribed to Nergal and Mars.

784

The kerm of this tree is actually a scarlet

female cochineal insect Coccus ilicis or Kermes vermilio from which the

Greeks extracted royal scarlet dye.

785

The counterpart of the kerm-oak is the terebinth tree or pistachio-

oak, which is Abraham's tree. In sacred groves, the Kerm King and

Terebinth King are twins and rivals for the affection of the Great

Goddess. In ancient tradition, the Kerm King murders the Terebinth King

and the son of the Terebinth King takes revenge on his uncle at the

September New Year celebration. The son then becomes his principal

mourner and inherits the kingdom. Shakespeare's masterpiece Hamlet

echoes this very ancient plot where the Goddess-wife betrays her sacred

king husband, who the tanist killed and the son avenged.

786

Nevertheless,

the distraught son does not punish his adulterous mother because she

acted with the authority of the Mother Goddess. Shakespeare was

probably alluding in veiled allegory to the famous English instance of this

plot. Roger Mortimer killed King Edward II at Berkley Castle in

September 1327, consorted with Edward’s wife, Queen Isabella, and

alienated Edward III from his throne. Edward III’s tortuous dilemma was

precisely Hamlet’s dilemma that his mother’s second marriage would

alienate his royal rights.

787

Hamlet’s indecision followed the myth of The Epigoni, the seven

sons of the seven champions that fell at Thebes who swore to avenge their

fathers.

788

This didactic myth teaches the instability of women’s

judgment, the folly of men in humoring their vanity or greed, the wisdom

of listening to seers who are beyond suspicion, the danger of

misinterpreting oracles and the inescapable curse that falls on any son

who kills his mother, even to placate his father’s ghost.

789

Eriphyle, as

she lay dying, cursed Alcmaeon:

790

Lands of Greece and Asia, and all of the world: deny shelter to

my murderers!

The patriarchal Indo-Hittites who invaded of the Mother

Goddess’ realm wrongly characterized these age-old themes as parricide

210

and incest.

791

It was the priests’ intention to invalidate the Mother

Goddess’ religious axiom that motherhood is more diving than

fatherhood.

792

The kerm-oak or Holly Oak is an evergreen twin of the common

oak called Dann or Tann, and is the equivalent of the Gaulish word for

Oak, Tinne.

793

Tinne is also the name of the Green Knight who appeared

in the old English Christmas Play. He is the beheaded Fool who rises

unhurt.

794

This represents the survival of the Roman festival of

Saturnalia, which is the ancient myth of the emasculation of Uranus by

his son Cronos or Saturn. In turn, Zeus or Jupiter, who is the son of

Cronos, exacts vengeance upon his father by banishing him to the

Western Underworld.

795

The little rough gall-apples on the oak leaves are called gall, or in

Latin Galla. Galla in Sumerian means womb. It also describes the KUR

who are spirits of the underworld.

796

The word Galla also suggests

galena, which is lead sulfate (

PbS).

The ancient Egyptians knew of galena and used it along with

stibnite as cosmetic eyeliner and eye shadow.

797

They mined it at Gebel

Rasas, which means Mountain of Lead. It is located at the southern edge

of the Nubian Desert on the Red Sea. This is now in modern Sudan, three

hundred and eight kilometers east of Atabora.

798

The mineral galena is the primary source of lead or Saturn. The

alchemical importance of galena is that it is auriferous (bears gold) and

produces considerable amounts of antimony when it is refined. Other

impurities include copper, zinc, silver, arsenic and selenium.

In Chapter 8, we saw that in Harran the Temple of Saturn was

hexagonal and built of black stone. The cult image was of lead. Its

throne was on the highest dais, which had nine steps.

799

The mineral of

lead is certainly appropriate for the Saturn Regime or Dry method.

Chapter 7 mentioned that Shakespeare concealed Portia, the Virgin of

Merchant of Venice, in lead. Isis’ column at Nysa in Arabia also

recorded:

I am the eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of Gods…

This circumstantial evidence suggests that the prima materia we

are searching for is quite likely to be galena, the mineral of lead sulfide.

However, before we settle on galena as the prima materia of the wet

method, we need to identify the link with the ram.

Lead and tin have always been closely associated. The Egyptians

regarded lead and tin as the same metal. Yet, Egyptian tombs often

211

contain items of tin rather than lead. The Gaulish word Tinne, for Oak,

also implies the metal to which Fulcanelli alluded to might really be tin.

Tin was a reducing agent in the manufacture of Tyrian Purple (or

Royal Purple) from dead mollusks. The ancient Phoenician dyers

employed four species of shellfish that contained a sac of coloring matter:

the Buccinum lapillus of Pliny, which is the Purpura lapillus or Purple

haemastoma of modern naturalists, Murex trunculus, the plentiful Murex

brandaris, and the sea snail Helix ianthina.

800

Reducing these mollusks

with tin produced the malodorous dibromoindigitin, which is similar to

the blue dye indigotin or woad. The best purple Dibapha cloth of the

Tyrians was dipped twice, first in Murex dye and then in Buccinum.

Tin is also associated with the oak-god Jupiter. The Temple of

Jupiter in Harran was triangular with a pointed roof. The stone used was

green and the image of Jupiter was made of tin. It sat upon a throne on a

dais raised eight steps high. Eight is the symbol of rejuvenation or

reduplication being 2 x 2 x 2. It is the sacred numeral of the chief God,

Tinne, in the Boibel-Loth calendar.

801

The Boibel-Loth calendar, with

three hundred and sixty plus five days based on the number eight,

replaced the ancient Beth-Luis-Noin calendar of three hundred and sixty-

four plus one days, based on the number seven. The base-eight calendar

corresponds to the eight-fold name of the God of Light, JEHUOVA

802

The whitish wandering planet identified with Tin has the

singularly important name of Z-D-K meaning Zedek or Zadok.

803

The

Jews claimed that the Gentiles profanely called it Jupiter. We

investigated the importance of Zadok and Righteousness in Chapter 11.

Jupiter and other thunder gods such as Hercules, Zeus, Duir,

Janus, Thor, Bel, and Hermes are all oak-gods.

804

Yahweh in his aspects

of El or Jah, which are interchangeable terms, is also an Oak-god. The

Roman poet Virgil, who lived from 70BCE to 17BCE, mentions the roots

of the Oak tree. He says they run as deeply into the ground as the

branches rise to heaven. The oak is therefore highly reminiscent of the

fundamental hermetic maxim as above, so below. In the dimension of

time, the oak stands at the turn of the year.

805

The Oak tree therefore

symbolizes the annual resurrection god who rules Heaven and the

Underworld, the ram-headed god Osiris, Hercules and all immortal gods,

particularly Amun-Ra.

Therefore, our drifting has brought us to tin as another possible

solution to Fulcanelli’s riddle. The mineral form of tin is cassiterite,

tinstone or tin dioxide. So perhaps cassiterite, rather than galena, might

212

then be the ultimate mineral associated with both the Oak tree and the ram

for the wet method.

Tin became a familiar additive for copper after four thousand

BCE. Crete exported tin to Mari in Akkadian times. In Chapter 5, we

saw the extraordinary campaign by Sesôstris I to obtain tin and other

minerals in Anatolia.

The many traditional mines in Anatolia and surrounding the

Aegean, such as the Laurion field, produced low-grade tin, copper, lead

and silver.

806

The Black Sea sortie of Sesôstris I may have focused on the

cassiterite mines at Kestel/Göltepe and Bolkarda

in the Taurus

Mountains of Anatolia.

807

Cassiterite was highly prized in Egypt.

Howard Carter found a golden box full of cassiterite in Tutankhamen’s

tomb.

808

Even today, the mineral often substitutes for diamond because of

its high luster and light dispersion. Three hundred years after Sesôstris I,

in one thousand five hundred BCE, Czech/German miners began to

exploit the main high-grade cassiterite sources in central Europe. As we

saw in Chapter 12, the Cornish sources so famous in Roman times began

much later in one thousand BCE.

However, cassiterite is an oxide rather than a sulfide like galena.

It is normally a drab brown rutile ore like titanium dioxide found in

quartz, granite and gneiss. Even rich ore contains only five percent of tin

and good ore only two percent. The bulk of cassiterite is other oxide rock

or sands with quartz, fluorite, topaz, wolframite and pyrite. As

compelling as the case is for tin, it does not provide the necessary

antimonial basis for alchemical Mercury we have been seeking.

A modern analogy to Fulcanelli’s riddle is that the alchemists'

white rabbitt lives in the burrow of Mother Earth’s womb, among the

roots of the mighty Oak-King from which the underground stream flows.

The solution to this riddle is more straightforward. Isaac Babbitt invented

an excellent antifriction metal for bearings in 1839. Babbitt metal

combines eighty-nine percent tin with seven percent antimony and four

percent copper. The antimony provides our enigmatic rabbitt under the

Oak tree.

Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 showed the archetype of Azazel,

Bezaleel or Aholiab the son of Ahisamach of Dan released to mankind the

secrets of metallurgy, the manufacture of weapons and jewelry, and the

use of antimony in art and medicine. He taught women the art of

cosmetics. We earlier noted that the ancient Egyptians used both galena

and stibnite as cosmetic eyeliner and eye shadow. Stibnite added sparkle

213

in particular. It was the black powder called Koh’l or al kuhl (pronounced

alcohol). Heightening the appeal of stibnite is that it is an ore found

along with gold.

The Magi attributed antimony to the Constellation of Aries, or the

Ram, as this is the first heavenly sign in which the sun takes its

elevation.

809

This provides Fulcanelli’s link with the ram that we

originally sought with tin. So finally, we may settle on stibnite, the black

powder of the Egyptians called Khemeia.

We may conclude that the prima materia that leads to the White

Virgin of Mercury, or antimony, is either galena or stibnite. It seems the

Egyptians were unable to differentiate between the minerals.

810

The most

prolific mineral for Mercury is the ore of antimony, stibnite. A more

recent source of antimony is Babbitt Metal, which we could call the

Jupiter method because Babbitt Metal is 89% tin and 7% antimony.

As was previously mentioned, Artephius described the process of

the Philosophers’ Stone using Antimony in about 1120 or 1150 CE. It

rapidly became the divine Wet Method of producing the Philosophers’

Stone used by all the great alchemists. Antimony Trichloride is today

widely used as an excellent non-aqueous solvent, especially for chloride-

ion transfer-reactions. It avoids troublesome nitrates altogether by using

chloride ion transfer.

Artephius’ methods involved two distinct processes, called the

first and second Perfections. In the First Perfection, the alchemist worked

to achieve two things:

1. Precipitating pure antimony from stibnite (Sb

). Pure

antimony, called the Regulus, forms when iron substitutes for

antimony in the sulphide. The reaction is Sb

+ 3 Fe >> 2Sb +

3FeS. Iron substitutes for antimony in the salts because iron is

above antimony in reactivity. Iron sulphide (FeS) forms a ‘mat’

that is fused to the Regulus. The products readily part, as the

Regulus is heavier than the fused mat of iron sulphide. Roger

Bacon’s Tract on the Tincture and Oil of Antimonii outlines the

use of iron (see Appendix 2).

2. Creating Antimony Trichloride (SbCl

), which is a colorless,

transparent liquid or white deliquescent solid. The trihalidation of

antimony only commences when the Regulus moves into

abundance. A pentachloride, (SbCl

) coexists with the

trichloride. The pentachloride sublimates at 4ºC and depresses

the melting point of ‘our Antimony Chloride’ from 73ºC to about

214

35ºC. SbCl

is a reddish-yellow oily liquid with an offensive

odor. It readily loses a halogen at room temperature to become

the trichloride. It cannot be distilled on its own without

decomposition. Antimony Trichloride is particularly unusual in

that it is volatile enough to be distilled using glass vessels. Iced

water chills the collection vessel.

The alchemist first obtained stibnite from a mine. Minimum

scoria (clinker in lava, refuse or dross) in the stibnite is best. He

pulverized the stibnite to a powder with a hammer.

The alchemist then obtained the First Agent, Ignis innaturalis

(Natural Fire) or Secret Fire, which was the liquid nitrate salt borne by

man, or simply urine. Alchemists enhanced this with a chloride such as

the traditional ‘muriate’ of alchemists, ammoniac (Ammonium Chloride

Cl). As potassium salts are amorphous with ammonium salts, they

kept nitrates out by using a potassium-based chloride called Muriate of

Potash (Potassium Chloride KCl). Chloride of Potash is another name for

Muriate of Potash. Nowadays, there are even stronger oxidizing

oxymuriates, such as Chlorate of Potash, which is Potassium Chlorate

(KClO

), and Sodium Chlorate (NaClO

The old treatises that suggest adding Nitre, which is Potassium

Nitrate KNO

, also called saltpeter, are in error. Nitre reacts with sal

ammoniac to produce Potassium Chloride and Ammonium Nitrate in the

reaction KNO

+ NH

Cl >> KCl + NH

. Therefore, this is just a long

way around to produce KCl. Ammonium Nitrate decomposes to nitrogen

) and water. However, the alchemist should particularly avoid Nitre

because KNO

dissolved in SbCl

produces the highly deadly reddish-

brown gas NO

. Many people do not appreciate the great danger of

exposure to this gas. While initial exposure may cause only pain in the

lungs, death can occur a few days later from the resulting oedema.

Other old treatises also suggest adding cream of tartar to make

saltfire from sal ammoniac, salt of tartar and saltpeter . However, tartar is

a flux for the Dry Method. It is very dangerous in the Wet Method. Salt

of tartar added to Nitre plus stibnite creates gunpowder, which often

explodes.

Now, we return to the First Perfection, also called the distillation.

The alchemist mixes the pulverized metals to form the Compost. Any

mixture of metals is also a Rebis. It is placed into a distilling retort (say a

150ml flask empting into a 250ml receiver). The proportions are 3 parts

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pulverized Stibnite; 1 part Iron powder; and 4 parts Secret Fire (urine with

Potassium Chloride).

The neck of the flask must be cooler than the base so the vapor of

the Mercury will condense. If the neck is warmer, the vapor will expand

too rapidly and explode the vessel. Alchemists call their vessels an

Iimbic, Alembic, Kerotakis or Pelican.

The alchemist gently heats the flask in a temperature controlled

sand bath. The temperature range is 37ºC to 41ºC or blood heat, called

‘the temperature of a hen on its eggs’ and held constant for about 84 days.

There is a slow reaction as the Compost absorbs the liquid in the

first few days. It swells, and sweats with a ruddy appearance. This is the

Rule of Saturn of the First Perfection.

Eventually, a beautiful shiny star appears on the surface. This is

the Regulus, which is pure antimony. The alchemists term Heat plus

Dryness as ‘Fire’. Only when the Regulus is formed does the Antimony

Trichloride vapor arise and the ‘cleaning’ take place. Many alchemists

erroneously assume that the Star Regulus of Mercury, this Star of

Bethlehem or Morning Star at this point is the Holy Grail.

The purified white vapor of Mercury, Shakespeare’s Portia,

ultimately rises from the reaction. To the Alchemists this is ‘Air, their

term for Heat plus Humidity. It is the vapor of Antimony Trichloride that

forms as a white ‘metallic, volatile humidity’ or sweat, similar to saliva.

Alchemists call the vapor of antimony the ‘Mercury of the Wise’, the

‘white wife’ or White Goddess of the First Perfection.

When the gas is distilled, condensed and cooled in the receiver

flask, it becomes a wondrously bright liquid. The alchemists call ‘Cold

plus Humidity’ as ‘Water’. Alchemists called Antimony Trichloride the

‘water that does not wet the hands’.

The condensed Antimony Trichloride is kept sealed in the

receiving flask. It will fume slightly in air and is very corrosive, irritating

and hygroscopic. This Mercury of Antimony Trichloride becomes the

“our vinegre” or Secret Sophic Fire in the Second Perfection.

The alchemist then separates the Earth from the Heat and the

subtle from the gross. That is, when the Regulus is black with Iron

Sulphide, the alchemist dries-off the water and removes the Regulus;

which is the ‘First Stone’, from the mat of Iron Sulphide. He also

discards any oxide ‘flowers’ in the neck of the flask. The alchemist then

pulverizes the Regulus with a hard mortar and pestle. In the Second

Perfection, this Regulus will be called Mercury.

216

The Philosophical Egg of the Second Perfection is formed from 8

drachms (28.8ml) of Azoth in a 100ml flask, which should fill the flask to

¼.

811

The flask should have a thin narrow neck about six fingers high.

The neck of the flask is hermetically sealed with a rubber bung because if

something has to move the bung will be forced out.

The Azoth, which is analogous to the Compost of the first

Perfection, is made from a mixture (called a Hermaphrodite) of leaf Gold

and Regulus, with the Secret or Sophic Fire of Antimony Trichloride.

The Red Man of the second perfection is Gold. The ratio of the

Hermaphrodite is Gold, 3 drachms (10.8ml), which is 2¼ teaspoons, with

Regulus, 1 drachm (3.6ml), which is ¾ teaspoon.

The alchemist forms the Azoth by adding 4 drachms (14.4ml),

which is 3 teaspoons or 180 drops, of the Secret or Sophic Fire, liquid

Antimony Trichloride from the 1st Perfection (remember, do not add

Nitre to Antimony Trichloride!)

A period called the Rule of Saturn takes 46 to 50 days to form the

Black mass. In the period the alchemist repeatedly dissolves and

coagulates ‘Solve et Coagula’

The alchemist keeps the Azoth at blood heat until it sweats and

there is circulation. Always keep the heat moderate at say 37ºC to 41ºC

but make sure the reaction actually starts. The Azoth of this phase sweats

and the vapors or exhalations rise and fall (i.e. sublimates). When the

sweat returns to the Azoth as rain, it perforates it and the Azoth desiccates

or bursts in a bloody broth. With time, the moist slime changes to a dry

coagulated substance. The alchemists term this ‘Cold plus Dryness’ as

‘Earth’. The Lyon or Toad’s exhalations are the vapors seen in the neck

of the flask. It is at first white, then yellow, bluish and blackish. Yellow

represents the copulation of the man and woman. Some alchemists

visualized the changing colors as a battle between the vapors and the

Earth. They often compared it to two fighting dragons, one with wings

and the other without. It is also likened to the two snakes of Hermes,

which are the conjunction of opposites. Seven or eight successive

volatilizations are necessary. Each follows sublimation.

Some alchemists call the volatilizations Eagles. These Eagles

feed on the Lyon and drip back down on the Earth as dead eagles. In

addition, it is symbolized as a pelican feeding its young with its own

blood. Eventually the Earth puffs-up, fully putrefied.

A phase of calcination begins, which to leads to the black or

Nigredo. The fumes cease. The Earth bursts and reduces into a into a

217

coal-black powder called the Crows Bill or the Raven, which swims in the

dead sea. This is a major milestone called the Nigredo. Later, it will

yield up the white stone. The Nigredo brings the end of the Rule of

Saturn.

The Rule of Jupiter begins. It takes about 56 to 60 days more to

achieve the Peacock’s Colors. The alchemist slowly increases the

temperature to fever heat to 41ºC. A water washes the Nigredo. It is

called ‘Diana naked’. Beautiful colors appear, very like the refraction of

light on spilt oil. Alchemists know this as the Peacock’s Tail. It signals

the end of Jupiter’s Rule.

The Rule of Luna now begins. It takes 22 to 24 days more in

Luna’s Rule to achieve the Second Stone, which is when the earth turns

white. This is also called the ‘albedo’, luna white or white dove. It floats

on the water like a cream and grows more and more glorious for 20 to 22

days. This cream can be gathered and gently heated to evaporate the

water, leaving fragrant white oil. This oil was the famous salve or

universal unguent of the Knights Templar. It has been of widespread

medicinal virtue until the advent of modern pharmaceuticals. The cream

cured maladies such as gout, leprosy, stroke, dropsy, epilepsy,

consumption and dehydration to fever and pestilence (see Appendix 2,

Roger Bacon’s Method).

The Rule of Venus (or love) is 40 to 42 days more with heat

increased to 66ºC to 77ºC (150ºF to 170ºF). The King (gold) unites with

the Queen (albedo). The Queen is also called Philosophical Mercury,

rosa alba (the white rose). In uniting, the king and queen remove

impurities from each other. The King and Queen produce the Green Lion.

The Rule of Mars is 42 days, in which the Green Lion is

overcome with azure, grey, citrine and finally changes to another red

Hermetic Mercury. The Earth is red and called ‘Sulphur’. The red

Sulphur fixes the white Mercury and they dissolve into liquid state.

The glorious Rule of Sol flavus is 40 to 42 days more with the

temperature increased to between 100ºC and 121ºC (212ºF to 250ºF). In

a moment the Tyrian color comes. It is a sparkling red oil of fiery

vermillion. Alchemists call it the Red Rose; the perfect fixation and

perfection; the Red Poppy of the Rock; and the precious tincture. This is

at last the Philosophers’ Stone or ‘Third Stone’. When powder forms

from the solution, the alchemist slowly increases the temperature to 150ºC

(300ºF).

218

The red powder is gold chloride, although in its pure form gold

chloride is an orange-red color. Gold chloride is particularly useful for

medicinal purposes because when taken into the body the chloride acts as

a dispersing agent in the stomach and makes the body capable of

absorbing the compound. A major controversy continues over how safe it

might be to ingest gold compounds. Some say homeopathic gold chloride

is safe while chemical gold chloride, used as a medication for arthritis,

may not be safe since the metallic gold precipitates out in the human body

due to the body’s own pH. The wisest advice is always to fully

understand the medical effects of any metals before ingestion.

Traditionally, the blood red powder is the famous Philosophers'

Stone and that it takes only a few days to multiply this powder into any

additional amount of the red product.

It is undoubted that the alchemists created this red-powder. For

example, the noted alchemist Robert Boyle, who gave us Boyle’s Law of

Gasses, bequeathed samples of red powder to Sir Isaac Newton and John

Locke.

Some alchemists say there is another lilac stone above the red,

which is the true Philosophers’ Stone. Whether these scientists managed

to achieve the fabled lilac Philosophers' Stone in any significant quantity

is another matter.

In the second Perfection, alchemists seek to move gold through

its oxidation states. Gold has five standard oxidation states but is mostly

found in Au(I) and Au(III) compounds and complexes. These are

uncombined gold, sulphide ore and arsenide ore. Refiners easily extract

gold metal from simple compounds using cyanide complexes.

In the commercial process for extracting gold from low grade

ores, gold is oxidized in the presence of aqueous sodium cyanide:

4Au +

8NaCN + O

+ 2H

0 -> 4Na[Au(CN)

] + 4NaOH. The gold and sodium

cyanide are then recovered in the presence of carbon 2

Na[Au(CN)

] ->

+ 2NaCN or zinc is added to release a gold metal precipitate:

2Na[Au(CN)

] + Zn -> 2NaCN + Zn(CN)

+ Au

Natives in Indonesia, New Guinea and the Brazil still use the

age-old metallic mercury (Hg) method. It recovers about two-thirds of

the gold present. They wash to rock face with high-pressure water and

break the ore in a hammer crusher; alloy the gold sediment with metallic

mercury (called amalgamation) in a sluice-box; filter; and vaporize the

mercury from the gold with heat. The mercury vapor that results can be

219

distilled and reused but is more often simply burnt-off. During the

process, natives regularly inhale the poisonous metallic mercury vapor.

Gold is unreactive, meaning it does not displace hydrogen from

acids. Platinum is even less reactive. Therefore, oxidization of gold

requires a very strong oxidant such as nitric acid, concentrated sulphuric

acid or an ion transfer reaction the Secret Fire.

Au(II) results from Au-Au bonding with ligands (such as halides

or cyanide) holding the atoms together. Stepwise oxidation of gold by

successive addition of halogens, such as chlorine, converts gold from

simple Au(I), such as AuCl and Au2O, through to Au(II) with the Au-Au

bond to Au(III). This produces various gold (III) chloride ions with

antimony in the presence of Secret Fire. This takes place over a long

period producing the colors of red (gold chloride), green beneath the red,

and white as the doves in the green tree. Along the way, the alchemist

removes antimony as a fragrant cream byproduct.

As we saw in the last chapter, individuals, the Church, Monarchs

and Parliaments experimented with alchemy in the quest for unlimited

wealth. Transmutation or Projection is the process of converting large

amounts of base metals such as lead and iron into gold.

For transmutation, the alchemist melts metallic gold in a crucible.

He then adds the red powder of the Philosophers’ Stone in equal part to

the crucible and pours the mixture into an ingot where it cools. The

alchemist then breaks away part of the ingot and pours ten parts of heated

Mercury onto it. He melts the new mixture. Finally, he tinges purged

melted metal in a molten state to transmute it into pure gold.

An adept can multiply the red powder ad infinitum.

Theoretically, the amount of gold from transmutation is also infinite:

812

He therefore whom God has blessed with this talent, hath this

field of content, which far exceeds popular admiration; First if he

should live a thousand years, and every day provide for a

thousand men, he could not want, for he may increase his stone at

his pleasure, both in weight and virtue; so that if a man would,

one man that is an adeptist, might transmute into gold and silver

that is perfect, all the imperfect metals that are in the whole

world; secondly, he may by this art make precious stones and

gems, such as cannot be paralleled in nature, for goodness and

greatness; thirdly and lastly, he hath a medicine universal, both

for prolonging life, and curing all diseases, so that one true

220

adeptist can easily cure all the sick people in the world. I mean

his medicine is sufficient.

Yet, the success of physical transmutation has always been in

doubt. Judah Ben Solomon declared that it was impossible in 1245.

813

Trickery produced small-scale transmutations. One technique involved

adding to the crucible a small ball of wax or bitumen containing gold, to

melt at the right moment. Medieval alchemists always found a reason for

failing to turn the King's kitchen utensils into gold. They usually blamed

corruption in the base metals provided for transmutation:

814

But many through ignorance doth mar what they made,

When on metals uncleaned projection they make

For because of corruption their tincture must fade,

Which they would not away first from bodies take,

Which after projection be brittle, blue and black:

That thy tincture therefore may evermore last.

Upon ferment thy medicine look thou first cast.

Roger Bacon was an English philosopher and scientist who lived

from 1214 to 1292. The alchemists accepted him as a great master of the

art.

815

His play, The Alchemist, gives a wonderfully humorous insight

into how misguided but enthusiastic practitioners compromised alchemy.

In the end, alchemists became indistinguishable from charlatans.

Appendix 2 contains Roger Bacon’s own alchemical methods.

Some of the greatest philosophers and scientific minds of all time

such as Baruch de Spinoza, who lived from 1632 to 1677, were prepared

to believe in transmutation. The most likely reason for this may simply

be that it is very difficult to distinguish real gold from salts, alloys, plating

and fool's gold, which is iron pyrites or iron disulfide.

816

Alchemists

carefully created many gold/silver/copper alloys, as the Incas in Peru

did.

817

Indeed, most Egyptian artifacts from three thousand eight hundred

BCE to 1085BCE were amalgams of gold and silver with up to ten

percent copper.

818

The celebrated semi-transmuted coins of the

alchemists are usually electrum plated.

Other so-called gold substances produced by alchemists were

often toxic metal salts that happened to have a yellow sheen such as lead

antimonate (

PbSb

) and metallic mercury (Hg) salts:

819

For gold of alchemy, made with corrosives, destroys the body - as

Aristotle and many other philosophers have proven.

It seems obvious that alchemical transmutation cannot be taken

literally on a metallurgical level, else all humankind would be

221

unbelievably wealthy with gold and healthy into the bargain. This, of

course, does not rule out that transmutation occurs in nuclear physics by

the bombardment of atomic nuclei with neutrons.

Intuition tells us that alchemical transmutation is not chemistry

but didactic philosophy. Transmutation in alchemy can only be a

hermetic process based on the perfection of metals, illustrated by symbols

and veiled in allegory, designed to make good men better. Wisdom

communicates from one man to the next without attenuation through use.

This is symbolically the same as the lighting of candles by the

congregation during the Paschal Praeconium in the Roman Catholic rites

of Resurrection, celebrated at midnight on Easter Saturday. From the

flame of the great Paschal Taper, the congregation lights multiple candles

throughout the whole church. The great Taper though divided, suffers no

loss from the communication of its light.

820

In the same way, the modern

Olympic flame, ignited by priestesses in Athens with the rays of the sun,

communicates with the Olympic host city.

Zosimus of Panopolis, a highly regarded Jewish alchemist of

about four hundred CE, clearly considers the Jews as the repositories of

alchemical wisdom.

821

He suggested that they gained their sacred art

from the Egyptians by surreptitious means.

The infamous Jewish alchemist Count St. Germain, seems to

confirm the Jews’ illicit possession of alchemical knowledge. He wrote

that Moses discovered a manuscript in an Egyptian monument that

showed how to prolong life for more than a century. The manuscript was

triangular in the same way the Sumerians codified the law of the God

KUR on triangular tablets.

822

Moses concealed it in Asia under the device

of a winged dragon.

823

Asia here probably refers to Byblos, identified

with Gebal, which was the home of the Dionysian initiates in about one

thousand six hundred BCE.

824

Appendix 11 provides a translation of this

important manuscript.

Saint Germain’s winged dragon is a magical talisman. Its tail

lemniscates in a figure eight pattern and has a small head at its tip. The

main head and the headed tail are pointing in opposing directions. The

figure has wings and an arrow-shaped tongue protruding from the main

head. It is one of three magical illustrations executed in gilt and several

colors of ink.

The symbol of the winged dragon refers to the legend of

Hercules, glorious son of Jupiter and Alcmena. He fought and conquered

the dragon at the entrance to the garden of Hesperides called Ladon.

825

222

Hercules was seeking the tree of life, the divine Apple tree in the

Garden of the Hesperides that produced golden apples of felicity.

826

Mother Earth originally gave this tree with golden apples to the Great

Goddess Hera as a wedding present. Hera placed the tree in her orchard

on Mount Atlas with the Hesperides.

827

The three sweetly singing

Hesperides were Hespere, Aegle and Erytheis.

828

Hercules' blade, reddened with the blood of the ferocious

hundred-headed Ladon, who coiled around the apple tree, is the necessary

key to enter the garden.

829

There the Hesperides, the Three Daughters of

the West who really symbolize the great Triple or Mother Goddess, grant

him wisdom.

Such symbolism is patently alchemical with the Dragon, its blood

and the golden Apple tree all being seen within an alchemist's flask

during the Great Work. A sacrifice is necessary, but it is not always the

Dragon. We will understand this further when we look at the legend of St

George and the Dragon in Chapter 15.

The aforementioned alchemist, Zosimus, was a highly passionate

advocate for intellectual and academic honesty in alchemy. He inveighed

against the jealousy, vanity and mean-spiritedness of those who concealed

their alchemical wisdom asserting:

…everybody should possess a book of chemistry, which should

not be hidden away.

Zosimus openly criticized his contemporary Theosebia who kept

her alchemical wisdom secret, only transmitting it under oath to small

groups. Suggestive of the Mysteries and legends of St George, Zosimus

clearly agreed that the procedures of alchemy are strictly preparatory to

the purification and perfection of the soul. He wrote:

830

Perform these things until your soul is perfected.

Another celebrated alchemist, Paracelsus lived from 1493 to

1534. He was born Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim but called

himself both Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von

Hohenheim and Paracelsus. Others honored him as the Swiss Hermes

because he had learned the secrets of alchemy in Constantinople and from

them developed the first cure for syphilis. In his Theory of Alchemy,

Paracelsus proposed ritual Questions and Answers to confirm the

perfection of the soul:

831

Q. What do the philosophers understand by their gold and silver?

A. The philosophers apply to their sulphur the name of gold, and to

their mercury the name of silver.

223

Q. Whence are they derived?

A. I have already stated that they are derived from a homogeneous

body wherein they are found in great abundance, whence also

they know how to extract both by an admirable process.

Q. Is everything contained in this subject?

A. Yes, but nature at the same time must be assisted, so that the work

may be perfected and hastened, by means which are familiar to

the higher grades of the experiment.

Q. Is this subject exceedingly precious?

A. It is vile and originally without native elegance. Fundamentally it

is not saleable because it is useful in our work alone.

Despite its complex chemistry determined by trial and error,

medicinal success and high ideals, the prevailing view of alchemy has

now become disdain. This is due to unremitting focus on alchemy’s more

sensational aspects like counterfeiting and astrology. While it was the

forerunner of modern chemistry, medicine and pharmaceuticals, these

sciences have now subsumed the finest of the alchemists' art.

Massive transmutation of metals to gold by tincture is clearly

impractical. We must therefore ask if the real purpose of years of risky

and dedicated work was simply to produce a somewhat limited quantity

of red powder. There is perhaps a more ancient purpose of compulsive

alchemy, in searching for something that was lost that long pre-dates the

Aristotelian concept of perfection. In the next chapter, we look at earlier

and increasingly arcane meanings in the art of alchemy.

224

Chapter 15 St George and the Dragon

In the last chapter, we saw that Hercules fought and conquered

the dragon at the entrance to the garden of Hesperides. He was then able

to enter and find the Apple tree that produced golden apples of felicity.

There are many other representations of this same symbolism.

For example, in the Treasury of the Residence in Munich a magnificent

statuette dated 1586-1597 shows St George on a white charger plunging

his crystal sword into a winged emerald green dragon (see frontispiece).

The rubies over his enameled agate charger suggest blood and show the

red cross of St George. This magnificent equestrian statue, fifty

centimeters high, is the most gloriously jeweled object of its kind and the

greatest achievement in late sixteenth century goldsmith work.

832

originally housed a relic of St George given to Duke Wilhelm V, the

Pious, by his brother Ernst, Archbishop of Cologne. They concealed this

statue for thirty years, until 1617.

Another famous literary representation of St George killing the

dragon is Edmund Spencer's Faerie Queen.

833

Here the lovely woman

Una brings her Knight of the Red Cross to the House of Holiness in which

he finds Faith, Hope and Charity. Charity is the principal nature of the

House. It is brotherly love, the Charity of God or manna.

834

The name

Una means oneness and, co-incidentally, the three principles or neters are

important clues in the rituals in the House of the Pharaoh Unas, described

in Chapter 16.

Prima facie, the killing of the dragon is simply the victory of

good over evil. To the Church it was also the symbol of overcoming

Tiamat, the Triple Goddess in her aspect as the destroyer Hecate or

Demeter. The Pope uses the same allusion at a Consistory where the he

elevates bishops, archbishops and priests to the College of Cardinals. As

the Pope receives each candidate at his golden throne, he and hands the

new cardinal a red biretta, the silk square-ridged hat that symbolizes his

new rank as a prince of the church. The color red symbolizes a cardinal’s

willingness to shed his blood for the faith usque ad effusionem sanguinis.

On a more mystical level, the legend of St George represents the

personal victory of an individual's purity and virtue over the hundred evil

heads of his own base nature, ignorance and moral vice.

835

In alchemical

225

THE FIRST BOOKE OF THE FAERIE QVEENE.

Contayning

THE LEGENDE OF THE KNIGHT OF THE RED CROSSE,

OR OF HOLINESSE.

226

terms, it is the combat of the Knight (Secret Fire) with Stibnite (the

Dragon), which, after much purification:

836

is born the astral stone, shining as pure as silver, and which

appears to be signed, bearing the imprint of its nobility, its stamp

(a claw) ... a sure indication of the union and peace between fire

and water, between earth and air.

The hundred-headed hydra is just the same as the dragon. It is

also called the Old Serpent, Lord of the Abyss, Leviathan, Lotan, Shaitan,

Tiamat, Forsaker, Abandoner and Cthulhu. Sufi and Muqarribun writings

make use of the term Abandoner referring to the power of Tajrid and

Tafrid, which mean outward detachment and interior solitude

respectively. The Greeks use the word Apollyon, Abaddon in Hebrew.

837

In Pompeii, this menacing dragon is shown both as a crocodile in

the Villa of the Mysteries and the sea monster ketos in the legend of

Andromeda and Perseus in the Mythological Room of the Imperial Villa

at Boscotrecase.

838

Nicholas Poussin’s 1633 painting The Companions of Rinaldo,

now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, shows the

Christian knights Carlo and Ubaldo confronting the same fearsome

dragon. This has the same meaning as the two warring knights in the

Merchant’s Chapel of St Peters Church in Malmo, Sweden. Below them

is a large picture of St George and the Dragon.

A recent interpretation of the story of St George is George Lucas’

blockbuster film Star Wars (1977). Initially, many studios rejected the

script. It went on to gross two hundred million dollars and become the

envy of the industry. Star Wars even redefined cinema in the twentieth

century and became a popular trilogy. In the film, Daath-vader, so named

after Daath meaning man’s knowledge, is man’s base nature or the Lover,

balanced by his pure Son Luke Skywalker. Daath and Luke are two sides

of the same coin. Swords of Light consummate their battle. Only

initiates of the ancient Jedi Knights could wield these swords. So

enduring and popular was the theme that George Lucas’ used it once more

in 1999, with the first of three prequels of a new Star Wars Trilogy.

George Lucas is not alone in using this age-old theme. Michael Douglas’

film The Game is an initiation sequence. Douglas conceals the dragon in

a place worthy of the erudite complexity of Shakespeare.

Gnostic Christianity modified the alchemy of the Greater

Mysteries in a very imaginative way. The Gnostics believed that the

achievement of virtue over the ignorance and moral vice of one’s own

227

base nature was a pyrrhic victory - just as in the Afro-Asiatic sacred

marriage, where the ritual sacrifices the king. In this ceremony, it is the

victor St George, who is sacrificed.

839

The killing of the dragon is, in fact,

not a killing to death. When the sword of crystal light subdues the

Dragon, the Knight of the Rose Croix becomes the perfect expression of

life. This needs further illustration.

In a bold defense of the Families of Love in 1580, called an

Apology for the Service of Love, the Family describes how death is life.

They assert that sin is repairable in life. The Apology is set as a three-way

conversation in which the Exile, a Familist, seeks to convince two curious

individuals that the Family of Love was neither heretical nor:

…the most detestable Sectaries or Hereticks, that ever reigned on

the earth; yea, and as people not worthy to live in the Common-

wealth.

The Exile is seemingly a wild man, clothed in moss and coming

from the mountains. He talks of Family Brethren walking upright,

peaceably and brotherly amongst all people after their ritual:

840

To dye unto sin, to crucify the flesh with her lusts, to put on the

new man of righteousness, to dwell in Christ and have him dwell

in us, to have the same mind in us that was in Christ…

The odd character of the Exile in the Apology shows the author

had a detailed and insightful knowledge of Ovid or the poems of

Gilgamesh, written in about two thousand BCE.

841

Ovid variously

describes how Perseus and Hercules enter the Garden of Hesperides.

Hercules defeated the dragon at the gate.

842

Perseus defeated the giant

Atlas, who is an archetype for the Exile.

843

In Gilgamesh and the Cedar Forest, a wild man called Enkidu is

beguiled and persuaded to begin a new life among mortals.

844

Enkidu

adapts to his new lifestyle but loses his strength and courage. Gilgamesh

suggests that they seek out and kill Huwawa, a giant hideous monster

with lion’s claws. Enkidu is hesitant but finally seeks out Huwawa at the

mountain of cedars. Hu is the name of the cedar tree. The mountain of

cedars is a forest of base natures. The fearsome alter ego of Enkidu

dwells there. In a fit of rage, Enkidu kills his own base ego, as must the

Rose Croix Knight.

The Gnostic version maintains that instead of killing the Dragon,

the Soul instead unites or merges with the Dragon via the crystal sword of

light. This is not yet the sacred marriage. When pierced by the sword,

the Dragon simply floats up the sword to merge with the Rose Croix

228

Knight. The united entity of Spirit and Soul takes the worldly form of the

Dragon or, as San Francesco shows in his famous painting Crucifix, a

Serpent. At this point, the united entity is characterized in two completely

different ways. These are the Serpent and the Agnus Dei, or pure lamb

awaiting ritual slaughter.

The Gnostic Croix Knight, who has found his base nature,

victoriously impaled it and merged with it, then prepares for the sacred

marriage to the Goddess of Wisdom. The aspiring Knight of Holiness

must wed her as Truth to regain life with a new purified Spirit. He must

be reborn.

The Goddess of Wisdom is the hermetic form of the goddess of

death and love who is Aphrodite, Pallas Athena, Venus, Ishtar, Isis and

Sophia. She is both the Lion Goddess and Water Goddess from an

unusual event in astrological mythology associated with the real

Gilgamesh, a Kassite-Hyksos Shepherd King who invaded Babylon.

845

He identified with the ancient legends of Gilgamesh and took on the

symbol of the Ram because the relentless precession of the earth’s

equinoxes had moved the sign of the Ram into the favored House of

Spring in the Zodiac calendar. Amun and Yahweh followed Gilgamesh

by taking the sign of the Ram.

When the Ram pushed the Bull from the position of supremacy,

the Crab simultaneously displaced the Lion at the Summer Solstice. As a

result, the Love Goddess of the Summer Solstice left her Lion to become

the Goddess of Water. We see this in Aphrodite’s birth from a seashell

and the Virgin Mary reflected in many a convent garden pool.

The Dragon, who has been female to this point, is now

hermaphrodite, meaning both female and male. It takes on the male

aspect of the Knight and prepares to mate with the Goddess of Wisdom.

In the contrived process of mating, the Dragon disappears and all that

remains is the purified, reborn Knight as the beneficent Star of Life, also

called Phosphorous, meaning the bringer of light.

846

The Soul, of course,

never dies and remains constant throughout the process.

Revelation portrays this scene.

847

The number 666 is the number

of a man and represents his Spirit:

848

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the

number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his

number is Six hundred threescore and six.

229

Historical fundamentalists identify the Great Beast with Emperor

Nero because his Greek title is Neron Kaisar. The Gematria sum of the

Hebrew translation

RSQ NWRN is 666.

A rather complex solution to the puzzle uses the Atbash Cipher

(see Appendix 10). The number 666 is the Atbash Cipher code for

alphabetically transforming the Spirit (

RWCh) to the spiritually pure

Elohim (

ALHYM).

849

Gematrists perceive the number 666 as six, six and

six as in the combination of a safe. They transform the letters of the

Spirit,

RWCh (Ruach), through six places by cyclic rotation. RWCh

becomes

DLB, which is a Notaricon acronym for the Holy Alphabet

(Aleph, Beth, and Lamed). Ch rotates by six to B, the first letter in

BYTh.

W rotates by six to the middle letter L in Aleph (

ALPh), which is not a

vowel but a consonant. R similarly maps to D, the last letter in Lamed

(

LMD). Thus, the Holy Alphabet is the Key to Resurrection. Finally,

DML PhLA ThYB maps through the Atbash Cipher to Elohim

(

ALHYM).

850

Dante provided a straightforward solution in the Inferno.

851

The

letters in the dragon’s name Apophis sum to 667. The victorious knight

who vanquishes his own spirit, cuts-off the head of the dragon. Dante

sees this as cutting-off the initial letter A from the name Apophis. The

value of A is one so the remainder is 666. This is the age-old battle of Ra

and Apophis in Egypt, Apollo and the Python in Greece, Thor and the

serpent in Norse sagas, the Hittite storm god and a serpent on New Year’s

Day, Enlil and Tiamat in Mesopotamia, Tishtrya and Apaosha in Iran,

Indra and Vritra in India, Maui and Tuna in Polynesia and many other

myths.

852

We now return now to the mating of the dragon and Goddess.

The Goddess proceeds to destroy the Dragon embodying the Knight’s

Spirit. At this point, the Gnostic ritual diverges from the ancient sacred

marriage. In ancient times, the Knight would have been bound to an

oaken Tau cross, representing God’s Divine Law, using the five-fold bond

that joins wrists, neck and ankles together.

853

Flayed and hacked to

pieces, the sacrificial king would become a Eucharist. A new son would

have been naturally born of the Goddess after nine months gestation.

Indeed, the purpose of priestess’ sexual orgies was to ensure that at least

one became pregnant for this outcome.

In the Gnostic version, it was desirous to avoid the actual death of

anything real, let alone murder the initiate. Instead, the Goddess’ love

destroyed his Spirit by figurative crucifixion on a Tau cross. The

230

crucifixion scene shown to the Knight is the same as San Francesco’s

Crucified Serpent or the image of the serpent of bronze that Moses hung

on his staff, the nehushtan.

Another Serpent was born from the ashes of the Knight’s

crucified Spirit. As this was an Easter ceremony, this new Serpent laid

the glain or red egg, which the Goddess ate.

854

With the Goddess fertilized one way or another, the Rose Croix

Knight was reborn in life as described by the Family of Love. The

newborn issue of the sacred marriage emerged in the Rose Croix Knight

as the new King. The Dervish maxim is:

855

The man must die that the saint may be born.

The modern song Hero expresses the same sentiment:

856

Search for the hero inside yourself.

Search for the secrets you hide.

Search for the hero inside yourself.

Until you find the key to your life.

Ovid tells a legendary story of rebirth in the Doctrines of Pythagoras,

where the Phoenix of Assyria renews and begets itself:

857

This bird, when five long centuries of life

Have passed, with claws and beak unsullied, builds

A nest on a loft-swaying palm; …

Then from his father’s body is reborn

A little Phoenix, so they say, to live

The same long years. When time has built his strength

With power to raise the weight, he lifts the nest –

The nest his cradle and father’s tomb –

As love and duty prompt, from that tall palm

And carries it across the sky to reach

The Sun’s great city, and before the doors

Of the Sun’s holy temple lays it down.

The new King was his own Horus or Christ that was always latent within

the Knight Rose Croix, thus the Gnostic interpretation of I.N.R.I being

Jesus reigns within us.

Jesus sayings, found in the primitive Gospel of Thomas, mirror

this:

858

Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring

forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you,

what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

231

Consistent with this, the Gospel of Philip maintains that

resurrection of the spirit occurs before death and there is no resurrection

after death. A Greek Orthodox cleric readily confirms the meaning of

Easter:

859

We contemporary Christians should realise that the Resurrection

of our Lord does not concern the dead but rather those who are

still alive … the victory of the Lord’s sacrifice over moral and

spiritual death … has nothing to do with the physical

phenomenon we call “death” in our daily life.

In 1429CE, Phillip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Earl of

Flanders, instituted the Order of the Golden Fleece. Excepting that its

membership increased from thirty to seventy-eight, the Order remained

unchanged for nearly four centuries. In some countries, such as Sweden,

it became the most prestigious order of knighthood of its time.

In 1469, forty years after the Order of the Golden Fleece was

established, King Lewis IX created another important French Order, the

Order of St Michael.

860

This Order traces the legend of St Michael’s

worldly twin, St George. Its motto Immensi tremor Oceani means an

immense shaking in the waters. The Order’s collar was composed of

scallop-shells of gold. The jewel on the collar is a hillock on which St

Michael tramples the Dragon. Pope Leo X, the Medici’s high

Renaissance maecaneas, contributed to the Order in 1518. Pope Leo

presented King François I with two of Raphael’s paintings, Saint Michael

and the Holy Family, both of which now hang in the Louvre.

861

King Henry III of France established the Ordre du Saint-Esprit or

Order of the Holy Ghost in 1578.

862

Henry’s purpose was to bind the

French nobility to his side in the midst of religious turmoil. This included

the now infamous Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. on 24 August 1542

where Henry III ordered the murder of hundreds of Protestants who were

in Paris for the wedding of his sister Marguerite to the Huguenot leader,

Henri de Navarre.

The Order of the Holy Ghost became the most prestigious of all

France’s chivalric Orders. Its emblems were a dove, knots of gold and

the Fleur de Lys. The evening before a French Knight received this

Order, he became an initiate of the Order of St Michael.

The old French Ecossais Master or Architect’s Catechism follows

the twin Orders of St Michael and the Holy Ghost. It highlights the latent

Christ within:

863

Q: How is your health?

232

A: I carry a child in my womb, though I am a man

Q: How long will you carry it?

A: That is not decided, but while waiting I am frequently confined

Q: Who will be the midwife?

A: Minerva

Q: Who will be the Uncle?

A: Mercury

Q: And the Father?

A: One of my equals and I

The Gnostic-Rosicrucian Knight is a philosopher in search of

Truth because he searches for his sacred marriage with the Goddess of

Wisdom. If successful, he becomes a Knight Quadosh. Quadosh

signifies Holiness, Dedication and Sanctification.

864

He is also called a

Knight of the Feast of the Brotherhood because his ordeal is celebrated by

the Feast of the Brotherhood held on Passover Eve, also known as the

Agape or pure Feast of Brotherly Love.

We shall discuss Moses’ nehushtan further in Chapter 18.

865

It is,

however, worth noting that the crucified serpent continued to be a very

important image representing the crucifixion of Spirit on the cross of

Divine Law, so the seed within the Spirit, that sinneth not, could emerge.

Even Sir Francis Bacon, who wore the black hat of knowledge, chose the

device of a serpent on the anchor of peace, as shown in the Crucified

Serpent from the titlepage of The Faerie Queen, Part II (1617, dated

1613).

Sir Francis Bacon’s foster father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was

responsible for the appointment of a prominent Family of Love personage,

Robert Seale to court office.

866

The Bacon and Seale families both kept

country houses at St Albans. Given these close ties, it is not surprising

that Sir Francis Bacon was to use the Family’s symbolism of resurrection

on earth in the Knights Rose Croix ceremony of St George.

There is another confirmation of the close philosophical ties

between Sir Francis Bacon and the Family of Love. While inveighing

against moral injustices in the High Commission’s application of the law,

Sir Francis Bacon was to call upon a substantial portion of the Family of

Love’s Petition to James 1.

867

The word Shakespeare is interchangeable with the identity of all

dragon-slayers. It often describes St George.

868

Somewhat in

confirmation of this, Shakespeare is reputed to have been born and to

have died on twenty-third day of April, St George’s Day.

233

Crucified Serpent

from the titlepage of The Faerie Queen, Part II (1617, dated 1613)

234

The name William has additional significance since it derives

from Hwyll, or Hu the cedar tree we saw in the poem of Gilgamesh. The

final syllable is Helm, meaning helmet. It therefore means the glorious

helmet of knowledge or Wisdom. Knight-heroes that attain their goal

receive the same glorious helmet of invisibility worn by Pallas Athena.

Only the true initiate can wear this glorious helmet. It hides the

Countenance of the Lord from the profane.

In 1605, the Brothers of the Rosy Cross circulated in Europe a

manuscript titled The Restoration of the Decayed Temple of Pallas.

869

contained their constitution.

The cabalistic number of Rose Cross Knights was the perfect

number one hundred.

870

Knights Rose Croix often signed themselves as

100 men, Century-men or C-men. The latter is also a humorous play on

the Gnostic equivalence of semen and the carnal element in their ritual.

They also used the device of a Pythagorean comma ‘,’ to represent their

perfect number of one hundred. One hundred is also the exact Greek

meaning of the name of Triple Goddess, Hecate, in her aspect of death.

871

Each of the hundred was a single lunation. One hundred lunations made

up the Great Year of the Triple Goddess, at the close of which she ritually

sacrificed the king.

872

We see the Knight Rose Croix and the Triple Goddess interacting

in Shakespeare’s consummate play, King Lear. It drew on Geoffrey of

Monmouth’s legend of King Lear, the king who seemingly divided the

Kingdom of Britain into two parts.

873

Geoffrey of Monmouth says he

obtained his mysterious book of histories from Walter, Archdeacon of

Oxford.

King Lear’s desperate attempt to avoid the sacrificial fate of kings

has its origins in the ancient Triple Goddess ritual. To avoid death, or at

least defer it for nineteen years, the king divided his kingdom into three

parts and awarding one part to each of his successors.

874

The Judgment of Paris influenced Shakespeare.

875

In this archaic

legend, Paris, awards his apple to Aphrodite who is the fairest of three

goddesses: Athene the maiden, Aphrodite the nymph and Hera the crone.

However, Shakespeare has realized that this is the wrong way around, as

Homer and Hesiod knew. It is Aphrodite awarding the apple to Paris at

the price of his life. The apple is Paris’ passport to the Elysian Fields,

which admits only the souls of heroes. Eve awards the same apple to

Adam.

235

Cinyras and Smyrna shows the correct orientation of the legend.

In this myth, King Cinyras extended his reign beyond eight years by

marrying his youngest daughter, the birth-goddess Smyrna.

876

In the

normal scheme of things, another princeling would marry her and thereby

inherit his kingdom. In other cases of planned prolongation, kings sought

to increase the period of their sovereignty by giving away two thirds of

their kingdom.

877

For example, Actor and Proteus both divided their

kingdoms into three parts, retaining only one part and bequeathing the

other two thirds to their successors.

878

In the Preface of this book, the author undertook to warn readers

about outlandish hypotheses. Here is a major challenge: Geoffrey of

Monmouth’s histories seem to bear little relationship to known historical

facts. This may be because they are often about important events in

Egypt two thousand years before his time. If this is indeed the case, these

events had monumental importance for the Israelites, as we saw in

Chapter 6. Shakespeare’s King Lear may well be the same age-old story

that had its greatest moment in history in the twenty-first dynasty of

Egypt, which divided the Kingdom of Egypt in 1075BCE. Thebes ruled

Southern Egypt and Tanis, in the far northeast of the Delta, governed the

new independent North Egypt. The folly of division weakened both states

and opened Egypt to a Libyan invasion in 945BCE. The Libyan Pharaoh

Shoshenq I overthrew all Egypt.

This hypothesis explains the real inspiration behind the well

known, despairing, yet unprovable legend of the division of Solomon’s

kingdom between Solomon’s son Rehoboam and an official of Solomon’s

court called Jeroboam.

879

The division of the kingdom between

Rehoboam and Jeroboam may really be an allegory of the acrimonious

rift between the parallel Israelite religions of Levite Judaism in the South

and universal hermetic religion of the Tribe of Dan at Panias in the North.

Now we look at division of the kingdom in the English context.

In 1292, King Edward I of England faced the great cause of Scotland,

whether he should divide Scotland.

880

His judges needed to decide a

difficult question, whether the kingship of Scotland should be awarded to

a representative of one of the three co-heiress daughters of David earl of

Huntingdon (the younger brother of William the Lion) or partitioned

between them.

This was to rule on two important issues. The first was

divisibility of the kingdom and the second was the proper moral and legal

solution to a clash between Western primogeniture and the ancient

236

Israelite principle of ultimogeniture observed by the Scots. At issue was

whether the son (Robert Bruce) of a younger daughter had a better right to

the kingship of Scotland than the grandson (John Balliol) of an elder

daughter. The Scotts called Robert Bruce of Annandale The Competitor.

Eighty Scottish assessors, appointed equally by Robert Bruce of

Annandale and John Balliol, failed to resolve the matter and it was turned

over to Edward I.

Edward I’s judges upheld English usage on succession,

primogeniture, that the issue of an elder line must become exhausted

before succession could pass to that of a younger line. After his loss,

Robert Bruce pursued his second option, which was to split Scotland into

its three original components of Lothian, Alban and Strathclyde and

award these to the representatives of the three co-heiresses. He again lost

the argument. Edward I’s judges decided the kingdom of Scotland was

indivisible and impartiable. In this decision, however, Edward I

unwittingly established the basis of Scotland’s future independence.

We can clearly see Shakespeare’s King Lear reflected in Robert

Bruce’s dilemma. He was eighty-one years old. Having been the

nominated king and now all-but lost his kingdom due to Edward I’s legal

ruling and his advanced age: would he seek to split the kingdom between

the daughters, with the youngest one (his own line) receiving the choicest

piece, or would he see the kingdom go in whole to a younger king? He

endeavored to split the kingdom but as with Shakespeare’s King Lear,

Robert Bruce The Competitor lost all. He died in 1294 but the Scots

crowned his grandson Robert the Bruce king in 1306 and sixty five years

later, in 1371, his great-great grandson Robert II, became the first Alanic

Stuart king.

Perhaps even more topical for the Elizabethans of Shakespeare’s

time was the political folly of splitting the mighty kingdom of France.

Jean le Bon, John the Good, in an acute lack of wisdom, divided the

kingdom of France between the three younger brothers of the Dauphin

Charles V, the Dukes of Berry, Anjou and Burgundy. Indeed, this

division led to England winning the Hundred Year’s War (1337-1453)

after the Duke of Burgundy sided with England to protect his lucrative

Netherlands wool trade.

There is no more compelling elaboration of Shakespeare’s

brilliant dimensions – legal and esoteric - than his play King Lear. We

have seen the legal dimension and now we turn to the esoteric.

237

Shakespeare’s King Lear was aged and infirm with no son to

replace him. He desperately sought to divide his kingdom among his

three daughters to avoid his sacrificial fate in favour of a younger king.

All he sought to retain was a troop of one hundred men for protection. He

was a hundred-man.

King Lear’s three daughters represent the Triple Goddess. To

succeed with his plan he needed to experience the carnal love of the

Goddess, which is the professed love of each of his daughters. In this

way, he could satisfy the requirement of carnal involvement with the

Goddess, without actually being involved.

Shakespeare employs an exquisite Baconesque legal fiction. In

return for a portion of the kingdom, each daughter is required to swear

that King Lear has priority in love over her husband. To his youngest,

most innocent daughter he offers the choicest portion of the kingdom in

special recognition of her ultimogeniture. She denies him, withholding

her carnal love for her own fiancée.

Winning only two daughters was not sufficient to subvert his

impending fate. To others, King Lear’s mind seems to break. The astute

King Lear recognizes that his clever solution has not worked and the time

for sacrifice is upon him. In his rage, he banishes Wisdom from his

kingdom in the form of his old friend. He violently berates his daughters

to find a solution that will preserve his life.

King Lear’s madness is really the essence of clear vision, as we

would expect from such an illustrious King. Even this tirade against his

daughters cleverly characterizes each as a traditional embodiment of the

Triple Goddess such as Hecate.

The King cannot escape his fate. Indeed, he and his three

daughters all die in the moment of climax as the wicked Edmund kills the

most innocent daughter, Cordelia, who represents the Goddess of Love.

Edmund is Edgar’s evil alter-self. As with all Rose Croix

Knights, Edgar must kill the evil base side of his own character before he

can achieve the purity required for kingship. He kills Edmund and

immediately emerges as the purified righteous King.

Through this consummate tragedy, Shakespeare recalled a long

history of Rose Croix tradition. The theological scholar Eusebius

provides evidence of the importance of this Rose Cross tradition.

Eusebius relates that even the great Emperor Constantine

identified with the ritual by having himself depicted with his lance

piercing a bristling dragon.

881

In fact, the Red Cross first became

238

associated with St George when Emperor Constantine used it to

commemorate the beheading of his friend the martyr St George of Lydda

on 23 April.

882

From the legend of St George and the Gnostic depiction of Jesus

on the Cross as a Serpent, we can more readily understand the arcane

significance of the Spear of Longinus. Longinus used this spear to pierce

the side of Jesus. The legend of Longinus corresponds to that of Pelops,

who killed the old king Oenomaus with his spear.

883

Pelops was

Tantalus’ lucky eighth son.

Legend holds that Joseph of Arimathea also gave the Red Cross

device to Prince Caradoc in his capacity of Defender of the Faith in

Britain. From this, the Red or Rose Cross then became the device of the

Christian flag of the British Church. It now dominates a St Andrew’s

Cross on the Union Jack.

In about 1195CE Richard I the Lionheart adopted St George as

the patron saint of Britain, thereby displacing King Edward the Confessor

as Britain’s patron saint.

884

He simultaneously elevated the Rose Cross to

the emblem of Britain and instituted the new British battle cry For St

George. Any knight who successfully scaled the walls of Jerusalem in

the Crusades earned the reward of elevation to Companion of St

George.

885

During a truce in the Third Crusade, Richard I initiated Saladin

into the Order of Chivalry.

886

This seems to be a fact. In return, Saladin

initiated Richard I into the lower degrees of Dervish mysticism. The

Dervish tradition records that Richard I then initiated a number of knights

including several Knights Templar into the same mysteries. The

Dervishes, however, claim that Richard I never received the higher

degrees of their system of thirty-three degrees and therefore Knights

Templar and Freemasons only have the lower degrees.

Richard II required that every British soldier wear a St George

Cross over his armour. His decree remained in force until the sixteenth

century.

887

The unequivocal meaning was that a Rose Cross Knight

should serve his King as a Defender of the Faith.

Richard I died before he could implement his dream to recreate

King Arthur’s Order or Society of St George and the Round Table. King

Edward III achieved Richard I’s aim by instituting The Most Noble Order

of St George and the Garter in 1344. He consecrated the Royal Chapel of

St Edward the Confessor, in Windsor Castle, to the new Order in 1348.

888

It was a society, fellowship and college of knights and their ladies, formed

239

with the object of Good Fellowship. The insignia of the twenty-six

Knight Companions was a light blue Druidic thong or garter tied just

below the knee. This gave them the colloquial name: Knights of the Blue

Garter. The blue thong is the traditional Persian color of righteous

sovereignty, kingship and rebirth. It reminded the Companions not to flee

from defending Truth. Their purple robe further confirmed that they were

equivalent to kings in courage, piety and devotion to Truth.

Three sets of the Order’s regalia can been seen today. The Scots

keep King James VII collar and his Great and Lesser Georges with the

Honours of Scotland in the strong room at Edinburgh Castle. Another

two sets of regalia are stored at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen.

Elizabeth I sent the first to King Fredrick II of Denmark in 1582. The

museum claims it is the oldest regalia in existence. James I sent the

second to King Christian IV in 1603. Political unrest at the time of

Cromwell’s republic and Charles I’s execution led to the Danish not

returned it upon Christian IV’s death in 1648.

Given the heritage of the Order of the Garter, it is not surprising

to find tiny roses in the golden garters of a Companion’s jeweled collar.

The roses are the original five-petal dog rose, albeit red to signify the

ritual of ardor. Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), the famed English

antiquarian, Rosicrucian and Freemason was the historian of the Order of

the Garter.

889

In his famous history of the Order, Ashmole traced the reward of

military honour to the Trojans and Greeks.

890

The English King awarded

the Order of the Garter to foreign kings and dukes as well as to

Englishmen as a sign of the universal and chivalrous kinship of knights.

891

For example, Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, received the

Order of the Garter from King Edward IV in 1474. The Duke proudly

showed his Order of the Garter in an exquisite parquetry studilio in his

Palace at Gubbio in Umbria. The ducal studilio is now on-display in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Order required all its Knights to meet at Windsor Castle on

St George’s Day, twenty-third of April.

892

The English King guaranteed

foreign members safe conduct on English soil for fifteen days either side

of the grand Solemnity. England granted free passport even if it was at

war with the foreign nation.

The importance of international leaders meeting in harmony on St

George’s day was echoed at the fiftieth anniversary meeting of North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (

NATO) members in Washington on April

240

23, 1999. NATO’s meeting was in the midst of Serbia-Kosovo

difficulties. European leaders well realized the importance of the day

chosen for their anniversary.

A replica Magna Carta in the Rotunda of the Capitol of the

United States in Washington underscores the relevance of the Order of

the Garter to the USA. This replica is a treasured gift from Britain. The

case shows Jesse’s tree sprouting the white, five-petal Tudor dog rose,

yellow daffodil of Wales, green three leaf Irish clover and violet Scottish

thistle. Underneath the tree, barely perceptible, St George continues his

battle with the dragon.

Ashmole contended that Moses, Solomon and Hermes were the

only three who excelled in the knowledge of the Philosophers' Stone.

With it, they wrought wonders. This he learned from Mr. William

Backhouse:

893

Jan 13, 1653: Father Backhouse lay sick in Fleet Street; and

fearing that he would not recover, communicated to Ashmole as a

legacy “in syllables, the true matter of the Philosophers’ Stone.”

The eighteenth century French scholar, J M Ragon, noted that

Ashmole composed many of the original rituals of Freemasonry.

894

Ashmole's work seems based on the thirteenth century revisions of an

even earlier system. While Ashmole's collection of twelve wagonloads of

historical, philosophical and alchemical materials was to become

Oxford‘s famed Ashmolean Museum, Ragon’s own unfinished

manuscripts remained in the archives of the Grand Orient of France. The

archives in Paris became relatively impoverished when the Nazis

removed its documents during the occupation.

The alchemical slaying of the dragon occurs in the ancient

Mysteries, in the fifth degree of seven. This is the second degree of the

Greater Mysteries (see Appendix 7).

895

This degree presents a dramatic

reenactment to the candidate, the Arch-Mason or Chistophoris, as sole

spectator. We are familiar with this play through scenes on ancient Greek

pottery. Perseus, with the assistance of Hermes and Athena, decapitates

the Gorgon called Medusa, whose name derives from the Sanskrit Medha

meaning sovereign female wisdom.

896

Perseus overcomes the sea monster

that seeks to devour Andromeda.

897

In a similar legend, Jason sails his magic boat, made from the

prophetic oaks of Dodona to win the Golden Fleece.

898

He needs the help

of the goddess Hera and his love Medea.

899

With magic charms from

241

Medea, Jason becomes invincible and is able to beguile the sleepless

dragon that guards the Golden Fleece.

We see the same symbolism in the Minoan myth of Minotaur, a

half bull, half-human who is confined to a labyrinth. At Knossos, the cult

of the bull succeeded the partridge cult.

900

Although easy to enter, the labyrinth is impossible to escape from

without the help of the Goddess Ariadne. She represents love. To the

Greeks her name Ariagne meant most pure or very holy (qdeshah).

901

She

was the Moon Goddess honored in the dance of the labyrinth.

Ariadne immediately falls in love with Theseus, who is to be the

next meal for the Minotaur. She seeks the designer of the labyrinth,

Daedalus, to obtain a ball of silken thread.

902

Theseus fastens one end of

this to the door of the maze and unwinds it as he ventures in. After killing

the Minotaur, he is able to emerge from his figurative death by rewinding

the silken thread of Ariadne’s love (see Appendix 6). On Mount Sipylus,

in Athens, Crete, Troy and in Palestine, dancers of the maze or cordax

used a rope in the same way, explained as an aid to keep proper distance

and execute the pattern faultlessly.

903

The Celtic people knew Ariadne’s castle of Light at the Corona

Borealis as Caer Sidi.

904

The Welsh called the maze Caer-droia or Troy-

town.

The Greeks visualized the Corona Borealis as a crown of fiery

gold and Indian rubies set in the shape of roses.

905

The divine smith

Hephaestus created this crown. The same delicate gold wreaths with

gemmed flowers were found in the Mochlos hoard.

906

Ariadne’s spiral castle is revolving, and remote, gloomy, lofty

and cold. In Celtic myth, this spiral castle is a labyrinthine bridal chaplet

and royal tomb.

907

To escape is to reincarnate.

Many labyrinths are in a mountain cave.

908

The entrance is via a

dark door on the side of a hill. The theme is modern as well as ancient.

Fans of Superman will recognize the castle as the Arctic ice cave where

Superman regenerated. A video clip called Frozen, from the American

singer Madonna’s 1998 album Ray of Light, similarly shows Madonna as

the Triple Goddess in her castle of Light at the Corona Borealis.

909

The

spiral Guggenheim Museum in New York designed by Frank Lloyd

Wright suggests the same fascination of spiral castle and beehive.

The word Hero derives from the name of the Goddess Hera.

910

With his golden apple, the soul of her Hero travels to her paradise at the

back of the North Wind.

242

Only seven heroes harrowed hell to return from this paradise

called Caer Sidi.

911

These are all sun-heroes: Daedalus with the assistance

of the Moon Goddess, Theseus who killed the Minotaur, Hercules,

Orpheus and 3 others. The last three will be among the heroes Amathon,

Arthur and Gwydion in Britain; Harpocrates, Kay, Owain and Cuchulain

in Ireland.

Ariadne transported the sacrificed Oak-king to her spiral castle in

the Corona Borealis. This was just dipping over the northern horizon at

the time of the summer solstice.

912

In this castle, the Oak-king, like the

blind Samson in Delilah’s prison mill, adds his weight to turn the Mill of

the Universe. As Samson’s sacrificial Goddess, Delilah shaved the rays

of the sun, his hair and his strength, before calling the Philistines, as the

ages old Triple Goddess did before tearing to pieces the sacrificial king.

913

The dancing Great and Little She-Bears showed the ongoing turn

of the Mill around the polar axis.

914

Nowadays, the relentless precession

of the earth has disturbed this pattern.

The Egyptians used labyrinths in their mortuary temples. That of

the sixth Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, Amenemhe III, Sesôstris I great-

great grandson, was known to classical writers such as Herodotus as the

Labyrinth and mysteriously described as Egypt’s greatest wonder of

all.

915

In the Egyptian context, St George is Horus.

In the second degree of the Greater Mysteries, mentioned earlier,

Horus searches the hall with several masters bearing torches to find the

cavern where Typhon, a hundred headed dragon, belches flames. Horus

decapitates Typhon and casts the corpse back into the fiery cavern. In

silence, Horus exhibits the dragon's heads. The candidate received the

meaning of the drama and the word, Chymia. This united Mystery

philosophy with alchemy and foreshadowed the importance of alchemy in

the rituals to come.

This fifth degree of seven also reminds us of the Egyptians’

anguish when ruled by the Hyksos king Apophis, who fashioned himself

as Typhon. Chapter 6 introduced this subject, which we will return to in

Chapter 18.

In the next chapter, we look at the colors of emerald green and

lilac before again turning to the Red Cross of St George in the intriguing

context of Roses and Rosicrucians. We shall also see the striking

similarity between the symbolism in this degree and Mesopotamian myths

outlined Chapter 18 and then look more closely at the ultimate aims of

alchemy.

243

Before concluding this phase of our alchemy investigation, it is as

well to remember that there never was a Gorgon called Medusa.

916

The

Gorgon was simply a fearsome ugly mask, a warning not to divulge or

misuse the real contents of Pallas Athena’s magical goatskin bag.

917

These are the Mysteries of the Triple Goddess: a live and venomous

serpent, the great secrets of alchemy, Palamedes’ secret letters of the

alphabet and a disc spirally engraved with the nine-letter name of the

Goddess of Wisdom, JIEHUOVA

Later, when the ceremony became patriarchal, Perseus owned the

bag and the Holy and Ineffable name of God was the seven-letter name

JIEUOA

918

244

Chapter 16 Green and Lilac

There are further stages of alchemy that move beyond red to

green and eventually lilac substances. Green has always been at the

centre of alchemical mysteries as a Green Lion. The sixteenth century

treatise Esh M’saref or The Refiners Fire discusses the Green Lion:

919

And it is known in the metallic mysteries that at the very outset

there occurs the enigma of the Lion of the green growth, which

we call the Green Lion, which, I pray you, do not reckon that it is

called for any other reason but its color. For unless your matter

be green, not only in that immediate state before it is reduced to

water, but also after the water of gold is made thereof, you must

remember that you must thus amend your universal dry process.”

The manuscript also notes that the true healer, that is the expert

alchemist, must be as contemptuous of riches as the Prophet Elisha.

920

Michael Maier's Septimana philosophica links the Green Lion to an

alchemical rose:

921

The centre of the rose is green and is emblematical of the Green

Lion.

Basil Valentine also discusses the Green Lion in his Twelve Keys:

This is feeding, the Red Lion with the blood of the Green Dragon.

The Green Lion you know what it is, it's the crude antimony. And

the Red Lion is the Regulus.

His words are mischievously obscuring because the Green Lion is

not crude antimony as he says and the Red Lion is quite apparently not

the Star Regulus of antimony. Though a master of misinformation, Basil

Valentine skillfully left an important clue to those who can see. The

words are you know what it is. Of this, we shall have much more to

discover in Chapter 19.

The Green Dragon exists within the alchemists' flask. It is crucial

in preparing the Green Lion and often compared to the human

characteristic of jealousy. Shakespeare’s Othello says:

922

IAGO O, beware, my lord, of jealousy:

It is the Green-ey’d monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

Minna Antrim (b1861) argues similarly in Naked Truth and

Veiled Allusion that the absence of the Green Dragon means the

alchemical reaction is not working:

245

The Green-Eyed Monster causes much woe, but the absence of

this ugly serpent argues the presence of a corpse whose name is

Eros.

The emergence of a green substance beneath the red was one of

the most hidden secrets of the Great Work. Fulcanelli said of the red

substance:

923

… according to the sacred language, the term philosopher's

stone, means the stone which bears the sign of the sun. The solar

sign is characterized by its red coloration, which can vary in

intensity … and

924

...the philosopher's stone appears in the shape of a crystalline,

diaphanous body, red in the mass, yellow after pulverization ..

David Hudson says of the chemistry of the Green substance:

925

Monatomic gold as a chloride has a forest green color;

commercial gold chloride is gold or a light green depending on

how much you dilute it. No one offers monatomic gold

commercially. Edgar Cayce says you should use gold chloride

solution in his Wet Cell Appliance. When you put the green gold

chloride solution in the wet cell it works about twenty times better

… When you dissolve metallic gold into aqua regia, you convert

to chloride to get rid of all the nitric. All you really have is a

cluster of metallic gold. I do not care how long you boil this; it

never will dissolve to the monatom. The diatonic bonds of gold

are so profoundly strong, and if you really think about it, gold has

an electronic structure of 5d106s1 and that in itself tells you it

will never go to the monatom. All of the other s1 elements are

lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium; these are

explosively reactive substances that we call the alkaline metals. If

you throw them in water, they burn. Gold has the same structure

as these alkaline metals. Gold gets a hold of itself and it will not

let go. You can get it down to the diatom, but it will never go

farther than that, so the best that you can ever hope for, is

. You never lose the diatomic bond, and that's why when

you refine gold, you always get 99.9% recovery, because it’s real

easy to recover, it never loses its metallic character. But if you

know how to take those metallic bonds apart and get monatomic

gold, which is what mother nature did by literally dissolving it to

a single atom when it comes up out of the earth, about ninety

246

eight percent of the gold comes up as monatomic gold, about two

percent comes up as metal.

Others have suggested that green gold is formed from gold

isotope 192, while red is from the 195 isotope and white from 197. In

contrast to the difficulty in raising green and red to white, white gives rise

to both red and green. It is possible that a collapsing magnetic field or

accurate chemical pH control also can remove neutrons to form the green.

The mystery passion play of the Egyptian Sed Festival, which

dates back to the first Egyptian dynasty, demonstrates the importance of

both Red and Green. In this play, the Spirit of the Pharaoh Unas

figuratively dies and then is reborn. Renewed, he rules Egypt wisely.

The name Unas means Existence. The Pharaoh's Spirit or ka passes

through the phases of the silvery white crown of the south (Mercury)

representing the soul and the golden red crown of the north (Sulphur)

representing the spirit, thereby uniting them:

926

Unas has sustained himself on the Red Crown; he has swallowed

the Green One… The signatures do not weaken in his hand for he

has swallowed the wisdom of all Neters [Principles].

The Pharaoh is himself the great house. He is the living image of

reincarnation and of return to the source of the divine Word. He

represents the resurrecting Osiris. The image of the Pharaoh as the great

House is similar to the early Persian meaning of Freemason, which is

Master of the House. In the ceremony dedicating a new temple, the

Pharaoh orients the temple, symbolically prepares the foundations and

passes the house to its Master.

927

The resurrection ceremony of Anubis for the Unas Pharaoh

continues:

928

Unas is liberated from the humanity that is within his limbs. This

Unas seizes the great white crown from the hands of the two

divine Enneads. Isis nurses him, Nephthys suckles him. Horus

takes him in his fingers, eternally living. He purifies Unas in the

Jackal Lake, he delivers the Ka of Unas in the lake of the

Netherworld, he destroys the flesh of the Ka of this Unas for his

body of resurrection, by means of what is on Ra’s arms…. The

two lands shine forth and the face of the Principles radiates while

he leads the Ka of this Unas and his own body of resurrection

toward the great mansion….. Perfect is this Unas in his

perfection, he is no longer corruptible…. In this country to which

Unas is going, he will know neither hunger nor thirst, throughout

247

eternity. God appeared to Unas and Unas is seated upon the

great throne at the side of the great God…. It is Unas who is at

the head of the Kas, who united hearts in the face of the supreme

Sage, bearer of the divine scroll the Knower of wisdom at the

right hand of Ra….

Although this ceremony dates from the first Egyptian dynasty, the

above description is from the Saqqara temple of Pharaoh Unas, the last

king of the fifth dynasty. The Egyptians may have lost the secret of the

green substance during the Hyksos invasion.

929

Pre-Islamic Persian Sufism provides a guide to the full

significance of green:

930

Ours is the method of alchemy. It involves extracting the subtle

organism of light from beneath the mountains under which it lies

imprisoned.

The Iranian Sufis drew not only on Islam, but also on the

Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Hermetic, Gnostic and Platonic traditions that

flourished in Persia. Sohrawardi the Martyr, who lived from 1153CE to

1191CE, was the chief Sufi Philosopher of the Orient. He carried out the

great project of reviving the wisdom of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran in

Sufism.

This wisdom traced the Orient of pure light to the celestial pole,

the double constellation of the Bear and Pole Stars. In an important Sufi

vision, oil collected from the constellation of the Bear is a pure spiritual

substance given as initiation into the mystical rank of Ecclesia Spiritualis,

the seven masters of initiation and intercessors.

931

The Great Bear, otherwise known as the Great Chariot, Arktos,

the Big Dipper and Charlie’s Wain is the most prominent constellation in

the Northern Hemisphere.

The Little Bear or Little Chariot is the laborer’s Plough or

Phoenix, which is reborn from ashes.

Each night the Great Bear’s seven principal stars pivot around the

axis of the North Pole. This axis is now located near the star Polaris but

six thousand years ago the star Dracos was the axis. Dracos, the

Arthurian dragon, lies in between the two Bears so that the Bears

appeared to dance around the pole as the earth rotated.

Ruzbehan of Shiraz, on turning his attention to the Great Bear,

saw its seven stars as seven apertures through which God directly showed

himself. Similarly, in Taoist tradition, the Ecclesia Spiritualis are the

seven spiritual rulers in the constellation of the Bear and the Bear Star is

248

the Pivot of Jade.

932

Confucians call Polaris the Emperor and the Great

Bear his Chariot.

In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda and Spenta Mainyu together

evoked the bounteous septet of Amesha Spentas, the Beneficent or Holy

Immortals.

933

These spiritual beings exorcise the deavas, who are major

demons committed to ruination.

934

Jewish and Christian traditions

adopted the seven Amesha Spentas as seven archangels.

At the extreme east of the Iranian world is Transoxiania, very

near Bactria, the Jewel of Iran that cradled Indo-Hittite Zoroastrianism.

There, Sufi Najmoddin Kobra (d1220CE) made clear the pre-eminence of

Green Light as the mystic Orient, light of the North or the heavenly pole.

He writes that initiation in the lower mysteries merely takes the candidate

from the dark night of unconsciousness to the luminous black night of

superconsciousness, which is only to the realization that one is actually

unknowing.

935

This is the same as the Tenebrae or Darkness in the Roman

Catholic Matins and Lauds of Holy Week.

936

Lulled into psychological

quiescence by Gregorian Chants and the gradual extinguishing of candles,

an individual can find nothing in the empty silence and darkness except

memories. Deprived of light, the individual is dispossessed of all that is

Good. This is the doctrine of privato boni. Memories cannot help to

grasp the current situation. The individual is said to be in the cloud of

unknowing. St Dionysius referred to it as divine darkness and others as

nigredo. The individual loses complacency and becomes one of the

parvulis, poor in spirit, exiled or orphaned. The magnificent Miserere

describes this experience:

But what a mystery my life is,

What a mystery!

… But where am I and what am I doing,

how do I live?

… I see myself.

I live in the soul of the world

Lost in the depths of life!

Miserere, miserable me,

But I toast life!

If there is night dark enough

To hide me, hide me,

If there is a light, a hope,

Magnificent sun that shines inside me,

249

Give me joy to live

That is not yet there.

… That perhaps is not yet there.

A sharp sound cracks the darkness. Light is reborn. A priest

returns a single candle to the stand. The candle symbolizes each

individual’s magnificent sun, the knowledge of God that dispels the

darkness of ignorance and despair. All then leave the Church in silence.

Sufism identifies the state of Luminous Night with mystical

poverty, described as poor in spirit. People in this stage have nothing

with which to be, they cannot be sufficient unto themselves in order to be

what they have to be. It is the in-essence of their essence. The Sufi

philosopher Semnani said that passing from the Luminous Night to the

brilliance of emerald vision is a sign of the completed growth of the

subtle organism, the resurrection body hidden in the visible physical

body.

937

The initiated know this experience as the happy gate of blackness

… which art the passage to this so glorious change.

938

It is the gate of

Saturn. Apuleius describes his experience of Luminous Night with the

mysterious words:

At midnight, I saw the sun shining brightly with a splendid light.

Installed master freemasons will know what he means.

Red, the color of ardent pure fire, is the sign of vitality of spiritual

energy, signifying the power to actualize. The importance of the color

green is that it is the color of the heart and the sign of life of the heart. It

is the color of resurrection, the celestial pole and the highest light of the

Mystery.

939

It is the color of Mohammed.

940

It is also associated with the

Great Mother Goddess in her Egyptian aspect as Isis, the Lady of Nature.

Sohrawardi said in his Recital of the Exile:

941

Green is the color that outlasts the others. From this color

emanate flashing, sparkling rays. This green may be absolutely

pure or it may become tarnished. Its purity proclaims the

dominant note of the divine light; its dullness results from a

return to the darkness of nature.

Goethe was a practical alchemist and he studied the Aurea Catena

Homeri or Golden Chain of Homer by Anton Joseph Kirchweger and

Opus magocabbalisticum et theosophicum by Georg von Welling. Much

of his interest in alchemy comes through in his opera Faust:

942

If the polarity of yellow and blue has truly been grasped, if in

particular their intensification into red has been well noted and it

250

has become clear how these opposites tend toward one another

and reunite in a third color, then it cannot be doubted that the

intuition of a profound secret is beginning to dawn in us, a

foretaste of the possibility that a spiritual meaning might be

attributed to these two separate and mutually opposed entities.

When they are seen to produce green below and red above, one

can hardly refrain from thinking that one is contemplating here

the earthly creatures and there the heavenly creatures of the

Elohim.

Goethe's third substance that forms from green below and red

above is lilac. The purple color of lilac or lavender is the color of wisdom

and the end of the work. If the rock of the Green Lion is broken open,

lilac is inside.

Appendix 4 contains an excerpt from a very old hermetic

document called the Virgin of the World, handed down to us by Stobæus.

It may well be the most esoteric institution of the Mysteries of Isis.

943

the Virgin of the World, Isis pours knowledge over Horus in preparation

for the Black Rite of Perfection, which she has already received.

944

Isis

begins with an alchemical allegory of the creation of the world. In her

story, the Philosophers’ Stone is in compost.

945

The great French protégé poet, Arthur Rimbaud

(1854-91),

similarly describes in his Sonnet of the Vowels how each of the five

vowels in the alphabet has a different color.

946

These are sequentially the

alchemical stages of black (nigredo), white (albedo), red (rubedo), the

peaceful pastures of green and finally

OMEGA blue, or rather the violet of

His Eyes. Buddhists similarly chant the vowels: Hum (black), Ni

(yellow), Me (red), Pad (green),

AUM (white) and Ma (blue).

947

The Roman Catholic Church has a systematic color symbolism

for High Mass. Deacons wear a green tunicle or dalmatic over a white

tunic when serving the Host at the altar.

948

The Priest wears a white linen

robe, hood and girdle. He also wears a short band of silk called an

orarium around the neck and a silk chasuble or poncho. While the color

of the silk chasuble varies with feasts and seasons, it is purple for the

most important High Mass on Maundy Thursday of the Easter Holy

Week.

These color sequences glow in an alchemists’ flask. The reaction

phases have many romantic names.

949

Virgil, Homer and Nicholas Flamel

talk of the Palm of the Valley of Oddy, Mystic Rose of Kab, Tower of

Ugolin and plant Moly. The roots of the plant Moly were black, the five

251

leaves green and flowers white. Homer’s description in the Odyssey

suggests Moly is the sweet scented wild cyclamen.

950

It could also be

wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), which is a psychedelic plant that

causes the serious illness of absinthism suffered by Van Gogh.

951

Ovid

identifies Moly as the plant or root that defied moon-magic by allowing

Ulysses to overcome the wiles of Circe, wed her and rescue his men.

952

The Palm in the Valley of Oddy was Tamar the date palm. Ovid

describes this lofty swaying palm in The Doctrines of Pythagoras.

953

The

Phoenix builds a nest in the palm. This nest is both the tomb of its father

and its own cradle. He also describes it as the plant of Myrrah, the

beautiful daughter of Cinyras that lay with him as an instrument of the

three Sisters (the Furies), who are of course the Triple or Mother

Goddess.

954

Pregnant, Cinyras flees her father’s wrath to Saba’s soil

(southwest Arabia), where she becomes a tree. Weeping, as does Isis, she

bears a son. Using magnificent double entendre, Ovid observes:

… Those tears in truth

Have honor; from the trunk the weeping myrrh

Keeps on men’s lips for aye the name of her.

Her son, child of his sister and grandfather, is the beautiful Venus

of Venus and Adonis.

955

The Hebrew Tamar derives from the ancient practice of forcibly

fertilizing date palms. The palm is dioecious and requires artificial

pollination. Grove keepers bind the male flowers to the female flowers,

once more representing the sacred marriage of the Triple Goddess.

Judah’s union with Tamar in the Book of Genesis alludes to

Tamar as a holy prostitute. As we might expect of the Mysteries, her

payment is a young goat.

956

Similar visual images in Pompeii date from 15CE. These images

show a tree between two columns at which a sacrifice is about to take

place. The Goddess of death lies in wait between the columns. Her robe

conceals the sickle with which she will emasculate the sacrificial king and

he will bleed to death. These images are in the Black Room of the

Imperial Villa of the Emperor Augustus at Boscotrecase and at Pompeii’s

Casa dei Cubicoli Floreali.

957

In the Book of Genesis, Tamar is at first a regular prostitute

beside the road called a zonah (

ZNH). Later, Adullamite seeks her as a

temple prostitute.

958

In this holy context, she is a Holy, Dedicated or

Consecrated One or Qdeshah, the feminine form of

QDSH. This derives

252

from the Akkadian qadishtu and Qudshu, the Syrian love and fertility

goddess.

959

A monument in Memphis calls Qudshu ‘the prostitute’. The

holy prostitute Tamar offers cakes, presumably barley cakes, to Amnon

before intercourse.

960

The Israelites eventually banned ritual or holy

prostitution ruling there shall be no QDSH of the daughters of Israel.

961

It is also interesting to note that the Greek word for a Palm Tree is

phoi’nix. Chapter 15 discussed the rebirth legend of the Phoenix.

Shakespeare’s curiously alchemical poem The Phoenix and the Turtle

echoes the profound role of the Araby tree. It begins:

Let the bird of loudest lay

On the sole Arabian tree

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,

Foul precurer of the fiend,

Augur of the fever's end,

To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing,

Save the eagle, feath'red king:

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Only the eagle, feathered king is included in the ceremony. The poem

ends with the Threnos in three-three time, the meter of the Triple

Goddess:

Beauty, truth and rarity,

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest,

And the turtle's loyal breast

To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:

'Twas not their infirmity,

It was married chastity.

253

Archaic Temples of the Mysteries

One of three shown in the Black Room of

Emperor Augustus’ Imperial Villa

at Boscotrecase

254

The turtledove is Astarte’s bird and the song of the turtle is the

ritual song or liturgy of Astarte wooing Tammuz to the sacred marriage

and his death.

962

This is the Biblical Song of Songs or Song of Solomon.

In alchemy, vile terms about excretions tend to repel the non-

adept. However, they bring humorous delight to the alchemist who even

uses dung’s soft exothermic heat to warm his flask and urine to provide

nitrate and ammonia. The alchemist also calls his reaction residues by the

name faeces or excrement. Nicholas Flamel's 1629 Original du Désiré or

Thrésor de Philosophie identifies that the Philosophers’ Stone is in the

messy chemical substrate of the Alchemists’ crucible:

963

There is an occult stone, concealed and buried in the depths of a

fountain, which is vile, abject and valued not at all; it is also

covered with filth and excrement, to which all names are given,

although there is really only one.

The same sort of imagery occurs when Samson of Dan scooped

honey from the carcass of a lion and riddles:

964

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth

sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.

It is exactly the same riddle as rose logic. That which the rose

embraces, in-turn embraces the rose, as we shall see in Chapter 17.

Although the Green Lion often occurs, only one technique in the

literature uses the green substance to make another, lilac colored

substance. This is in a seventeenth century manuscript in the Berlin

Staatsbibliotek, suggestively called the Messiah of the Righteous. The

name invites us to reflect both on the Teacher of Righteousness in the

Dead Sea Scrolls and Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness and Priest

King to the Most High:

965

This operation is the Messiah of the Righteous, and it is forbidden

to give it to the ignorant. Take smooth green sulphur and

quicksilver [never use this substance] and mix them together and

grind them well, and cook them together with rosewater at night

in a glass vessel, and the fire should be gentle, and the vessel

should be sealed on top, and in the morning take it out and grind

it and mix it with strong vinegar, and then return it to the vessel

as it was. Do thus six times until the quicksilver dies. Then take

these powders and grind them and distil them in a distillation,

and of twelve ounces three ounces will remain. Then take one

part of sal armoniaqe [sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride] and

one part of saffron of iron and úbr [A., eagle, sal ammoniac], and

255

one part of linseed oil, and grind it all and mix it with what you

obtained from the distillation, and grind and mix it well, and put

these powders into a new flask, and put it into a pit full of dung,

and cover it well for seven days and you will find in the flask

something like a piece of metal, and make a powder and take the

metal, whatever it may be, and heat it and put [some] of this

powder on top and [word illegible] it, and then take of lead one

part, and cut it up and throw its powder upon two parts of

quicksilver, and when you see the smoke from the quicksilver

rising, throw on it [some] of this powder, and take of this

quicksilver one part, and one part of gold, and mix them together,

and it will colour it to gold which will be good for all tests, and

try it. And he who understands from this will be right, and will

live to the end of days.

The method is in code, which we learned of in the last chapter:

Quicksilver is not metallic mercury but Philosophers' Mercury, Sulphur is

gold, vinegar is something equivalent to aqua regia and the mysterious

úbr [A., eagle, sal ammoniac] is not sal ammoniac or ammonium

chloride. The term úbr probably derives from the ancient Egyptian word

for gold, nub. Egyptian gold mines were predominantly in Nubia. The

emblem of royalty, the eagle, and A for aurum or gold confirms that úbr is

the red powder of the Philosophers' Stone made from gold.

Chapter 3 compared the lilac Philosophers' Stone with the lilac

plant or Syringa vulgaris of the Olive family. The lilac is a native of

Persia and some mountainous regions of Eastern Europe. It arrived in

Britain in the sixteenth century. Lilac found uses in homoeopathic

alchemy and medicine. It dispelled parasitic worms, reduced fever, and

treated malaria. Sometimes, lilac substituted for Aloe Vera.

Scottish legends abound with alchemical symbolism and purple

flowers such as the lilac. One Scottish folktale recounts how a young

bride-to-be died on the eve of her marriage. She asked that lilacs grow on

her grave. The lilacs bloomed white and remained so even after

transplanting. This pure young girl clearly represents the female essence

of philosophic Mercury. We saw the same white maiden as Ophelia in

Hamlet and Portia in the Merchant of Venice.

Another legend tells of a falcon dropped the first lilac seeds in an

old woman's garden. The seed sprouted and grew into a beautiful bush,

but it did not bloom. One day a young prince stopped to admire the bush.

256

As he was leaving, a plume from his cap fell on the bush. From that day,

the bush had plumes of purple flowers.

This legend refers to the Rosicrucian symbol AA, which derives

from the Apollo's anguished cry at the accidental death of the youth

Hyacinth, described by Ovid (see Appendix 4).

966

The drops of

Hyacinth's blood became rich purple flowers, albeit not the modern

hyacinth but the blue larkspur or hyacinthos grapta, which has markings

on the base of its petals resembling the early Greek letters AI.

967

Similarly, the Salaminians reported a new flower when Ajax died.

968

was smaller than a lily, white, tinged with red and like the hyacinth bore

the letters Ai! Ai! or woe! woe!

With the death of Hyacinth, Apollo also uttered the distraught cry

from his heart, Ai, Ai, which are formed on the leaves of the hyacinth.

969

For boy and man alike these letters are the wail of woe foreshadowing

ritual death. Ovid prophesies that Hyacinth will return a second time as a

very powerful hero.

970

Elizabethan works refer to the Hyacinth as the herb or weed.

971

The Greeks write Ai as U, or upsilon, which corresponds to the English

letter V, the invert of A. As we shall see in the next chapter, Sir Francis

Bacon first used the AA sign in his literary headpieces, from 1577 on the

Continent and 1579 in England.

These enigmatic headpieces signaled that within lay a metaphor

for one of the secret Rosicrucian mythological histories of ancient Britain

when Britain was called Ortygie, the land of Leto the White Goddess.

Leto was the mother of Apollo and Artemis (AA). William Blake’s hymn

Jerusalem described this Hyperborean island of God (see also Chapter 17)

where the inhabitants were, in a sense, Apollo’s priests and Apollo had a

grand shrine and big circular temple:

972

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

The AA, one A bright and the other A shadowed, symbolises that

half the work is visible and half is veiled. Sir Francis Bacon later

entwined the two letters with hyacinth flowers, or the herb Asclepias

acida, representing the golden flower of alchemy. This flower, though

golden in nature, is the hyacinthine color of blue or the sapphire blue of

the hermaphrodite.

973

257

The appearance of the lilac Philosophers' Stone in the compost

fulfills the twofold axes of the cross of Light and Life. The great hermetic

maxim as above, so below applies in the reaction vessel and time

cyclically returns us to where we started. Alchemists think of this as an

ouroborus, the symbol of Saturn, which is a snake curled in a complete

circle holding its tail in its mouth.

974

To the hermetic alchemists, the two

axes of the cross represent the All in One.

In the next chapter, we look more deeply at the many rose

allegories. We shall also see how they apply to the enigmatic

Rosicrucians.

258

Chapter 17 Roses and Rosicrucians

In previous chapters, it has begun to emerge that the symbolism

of the rose, like that of goats and honey, has two very different meanings.

The first is related to the Afro-Asiatic sacrificial king myth, with its

inherent carnality, and the other to Indo-Hittite mythology of purity,

morality, virtue and longevity. We see the former evidenced in Canaanite

rituals and the latter in Israelite rituals of Righteousness.

In this chapter, we will look closely at the many layered and

diverse symbolism of the rose beginning with perhaps the earliest Indo-

Hittite reference to the rose on Tablet X of the Mesopotamian Epic of

Gilgamesh. Here the Mesopotamian Noah tells Gilgamesh:

Gilgamesh, I will reveal to you a hidden thing,

a secret of the Gods I will tell you:

There is a plant like a thorn,

like a rose its thorns will prick your hands.

If you hold that plant in your hand, you will find new life.

Michael Maier's Septimana philosophica provides a complete

example of alchemical rose symbolism:

975

The rose is the First, most beautiful and perfect of flowers.

It is guarded because it is a virgin, and the guard is thorns.

The centre of the rose is green and is emblematical of the Green

Lion,

That even as a natural rose is a pleasure to the senses and life of

man, on account of its sweetness and salubrity, so is the

Philosophical Rose exhilarating to the heart and a giver of

strength to the brain.

That as the natural rose turns to the sun and is refreshed by rain,

so is the Philosophical Matter prepared in blood, grown in light,

and in and by these made perfect.

The rose is a special key in Apuleius' The Golden Ass. The hero

Lucius became an Ass. He implored the Goddess Isis for help and she

appeared to him. The hero became a man once more when he ate some

roses:

Then also the priest, all the profane being removed, taking hold of

me by the hand, brought me to the penetralia of the temple,

clothed in a new linen garment. Perhaps, inquisitive reader, you

will very anxiously ask me what was then said and done? I would

259

tell you, if it could be lawfully told; you should know it, if it was

lawful for you to hear it. But both ears and the tongue are guilty

of rash curiosity. Nevertheless, I will not keep you in suspense

with religious desire, nor torment you with long-continued

anxiety. Hear, therefore, but believe what is true. I approached to

the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of

Proserpine, I returned from it, being carried through all the

elements. At midnight, I saw the sun shining with a splendid light;

and I manifestly drew near to the Gods beneath, and the Gods

above, and proximately adored them. Behold, I have narrated to

you things, of which, though heard, it is nevertheless necessary

that you should be ignorant. I will, therefore, only relate that

which may be enunciated to the understanding of the profane

without a crime.

An elegantly beautiful depiction of rose logic dates from the three

thousand BCE Sumerian settlement at Ur of the Chaldees.

976

There a

jeweler modeled two golden rams in white shell and Lapis Lazuli. They

stand on their hind legs and are bound with silver chains to a tall golden

thorn bush, which has produced a golden rose.

The identical use of rose logic occurs at Abraham's sacrifice of

Isaac:

977

The angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven 'Abraham!

Abraham!' He replied 'Here I am.' 'Do not lay a hand on the

boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God

because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.'

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by

its horns. He went over, took the ram, and sacrificed it as a burnt

offering instead of his son.

The ram is the sacrificial son-lover of the Goddess, the bush is the

symbol of the Goddess Wisdom who tangles the lover to embrace him

and the dog rose is the symbol of the womb of transformation that will

produce the resurrected son. Dog roses peculiarly fruit by self-seeding to

reproduce without cross-pollination from a mate.

The sign of the ram µ is equivalent to the Tau-cross on which the

sacrificial king met his death. It is also the traditional sign of a Master of

the Mysteries. In the Druidicalphabet, the Tau-cross is the symbol for a

holy man. The Druids show it as a "Y" because it depicts a man standing

erect with his hands raised in grand and royal adoration to receive the

divine Light.

978

260

From its sacrificial context, a sprig of acacia has become the

universal symbol of consigning the prematurely dead into the care of the

Goddess. Abraham’s bush is the Hebrew hawthorn (Sant) or wild acacia

with golden flowers and thorns. This shittim-wood still grows in

Cyprus.

979

In midrashic tradition, Moses asked Bezaleel to make the Ark

of the Covenant. Jacob obtains the wood by felling the sacred acacia

grove at Migdal, beside Lake Gennesaret. Felling of the sacred groves

with their Asherah poles is a reference to the overthrow of the Mother

Goddess.

The essential feature of rose logic is embracing. The lover

embraces the rose and the delicate bud of the rose embraces the birth of

the young lover, spiritually refreshed by passing through the womb. The

rose is both a symbol of premature death and purity of rebirth.

The ritual death of Jesus clearly uses rose logic. Mary Magdalene

anointed Jesus in the same way that Sumerian priestesses anointed kings

before sacrifice.

980

Jesus was destined consummate his marriage to Mary.

He engaged her with kisses on the mouth that upset the disciples:

981

But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss

her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by

it and expressed disapproval.

Mary Magdalene is then present at Jesus’ crucifixion.

982

Later at

the tomb, she mistakes Jesus as a gardener, which was the name given to

the son-lover in Sumeria.

983

At the time, she is weeping as the Sumerian

sacred high priestess weeps for the son-lover:

984

The harlot who anointed you with fragrant oil laments for you

now.

The harlot in this context is an honorable role. As with the

Church, she receives all men as lovers for spiritual rebirth. Jesus

interrupts Mary Magdalene's approach to embrace him further, which is

the meaning of the Greek, saying:

985

Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.

Pope Gregory the Great (AD590-604) partly settled the vexed

question of Mary’s complex character. This influential Pope declared that

Mary Magdalene, Lazarus’ sister Mary of Bethany and the sinner woman

in Luke to be the same person.

986

Salome incongruously mirrors Mary Magdalene in Mark’s

Gospel. Both women are present at the crucifixion and then the empty

tomb.

987

Together the Gospels of Mark and Mathew suggest Salome is

261

the wife of Zebedee. Yet, this is not at all conclusive. Comparing the

Gospels of Mark and Luke shows Salome associated with Joanna.

988

The only other Salome is the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, the

tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. Salome performed the dance of the seven

veils, which is the lunar mystery of the seven days that the moon takes to

remove her veils. In return for her dance of the Mysteries, Salome

requested the head of John the Baptist.

989

This is the sign of a sacrifice to

a divinity.

990

While this Salome is not mentioned by name in the biblical

texts, Josephus does make mention of her.

991

The Romans later exiled

Herod Antipas to Vienne in France for his execution of John the Baptist.

Salome’s dance of the seven veils is reminiscent of Ishtar's

descent into the underworld. Ishtar’s journey to the Underworld required

her to remove an item of clothing at each of seven gates. Naked and

defenseless, she entered the realm of the dead to plead for the rebirth of

her lover Tammuz. While Ishtar is away from Earth, the crops fail, cattle

become sterile and men and women lose the ability to procreate. With her

plea granted, Ishtar returned to Earth and restored fertility to the land.

The legends of the Holy Grail repeat this ancient story. The land wastes

while Perceval struggles to answer the question: What is it the Grail has

served and what is it it serves? When he successfully answers this

question, Perceval’s earthly and heavenly spirits are reunited and the land

recovers its fertility.

Scholars have long recognized the theatrical nature of Jesus'

passion accounts, the Gospel of Mark in particular.

992

On the broad

sweep of Mark's stage, it is immediately apparent that he has introduced

Salome to reinforce the rose logic of Mary Magdalene through Salome's

role with John the Baptist. The Gospel of Thomas completes the triangle,

stating that Jesus’ wife was Salome.

The Virgin Mary is the goddess of birth and Mary Magdalene is

the goddess of carnal love. Salome completes the triad of the Triple or

Mother Goddess. Esoteric writers also placed her at Jesus’ crucifixion

and empty tomb to contribute the Hecate or Demeter aspect of the Triple

Goddess.

We can see the rose logic symbolism exquisitely carved in

Michelangelo's Pietà, originally sculptured in 1499CE for St Peters

Basilica in Rome. With breast exposed to suckle the newly born infant,

the Virgin Mary nurses the crucified Jesus. She represents the Church at

the precise moment of her transformation from the lover who has just

presided over his death, to the tender mother present at his birth.

262

Michelangelo's Pieta is the most loved statue of Jesus. Its number of

copies is almost countless.

The botanical characteristics of roses bear considerable relevance

to their historic importance. The earliest three roses, from which all other

roses are derived, are the Rosa caninae, which is the five petal dog rose,

Rosa gallicanae, also called the gallica rose, and the musk rose Rosa

sysnstylane.

Herodotus, who lived from 485BCE to 425BCE, visited the

fabled gardens of the Phrygian King Midas in northern Greece.

993

noted that King Midas had taken with him roses having sixty petals that

were perhaps the double Rosa gallicanae or Rosa damask. At one stage,

the Mother Goddess granted Midas’ wish that everything he touched

should turn to gold. This ability to transmute metals by mere touch is the

characteristic of a man who has internally processed mercury.

994

Some Egyptologists recognize a rose in Ptolemaic texts. This is

probably Rosa sancta or the Holy Rose of Abyssinia.

995

It was formerly

Rosa richardii, the symbol of reincarnation. For one thousand five

hundred years Christian sanctuaries in Ethiopia planted Rosa sancta as a

symbol of reincarnation.

Crusaders in Palestine also held the Cruciferae or cruciferous

flower in high esteem as a symbol of resurrection because it could revive

after being dried. While not a rose, they called it the Rose of Jericho or

Cruciferous Rose.

Roses entered royal heraldry in 1200CE and immediately became

highly popular. Edward I of England (1272-1307) first adopted a golden

rose in his heraldic crest. Later Henry IV (1399-1413), who issued many

royal licenses for the practice of alchemy, chose a red rose. Edward IV

(1461-83) selected a white rose framed in a circle of sunrays. This is a

rose en soleil.

Shakespeare writes of the dog rose or eglantine in The Noble Two

Kinsmen. It is a story based on Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite.

996

In the

Temple of Diana, a rose falls from its tree as a sign to the Vestal Virgin

Emilia that she may marry. Shakespeare explains why a rose is best:

997

It is the very emblem of a maid:

For when the west wind courts her gently

How modestly she blows and paints the sun

With her chaste blushes! When the north comes near her

Rude and impatient, then, like chastity,

She locks her beauties in her bud again

263

Sirius in a fiery Vesica Piscis

Concluding the Faerie Queen, Book2, 1609

264

And leaves him to base briars.

The dog rose, Rosa caninae is associated with the Dog Star

Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky. It represents the love of

Venus, Ishtar and Isis. The five white petals are symbols of virginity.

They are also the pentagon traced out in the night sky by the planet Venus

in its eight-year cycle. In Zoroastrian tradition, the dog rose also stands

for the illumination of love.

998

In contrast, a red rose represents the

womb, its menstrual blood and the ardor of carnal love. It symbolizes the

bloom of puberty.

The Egyptians knew the constellation of Sirius as Apes, meaning

the Head. Sirius was the Hawk, or sign of Horus. Chapter 14 showed

Horus was a Christ-soul that fights the evil serpent and conquers it.

999

Professors Giorgio de Santillana of Massachusetts Institute of

Technology and Hertha von Dechend of Frankfurt University have shown

in Hamlet’s Mill that astronomical events provide the source of many

ancient myths.

1000

The rising and setting of Sirius and the constellation of Orion are

particularly fertile sources of myth. One of the most intriguing and

prevalent ancient beliefs is that there is a star gate at each end of the

Milky Way. The southern gateway is near Spica at the tail of Sagittarius.

The northern gate is close to the shake-hands position above Orion in

Gemini.

In the tradition of the African Dogon tribe, Sirius is Nommo.

1001

Nommo is also the name of the three Great Initiates or happy astronomers

of the Christ Brotherhood of Sirius. One of these is the prophet Idris or

Enoch. This inseparable trio of honorable sages is reminiscent of the

Three Principals in Royal Arch Freemasonry.

1002

The importance of the Three Great Initiates can best be

understood by analogy with the three great Indo-Hittite Principles of

Creation and Truth (Brahmâ), All Pervading Light (Vishnu) and

Transformation, Destruction and Regeneration (Shiva). Sir John Dee

employed this early Indo-Hittite symbolism in his 1577 freemasonic tract

General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of

Navigation.

The three Great Initiates of Sirius supposedly came to earth

eighteen million years ago, bearing the threefold Light of Love.

1003

They

inhabited Hyperborea, the fabled land of rebirth beyond the North Wind.

These creatures from Sirius were amphibious men giving Sirius the

soubriquet of the Land of the Fish.

265

Queen Elizabeth 1 attended by the Three Great Initiates

Act and Monuments by John Fox, 1563

266

There is a surprising confirmation of this mythology with the two

goddesses of Anubis. The headdresses of Isis and Nephthys each contain

fish tails that demonstrate a supreme fish lineage.

The Mesopotamian Creation Epic provides further evidence of a

fish lineage. Men wearing fish-coats depict Supreme fish-beings called

Oannes. Many believe the name John, meaning man, derives from

Oannes.

In Egypt, early Christians identified John the Baptist with the

Chaldean God Oannes. They believed he appeared regularly in the

Persian Gulf to renew the revelation to the faithful.

1004

Every initiate of the Eleusian Mysteries was also required to pass

through a love-right with the mermaid Love Goddess.

1005

She would hold

a round mirror and golden comb. The mirror stands for know thyself, a

maxim attributed to the Egyptian Pharaoh Sesôstris I and later to Socrates.

It reflects one’s past and seeks motives of hope in virtue for the future.

1006

In the words of Woody Allen: Know yourself, accept yourself and get on

with life.

1007

We shall look more closely at the love-right in Chapter 18.

The embellished letter C of John Fox’s Acts and Monuments of

1563 emphasizes that Elizabeth I is the true successor of Emperor

Constantine. So revered was the book that it was placed on the altar,

alongside the Bible, in every church in Britain.

Within the letter C, the three Great Initiates are advising Queen

Elizabeth I on her role of Priest Queen of the original British Church and

restorer of the pure and true religion.

1008

In both Zohar and Mandaean

sources, these are the three messengers, or uthras. These messengers

precede the master of mysteries who brings the book of Wisdom to

Adam.

1009

The Virgin Queen, Astraea, symbolized Elizabeth I. Romantic

Elizabethans thought that Astraea’s return to earth would inaugurate a

golden age of virtue, justice, peace and plenty. This age, the Age of

Aquarius, is nowadays approaching.

So enthusiastic were the portrayals of Elizabeth I as the legendary

Virgin or Faerie Queen that there was a great outpouring of literature. As

an icon for the new Age of Aquarius, every possible venue celebrated the

Queen. One such venue was as the great public holiday Tournament

declared to mark Queen Elizabeth I’s Accession Day. Increasingly lavish

spectacles at Kenilworth and Woodstock matched even the Magnificences

of Catherine de Medici.

1010

267

Elizabeth I commanding the Ship Europa,

guided by Zeus the Bull

1011

advised by the Three Great Initiates of Sirius

From: General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the

Perfect Arte of Navigation by Dr John Dee, 1577.

Bottom: Minerva Britannia

Middle Left: Fortuna with a Laurel for the Courageous Victor

Top Left: St Michael with the Cross of St George defending

Britain

268

Tudor monarchs, epitomized by Elizabeth I, held the rose in

especially high esteem as the symbol of their ancient British heritage. It

was a period when genealogy governed one’s legitimacy in royal circles.

The genealogy of the Tudor family was impeccable. Bardic genealogies

showed they possessed three particularly fine lineages.

The first of these was to the Kings of Judah through Joseph of

Arimathea. The second was to the Roman Emperor Claudius through

Emperor Constantine and his son Ambrosius Aurelianus. The gloriously

named Ambrosius Aurelianus had an intriguingly magnificient title: he

was the Prince of the Sanctuary.

The last of the key lineages was through the Romans to the

ancient Great British High Kings. These included Cunobelinus, called

Bran the Blessed, Caradoc, King Lear and Beli the Great.

1012

The Church anointed the Tudors at their coronations as Priest-

Monarchs in true Davidic tradition. The Tudors regarded themselves as

carrying with them the halo of light that signified they had received the

full ancient initiate’s knowledge of Truth.

1013

The College of Heralds in

London also believes Queen Elizabeth II to be the one hundred and forty

fourth direct descendant of King David.

1014

The Tudors were also able to claim primacy in the Christian

religion. They were relations of Linus, the priestly second son of King

Caradoc. In tradition, St Paul appointed Linus as the first Bishop of

Rome in 58CE.

Iltigius wrote that St. Peter said:

1015

Concerning the Bishops who have been ordained in our lifetime,

we make known to you that they are these. Of Antioch, Eudoius,

ordained by me, Peter. Of the Church of Rome, Linus, son of

Claudia, was first ordained by Paul, and after Linus' death,

Clemens the second, ordained by me, Peter.

Emperor Claudius then granted the British King Caradoc a palace

in Rome in 52CE, called the Palatium Britannicum. It allegedly became

the first organized Christian Church. Both St Peter and St Paul often

enjoyed happy lodging at this British Embassy. Their impressive

patronage led to its alternative name, the Home of the Apostles. More

fortuitous still, this was in writing. St Paul had confirmed his familiarity

with the British entourage in the closing paragraph of his second letter to

Timothy. There he passed on the good wishes of Linus, Linus’ sister

Claudia and her husband, the Roman Senator Rufus Pudens:

1016

269

Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and

all the brethren.

This odd paragraph has, of course, all the hallmarks of later

insertion into the text of St Paul’s letter, in order to associate the Tudors

with St Paul. Perhaps the helpful clerics could not resist overkill. As

Roman Senator Rufus Pudens was a relative of St Paul, the letter pressed

the inescapable conclusion that the Tudors’ ancestors not only knew and

worked with St Paul, but also were related to him. Sadly, there is no

information concerning Linus that provides an independent verification of

these claims in either Vatican or British royal records.

It is here that Joseph of Arimathea enters the legend. He

supposedly instructed the three Bishops of Rome: Linus, St. Clement and

Mansuetus. Mansuetus was a constant visitor at the Palace of the British

at Rome after Claudia had married Pudens. Indeed, there is some

influential confirmation of Joseph of Arimathea’s role from four Church

Councils: Pisa in 1409, Constance in 1417, Sienna in 1424 and Basle in

1434. These Church councils yielded antiquity and precedence to the

Church in Britain because Joseph of Arimathea founded the Church in

Britain immediately after the passion of Christ.

The fruitful Bardic genealogies of Elizabethan times, based on

their Druidic histories, also encompassed the original settlement of

Britain. It derived from a megalithic Hyperborean Bear Race from the

Aegean in the fourth millennium BCE. This migration reputedly occurred

because the Black Sea flooded Peloponnese Arcadia. The Odyssey points

to the home of the Hyperboreans, Boreas the North Wind and his brother

winds, as being an Aeolian island, perhaps the Aegean island of Tenos

north of Delos.

1017

Druidic tradition held that Britain was Alba, the land of Albion.

Albion was the tribe leader who led this fourth millennium BCE

migration from the Aegean to Britain. Upon their arrival, the White Land

of Albion became a special country of God.

As we saw in Chapter 12, tradition also held that a second Trojan

migration from Thrace, Greece and Asia Minor occurred in the second

millennium, about 1115BCE.

1018

Because of the two Trojan migrations from Arcadia, the Tudors

identified closely with the ancient people of the Peloponnese. The Tudors

also believed the Trojans to be the great ocean navigators, the

Phoenicians, and the descendants of the Cymry. Ancient legends of giant

Cornish megalithic builders, cherished as Cymry, confirmed this story.

270

The pure White Land of Albion was Mary’s Dowry or marriage

offering. Mary was in this sense Minerva Britannia, the daughter of the

Triple Goddess in her guise of Anna.

1019

The nine Muses that interplay

throughout Shakespeare’s Histories, Comedies and Tragedies represent

this same goddess.

Minerva Britannia is the sacred Muse of the Knight of

Holiness.

1020

She represents his perfect and holy intelligence. Minerva is

the patron goddess of Britain, who as Pallas Athena sprung from the head

of Zeus after Vulcan split it open with an axe. Pallas Athen was shaking

the spear of illumination at the dragon of ignorance, vice and

selfishness.

1021

The nom de plume Shake-speare derives from this

astonishing and beautiful British spear shaker. Ironically, she is the most

important Goddess of the Achaeans, rather than the Trojans.

The various writing styles evident in Shakespeare suggest the

nom de plume was for a team. Probable members include Richard Field,

Richard de Vere 17

Earl of Oxford, Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser,

Sir Edward Dyer, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Bacon. Their interest

seems focused around the players companies that performed each year on

St John the Evangelist’s Day, December twenty-seventh, a traditional

assembly day of Freemasons.

Minerva is the light of the countenance of God.

1022

She bore the

Word and Light of God as a Seed of Light from the heavenly Father to

impregnate the Earthly Mother in the same way as the Shekhinah, or

Immanent Principle of God, fell from the highest heaven to the abyss.

1023

Athena’s helmet and Minerva's veil only conceal in order to

reveal and thus are equivalent to the white dog rose.

1024

Quite aware of

this delicate hermetic drift, the Tudor Kings and Queens adopted the

white rose as their symbol, as did the Calebites who adopted the white

rose as the symbol of their heritage and their special land. Britain also

adopted Michael directly as its patron protector in the same way as the

Essenes had looked to Michael for protection of their land.

Michael's name means He who is like unto God. Michael is the

pre-eminent angel of the Heart of God.

1025

He carries the flaming sword

of truth and a shield emblazoned with the red cross of St George.

The companionship of the angel Michael and St George is not by

chance. They are twin aspects of one. St George is the counterpart that is

the human soul. We shall see this duality of twins in more detail in

Chapter 22. Suffice that for the Tudors, the angel Michael and Knight St

271

George were both reminders that Britain is the land of the radiant heart

and Rosy Cross, symbolized by the roses of Sharon and Minerva.

This dual symbolism of rose colors fitted appropriately with the

unification of the Houses of York and Lancaster. The unification

followed the bloody Wars of the Roses from 1455 to 1485, finally ending

on Bosworth Field. After this decisive battle, King Henry VII ascended

the throne and married the daughter of Edward IV.

From the union of the White Rose of York or Rosa alba semi-

plena and the Jacobite Rose, Rosa alba maxima, the Tudor Kings Henry

VII and Henry VIII created the unique Tudor Rose. This was a five petal

white rose placed in the centre of a five petal red rose, surmounted by a

crown.

The union of the roses had meaning in a more esoteric context. It

represented both the image of the rose of Minerva and St George, and the

unification of the lineage of ancient Calebite-Zaddoki bloodlines with

those of the Christian Church.

The Tudor rose of Edward VI emerged from a pomegranate, the

Israelite symbol of royalty and fertility. Queen Elizabeth I's Tudor rose

bore the motto Rosa sine spina or rose without a thorn. It symbolized her

identification with the Virgin Queen.

The Stuarts followed the trend with their own rose, divided into

two halves, with the thistle of Scotland added. The Stuarts issued many

alchemical licenses and it is hardly surprising that they chose the spiny

purple Scottish Thistle as their alchemical image of the Philosophers’

Stone. Queen Anne's personal badge was also a rose and thistle, in this

case growing from the same stalk.

The Golden Rose became an Ornament presented personally by

the Pope as the symbol of the living Church and its mysteries. The Count

of Anjou first received it in 1096.

1026

This may have been Rosa gallica,

the only wild rose found in Papal States.

1027

The Greeks and the Median

fire worshippers of Azerbaijan and Persia knew the legendary medical

properties of Rosa gallica as far back as 1100BCE. Roman military

doctors grew it on campaigns as well as in Provins, near Paris, for over

seven hundred years.

Throughout history, few flowers have received the elevation of

the rose and been so laden with symbolism. Now we can proceed to

unravel some further paradigms of esoteric importance.

The Dog Star Sirius symbolizes the great Triple Goddess in more

than her aspect of love. The constellation of Canis Major has 64 stars and

272

Sirius represents the mouth and tongue of the Dog.

1028

Therefore, the

celestial interpretation of the Triple Goddess is a dog. The analogy is

further extended because of her promiscuity in love and because she eats

corpses.

1029

Dogs such as the Egyptian Anubis have always guarded the

land of the dead. The ancient initiates of Ishtar and Isis, the q’deshim,

wore the dog mask of Anubis to honour her beauty.

1030

Traditionally,

wherever three roads met, followers of the Triple Goddess sacrificed dogs

to her as the deathly Hecate or Sheol.

The Kenite Calebites, or Dog-men of Hebron and Ephrath, called

themselves Sons of the Dog Star. They claimed to be the original people

of Yahweh and the traditional landowners of Hebron, Jerusalem and

Ephrath.

1031

The Dog Star was their Calebite badge for the House of

David.

1032

Although generally regarded as a son of Judah, an old legend

from Egypt holds that King David was a Calebite descended from Hur,

suggesting the Hurrians. This is what Geoffrey of Monmouth, seems to

imply in 1136CE:

1033

Gwendolen’s intention was that this everlasting honour should be

done to Habren because her own husband had been the girl’s

father. It thus comes about that right down to our own times this

river is called Habren in the British language, although by a

corruption of speech it is called Sabrina in another tongue.

The Calebites and Israelites remained close allies as shown at the

Battle of Rephadim. There, Hur and Aaron, representing the Calebites

and Israelites respectively, assisted Moses’ victory over the

Amalekites.

1034

Somewhat oddly, this battle with the Amalekites at

Jehovah-Nissi, close to the Mount of God, is Hur’s only recorded

appearance in the Pentateuch.

1035

The memorable victory of Moses is a retelling of Abraham’s

defeat of the Elamite king, Kedorla’omer, following Abraham’s own

departure from Egypt.

1036

In Moses’ tale Amalek is probably the god

Melek Taus also known as ‘Azâzil or the Peacock Angel.

1037

He is

reputedly the chief of the giant Nephilim, described as Watchers in the

Judaic-Christian apocryphal Book of Enoch, and their offspring from the

Daughters of Man called the Anakim. Melek Taus is equivalent to

Ahriman, Satan or Lucifer. In the same way, the battle between the

people of Amalek and the Israelites is equivalent to the ever-pervasive

battle between good and evil.

273

The Nephilim had many different names.

1038

They were called

the Fallen Ones, Terrors (Emim), Weakeners (Repha’im), Giant Heroes

(Gibborim), Achievers (Zamzummim), Long-necked (Anakim) or Wearers

of Necklaces, Devastators (Awwim) and Serpents. These people were a

Neolithic tribe of seven-foot tall people, which flourished in Europe. The

Hamitic Watusi in Equatorial Africa is an offshoot.

1039

After removing

the Anakim, Joshua conceded Hebron to Caleb as his inheritance. It was

the Nephilim, Arba, who established Kiriath-Arba or Hebron.

Of all the Children of Israel that came out of Egyptian bondage, it

was only Caleb and Joshua who crossed to the Promised Land following

the death of Moses.

1040

Caleb then seized Hebron and ousted the four

tribes of the Anakim, known as Arba’s son Anak and grandsons Sheshai,

Ahiman and Talmai.

1041

When we speak of Caleb, it is of the tribe that ended with Jasher,

sone of Caleb, and Jasher’s daughter the famous leader and judge,

Debroah.

1042

The line of Caleb flowed from Abraham to Isaac, to Hezron,

Caleb, Jasher and Debroah. It was Jasher, not Joshua, that received

Aaron’s rod from Moses, and who lead the Children of Israel into the

Canaan.

Caleb conveyed the Holy Spirit to Hebron. In Hebron, Caleb the

Hurrian ousted Mother Goddess worship.

1043

For the Calebites, the

religion of Yahweh continued as a patriarchal and stridently anti-mother

right.

1044

This is to say, deriving from the Indo-Hittites above Israel, in

the Indo-Hittite crucible of the Commagene, rather than from the Afro-

Asiatic Semites.

1045

In this story, we can dimly perceive the occupation of Hebron by

the Hurrians, which has always been such a mystery to scholars. The

Hurrian Calebites of Hebron, the Kirjath-arba, Dog-men or Children of

Heth, are therefore the mysterious roses on the Plain of Sharon. David’s

battles with the Philistines also symbolize the ongoing process of

eliminating the Anakim from Israel.

Eventually the Israelites absorbed the Calebite heritage, as can be

readily detected in one of the greatest guilt-myths of all time, that of

Jacob and Esau. These brothers represent the smooth peoples of Judah

and rough Calebites of Edom respectively.

1046

The Calebites of Hebron merged with tribe Judah, and the

Calebites of Ephrath with the tribe of Benjamin. From this amalgamation

of the tribes, the Pentateuch was to become a unique blending of both

Israelite and Calebite history and religious development. This was the

274

key period when the Indo-Hittite compression finally fused the Hurrians

and Israelites into the unique religious society we know today.

The Calebite peoples were probably the group that avoided

transportation to Babylon in the Exile. They were the remnant. Instead,

these tented-peoples returned to their Kenite mother tribe in Edom for

protection. There they retained the essential purity of the early Israelite-

Calebite religion. This was in contrast to the main body of Israelites.

Persian philosophies influenced them greatly during the Exile in

Babylon.

1047

Six hundred years later Jesus was to continue the ferocity of the

Calebite attack on the Canaanite religion of the Great Triple Goddess

saying:

1048

I have come to destroy the works of the Female.

Although Jesus participated in the ancient laming rituals of

royalty, he rejected the Mother Religion immediately afterwards.

1049

doing so, he also rejected his Kenite wife Mary Magdalene and never

consummated the sacred marriage with her.

1050

For this reason Paul's adoption of Afro-Asiatic sacrificial king

rituals, using Jesus as his archetype, was a direct affront to much Jesus

stood for in his own country. The furor that ensued nearly led to the

hanging of Paul and in fact resulted in his deportation from Israel.

1051

Nevertheless, the Roman Church was to further entrench this ritual by

incorporating Afro-Asiatic carnal symbolism of rose logic into its

buildings and ceremonies. We must defer this intriguing topic until later

in this chapter.

The Book of Matthew describes Jesus’ second coming, drawing

heavily on events of about 165BCE in the Old Testament Book of

Daniel.

1052

The Book of Luke follows on to note that Jacob’s throne and

royal line would to continue in existence through the centuries until Jesus

Christ took it over at the second coming:

1053

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a

son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall

be called Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto

him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the

house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Just as Samson was a Nazarite of the tribe of Dan who judged

Israel during the period of Philistine domination, Jesus was from

Nazareth, which means he was a Nazarene or Danite. His father was of

Judah and his mother a Kenite. So Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of the

275

Midrash, the Messiah will have the reverse parentage to Samson. The

Messiah would come from Judah and his mother will be of the Tribe of

Dan.

1054

Returning to groups that used the rose as their symbol, we turn to

the Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion. Claude Antoine Thory, the famous

French Masonic Historian who co-founded the Rite Ecossaise

Philosophique in 1775, tells us that the Essenes and Jews founded a

School of Solomonic Wisdom in Alexandria.

1055

The School later divided

into a variety of Orders known as the Conservers of the Mosaic Secrets,

the Hermetic Secrets etc.

This School reunited with Ormus. According to the French Rite

of Memphis, Ormus was an Egyptian priest in Alexandria baptized by St.

Mark in 46CE.

1056

His school was probably the sole trustee of the ancient

doctrines of Egypt. The Knights Templar received these secrets from the

Knights of Palestine, the latter day followers of Ormus.

1057

It is worth briefly diverting to understand the Rite of Memphis,

which identified Ormus. Marconis was inspired to create his own system

of ninety degrees in 1839 called the Rite of Memphis. It was essentially

the defunct Rite of Mizraim, which probably dissolved because the final

parts of its ritual had become unacceptably occult.

1058

While initially the

Grand Orient of France supported the Rite of Memphis, it ultimately

suspended this rite as well. The exoteric portion of the Rites of Memphis

and Mizraim became the Ordo Templi Orientis. The Hermetic

Brotherhood of Light reserved the more occult inner teachings. The two

orders merged by about 1917.

Notwithstanding the passing of the Rites of Mizram and Memphis,

these degrees quite possibly included elements of scarce Rosicrucian

histories gleaned by the Jesuits, such as the Initiation of Plato.

1059

While Ormus may have been an Egyptian priest, his name is

likely to be an abbreviation for Ahura Mazda in the same way as

Ohrmazd.

1060

In other words, his School reunited with the religion of

Ormus, the Good Religion of Zoroaster. The symbol adopted by the

Conservers of the Hermetic Secrets was a rose on a cross.

1061

The Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion claims its original foundation

in this Alexandrian School of Wisdom. However, the mediaeval form

dates from about 1090CE and later became public when the Knights

Templar annexed it to accommodate Jews and Muslims within their

Christian organization.

1062

By this time, the Prieure du Notre Dame du

276

Sion had inherited the Alexandrian Jewish knowledge of alchemy, which

was also flourishing in the Jewish communities of France and Spain.

The Knights Templar and Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion shared

the same Grand Master until 1188. In this year, the Orders separated to

allow the Order of Sion to focus on the restoration of the Merovingian

lineage in France. This separation occurred at Gisors as the Splitting of

the Elm. The Elm is the tree that supports the young vine.

1063

Some legends say the Rosicrucians originated with one of the

elm’s branches at Gisors, known as Ormus. The priory of St Samson

d’Orleans, so they say, protected the members in the priory of Mount Sion

at St Jean Le Blanc. The emblem of Ormus was a red cross in a white

rose. Since 1188 and to this day, a Supreme Master, called the

Nautonnier or Navigator, has led thirteen members in their worship of

Notre Dame.

The Knights Templar and Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion

effectively reunited at the marriage of Count René d’Anjou.

At least three Grand Masters of the Prieure du Notre Dame du

Sion were well-known practitioners and publishers of alchemy: Nicholas

Flamel (1398-1418), Robert Boyle (1654-1691) and Sir Isaac Newton

(1691-1727). Although these Grand Masters were familiar with Jewish

alchemy and Gnostic philosophy, they probably were not accomplished

adepts of practical alchemy. Isaac Newton seemed very frustrated.

Perhaps the Grand Masters suffered a similar vacuum of knowledge as the

Rabbis who supposedly lost the secret at the destruction of the Temple.

Nor were these Grand Masters of the Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion

privy to the secret philosophy of the Sharon's Rose.

The Rite of Memphis always held that the real principles of

masonry were Chaldean.

1064

Their Rosicrucian ancestors had supposedly

preserved this knowledge in the Temple of the Rose Cross at

Damascus.

1065

The knowledge was preserved at an unknown convent of

the Maronites, on Mount Liban. This probably refers to either the

Assaasins and their Grand Master, the Old Man of the Mountain in a cave

of Mount Lebanon.

1066

A 1660 Rosicrucian poem to the Societie by Francis Thynne

honors the dedication of the Rosicrucians:

1067

The purple Rose which first Damasco bredd,

adorn'd with cullor grateful to the sight…

Soe two faire dowries which man doth enjoye –

true perfect love, and suer fidelite…

277

both which. This damask rose doth well unfolde,

as honest hart, which faith and love doth houlde.

There is an important parallel between the stories of Arcadia in

the Aegean Peloponnese and Damascus. The renowned alchemist

Michael Maier writes that the Temple of the Rosy Cross is located by the

spring Helicon on the double peaked mountain of Parnassus.

1068

This

corresponds with the Greeks who originally worshiped the Muses at

Mount Pieria in Thessaly but transferred to Helicon.

1069

Later they

relocated to Delphi on the slopes of Mt Parnassus.

1070

The legendary winged-horse Pegasus sprung the well called

Hippocrene at the sacred spring of Helicon, by striking his moon-shaped

hooves on the ground.

1071

He was the native European pony. Because of

his moon-shaped hooves, he was sacred to Demeter, the mare-headed

Moon Goddess. She gave him the power to bring rain and install

kings.

1072

Because of his abilities, Pegasus’ spring was sacred to the Triple

Goddess and her Muses as a source of poetic inspiration.

1073

The dialogue

between Moth and Adriano de Armado (initials AA) in Shakespeare’s

Love’s Labours Lost refers to it:

1074

Moth …the dancing horse will tell you.

Adriano de Armado A most fine Figure!

Moth: To prove you a cipher.

A huge painting of the winged horse Pegasus was the principal

feature of the Hall of the Inner Temple, an ancient mansion of the Knights

Templar in London.

1075

It hung there for many centuries. The college of

lawyers of Inner Temple in London adopted Pegasus as their arms. They

erected a stained glass window with these arms in Temple Church, which

was replaced the original circular church after 1160CE. In 1185CE,

Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, consecrated the new, characteristically

round church to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the presence of King Henry

II. It served the London headquarters of the Knights Templar until 1307.

The gushing spring of Helicon is equivalent to the source of the

Jordan River at Paneas, sixty-three kilometers south of Damascus and

twenty kilometers from the triple peaked Mount Hermon. As previously

mentioned, Mount Hermon has more than twenty ancient temples, which

is unusual for a Phoenician coastal site. However, many regard another

mountain, the triple-peaked Mount Lebanon, as the legendary Mount

Hermon.

278

Mount Lebanon is also called the White Mountain, the Old White-

headed Man, Jebel esh Shiekh or the Mountain of Ice, Jebel-el-Tilj.

Josephus writes that the source of the Jordan is in fact even closer

to Mount Hermon:

1076

There is a mountain here whose top is lost in the clouds; in the

lower slopes is a cavern with its mouth concealed by vegetation,

inside which a sheer precipice descends, nobody knows how far,

to a cavity filled with still water: no plummet has ever reached the

bottom, however long the cord. From the roots of the cavern well

up the springs, which some consider the headwaters of the

Jordan. ... The Jordan appears to rise at Paneum, but actually it

flows out of sight underground from the pool called Phiale, 'the

Bowl', to Paneum. Anyone going up into Trachonitis will find this

pool fourteen miles from Caesarea Philippi, not very far to the

right of the road. It is very aptly called 'the Bowl' because of its

shape, which is a perfect circle. The water always remains level

with its brim neither sinking nor running over.

Panias was progressively renamed Caesarea Philippi, Neronias,

then and Arabic Banias. At the Crusades, it became Belinas. The Jews

called the city Dan or Mizvar Dan, meaning Fort of Dan. The Fort is still

the most remarkable in the Holy Land.

1077

Syrians or Phoenicians

originally built it and the Saracens and Franks added to it.

The River Jordan takes its name from the Tribe of Dan. Jordan

means the going down of the Dan.

1078

It flows through Galilee to the

Dead Sea bringing extraordinary fertility to the land.

1079

Josephus describes how Galilee was excellent for crops, cattle

and rich in forests of every kind.

1080

Its enormous agricultural

productivity studded thickly the land with towns and villages, the smallest

of which had fifteen thousand inhabitants.

The Jordan River flows into Lake Gennesaret or the Sea of

Galilee, which Josephus describes as delicious and pure with a sandy

beach on every side.

1081

It is slightly salty due to warm saline springs that

enter the floor of the lake.

Josephus describes the species of fish in the lake and tells us that

they differ in taste and appearances from those found elsewhere, but are

very like the perch in the lake of Alexandria. Alongside the Lake is an

abundant stretch of country that Josephus calls nature’s crowing

achievement. Plants of every variety grow in its rich soil. Even those

279

naturally opposed elsewhere flourish together. Walnuts, grapes, figs and

palms produce fruit all year around.

As one of the many rewards for their successful revolution, the

Maccabean-Hasmonaeans received the exquisite Plain of Gennesaret on

the West side of Lake Gennesaret in Galilee.

1082

Thereafter it became the

heartland of Jewish royalist resistance to the Romans.

Finally, Jericho, at the approach to the Dead Sea, is renowned for

its fertility. It is rich in palms and balsam.

1083

Cleopatra coveted the

Jericho palm grove for its richness and finally received it as a gift from

Antony.

1084

The Greek shrine to Pan gives Paneas its name as the legendary

source of the marvelous Jordan River. It marks the site of transformation

of man from the lowest earthly to the highest celestial form. Sir Francis

Bacon was to write that what we know as the Church of Christ, was once

the Brotherhood of Pan.

1085

Pan is the anthropomorphic or archetypal image of the evolution

of the Spirit of Man. The waters of Pan are therefore an agent of

evolution or regeneration. John the Baptist conducted his baptism rituals

in the Jordan and even today people of some religions return there to

immerse themselves in its waters for extraordinarily long periods, even to

the point of almost drowning.

The Nile and the Jordan River are similar in more than fine fish

and fertile floodplains. The renowned alchemist, Zosimus of Panopolis,

was to write:

1086

Go to the waters of the Nile; there you will find a stone which has

a spirit; take it, cut it in two; put your hand in its interior and

draw out its heart: because its soul is in its heart.

There is a purpose for the forgoing description of the bounty of

the Jordan River. This is to outline that the fertility of the river’s valley is

quite possibly due to an exceptionally high level of gold and other

regenerative elements. Its waters yield these metals by precipitation with

sodium hydroxide, as shown in Appendix 3.

With the Nile and Jordan Rivers, we just are beginning to

understand the volcanic vent, riverbed and seabed sources of the

Philosophers’ Stone, which we shall return to in Chapter 19. The author

is indeed indebted to a certain thirty-third degree freemason who grew

dog roses in his front garden and many years ago related his excitement

about the unusual topic of Jordan River water.

280

While the term Rosy Cross has engulfed esoteric rose symbolism,

it really has little to do with roses in any direct botanical sense. The term

Rose Croix derives from the Latin ros meaning dew or Life, and crux

meaning cross that refers to the chemical sign for Light. As we saw in

Chapter 5, the cross of Light and Life has the same meaning as Yahweh's

post-Exilic name.

Yet, the rose is an evocative symbol of many other things that

have synergy with alchemy. For example, the rose also stands for secrecy

and silence. Many hotels in Europe such as those in the Vienna Wood

have a rose on their billboard suggesting their hotels provide

confidentiality for amorous liaisons.

A rose in a dining room reminds people of the need for secrecy

around the dinner table, or sub rosa in Latin.

1087

This reflects the Sign of

Silence, which is a form of adoration given by raising one’s finger to the

lips. Historically, it is the sign of adoration of a king reborn. The rose

embraces the king. In the case of Horus, it is a lotus flower. Cupid, the

son of Venus, symbolizes this image of beauty and love. He presents a

rose to Harpocrates as the secret symbol of his forthcoming rebirth:

1088

In many places as well in England as the Low Countries, they

have over their Tables a rose painted, and what is spoken under

the rose must not be revealed; the reason is this; The Rose being

sacred to Venus, whose amours and stolen sports that they might

never be revealed, her sonne Cupid would needes dedicate to

Harpocrates, the God of Silence.

The Egyptians knew Harpocrates as Heru-pa-khret. It is from his

Egyptian name that the Chi-Rho cross of Christ derives. KHeru translates

in Greek as Criw meaning, I anoint.

1089

With this perspective of

Harpocrates, we can again detect Indo-Hittite myth replacing Afro-

Asiatic. Harpocrates, as the divine child, is victorious over the carnal

lusts of Set. The Egyptian Saturnalia celebrated this event.

1090

In 1731CE, Corneille asserted that the great masters of the Rose

Cross were Frerés de la Rosee Cuite or Brothers of the Boiled Dew.

1091

He records that they gave themselves the initials FRC. Masonic fringe

groups such as Fratres Rosi Crucis, Fraternity of the Rosy Cross and

Fellows of the Rosy Cross took these initials.

1092

The earliest written reference to the Brethren of the Rosy Cross,

or Rosicrucians, is a 1638 poem that associates them with speculative

Freemasonry:

1093

281

For what we pressage is not in grosse, for we be brethren of the

Rosie Cross, we have the Mason’s Word and second sight, things

to come we can foretell aright.

Amongst Elias Ashmole’s papers were his handwritten English

translations of the Rosicrucian tracts Fama and the Confessio. In about

1653, Elias Ashmole wrote that he had learned from Doctor Molton that

the Rosicrucians lived in Strasbourg:

1094

The Fratres RC: live about Strasburg: 7 miles from thence in a

mon(a)st(e)ry.

In fact, the Fratres were more widespread than this. In June 1623,

the College Principal des Freres de la Rose-Croix, a group of protestant

monks from the abbe d’Orval, was present in Rennes-le-Chateau and

Rennes-les-Bains..

1095

They were a Benedictine and Cathar order that

derived from the Bogomils.

The Thirty Years War brought European Rosicrucians to

England. The war lasted from 1618 to 1648. In the 1620s, Catholic

Armies overran most of Germany. The Christian Unions of Johann

Valentin Andrea smuggled German Rosicrucians into Flanders. From

there, they formed a Rosicrucian Court in Exile in the Netherlands. James

I of England, a Stuart King from 1603 to 1625, became the main bastion

of protection. Most Rosicrucians moved on to England. Dame Francis

Yates observes that the Thirty Years War put paid to the Rosicrucians'

attempt to build a Protestant esoteric empire in Europe.

1096

Johann Valentin Andrea, who organized the Christian Unions, is

also considered the most likely author of the Rosicrucian manifesto

Christian Rosencranz. He adopted armorial bearings of a St. Andrew's

cross with four roses.

1097

The deeply meaningful symbol of a St. Andrew's cross was

proudly worn at the establishment of the Royal Society where each fellow

wore a St Andrew’s cross of ribbon on the crown of his hat.

1098

The Roman Catholic Church, refers to the St Andrew's cross as

the Signaculum Dei or Seal of God.

1099

Yet, it remains a thorn to the

established Church. It is a symbol of Archangel Michael and the lineage

of Melchizedek Priests.

1100

The Testament of Amram found among the

Dead Sea Scrolls highlights the strong similarity between Melchizedek

and the Archangel Michael, Protector of Israel and Prince of Light.

1101

England did not prove a very safe refuge for the Rosicrucians.

The Government of England was unstable because Charles I, son of

James I, dismissed Parliament in 1629. He governed without Parliament

282

for eleven years. Meanwhile the Hammer of the Witches organized by the

Roman Catholic Church had spread to the Protestant Church in England.

The escalation of fanaticism that led to the Hammer of the

Witches had been in progress since the time of Emperor Constantine, who

reigned from 306-307CE. After his conversion to Christianity, Emperor

Constantine immediately banned all magic and magicians. Under this

law, the State could sentence offenders to immolation.

Shortly afterwards Constantine found it necessary to amend the

law stating that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant

magic and that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to cure

diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests. Nevertheless,

the Church's war on heresy and magic had begun. From 1200CE to

1500CE, the Church specifically targeted Cathars, Knights Templar,

Jews, Muslims and Gypsies. It accused them of witchcraft, sorcery and

satanic magic.

Chapter 13 related how Pope John XXII directed his Papal Bull

of 1317, called Spondent pariter, against magicians and alchemists. Pope

Eugene IV followed with bulls in 1437 and 1445 exhorting inquisitors to

be more diligent in searching out magicians and witches who produced

bad weather. Persecution of all types of magic redoubled.

Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis Desiderantes in 1484.

This bull sent inquisitors into Germany. The inquisitors’ manual was the

infamous Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of the Witches. It ordered:

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

1102

Pope Julius II and Pope Adrian

VI reinforced the purging of witchcraft with similar bulls in 1504 and

1523 respectively.

Before Pope Innocent VIII’s bull of 1484, the Church had

distinguished between magia and malificia. Magia was acceptable magic

while malificia was magic used with criminal intent. The Church

regarded magia as a social ill rather than heresy and tolerated it, provided

it did not invoke the devil or other evil spirits. After Pope Innocent VIII's

bull, all popular magic became malificia and heresy.

Earlier, in 1252, the Church had sanctioned torture in Papal

Inquisitions and permitted both secret trials and execution by burning.

With the aid of Malleus Maleficarum, the inquisitors ordered ferocious

witch-hunts against the rural classes. These peaked between 1580 and

1660. Inquisitors and Puritans in England, Europe and America executed

hundreds of thousands of alleged witches over a two hundred and fifty

year period. Many tens of thousands of these were in Germany alone.

283

In concert with the widespread repression of the time, Dr John

Whitgift's Star Chamber decree of 1586 restricted freedom of the press in

England.

1103

Published manuscripts required the assent of either the

Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. Exceedingly harsh

penalties caused most writers to cease publishing entirely. Only those

with implicit Royal support such as Sir Francis Bacon continued to

publish and even then under pseudonyms.

By 1625, Rosicrucian scientists had also become victims of the

witch-hunt. Even the fledgling Royal Society, established by Charles I on

St Andrew’s Day, was obliged to go underground where it became the

Invisible College in 1649.

1104

The Royal Society eventually emerged in

1662 under Charles II's sponsorship.

1105

He had an alchemy laboratory

built under his bedchamber, with access by a private staircase.

Sir Christopher Wren was a founding member of the Royal

Society and frequented the Invisible College. There are scant records of

Freemasonry at this time but Anderson's New Book of Constitutions of

1738 notes Wren, the Master of the London Operative Masons Company

was a Grand Master of Freemasonry in 1685.

1106

Similarly, John Aubrey,

an antiquary and fellow of the Royal Society, recorded that an order

initiated Wren in 1691 at St Paul’s Cathedral.

1107

The Christian Unions of Johann Valentin Andrea, who organized

the mass Rosicrucian evacuation from Germany, urgently needed stability

in Britain. There were a number of ready havens for them. These

included nobles who had been forming circles for the practice of the

Mysteries. Dr John Dee had refreshed this knowledge from the Architects

in Italy and Navigators in Holland.

Other like-minded groups were the Family of Love, which we

mentioned in Chapter 15, and lodges of operative Scottish builders and

glassmakers. Operative Scottish builders' lodges were at the same time

filtering into England as clandestine sanctuaries with unusual modes of

secrecy, where the circles could pursue scientific discussion in the midst

of widespread intellectual repression. Through their friendly joining of

the operative lodge system, the Christian Unions of the Rosicrucians

catalyzed speculative English Freemasonry into the grand institution it is

today.

By 1717, the Rosicrucians and Freemasons found it necessary to

address the profusion of groups and rites that had developed since the

days of Dr John Dee and Sir Francis Bacon.

1108

A great convocation was

organized and John Toland rationalized the various legends. He

284

canonized their rituals to form the basis of Regular or Craft

Freemasonry.

1109

Toland was a cosmological hermeticist who believed in

the ideals of animate matter and a world spirit.

After many more attempts at standardization, the Duke of

Brunswick finally addressed the profusion of esoteric rituals in the higher

degrees at Wilhelmsbad in 1782.

1110

Thirty sittings debated whether

Masonry was a continuation of the Knights Templars. At stake was the

controversial point of whether every Freemason was a Knight Templar.

The outcome was in the negative, however the decision applies only to

the degrees of Craft Freemasonry, not to the higher degrees.

1111

By means of the early rationalizations, Rosicrucians helped

transform English Freemasonry from its literal Roman Catholic focus into

a common forum for all religions, especially Gnostic Christians and Jews.

The blending of Rosicrucian Indo-Hittite myths expressed by

Zoroastrianism together with Afro-Asiatic mysteries of the Mother

Goddess is perhaps the major reason why the flavor of Freemasonry is so

unique.

Two superimposed squares produce the Rosicrucians’ eight-

pointed star or foliated Rosy Cross.

1112

Its eight points represent the

traditional number of plenty. This cross was marked on the Melchizedek

shewbread in the Temple.

1113

Eight was the number of Osiris. It is also

the special number of the Holy Ghost or Holy Breath and is the cipher

number for Knowledge or Saturn.

1114

It refers to the Origin or Pole out of

which the seven Spirits of God emerged. Seven is the number of holiness

and ten the number of perfection.

1115

Many Knights Templar and St Clair gravestones in Scotland

show the Rosicrucian eight-pointed cross with a sword and various

Masonic symbols. The eight pointed cross is also reminiscent of the

Melchizedek and papal tri-railed Cross-of-Salem. The three rails

represent, among perhaps many other things, the light of the sun, the light

of the soul and the light of knowledge. These are the three great lights in

all Mysteries.

Chapter 8 showed these three lights form an equilateral triangle

with the Sun (Q're), the Moon (Ashima) and Venus (Anatha) at its

vertices. These vertices also represent Shamash, Sin and Inanna. There

are many other matching triads.

The paradigm of three rails or lights has proven insightful in

today's philosophy and psychology. A modern example is the philosophy

of Sir Karl Popper. The three rails are equivalent to three worlds.

1116

285

World One is the material world; World Two the subjective world of each

individual’s mind; World Three is objective structures that are produced

by the collective action of human minds but once produced are

independent. Within World Three is the knowledge of books, social

organizations and techniques of communication.

1117

The US clinical

psychotherapist Albert Ellis independently developed a famous system of

cognitive behavioral psychology involving Activating experiences, Belief

systems and Consequences of actions that closely corresponds to Popper's

three worlds.

1118

His system of disputation and accountability is now at

the heart of most clinical therapy.

We now return to our Rosicrucian investigations. Very little

information exists about the German Rosicrucian before their arrival in

England. Even today, they are silent on the subject. Masons described

the Rosicrucians in 1883 as follows:

1119

The Rosicrucians of Germany are quite ignorant of their origin;

but, by tradition, they suppose themselves descendants of the

ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Magi and Gymnosophists [Indian

yogis]; and this is probably true. They had the name of

illuminati, from their claiming to possess certain secret

knowledge, and from their secrecy, they were also called invisible

brothers.

One of the very early irregular groups struggling to make the leap

from Jewish alchemy to German Rosicrucianism was the Order of the

Golden and Rosy Cross founded by Sigmund Richter in 1710. With

uncertain beginnings, the Order quickly collapsed because it:

1120

…upheld faith against skepticism, revelation against reason,

Christian doctrine against deism or paganism, monarchy and

established hierarchy against democracy, tradition and stability

against change and progress.

The failure of conservative Freemasonry is flippantly, yet

succinctly summed-up by Sir Humphrey Appleby in the British

Broadcasting Commission television series Yes Minister:

Sir Humphrey: The issue is not good and evil, Minister - its about

order and chaos.

Minister: If you believe that Humphrey, you will most

assuredly go to hell.

Sir Humphrey: Minister, I did not know you were a Theologian.

Sir Humphrey is asserting the primacy of order over good.

Freemasonry’s adherence to this principle of enlightened or benevolent

286

autocracy is misguided because it condones despotic tyranny and slavery.

Order out of chaos lacks relevance in our modern Western Democracies

where individual liberty is the most precious jewel.

The two key events in about 1970 changed society’s comfort in

order. At the Paris Sorbonne, students violently protested against the

Vietnam War. These Sorbonne protest erupted into France’s second

revolution. Ten million French people went on strike over industrial

conditions. In June 1968, President de Gaulle asked the people for the

opportunity of reform and they granted it. Instead of reform, de Gaulle

violently put down the protestors. The people dismissed him in April

1969.

In 1968, Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy were

assassinated. New York’s Columbia University Students rioted over US

actions in Vietnam. In April 1970, the US blue blood establishment was

shocked out of its complacency when six thousand of their sons and

daughters rioted at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Kent State University became the nadir. In May 1970, thirteen

seconds of M1 fire by National Guardsmen saw four students dead and

nine badly wounded. One student was bayoneted. The FBI and Special

Grand Jury found the University administration clearly responsible.

Thomas Jefferson highlighted the Freemasons’ dilemma when he

said:

Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security,

will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

In his day, progressive Freemasons turned to the objects of

Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. On July 4, 1776, the Congress of the

United States adopted The Unanimous Declaration of The Thirteen

United States of America, which stated:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the

pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments

are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the

consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government

becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to

alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its

foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such

form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and

Happiness.

287

However, in drafting the US constitution, the fathers decided to

subjugate liberty to order. They returned to the concept of order out of

chaos. They regarded the definition of good and evil as a matter of

theology, not government, and saw the rule of law as more important.

When it came to that rule of law, it was the society that mattered, not the

individual. The 1761 Bill of Rights overturned this mistake and

reintroduced the importance of individual liberty in law. It remains a

salutary warning to all literal Freemasons.

While The Golden and Rosy Cross dissolved, the Societas

Rosicruciana in Anglia reused its rituals in 1793.

1121

The Societas

Rosicruciana in Scotia and the American Societas Rosicruciana in

Civitibus Foederatis are associates of this order.

One Rosicrucian group, the Societas Rosicruciana of

Pennsylvania, claims lineage to the original German Rosicrucians. It also

claims a heritage to the original church of Jerusalem of the Nazarenes,

which we also associate with the Great Heresy of the Bogomils. The

Societas Rosicruciana is supposedly one half of the true order with the

other half being invited Grand Masters of Freemasonry. Some believe

this group unified Freemasonry since John Toland rationalized and

formalized its rituals in 1723.

The Rosicrucians in Europe associated with the Family of

Love.

1122

They sponsored and educated Sir Francis Bacon and appear to

have facilitated the protection of Britain by giving assistance to Sir

Francis Walsingham's famous network of spies.

The Family of Love or Houses of Love, a term also used recently

by the Children of God cult, was formerly a mystery school or fellowship

of scholarly adepts dedicated to preserve Mystery truths.

1123

One of its

most enthusiastic members, Christopher Plantin, was a French printer in

Antwerp. He published the 1577 edition of Alicat's Emblemata, which

first contained the Rosicrucians’ enigmatic AA emblem.

288

The AA Device, from the Faerie Queen, Book 2, 1609

showing distinctive shading or Veil of the right A indicating

Wisdom or the meaning of life needs to be discovered

The Rosicrucian Family promoted tolerance, friendship, learning

and artistry in service of truth.

1124

They regarded virtue, peace and the

purity and strength of a person's inner spiritual life as far more important

than any outer religious or political orientation. Charity or brotherly love

was the most important of the virtues, as it is in Freemasonry today.

The Family considered the outer form as unimportant and able to

adapt to exigency. The branches of the Family’s tree could bend in the

winds of the political and religious environment in each country.

However, the inner form was quite different. The Family united its

members with a common philosophy of man’s inner spiritual life.

The Family claimed its members led the Italian Renaissance and

produced great writers, teachers, healers, scholars, poets, artists and

craftsmen. They also claim credit for great charitable works and

educational schemes. Dr John Dee traveled to Rome to follow the Family

and bring their Italian Renaissance stories back to England.

The sentiment that underpinned the Family was only one part of

society’s longing for better times. Righteous social engineers constantly

sought out portents of change such as comets and other signs in the sky.

As if on cue, impressive supernova explosions took place that had

immense meaning for the early English Rosicrucians

289

These supernova explosions occurred in Cassiopeia in August

1572 and Ophiuchus in 1604. These two brilliant supernovas were both

clearly visible in daylight for up to one and a half years and greatly

excited the Rosicrucians as Stars of Bethlehem ushering in the

penultimate age of man. This was to be the Golden Age of Aquarius.

The supernova in Cassiopeia was particularly unique, as this

constellation was the heavenly body specifically regarded as the Celestial

or Virgin Queen.

1125

Cassiopeia is one of the titles of Isis, the Queen of

Ethiopia who is the Popess of the Tarot.

Ophiuchus has mystical importance as Aesculapius the Serpent

Holder and was held to be very significant because it marked the death of

Queen Elizabeth I.

1126

Robert Fludd wrote that the planetary conjugations of 1603-1604

were a sign for the Rosicrucian Brotherhood to expand its membership in

preparation for the great Restoration of Arts and Sciences of the World,

which they called the Instauration.

1127

The Rosicrucians believed the

arrival of the Golden Age of Aquarius would lead all men to embrace

Righteousness.

1128

A supernova reputedly occurs in Cassiopeia every three hundred

years on average. Each new star that appears in Cassiopeia symbolizes

the birth of a new Christ or Child of Light who will be manifest on earth.

People who received the Mysteries and put Righteousness into

full practice showed the illumination of Joy in their faces. This was a

Crown of Light. Josephus wrote that the reward for a righteous life:

1129

… is not silver or gold; it is not a garland of olive branches or of

small age, nor any sign of commendation; but every good man …

shall come into being again, and at a certain revolution of things

shall receive a better life than they had enjoyed before.

The Rosicrucian sign of this Crown of Light was the letter A

given twice as AA. It derived both from the double A star formation in

Cassiopeia and from Apollo's cry at the death of Hyacinth: Ai, Ai (see

Appendix 4).

The twin AA especially represents Circe’s sacred island named

after Apollo’s cry, Aiaìe or Aeaea. There she granted men the Wisdom of

initiation and symbolically turned them into pigs. The island of Aiaìe

appears to represent the Aj people’s land (aìe). The Rig-Veda mentions

the Aj, who are also known as the ancient Hyperborean cult of Apollo that

came from Airyana Vaêjo (or Airyana Aejo) and settled in Britain.

1130

290

Less compelling perhaps, AA also suggests the Achaeans and

Argeioi, the ancient names of the Danaans.

1131

Furthermore, in the twin

peaks of AA, we can also recognise the KUR-KUR, Sumer’s sacred

mountain, which we discussed in Chapter 5.

1132

Full or partial inversion of the AA device as VV or AV concealed

it with greater mystery. For example, in Shakespeare's overt drama of the

sacred marriage, Venus and Adonis, the sacrificed Adonis’ blood brings

forth a blood red flower, very similar to the purple flower of Hyacinth.

1133

Although a discus kills Hyacinth and a boar kills Adonis on Mount

Lebanon, they represent the same individual. The AV combination, when

superimposed, becomes the six-pointed Christ-star, which is the sign of a

Master and symbol of a Freemason.

1134

The Rosicrucians often showed the AA device as a name such as

Adriano de Armado in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost. A beautiful

silk embroidery of Anna Austin’s funerary urn hangs in the hallway at

Woodlawn Plantation, Virginia, the home of George Washington’s

nephew Lawrence Lewis and Nelly Custis Lewis, George Washington's

foster granddaughter. The urn for this unknown woman with initials AA

bears the date November 11, 1797, age 56 years. A Masonic soldier and

his lady in white stand by. The woman in white is a classic white

goddess. Such was the skill of the embroiderer that she disappears

entirely in the reflection of a mirror.

Adepts of the AA figuratively slice their crown to open the

spiritual pole of the human to heaven, in the same way as the discus

scalped Hyacinth.

1135

This represents the unlimited and visual experience

of boundless light and a knowledge that God is beyond understanding.

1136

To achieve this, a hairdresser arranges a square coiffure, which enables

the release of spiritual consciousness through two small openings in the

crown of the skull called the parietal foramina (see Appendix 7).

1137

symbolic cap protects the shaven head and is a sign of the celestial vault.

The cap is similar to Pallas Athena's glorious helmet or crown of light

that is God's Countenance, God's Word or Life.

1138

In the same way, the ancient Jewish Phrygian Cap or conical cap

of Hades, which usually denoted a person of Anatolian or Persian origin,

has always been the Indo-Hittite sign of an initiate and protective talisman

against ritual slaughter.

1139

The earliest mythical wearer was Perseus (or

Ptersus) who reputedly brought initiation and magic to Persia, killed the

Gorgon Medusa and founded the Magi to guard the sacred immortal

291

fire.

1140

Red Phrygian caps signified liberty in the French Revolution and

the wearer was highly regarded as a true revolutionary.

In the next chapter, we shall see how Freemasonry and

Rosicrucianism prospered, while the Knights Templar apparently lost

touch with the fine line between esotericism and heresy. The Roman

Catholic Church accepted the former. It even incorporated it into its

living church rituals. The latter included the notorious Arabic grimoire

magia, necromancy and a mélange of Gnostic sexual practices.

292

Chapter 18 Architecture, Freemasonry & Knights

Templar

The most ancient architect known to the world is Imhotep of

Egypt.

1141

He was Chief Minister to Pharaoh Djoser who reigned from

2630BCE to 2611BCE. Sekhemet, who reigned in 2603BCE, last

mentions him. Imhotep, also called Imouthes, had a number of great

titles. He was Seal Bearer or Grand Vizier, High Priest of Heliopolis,

Chief Lector Speaker or Evangelist Priest, Director of the Great Mansion

and Architect of Saqqara and Edfu. Later the Triad of Memphis deified

him as the Son of God to replace Nefertum, the son of Ptah.

It was in Imhotep’s day that the Heliopolian cult of Amun

established the primary philosophies of Old Kingdom Egypt. They

formalized these philosophies in the Pyramid Texts, so-called because

pharaohs of the fifth and sixth dynasties wrote them in seven pyramids.

These dynasties existed in the period 2800BCE to 2470BCE.

The Egyptians raised Temples to Imhotep in Memphis and in

Philae, on the Island of Elephantine. The Greeks subsequently

worshipped him as Asclepius, the god of medicine and the son of Apollo.

The great Imhotep is still highly regarded by the medical profession.

The only other mortal to share the divinity of Imhotep was a sage

of the eighteenth dynasty called Amen Hetep Son of Hapu. His cult

shared a healing shrine with Imhotep at the Funerary Temple of Queen

Hatshepsut in 1470BCE. This was located at Deir El Bahri in the

Western Desert near Thebes. It operated until Christian times.

Amen Hetep Son of Hapu was Chief of Works under Amenhotep

III.

1142

He moved mountains of quartzite to erect the colossal monuments

of Amenhotep III. These included the Colossi of Memnon, which are two

great images of the seated Amenhotep III carved from the fine reddish

sandstone of Gebel el-Ahmar. They are still at Luxor, near the road to the

western desert. These statues are all that is left of Amenhotep III’s

mortuary temple, the largest in Thebes. Amen Hetep Son of Hapu is also

famous for constructing a complex of funerary Temples under the cliffs of

Western Thebes.

Freemasons have their own rudimentary chronology of Egypt,

which records chief builders back to 970BCE.

1143

An ancient stonemason

inscribed it in the Wadi Hammamat in 580BCE. It rivals the king lists of

Manetho in importance, comparing the earliest chief builder to Imhotep.

293

Great and pious architects such as Imhotep and Amenhotep Son

of Hapu are prominent archetypes for Freemasonry’s Hiram Abiff.

Tradition holds that Hiram Abiff was a member of a secret society of

master builders known as the Dionysian Artificers. The Artificers

appeared around one thousand BCE to erect King Solomon's Temple.

From a base in Lebedos, they established builders’ lodges in all

Mediterranean lands, Syria, Persia and India.

1144

In Persia, Cambyses

gave them great marks of favour.

1145

In Rome, the Dionysian Artificers

became a branch of the Roman Collegia.

The archetypal Hiram Abiff was a Grand Master of this noble

order of builders, which took its name from the Greek God Dionysis. The

builders were organized into lodges, claimed to possess secret knowledge

and dedicated themselves to help the poor.

1146

The rose is an important

Dionysian symbol and the Rosalia was one of their most important

ceremonies.

1147

The Dionysian Artificers likened man to a rough ashlar.

Reason could fashion rude material into a perfectly square stone, the

symbol of God. Thus fashioned, each man became part of the living and

Eternal Temple, without the sound of a hammer. All ashlars, or squared

stones, represent God.

As noted in Chapter 9, the Dionysian Artificers who settled in

Israel reputedly founded the Cassidens or Assideans who later became the

Chassidim.

1148

According to Philo and Josephus, the Cassidens joined

with the Essenes.

1149

Both the Cassidens and Essenes disallowed women

to their assemblies.

The Dionysian Artificers were perhaps associated with the great

Ionians who built the Temple of Diana at Ephesus in the eleventh century

BCE. This temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The

Dorians similarly built the Temple of Apollo at Tripoli.

At Marmaria, one and a half kilometers from Delphi, on the

slopes of Mt Parnassus, are three precious ornaments also reputedly built

by the Dionysian Artificers.

1150

These are two small Doric Temples and

the famous Tholos of Delphi. The older of the two small temples is

known as the Treasury of Massalia and dates from about 530BCE when

the Python Priestesses moved around the hill from Delphi. Traditionally

the Priestesses buried a young warrior under the temple threshold.

1151

Freemasons may recognize this practice.

Chapter 5 showed that the name Treasury was usually an alias for

a Temple of melissae priestesses. The Treasury of Massalia was one of

the finest examples of Ionic architecture in Greece with spirals and

294

astragals on its walls of Parian marble. The two columns at its entrance

were Ionic. Palm leaves, the symbol of life, curved curiously downwards

to decorate their capitals. This type of embellishment became the Aeolic

style. It reflects that Priestesses of Delphi worshipped only the Fates of

Birth and Death.

1152

Close by is the exquisite circular Tholos designed by Theodorus

in the fourth century BCE. It was Doric, built from Pentelic marble.

Twenty Doric columns once stood around the exterior. The wall and

molded podium of the Tholos are of Eleusian marble. They support a

labyrinth of ten Corinthian columns. Two interlocking spiral S shaped

staircases may have existed inside columns, similar to the Mycenaean

Treasury of Atreus and the Temple of Apollo at Didyma. The great

Chateau Chambord in the Loire Valley in France, thought to be the work

of Leonardo da Vinci, includes a magnificent intertwining staircase of this

type.

The Tholos of Delphi is similar to images painted in frescoes of

Pompeii. Bedroom B of the Villa of the Mysteries and Bedroom M of the

Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor, at nearby Boscoreale, both show the

mysterious Tholos, partially concealed from view by a veil.

1153

We shall

have more to say of the Tholos and its enigmatic labyrinth of columns

later in this chapter.

It is interesting to note that all three societies of architecture and

building, the Ionians, Dorians and Dionysian Artificers, advocated

generous acts of benevolence. They practiced this charity along with their

architecture and building.

1154

These groups were the archetypal

forerunners of the Rosicrucians.

Numa Pompilius, later called Pontifex Maximus, first constituted

the Roman Collegia in 703BCE.

1155

Masonic tradition holds that Caesar

Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome from 27BCE to 14CE, was a patron

of Masons and Grand Master of the Roman College of Architects.

1156

oversaw the Roman innovation of a new architectural order, the

Composite Order, which was first apparent in 19CE.

1157

Certainly, Caesar

Augustus’ boast that he had found Rome brick and left it marble shows

his high regard for architecture.

Historians know Caesar Augustus as Octavian, although his name

was originally Gaius Octavius. Later he became Gaius Julius Caesar

because he was the grand nephew of Julius Caesar and succeeded him.

Julius Caesar claimed descent to the twin boys Romulus and Remus who

founded of Rome. They were the offspring of the pious Trojan Aeneas, a

295

prince of the royal house of Assaracus, who bought the sacred porpoise-

ivory Palladium of the porpoise cult to Rome where the Vestal Virgins’

guarded it.

1158

The legendary Palladium was a legless object, three cubits

high, made by Athene in memory of her dead playmate Pallas.

1159

Athene

originally set the Palladium beside Zeus’ throne on Mount Olympus.

However, when Electra violated it with her touch, Athene violently cast it

to earth.

Aeneas was the son of the Goddess Aphrodite and Anchises,

King of the Dardanians and grandson of Ilus.

1160

The Arcadians and

Trojans built shrines to Anchises as the god Adonis who was born from a

myrrh-tree.

1161

As we saw with Tamar’s Palm in the Valley of Oddy in

Chapter 15, the drops of gum shed by the myrrh tree were the tears shed

for Adonis who was born from the tree.

1162

Ovid tells the same story of a father incestuously copulating with

his daughter, Myrrah, albeit unbeknownst to him.

1163

There are many

stories of father-daughter incest to prolong the dynasty. In the Israelite

context, the daughters of Lot lay with him at Zoar.

1164

Similarly, Judah

lay with his daughter Tamar.

1165

A Midrashim suggests that God assisted

their incest.

1166

Like Horus, Aeneas was the Son of God. Both Julius Caesar and

Caesar Augustus claimed descent from him.

1167

The myth of Aeneas

became very important to the Rosicrucians in the seventeenth century. As

previously mentioned, he is one of the nine noble warriors. Frederick II

decorated his bedchamber at Sans Souci with esoteric reliefs of Julius

Caesar and Augustus.

Diocletian, Emperor from 284 to 305CE, endeavored to suppress

Christianity, yet was lenient on the Roman Collegia despite many

members being Christians.

1168

Nevertheless, he martyred four aristocratic

patrons of architecture, called the Quatuor Coronati, together with four

sculptor masons and an apprentice. Their emblems were the saw,

hammer-mallet, compasses and square, cube, plummet, circle and level.

These were the same emblems revered by the Roman Collegia and the

mysterious Magistri Comacini. A member of the Roman Collegia called

Vitruvius noted that those who wore the leather apron of the craft

reserved the inner mysteries.

1169

The fall of the Roman Empire was to lead to a dramatic loss of

Collegia skills. Vitruvius described how the Romans had made extensive

use of cement and even hydraulic lime and silicate mortars that could set

underwater.

1170

The magnificent dome of the Pantheon built in 110CE

296

still stands testament to their great achievement in building technology.

In contrast, the great cathedrals and public buildings of Cologne, Milan,

Bologna and Seville used porous sandstone. Time has proven this

material inadequate and these cathedrals now require extensive

waterproofing and repair. It is surprising to most architects and engineers

that the Roman’s knowledge of cement and admixes was lost until the

invention of Portland cement in England in the eighteenth century CE.

The same catastrophic loss of skills occurred in glazes and glass

making. Vitruvius tells us of the chemically complex color, Egyptian

Blue, invented by the Egyptians before two thousand five hundred

BCE.

1171

The Greeks, Romans and citizens of Pompeii enjoyed it.

Rabbis once died the tassels of their tallith this blue. To this day, their

tassels remain white because of its loss.

Egyptian Blue was lost to civilization at the time of the barbarian

invasions of Rome in 410CE, only to be rediscovered in the nineteenth

century. It joined another rediscovered color, the royal Purple of Cassius,

found again in 1685. Andreas Cassius precipitated gold, stannous and

stannic chlorides with an alkali to obtain the famous glass colorant called

the Purple of Cassius. Heating a mixture of antimony trisulphide, iron,

mercury (Hg) and copper produced the violet Purple of Cassia.

The skills and functions of the Magistri Comacini appear to

derive from Brotherhoods, such as the Sarmoung Brotherhood, that we

might call Mages of Commagene.

1172

Their involvement in the building

of the great cathedrals of France seems to have had its genesis in the visit

of Louis VII to Palestine during the Second Crusade in 1147CE. Shortly

after his visit, the King adopted the Fleur-de-Lys as both his personal

heraldic device and the Royal Coat of Arms of France.

1173

The Fleur-de-Lys derives its name from the flower Fleur-de-

Luce. It is the sacred narcissus or leirion used in the ancient wreaths of

Demeter and Persephone.

1174

It is the same flower that Gabriel gives to

Mary signifying that a new king would emerge from her womb.

The Fleur-de-Luce is the striking Nazareth Iris or death flower of

the group Oncocyclus.

1175

St Bernard originally translated the word

Nazarene as branch of the vine. Traditionally it means any lilac colored

flower such as the lilac, iris, crocus or even a rose. It is the ultimate lilac

or purple color that symbolizes Horus and the Philosophers’ Stone.

A further intrigue in the mystery of the French cathedrals is that

the Fleur-de-Lys astrologically corresponds to the sheaf of wheat in the

constellation of Virgo. The constellation of Virgo provides an uncanny

297

celestial map for the terrestrial layout of the great Gothic Notre-Dame

cathedrals in northern France.

1176

These are Rouen, Chartres, Laon, and

Reims etc. In this pattern the most important cathedral in France, Reims,

represents the star Spica. It therefore symbolizes the Fleur-de-Lys in

particular.

In another surprising coincidence, the pyramids of Giza form the

map of Orion over an area twenty kilometers by ten kilometers.

However, the French Virgo is on a very much grander scale of two

hundred and ten kilometers by one hundred and sixty kilometers.

Nevertheless, both seem to express in tangible form the much clichéd

dictum from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes as above, so below. The

Virgo plan in France may either exist by chance or have been constructed

to such a scale because Louis VII shared the expectancy that the next

Messiah would be French and of royal blood.

1177

His adoption of the

Fleur-de-Lys seems to confirm this and we shall see how poignant this

was to be.

Architects and stonemasons of the Magistri Comacini built the

great Gothic cathedrals with a previously unheard of range of structural

designs and construction skills. They taught the secrets of sacred

geometry and construction based on the equilateral triangle of the pointed

arch, called the ogive, which was the upper half of a vesica piscis.

1178

The

structural innovations developed in the Paris basin between 1140 and

1240 were unparalleled until the invention of reinforced concrete.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the ancient priests and

mathematicians considered that the equilateral triangle embodied God. It

was also the remarkable resolution of forces in construction that enabled

the lightweight and soaring arches of the Gothic cathedrals. Knocking an

equilateral triangle of bricks from a wall without compromising stability

is elementary building theory today. Yet, the secret of building

lightweight edifices to God, using the ogive principle of God, was

enormously exciting to mediaeval architects. It embodied the glorious

meeting of form and function. St Bernard marveled that God was length,

width, height and depth and decreed that in his cathedrals there must be

no decoration, only proportion.

1179

Gothic principles were certainly

austere in the sense of being devoid of decoration. Yet, the new use of

light in the upper sections of the cathedrals coupled with slender, logical

proportions, based on the Golden Ratio, provided a delight for the

senses.

1180

298

Simple trigonometry in Appendix 8 shows why the Knights

Templar were distinguished by the Cross Patteé to mark their austere role

as Knights of the Perfect Pyramid and Golden Ratio. St Bernard saw the

Knights Templar as icons of mathematical perfection, replication and the

womb of living Church regeneration.

Geometry in architecture triumphed with the creation of

spectacular height and roof spans, only limited by the compressive

strength of the building materials available. This found its zenith at

Beauvias Cathedral, which has a nave ceiling height at the keystone of

forty-eight meters compared to thirty-two meters in Paris and thirty-six

meters at Chartres.

1181

Due to repeated compressive failure in the stone

foundations, the nave at Beauvias was never completed. After

encountering this limit, the architects of God turned to their newly

discovered dimension of expression, natural light, and increased window

size. Their objective was to create a thin pillar shell, as found at Saint-

Denis and Sainte-Chappelle. Saint-Denis is the true diaphanous cradle of

the Gothic style.

St Bernard motivated his ecclesiastical workforce by declaring

that work is prayer.

1182

The Gothic cathedrals erected by this practical

prayer became the magnificent New Jerusalem, rebuilt everywhere in

Europe.

1183

After St Bernard's discoveries were incorporated into the

great cathedrals, the Church rapidly lost interest in Jerusalem itself. With

the discoveries of the Melchizedek knights safely hoarded away, even St

Bernard never saw the need to visit Jerusalem. Quite pointedly, he

asserted that Cistercian monks need only travel to Clairvaux Abbey

where:

1184

Even now he stands in the courts of Jerusalem … but not of that

earthly Jerusalem to which Mount Sinai in Arabia is joined, and

which is in bondage with her children, but of that free Jerusalem

which is above and the mother of us all. And this, if you want to

know, is Clairvaux. She is the Jerusalem united to the one in

heaven by whole-hearted devotion, by conformity of life and by a

certain spiritual affinity.

The architect brethren of St Bernard’s cathedral builders, the

Magistri Comacini, honored the martyrs Hiram Abiff and the Quatuor

Coronati. Their meeting rooms were loggia and their symbols included

King Solomon’s knot and the interwoven cord of eternity. They held that

King Solomon had given them a Charge and incorporated them fraternally

in the precincts of his Temple.

299

The Enfants de Solomon or Children of Solomon was part of the

operational wing of the Magistri Comacini.

1185

This is the same building

group as the Sons of Solomon, an alternate designation of the Dionysian

Artificers. After the suppression of the Knights Templar, the Sons of

Solomon was considered clear of ill doing and became the Foreign

Companions of the Devoir de Salomon.

1186

In the nineteenth century they

were renamed Les Companions des Devoirs du Tour de France.

1187

The Magistri Comacini was in existence at least as early as

643CE when given privileges by the King of Lombard.

1188

Legend

suggests that they lived on a fortified island in Lake Como that is now a

ruin.

1189

As Lake Como today has only one island and it is a swampy

mudflat, the island may now be part of the shoreline.

It is most likely that Sir Christopher Wren referred to the Magistri

Comacini when he remarked:

1190

The Italians (among which were yet some Greek refugees), and

with them French, German and Flemings, joined into a Fraternity

of Architects, procuring Papal Bulls for their Encouragement and

particular Privileges; they stiled themselves Freemasons, and

ranged from one nation to another as they found Churches to be

built.

The Papal Bulls alluded to by Wren are unknown and quite

probably just part of the extensive folklore of the Magistri Comacini.

They were active in Ravenna and Venice, although these cities show little

evidence of the Romantic style. Ravenna is primarily Byzantine and

Venice is Arabic without a single Romantic building.

The construction arm of the Magistri Comacini, called the

Compagnonnage, worked under Cistercian Masons and Knights Templar

Master Masons called Fratres Solomonis to build the great cathedrals of

France.

1191

The Compagnonnage first congregated in 1194CE to build

Chartres Cathedral after a major fire. It took a mere twenty-six years to

complete the great new cathedral of Chartres. Their construction

philosophy was integrally associated with alchemy. Carved reliefs in

Chartres and the other Notre-Dame Cathedrals of Paris, Reims, Amiens

and Bourges graphically symbolize the steps of the alchemical process.

1192

In an immense accomplishment for the era, the Compagnonnage

went on to build over one hundred and fifty monumental buildings in just

one hundred years. At the time of Chartres, nearly twenty cathedrals of

the same scale were simultaneously under construction in northern

300

France.

1193

An impressive two thousand seven hundred churches, chapels

and cathedrals were finished in the Paris basin alone during the century

from 1140CE to 1240CE.

1194

The limestone Paris basin contains over

ninety percent of all the early Gothic churches.

According to the Venerable Bede, who lived from 673CE to

735CE, the Magistri Comacini reached Anglo-Saxon England where they

built a church in Northumbria.

1195

However, there was an even earlier

tradition of Masonic guilds in third century England when the martyr St

Alban commenced the building of abbeys.

1196

Around 935CE, Athelstan

King of Wessex called an assembly of Masons at York and issued them

with a charge.

Some historians believe that at this time, ancient teacher of the

arts, the Culdees, controlled the Masonic Collegia in York, Kilwinning,

Melrose, and Aberdeen. An old Scottish tradition suggests that this

Syriac Christian or Culdee heresy was preserved in Scotland and survived

for some centuries after the Knights Templar suppression.

1197

These early efforts aside, it is likely that the main migration of the

Compagnonnage building guilds into Britain was subsequent to the

1066CE Norman Conquest when they constructed Melrose Abbey and six

other abbeys and churches in Scotland. These masons brought with them

the basis of today's Craft Freemasonry, but this was to be developed and

fashioned in a unique context.

1198

Although the Compagnonnage masons were nominally Christian,

they carved a strange profusion of symbols into nearly all pre-

Reformation Churches. The Reformation in England commenced about

1534 when Henry VIII prevailed upon Parliament to appoint the king and

his successors to be the supreme head of the Church of England. Between

1536 and 1539, Henry VIII suppressed the Roman Catholic monasteries

and seized their property.

Over six hundred pre-Reformation churches throughout England,

Ireland, Spain and France contain images of the Green Man and Sheela-

na-gig carved in stone.

1199

The Green Man has always symbolized a

vegetation god but he is not a happy character.

1200

The Greeks showed

him as Tantalus dressed in fruit-hung boughs, in agony from flogging and

horror-stricken by fear of drowning or immolation on a pyre.

1201

The

Balkans flung their Green Man, whom they called Green George into a

river as a pharmacos or scapegoat. People of Normandy ducked, beat and

burned him at their mid-summer bonfire.

1202

301

The Green Man’s image as the male counterpart in rose logic is

less recognized. He is St Bernard’s branch of the vine. Each year the

immortal sacrificial king consummates a sacred marriage with the

goddess of Wisdom who becomes his wife. He then dies, is resurrected

and one year later consummates the sacred marriage again.

1203

As we found with the rose, the goat, honey and the dragon,

similar images often have two quite different interpretations. This is the

case even with the Sheela-na-gig. Her confronting vulva is ascetic and

oracular. The Afro-Asiatic sacrificial king ritual involves death brought

by the Goddess Demeter, also known as Hecate and Danaë. Demeter is

the barley Goddess of the witches. In Britain, a white horse often

symbolizes her in the open countryside.

Before we turn to the Sheela-na-gig in particular, we need to

review the practices of the Triple Goddess. At Marmaria, near Delphi,

archeologists have discovered that the ancient female rites involved vulva

imagery. They found gold statues of women with their faces and genitals

combined. The priestesses hid these statues in the floor of the Tholos, a

stone circle rotunda dedicated to the Barley Mother at Temple of Demeter.

We investigated the architecture of the site earlier in this chapter.

The grim purpose of the grotesque statues discovered in the

Tholos was to equate the right of the Goddess to bring both birth and

death. The cat is a quintessential representation of a witch, and the

particular symbol of the Barley goddess. The cat characterizes the dual

right of birth and death because it mates openly and will devour its

young.

1204

In some modern shops that sell esoteric items, one may see

statues of cats with bloody mouths.

A similar college of priestesses to that at Marmaria operated at

Iolcus, the chief port of Southern Thessaly. This college demonstrated

the continuum of the relationship between the priestesses and witches

because its fifty priestesses maintained a close affinity with the Scottish

witch cult.

1205

The Sanctuary of Athena lies near the Temple of Demeter on the

hill of females at Marmaria. At the Sanctuary of Athena, kings

contributed enormous wealth to the Python Priestesses of Demeter and

were safe in the knowledge that the Goddess’ priestesses would not

demand their death in exchange for orgiastic favors. Instead, the

priestesses sacrificed a male child each year of a king’s reign.

1206

The

ancient Greek practice of deserting unwanted children, leaving them on

302

hillsides to die from exposure to the elements, probably provided many of

the innocent victims.

Child surrogates, now called interrex, extended the period

between the sacrifice of a mature male from one year to five, then to

seven and eight years.

1207

The priestess’ euphemistic analogy for a male

sacrificial victim was a piglet known as kolabros, which derived from the

double meaning of a pig. The pig was the sacred son and lover. He

related to the Goddess in her guise of a sow. In Thrace, the priestesses

performed the bloodthirsty dance called the kolabros on the skulls of their

victims. Kali performed the same dance in India.

Apollo destroyed the Python at Delphi but retained the Python

Priestesses. This legend, and another of the attempted rape of Daphne the

bloody one, seems to record the capture of the Delphic shrine by the

Achaeans in the thirteenth century BCE.

1208

This ended the tradition of

royal sacrifices.

1209

Legend said that Apollo tamed the priestess’ wild

frenzy and led them in formal and decorous dances.

1210

When the Dorians

returned, two hundred years later, patrilineal genealogy had replaced

matrilineal.

1211

A prince no longer left the house of his father to marry a

foreign princess, the princess came to him. Although the Mother Goddess

rite continued, it was without the overt sacrifice of men.

The image of the pig, hog or boar remained an icon of

resurrection in Wisdom long after the time of the Python Priestesses.

Ovid writes that Diana transformed Actaeon into a boar after he gained

knowledge of her.

1212

Ovid’s Circe mixed an Oimellas of Wisdom to turn

her visitors into swine at her palace on the island of Aiaie.

1213

It was a

brew of barley, honey, strong wine, creamy curds and secret essences.

The hog was the symbol of the initiate at Pompeii, as shown in the fresco

above. Sir Francis Bacon also adopted the hog or boar as his symbol of

Wisdom.

Originally the Afro-Asiatic sacrificial king ritual required the

death and rebirth of the leader or king, so the land would be fertile.

Medea, for example, renewed the old king Aeson:

1214

…She bade bring out

The old exhausted king, and with a spell

Charmed him to deepest sleep and laid his body,

Lifeless it seemed, stretched on a bed of herbs

… Meanwhile within the deep bronze cauldron, white

With bubbling froth, the rich elixir boils.

Roots from the vales of Thessaly and seeds

303

Kids entering and two Boars, representing the Sacred king and his

Tanist escaping from the Maze & the Eleusis or Arrival of the Divine

Child carried by Shepherds

Fresco from the House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii

1215

The scene also

represents Circe’s palace on Aiaìe.

304

And flowers she seethes therein and bitter juices,

With gem-stones from the farthest Orient …

… And behold!

The old dry stick that stirred the bubbling brew

Grew green and suddenly burst into leaf,

And all at once was laden with fat olives;

And where the froth flowed over from the pot

And the hot drops spattered the ground beneath,

Fair springtime bloomed again, and everywhere

Flowers of the meadow sprang and pasture sweet.

And seeing this Medea drew her blade

And slit the old king’s throat and let the blood

Run out and filled his veins and arteries

With her elixir; and when Aeson drank;

Through wound and lips, at once his hair and beard,

White for long years, regained their raven hue;

His wizened pallor, vanquished, fled away

And firm new flesh his sunken wrinkles filled,

And all his limbs were sleek and proud and strong.

Then Aeson woke and marveled as he saw

His prime restored of forty years before.

As we have seen, the herding, protein-eating Indo-Hittites saw

little merit in the Mother Goddess’ analogy of male sacrifice. Under

pressure of change at Delphi, the king sacrifice became the sacrifice of

any male. Later a male child became a live sacrifice or sparagmos in the

Mysteries of Demeter.

1216

Euripides’ fifth century BCE play Medea tells of the return of

Goddess worship to Athens and the inception of child sacrifice in

response to desertion of the Mother Goddess religion by Jason:

1217

Men say that women cannot be good at anything, therefore I will

excel at wickedness .. A women gives life to her children, it is her

right to take it away.

Medea’s expulsion, from Corinth and then from Athens, refers to

the Hellenic suppression of her Triple Goddess cult.

1218

Philomela, the sister of Queen Procne, participated in a sacred

marriage with King Tereus. Queen Procne later learnt of the affair and

sought vengeance. As Hecate, she killed her son rather than the king:

1219

… As Procne spoke, her son

Itys, approached – she knew what she could do!

305

Looking at him with ruthless eyes, she said

“You’re so like your father!” and she planned

In silent rage a deed of tragedy.

… She struck him with a knife

Below his ribs, and never even looked

Away; one wound sufficed to seal his fate.

And Philomela slit his throat. Alive,

And breathing still, they carved and jointed him,

And cooked the parts; some bubbled in a pan,

Some hissed on spits; the closet swam with blood.

… In rushes Philomela,

Just as she is, that frantic butchery

Still spattered in her hair, and throws the head

Of Itys, bleeding, in his father’s face.

In child sacrifice, the priestesses castrated a boy, tore him apart

and consumed him in a Eucharist called the omophagia. Later, the

priestesses baked his blood in baked barley cakes and ate the cakes in

honour of the Barley Goddess.

1220

This is the esoteric meaning of barley

cakes.

Blood also anointed the Earth Priestess’ omphalos stone. This

was a navel shrine of the Earth Mother with the spiral python motif of

immortality.

1221

It symbolized both the umbilical tie to the earth and

resurrection for the sacrificial king. Rosettes, the ancient symbol of

sacred marriage and royal resurrection, decorated the omphalos. The

Priestesses constantly anointed it with blood and oil mixed with strands of

woven wool.

1222

Both the city of Delphi and the influence of the priestesses at the

Temple of Demeter declined after the Sacred Wars of 529BCE to

338BCE. The Gauls finally destroyed the Temple in 279BCE.

Yet, the practices of Triple Goddess worship were entrenched

elsewhere in Europe and horrifying myths continued to circulate. While

the Indo-Hittite invasions of Greece stopped the practice of male

sacrifice, the Goddess Demeter’s ensuing hostility to children demanded

constant, covert appeasement.

In the old myths of Europe, the male oak god Janus saved

children from the witch Demeter.

1223

He was the oaken door of strength

and security. Another name for Demeter was Cardea. If she penetrated

beyond the Oak-king, the door, she would steal the children to drink their

blood.

1224

This Hansel and Gretel factor, now presented as mere fairytale,

306

is still the most entrenched, pernicious and feared aspect of witch

ceremonies up until the present day. Modern witches will still talk of

stealing blood for their barley cakes from the pierced finger of a child.

The Triple Goddess has constantly been with us, even if not

immediately recognizable. Ludwig van Beethoven praised her in his

triumphal Symphony No 9, Opus 125 Choral, dedicated to King Friedrich

Wilhelm III of Prussia.

Beethoven composed this magnificent testimonial intermittently

between 1792 and 1824. He was deaf by the time of its first performance

in Vienna on 7

May 1824. In reaching the words Tochter of Elysium, the

orchestra assumes moestoso and triple time for the crowning choral

Finale, afterwards resuming common time. Elysium is Hera’s apple

orchard on Mount Atlas, guarded by the Hesperides.

1225

The words of the

Finale praise the Triple Goddess while longingly searching for the lost

Father:

Joy, fair spark of the gods,

Daughter of Elysium,

Drunk with fiery rapture, Goddess,

We approach thy shrine!

Thy magic reunites those

Whom stern custom has parted;

All men will become brothers.

Under thy gentle wing.

May he who has had the fortune

To gain a true friend

And he who has won a noble wife

Join in our jubilation!

Yes, even if he calls but one soul

His own in all the world.

But he who has failed in this

Must steal away alone and in tears

All the world's creatures

Draw joy from nature's breast;

Both the good and the evil

Follow her rose-strewn path.

She gave us kisses and wine

And a friend loyal unto death;

She gave lust for life to the lowliest,

And the Cherub stands before God.

307

Tenor and Choir

Joyously, as his suns speed

Through Heaven's glorious order,

Hasten, Brothers, on your way,

Exulting as a knight in victory.

Choir

Joy, fair spark of the gods,

Daughter of Elysium,

Drunk with fiery rapture, Goddess,

We approach thy shrine!

Thy magic reunites those

Whom stern custom has parted;

All men will become brothers

Under thy gentle wing

Be embraced, Millions!

Take this kiss for all the world!

Brothers, surely a loving Father

Dwells above the canopy of stars.

Do you sink before him, Millions?

World, do you sense your Creator?

Seek him then beyond the stars!

He must dwell beyond the stars.

Chapter 15 mentioned that the singer Madonna emulated the

Triple Goddess in Ariadne’s castle of Light at the Corona Borealis.

There are many other examples of the warm reception of the

triple Goddess on the pop hit parade. In memory of Princess Diana, Sony

Entertainment released an official compact disk of her favorite songs

entitled Diana, Princess of Wales – Tribute. It included a hugely popular

song of praise to the Mother Goddess, Hymn to Her, by lead singer

Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders:

1226

Let me inside you, into your room

I've heard it's lined with the things you don't show.

Lay me beside you, down on the floor

I've been your lover from the womb to the tomb

I dress as your daughter, when the moon becomes round.

You be my mother, when everything's gone.

And she will always carry on.

Something is lost but something is found

They will keep on speaking her name.

308

Some things change, some stay the same.

Keep beckoning to me, from behind that close door.

The maid and the mother, and the crone that's grown old.

I hear your voice coming out of that hole.

I listen to you and I want some more.

I listen to you and I want some more

And she will always carry on.

Something is lost but something is found

Let me inside you

Lay me beside you

I dress as your daughter

And she will always carry on.

Something is lost but something is found.

We can now turn to the Sheela-na-gig. Masons often carved this

crudely pornographic representation of an ugly, naked female figure

displaying her genitals in churches. It immediately suggests the pagan

carnality of the Mother Goddess. Even more offensive, erotic carvings

depict monks and priests performing homosexual acts, wearing the heads

of animals and in sexual poses with wanton young girls. In the hallowed

chamber, such pornographic lampooning of the Church and its clergy is

highly incongruous.

Together with the Green Man, the presence of Sheela-na-gig

would seem convincing evidence that the Church is little more than a

pagan hall for the sacrificial king ritual. Yet, here once more, all is not as

it seems. While these images do reveal a sharpened perception of the

Church building as a womb, the Sheela-na-gig is remarkably specific to

Indian yogic Tantrism in the same pre-Reformation period from at least

seventh century CE to thirteenth century CE.

Despite its sacrificial king context in Christian Churches, the

Sheela-na-gig is quite removed from the Female, Triple or Mother

Goddess Demeter. It is more characteristically an Indo-Hittite icon for

the ascetic yogi practice of vulva worship called stripuja.

1227

Exaggerated

ugliness of the female form deliberately reinforces that the sole feature of

concentration is the vulva and its oracular function.

1228

A Yogi adept

would focus his eyes on the vulva and his mind on Karma or lust. The

object was to achieve an ejaculation but with the semen remaining in the

body. Yogis consider this to give an upward flow of sexual energy in the

spinal-tree called the kundalini experience.

1229

Human life force flows up

the spinal-tree to the head where human consciousness and divinity meet.

309

This meeting place is analogous to the altar in the church where the Bread

of Life transubstantiates into God.

Wanton poses with young girls shown in the churches are

similarly not of sexual indulgence but of abstinence and testing that

formed part of the greater Mysteries (see Appendix 7). The skilled

Initiate demonstrated that he could control his sexual urges even when in

a position of power and arousal.

1230

The Greater Mysteries held a similar test: seduction by the

corporeal pleasures of life. A successful initiate would not divert from

the true path of Wisdom:

1231

I have never knowingly done wrong to any person; nor forgot the

respect which I owe to my kind; nor even to myself without

profound repentance. I have followed the lessons of the Stoic

Socrates, and overrun the world in my exertions to attain more

wisdom. After having assiduously listened to the Priests of this

land of Egypt, I descended to the gloomy empire of the dead, and

interrogated the illustrious shades, or otherwise collected their

luminous sentiments; then I traversed the flames, combated and

slew in his cavern the monster of darkness – the genie of evil.

Then having ascended the course of a river by swimming, after

climbing a ladder which sank under me, I arrived at a delicious

place where beautiful women with naked breasts tendered me

pledges of love. From thence I was conducted hither.

The most learned French Masonic scholar of the nineteenth

century, J-M Ragon, argued that this test of carnal desire was of the

greatest antiquity and really the last degree of perfect initiation.

1232

The

Freemasonic Ancients also preserved it as the most important element of

their rituals.

A true Yogi can be perpetually stimulated over a long period and

yet refrain from external ejaculation. He diverts sexual energy from the

physical to the psychic plane. Homosexuality and bestiality were other

ways to achieve the same sexual excitement while avoiding female

physical contact and the risk of conception.

1233

Ritualized bestiality was

also an advanced Yogi religious practice. The priests legitimized this

practice with the legend that Shiva copulated with the female of each

species to create the animal races.

1234

From the profusion of these images in pre-Reformation churches,

there is little doubt that the Roman Catholic Church understood and

310

approved of these esoteric meanings. They are wholly consistent with a

priest’s vow of celibacy.

Yet, there is an even more striking element built into the most

sacred part of the Church. Professor Gregory Webb of Cambridge

University was Secretary of the Royal Commission on Historical

Monuments. He discovered that ninety percent of all pre-Reformation

churches in Britain hid pagan fertility symbols such as the stone image of

a phallus in the Christian altar.

1235

Professor Webb's discovery is

extraordinary. The builders and ecclesiastics clearly had an

overwhelming desire to model the Church as a womb at the instant of

conception, as graphically embodied in Michelangelo’s Pieta.

The philosophy of alchemy infused both the Church and

Freemasonry over a long period. The operative lodges of stonemasons

and glassmakers already had vestiges of alchemical beliefs from the

Compagnonnage. The Rosicrucians added their knowledge to these

beliefs.

This Rosicrucian model treated the sciences of alchemy and

astronomy as its greatest practical secrets. The Rosicrucians had sprung

from the same fundamental hermetic tree but concentrated on a higher

level of perfection of the human spirit, through the symbolism of

perfection in metals, rather than the traditional perfection of geometry,

architecture and building in Craft Freemasonry. These two groups

parallel the twin roles of building and alchemy in the traditional

sequences of the Lesser and Greater Mysteries. These were set out in

some detail in the late Renaissance Crata Repoa (see Appendix 7),

printed in Germany in 1770. It draws on earlier sources such as the

Ritual of Initiations by Humberto Malhandrini, published in Venice in

1657.

1236

English historians puzzled over the great French writers,

especially the highly regarded Ragon, accepting both the Crata Repoa

and Initiation of Plato as genuine when to English writers they appeared

to be merely graceful fiction.

1237

However, in 1932 professor Amadeo

Maiuri discovered the Oracle at Cuma in Italy, where the fabled Aneas

come to consult his father in the Underworld.

1238

At nearby Baia, in 1967,

Robert Paget and his friend Keith Jones discovered the great Underworld

stage of Homer’s Odyssey, Orpheus & Eurydice and Vergil’s Fourth

Eclogue.

1239

This was a complex of tunnels 880 feet long and 140 feet

below the surface of the ground.

1240

The River Styx is integral to the

311

whole plan. It is potable water fed from underground streams and

required a boat journey with the ferryman Charon.

The connection between Homer and the Baian Oracle is strong.

Strabo wrote that Baia took its name from Baius, one of the companions

of Odysseus.

1241

The Anead describes Aneas’ visit to the Oracle to

consult his dead father. In the Oracle there is writing identifying the place

as Illium (Troy) with a prayer to Hera and a niche, which contained a

mason’s plumbob.

The mistaken idea, that an Egyptian priestly heritage is

impossible, is best summed-up by the French Protestant critic Isaac

Casaubon who disputed the idea of Egyptian priestly heritage in 1614.

Casaubon argued that the Corpus Hermeticum was a derivative concept,

as there were no references to it in other works with compellingly similar

themes, such as Plato, Aristotle and the New Testament. Although his

theory was widely embraced at that time, modern scholarship now regards

Casaubon’s logic as arrogant and faulty. Casaubon’s chief deficiency was

that he lacked positive evidence. He also made two erroneous

assumptions regarding the important theme of Righteousness. Casaubon

maintained such a theme could not be widely shared. He also assumed

that no single chain of succession could preserve the theme of

Righteousness over a long period. Modern scholars are now more

inclined to accept the merit of Sir Flinders Petrie’s argument that an

Egyptian prisca theologia & prisca sapientia may date back at least to the

period between the sixth and second centuries BCE.

1242

The conversion of metallic gold to the Philosophers’ Stone

involves putrefaction, corruption, generation and ultimately perfection.

Colors change from black to white, red and finally green. Color change is

important symbolism in the Church, Freemasonry and in much of the

Elizabethan Canon of English literature.

These color changes are particularly important in the higher

degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Chevalier Andrew Michael

Ramsay, Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of France, foreshadowed the

genesis of Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

1243

In a speech given on Charles

Radclyffe’s appointment as Grand Master in 1737, Ramsay outlined the

rediscovery of Freemasonry by the Knights Templar. His speech

anticipated renewed royal patronage by King Frederick II:

1244

The word Freemason must therefore not be taken in a literal

gross and material sense, as if our founders had been simple

workers in stone, or merely curious geniuses who wished to

312

perfect the arts. They were not only skilful architects, desirous of

consecrating their talents and goods to the construction of

material Temples, but also religious and warrior Princes …

Scottish Rite Freemasonry officially commenced at the Jesuit

Chapter of Clermont, which existed from 1758 to 1764, although it traced

three of its four degrees of Harodim at least as far back as 1688.

1245

This

Chapter of Clermont, or Mount of Clerics, produced the first statutes of

modern Knights Templar.

1246

The word Heredom is a French derivative

of Harodim. It was a term used by the Comacini builders of London,

meaning a Master of the Builders of the Temple.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, the Gaelic speaking

Celtic Scots of Scotland’s eastern Border country were Pelagian

heretics.

1247

Pelagius was a Gaelic speaking Celtic from Strathclyde in

429 CE. St Jerome called him a fat hound weighed down by Scottish

porridge. A precursor to Germany’s Luther, Pelagius preached that

demanding personal effort was the key to salvation, not a corrupt and

morally lax Church. His libertarian concept of individual free will was at

the core of all Mystery Religions that sought to make good men better by

confronting them with their own mortality. In the Scottish Borders of the

Dark Ages, the ancient doctrine compounded with Triple Goddess or

Virgin Worship, in the form of a cult of Mary.

1248

This powerful cocktail

underpinned the mysteries of the Knights Templar learned in the East.

There is an old Scottish tradition that the Knights Templar

rescued a group of Syriac Christians from the Saracens. These Syriac

Christians were disciples of the Rose Croix and claimed descent from the

Essenes.

1249

The Sepher Toldos Jeshu recorded the tradition that Hugh de

Payens learned the truth of Jesus and early Christianity from Theocletes,

Grand-Pontiff of the Johanite sect’s Order of the Temple. Theocletes

designated Hugh de Payens as his successor.

1250

We looked at the

Nazarene beliefs about Jesus in Chapter 10.

The Knights Templar called those initiated into higher Johanite

mysteries Knights of Palestine. The Nazarenes of Basra in Persia still

have a tradition that their glorious and wealthy Brothers in Malta and

Europe will eventually restore the doctrine of their Prophet Iohanan (St

John), the son of Lord Jordan, and eliminate from the hearts of humanity

every other false teaching.

1251

The Syriac Christians arrived at a mountain in Scotland called

Harodim or Heroden, between the west and north of Scotland, 60 miles

from Edinburgh.

1252

313

Many believe this place was the island of Iona, known also as Hy,

Icolmkill and Innes nan Druidhreah (Island of the Druids).

1253

The Celts

worshipped on Iona from ancient times. In 717CE, the Culdees of Ireland

inhabited the island.

In 1784, some French Freemasons wrote to their English brethren

enquiring whether the Hebredian island,

where the Culdees practised their

rites, was the same as the Island of Mull where Pierre d'Aumont and

seven other Knights Templar had landed. They asked: It concerns us to

know if there really exists in the island of Mull, formerly Melrose ... in the

North of Scotland, a Mount Heredom, or if it does not exist. In reply

General Rainsford, referred them to the words Har Adonai, which means

the Mount of God.

1254

The Mount of God is a place of ritual testing.

However, other French masons record that the secret place of

hiding was the concealed valley of Glenbeag, opposite the Isle of Skye,

about one and a half miles south of Glenelg where there are two

exceptionally well preserved Iron Age brochs called Dun Telve and Dun

Troddan:

1255

Here were two old castles, built in a remarkable manner, of

stone, with neither lime nor mortar, and which appeared to have

served as places of refuge in the wars of earlier times. It was in

these castles that the masters assembled in council, and

consequently they received the name of Masters of the Valley, or

Scottish Masters.

These masons of the hidden valley survived and established a

philosophical athenaeum called the Masons of the Orient or Brethren of

the Rosy Cross of the Orient.

1256

They held their first Chapter of the

Scottish Rite degree in a castle of the Knights of the Rose Croix in

Edinburgh. The Superior Sovereign Grand Chapter traditionally met

there until a schism in 1322.

1257

Marconis (de Negre) claims the group followed Manes’

Manichean heresy. Manes propagated his sect of Magi in 304CE.

1258

Mohammedan legend says Manes was born in the year five hundred and

twenty-seven of the Astronomers of Babylon, which is 215 or 216CE.

1259

A more accurate date may be 257CE.

Many of the Rose Croix Masons of the Orient fought in the

crusades, adopting the name Knights of Palestine.

1260

Marconis notes that

the Knights Templar followed this group and incorporated their ritual of

the symbolic death of Hiram Abiff.

1261

The Rose Croix initiates within

314

the Knights Templar called themselves Sons of the Widow. The Widow

was the harlot in the Gospel of Thomas who receives all men:

1262

Jesus said, "He who knows the father and the mother will be

called the son of a harlot."

Baron Tschoudy’s L'Etoile Flamboyante (The Blazing Star,

1766), describes the Knights of Palestine, more fully known as he Knights

of the Morning and of Palestine. He says they were the descendants of

the masons who had worked on the Temple of Solomon. Their

documents consisted of their regulations, particular liturgy and an

alchemical treatise attributed to the Roman Morien.

1263

In 1182CE,

Robertus Castrensis translated this work from Arabic into Latin.

1264

first appeared in Paris in 1559 CE.

1265

From 5BCE to 74CE the Knights of Palestine existed as Magi in

Damietta, in Egypt, and kept the annals of the Order. After Titus

destroyed Jerusalem in 70CE, they relocated to Scythia and a mystery

place called ‘the Thebaid’.

The Johannite documents of the Knights of Palestine, also called

the Knights of the Aurora and Palestine, may well be those same

documents said to be sealed in three encased boxes in the vault of the St

Clair's crypt in Rosslyn Chapel.

In Chapter 11, we noted that the only known statute of Shemyaza

hangs upside down in the choir of Rosslyn Chapel. It is a particular

marker of the treasure in the crypt. According to the Mandaeans, this

angel, as Razalel, was particularly distinguished in delivering the Book of

Adam, which is known to scholars as the Codex Nasarous.

The Rosslyn Chapel documents probably also include the

notorious Toledot Yeshu, which the Johannites believed was written by

the Apostle John, and the Mandaean Book of John (Sidra d'Yahya), which

says that St John erred in baptizing the false prophet Yishu Meshiha (the

Messiah Jesus), son of the devil Ruha Kadishta. It is supposedly the

Knights’ Templar true version of St John’s Gospel, which they copied

from an original on Mount Athos. It says Jesus Jesus Christ was a false

Messiah, sent by the powers of darkness, who disemminated throughout

the world a perverted form of St John’s doctrine. The Bogomils, who

also possessed this special version of the Gospel of St. John, placed it on

the heads of their candidates during initiation.

The Knights of Palestine pledged to win back their Temple in

Jerusalam and its lost treasures. The Knights are now known as Princes

of the Royal Secret., which is the 32º of the Scottish Rite. Its cadet degree

315

is the Rite of the Jesuit Chapter of Clermont, the Rite of Perfection or Rite

of Heredom, which is now the 18º of the Scottish Rite.

Chevalier de Bonneville of the Jesuit College of Clermont in

Paris established Rite of Heredom.

1266

To this day, Scottish Rite

Freemasons know their eighteenth degree ceremony as the Jesuit degree

or High Church degree. The Abbé Barruel claimed that this degree was

the Easter Ceremonial of the Knights Templar.

1267

The Chapter of Clermont claimed to be the sole true descendant

of the Knights Templar, fusing together the themes of chivalry, King

Solomon’s Temple and alchemy. It taught that the Knights Templar

recovered dishes marked for alchemical purposes of the Royal Art from a

hollow corner stone in the Temple of Jerusalem.

1268

The dishes were for

the preparation of an alchemical Eucharist, which we looked at in Chapter

1. They hint at the real discoveries in Jerusalem, which we shall learn

more of in Chapter 20. Because of the discoveries in the Temple, Scottish

Freemasonry has stronger links with alchemy than does Craft

Freemasonry. The Scottish Rite focus on the Greater Mysteries reinforces

it further.

Frederick II (1712-86) established the thirty-third degree of the

Scottish Rite in May 1786, shortly before his death.

1269

He formed this new degree to cap the existing system of twenty-

five degrees.

1270

The number thirty-three has many esoteric associations.

Chapter 7 showed thirty-three is a cabbalistic symbol of the sacred names

of BAL and AUM. It is also the thirty-three year life of Jesus. Thrice

three alludes to the Ennead of the Goddess, the Ennead of God and thrice

through the Valley of Death, the third being physiological death.

Frederick II, the second King of Prussia, ruled from 1740 to 1786.

Old Fritz, the enlightened despot, was a highly successful military leader.

He proved an able administrator, lawgiver, companion philosopher to

Voltaire and d’Alembert, prolific writer, musician and patron of French

Rococo artists such as Watteau, Pater and Lancret.

1271

Frederick was also

an ardent political admirer of George Washington. While usually frugal,

Frederick was an avid collector of three hundred extravagantly jeweled

snuffboxes.

1272

He built the famous Masonic Rococo palace of Sans Souci at

Potsdam in 1745. Sans Souci means without care. It gained considerable

attention when Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill

gathered at Potsdam in 1945 to decide the future of Germany. Believing

316

they were on hallowed ground, the world leaders shifted their meeting to

a less controversial location.

Following his role in the 1734 Rhine campaign of the War of

Polish Succession, Frederick’s interest in philosophy accelerated.

1273

corresponded with Voltaire in 1736, pursuing science and philosophy

above all else until 1740 when he became King of Prussia. Frederick

studied Christian Wolff’s essay Reasonable Thoughts about God in 1737.

From 1740, Frederick embarked on victorious military campaigns.

In 1747, Frederick commenced his celebrated supper gatherings

in the Marble Hall at Sans Souci. Three years later Voltaire visited and

wrote:

1274

Supper was usually taken in a small chamber whose most

peculiar decoration consisted of a picture by Pesne, one of our

best colorists, for which he had supplied inspiration. It was a

beautiful bawdy painting. There were men embracing women,

nymphs and satyrs, cupids playing games of Tag and Blind Man’s

Buff, a number of people swooning with pleasure at the sight of

these romps, cooing turtle doves, billygoats mounting nanny-

goats and rams mounting ewes. Often the meals were no less

philosophical affairs. Anyone entering unexpectedly and listening

to our conversations would have thought he was listening to the

Seven Wise Men of Greece in a house of pleasure. I do not

suppose there is another house in the world where all mankind’s

superstitions are discussed so freely and dismissed with more

mockery and contempt. God Himself was not touched on; but

there was no mercy towards all those who in His name had

deceived mankind.

Perhaps Voltaire is referring to one of the most famous French

clandestine manuscripts, the profane Traité des trois imposteurs, first

edited in 1719 under the title L'Esprit de Spinosa. The Three Imposters is

a highly controversial, vitriolic critique of Christianity, Judaism and Islam

that refers to Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. A German officer named

Tausendorff allegedly found it in the library of the Elector of Bavaria,

after the victory of Hochstadt in 1703. In 1767, Voltaire actually

mentioned this work, doubting its existence. However, Voltaire’s Sermon

of the Fifty echoed it.

1275

Frederick died at Sans Souci in August 1786. His final resting-

place is in a crypt at the palace. He lies with his horse and dogs in

preference to the Potsdam Garrison church with his wife. This crypt is

317

quite intriguing. On 10 August 1744, Frederick commenced the terraced

vineyards and crypt on the hill then known as Wüster Berg.

1276

This was

just seven years after Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay’s famous

speech on Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

Frederick constructed the special crypt on the topmost terrace

well before finalization of the plans for Sans Souci Palace in 1745.

1277

The unusual importance of the crypt is reinforced by a beautiful rural

supra porta over the door to the music salon in the palace. It shows the

Havel River and palace together with a classical tomb bearing the

inscription

ET IN ARCADIA EGO. The artist has depicted a shepherd,

shepherdesses, a flock of sheep and boatmen alongside the tomb. The

famous inscription is of course the subject of Nicholas Poussin’s two Les

Bergers d’Arcadie paintings of 1630 and 1640.

1278

In 1618, Il Guercino

also named one of his works Et in Arcadia ego. Frederick II gave specific

instructions in several wills for a quiet funeral and burial in the crypt.

Perhaps to this day certain philosophical treasures lay in the classical

tomb or with this great monarch in his extraordinary resting place.

1279

Louis of Bourbon, Prince of the Royal Blood of France assisted

Frederick II promulgate the thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite just

before his death in May 1786. This may well have been Louis de

Bourbon-Condé, Count of Clermont and Abbé of St Germain des Près,

who was Grand Master of French Masonry and died in 1771.

1280

However, if the establishment date of May 1786 is correct then the Louis

Bourbon in question could have been the Count of Clermont’s nephew,

Louis Philippe-Joseph d’Orleans, Duke of Chartres, Prince of the Royal

Blood. He continued as Grand Master until his abdication in 1793.

1281

Another prominent Louis Bourbon was the Count of Provence,

who became King Louis XVIII in 1795. Louis’ ancestry traced back to

the Capetian king Louis IX (Saint Louis, 1214-1270). The line took its

name from the Barons of Bourbon heir, Béatrix (d.1310), who married

Robert de France, the Comte de Clermont and sixth son of Louis IX. The

Count of Clermont, Louis, remained in exile in England during the French

Revolution and Napoleon's rule. Following the death of ten-year-old

Louis XVII, the Count of Clermont became titular king of France. France

crowned him constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII, in 1814, following the

abdication of Napoleon.

Another heir to the throne through Robert de France, Comte de

Clermont, was the Huguenot General, Henry III of Navarre. He provides

318

an important clue to the relationship of the Royal Blood of France to the

lands of the Merovingians and the Jewish state of Septimania.

The last Capetian king, Charles IV, had died without heir and his

younger brother Charles Count of Valois assumed the throne. This Valois

branch of the family then ruled France for two hundred and sixty-one

years until 1589. The Dominican friar Jacques Clément murdered the last

of the Valois kings, Henry III (r1574-89), while he led a Huguenot attack

on Paris. The childless and effeminate Henry III named his brother-in-

law, the Huguenot General, Henry III of Navarre, to be his successor.

Henry III of Navarre was both the nominated and the legitimate

heir to the throne through his parents Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne

d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. He was born in Pau, in the autonomous

Kingdom of Navarre, two hundred and eighty kilometers to the southwest.

The original Basque state of Pamplona became Navarre in 824CE. It

encompassed today’s province of northwestern Spain and the French

department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. It was also on the western edge of

the Jewish Kingdom of Septimania indicating that Henry III of Navarre

was not only a Prince of the Royal Blood but also perhaps a Prince of the

greatest secret, the Royal Davidic Blood.

Henry III of Navarre ascended the throne as Henry IV of France

in 1593 after he finally renounced Calvinism declaring that Paris was

well worth a Mass. His enthronement began 225 years of Bourbon rule.

Henry ended the terrible Wars of Religion in 1598 with the Edict of

Nantes, which legitimized Protestantism in France.

Eight years later, Robert Naunton recorded Henry IV’s mystical

activities in Paris. Naunton noted that Henry IV was to celebrate the

Eleusian mysteries that Easter 1597.

1282

King Philippe Le Bel of France ordered the arrest of Knights

Templars in France on Friday 13 October 1307. Scholars attribute his

action to resentment for the riches of the Order and growing

disillusionment with the cost of recapturing Jerusalem. The Order was

wealthy. It owned sixteen thousand Lordships in Europe and forty

thousand Commanderies.

1283

Yet, the severity of the indictment is still

puzzling and not adequately explained by these factors alone. There is an

absence of similar force against the Cistercians or against the Sons of

Solomon.

The Knights Templar was directly beholden to the Pope for its

constitution. The Pope had the power to withdraw its mandate, dissolve

the Order peaceably and transfer all assets. Indeed, the Pope had

319

endeavored to broker a solution before State seneschals arrested members

of the Order. His plan was for the Knights Templar to amalgamate with

the more conservative Order of Knights Hospitaller. However, both

Orders were unreceptive to the idea. For unexplained reasons their long

relationship had been uneasy. It occasionally flared with violence and it

would undoubtedly do so again.

In theory, the Pope could have compelled a restructure of the

Orders. It was unnecessary to execute a mass arrest of all members of the

Order, engage the Dominicans to extract confessions and risk the

dissipation of property to overseas kings as subsequently occurred to

Edward II in England.

1284

The Knights Templar could not have rebelled against a

restructure or liquidation. Each knight was a monk of the Roman

Catholic Church and had taken a vow of material poverty. Furthermore,

if the Order had rebelled it would have had limited options for shelter.

Envious monarchs continually eyed its productive land and were prepared

to expropriate the assets of the Order at the first sign of any weakness in

its legitimacy.

The viciousness of the suppression has commercial and religious

implications. Underlying the commercial imperative was a sudden

decline in the fortunes of France.

Philippe IV Le Belle was the eleventh king of the Capet dynasty.

The House of Capet acquired the throne of France in 987CE when the

Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties were without immediate heir. For

over three hundred years, Philippe IV's family had expanded their

dominions at the expense of these dynasties and of English domains. In

1144CE, Capetian King Louis VII The Young conquered the Barons of

Champagne. His son Philippe II Augustus added Flanders, Burgundy,

Normandy, Maine, Brittany, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou and the Albigensian

territories in the south of France. France became the most powerful

nation in Europe.

Subsequent Capetian ambitions proved less successful.

Territories in southwest France were lost to the English by Philippe IV's

grandfather Louis IX, called St Louis. Philippe III The Bold then

unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of Aragon. Philippe IV had the

same dismal fortune in his attempt to wrest Guienne in southwest France

from England.

These fruitless campaigns and France's decline from its status as

the premier nation in Europe led to acute cost pressure on Philippe IV.

320

Compounding his problem was the Knights Templar Order. It had

absorbed a very large number of feudal estates and removed them from

crown revenue. In desperation, Philippe IV increased taxes, devalued the

currency and ruthlessly expropriated the assets of Jews and Italians.

From a religious perspective, the Capetian family had staunchly

supported the Church. It enthusiastically participated in the Crusades,

suppressed heresy and formed a capable bulwark against the aspiring

Merovingian and Carolingian families that threatened the fundamental

legitimacy of the Church.

In harboring the Melchizedek or Nazarene heresy, as we saw at

the end of Chapter 11, the Knights Templar and Cistercians were

negligent in their duty to the Church as an agency of that body. This also

made them guilty of abusing their position of religious and commercial

privilege. While Philippe IV acted because of financial pressure, his need

to stabilize Capetian succession against the Merovingian and Carolingian

dynasties that had gained a stronghold within these Orders was perhaps

the major determining factor in the indictment of the Knights Templar.

The suppression of the Knights Templar therefore followed as a

convenient means to achieve many aims. These were to annul debt and

receive fees while piously pursuing heresy and once more

disenfranchising the regal aspirations of the Merovingian and Carolingian

dynasties. Philippe IV ostensibly had both authority and propriety on his

side.

It appears that members of the Knights Templar received

forewarning of their arrest. The evening before the seneschals opened

their sealed orders, the entire Knights Templar fleet of eighteen galleys

slipped anchor from the English controlled port of La Rochelle and

headed for the Firth of Forth and the Western Isles of Scotland.

Pierre d'Aumont and seven other Knights Templar, disguised as

woking masons, landed on the Island of Mull They held their first chapter

on St. John's Day, 1307. Robert Bruce then took them under his

protection. On St. John's Summer Day, 24 June 1314, they fought with

Bruce at Bannockburn against Edward II.

In France, leadership of the Knights Templar passed to John

Larmenius. His Charter of Transmission shows the degree of animosity

felt by the French survivors towards their brothers in Scotland:

1285

I, lastly, by the decree of the Supreme Assembly, by Supreme

authority committed to me, will, say and order that the Scot-

Templars deserters of the Order be blasted by anathema, and that

321

they and the brethren of St John of Jerusalem, spoilers of the

demesnes of the Knighthood (on whom God have mercy), be

outside the circle of the Temple, now and for the future.

In 1324, four years after Philippe IV suppressed the Order, Pope

Harminius excommunicated the Scottish Templars.

The Compagnionage claim to be the continuing Order:

1286

Our founder, Jacques Bourguignon Molay, born in Sossay in

1243. Grandmaster of the Commandery in Jerusalem in 1285. He

returned to France in 1301, bringing with him the secrets of the

Orient. The king and the pope were jealous of his science, of his

knowledge and his authority… He was executed on the outskirts

of the citybut before his death, he gave his Master’s Charter to

Jean de Larmenie who re-instituted our order. Our ancestors

managed to purchase the head of our founder from the henchman

who had removed it from the body before it burned. The skull was

kept at Evreux for two-hundred years until Isaac Long – Knight -

took it to Charleston where it remained until 1781 when Franklin

returned it to Mans, where it lay until this day in the Temple de la

Fraternite.’

Philippe IV faced many issues of international incredulity in

prosecuting the Knights Templar. However, the secrecy and arcane

practices of the Order gave him the ammunition he needed. The Knights

Templar learned basic Indo-Hittite philosophy through their contact with

mystical Sufis. These ideas extended well past architecture and alchemy

to an extended range of esoteric subjects.

These included claims of heresy, homosexuality, murder and

worship of a mysterious deity called Baphomet. Rumors surfaced of a

second, even more mysterious Rule within the inner circle of the Order.

The origin and exact meaning of the image called Baphomet is

still unknown. Esoteric writers often reversed the letters of words as an

elementary cipher. The Triangular Book of St Germain in Appendix 10

uses this simple technique. One solution of Baphomet reverses it

suggesting:

TEM OHP AB.

1287

Expanding this in Latin leads to Templi

omnium pacis abbas, meaning father of the temple, universal freedom of

mankind.

Another solution was determined with the Atbash Cipher.

Baphomet directly translates to Sophia, who is the Goddess of Wisdom

(see Appendix 10 for the Atbash Cipher).

1288

322

Repeated use of the Atbash Cipher can demonstrate that

Baphomet is the name of the intercessor between Jehovah and the

Messiah. The Atbash Cipher produces

BphOM from Jehovah (YHWH).

1289

Using the Cipher once more, Baphomet (

BPhOMTh) leads to Yahushua

(

YHWShO), which means The Messiah.

1290

Thus, YHWH with the letter

Shin means Yahushua. Baphomet is therefore the partner of Jehovah and

route to the Messiah. Thus, Baphomet figuratively gives birth to the

Messiah from Jehovah. Baphomet therefore fulfills the age-old role of the

Mother Goddess in the old sacrificial king rituals. She is Wisdom or

Sophia, who brings forth the son of perfection. Thus, the repeated use of

the Atbash Cipher through Baphomet, gives the same answer as the

straightforward method, Sophia.

Baphomet is therefore equivalent to the Shema or understanding

that unites the one with God. This is the Shekhinah or the Virgin with

Child. The contemplator who has found this understanding, himself

becomes the Messiah or the self who has found purity. Chapter 15

demonstrated this with St George and the Dragon.

Through this construction, the Kabbalah shows that

YHWH

encompasses the sacred marriage and the sacred son. Although Holy, the

Virgin and child are simply component parts that unite in the Father:

1291

Shema Israel YHWH Elehenu YHWH EChad.

Hear, O Israel, YHWH, our God, YHWH is one.

A 1302 English seal of the Knights Templar of England shows

Baphomet as Sophia.

1292

This seal depicts the star and crescent moon of

Islam, together with a lion and two five-pointed stars. The star and

crescent moon of Islam symbolize God, wisdom and love. Chapter 8

showed that the lion is the Lion of the Sun and of Judah and represents

Q're. The two stars are Ashima representing both the moon and wisdom,

and Anatha representing fertility and love.

Investigators did not find Baphomet but they discovered a

beautiful casket in the possession of the Knights Templar. Inquisition

records describe it surmounted by:

… a great head of silver, most beautiful, and constituting the

image of a woman.

There was more than one gilded head seized from the Knights

Templar. Marseilles held one. Vienna's Imperial Museum held others

until at least 1818.

1293

There is little doubt that Baphomet represented Wisdom as the

Moon Goddess Sophia. Yet, she is also God the Son because the Son, as

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Wisdom, is also feminine. This is just the reverse of the Moon God Sin,

who became Yahweh's wife Ashima.

1294

Recognition of the Son as both

masculine and feminine is the key to understanding western religion.

1295

In this respect, the Son is no different than the original Edomite divinity

of two thousand BCE, who was also androgenous.

Elsewhere amongst the Knights Templar possessions, we would

have expected to find images of the Sun and Venus, Inanna or Ishtar

representing Love. In fact, the inquisition mentioned this very image of

Venus, the cat goddess:

1296

… a small image of a lion, probably of gold, with the likeness of a

woman.

On October 22, 1307, Jacques de Molay confessed to a group of

academics at Paris University that the charges brought by King Philippe

IV Le Bel were true. Jacques de Molay wrote an open letter to his

Knights instructing them to confess freely. One of the leading members

to do so was the Grand Treasurer, Hugh de Pairuad. He stated that he had

been responsible for initiating many knights and had seen the Knights

Templar god that granted them worldly wealth, made the land fertile and

caused the death of their enemies.

1297

This description matches the Sumerian sun god Shamash or

Zoroastrian Mithra of the broad pastures, who is not to be confused with

the tauroctonous or bull slaying Mithra of the Romans. The

Mesopotamian Mithra was the God of Light and Covenant with Man and

a solar deity adjunct to the Persian deity, Ahura Mazda.

1298

Charles Dupuis' famous book Origin of the Cults, published in

1795, outlines that nearly all myths derive from the miracle of sexual

reproduction or the movements of the planets.

1299

Along with the Lesser

Mysteries of Egypt and Persia, the Knights Templar had seemingly

encountered arcane Sufi and Orphic Mysteries that related to former ages

of the world.

1300

We shall see the Knights Templar related to the second

mysterious Rule of the Order, a version of the Greater Mysteries gone

awry, through lack of information, adoption of Bogomil and Mandaean

beliefs and association with the Assassins.

As Vergil’s Fouth Ecologue shows, the shift from orthodox

Christianity to the Mysteries was subtle. Vergil wrote that the Sibyl of

Cuma prophesised Christ’s birth:

1301

We have reached the last era in the Sibylene song. Time has

conceived and the great sequence of the Ages starts afresh. Justice, the

Virgin, comes back to dwell with us ... The Firstborn of the New Age is

324

already on his way down from high heaven to earth. With him the Iron

Race shall end and Golden Man inherit this world. Smile on the Baby’s

birth … this glorious Age will dawn ... the ox will not be frightened of the

lion … Your very cradle will adorn itself with blossoms to caress you …

Enter – for the hour is close at hand – on your illustrious career, dear

child of the gods … see how the whole creation rejoices in the age that is

to be! … Begin,then, little boy, to greet your mother with a smile …

Many eighteenth degree masons will recognize the seven ages of

the world’s existence!

But more than this, in their insatiable scouring of the Middle East

for manuscripts relating to their Jerusalem discoveries, the Knights

Templar may well have turned up two powerful Arabic manuscripts that

explain the extreme sexual accusations against the Order in the context of

previous ages of the world. These manuscripts are the Picatrix and the

Dread Book of the Mad Arab Al Azif. In this context mad does not

imply lunacy, but that Al Azif is a Magi from Media, in modern day

Azerbaijan.

The Picatrix is an infamous collection of Arabic astral grimoire

magic that invokes the classic planetary gods of Harran, gives detailed

information on the Lunar mansions and makes much of agape or fraternal

feasts.

1302

The book is really the notes of the Brethren of Purity at Basra

on the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. The Picatrix title was Ghayat

Al Hakim, meaning the Aim of the Wise. It seems much older than the

medieval Key of Solomon does because the text makes many references to

the Book of Buddha and the wise men of India timing their religious rites

by Lunar Mansions, which has been the case since at least one thousand

BCE. The Picatrix has a companion alchemical book called The Sages

Step that specifies training in Euclidean mathematics and natural sciences

as necessary for an alchemical aspirant.

1303

It also contains precise

instructions for the purification of gold and silver by cupellation.

The Picatrix may explain how the Knights Templar developed an

understanding of the lunar system of religion in Harran. Yet, there is a

much deeper mystery in the accusations against the Knights Templar.

The Dread Book of Al Azif, also called the Book of the Practices of the

Dead or Necronomicon, better explains this mystery. It is anmed after the

Nekromanteion, a Greek Oracle of the Dead at Thesprotia, which began

operating in about 800 BCE.

Debate continues over the existence of this manuscript and its

historical veracity. Some maintain that the Necronomicon is a hoax. Its

325

available publications seem to support this. Notwithstanding this doubt,

the Magan text of the Necronomicon does reflect a number of authentic

works from the Creation Epic of the Mesopotamians such as the Descent

of the Inanna and with the same missing ending as traditional sources.

In The History and Chronology of the Necronomicon, H P

Lovecraft writes that Abdul Alhazred of Sanaa in Yemen originally wrote

the Dread Book before his death in about 738CE. In 950CE, Theodorus

Philetas of Constantinople translated it into Greek under the title

Necronomicon. Pope Gregory IX subsequently banned the work in 1232.

In principle, it remains officially suppressed today.

The Dread Book seems to have some similarity with the horrific

tortures carried out by Landulf II of Capua in southwest Sicily.

1304

This

was the theme of black magic followed by Dietrich Eckart and Aleister

Crowley.

The Dread Book contains a collection of spells for awakening the

monsters of the Abyss and dark places of the human imagination. We

easily recognize this as St George’s dragon, but more on this later. The

Magan text within the book deals with a time before worship of the Moon

God. In fact, Dr John Dee translated part of the Dread Book as the Liber

Logaeth while he was Warden of Christ's College Manchester from 1590

to 1604.

1305

Dee’s Liber Logaeth passed into the collection of Elias Ashmole

and with Ashmole’s collection to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It

seemingly disappeared from the Bodleian Library following a break-in

during the spring of 1934, at a time when the agents of Germany were

collecting occult literature.

The Liber Logaeth told the story of the Old Ones, who arrived on

primal earth from dark stars. They swarmed from the oceans to build

cities at the poles and raise temples to those cursed by the Gods. They

ruled the earth in abomination until the Elder Lords finally acted:

Casting them forth from the Earth to the Void beyond the planes

where chaos reigns and form abideth not. And the Elder Lords

set their seal upon the Gateway and the power of the Old Ones

prevailest not against its might…Loathsome Cthulhu rose then

from the deeps and raged with exceeding great fury against the

Earth Guardians. And they bound his venomous claws with potent

spells and sealed him up within the City of R'lyeh wherein

beneath the waves he shall sleep death's dream until the end of

the Aeon.

326

We saw in Chapter 15 that the Dragon is an integral part of the

Greater Mysteries. It is therefore likely that the older parts of the

Necronomicon represent a Babylonian formulation of the Greater

Mysteries. Its newer formulations, complete with symbols, are

interpretations of the last one hundred and fifty years.

Before turning our attention to the unsavory aspects of

necromancy, it is helpful to understand a little more of the poem called

the Descent of the Inanna. This poem appears in both the Creation Epic

of the Mesopotamians and the Dread Book. Surprisingly, it allows us to

outline the acceptable limit of magic in mysteries by reference to the

rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.

We begin with Marduk Kurios of the Double-headed Axe.

Tiamat originally swallowed him but later the roles reversed. In claiming

to slay the Old Ones on the Earth, Marduk was following in the footsteps

of the first Indo-Hittite warrior prince in defeating the Goddess.

1306

This

Gorgon-slayer was Ptersus the Destroyer.

1307

Marduk’s name means son of the righteous mound or KUR-KUR

and is represented by a triangle of three dots. He is the son of the

supreme physical god Enki, brother of Inanna, God of Jupiter and Lord of

Magicians.

We see him as St George killing the green dragon and as Perceval

in the Arthurian romances. His color is royal lilac or purple. He is the

manifestation of the Philosophers' Stone whose mark is interchangeably

the Phoenix, eagle or Tau-cross hammer.

The regal symbol of the double-headed eagle facing east and west

is the ancient phoenix, often mistaken for an eagle. This symbol entered

the rites of initiation in two ways.

The Amazon-Scythian women used the famous double-headed

axe or labrys, which became a popular Scythian and Greek symbol of

death in the Mysteries. The dual curved blades represent the moon’s

monthly cycle of waxing and waning. The Scythians represented initiates

as a pure phoenix arising from the ash of its father. From the double-

headed axe, the phoenix, too, became the double-headed badge of an

Eastern Priest-King. It is the insignia of a Patriarch in the Eastern

Church. In 1919, the Eastern Synod bestowed the double-headed badge

of an Eastern Priest-King on the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The double-headed phoenix derives also, or for the same reason,

from Marduk's distinguishing emblem of the double-headed axe.

1308

The

double-headed eagle represents the dual face of Marduk, Janus or Pan.

327

The eagle is also the symbol of Jupiter. As time belongs to God, the

double-headed divider separates eras, implicitly looking back to time past

and forward to the time to come. The month January derives from Janus

who symbolizes the winter solstice, the death of the old year and advent

of the new. Janus also represents the death of the sacrificial king and

crowning of the new king who will bring agricultural prosperity to the

land.

Marduk's double-headed axe is an instrument of division, the

most important characteristic of a transcendent god. God created the

world with this instrument of division. Division is how Yahweh created

the difference between light and darkness and separated the upper

firmament from the lower.

1309

Marduk similarly divided the body of

Tiamat into two parts.

1310

He created the sky and earth from the waters of

these halves.

All sacrificial oak kings fell beneath the sacred double-headed

axe, known as the labrys.

1311

This ancient weapon was the emblem of

Cretan sovereignty.

1312

It combined the power of Poseidon’s trident with

Zeus’ thunderbolt.

1313

The priestly corporation at Delphi, the Labryadae,

which still existed in Classical times, took its name from this Cretan two-

headed axe used in the ceremonies.

1314

The labrys was the instrument of

death and correspondingly of rebirth, represented by the two-headed bird

called the phoenix. Phoenix is the masculine form of Phoenissa, the red

or bloody one, a title given to the Triple Goddess who brought Death-in-

Life.

The smithy-god’s furnace and his sword, or Word in the

Revelation of John of Patmos, again demonstrates the double-edged

instrument of division:

1315

And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of

man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the

paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like

wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And

his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his

voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand

seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword:

and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

The two-edged sword is the ancient instrument of dichotomy or

sorting. It is the same as an axe, divider or compass. These instruments

all divide the firmament to create the world at its centre. The same act of

division or measurement creates individuals. The god that wields the axe

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or holds the hinge of the compass, which represents the unity of the whole

and the order of chaos.

In the Mesopotamian poem, Descent of Inanna, the goddess

descends into the underworld to overcome her sister, the serpent of chaos

Tiamat or Ereshkigal. She makes this perilous journey to achieve the

wisdom of the Underworld:

1316

Father Enlil answered angrily: My daughter craved the Great

Above. Inanna craved the Great Below. She who receives the

'me' of the underworld does not return. She who goes to the Dark

City stays there.

The me of the underworld is Inanna’s own base nature. Her death

is analogous to that of St George. Inanna, like Isis and Ishtar, symbolizes

resurrection and the efficacy of the elixir of life.

1317

In the underworld,

Inanna falls prey to the spirits of darkness. Love becomes death. After

three days, the messengers of life discover Inanna’s corpse impaled on a

rod and resurrect her.

1318

Inanna is an image of love crucified, the earliest

rose on the cross of Mesopotamia dating from at least two thousand

BCE:

1319

The Annunaki, Dread Judges, Seven Lords of the Underworld

drew around her. Faceless Gods of Abyss. They stared and fixed

her with the Eye of Death. With the Glance of Death they killed

her and hung her like a corpse from a stake.

And the Elder Lords were rent with fear. Our Father Enki, Lord

of Magick, receiving word by Inanna's servant Ninshubur, hears

of Ishtar's sleep in the House of Death.

To the Kurgarru he gave the Food of Life, to the Kalaturru he

gave the Water of Life. With haste they fled through the Palace of

Death, stopping only at the corpse of Inanna, the Beautiful

Queen, Mistress of the Gods, Lady of all the Harlots of Ur, Bright

Shining One of the Heavens, Beloved of Enki, which lay hung and

bleeding from a thousand fatal wounds.

Upon the corpse of Inanna sixty times they sprinkled the Water of

Life of Enki. Upon the corpse of Inanna sixty times they sprinkled

the Food of Life of Enki. Upon the corpse, hung from a stake,

they directed the Spirit of Life and Inanna arose.

The image of a serpent crucified on a tree is prominent in Israelite

literature. Moses hung a bronze serpent called the nehushtan, Ne-Esthan

in Greek, on his staff for the healing of the plague.

1320

The Ark of the

Covenant safeguarded it for many years until King Hezekiah broke the

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nehushtan into pieces to prevent its worship.

1321

We saw in Chapter 17

how the Rosicrucians adopted the nehushtan as their symbol of the

Greater Mysteries.

Moses' renowned staff had an equally miraculous history. Seth

took it from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Moses turned

it into a serpent to overcome the magicians of the Pharaoh and used it to

part the Red Sea. He also brought forth water from a rock at Kadesh in

the wilderness of Zin.

1322

It then reputedly became a structural beam in

King Solomon's Temple.

A serpent on a tree often symbolizes the crucifixion of Jesus,

which derives from the Revelation to John of Patmos:

1323

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the

Son of Man be lifted up.

Inanna, Jesus, St George and Lucifer are all impaled on a staff or

tree. As incongruous as it seems, Jesus is Inanna as Love impaled on a

staff. After three days, he receives the gifts of Wisdom, Love and

resurrection. Jesus is also the serpent of Wisdom on Moses' staff, as

Lucifer is the serpent on the Tree of Life. The morning star of Inanna or

Venus that rises before the Sun represents either Jesus or Lucifer:

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you

about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we

were eye-witnesses of his majesty … And we have the word of the

prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention

to it, as a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and

the morning star rises in your hearts.

2 Peter 1:19 has a similar verse:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do

well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place,

until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts

However stark and confronting, the comparison of Jesus with

Lucifer and Inanna depends very much on religious context, as we saw in

Chapter 13. For example, the Roman Catholic Paschal Praeconium of

Easter Holy Week refers to the two co-existing lights of Jesus and Inanna

or Venus. The first is the candle of Christ as Wisdom dispelling the

Luminous Night and second is the morning star of knowledge that rises

from the netherworld:

We beseech thee therefore, O Lord, that this candle, consecrated

in the honour of thy Name, may continue to dispel the darkness of

this night. And being accepted as a sweet savor, may it be united

330

with the lights supernal. May the morning star find it burning:

that morning star, I say, which knows no setting. That which

being returned from the depths, shineth serene upon the human

race.

Within this convoluted theological milieu, it is not surprising that

the Knights Templar possessed a cult image of wisdom that

simultaneously represented both Jesus and Inanna. Nor is it surprising

that they gave testimony of a god analogous to the Son who is Life.

The deity rescued from the underworld is the Son who is Life.

Every year the success of his resurrection repeats with the agricultural

cycle. As Isis searched for Osiris, so Inanna searches for and resurrects

Dumuzi:

1324

Inanna and Geshtinanna went to the edges of the steppe. They

found Dumuzi weeping. Inanna took Dumuzi by the hand and

said: You will go to the underworld half the year. Your sister,

since she has asked, will go the other half. On the day you are

called, that day you will be taken. On the day Geshtinanna [your

sister] is called, that day you will be set free. Inanna placed

Dumuzi in the hands of the Eternal.

In the genealogies of Sumer and Semitic Akkad, the worldly

sacrificial god Dumuzi is Tammuz. Both are. In contrast is Inanna's

transcendental brother, the Sun God Utu. Utu cannot impregnate Inanna

even though this is Inanna's wish. He arranges Inanna's marriage to his

worldly twin, the god Dumuzi:

1325

Sister, your bridegroom will go to bed with you. He who was

born from a fertile womb. He who was conceived on the sacred

marriage throne. Dumuzi the Shepherd! He will go to bed with

you.

However, Inanna acquiesces to the marriage only when Dumuzi

likens himself to Utu. Transcendental Utu the Sun God is identical with

Shamash the God of the Sun and God of the Covenant with man. Utu-

Shamash and Inanna are children of the supreme Moon God Nanna, who

became the God Sin. Utu-Shamash is also Mithra of the broad pastures

and he is the perfect Gawain of the Arthurian romances.

Dumuzi-Tammuz and Utu-Shamash also coalesce as twin aspects

of the same individual. We have already looked at the twin character of

St George and the angel Michael and in Chapter 22, we shall look further

at the fundamental issue of twin characters. This factor unifies the

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majority of Indo-Hittite myths, including the Arthurian romances of the

Holy Grail.

As we have seen, the Roman Catholic Church embraced these

deeper mysteries and enacted them throughout the year with the

involvement of the congregation. This gave rise to the Catholic

description of the mysteries as the living church. Obscure as they may

have been to the general congregation, these mysteries alone would not

have led to the furious indictment of the Knights Templar.

We have already seen that the building associates of the Knights

Templar, the Sons of Solomon, carved Indian tantric kundalini images into

more than six hundred pre-Reformation churches in England, Ireland,

Spain and France.

The problems of the Knights Templar involved even more

esoteric aspects of rediscovered wisdom than we have so far discussed.

Necromancy was a traditional path of scientific and philosophical

investigation.

Homer’s Odyssey described how to conjure up the dead with the

same pit Romulus dug when he founded Rome:

1326

When you, hero, land there, as I tell you,

Dig a pit (‘bòthron’) one cubit long and wide,

And around it pour out the libation for all the dead:

Firstly with honeyed milk, then with sweet wine,

Thirdly with water, and sprinkle white flour

…

After invoking the illustrious ranks of the dead with vows,

Sacrifice a ram and a black ewe,

Turning them to the Erebus, but you must turn elsewhere

To the river stream. There many

Of the deads’ souls will come…

In learning about Iranian and Indian mysteries, the Knights

Templar would have had difficulty resisting its appeal. In fact, the

Knights Templar had its own legend of necrophilia:

1327

A great lady of Maraclea was loved by a Templar, a Lord of

Sidon; but she died in her youth, and on the night of her burial

this wicked lover crept to the grave, dug up her body, and

violated it. Then a voice from the void bade him to return in nine

months’ time, for he would find a son. He obeyed the injunction,

and at the appointed time he found a head on the leg bones of the

skeleton (a skull and cross-bones). The same voice bade him

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“guard it well, for it would be the giver of all good things,” and

so he carried it away with him. It became his protecting genius,

and he was able to defeat his enemies by merely showing them the

magic head. In due course it passed into the possession of the

Order.

Mystics have always ascribed considerable power to the god

Saturn, the keeper of the last Gate. Techniques to pass through the Gate

included tantric sexual magic, Indian kundalini yoga, homosexuality and

Gnostic Agapoi love feasts involving male and female secretions.

1328

The infamous Aleister Crowley actively pursued these occult

rituals. He joined the Golden Dawn in 1898. In 1912, he practiced sexual

magic in a spurious and clandestine lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis in

Berlin.

1329

This included homosexuality, masturbation and the concocting

of an elixir of life from male and female secretions. Aleister Crowley

then plumbed even more perverse and highly sadistic sexual practices at

the Abbey of Thelema or Thule Abbey in Sicily.

1330

This included animal

sacrifice, orgies, bloody scourging, sodomy and invoking the Anti-Christ

to raise the magic power of evil.

Radical behavior seems normal once a consistent, albeit illogical,

frame of reference emerges. This particularly applies in the absence of

checks and balances. When brought to account, many people who have

participated in unpleasant acts cannot understand why they thought it was

acceptable at the time. The old homily absolute power corrupts

absolutely bears out repeatedly.

Although the Inquisition made such accusations against the

Knights Templar, it is still inconclusive whether the inner circles of the

Knights Templar strayed into such a frame of reference. It appears from

testimony given to the inquisition that lower levels in the organization

were relatively ignorant about practices at higher levels. In his righteous

fever, Philippe IV would have been better to impeach only those in the

inner circles rather than attempt to net the whole Order beginning with

fifteen thousand members in France. It was not for another six hundred

years that Vilfredo Pareto enunciated his celebrated eighty-twenty maxim.

In this instance, Pareto's rule would simply hold that eighty percent of the

problem, if it existed, was with twenty percent of the group.

However, records show that the Pope would not intercede on

behalf of the Knights Templar. The Grand Master of the Knights

Templar, Jacques de Molay, declared to the Dominican Inquisition on

November 26, 1308:

333

I would like to tell you certain things, if only you were not the

people you are, and if you were authorized to hear it.

Two days later, on November 28, 1308, Jacques de Molay again

sought to confide in Pope Clement V. Pope Clement V avoided him.

There was an underlying reason why the Pope did not want to be

associated with his confession. The Pope even attempted to escape Paris

for Rome to avoid the radical imbroglio. As with the Sons of Solomon,

the Pope decided against assisting or defending the Knights Templar from

accusations of unacceptable practices that may have easily entrapped him.

It is highly likely that he well knew these practices included the

torrid secret of the goddesses of love and maternity, Inanna, Ishtar and

even Mary. They were a highly esoteric part of Church ritual as well as

unusual practices within the Knights Templar. Before the son could be

reborn, the lover had to die. The Knights Templar directly employed this

symbolism. They said that their devotions began and ended with Mary,

although these were respectively the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene.

Chapter 14 showed that the Apple cut crossways shows the star of

the goddess Venus, Ishtar or Inanna in her five stations from Birth to

Initiation, Love, Repose and Death.

Similarly, the Cistercian St Bernard described the five-petal rose

as the five virtues of Mary.

1331

John Donne writes in The Primrose that

this five-petal flower is sacred to the Muse.

1332

The fifth station, of Saturn or Death, is the goddess in her

manifestation as a cat or lion goddess consuming the lover. Appendix 3

provides Sir Francis Bacon's own chilling description of the inescapable

goddess. Fulcanelli highlighted the uncanny thread between alchemy and

the religion of the Mother Goddess’ barley cakes made with sacrificial

blood at the end of the twelve nights of Saturnalia festivities:

1333

“Gala,” in Greek means milk, and mercury is also called

Virgins’ Milk (lac Virginis). Therefore, brothers, if you

remember what we have said about the Twelfth-night cake, and if

you know why the Egyptians divinized the cat, you will be left in

no doubt about the topic you should select; its common name will

be known to you. Then you will posses the chaos of the sages

“wherein lie potentially all the hidden secrets” as Philalethes

declares, and which the skillful artist promptly activates. Open

up, that is, break down, such matter, try to isolate its pure

portion, or its metallic soul, as they say, and you will have the

Kermes, the Hermes, the “tingling mercury” that holds the mystic

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gold, just as Saint Christopher carries Jesus and the ram his own

fleece.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night echoes this:

1334

Clown: O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your

true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no

further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every

wise man's son doth know…

Sir Toby Belch 'O, the twelfth day of December,' … Out o' tune, sir: ye

lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou

art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Clown Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth too. …

Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid;

Fly away, fly away breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My

shroud of white, stuck all with yew …

Maria: nay, but say true; does it work upon him?

Sir Toby Belch: Like aqua vitae with a midwife.

The Goddess’ cycle from Birth to Initiation, Love, Repose and

Death can be dualistic, being either life affirming or life rejecting. The

life-affirming variation presents Death as Death-in-Life or rebirth.

In the life rejecting or radical version, death is the central focus of

a cycle filled with woe:

The woman, because of her vulva, what harm she did! Inanna

because of her womb, what did she do! All the wells of the land

she filled with blood…

We have also seen from Inanna's trials in the Dread Book that the

powers of darkness overcame her. These beings dwell beyond the final

Gate guarded by Adar the God of Saturn. The cruel demons of the dead

are Iggi from the Sumerian IGI meaning face or presence.

1335

The Iggi

provide assistance in both good and evil. Marduk enlisted these foul

spirits to help him overcome the Old Ones. The formulae and acts

required to evoke the beings and monsters that dwell in the outer reaches

of the human psyche are detailed elsewhere.

1336

A number of Christian cults such as the Cathars and Manichaeans

worshipped death as well as life. In the extreme, these death rituals

involved sodomy, necrophilia and cannibalism.

1337

We ponder whether the accusations of certain practices within the

Knights Templar such as obscene kisses of humiliation had the same

arcane significance.

1338

Drug use and sexual exploitation existed with the

Arabian associates of the Knights Templar, the Assassins. Experiments in

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the East would have involved sexual energy to raise the Iggi into visible

appearance, as Solomon reputedly did.

Thrill of illicit practices and the ease of trapping new initiates into

the quicksand of radical dualism remain with us today. For example,

many so-called neo-Templar and Rosicrucian orders ultimately exploit

phallic symbolism and tantric sex.

Freemasonry has repeatedly purged itself of these rituals and,

along with it, much of the visible symbolism related to alchemy and the

ages of the world. Gone are images of a maiden weeping over a broken

column, beehives, Egyptian temples and mummies, Orphic and Mithriac

mysteries and even Poisson's celebrated paintings embodying secret

knowledge. The truly insightful Freemason finds little vestige of this rich

heritage today. Scottish Rite Freemasonry is not quite so obscure, but it

has extensively adapted the Greater Mysteries towards its own needs.

In this chapter, we noted that the Hebrew word Nahash means

serpent. This same word has two other literal meanings, which are He

who solves Secrets and He who Knows Metals.

1339

In the next chapter, we

shall see how poignant these additional meanings can be.

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Chapter 19 The Philosophers’ Stone and Manna

The Jews in Alexandria and the Rosicrucians’ Sabian forebears in

Damascus independently preserved the secret of the Philosophers' Stone.

To this day, each retains its independence.

We have seen that the Rosicrucian route leads back to Anatolia,

to the Indo-Hittites and the scientific philosophies of metallurgy,

alchemy, medicine and immortality. This route is relatively obscure

because of the Rosicrucians’ traditional low profile and intentional lack of

records. Over the last three thousand years, discovery of significant

documents such as the Corpus Hermeticum, Picatrix and writings of the

Family of Love have been rare.

In contrast, the Jews objectively documented their story through

wide study of the Bible and candid writings of the great Jewish

alchemists. Jewish alchemy seemed to start at the Hyksos invasion of

Egypt in 1801BCE when the Israelites participated in the royal secrets of

the Philosophers' Stone, known to the Old Kingdom Pharaohs.

As we saw in the last chapter, the Egyptians knew the true secret

of the Philosophers' Stone at the time of Imhotep, if not earlier. The

annual rituals of Unas described in Chapter 16 used the Philosophers'

Stone to refresh the spirit of the Pharaoh and thereby to refresh the order

and fertility of the land. The Egyptian king-making ceremonies were rites

that introduced the Philosophers' Stone to the new Pharaoh. They

described how the Old Kingdom Pharaohs never died, but ascended a

stairway to heaven. Strangely, true to the tradition, the bodies of the

oldest Pharaohs and their high priests remain undiscovered.

1340

The texts of the Old Kingdom gave the Philosophers' Stone many

names. It was called the golden tear from the eye of Horus, that which

issues from the mouth of the Creator (the Christian Word), and the spittle

or the semen of the Father in Heaven. With the rise of the Heliopolian

Amun, it later became the hidden Light: the unknowable name of the God

whose title was Amun and whose symbol was the ram.

Perhaps the most enigmatic name for the Philosophers' Stone was

in the negative or hidden form of a question-name: What is it? This is

what Basil Valentine was referring to when he said of the Green Lion:

you know what it is. We shall have much more to say about the name

posed as a question in Chapter 22, where we look at the Holy Grail.

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Sesôstris I offering Shewbread to Amun

in the White Chapel at Karnak

338

The Kabbalah interprets the name-question: What is it? as the

word manna.

1341

It comes from Genesis and Exodus, which are probably

the greatest alchemical texts ever written. Exodus tells the history of the

Israelites and their reliance on manna for sustenance of the spirit:

1342

And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered

the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.

And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of

the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar

frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they

said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was.

And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath

given you to eat.

With the Word of the Lord, the manna, the Israelites did not grow

old nor suffer illness, suggesting a ritual experience:

1343

And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led

thee these forty years in the wilderness ... And he humbled thee,

and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou

knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee

know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that

proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Thy

raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these

forty years.

The Egyptian and Tigris-Euphrates Valley societies both

symbolized the Philosophers' Stone as an elongated pyramidal or conical

shaped stone, about twice as tall as it is wide. It was similar to the Ben

Stone and the point of Thutmose III's column, now the misnamed

Cleopatra’s Needle in London.

1344

In Harran, in the Commagene, the 550BCE stele of Nabnoidus of

Babylon depicts the royal sceptre topped with a similar wedge shape

representing revealed wisdom of the Moon God Sin. Chapter 5 showed

the same cone shape is the symbol of the Sumerian KUR and Q're.

1345

In Chapter 3 we looked at the sacred treasures of King Solomon's

Temple recorded in the Temple of the Al Karnak, particularly the plunder

from the Palestine campaign of Thutmose III. Detailed examination of

these treasures shows the same elongated pyramidal or conical shapes

under the items of gold. This is white bread or shewbread.

1346

This same

shape is shown even earlier in the White Chapel at Karnak, where the

twelfth dynasty Pharaoh Sesôstris I presents the conical shewbread to

Amun.

1347

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Shewbread is Offered to Anubis

Guardian of the Secret,

Nineteenth dynasty, Abydos

340

In another famous bas-relief from the Pyramid Texts, the Pharaoh

is shown offering shewbread to Anubis who is sitting on an ark. Anubis

symbolizes the guardian of God over the secrets.

1348

Sometimes he has a

sceptre made from the mysterious metal tchâm, which like orichalcum,

may be platinum.

1349

Plutarch notes that Anubis, the jackal god, was born of both

sisters Nephthys and Isis, who were two aspects of the same divine

person:

1350

By Anubis they understand the horizontal circle, which divides

the invisible part of the world, which they call Nephthys, from the

visible, to which they give the name Isis; and as this circle equally

touches on the confines of both light and darkness, it may be

looked on as common to them both.

The chest that Anubis guards represents the prime secret on

which the sovereignty of the king depended.

1351

So important was this

secret to Hercules that he descended into the Underworld to recover the

guardian dog Cerberus.

1352

Cerberus, a dog with three heads, was the

grim, watchful guardian of the entrance to Hades.

The secret of preparing the Philosophers' Stone was seemingly

lost to Egypt in the tumult of the Hyksos expulsion. The old legends of

Zosimus and St Germain imply the Israelites plundered the secret from

the Egyptians, as we saw in Chapter 14. The Bible also talks about the

plunder of gold and silver from the Egyptians:

And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians:

and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty:

But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that

sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and

raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your

daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.

1353

And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses;

and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of

gold, and raiment: And the Lord gave the people favour in the

sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as

they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

1354

When the Israelites departed from Egypt, Moses knew how to

make the substance known as the Philosophers' Stone, manna,

chrysopoeia, aurum potable or the water of gold. Moses' skill as an

alchemist is clear in the episode of the golden bull. The Israelites

apparently carried through the desert sufficient gold for the Ark of the

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Covenant, large tabernacle items like the golden vessels weighing twenty-

nine talents (over one ton) each and the golden bull Atabyrius. In finding

the Israelites worshiping the golden bull, Moses was outraged:

1355

And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that

he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot,

and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath

the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it

in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the

water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

It is possible to dissolve and drink calcinated gold as described

here. Calcination is the burning of gold in fire with deer antler or animal

horn as the traditional source of calcium.

Chapter 11 showed that Moses then commanded Bezaleel, the

Son of Light who built the Ark of the Covenant, to prepare the Bread of

Life or Bread of the Presence of God. The Melchizedek Priests set this

Bread on a golden table in front of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of

Holies. Once a week they ate the Bread of the Presence of God and more

was set in place.

After entering the Promised Land, the Israelites no longer

consumed the Bread of Life.

1356

And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the

old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any

more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

Jesus, a Melchizedek Priest, refers to the loss of manna when he

turns down the request of the masses at Capernaum:

1357

Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead.

Rabbinical tradition holds that the secret of the Philosophers'

Stone was lost to the Israelites at the destruction of the First Temple.

David Hudson has reported that in answer to his question about the

existence of white powder gold, a Rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Phoenix

answered:

Oh yes Mr. Hudson, but to our knowledge no one has known how

to make it since the destruction of the first temple … The white

powder of gold is the magic. It can be used for white magic or

black magic.

Following the destruction of the First Temple, alchemy and the

Philosophers' Stone remained subdued until the Hellenistic times in

Alexandria.

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From four hundred BCE, until the time of Jesus, there was a

remarkable acceleration of learning in Alexandria under the Ptolemaic

kings of Egypt.

1358

This commenced with the break up of Alexander’s

empire in about 321BCE, when Alexandria became the enforced home of

a massive number of Palestine Jews. Ptolemy I Soter who reigned from

323BCE to 285BCE enslaved one hundred thousand Jews and brought

them to Alexandria where the men served as military conscripts. His son,

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 285BCE to 247BCE,

subsequently released all Jewish slaves. There were more than one

hundred and ten thousand at the time. Jews then resided all over the city

and a Jewish aristocracy became established on the elite east side of

Alexandria.

Ptolemy I Soter built the great Library of Alexandria. His son

Ptolemy II Philadelphus expanded it and ordered the translation of the

Torah into Greek for the benefit of the large Jewish population of

Alexandria who could no longer speak Hebrew. The result was the

Septuagint, finalized about 150BCE. Far from being jubilantly received,

many Jewish scholars lamented that the Septuagint divulged to Israel’s

enemies their innermost secrets and shame at the evil deeds done by their

ancestors and God’s continual punishments for backsliding.

1359

The Alexandria Library reputedly contained five hundred

thousand manuscripts and scholars could live there to study for as long as

they wished. Euclid was among the first scientists to work there. It was

at the Library that Aristarchos produced his remarkable treatise

suggesting the moon received its light from the sun. He also studied the

relative sizes and separations of the sun, moon and earth using a three

hundred and sixty degree system.

This era of enlightenment was not to last. Diocletian, Emperor of

Rome from 284CE to 305CE, was paranoid about Christianity and the

occult. He sought out and burned all Egyptian works that concerned the

chemistry of gold and silver. His reason for this was to prevent his

enemies making use of occult science against the Romans.

1360

In a last

effort to block Christianity, he declared Mithraism as the official religion

of the Roman Empire.

Diocletian may have been concerned about rumors of a fearful

alchemical secret, that of the legendary Shamir. In Rabbinical tradition,

the Shamir was a giant worm that could cut stones.

1361

The secret of the

Shamir was probably in the hands of the Essenes in Alexandria. We know

from Philo of Alexandria, who lived from 20BCE to 50CE, that the

343

influence of the Essenes of Egypt, known in the first century CE as

Therapeuts, was particularly strong in Alexandria.

1362

Hippolytus

recorded Essenes were still in Egypt in 250CE.

Excavations at Qumran have shown that the Essenes operated a

furnace and carried out metallurgical works.

1363

Alchemical works

continued in this same area long after the Roman campaign against

Massada. For example, the nearby village at the spring of Engedi was

engaged in esoteric activities. Engedi was the site of a famous Essene

college similar to Callirrhoë and Modein. A mosaic inscription in the

floor of the fourth century CE synagogue at Engedi includes a curse,

which is the only sinister curse ever discovered in a synagogue:

1364

Whoever reveals to the gentiles the secret of this village, the one

whose eyes roam over the entire earth and sees what is hidden

will uproot this person and his seed from under the sun.

One theory is that the Essenes collected white salts from

evaporated holding ponds in the Dead Sea. They sought material at the

surface where sodium chloride had already dropped away by fractional

crystallization. They manufactured alchemical gold employing a tower

five hundred meters up the hill for a gravity feed to a reverberatory

furnace. The tower still exists. Appendix 3 describes the method

supposedly used by King Solomon to make his one hundred thousand

talents (about three thousand eight hundred tons) of alchemical gold.

The priestly secret of alchemy had much in common with the

secrets of early glass manufacture and fabric dying. During the Roman

period, the great glass-making site of Jalame in Western Galilee produced

excellent Roman glass.

1365

The special timbers required in firing this low

potassium, low magnesium Roman glass were the symbolic trees of

Beech, Oak and Apple.

1366

A traditional source of glass making sand was at the mouth of the

Belus River. This was the town of Ptolemais, now called Acre.

1367

Josephus and Pliny mention it, noting that the sand here would form

crystals. These were crystals of quartz and chalcedony in the presence of

calcium from decayed seashells.

1368

Josephus writes that many ships

called to load sand for glassmaking and that nature constantly replenished

it. Josephus described a very unusual property of these crystals: if they

overflowed the basin, they reverted to ordinary sand.

Josephus preserves alchemical secrets in his writing. He does so

elsewhere. Quite out of context with his discussion of the hilltop fortress

of Machaerus, Josephus refers to a certain root growing at Barras. This is

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Pliny’s mandrake and it is an allegorical description of the Great

Work:

1369

In a ravine which protects the town on the north is a place called

Baaras, where grows a root of the same name. This is flame-

colored, and at dusk it sends out brilliant flashes so that those

who come near in the hope of plucking it cannot take hold of it, as

it slips away and will not stay still until it is drenched with a

woman’s urine or menstrual blood. Even then to touch it means

certain death, unless one happens to have brought an exactly

similar root dangling from the wrist. It can also be secured

another way without risk, thus – they dig right around it, so as to

leave the smallest possible piece of root in the ground; then they

tie a dog to it and when he springs forward to follow the man who

tied him, it is easily pulled up, but the dog dies instantly – a

substitute for the person who was going to remove the plant; for

no danger remains for those who subsequently handle it. Despite

the greatness of the danger it has one virtue that makes it sought

after; for the so called devils – in reality the spirits of evildoers

that enter the living and kill them if they are not rescued – are

quickly cast out by this plant if it so much as touches the

possessed. Here too flow springs of hot water differing widely in

flavor, some being bitter and others very sweet indeed. There are

also many fountains of cold water, and these do not all issue from

wells on low ground in a row; the truth is more surprising, for

there is a cave to be seen nearby, not hollowed out to any great

depth, but sheltered by a rock that juts out. Above this protrude,

as it were, two breasts a little way apart, sending out water, in

one case icy, in the other boiling hot. When mixed these furnish a

most pleasant bath, beneficial in many sicknesses and giving

special relief to tired muscles. The region also contains sulphur

and alum mines.

The real mandrake or Mandragora officinalis is one of the most

striking plants of Lebanon and the Plain of Sharon. It has a central bunch

of dark-blue, bell-shaped blossom on a flat disk of very broad primrose-

like leaves.

Wei Boyang, a Chinese alchemist of the second century CE,

relates a similar tale:

1370

One day Wei Boyang Passed into the mountains to prepare

numinous elixirs. With him and went three disciples, two of

345

whom were, he felt, lacking in faith and sincerity. When the elixir

was achieved he decided to make a trial of them. The gold elixir

is now made, he said, but it ought first to be tested. Let us give it

to this white dog; if the animal lives and can soar into the air then

will be safe for human beings, but if the dog should die then it is

not to be taken. So Wei Po-Yang They did it to the dog, and the

dog immediately fell down dead. Turning to the disciples he said:

I feared the elixir was not perfected. As it has killed the dog into

would seem that we have not grasped the fall of theory of spiritual

power. If we take it now I am afraid that we shall go the same

way as the animal. What do you think we should do? The

disciples, perplexed, replied by another question: Would you, sir,

dare to take it yourself? He answered: I abandoned worldly ways

and forsook family and friends to enter into the mountains; I

should be ashamed to return without having found the Tao of the

Holy in Immortals. To die of the elixir would be no worse than

living without it. I must take it. And he did, whereupon no sooner

was it in his mouth than he fell dead.

One disciple took the elixir and died. When the other two had

gone, the seemingly dead master, his disciple and the white dog recovered

and journeyed along the mountain path of the immortals.

This elixir was made from the climbing plant Asclepias acida

(“AA”), which is milkweed. This is a similar herb to the European

swallowwort or Vincetoxicum hirundanaria. It is a medicinal antidote

whose name means defeat the poison. The first century CE Greek

physician and pharmacologist, Dioscorides, called the plant the dog

strangler and wrote that the leaves it mixed with meat could kill dogs,

wolves and foxes.

1371

In the Switzerland, swallowwort is called the

Master Herb and in Austria Jewish herb or White Cross herb.

The Persians and Indians both made their sacred drinks, Hoama

and soma, from fermented Asclepias acida juice, mixed with milk, butter

or honey.

1372

After drinking the nectar, the adept entered a death-like

state for several days. Upon waking, he experienced a state of ecstasy for

a few days with higher consciousness, visionary powers, inexhaustible

strength and vitality. All 114 hymns in the ninth book of the Rig Veda

(circa 1500 BCE) are dedicated to soma:

1373

We have drunk soma, we have become immortal; we have gone to

the light; we found the gods.

346

The Soma plant Asclepias acida has small, fragrant white flowers

at the end of its branches and few leaves. Christian graves in Rome’s

catacombs have drawings of a variety of this plant showing long fruits,

which is not found in Europe.

The early Israelites and Edomites used the burning bush datura

stramonium, commonly called the thorn apple. It is the only plant to

grow on rocky high places such as Jebel Madhbah at Petra. The spiny

black fruit has long been used as a folk medicine and intoxicant.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that the priests used its fruit to bring on fantasy,

which they say is the voice of their god.

1374

It seems that the thorn apple

is Eden’s forbidden fruit because the peculiar feature of the thron apple is

that it produces a vapour that burns without the bush being consumed.

There are references to the thorn apple in Homer’s Odyssey and

Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Anthony and

Cleopatra. In recent times it has been found to control severe brain

cancer.

1375

While in times that are more recent, the Persians made Soma

from Asclepias acida, some scholars now suggest that the ancient recipes

in the Rig Veda strongly imply that Soma was made from two stones or

rocks (adrau) in the mountains (girau). It is quite likely that Soma had its

true source in metals before they used hallucinogenic plants like Asclepias

acida and more recently, Cannabis

At the end of Chapter 2, we saw that volcanoes produce ores with

iridium and rhodium that can be used to manufacture ORMES and

healing monatomic materials. Rig Veda recipes say that a divine Eagle

fetches Soma from Heaven.

1376

The Eagle extracts it from a metal fortress

in the form of golden-yellow (hari) and reddish-brown (aruna) rocks,

which are probably yellow gold-quartzite and reddish-brown gold-

platinum ores. The Rig Veda also says the priests crushed the collected

material with noisy grinding stones, which sounds more like heavy ore

grinding than squeezing plants. Then they washed it free of impurities,

filtered it through a woolen fleece (avi) and cooked it in water. The Rig

Veda says the final product is clothed in robes of milk. They called it the

Milk of Heaven or Milk of God.

Returning to the manufacture of glass, we find the metals of

alchemy used extensively, such as gold for ruby red color and antimony

as a decolorant and opacifier.

1377

This red-golden, transparent, antimony

glass symbolizes the new Jerusalem. The glassblowers of Murano, north

of Venice, still manufacture rose lamp glass from gold. Many of these

347

precious lamps decorate churches, in particular Jesus’ tomb in

Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Although invented by Johann

Kunkel in Potsdam in about 1680, the earliest example of ruby-glass

dated with certainty is a pair of fine Baroque ruby glass beakers in the

Treasury of Copenhagen’s Rosenborg Castle. Duke Julius Franz of

Saxony-Lauenburg polished these beakers in 1689.

The Egyptians used antimony in glass making since at least the

time of Tuthmose III. The religious secret of antimony glass provided the

wondrous translucency of the stained glass windows at Chartres

Cathedral.

1378

The alchemical technology for this special glass suddenly

appeared in the first quarter of the twelfth century CE and just as abruptly

disappeared in the middle of the next century.

1379

The famous Purple of

Cassius was, for example, a colorant made from the body of God. It was

in use long before its official discovery in 1685. The presence of the

Purple of Cassius in glass figuratively endowed light with the body of

God. Chartres’ Blue was similarly a particularly beautiful unsaturated

blue that delighted the senses. It was a feature at Chartres Cathedral.

1380

As the Essenes were quite familiar with glass making and the

chemistry of gold, they would have been in possession of the materials to

make the explosive called gold fulminate. Gold, Aqua Regia and potash

make this highly unstable explosive. Aqua Regia dissolves the gold and

the addition of potash precipitates gold hydroxide. Potash is potassium

carbonate from the ashes of burnt wood. Adding ammonia (sal

ammoniac) to the gold hydroxide then forms gold fulminate. It becomes

very explosive when dry and is difficult to handle. Dissolving silver

oxide in ammonia makes fulminating silver, which is also very explosive

when dry.

The alchemist masons who employed gold fulminate as an

explosive would have prepared it on-site. To cut a block or stele with

precision, the masons would have poured a fulminate slurry into a series

of chiseled-out hollows, allowed it to dry and then set off a chain reaction

to separate the rock.

Modern gunpowder is a less expensive explosive made from

seventy-five percent potassium nitrate, ten percent sulphur and fifteen

percent charcoal. The alchemist monk Roger Bacon first revealed it in

the West in the early fourteenth century CE.

1381

At that time, gunpowder

was a mixture of Brimstone, Sulfur and Saltpeter. China first discovered

the secret in one thousand CE. As soon as gunpowder appeared in

348

England, the Crown seized the rights and began to manufacture it under

Crown monopoly.

Both fulminating gold and original gunpowder used regular

alchemical raw materials like saltpeter, which was a common source of

nitric acid for Aqua Regia. Yet, only fulminating gold is likely to have

been the Shamir. This is because it had two characteristics that would

have disenchanted monarchs and therefore allowed it to remain

comparatively secret. The first was that any significant use of fulminating

gold required a monarch to delve deeply into his gold reserves. The

second reason was that the strategic use of the fulminating gold was

severely limited because it was unstable. Unskilled soldiers could neither

prepare nor handle the dangerous substance.

Moses and the authors of the Bible at the time of King Solomon

may have known about gold fulminate. For example, Moses referred to

the massive destruction the Lord would wreak on the land with brimstone

and salt if the Israelites abandoned his covenant:

1382

And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and

burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth

therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and

Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus

unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

It is also possible that the story of Joshua’s destruction of Jericho

is an indirect reference to the terrible power of the Shamir.

1383

In fact,

Joshua reserves the metals in the city for the Lord’s treasury, perhaps with

an eye to replenishing his stores.

1384

In old Masonic tradition, the Shamir is one of the secrets that

Hiram Abiff refused to surrender to his murderers. The Old York ritual

refers:

1385

… to the wonderful properties of that noble insect the SHAMIR,

which cut and shaped all the sacred utensils and holy vessels in

King Solomon’s Temple... the wonderful creature that could cut

stones.

The crest of Earl St Clair of Orkney and the documents in the St

Clair libraries prominently show the Shamir. Earl St Clair was the

Scottish ruler who sheltered fugitive Knights Templar and their fleet,

when it escaped Philippe IV’s suppression order. His family

subsequently became hereditary Grand Masters of Freemasonry. The

knowledge of the Shamir has no doubt remained sealed with other

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documents in three encased boxes, alongside the seventeen Barons in

their armor, in the vault of the St Clair's crypt at Rosslyn Chapel. The

secret still holds fascination but today it is likely to be one of those empty

secrets that are now all too common in hermetic alchemy.

Following the destruction of alchemical works by Diocletian, the

famous Library of Alexandria was itself burnt to the ground by a

Christian mob in 390CE. This loss of the Library, followed by the

gruesome murder of the beautiful mathematician Hypatia by a gang of

monks twenty-five years later, ushered in Europe’s Dark Ages.

The story of the Philosophers' Stone lay dormant in the West for

another six hundred years, until the time of the Crusades when rumors

seeped out that the Knights Templar had found something very exciting.

Troubadours of the Holy Grail romanced this discovery to a fascinated

Europe, as we shall see in Chapter 22.

Alchemists and kings vigorously sought the Philosophers’ Stone

as a wonderful medicine that had the power to repair the human body and

increase human life almost indefinitely. The Bible itself had declared that

Melchizedek the King of Salem, who first possessed the Philosophers'

Stone, would live forever.

1386

Flavius Josephus seemed to confirm this

when he recorded that the Essenes had extraordinary lifetimes of greater

than one hundred years.

1387

Georgian people in the mountains above

Colchis reputedly enjoyed similarly bounteous lifespans of one hundred

and ten years.

1388

In 1220CE, with Grail romances echoing around

Europe, the alchemist Artephius claimed he had lived a thousand years.

1389

The Comte St. Germain was supposed to have lived for more than

one hundred years. He was a prominent Jewish alchemist who made

known that his special color was, as we might imagine, green tinged with

blue. Baron de Gleichen, who knew St. Germain well, refuted his long

life maintaining that St. Germain had said to him:

These stupid Parisians believe that I am 500 years old; I confirm

them this idea since I see that it gives them much pleasure.

However, this does not mean that I am infinitely older than I look.

Various sources 'sighted' St. Germain in 1835, 1926 and 1934,

although his death is well recorded on February 27, 1784, and by his own

admission he seems to have been ninety-two or ninety-three at the time.

The year of his birth is unknown.

Nicholas Flamel who lived from about 1330 to 1418 was a Grand

Master of the Prieure du Notre Dame du Sion and a well-known

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alchemist. He is also reputed to have been alive some three hundred years

after his recorded death. Paul Lucas wrote in 1712 that he met a Dervish

in the streets of Bursa in Turkey who said that he had come from

Uzbekistan. The Dervish related in great mirth that Flamel and his wife

were living in India. Ayurvedic Indian alchemy, called Rasa Shastra,

claims people alive today aged three hundred years. The Ayurvedic texts

repeatedly say gold is immortality.

1390

Following the translation of the great Arabian sources, the flurry

of Grail Romances and suppression of the Knights Templar, alchemy

became dormant for a further three hundred years. As we saw in Chapter

17, the Church had prohibited alchemy and all scientific investigation.

Only scattered Jewish alchemical scandals and anonymous alchemical

publications punctuated this blanket of silence.

Alchemy gave birth to modern chemistry in the sixteenth century.

The key event was when Antoine Lavoisier showed that water separated

into hydrogen and oxygen, and then recombined as water. He wrote that

oxygen sustained combustion, oxidized the elements and was susceptible

to recovery. Lavoisier summarized his big bang in chemistry with the

words:

Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, all is transformed.

Following his discovery, reason totally prevailed over

metaphysics in chemistry. For all his greatness, poor Lavoisier had a sad

end on the guillotine because he was also a State farmer-general at the

commencement of the French Revolution. Yet the new chemistry he

catalyzed made rapid scientific advances. It quickly distanced itself from

alchemy's inherent imposture and fraud.

The Rosicrucian influence then revived once more with Dr John

Dee, Shakespearean literature, the cautious writings of Paracelsus and the

mystical works of Fludd and Maier in the seventeenth century. This tiny

trickle received some impetus with the Invisible College and Royal

Society. It became a gentle stream when the English chemists and

physicists Robert Boyle, William Cooper, Eireneus Philalethes and Sir

Isaac Newton began to bring bona fide chemical and alchemical

investigations some respectability.

The tentative revival of alchemy then became a veritable flood in

the late eighteenth century with the popularity of Freemasonry in England

and Rosicrucianism among German Masonic-alchemical groups. It is at

this time that we see the emergence of groups with remarkable names

such as the Brothers of the Boiled Dew.

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Many of these fringe groups were reviving Jewish traditions

preserved in Rabbinical and Arabian treatises.

In the next chapter, we look at one of the most intriguing aspects

of alchemical studies, Jewish traditions that allude to what the Knights

Templar really found under King Solomon's Temple.

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Chapter 20 The Ancient of Days

The philosophy of the qabb³lâ or Kabbalah is set out in the

Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Creation, written in three hundred CE. It

describes a cosmology based on numerical correspondence, such as the

sevenfold planets with the seven days of the week and the seven openings

in the head. Another is the twelvefold zodiac with the twelve directions

of space, twelve months of the year and twelve organs of the body. It

teaches that dualistic good and evil do not tear the cosmos. Instead,

positive and negative energies hold the cosmos in polarity. The method

of salvation is through becoming aware of oneself as a microcosm. This

seats the King on his Throne in the centre of life.

The concept of the King on his Throne was a common symbol for

Osiris in ancient Egypt. The throne was Isis and she was the female

counterpart of the male, making the whole of God.

1391

The young Horus

often sat on her lap as the king reborn. Many a Pieta shows the young

Virgin Mary as the throne, nursing Jesus.

The Zohar or Book of Splendor is the magnus opus of the

Spanish-Jewish Kabbalah.

1392

Its name derives from ZHR meaning to

illuminate. It is both a mystical novel based on the Torah and a

commentary of the Pentateuch. Rabbi Simon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar

in the second century CE but it was apparently edited by Moses bar Shem

Tov of Leon of Granada who died in 1305.

Moses of Leon published the Zohar in 1290. Just before his

death, he added three influential and enigmatic books.

1393

These were the

Book of the Concealed Mystery (BoM), the Greater Holy Assembly

(GHA) and the Lesser Holy Assembly (LHA). Together they represent

only three percent of the Zohar.

In the Lesser Holy Assembly, Moses of Leon is dictating from his

deathbed:

1394

The Reapers of the Field are few

And only at the edge of the vineyard.

…Rabbi Shim’on sat down

He cried, and said, ‘Woe if I reveal! Woe if I do not reveal!’

His dying breaths imparted the secret knowledge of manna and

the Ancient of Days :

1395

And all of them (the holinesses) come from the upper head of the

skull…from the direction of the upper brains…and this blessing

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flows into all the vessels of the body, until it reaches those that

are called the ‘hosts’…And, that flow, after it is collected there, it

stays there, and then goes to that holy foundation. It is all white,

and therefore it is called ‘mercy’. And this mercy enters the Holy

of Holies, as it is written (Ps 133:3): ‘For there the Lord

commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.’

Here blessing and mercy are two of the original Hebrew names

for manna.

1396

Another is the charity of God.

Both the Zohar the Denudata, another Kabbalah text, describe

The Ancient of Days as having a furnace and three skulls. The prophet

Daniel, reputedly a great alchemist, wrote of the Ancient of Days in the

Book of Daniel:

1397

I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days

did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his

head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and

his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth

from before him … and, behold, one like the Son of man came

with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days …

The Ancient of Days had only one eye known as the Eye of

Providence. It shone with blinding brightness.

The Ancient of Days’ sophistication is similar to Hephaestus’

legendary robotic smithy on Mount Olympus, where he manufactured

some sort of vehicle:

1398

He was making twenty tripods

To place around the walls of the fine hall:

He was fitting golden wheels under their bases,

So that they by themselves could enter (‘autòmatoi dysaiato’) the

gods’ meetings,

Then return home (‘pròs dôma neoìato’). It is wonderful to look

at!

…

Two golden maids …

Looking like living girls,

Had a mind in their breasts (‘nòos metà phresin’), they had voice

And strength.

…

He moved the bellows away from the fire,

And collected all tools he had worked with into a silver case;

Then with a sponge he dried his face, his hands,

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His neck and hairy chest,

He put on his tunic, took his big stick, and limped out

Of the door.

…

He went back to the bellows,

Turned them to the fire and set them in action.

All twenty bellows blew on the furnaces

Emitting a modulated kindling puff (‘pantoìen eùpreston

aütmèn’),

Now fit for quickening,

Now for the opposite,

According to Hephaestus’ purpose and the progress of the work.

Our investigations have been conventional to this date. The

foundation has been reasonably scholarly. We now dip well below the

scholarly threshold into the kaleidoscopic realm of speculation.

British engineers George Sassoon & Rodney Dale have

interpreted this description of the Ancient of Days as a machine for

manufacturing manna, a kind of still, described in anthropomorphic

terms.

1399

The engineers saw the still as a bacterial multiplier for

manufacturing bread. They may well have been on the right track, but

misinterpreting common bread for sacramental bread. Stills similar to the

description of the Ancient of Days are commonplace in alchemy,

particularly the double pelican with two interlocking cucurbits.

1400

Moses of Leon describes the operation of the Ancient of Days as

follows:

1401

Into the skull ... distils the dew from the white head ... and

covereth it. And that dew appeared to be of two colors and by it

nourished the field of the holy apple trees. And from this dew of

this skull is the manna prepared for the just in the world to come.

And by it shall the dead be raised to life. And the manna did not

appear to be derived from this dew except at one time: the time

when Israel was wandering in the desert. And the Ancient One of

All fed them from this place. But afterwards, it did not fall out so

more fully.

The ceasing of the manna in the Bible is analogous:

1402

And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the

old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any

more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

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Caleb seems to have taken the machine that made manna to

Hebron:

1403

I conveyed the Divine Spirit through the water of Jordan to the

level of the vale of Hebron.

The two British engineers also believe that the Israelites relocated

the Ancient of Days to Shiloh after it ceased production in Hebron. Shiloh

is forty kilometers north of Jerusalem. The Children of Dan supervised

the holy objects.

1404

Amongst them was a dedicated band of priests called

the Reapers of the Holy Field.

1405

Their name derives from those who

collect the manna from the dew in the field of holy apples.

1406

The engineers contend that Psalm 133 of David is included in

rituals of the Zohar, Knights Templar initiation and Freemasons initiation

for a special reason. It is a perpetual reminder of the Ancient of Days and

the dew, manna, Philosophers' Stone or What is it? that was lost:

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

It is like the precious oil poured on the head, running down on

the beard, running down Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of

his robes.

It is as if the dew of Hermon was falling on Mount Zion.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

In addition, the Zohar says the same thing:

1407

“Come and see:

Every single day, dew trickles down from the Holy Ancient One to

the Impatient One, and the Orchard of holy Apple Trees is

blessed.

Some of the dew flows to those below;

holy angels are nourished by it,

each according to his diet,

as it is written:

‘A human ate angel bread'

1408

Israel ate of that food in the desert.

Rabbi Shimón said:

“Some people are nourished by it even now!

Who are they?

The Comrades, who engage Torah day and night.

Do you think they are nourished by that very food?

No, by something like that very food; two balancing one.

… The food that comes from higher above is finer food,

coming from the sphere where Judgment is found.

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…Happy is the portion of the righteous!

As we saw earlier, there is manna is Mercy and there is no Judgment

without Mercy.

Also from the Skull of the Microprosopopeia:

1409

When the White Head decided to add to its beauty with an

ornament, it sent out a spark from its own light.

It breathed on the spark to cool it, and the spark grew firm.

It expanded and hollowed itself out, like a blue transparent skull

enclosing thousands, myriads of worlds.

This cavity is full of external dew, white on the side of the Father,

red on the side of the Son. It is the dew of light and life, the dew

that engenders and resurrects the dead.

Some are resurrected in light, others in fire.

Some are in the eternal whiteness of peace, the others in the

redness of fire and the torments of war.

“The wicked are the disgrace, so as to speak, of their father, and

it is they who cover the face with its redness.

In this skull of the Universal Man, only begotten Son of God,

resides Knowledge, with its thirty two paths and its fifty gates.”

However, not everyone enjoyed manna. The fearful Watchers of

the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim, had such large appetites that God gave

them manna, of many different colors.

1410

They rejected God’s offer,

preferring the flesh of animals and man, fouling the air with sickly vapors.

It was then that God decided to cleanse the earth.

The Zohar’s explanation makes compelling evidence that the

manufacture of manna or dew is the great secret that was lost. Other

descriptions by Jewish alchemists support this somewhat unconventional

conclusion. For example, Michael Maier writes of Maria the Jewess:

1411

But the whole secret, she says, is in the knowledge of the Vessel of

Hermes, because it is divine, and is, by the wisdom of the Lord,

hidden from the gentiles.

Among the many names Elias Ashmole lists as being applied to

the Philosophers’ Stone is the Hebrew Tetragrammaton jud he voph

hé.

1412

The finding of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton is hermetically

equivalent to finding the secret of the Philosophers’ Stone.

Abraham Eleazar’s talks of the Tetragrammaton in his fourteenth

century book Uraltes Chymisches Werck, the Book of Light. A much

earlier source called The Great Secret of the Master Tubal-Cain gave him

the secret: the Hebrew Tetragrammaton is in a cave at the bottom of a

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long passage, five hundred spans under the Holy of Holies. A fire that

kills protects it.

The Copper Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals that

foundations of the Temple concealed large amounts of gold and important

texts at the time of the Roman assault of 67CE to 70CE:

1413

Item 7: In the cavity of the Old House of Tribute, in the Platform

of the Chain: sixty-five bars of gold.

It may be that the six hundred talents of gold (about twenty-three

tons) under the Temple was an input for an alchemical process rather than

simply a store of wealth. It may have been feedstock for making the

Philosophers’ Stone.

To encourage the Jews to redouble their efforts to find the lost

Philosophers' Stone, Abraham Eleazar writes:

For you should know that God the Highest will promise and give

you His blessing so that you should enjoy the breadth of the land

and drink the dew of heaven.

This is the same exhortation as found engraved on copper tablets

in the manuscript of Samuel Baruch.

1414

Samuel Baruch writes that the

ultimate achievement is:

the great mystery of the world, the life and food of the holy souls

and angels, out of whose dew the heaven comes and the fatness of

the earth.

In addition, he adds:

My sons, I have sketched in figures the secrets of the great world,

and also its meaning according to its inner secret understanding,

as Moyses our brother had learned it from Tubal-Cain, and left it

behind, to your great joy, to find the Mighty One in Israel, in

figures, as well as His servants and angels, together with the

powers of the innermost receptacle in centro of the natures.

Finally, alchemists from generation to generation hand down a

dire warning:

That quintessence is a holy balsam and also a poison. This is all

medicine, and without the help of God it is without fruit, it kills

and destroys.... This is the great secret of the fathers, this is what

God gave them as a consolation, which they used when they were

in plight and trouble; otherwise they did not use it, because they

were satisfied with the Highest, and with little. This was the

masterpiece of the wise masters with which they prepared

everything necessary that belonged to the Temple.

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We now delve even deeper into the realm of speculation. The

Jewish stories show that the French knights who excavated the

foundations of King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem found more than

gold. Let us hypothesize that they found the secret treasure of the

Melchizedek Priests that they were looking for. It was an old gold

processing machine that had long been disused and was almost forgotten.

The Holy Order of Knights Beneficent of the Holy City tell the legend of

how Hugues des Payens and the first Knights Templars, while repairing

the house King Baldwin II of Jerusalem gave them, excavated in the ruins

for materials. They found an iron trunk with many extremely valuable

things, including the scientific process of the Great Work taught to

Solomon and his confidants by Hiram Abiff, whom Solomon’s friend and

ally, Hiram King of Tyre, sent to them.

1415

The Knights Templar fervently scoured Europe, Palestine,

Arabia, Persia and Ethiopia for knowledge of the operating instructions.

It is highly probable that any mysterious technology they found

was as puzzling as it had been to the Reapers of the Holy Field. They

would have followed the only time-proven course of action. This was to

adhere to the advice of the Jewish Rabbis and Sufis and hide the machine

until time or circumstance should provide a clue to its unique benefits.

Where is it? This question is as enigmatic as the original question-name:

What is it?

The exact location of the Israelite secrets lies with the

descendants of the Cistercians. The Knights Templar Order, for all its

intrigue, was only the minder of the secret. They protected it but did not

necessarily know the meaning of it nor understand it.

Initially, the knights of St Bernard were laymen. They received

their constitution or Rule as Knights Templar, as a reward for their

success in finding the secrets of the Temple. The new organization also

provided protection for the coveted secrets. While the Knights Templar

has always been of considerable esoteric interest, it was the Cistercian

Order that owned the secret and controlled the Knights Templar.

The Cistercians were a monastic order founded in 1098CE at

Cîteaux by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Molesme. St Bernard,

who lived from 1090 to 1153, joined the monastery of Cîteaux in 1113.

Two years later, he became the founding abbot of Clairvaux. The

Cistercians then became the most influential order within the Roman

Catholic Church. Over the next fifteen years, they established more than

three hundred monasteries. St Bernard built sixty-eight of these. The

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number of Cistercian monasteries eventually grew to over seven hundred

throughout Europe, Britain and Palestine.

The mother order of the Cistercians was the Benedictines, created

by St Benedict at Monte Cassino in 529. People commonly called them

black monks because of their black tunic and scapular. In stark contrast,

the Cistercians adopted a white or grey tunic. It was an emblem of the

purity fitting of their Jerusalem discoveries and they became the white

monks.

In April 1310, Brother Aymery of Limoges lodged a defense in

the name of the Knights Templar that highlighted the central role of St

Bernard in establishing the Order on behalf of the Cistercians. He

addressed the Order’s defense to God and said:

1416

Thine Order, that of the Temple, was founded in General Council

in honour of the Sainted and Glorious Virgin Mary, Thy Mother,

by the Blessed Bernard, Thy Holy Confessor, chosen for this

office by the Holy Roman Church. It is he who, with other

upright men, instructed the Order and gave it its mission.

Nine lay French knights, led by Hugues de Payns, excavated

under King Solomon's Temple on Mount Zion in 1118. A decade later, in

1128, the knights returned from Jerusalem in triumph because their

excavations had been extraordinarily successful. St Bernard says he sent

his triumphant knights to Champagne and Burgundy under the protection

of the Count of Champagne:

1417

The work has been accomplished with our help. And the knights

have been sent on the journey through France and Burgundy, that

is to say Champagne, under the protection as we shall see, of the

Count of Champagne, where all precautions can be taken against

all interference by public or ecclesiastical authority; where at this

time one can best make sure of a secret, a watch, a hiding place.

The ingenious St Bernard sent his knights and their precious

charge to the ancient Merovingian region in southern France. They

ultimately hid their Israelite cargo at Mt Cardou near Rennes le

Château.

1418

German miners burrowed out a cache in the mountain for

their treasure.

1419

This is consistent with old traditions that suggest the

Holy Grail rests in a lonely chapel on a mountain.

1420

There is a surprising piece of evidence that precisely confirms the

importance of Mount Cardou: King Philippe IV’s harsh suppression of the

Order exempted the Mallorcan Mas Deus Commandery of Knights

Templar at Bézu who guarded Mount Cardou from nearby Blanchefort

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Castle.

1421

There were a number of preceptories and lookouts that did not

immediately fall to Philippe Le Bel because they were on lands controlled

by nobles. Such areas included Champagne, Lorraine, Savoie, Provence.

In the Pyrennées, the counts of Carcassonne and Toulouse, the nobles of

Barcelona and Aragon, and the Roussillon clans which included the

family Fenouillet controlled areas around Renne le Chateau including

Bézu, Les Triplées, Commes-Sourdes and Lavaldieu.

With the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the Cistercians went

into decline and reform. The Feuillants emerged as a reformed Cistercian

order in 1586. For the sins of their mother Order, they paid the penance

of eating only bread and vegetables seasoned with salt. They drank only

water and the Order permitted no furniture for their comfort. Total

silence, prayer and manual labor occupied their days.

A second group of reformed Cistercians, called the Trappists,

began a similar penance in 1662 and became known as the Cistercians of

the Strict Observance. They devoted themselves to absolute silence,

prayer, reading and manual work. They did not eat meat, fish or eggs.

With the emergence of the Trappists, the original order became the

Cistercians of the Common Observance.

It is certain that at the time the Knights Templar were indicted,

the Cistercians would have been under at least as much pressure and

given up any outstanding secrets to the Pope. Yet, there is no indication

the Cistercians delivered their secrets at any time. Chapter 18 showed

that the Pope was unwilling to help the Knights Templar or even listen to

their secrets. From this we may conclude that the Church already had

knowledge of the great find and considered that the Knights Templar had

nothing further to add to this knowledge. Papal indifference to the

Knights Templar suggests that the secret still lies concealed in the place

where St Bernard's knights originally buried it, at Mt Cardou.

The cellars of the Cistercians and the cache in Mt Cardou near

Blanchefort Castle are not the only repositories of Knights Templar

secrets. The Melchizedek families would have followed their age-old

policy of hiding the secrets in at least three places, as was the Essenes’

policy with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

For example, documentary evidence is also likely to be stored in

the extensive vault of Earl St Clair’s Rosslyn Chapel, five kilometers

south of Edinburgh in Scotland. The Chapel is only seven kilometers

from the ruined Scottish headquarters of the Knights Templar at

Balantrodoch, now called Temple. A foundation for the nave of the

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Collegiate Church extends thirty metres from the west end of the existing

chapel. Construction of the nave never proceeded. The foundation

supported what was below, not what was above.

Before leaving the intriguing subject of the Knights Templar

treasures in of Mount Cardou, it is worth considering that the interior

chapels may contain more than one of the great religious icons. Various

authors speculate that the mountain contains the bones of the Ancient of

Days, the missing Ark of the Covenant or Jesus’ bones.

The next chapter decodes inscription on Lord Anson’s famous

Shugborough Monument, based on a full knowledge of initiation

theology. It confirms the bones in Mount Cardou may indeed be a

surprise for all.

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Chapter 21 Et in Arcadia Ego

In 1744, George Anson (1697-1762) circumnavigated the globe

as naval commander of the Centurion. Over three years and nine months

he collected an immense fortune. He brought unusual plants from China,

including the everlasting Lord Anson's Blue pea. Richard Walter and

Benjamin Robin recounted his famous voyage in their book Anson's

Voyage.

George Anson entered the Royal Navy at fifteen years of age.

Commissioned at twenty-one, Anson commanded his own ship at twenty-

seven. After his epic circumnavigation of the world, the Navy promoted

Anson to rear admiral. His heroic feats led to a stream of decorations.

In 1747, Anson defeated the French fleet off Cape Finisterre. The

Navy elevated Anson to vice-admiral and the King raised him to the

peerage. It seemed no adverse circumstance could shake his rational

calm. One year later Anson achieved full admiral and became a First

Lord of the Admiralty. Incongruously, he then disappointed everyone.

In 1761, only a year before his death, he ascended to the highest

rank, Admiral of the Fleet. In this year, he conveyed the seventeen-year-

old bride of George III¸ Sophia Charlotte, Princess of Mecklenburg-

Strelitz, in the Royal yacht Charlotte from Harwich to Cuxhaven,

Germany. Anson died soon afterwards, in 1762.

Anson’s booty made him one of the richest navy men of the era.

In 1743, he received the fabulous sum of £500,000 as his share of the

treasure of the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga. In 1747, he received

£300,000, from the capture of one of the transports that La Jonquière

forfeited after Anson’s Cape Finisterre victory.

With his fortune, Anson created a magnificent seventeenth

century house and garden at Shugborough Hall, in rural Staffordshire.

Shugborough was the home of his elder brother Thomas, the Earl of

Lichfield.

Anson commissioned James Stuart, the Athenian, to build the

antiquities of Athens in the park. This included replicas of the Lanthorn

of Demosthenes, the Triumphal Arch of Rome, Tower of the Winds, a

Doric Temple, Chinese House, Cat's Monument, a cascade with a

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The Shepherds’ Monument

(Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire)

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colonnade, a Palladian bridge and a Pagoda that is now lost to us. His

Victorian rose garden still has a beautiful collection of rambling roses and

bush roses.

The most unusual antiquity of all is the Shepherd's Monument. It

takes its name from a marble relief based on a painting by Nicholas

Poussin Les Bergers d'Arcadie II (also known as Et in Arcadia Ego)

carved by the Dutch artist, Scheemakers. He sculpted this painting in

mirror-reverse, typical of a bas-relief made from an engraving of the

original painting kept in the Louvre. Reversed back from a mirror image

to normal font, the inscription Et in Arcadia Ego is normal forward text.

Poussin’s painting Les Bergers d'Arcadie II was very important to

the Ansons. In 1751, Thomas Hudson painted Lady Anson holding a

partly rolled copy of an earlier Poussin painting on the same theme known

as Les Bergers d'Arcadie I. The Duke of Devonshire owned the original

Les Bergers d'Arcadie I at the time. He lived at Chatsworth, quite close

to Shugborough. In 1967, an anonymous seller sold Hudson’s portrait of

Lady Anson at Sotheby’s to an equally anonymous buyer. Today,

Chatsworth’s Chapel proudly displays Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s 1660

painting of the Holy Family adjacent to Nicolas Poussin’s Les Bergers

d'Arcadie I. The Holy Family warrants comment because it shows Mary

in a red dress. This is traditionally the symbol for a woman who is no

longer a virgin and Murillo is probably denying the virgin birth. Artists

usually depict Mary Magdalene in a red dress.

The famous Parchment 2 found by Abbé Berenger Sauniere at

Rennes le Château tells of the supper in Bethany at which the recently

raised Lazarus sat at the table with Jesus. It was at this meal that Mary

Magdalene anointed Jesus’ feet with her hair. Abbé Sauniere’s

parchment contained a coded message that included the words Poussin

Teniers hold the key. Sauniere went to great lengths to obtain copies from

the Louvre of Les Bergers d'Arcadie II by Poussin and St Antony and St

Paul by David Teniers. These were the same paintings held at or near

Shugborough one hundred and thirty years before Abbé Sauniere’s 1886

exploits.

David Teniers’ St Antony and St Paul shows the Holy Dove

flying down with the host in its mouth. It is a painting of what the hermit

told Parsifal on his quest for the Grail:

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Its holiest power and its greatest, they shall be renewed today.

For ever upon Good Friday a messenger finds her way.

From the height of the highest heaven a Dove flies on her wings,

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Les Bergers d'Arcadie II (Nicolas Poussin)

St Antony & St Paul (David Teniers the Younger)

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Les Bergers d'Arcadie I (Nicolas Poussin)

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The Arcadian Shepherds (Il Guercino)

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And the Host, so white and holy, this to the stone she brings.

And she lays the Host upon it. And white as His body the Dove

Fulfills her mission and flies on her path to the Heaven above.

Ever upon Good Friday, this happens as you hear from me,

And the stone from the Host receives all good that on Earth may

be,

All food and drink that springs here as abundant as Paradise,

All wild things in wood and water, all that moves below the skies,

To the brotherhood of the Grail are they given, who serve God’s

favor fair.

His servants He feeds for ever, the Grail their needs and care.

The marble relief of Poussin’s Les Bergers d'Arcadie II in the

gardens of Shugborough has some unusual features. Scheemakers

adjusted the hand of the first shepherd so that his finger still pointed to the

word Arca in the inscription Et in Arcadia Ego. Furthermore,

Scheemakers placed a smaller sarcophagus on top of original tomb or

plinth. This new Arca, which is an ossuary or bone container, is ogee

sided with an Egyptian pyramid for its lid.

Scheemakers also introduced a jolly vegetation god under the foot

of the shepherd standing next to the goddess. In the original Les Bergers

d'Arcadie II, this shepherd merely rests his foot on a rock. This barely

perceptible element of Scheemakers tableau would have been highly

risqué for the period because the vegetation god is looking forward to

receiving blood from the sacred marriage of one shepherd with the

goddess that results in an age-old sacrifice.

In fact, the vegetation god is trying to hurry the goddess to

consummation by showing her a very earthy erection. Urged on, the

goddess has begun her encounter by placing her arm on the shoulder of a

shepherd symbolizing that he is the chosen one for rebirth. The shoulder

has always been an important icon of selection. In Greek myth, the

sacrificial king Tantalus set a shoulder before Demeter at a banquet of the

gods.

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Even in Jerusalem, the shoulder was the priestly perquisite.

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Further over to the right is a five-petal dog rose of the goddess

that suggests encounters past.

Most incongruous of all are two simultaneous images of Lord

Anson’s dogs, one holding out his paw. They are in the cloud above the

new ossuary, where one would normally expect the sunburst or

illumination of God.

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Additional Ossary Vegetation God & erection

(from The Shepherds’ Monument)

The Goddess, Demeter (Hecate)

(from Les Bergers d'Arcadie II)

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These irreverent symbols of the sacred marriage remind us of

original purpose of the Et in Arcadia Ego theme. Les Bergers d'Arcadie

II shows a goddess with voluminous robes because she is Demeter or

Hecate. This goddess of truth in death, held a sickle beneath her

garments ready to dispatch the sacrificial king, or a surrogate representing

the dark side of his nature, after he had consummated the sacred marriage.

Originally, the spilled blood of the sacrificial king fertilized the land for

the next year of crops. Much later, it became a personal ritual of renewal

where only the hypothetical base nature died.

The earliest Arcadia painting that uses Virgil’s Et in Arcadia Ego

theme is by Il Guercino of Bologna. Il Guercino painted The Arcadian

Shepherds for Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1618. It shows the smooth

skinned Cain in contemplation about the death of his rough skinned

brother, Abel.

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Abel is the hairy, base side of Cain’s nature. The

vegetation god in Les Bergers d'Arcadie II is the same as the ground god

mentioned in Genesis 4:18 as opening its mouth to receive Abel’s blood

from the hands of Cain.

Il Guercino included a watching owl, the bird of death, to imply

both the passing of time and wisdom in the events of the night. In Les

Bergers d'Arcadie I Poussin transformed the owl into Pan, the universal

god, who pours water to show the passing of time.

In Les Bergers d'Arcadie II Poussin further transforms Pan to a

shepherd-god. This new shepherd has no need of sandals like the mortal-

shepherds who will shortly be involved in the drama.

The drama that will ensue has always been associated with initiation and

renewal under the auspices of the goddess.

Another Et in Arcadia Ego painting in Frederick the Great’s Sans

Souci palace in Potsdam shows only one shepherd with a group of

goddesses. The three goddesses represent the goddess triplet of marriage,

birth and death.

While these various esoteric layers in Poussin’s painting are

important in their own right, we turn to another level of meaning

represented by the additional ossuary and the perplexing letters engraved

below the bas-relief. These letters are D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. The

beginning D and the last M are set on a lower line to the rest of the letters.

Until now, these letters have remained undeciphered.

Julius Caesar’s great saying veni, vidi, vici has always been the

essence of succinctness. It translates as I came, I saw, I conquered. This

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Mirror Reversal of Shepherds’ Monument

and enigmatic letters beneath

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pithy Latin grammar immediately suggests the letters V.A.V.V might also

be an abbreviation of Latin.

A computer readily checks classic Latin sources, forwards and

backwards, for words with this sequence of letters. Such sources are the

Latin Vulgate Bible and the original Latin texts of Virgil’s Aenead and

Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Genesis 50:25 had the sequence in reverse order: visitabit vos

asportate vobiscum. How very appropriate. This is the most important

part of the very last chapter in Genesis, which deals with the Death of

Joseph in Egypt. It expresses Joseph’s request that his expatriate

compatriots in Egypt hide his bones safely outside Egypt.

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There is more in Genesis 50:25 than just the sequence of the four

starting-letters. The initial D precedes these as Deus, or God. Then

another two letters follow, the letters O and M from ossa mea, meaning

my bones. Altogether, seven of the ten letters needed are present.

Genesis 50:25 reads:

Deus visitabit vos asportate vobiscum ossa mea de loco isto

which translates to:

God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my

bones up from this place.

Understandably, Joseph did not want his mummy to remain in

Egypt. Similarly, Joseph swore to his father Jacob that he would to

remove Jacob’s remains from Egypt:

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Jacob lived in Egypt seventeen years, and the years of his life

were one hundred and forty seven. When the time drew near for

Israel to die, he called for his son Joseph and said to him, “If I

have found favour in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and

promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not

bury me in Egypt, but when I rest with my fathers, carry me out of

Egypt, and bury me where they are buried. “I will do as you say”

he said. “Swear to me” he said. Then Joseph swore to him, and

Israel worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

In many instances of biblical prophecy, it seems the priests

recorded prophecy well after the successful completion of the prophesized

act. It is intriguing to contemplate whether this may be the case with the

removal from Egypt of the remains of Jacob and Joseph. That is, their

compatriots removed their bones to Hebron or Jerusalem. In Hebrew,

Hebron is the word Khev’run. Kever in Hebrew and Khab’ru in Sanskrit

both mean tomb.

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Remember, it was Caleb who said:

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I conveyed the Divine Spirit through the water of Jordan to the

level of the vale of Hebron.

Now we can ask, does the Shugborough Monument refer to

taking the patriachs’ bones or mummies to Hebron, and later Jerusalem?

The artist Nicholas Poussin included Mount Cardou in Les

Bergers d'Arcadie II. Various authors have attributed something very

special to this mountain. Its intrigue involves both the mystery of Rennes

le Château and the secret treasure of the Knights Templar. It was to Mt

Cardou, near Rennes le Château, that the resourceful St Bernard sent his

knights with their precious charge. This is where they ultimately hid their

amazing Israelite cargo.

Bertrand de Blanchefort was the fourth Grand Master of the

Knights Templar from 1153CE to 1170CE. He was perhaps the most

significant Grand Master, transforming that organization into a well-

disciplined and powerful political institution. Bertrand involved the

Knights Templars deeply in European politics of the day.

Bertrand de Blanchefort granted the Knights Templar his lands

around Rennes le Château and Castle Blanchefort. The Knights Templar

immediately built in the area and the village of Rennes le Château

evolved as their regional headquarters. Somewhat incongruous as the

center of Christendom, the town’s coat of arms is a Star of David.

Mount Cardou’s gold had been depleted by Roman armies many

years before Bertrand de Blanchefort’s German speaking miners arrived.

Yet they apparently dug for a considerable period. Was this for gold or

did they hollow out a cache of burial chapels in the mountain?

Intriguingly, the miners may have carved the face of a reclining or buried

man on the side of Mount Cardou.

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Genesis 50 deals with the death of Joseph and the dispatch of his

bones to rest with his ancestors in Jerusalem. So perhaps the Knights

Templar found Joseph’s Egyptian mummy under the Temple in

Jerusalem. This explanation is consistent with Shugborough’s inscription

and the additional ossuary with its Egyptian pyramid top.

An exact correspondence between seven of the ten enigmatic

letters and Genesis 50:25 was a good start. Furthermore, the Biblical

verse is a prophecy. Anybody that found the bones would describe the

discovery as past sense. If the Knights Templar found the bones, they

would describe removal of the bones from a threatened Jerusalem to

Mount Cardou:

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The work has been accomplished with our help. And the knights

have been sent … where all precautions can be taken against all

interference by public or ecclesiastical authority; where at this

time one can best make sure of a secret, a watch, a hiding place.

The challenge remained to identify the remaining three letters

S.U.O. The computer could not locate this sequence in biblical verse. A

list of archaic Latin words provided an unexpected answer. U stood for

upilio, the archaic word for shepherd, the theme of the Shepherds’

Monument.

While it is possible that the letter S could stand for sunt or they

are as in my bones they are

dispersed, this necessitates a new phrase with

accompanying verb. It is more likely the letter S represents the adjective

sancta, meaning holy or sacred. With these substitutions the words

sancta ossa upilio mean the shepherd’s holy bones.

This provides an elegant solution to most of the problem:

Deus visitabit vos asportate vobiscum sancta ossa upilio o… m…

meaning:

God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry away

the shepherd’s holy bones o… m…

The letters O.M. remained a hurdle. In the middle of the biblical

verse, these letters stood for ossa mea. However, the hypothetical

solution no longer needed my bones. The bones being were those of

Joseph and perhaps his father Jacob, not my bones but their bones.

Earlier chapters showed that Jacob, or more correctly Iakeb

Aarhu (Jacob on the Ladder) Mer User Ra, was a Hyksos Shepherd king

that reigned immediately before Aa Pehti Set. Many inscriptions on

scarabs attest to him. Ramses II dated the commencement of the reign of

this king Aa Pehti Set. He erected a stele in 1240BCE to commemorate

the four hundredth anniversary of his dynasty commencing with Aa Pehti

Set.

If their bones were those of Jacob and Joseph, the Knights

Templar indeed carried shepherd’s holy bones away from Jerusalem, the

holy bones of a Hyksos Shepherd king and his son. It is quite consistent

with our chronology that the Semitic contingent of Hyksos may have

carried these bones to Jerusalem during the period of Hyksos rule in

Egypt.

The troublesome word beginning with letter M could not be a

word in the middle of the sentence, as it had been in the biblical verse.

The physical layout of the inscription shows it should be an end word. A

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small depression following each letter confirms the forward direction of

the sentence.

The position of the letter M as an end word is also likely because

tracing the inscription yields a St Andrew’s cross. As we have seen, this

was a very important symbol in Lord Anson’s day. A St Andrew’s cross

is the symbol used in old initiation and sacrificial rites to represent

resurrection. It is a symbol of Archangel Michael and the lineage of

Melchizedek Priests. Within the Roman Catholic Church, it is the

Signaculum Dei or Seal of God.

The St Andrews cross is achieved on the inscription by following

the rising diagonal line from D on the lower left to the first V on the top

right, then running right to left across the main row of letters. Finally, a

downward diagonal from the top left O to the bottom right M completes

the cross.

The symmetry implicit in a St Andrews cross would have been

important to Lord Anson. He established a fine garden of dog roses, the

symbol of resurrection of the men of the Plain of Sharon.

Following the small depressions and the St Andrews cross places

the letter M as the first letter of the last word. The preceding word begins

with O.

The right words came once more from the archaic Latin word list:

occulto maneo, which translates as to remain concealed.

At last the whole sequence of letters was in place:

Deus visitabit vos asportate vobiscum sancta ossa upilio occulto

maneo

which means:

God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry away

the shepherd’s holy bones to remain concealed.

Now Lord Anson’s mysterious letters at Shugborough have a

solution. The inscription implies that Lord Anson knew the Knights

Templar found Joseph’s mummy under the Temple in Jerusalem. They

removed it to a shrine in Mount Cardou. Poussin showed it in his famous

painting Les Bergers d'Arcadie II. The shrine may still be there. Possibly

the bones or mummy of Jacob is there as well.

The famous rose line of France supports for this solution. On the

official maps of the day, the rose line passed through Mount Cardou and

the unusual meridienne of Paris’ St Sulpice. Meridiennes are brass

plaques and strips in a church. A ray of sunlight highlights the

meridienne at noon and is used calibrate the village clock.

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St Sulpice’s meridienne is special for three reasons. Firstly, the

eminent English astronomer, Henry Sully (1680-1728), installed it in

1727. Henry, who lies in St Sulpice, spent most of his life on the

Continent. From 1718 he worked under the protection of the Philippe II,

Duc d'Orléans (1674-1723). Philippe came to power in 1715 as Régent

de France, because Louis XV was in his minority.

Henry Sully played a major role in solving the problem of

longitude. Historians regard his 1724 timepiece C as one of the twelve

most important marine timekeepers in the quest for longitude. It pre-

dated John Harrison’s first attempt by 11 years.

Secondly, the St Sulpice meridienne is important because French

astronomers adjusted it in 1744, about the same time Lord Anson was

beginning Shugborough Hall.

Finally, the church of St Sulpice received exceptional artistic

endowments in the century following the installation of its meridienne.

The Abbey of St Germain des Pres established St Sulpice as a peasant

church. In 1732, the authorities decided to remodel it and advertised an

architectural design contest. Florentine architect Servandoni won the

contest with a proposal to change the Graeco-Roman façade to fine

Antique style. Although Servandoni’s designs were adopted, they were

extensively modified by Maclaurin and then by Chalgrin. Twenty artists

worked on the interior murals and the genius of Bouchardon, Pigalle and

Delacroix excelled their work.

The Eugène Delacroix Romantic murals from 1849 to 1861

astound us. As with Henry Sully, Delacroix was supported by a Duc

d'Orléans, Louis Philippe (1773-1850). The French crowned him king

after the 1830 July Revolution. On the vaulting of the first chapel on the

right, Delacroix painted St Michael killing the dragon. St Michael is the

patron saint of Israel and England. On the right wall, Delacroix painted

angels driving Heliodorus, the King of Syria’s minister, from the Temple.

The angels struck him down for coveting the Temple’s treasures. One of

the angels is on horseback, like a Knight Templar. On the left wall,

Delacroix painted Jacob struggling with the Angel of God.

Both the Bourbon and its cadet d'Orléans dynasties were closely

associated with Knights Templar succession. Philippe II, Duc d'Orléans

(1674-1723) signed the famous Larmenius Charter of Transmission in

1705 as Grand Master.

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Louis Bourbon of Maine succeeded him in

1724, followed by Louis de Bourbon-Condé in 1737 and Louis François

Bourbon-Conty in 1741.

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Louis de Bourbon-Condé was also Grand Master of French

Freemasonry. He was succeeded as Grand Master of French Freemasonry

by Louis Philippe-Joseph d’Orleans (1747-1793), father of the Louis

Philippe who supported Delacroix.

The Valois King, Philip VI originally created the Orléans cadet

branch of the Valois family for his son Philippe in 1344. However, Louis

XIV’s brother, Philippe I (1640-1701), Duc d’Orléans founded the house

of Orléans, which is the collateral branch of the Bourbons. The original

Latin name of Aurelianensis highlights that Or in Orléans means gold.

Members of the French royal family frequently used the name

Aurelianensis. Its esoteric meaning is Prince of the Sanctuary, similar to

the fabled Ambrosius Aurelianus of England.

St Sulpice benefited from one hundred years of sponsorship by

the Princes of the Sanctuary, the Dukes of Orléans, Bourbon-Condé,

Knights Templar Grand Masters and French Freemasonry Grand Masters.

Out of this, Henry Sully and Eugène Delacroix delivered us an

extremely impressive church with magnificent images of Jacob, the

defense of the Temple treasure and the patron saint protector St Michael

fighting the internal enemy - directly attached to Mount Cardou by the

rose line!

In the next chapter, we look at the stories of the Holy Grail, in

particular the Didcot Perceval manuscript of about 1200CE, which is now

in the French National Library. The anonymous author claims it is the

story of a monk called Blayse, the most authentic source of all the Grail

stories.

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In this story, Merlin asks Perceval the big question:

What is it that the Grail has served and what is it it serves?

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Chapter 22 The Holy Grail

The Didcot Perceval is one of the most authentic romances of the

Holy Grail. Its name originates from an early owner of the manuscript

called Didcot. In the romance, Perceval’s famous make or break question

is:

What is it that the Grail has served and what is it it serves?

Chapter 19 showed the question-name What is it? stands for the

Philosophers’ Stone, sacred manna or dew. Perceval's unusual question

makes little sense without one of these substitutions. The question then

becomes a strong statement of the Grail's existence. It has supplied

manna throughout history and still does:

Manna that the Grail has served and Manna it serves.

Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail romance Parsifal written in

1220CE identifies the Knights Templar as the protectors of the Holy Grail

and the Grail family. In Wolfram's romance, the Grail is a stone left on

earth by a host of angles. The Grail's wondrous properties include the

capacity to heal and rejuvenate.

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After their Jerusalem discoveries, the Cistercians and Knights

Templar searched everywhere for more information. The Abbot of

Cîteaux, Etienne Harding, was an Englishman credited with formulating

the instrumental Charter of Charity of the Cistercian order. He and St

Bernard committed the whole resources of the Cîteaux to studying their

newly discovered texts.

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To assist their work they engaged rabbis from

High Burgundy in return for political protection. It is probably from this

circumstance that the Kabalistic Rabbis conceived the final books of the

Zohar.

In their search, the Knights Templar also discovered Sufi

chivalric Holy Grail imagery with its associated Order of Knights and

lineage of custodianship. This existed long before medieval times. The

Sufi Master Sohrawardi the Martyr was central in preserving the

endangered culture. Medieval troubadours of the day presented these Sufi

images and stories of the Holy Grail to a thrilled Europe.

With the aid of UNESCO funding, Henry Corbin researched

Sohrawardi's approach to the Holy Grail.

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The Holy Grail around

which Iranian Knights assembled was the Zoroastrian xvarnah or light of

glory. It is identical to the oriflamme, golden flame or flaming gold. The

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light of this flame enabled the Knights to behold Isrâqîyûm, which was

the source of the knowledge of the Orientals.

The Knights Templar also placed a round table with a flame in

the centre of their church.

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Their octagonal church was the traditional

church of the god Q're, the Sumerian KUR and the Moon God Sin. The

oriflamme in the center would have cast eerily magnified shadows of the

knights on the inner wall of the Church or Temple providing a deeply

moving ambience. The Church demolished these octagonal churches to

erase the practices of the Knights Templar and their seemingly occult

philosophies. Temple, at London’s Law Court, is a rare example of a

Knights Templar church.

In Chapter 5, we saw that the Arthurian legends have deep roots

in Iranian speaking tribe of Sarmatian Alans called the Kalybs. In the

Romances of the Holy Grail, Perceval or Parsifal is the same character as

the Iranian Knight Kay Khosraw. Indeed, Kay Khosraw’s legendary

characteristics are the same as those of Cei in the Celtic Mabinogin, Kay

in Norman stories and Lancelot.

Sinai Mysticism of Mount Qâf and Salvat Hill and the hermetic

emerald stone directly integrate Sufi stories and the Holy Grail.

The pursuit of the Holy Grail by Perceval or Kay Khosraw has

more dimensions than solely an alchemical pursuit of the Philosophers'

Stone. As we saw in Chapter 20, the use of the Stone demands a pure

heart. We recall that Samuel Baruch said:

That quintessence is a holy balsam and also a poison. This is all

medicine, and without the help of God it is without fruit, it kills

and destroys.

We turn now to Wolfram’s story to understand the importance of

a pure heart. There was a small introduction to manna and the Grail in

the last chapter, in reference to David Teniers’s painting of St Antony and

St Paul at Shugborough Hall.

Wolfram says he heard his Holy Grail story from Guiot de

Provins a vile and filthy monk in the Holy Land who supposedly belonged

to many Christian and Muslim orders.

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Guiot is sometimes written as

Guyot or Kyot.

Guiot told Wolfram of a heathen named Flegetanis who

worshiped a golden calf and was the original author of the Grail stories.

Flegetanis is Persian for familiar with the stars. Flegetanis says that,

with his own eyes, he saw the Grail and other hidden mysteries in the

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constellations. This is exactly reminiscent of the visions of the Sufi,

Ruzbehan of Shiraz.

Flegetanis is supposedly descended from Solomon, begotten of

Israelite kin from ancient times and to have lived one thousand two

hundred years before Christ. Identifying Flegetanis as worshipping a

golden calf is meant to suggest that he was with Moses in the Exodus at

the time the golden calf Atabyrius was calcinated by Moses and drunk by

the Israelites.

In all likelihood the Sabian School of Thabit ben Qorah was

really the character Flegetanis. This School played a pivotal role in

keeping alive the Iranian traditions of the Holy Grail. This school was

still active in Baghdad at the end of the ninth century and translated the

texts of Hermes Trismegistus from Greek into Arabic.

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Much of the Grail quest is about achieving purity of heart and

understanding the true nature of pure charitable love. Wolfram sees the

Quest as one where the individual struggles toward a sense of

wholeness.

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The Grail expresses the source of this wholeness. In his

prologue, Wolfram says that every act has Good and Evil results. He

says its best to err on the side of good so the natural and spontaneous

man will always choose the Good. This maxim elegantly delineates

Zoroastrianism.

Parsifal’s important question in Wolfram's romance is different to

Perceval's question What is it? in the Didcot Perceval.

Parsifal’s question instead reflects the alternate theme of purity

and true love through empathy with another's pain:

What ailes thee uncle?

It conceals the main theme of the Philosophers' Stone with an

admirable and intricately related alternative of love and charity.

Wolfram’s prologue also alludes to the reason for the difference

between these two interpretations. He says that he obtained the true story

from Mazadan who had the exact record of his family. That record is the

Sufi tradition of Sohrawardi and Mazadan is most likely the Zoroastrian

God Ahura Mazda.

Wolfram’s story is about the achievement of Perfect Nature by an

individual. We see this with Gawain and Parsifal who are twin aspects of

the same individual. Gawain is the perfect knight who represents the

peak of worldly chivalry. Parsifal is the perfect knight within the

transcendental realm of the Fellowship of the Grail.

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Chapter 16 investigated the importance of the color green in

Sufi's philosophy. Green light is the philosopher’s angel.

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Underpinning this is the Sufi belief that there is an angel or heavenly

partner for each of us called Perfect Nature and this angel performs the

function for us of a heavenly witness.

It is the same in Christian theology. God assigns a guardian angel

to each person at birth.

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This angel ministers divine guidance by

bringing God's love and wisdom. The angel guards against the powers of

darkness and bears the individuals prayers to God.

In Sufism, a substance sees and knows only its like. We are our

own Perfect Nature. The Zoroastrian explanation of Perfect Nature

makes the heavenly and worldly aspects of the same being quite clear.

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Our Favareti and our Daena make up our Perfect Nature. Together, they

represent the flame of our being, the Xvarnah. X-File enthusiasts might

see that Dana Scully is Fox Mulder’s protective angel.

Each being has his Favareti in the heavenly world that assumes

the role of a guardian angel, the angel that chooses one’s faith. The

Daena exists within one’s physical being. She represents the visionary

organ of the soul and the light that makes seeing possible. Those who

have the eyes to see can see this light. She is the essential individuality

and the celestially transcendent self. Kundalini yoga visualizes the Daena

as a tongue of flame above the head. It is the final liberation of the spirit

through the sun-door in the dome of the skull.

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The two lights of Favareti and Daena are in addition to the sun.

Robert Fludd, a Rosicrucian writing in the seventeenth century, explains

that the fire of the philosophers had three parts:

A visible fire which is the source of physical light and heat;

An invisible or astral fire which enlightens and warms the soul;

A spiritual or divine fire which in the universe is known as God

and in man as the spirit.

They are the same three rails of the tri-railed papal Cross-of-

Salem that we considered in Chapter 17. The vertical axis is Light. The

top and middle rails are one’s Favareti and Daena, which together

represent the flame of our being, the Xvarnah. The bottom rail is the

worldly or physical self.

The supreme Arcanum or Arcanum arcanorum of Sufism is the

celestial pole and the Most High is the God of the Polestar.

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He sits at

the North Pole of the Heavens, which is the highest celestial spot of the

Cosmos. His floor is made of meteoric iron.

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The floor is rectangular

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and each corner rests on a pillar. Many Freemasons will recognize the

floor of the gods as the tessalated pavement of their lodge.

All arks, chests, tholi domes and rounded hats, especially conical

Phrygian caps with the top turned forward or caps like Mercury’s winged

cap, are emblems of his celestial vault.

The Sufi's object of search is divine light from the North celestial

pole. Palaces there are ablaze with immaterial matter. This blazing light

emanates out of the other good beings that have died and ascended to the

mansions of light. The seeker is a particle of this same light. He finds

himself drawn to this celestial pole at the Corona Borealis.

As we saw in Chapter 17, an initiate must pass through the

luminous darkness that surrounds the Pole to achieve a reunion with his

own dimension of light. Then he must look vertically upwards from the

terrestrial toward the celestial pole. The stairway to heaven is a Jacob’s

ladder. It leads to the constellation of the Bear, Ursus Major. This same

stairway to heaven existed in Dilmun for the Sumerians and Pharaohs of

Egypt.

In the first Chapter, we saw that modern science stumbled onto

the fabled Philosophers' Stone that had evaded the alchemists for

thousands of years. There is of course a considerable amount of disquiet

about this discovery for the reasons Samuel Baruch described in Chapter

20:

This is the great secret of the fathers, this is what God gave them

as a consolation, which they used when they were in plight and

trouble; otherwise they did not use it, because they were satisfied

with the Highest, and with little. This was the masterpiece of the

wise masters with which they prepared everything necessary that

belonged to the Temple.

383

Conclusion

The goal of this book has been to bring the mysteries to life by

tracing the provenance of a single tangible element common to all

Mysteries from time immemorial, which is the Philosophers’ Stone. It

has many forms in different eras, from the ancient alchemy of the

Anatolian Indo-Hittites, Mesopotamians and Egyptians, to the new

sciences of sacred chemistry. It has taken us from Pyramid texts to Ovid,

Shakespeare, Star Wars, Superman and Madonna. The closely associated

story of St George and the Dragon, which represents the Rite of

Righteous, has never varied.

Old Kingdom Pharaohs and priests knew of the Philosophers'

Stone in Egypt from at least the time of Imhotep around 2800BCE. The

Israelites learnt of it in Egypt when they took part in the Hyksos invasion

following provocation by the Pharaoh Sesôstris I.

A nationalist revolt by Ahmose and his brother Kamose expelled

the Hyksos in 1567BCE. The Israelite contingent did not return to

Anatolia but congregated in Palestine and made the ancient sanctuary of

Kadesh, previously known as Salem, into their city of Jerusalem.

An expeditionary force of Tuthmose III captured Jerusalem in

1480BCE. The Pharaoh recovered its treasures and artisans to Egypt.

This was quite probably the enslavement of the Israelites. Ramses II

shows us that Tuthmose III's Jerusalem campaign and his own campaign

to Kadesh on the Orontes River became the primary symbolic act of a

Pharaoh's goodness. Through suppression of the Hyksos peoples, the

Pharaoh reaffirmed the stability of Egypt and his own identification with

Amun.

Nearly two thousand five hundred years after Tuthmose III, a

group of French knights, who were later to become the Knights Templar,

excavated under the temple in Jerusalem and found caches the Romans

had not discovered.

1446

They found Salem hidden records, wealth and

technology. Perhaps they also found the mummies of Jacob and Joseph.

Salem’s technology included the secret double pelican with two

interlocking cucurbits for producing the sacramental Philosophers' Stone.

It was called the Ancient of Days.

The Cistercians owned the secret for a time and created the

Knights Templar as guardians of the physical evidence. Stories of the

important find leaked out to the public as Iranian Sufi inspired romances

384

of the Holy Grail. Both the Cistercians and the Knights Templar became

immensely wealthy in just a few years thanks to privileges and donations

from nobles all over Europe eager to become involved. The Knights

Templar developed into a multinational agricultural, transport, banking

and security group. Eventually these trustees of the secret seemed to

loose touch with their legal beneficiary, the Roman Catholic Church.

The inherent flaw in the Knights Templar was the

Melchizedekian heresy they harbored, which the Roman Catholic Church

had been desperate to eliminate for almost a millennium. This seems to

have included a rejection of Church mysteries in favor of a direct

experience of the ancient mysteries. As priests of the Order of

Melchizedek, they believed themselves to be immortal through rebirth.

Ancient myths also present Pan as Saturn, the one first king and

universal god. Approaching the door of Saturn, the Melchizedek priests

of the Knights Templar may have experimented with arcane sexual

practices as part of the Assassin’s practice of the Greater Mysteries.

These might have been acceptable in Persia or India, but not in Europe.

After the rapid and violent suppression of the Order, its Iranian

chivalric Mysteries and Melchizedek aspirations blended into Scottish

Freemasonry. Rosicrucian traditions from Egypt and Harran fortified the

mysteries. Freemasonry experienced a duality. From the perspective of

Heliopolian cosmology, Rosicrucianism prided itself as the mind of God

or Ra. Craft Freemasonry was the torso of God or Ptah.

The Israelites appear to have refined gold from salts at the time of

Solomon, yet none of the Jewish alchemists, Cistercians, Knights Templar

or Rosicrucians since this time seems to have made the Philosophers'

Stone in any significant quantity.

The Rosicrucians and their Indo-Hittite forbears have

successfully kept a low profile for at least five thousand years, yet the

awareness of this secret substance and the role of the Rosicrucians is

widespread. Notwithstanding an abundance of evidence to the contrary,

the peculiar Jewish position continues to be that there has been no Jewish

involvement in alchemy.

1447

Along the way, great scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and

Paracelsus worked covertly to achieve alchemical success. The world is

much indebted to the alchemists who furthered the sciences of metallurgy,

chemistry and pharmaceuticals. Today we understand chemistry and

metallurgy to a more advanced degree. Respectable scientists fashionably

ridicule the chemistry of the medieval alchemists. They regard the

385

alchemists’ experiments of trial, error and danger as misguided and even

pathetically laughable.

However, the Ouroborus has now come full circle. Alchemy is

itself the rose. While Pharaohs, kings and priests of ancient societies

embraced it as their Kingly Secret, now the modern Philosophers' Stone

has the potential to embrace our whole society. With enough

perseverance and a good laboratory, any of us can make a small quantity

of the Philosophers' Stone, be it by traditional wet alchemy, the high

technology method of Whitegold, the simple method of King Solomon or

the peroxide method of the mining industry.

Yet, this book leaves us with at least one important and

unavoidable question. All the evidence available to our archaeologists

suggests that ancient civilizations did not possess advanced science. We

must therefore ask how the ancients knew of such an important substance

as the Philosophers' Stone. Concrete and Egyptian blue were

rediscovered fifteen hundred years after they were lost. Why does the

Philosophers' Stone remain a mystery?

386

Appendix 1 Preparing the Philosophers' Stone

The Philosophers' Stone is prepared from metallic gold by the

following process developed by David Hudson. The product is

colloquially called "Whitegold" and technically known by the acronym G-

ORME, which stands for the Orbitally Rearranged Metallic Element of

Gold:

1448

1. 50-mg gold (99.99% pure) was dispersed in 200-ml Aqua

Regia to provide clusters of gold atoms.

2. 60 ml concentrated hydrochloric acid was added to the

dispersion and the mixture was brought to boil, and continued boiling

until the volume was reduced to approximately 10-15 ml. 60 ml

concentrated HCl were added, and the sample brought to boil and checked

for evolution of NOCl fumes. The process was repeated until no further

fumes evolved, thus indicating that the nitric acid had been removed and

the gold had been converted completely to the gold chloride.

3. The volume of the dispersion was reduced by careful heating

until the salt was just dry. "Just dry" as used herein means that all of the

liquid had been boiled off, but the solid residue had not been "baked" or

scorched.

4. The just dry salts were again dispersed in Aqua Regia and

steps (2) and (3) were repeated. This treatment provides gold chloride

clusters of greater than 11 atoms.

5. 150 ml 6M hydrochloric acid were added to the just dry salts

and boiled again to evaporate off the liquid to just dry salts. This step was

repeated four times. This procedure leads to a greater degree of sub-

division to provide smaller clusters of gold chloride. At the end of this

procedure an orangish-red salt of gold chloride is obtained. The salt will

analyze as substantially pure Au2Cl6.

6. Sodium chloride is added in an amount whereby the sodium

is present at the ratio of 20-mole sodium per mole of gold. The solution is

then diluted with deionized water to a volume of 400 ml. The presence of

the aqueous sodium chloride provides the salt Na

. The presence

of water is essential to break apart the diatoms of gold.

7. The aqueous sodium chloride solution is very gently boiled to

a just dry salt, and thereafter the salts were taken up alternatively in 200

ml deionized water and 300 ml 6M hydrochloric acid until no further

387

change in color is evidenced. The 6M hydrochloric acid is used in the last

treatment.

8. After the last treatment with 6M hydrochloric acid, and

subsequent boil-down, the just dry salt is diluted with 400 ml deionized

water to provide a monatomic gold salt solution of NaAuCl

'XH

O. The

pH is approximately 1.0.

9. The pH is adjusted very slowly with dilute sodium hydroxide

solution, while constantly stirring, until the pH of the solution remains

constant at 7.0 for a period of more than twelve hours. This adjustment

may take several days. Care must be taken not to exceed pH 7.0 during

the neutralization.

10. After the pH is stabilized at pH 7.0, the solution is gently

boiled down to 10 ml and 10 ml concentrated nitric acid is added to

provide a sodium-gold nitrate. As is apparent, the nitrate is an oxidizer

and removes the chloride. The product obtained should be white crystals.

If a black or brown precipitate forms, this is an indication that there is still

present. If present, it is then necessary to restart the process at

step (1). If white crystals are obtained, the solution is boiled to obtain just

dry crystals. It is important not to overheat, i.e. bake.

11. 5 ml concentrated nitric acid are added to the crystals and

again boiled to where the solution goes to just dry. Again, it is essential

not to overheat or bake. Steps (11) and (12) provide a complete

conversion of the product to a sodium-gold nitrate. No chlorides are

present. 10ml deionized water is added and again boiled to just dry salts.

This step is repeated once. This step eliminates any excess nitric acid that

may be present. The NaAu hydrolyzes with the water and dissociates to

form HAu. The product will be a white precipitate in water. The Au

atoms have water at the surface that creates a voluminous cotton-like

product.

12. The white precipitate is decanted off from any dark grey

solids and filtered through a 0.45-micron cellulose nitrate filter paper.

Any dark grey solids of sodium auride should be redissolved and again

processed starting at step (1).

13. The filtered white precipitate on the filter paper is vacuum

dried at 120°C for two hours. The dry solid should be light gray in color,

which is HAu(XH

O), and is easily removed from the filter paper.

14. The monatomic gold is placed in a porcelain ignition boat and

annealed at 300°C under an inert gas to remove hydrogen and to form a

very chemically and thermally stable white gold monomer.

388

15. After cooling, the ignited white gold can be cleaned of

remaining traces of sodium by digesting with dilute nitric acid for

approximately one hour.

16. The insoluble white gold is filtered on 0.45-micron paper and

vacuum dried at 120°C for two hours. The white powder product

obtained from the filtration and drying is pure G-ORME.

Notes for the Experimenter

1. The acids used in this Patent are highly corrosive and very

dangerous.

2. Wear protective clothing, particularly rubber gloves and eye

goggles.

3. Work outdoors and remain up-wind of all fumes.

4. Do not use any metal at all in the preparation. Instead, use

glass or Teflon spoons and glass containers such as Corning Pyrex.

5. Use a gas burner for heat. Do not use an electric element,

magnetic stirrer or nearby motors.

6. Step (1): dissolve the gold in the Aqua Regia. Once the gold

is dissolved, the process can start right away. It is not a critical step.

7. Steps (2) to (5) convert Au

to Au

. Even though

monotonous, repeat the boiling down and addition of acid about one

hundred times. ‘Just dry’ is very difficult and time consuming. At any

time, stop the process and resume later. Use gentle heat and when

crystallization begins, reduce further. Gold clusters will recombine and

shine in the beaker. When this happens, add more Aqua Regia and boil

down with HCl. Repeat this at least eight times. Each time there should

be less macro-clusters of gold settling out. To speed up the process, filter

out the gold clusters and add them to the Aqua Regia for later attempts.

Eventually, the solution changes from a red acid liquid to dark red-brown

crystals of gold chloride, which produce a purple stain if splashed.

8. Steps (6) to (8): lead to the monotomic salt NaAuCl

.XH

Boil with water, crystallize, add dilute HCl, boil down. Repeat many

times over. If Step 7 is successful, the solution eventually alternates

between the grass Green Lion when concentrated HCl is applied and

citrine yellow gold chloride when the acid is diluted. The final acid

treatment produces the Green Lion if the metal-to-metal gold bonds have

been adequately dissolved. The color will lighten from orange to lemon

yellow and then pale yellow. Larger gold chloride clusters, which have

not broken down, concentrate to a darker orange-red region at the bottom

389

of the yellow liquid. Completely drying the gold chloride solution and

further heating it causes the 33 atom gold molecules to reform. This

defeats the process and the experimenter needs to restart the process.

When no more lightening occurs, decant the colored liquid from the white

crystals and recycle it to the Aqua Regia bottle. Dissolve the remaining

snow-white salt crystal mass in water and use a coffee filter paper to filter

out any remaining gold clusters or large debris. Boil down to ensure there

is no color change due to large clusters still forming. It is essential to

achieve snow-white salt crystals at this stage or the pH adjustment, Step

(9), will fail and Steps (2) to (5) restarted.

9. Step (9): pH adjustment requires patience. The initial

adjustment must not be faster than 2 hours. If you change the pH too

quickly, it will alter the reaction and revert to black, dark blue, brown or

brick red. It is best to adjust slowly over 3 days with constant stirring.

The pH moves a lot at first and then more slowly. Use a non-metallic

stirrer. Except for spot checks, a pH meter is of limited use. The probe

requires frequent rinsing and will eventually fail. Follow the directions in

the patent: bring the solution gently to pH 7.0 and check that it stays there

for 12 hours of stirring.

10. Step (10): is very dangerous. Adding nitric acid to remove

the chlorides of the salt crystals produces thick, brown, noxious fumes.

Work in the open, upwind and away from the fumes.

11. Step (14): It is essential the tube furnace heats to 800 degrees.

Two gas tanks are required, one with argon and the other hydrogen. First

heat the precipitate in the tube furnace in air, which produces brown

oxide. Purge the tube with argon. Heat the product under argron. Slowly

introduce hydrogen and turn off the argon. Allow to cool and slide the

quartz boat back and forth, which turns the brown oxide to black hydride.

This looks like iron filings. The hydrogen is removed to leave a white

powder by repeated heating and cooling under argon: 15-20 minutes in,

then out etc for a number of days. It can be turned-off at night and

restarted the next morning.

12. Step (16): Filter out any black or grey solids with average

filter paper. This may produce a clear liquid instead of the precipitate

mentioned in the patent. Instead of using 0.45micron filter paper that

clogs up immediately with precipitate, boiled down the precipitate to

remove most of the water. The clear water will turn milky and thicken to

hydrogen auride precipitate with water, what the ancients called the

390

semen of God. It tends to splatter so cover the pot and boil gently. The

crystals are purple-grey, off-white.

13. Always return any mistakes to the Aqua Regia bottle, such

over dried dark red chloride clusters. The finished product may appear

"wrong" but do not throw it away. A secret of the process is always to

reuse it as raw material and repeat the process.

14. Monatomics in solution may go to a gas if not stabilized with

salt in the solution.

391

Technical Description of the Process

An Aqua Regia solution of metallic gold is prepared. This

solution contains clusters of gold chlorides of random size and degrees of

aggregation. Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is added to the solution. The acid

is evaporated with a large excess of common salt (NaCl, 20:1 moles Na to

moles Au) to moist salts. Addition of acid and evaporation is carried-out

repeatedly. The addition of NaCl allows the eventual formation of

NaAuCl

, after all HNO

is removed from the solution.

The sodium, like gold, has only one unpaired ‘s’ electron and,

accordingly, tends to form clusters of at least two atoms. The sodium,

however, does not orbitally overlap the gold atom in the ‘d’ band, as it has

no ‘d’ electrons, resulting in a surface reaction between the sodium atoms

and the gold atoms. This results in a weakening of the gold-gold cluster

stability and causes the eventual formation of a sodium-gold linear bond

with a weakened d orbital activity in the individual gold atoms. The

sodium-gold compound, formed by repeated evaporation to salts, will

provide a chloride of sodium-gold. In these salts the sodium and gold are

believed to be charged positive, i.e., have lost electrons: and the chlorine

is negative, i.e., has gained electrons. When the salts are dissolved in

water, the pH slowly adjusted to neutral, full aquation of the sodium-gold

diatom will slowly occur and chloride is removed from the complex.

Chemical reduction of the sodium-gold solution results in the formation

of a sodium auride (NaAu). Continued aquation results in disassociation

of the gold atom from the sodium and the eventual formation of a

protonated auride of gold as a grey precipitate. Subsequent annealing

produces the newly patented G-ORME.

The above general description for the preparation of G-ORME

from commercially available metallic gold is equally applicable to the

preparation of ORMEs from the remaining Transition metals through

reaction with nitric oxide (NO) gas. The Transition metals include

platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium. Nitric

oxide is unique in that it possesses the necessary chemical potential as

well as the single unpaired electron.

392

Appendix 2 Roger Bacon’s Method

Oleo Antimonii Tractatus & Tract De Oleo Stibii.

1449

ROGERII BACONIS ANGLI

Summi Philosophi & Chemici.

Stibium, as the Philosophers say, is composed from the noble

mineral Sulphur, and they have praised it as the black lead of the Wise.

The Arabs in their language, have called it Asinat vel Azinat, the

alchemists retain the name Antimonium. It will however lead to the

consideration of high Secrets, if we seek and recognize the nature in

which the Sun is exalted, as the Magi found that this mineral was

attributed by God to the Constellation Aries, which is the first heavenly

such things are thrown to the winds by common people, intelligent people

ought to know and pay more attention to the fact that exactly at this point

the infinitude of secrets may be partly contemplated with great profit and

in part also explored. Many, but these are ignorant and unintelligent, are

of the opinion that if they only had Stibium, they would get to it by

Calcination, others by Sublimation, several by Reverberation and

Extraction, and obtain its great Secret, Oil, and Perfectum Medicinam.

But I tell you, that here in this place nothing will help, whether

Calcination, Sublimation, Reverberation nor Extraction, so that

subsequently a perfect Extraction of metallic virtue that translates the

inferior into the superior, may profitably come to pass or be

accomplished. For such shall be impossible for you. Do not let yourselves

be confused by several of the philosophers who have written of such

things, i.e. Geber, Albertus Magnus, Rhasis, Rupecilla, Aristoteles and

many more of that kind. And this you should note. Yes, many say, that

when one prepares Stibium to a glass, then the evil volatile Sulphur will

be gone, and the Oil, which may be prepared from the glass, would be a

very fixed oil, and would then truly give an ingress and Medicine of

imperfect metals to perfection. These words and opinions are perhaps

good and right, but that it should be thus in fact and prove itself, this will

not be. For I say to you truly, without any hidden speech; if you were to

lose some of the above mentioned Sulphur by the preparation and the

burning, as a small fire may easily damage it, so that you have lost the

right penetrating spirit, which should make our whole Antimonii corpus

into a perfect red oil, so that it also can ascend over the helm with a sweet

393

smell and very beautiful colors and the whole body of this mineral with

all its members, without loss of any weight, except for the foecum, shall

be an oil and go over the helm. And note also this: How would it be

possible for the body to go into an oil, or give off its sweet oil, if it is put

into the last essence and degree? For glass is in all things the outermost

and least essence. For you shall know that all creatures at the end of the

world, or on the last and coming judgment of the last day, shall become

glass or a lovely amethyst and this according to the families of the twelve

Patriarchs, as in the families of jewels which Hermes the Great describes

in his book: As we have elaborately reported and taught in our book de

Kabbalah.

You shall also know that you shall receive the perfect noble red

oil, which serves for the translation of metals in vain, if you pour acetum

correctum over the Antimonium and extract the redness. Yes not even by

Reverberation, and even if its manifold Beautiful colors show themselves,

this will not make any difference and is not the right way. You may

indeed obtain and make an oil out of it, but it has no perfect force and

virtue for transmutation or translation of the imperfect metals into

perfection itself. This you must certainly know.

AND NOW WE PROCEED TO THE MANUAL LABOUR, AND

THUS THE PRACTICA FOLLOWS.

Take in the Name of God and the Holy Trinity, fine and well

cleansed Antimonii ore, which looks nice, white, pure and internally full

of yellow rivulets or veins. It may also be full of red and blue colors and

veins, which will be the best. Pound and grind to a fine powder and

dissolve in a water or Aqua Regis, which will be described below, finely

so that the water may conquer it. And note that you should take it out

quite soon after the solution so that the water may conquer it. And note

that you should take it out quite soon after the solution so that the water

will have no time to damage it, since it quickly dissolves the Antimonii

Tincture. For in its nature our water is like the ostrich, which by its heat

digests and consumes all iron; for given time, the water would consume it

and burn it to naught, so that it would only remain as an idle yellow earth,

and then it would be quite spoilt.

Consider by comparison Luna, beautiful clean and pure, dissolved

in this our water. And let it remain therein for no more than a single night

when the water is still strong and full of Spirit, And I tell you, that your

good Luna has then been fundamentally consumed and destroyed and

brought to naught in this our water.

394

And if you want to reduce it to a pure corpus again, then you will

not succeed, but it will remain for you as a pale yellow earth, and

occasionally it may run together in the shape of a horn or white

horseshoe, which may not be brought to a corpus by any art.

Therefore you must remember to take the Antimonium out as

soon as possible after the Solution, and precipitate it and wash it after the

custom of the alchemists, so that the matter with its perfect oil is not

corroded and consumed by the water.

THE WATER; WHEREIN WE DISSOLVE THE ANTIMONIUM, IS

MADE THUS:

Take Vitriol one and a half (alii 2. lb.) Sal armoniac one pound,

Arinat (alii Alun) one half pound / Sal niter one and a half pound, Sal

gemmae (alii Sal commune) one pound, Alumen crudum (alii Entali) one

half pound. These are the species that belong to and should be taken for

the Water to dissolve the Antimonium.

Take these Species and mix them well among each other, and

distil from this a water, at first rather slowly. For the Spiritus go with

great force, more than in other strong waters. And beware of its spirits, for

they are subtle and harmful in their penetration.

When you now have the dissolved Antimony, clean and well

sweetened, and its sharp waters washed out, so that you do not notice any

sharpness any more, then put into a clean vial and overpour it with a good

distilled vinegar. Then put the vial in Fimum Equinum, or Balneum

Mariae, to putrefy forty (alii. four) days and nights, and it will dissolve

and be extracted red as blood. Then take it out and examine how much

remains to be dissolved, and decant the clear and pure, which will have a

red color, very cautiously into a glass flask. Then pour fresh vinegar onto

it, and put it into Digestion as before, so that that which may have

remained with the faecibus, it should thus have ample time to become

dissolved. Then the faeces may be discarded, for they are no longer

useful, except for being scattered over the earth and thrown away.

Afterwards pour all the solutions together into a glass retort, put into

Balneum Mariae, and distil the sharp vinegar rather a fresh one, since the

former would be too weak, and the matter will very quickly become

dissolved by the vinegar. Distil it off again, so that the matter remains

quite dry. Then take common distilled water and wash away all sharpness,

which has remained with the matter from the vinegar, and then dry the

matter in the sun, or otherwise by a gentle fire, so that it becomes well

dried. It will then be fair to behold, and have a bright red color. The

395

Philosophers, when they have thus prepared our Antimonium in secret,

have remarked how its outermost nature and power has collapsed into its

interior, and its interior thrown out and has now become an oil that lies

hidden in its innermost and depth, well prepared and ready. And

henceforth it cannot, unto the last judgment, be brought back to its first

essence. And this is true, for it has become so subtle and volatile, that as

soon as it senses the power of fire, it flies away as a smoke with all its

parts because of its volatility.

Several poor and common Laborers, when they have prepared the

Antimonium thus, have taken one part out, to take care of their expenses,

so that they may more easily do the rest of the work and complete it, They

then mixed it with one part Salmiac, one part Vitro (alii. Nitro, alii. Titro),

one part Rebohat, to cleanse the Corpera, and then proceeded to project

this mixture onto a pure Lunam. And if the Luna was one Mark, they

found two and a half Loth good gold after separation; sometimes even

more. And therewith they had accomplished a work providing for their

expenses, so that they might even better expect to attain to the Great

Work. And the foolish called this a bringing into the Lunam, but they are

mistaken. For such gold is not brought in by the Spiritibus (alii.

Speciebus), but any Luna contains two Mark gold to the Loth, some even

more. But this gold is united to the Lunar nature to such a degree that it

may not be separated from it, neither by Aquafort, nor by common

Antimonium, as the goldsmiths know. When however the just mentioned

mixture is thrown onto the Lunam in flux, then such a separation takes

place that the Luna quite readily gives away her implanted gold either in

Aquafort or in Regal, and lets herself separate from it, strikes it to the

ground and precipitates it, which would or might otherwise not happen.

Therefore it is not a bringing into the Lunam, but a bringing out of the

Luna.

But we are coming back to our Proposito and purpose of our

work, for we wish to have the Oil, which has only been known and been

acquainted with this magistry, and not by the foolish.

When you then have the Antimonium well rubified according to

the above given teaching, then you shall take a well rectified Spiritum

vini, and pour it over the red powder of Antimony, put it in a gentle

Balneum Mariae to dissolve for four days and nights, so that everything

becomes well dissolved. If however something should remain behind, you

overpour the same with fresh Spiritu vini, and put it into the Balneum

Mariae again, as said before, and everything should become well

396

dissolved. And in case there are some more faeces there, but there should

be very little, do them away, for they are not useful for anything. The

Solutiones put into a glass retort, lute on a helm and connect it to a

receiver, also well luted, to receive the Spiritus. Put it into Balneum

Mariae. Thereafter you begin, in the Name of God, to distil very leisurely

at a gentle heat, until all the Spiritus Vini has come over. You then pour

the same Spiritum that you have drawn off, back onto the dry matter, and

distil it over again as before. And this pouring on and distilling off again,

you continue so often until you see the Spiritum vini ascend and go over

the helm in all kinds of colors. Then it is time to follow up with a strong

fire, and a noble blood red Oleum will ascend, go through the tube of the

helm and drip into the recipient. Truly, this is the most secret way of the

Wise to distil the very highly praised oil of Antimonii, and it is a noble,

powerful, fragrant oil of great virtue, as you will hear below in the

following. But here I wish to teach and instruct you who are poor and

without means to expect the Great Work in another manner; not the way

the ancients did it by separating the gold from the Luna. Therefore take

this oil, one lot, eight lot of Saturn calcined according to art, and

carefully imbibe the oil, drop by drop, while continuously stirring the calx

Saturni. Then put it ten days and nights in the heat, in the furnace of

secrets, and let the fire that this furnace contains, increase every other day

by one degree. The first two days you give it the first degree of fire, the

second two days you give it the second degree, and after four days and

nights you put it into the third degree of fire and let it remain there for

three days and nights. After these three days you open the window of the

fourth degree, for which likewise three days and nights should be

sufficient. Then take it out, and the top of the Saturnus becomes very

beautiful and of a reddish yellow color. This should be melted with

Venetian Boreas. When this has been done, you will find that the power

of our oil has changed it to good gold. Thus you will again have

subsistence, so that you may better expect the Great Work. We now come

back to our purpose where we left it earlier. Above you have heard, and

have been told to distil the Spiritum vini with the Oleum Antimonii over

the helm into the recipient as well as the work of changing the Saturnum

into gold. But now we wish to make haste and report about the second

tinctural work. Here it will be necessary to separate the Spiritum vini

from the oil again, and you shall know that it is done thus:

Take the mixture of oil and wine spirit put it into a retort, put on a

helm, connect a receiver and place it all together into the Balneum

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Mariae. Then distil all the Spiritum vini from the oil, at a very gentle heat,

until you are certain that no more Spiritus vini is to be found within this

very precious oil. And this will be easy to check; for when you see several

drops of Spiritu vini ascend over the helm and fall into the recipient, this

is the sign that the Spiritus vini has become separated from the oil. Then

remove the fire from the Balneo, though it was very small, so that it may

cool all the sooner. Now remove the recipient containing the Spiritu vini,

and keep it in a safe place, for it is full of Spiritus, which it has extracted

from the oil and retained. It also contains admirable virtues, as you will

hear hereafter.

But in the Balneo you will find the blessed blood red Oleum

Antimonii in the retort, which should be taken out very carefully. The

helm must be very slowly removed, taking care to soften and wash off the

Lute, so that no dirt falls down into the beautiful red oil and makes it

turbid. This oil you must store with all possible precaution so that it

receives no damage. For you now have a Heavenly Oil that shines on a

dark night and emits light as from a glowing coal. And the reason for this

is that its innermost power and soul has become thrown out unto the

outermost, and the hidden soul is now revealed and shines through the

pure body as a light through a lantern: Just as on Judgment Day our

present invisible and internal souls will manifest through our clarified

bodies, that in this life are impure and dark, but the soul will then be

revealed and seen unto the outermost of the body, and will shine as the

bright sun. Thus you now have two separate things: Both the Spirit of

Wine full of force and wonder in the arts of the human body: And then

the blessed red, noble, heavenly Oleum Antimonii, to translate all

diseases of the imperfect metals to the Perfection of gold. And the power

of the Spiritual Wine reaches very far and to great heights. For when it is

rightly used according to the Art of Medicine: I tell you, you have a

heavenly medicine to prevent and to cure all kinds of diseases and

ailments of the human body. And its uses are thus, as follows:

AGAINST PODAGRA or GOUT

In the case of gout one should let three drops of this Spiritu vini,

that has received the power of the Antimony, fall into a small glass of

wine. This has to be taken by the patient on an empty stomach at the very

moment in time when he sense the beginning or arrival of his trouble,

bodily ailment and pain. On the next day and afterwards on the third day

it should also be taken and used in the same way. On the first day it takes

away all pain, however great it may be, and prevents swelling. On the

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second day it causes a sweat that is very inconstant, viscous and thick,

that smells and tastes quite sour and offensive, and occurs mostly where

the joints and limbs are attached. On the third day, regardless of whether

any medicine has been taken, a purging takes place of the veins into the

bowels, without any inconvenience, pain or grief. And this demonstrates a

great power of Nature.

AGAINST LEPROSY

To begin with the patient is given six drops on an empty stomach.

And arrange it so that the unclean person is alone without the company of

any healthy people, in a separate and convenient place. For his whole

body will soon begin to smoke and steam with a stinking mist or vapour.

And on the second day his skin will start to flake and much uncleanliness

will detach itself from his body. He should then have three more drops of

the medicine ready, which he should take and use in solitude on the fourth

day. Then on the eighth or ninth day, by means of this medicine and

through the bestowal of Divine mercy and blessing, he will be completely

cleansed and his health restored.

AGAINST APOPLEXIA OR STROKE

In the case of stroke, let a drop of the unadmixed tincture fall onto

the tongue of the person in need. At once it will raise itself and distribute

itself like a mist or smoke, and rectify and dissolve the struck part. But if

the stroke has hit the body or other members, he should be given three

drops at the same time in a glass of good wine, as previously taught in the

case of Podagra.

AGAINST HYDROPE OR DROPSY

In the case of dropsy give one drop each day for six days in a

row, in Aqua Melissae or Valerianae. On the seventh day give three drops

in good wine. Then it is enough.

AGAINST EPILEPSIA, CATALEPSIA, & ANALEPSIA.

In case of the falling sickness, give him two drops at the

beginning of the Paroxismi in Aqua Salviae, and after three hours again

two drops. This will suffice. But if further symptoms should occur, then

give him two more drops as above.

AGAINST HECTIC

In case of consumption and dehydration, give him two drops in

Aqua Violarum the first day. On the second day, give him two more drops

in good wine.

AGAINST FEVER

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In cases of all kinds of hot fevers, give him three drops in a well

distilled St. Johnswort water or Cichorii at the beginning of the

Paroxismi. Early in the morning on the following day, again give him

three drops in good wine on an empty stomach.

AGAINST PEST

In the case of pestilence give the patient seven drops in a good

wine, and see to it that the infected person is all by himself, and caused to

sweat. Then this poison will, with Divine assistance, do him no harm.

FOR THE PROLONGATION AND MAINTENANCE OF A

HEALTHY LIFE.

Take and give at the beginning and entry of spring, when the sun

has entered the sign of Aries, two drops; and at the beginning with God's

help, be safe and protected against bad health and poisoned air, unless the

incurred disease was predestined and fatally imposed upon man by the

Almighty God.

But we now wish to proceed to the Oleum Antimonii and its

Power, and show how this oil may also help the diseased and imperfect

metallic bodies. Take in the Name of God, very pure refined gold, as

much as you want and think will suffice. Dissolve it in a rectified Wine,

prepared the way one usually makes Aquam Vitae. And after the gold has

become dissolved, let it digest for a month. Then put it into a Balneum,

and distil off the spiritum vini very slowly and gently. Repeat this several

times, as long and as often until you see that your gold remains behind in

fundo as a sap. And such is the manner and opinion of several of the

ancients on how this oil may also help the diseased and imperfect metallic

bodies.

Take, in the Name of God, very pure refined gold, as much as you

want and think will suffice. Dissolve it in a rectified Wine, prepared the

way one usually makes Aquam Vitae. And after the gold has become

dissolved, let it digest for a month. Then put it into a Balneum, and distil

off the spiritum vini very slowly and gently. Repeat this several times, as

long and as often until you see that your gold remains behind in fundo as

a sap. And such is the manner and opinion of several of the ancients on

how to prepare the gold. But I will show and teach you a much shorter,

better and more useful way. Viz. that you instead of such prepared gold

take one part Mercurii Solis, the preparation of which I have already

taught in another place by its proper process. Draw off its airy water so

that it becomes a subtle dust and calx. Then take two parts of our blessed

oil, and pour the oil very slowly, drop by drop onto the dust of the

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Mercurii Solis, until everything has become absorbed. Put it in a vial, well

sealed, into a heat of the first degree of the oven of secrets, and let it

remain there for ten days and nights. You will then see your powder and

oil quite dry, such that it has become a single piece of dust of a blackish

grey color. After ten days give it the second degree of heat, and the grey

and black color will slowly change into a whiteness so that it becomes

more or less white. And at the end of these ten days, the matter will take

on a beautiful rose white. But this may be ignored. For this color is only

due to the Mercurio Solis, that has swallowed up our blessed oil, and now

covers it with the innermost part of its body. But by the power of the fire,

our oil will again subdue such Mercurium Solis, and throw it into its

innermost. And the oil with its very bright red color will rule over it and

remain on the outside. Therefore it is time, when twenty years have

passed, that you open the window of the third degree. The external white

color and force will then completely recede inwardly, and the internal red

color will, by the force of the fire, become external. Keep also this degree

of fire for ten days, without increase or decrease. You will then see your

powder, that was previously white, now become very red. But for the time

being this redness may be ignored (is of no consequence), for it is still

unfixed and volatile; and at the end of these ten days, when the thirtieth

day has passed, you should open the last window of the fourth degree of

fire, Let it stay in this degree for another ten days, and this very bright red

powder will begin to melt. Let it stay in flux for these ten days. And when

you take it out you will find on the bottom a very bright red and

transparent stone, ruby colored, melted into the shape of the vial. This

stone may be used for Projection, as has been taught in the tract on

Vitriol. Praise God in Eternity for this His high revelation, and thank Him

in Eternity. Amen.

ON THE MULTIPLICATION LAPIDIS STIBII.

The ancient sages, after they had discovered this stone and

prepared it to perfect power and translation of the imperfect metals to

gold, long sought to discover a way to increase the power and efficiency

of this stone. And they found two ways to multiply it: One is a

multiplication of its power, such that the stone may be brought much

further in its power of Transmutation. And this multiplication is very

subtle, the description of which may be found in the Tract on Gold. The

second multiplication is an Augmentum quantitatis of the stone with its

former power, in such a way that it neither loses any of its power, nor

gains any, but in such a manner that its weight increases and keeps on

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increasing ever more, so that a single ounce grows and increases to many

ounces. To achieve this increase or Multiplication one has to proceed in

the following manner: Take in the Name of God, your stone, and grind it

to a subtle powder, and add as much Mercurii Solis as was taught before.

Put these together into a round vial, seal with sigillo Hermetis, and put it

into the former oven exactly as taught, except that the time has to be

shorter and less now. For where you previously used ten (alii thirty) days,

you may now not use more than four (alii ten) days. In other respects the

work is exactly the same as before. Praise and thank God the Almighty

for His high revelation, and diligently continue your prayers fir His

Almighty Mercy and Divine blessings of this Work and Art as well as His

granting you a good health and fortuitous welfare. And moreover, take

care always to help and counsel the poor.

LAVS DEO OMNIPOTENTI NOTA.

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Appendix 3 King Solomon's Method

The following method is an edited summary of an anonymous

article entitled Simple Methods of Making Monatomic Gold.

1450

It has the

following disclaimers:

New information regarding monatomic elements has been made

available to this forum and the world. This information comes from a

scientist who wishes to remain anonymous. It is the wish of this scientist

that this information be made freely available and that his anonymity be

protected. His expertise is in the field of metallurgy and mining and he

holds degrees in five different physical sciences. He has been working

with the monatomic precious elements since 1980.

The author of this post does not claim that all of this information

is accurate or even that any of it is true. It may contain errors and be

incomplete in places.

Any unknown material should be subjected to a 98 element scan

prior to conversion to m-state material for ingestion.

King Solomon's Method

King Solomon’s people swept up the white material present when

a lake dries. They did not dig because they only wanted the material on

the surface. They fired this material with sulfur, put silver on top of it and

mixed in iron. Using this method and a reverberatory furnace, they

poured 100,000 talents of gold.

Both damp evaporated salts and water from the Dead Sea produce

a quantity of precipitate. Reconstituted Dead Sea salt water is far more

concentrated, produces a much greater amount of precipitate and requires

much more lye (dilute NaOH) to bring it up to the desired pH level.

The procedure for extracting monatomic elements from dry

material such as sweepings from salt and alkali flats, rock powders, etc. is

as follows:

1. Grind the dry material to as fine a consistency as possible.

2. Add lye to cover the dry material with a thin layer and stir in

distilled water sufficient to cover both by approximately 50mm.

3. Bring to boil outdoors where caustic fumes can escape. The

pH should be at or slightly above 12. Replace water as needed to

maintain sufficient reactant volume.

4. Maintain at boiling temperature for four hours, the longer the

better.

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5. Allow the slurry to settle overnight. Strain the slurry through

3 to 5 layers of coffee filters to remove the toxic elements (Gilcrest

precipitate) that precipitate above pH 10.78. Save the liquid that passes

through the filters, which is m-state material and Mg(OH)2 in solution.

6. Titrate the liquid that passes through the coffee filters to a pH

of 8.5 with hydrochloric acid while stirring. This causes m-state and

Mg(OH)2 to precipitate. The titration must be slow with thorough

mixing. If you go too far, the pH will abruptly shift and you will have to

start over by adding lye quickly to bring the pH back up to 12 and return

to Step (5) above.

7. To eliminate the Mg(OH)2, continue lowering the pH with

acid to pH 5-6 to dissolve both the m-state precipitate and Mg(OH)2

precipitate.

8. Add lye to raise pH to 8.5-8.7. Then the m-state will

precipitate, but the Mg(OH)2 will remain in solution.

The ancient process of converting monatomic matter to metal.

1. Filter, rinse, and dry the precipitate from the above processes.

2. Prepare a crucible for the furnace with layers of materials in

accordance with the following diagram. Sulfur reduces the monatomic

materials to metal. For example, no monatomic material is precipitated

from hot springs that contain sulfur while a considerable amount can be

precipitated from hot springs that do not contain sulfur.

|_________|

|_________|--Iron metal

|_________|--Sodium Carbonate

|_________|--Silver metal

|_________|--Sodium Carbonate

| |

\_______/ -- Monatomic state

mixed with Sulfur

3. Fire this mixture at 2200 degrees Centigrade. It appears that

doing this in the contained magnetic field of an induction furnace

produces better results than using other heat sources.

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Appendix 4 The Virgin of the World

Thrice Greatest Hermes’ Sacred Book, Virgin of the World,

describes the creation of the world as an alchemical process and finding

the Philosophers’ Stone in the compost:

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1. So speaking Isis doth pour forth for Horus the sweet draught

(the first) of deathlessness which souls have been accustomed to receive

from Gods, and thus begins her discourse (logos): …

6. And Nature, O my son, was barren, till they who were then

under the orders to patrol the Heaven, approaching the God of all, their

King, reported on the lethargy of things. The time was come for the

cosmos to awake, and this was no-one’s task but His alone. “We pray

Thee, then”, they said, “direct Thy thoughts to things that now exist and

to what things the future needs.”

7. When they spake thus, God smiled and said: “Nature arise!”

And from His word there came a marvel, feminine, possessed of perfect

beauty, gazing at which the Gods stood all amazed. And God the

forefather, with the name of Nature, honored her, and bade her be prolific.

Then gazing fixedly on the surrounding space, He spake these words as

well: “Let Heaven be filled with all things full, and Air, and Æther, too!”

God spake and it was so. And Nature with herself communing knew she

must not disregard the Sire’s command; so with the help of Toil she made

a daughter fair, whom she did call Invention. And on her God bestowed

the gift of being, and with his gift He set apart all them that had been so-

far made, filled them with mysteries, and to Invention gave the power of

ruling them.

8. But He no longer willing that the world above should be

inert, but thinking good to fill it full of breaths, so that its parts should not

remain immotive and inert, He thus began on these (breaths or spirits)

with the use of holy arts as proper for the bringing forth of His own

special work. For taking breath from His own Breath [Antimony] and

blending this with knowing Fire [Porphyry, meaning Gold or Copper-

Gold], He mingled them with certain other substances which have no

power to know; and having made the two – either with other – one, with

certain hidden words of power. He thus set all the mixture going

thoroughly; until out of the compost smiled a substance, as it were, far

subtler, purer far, and more translucent than the things from which it

405

came; it was so clear that none but the Artist could detect it [the

Philosophers’ Stone].

9. And since it neither thawed when fire was set unto it (for it

was made of Fire), nor yet did freeze when it had once been properly

produced (for it was made of Breath), but kept its mixture’s composition a

certain special kind, peculiar to itself, of special type and special blend –

(which composition, you must know, God called Psychosis, after the

more auspicious meaning of the name and from the similarity of its

behavior) – it was from this coagulate He fashioned souls enough in

myriads [projection], molding with order and with measure the

efflorescent product of the mixture for what He willed, with skilled

experience and fitting reason, so that they should not be compelled to

differ any way one from another.

406

Appendix 5 Bacon's Description of the Goddess

Description of the Queen, General Curse, and Sir Francis Bacon's Life

from Cipher Story Discovered and Deciphered by Orville W. Owen MD,

Vol 1, 1893: Lines 100 to 170 of 4600:

The first time that her I saw

She was a fair young lioness,

White as the native rose before the change.

Upon her head, as fit her fortune best,

She wore a wreath of laurel, gold and palm,

And on her forehead ivory the golden crown.

Upon her naked breast there shin'ed a golden star.

Her robes of purple and of scarlet dye,

Her veil of white, as best befits a maid,

A thousand blushing apparitions started in her face,

A thousand innocent shames in angel whiteness

Bore away those blushes;

And in her eye there did appear a fire

To burn the errors that princes held

Against her maiden truth.

About her danced girls who upon her threw

Sweet flowers and fragrant odors

That afar did smell.

She was of stature tall and graceful shape,

With countenance majestic, but whose pride

Depraves each better part,

And all those other precious ornaments deface.

Her sweet, fair, placid face

Was of such wondrous beauty,

That nature wept thinking she was undone

Because she took more from her than she left.

And when I beheld this beauty's wonderment,

This rare perfection of nature's skill,

I honoured and admired the maker's art.

But when I felt the bitter, baleful eyes

That death-dart out of their shiny beams,

I thought that I a new Pandora saw

Whom all the gods in counsel did agree

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Into this sinful world from heaven to send,

That she to men should be a wicked scourge.

For all the virtues of imposing power

That are the work of nature or of art,

Were here advanc'd and set in highest seat,

And so temper'd the features of her face

With light and shade,

That pride and meekness mixed in equal parts.

She was far more beauteous, 'rich'd

With the pride of nature's excellence,

Than Venus in the brightest of her days.

Her hair did Apollo's locks surpass.

A hair stands not amiss,

And the costly curious tire carrying a net

(Wherein her curled locks entangeld gravest men)

Mended in her face what nature missed.

But she to cross nature's curious workmanship,

Did mingle beauty with infirmity

And pure perfection with impure defeature;

For in her later age pride, like a corn-fed steed,

Her advanc'd, making her subject

To the tyranny of mischances mad

And much misery,

As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,

Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wo'd

The marrow-eating sickness whose attaint

Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;

For she to all licentious lust

'Gan to exceed the measure of her mean

And natural first need

Till, like a jade self willed, herself doth tire

By black lust, dishonour, shame and misgoverning,

For she was guilty of perjury and subornation;

Guilty of treason, forgery and shift;

Guilty of incest, that abomination;

Guilty of murder and of theft,

And accessory by inclination

To all sins past and all that are to come,

From the creation to the general doom.

408

Appendix 6 Ovid's Metamorphoses

From the METAMORPHOSES by Ovid, translated into English

verse under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander

Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and other eminent hands.

5.1 The Labyrinth

Now Minos, landed on the Cretan shore,

Performs his vows to Jove's protecting pow'r;

A hundred bullocks of the largest breed,

With flowrets crown'd, before his altar bleed:

While trophies of the vanquish'd, brought from far

Adorn the palace with the spoils of war.

Meanwhile the monster of a human-beast,

His family's reproach, and stain, increas'd.

His double kind the rumour swiftly spread,

And evidenc'd the mother's beastly deed.

When Minos, willing to conceal the shame

That sprung from the reports of tatling Fame,

Resolves a dark inclosure to provide,

And, far from sight, the two-form'd creature hide.

Great Daedalus of Athens was the man

That made the draught, and form'd the wondrous plan;

Where rooms within themselves encircled lye,

With various windings, to deceive the eye.

As soft Maeander's wanton current plays,

When thro' the Phrygian fields it loosely strays;

Backward and forward rouls the dimpl'd tide,

Seeming, at once, two different ways to glide:

While circling streams their former banks survey,

And waters past succeeding waters see:

Now floating to the sea with downward course,

Now pointing upward to its ancient source,

Such was the work, so intricate the place,

That scarce the workman all its turns cou'd trace;

And Daedalus was puzzled how to find

The secret ways of what himself design'd.

These private walls the Minotaur include,

Who twice was glutted with Athenian blood:

409

But the third tribute more successful prov'd,

Slew the foul monster, and the plague remov'd.

When Theseus, aided by the virgin's art,

Had trac'd the guiding thread thro' ev'ry part,

He took the gentle maid, that set him free,

And, bound for Dias, cut the briny sea.

There, quickly cloy'd, ungrateful, and unkind,

Left his fair consort in the isle behind,

Whom Bacchus saw, and straining in his arms

Her rifled bloom, and violated charms,

Resolves, for this, the dear engaging dame

Shou'd shine for ever in the rolls of Fame;

And bids her crown among the stars be plac'd,

With an eternal constellation grac'd.

The golden circlet mounts; and, as it flies,

Its diamonds twinkle in the distant skies;

There, in their pristin form, the gemmy rays

Between Alcides, and the dragon blaze.

5.2 The Death of Hyacinth

Phoebus for thee too, Hyacinth, design'd

A place among the Gods, had Fate been kind:

Yet this he gave; as oft as wintry rains

Are past, and vernal breezes sooth the plains,

From the green turf a purple flow'r you rise,

And with your fragrant breath perfume the skies.

You when alive were Phoebus' darling boy;

In you he plac'd his Heav'n, and fix'd his joy:

Their God the Delphic priests consult in vain;

Eurotas now he loves, and Sparta's plain:

His hands the use of bow and harp forget,

And hold the dogs, or bear the corded net;

1452

O'er hanging cliffs swift he pursues the game;

Each hour his pleasure, each augments his flame.

The mid-day sun now shone with equal light

Between the past, and the succeeding night;

They strip, then, smooth'd with suppling oyl, essay

To pitch the rounded quoit, their wonted play:

A well-pois'd disk first hasty Phoebus threw,

It cleft the air, and whistled as it flew;

410

It reach'd the mark, a most surprizing length;

Which spoke an equal share of art, and strength.

Scarce was it fall'n, when with too eager hand

Young Hyacinth ran to snatch it from the sand;

But the curst orb, which met a stony soil,

Flew in his face with violent recoil.

Both faint, both pale, and breathless now appear,

The boy with pain, the am'rous God with fear.

He ran, and rais'd him bleeding from the ground,

Chafes his cold limbs, and wipes the fatal wound:

Then herbs of noblest juice in vain applies;

The wound is mortal, and his skill defies.

As in a water'd garden's blooming walk,

When some rude hand has bruis'd its tender stalk,

A fading lilly droops its languid head,

And bends to earth, its life, and beauty fled:

So Hyacinth, with head reclin'd, decays,

And, sickning, now no more his charms displays.

O thou art gone, my boy, Apollo cry'd,

Defrauded of thy youth in all its pride!

Thou, once my joy, art all my sorrow now;

And to my guilty hand my grief I owe.

Yet from my self I might the fault remove,

Unless to sport, and play, a fault should prove,

Unless it too were call'd a fault to love.

Oh cou'd I for thee, or but with thee, dye!

But cruel Fates to me that pow'r deny.

Yet on my tongue thou shalt for ever dwell;

Thy name my lyre shall sound, my verse shall tell;

And to a flow'r transform'd, unheard-of yet,

Stamp'd on thy leaves my cries thou shalt repeat.

The time shall come, prophetick I foreknow,

When, joyn'd to thee, a mighty chief shall grow,

And with my plaints his name thy leaf shall show.

While Phoebus thus the laws of Fate reveal'd,

Behold, the blood which stain'd the verdant field,

Is blood no longer; but a flow'r full blown,

Far brighter than the Tyrian scarlet shone.

A lilly's form it took; its purple hue

411

Was all that made a diff'rence to the view,

Nor stop'd he here; the God upon its leaves

The sad expression of his sorrow weaves;

And to this hour the mournful purple wears

Ai, Ai, inscrib'd in funeral characters.

Nor are the Spartans, who so much are fam'd

For virtue, of their Hyacinth asham'd;

But still with pompous woe, and solemn state,

The Hyacinthian feasts they yearly celebrate.

412

Appendix 7 Crata Repoa

Manly P Hall describes the provenance of the Crata Repoa:

1453

The Crata Repoa is made up of fragments from many ancient

authors. The unknown compiler had as his purpose a restoration of the

ancient Mysteries based upon the hints and illusions contained in classical

writings. Most of the great philosophers of antiquity were initiates of

State Mysteries. In their writings, these men frequently allude to some

fragment of the initiatory rites. These hints have been carefully

organized, placed in sequential order, and connected with an editorial

tissue. The result is a restoration founded on the actual words of the

initiates themselves.

The seven degrees of initiation described in the Crata Repoa

equate to the last seven stages of the Great Work of Alchemy. There are

twelve stages altogether. The first four are preparatory, the fifth is a

threshold to the three degrees of the Lesser Mysteries that teach the

Humanities.

1454

The final four degrees are the Greater Mysteries of the

great manifestation of Light. These latter Mysteries teach love or agape

in the sense of charity. The steps of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries are:

Preparation and Threshold

Circumcision and meditation.

The Lesser Mysteries

1. Led by the Thesmophores (Guide or Tester) to the Gate of

Men, the Candidate is initiated as a Pastophoris (Apprentice). Having

taken an oath, light is restored to him and he is placed between two square

columns. Between the columns is a ladder with seven steps and an

allegorical figure portraying eight doors. The Hierophant (Teacher)

exhorts the Pastophoris to guard his prejudices and passions that might

draw him from the road to happiness. The Pastophoris then ascends the

ladder and is taught that it is a symbol of alchemical transmutation or

Metempsychosis. He is then given the word of recognition, taught the

handgrip and dressed in a hood, apron and collar with tassels. His duty is

then to guard the Gate of Men.

2. After a year of Apprenticeship, the Pastophoris is feasted by

beautiful temple virgins and invited to make love to them. He must prove

he has command over his desires. If worthy, the Thesmophores (Guide or

Tester) then addresses more questions and if found satisfactory, the

candidate is introduced to the Assembly. There he is sprinkled with water

413

by the Stolista (Baptiser) and accepted as a Neocoris (Craftsman). His

courage is then tested with a live serpent being thrown over him and he is

made to imagine the chamber is filled with serpents. If his courage is

proven, the Neocoris is led to two pillars with a griffin between, pushing a

spoked-wheel representing the four seasons and earth, water, air and fire.

There he is invested with a caduceus, taught the word of the degree and

taught of the fall of the human race. He was instructed in architecture,

geometry, mathematics and measures. His duty was to wash or anoint the

pillars.

3. When meriting the next degree of a Melanophoris (Master

Mason), the candidate was led underground through the Gate of Death to

a gloomy crypt containing the coffin of the assassinated Osiris. The new

Melanophoris was then led into the presence of the Pharaoh, where all the

other Melanophoris were assembled. The Pharaoh offered him a crown

of gold representing material power and wealth. The Melanophoris was

to reject and trample on this crown in order to gain the spiritual crown of

truth, morality and virtue. This incurred the wrath of the Pharaoh and the

Melanophoris suffered accordingly. Brought back with a peculiar

embrace expressing the power of death, the Melanophoris was given the

word Monach Caron Mini meaning I count the days of anger. The term

of anger is the time needed to master one’s own base or animal soul. He

was then instructed in alphabet, drawing, painting and rhetoric. He was

also taught the history, geometry and astronomy of Egypt. His work was

to attend upon the dying and dead.

The Greater Mysteries

4. After eighteen months the resurrected adept was invited to the

Greater Mysteries. He is then known as Moses, meaning He who is

drawn out of the waters (as were all new-born Sun gods such as the

Indian Agni or Surya, the Greek Perseus, Finnish Kullervo, Romulus and

Welsh Taliesin). Armed with a sword and shield, the Moses has then to

fight his way through labyrinth galleries where masked men with flames

and serpents attacked him. He was then led blindfolded to the Hall of

Maat. Maat is the goddess who represents the full illumination of the

human soul. She was represented by a white ostrich feather or jar. In the

Hall of Maat he was presented to the Pharaoh and Officers of the Society

and there made a Chistophores. They set his arms and legs spread eagle,

the Phoenix position. This was a posture similar to the St Andrew’s cross

used in the old rites as the symbol of resurrection. He then drank a cup of

bitter herbs and was dressed in buskins and a mantle, invested with the

414

armour and weapons of God. The bitter cup is a play on the meaning of

Miriam or the goddess Venus as Miriam means bitter as well as the mare

or sea.

He was to use his weapon to strike off the head of the beautiful

but dangerous female aspect of Chaos, the Gorgon Medusa, whose head

he presented to the Pharaoh.

1455

In return, the Pharaoh recorded the

Chistophores in the Book of Adepts of Egypt. He received with new

robes for his spiritual body, tied about the waist by a cord representing

truth, life and brotherhood. This cord was tied in a half bow or Ankh

representing the strength and frailty of the brotherhood. The

Chistophores was presented with the Code of Laws and the emblem of an

owl representing Isis, later Athena for the Greeks and Minerva for the

Romans. He was taught the secret Ammonitish language and sciences of

the human soul. The new Chistophores became a courtier, sustained by

the court and able to communicate freely with the Pharaoh.

5. The Chistophores could then demand the degree of a Balahate

or Philosopher. He was seated as the sole spectator to a drama where

Horus slays and beheads the hundred-headed dragon, Typhon. In silence

Horus exhibits the vile head emblematic of the mastery of ones own base

nature. The new Balahate was then given the word Chymia and taught

the skills of Alchemy.

6. The aspiring Chistophores was led in irons to the Gate of

Death through which a crypt was filled with water. He was rowed across

in the Barque of Caron and received by the Assembly. There he was

made a Maawr, meaning Seer or Priest of Astronomy, and received the

history of the gods. He was told of the One God from whom they all

emanate. The new Maawr was then taken to the Gate of the Gods and

presented to the pantheon. There the Demiurgos (Chief Prophet and

Initiator) taught him the secret history of Egypt, the world and the

universe. He received the history of the Society, its Order and a list of all

Chief Inspectors of the Society and members throughout the world. He

was then instructed in astronomy and the Priestly Dance of the movement

of the stars and constellations. The word of the degree was Ibis, the

symbol of the wise god Thoth.

7. Entry to the final degree was by invitation from the Pharaoh.

A grand reception was arranged for the Maawr and it formed a public

procession called the Pamylach, meaning circumcision of the tongue

representing the higher self. Formerly, the Maawr’s penis was

circumcised as a sign of purification of the lower self. At the end of the

415

procession an Assembly was held in a special room called the Maneras,

meaning the house of Manes with equivalence to the Indo-Hittite god-

king Manu. There the Maawr was made a Saphenath Pancah or Man

who knows the Mysteries. He drank of the Cup of Sweetness, the

heavenly ambrosia beverage Oimellas, and was told that he had arrived at

the end of all the proofs. He received an Ankh to wear on his heart,

meaning that he had become a life source or life bestowing spirit for

others. He also received a beautiful striped robe called the Etangi

representing the blazing White Light of the illumination and discipline in

which he lived.

His head was next shaved with a square coiffure, called the

tonsure. Together with the skull, the tonsure forms a squared circle:

1456

...the squaring of the circle was a problem that greatly exercised

medieval minds. It is a symbol of the opus alchymicum, since it breaks

down the original chaotic unity into the four elements and then combines

them again in a higher unity.

The tonsure therefore represented the third eye. It was based on

releasing the spiritual consciousness through the Gate of the Gods. These

are the two small holes in the skull called the parietal foramina.

The Saphenath Pancah was then given a complete explanation of

the Mysteries and permission to read the Books of Hermes, including the

royal key to the scriptures of other nations. The greatest attribute he

received was the right to vote in the election of Pharaoh and it was from

his new rank that the Officers of the Society were drawn. The Pharaoh

represented the mind of God, Ptah.

1457

These Officers of the Society

represented Ra, or the body of God, and governed the four main temples

of Egypt, Hermopolis, Memphis, Heliopolis and Thebes.

416

Appendix 8 The Perfect Pyramid

The following calculations show that the Perfect Pyramid is a

function of the Golden Ratio.

The Perfect Pyramid

Let: s = side length

k = side face height measured from the apex to the

ground

h = vertical height of pyramid

A = Area of a side face

Pythagoras’ Rule provides the side face height (k):

(1) k

= (s/2)

+ h

(2) k =

/4 + h

)

Area of a side face (A):

(3) A = ½ .s.k (area is half the base times the

height)

From (2):

(4) A = ½ .s.

/4 + h

)

The Perfect Pyramid built as the Great Pyramid of Giza is special

because of a particular constraint. In history, only Herodotus has alluded

to it.

1458

The key is that the area of a side face is equal to the square of the

height of the pyramid. Herodotus’ statement turns on the translation of

the Greek word epipol

s, which means either in elevation, by the lateral

surface or simply in surface.

1459

(5) A = h

equating (5) with (4):

417

= ½ .s. (s

/4 + h

)

and rearranging to make the apex height (h) the dependant

variable:

= ¼ .s

.(1 + 5)/2

Now (1 +

5)/2 is the Golden Ratio so:

= ¼ .s

So the unique formula for a Perfect Pyramid is that the square of

the height divided by the square of the side length is equal to the Golden

Ratio divided by four:

(6) h

= /4

= 0.404508

h/s = 0.63601

The inverse of h/s is 1.5723. This approximates to

(1.618) with

an error of only 2.8%. Thus the ratio of the side to the height of the

Perfect pyramid is also the Golden Ratio

The area of all four faces is:

Area of all four Faces = 4.A

Applying the key of Herodotus (5): A= h

Area of all four Faces = 4. h

Substituting (6) h

= /4

Area of all four Faces =

. s

Since the Area of the Base of the Pyramid is s

Area of all four Faces =

x Area of the Base of the

Pyramid

Thus the Area of all four Faces is purely a ‘replication’ of the

Base by the Golden Ratio. Isis was the Goddess of replication and this

equation explains why she was described as Mistress of the Pyramid in

the Inventory Stele discovered in 1800 CE by Auguste Mariette. The

Great Pyramid was the mathematically pure womb of Isis for regeneration

of the king as Horus.

418

On rearrangement the equation becomes:

= Area of all four Faces / Area of the Base of the Pyramid

This means that the area of the Base and the sum of the area of

the side faces provide the Golden Ratio. The only measurements

necessary are Side length and Side height. This is vividly shown in two

dimensions if the Perfect Pyramid is laid flat. The result is a Cross Patteé,

the insignia granted to the Knights Templar by Pope Eugenius III in

1146.

1460

The Knights’ Templar mantle with the Cross Patté was

therefore a visible and perfect calculation of the Golden Ratio and symbol

of the Perfect Pyramid.

Cross Patté.

The Golden Ratio is not the only primary constant inherent in the

perfect Pyramid. While the Perfect Pyramid has no need for the

knowledge of

, nor precisely demonstrates , it is the case that ‘2/ ’ is an

arbitrary value very close to the perfect value for ‘h/s’ in (6) above of

0.63601. The exact value of ‘2/

’ is 0.63662 so the error is very small

indeed, only 0.096%.

Squaring the Circle

Using the dimensions of the side length and pyramid height, the

approximation ‘h/s

2/ ’ provides a good physical estimate of both the

Golden Ratio and

(7)

2.s/h

This equation can be interpreted as relating the

perimeter of a circle with radius ‘h’ to the perimeter of

the square base ‘4.s’:

(8) 2

h 4.s

In other words, in an elevation view, the

vertical circle drawn through the apex of the pyramid, having its centre at

419

the middle of the pyramid’s base on the ground plane has the same

perimeter as that base in plan view. The error is 0.096%.

We can even proceed a little further to find a solution to the

classic problem of ‘Squaring the Circle’. This is to find a technique of

drawing a circle with the same area as a given square, using only

geometric means. It has engaged mathematicians for many thousands of

years.

1461

Again, let the Perfect Pyramid be laid flat so the

sides splay into a Cross Patté. The area of a circle

inscribed within the Cross Patté is:

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle =

(pi x radius squared)

Substituting (1): k

= (s/2)

+ h

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle =

[(s/2)

+ h

]

[¼ + h

]

Substituting (6): h

= /4

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle =

[¼ + /4]

= ¼ .

[1 + ]

The exceptional property of the Golden Ratio is that:

1 +

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle = ¼ .

[

]

Since the Area of the Base of the Perfect Pyramid is the side

length squared, s

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle = [¼ .

] x Area of Base

The value of [¼ .

] is 2.056199, almost the integer two.

Substituting the approximate value of two for [¼ .

] simplifies the

equation to:

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle

2 x Area of Pyramid

Base

With the Cross Patté, medieval mathematicians found an

approximate solution to squaring the circle. This was to take a Perfect

420

Pyramid, make it into a Cross Patté and inscribe a circle. The area of the

circle is twice that of the square base of the pyramid. Using a square

made from the diagonal of the base of the pyramid rather than the base of

the pyramid itself, the ‘twice’ factor disappears. This is because the

diagonal measures s 2. The area of such a square is 2.s

. Thus the

esoteric solution from the Perfect Pyramid is:

Area of Inscribed Patté Circle

Area of a square of the Hypotenuse

of the Base of the Pyramid

This formula is based on an assumed value of

[¼ .

] of two, which introduces an error of 2.8%.

An even better approximation derives quite simply

from a Jerusalem or Teutonic Cross.

1462

A Chessboard solves the problem of ‘Squaring

the Circle’:

1463

1. Divide the Square into a Chessboard matrix.

2. With a pair of Compasses centered in the middle

of the Chessboard, draw a Circle so it passes

through points on each side, each two squares in

from each corner. This circle has an area that

equals that of the square with an error of 1.8%,

less than the 2.8% inherent in the Perfect Pyramid

method. Schoolchildren sometimes prove the

areas are equal using paper. They cut away the

corners of the square and rearrange these

trimmings to fill the segments of the circle.

3. Again with the Compasses draw a circle so it

passes through points on each side that are one

square in from each corner. This circle has the

same perimeter as the square. The error is also

about 1.8%.

Ancient architects often wanted to Square the

Circle to create a circular column of known cross

section that could be set onto a square base. Their

portable calculator for ‘Squaring the Circle’ was a simple 2 x 1

rectangular tablet. Draw a circle through one corner while centering on

the corner diagonally opposite. The square has an area equal to 8 tablets.

421

Julius Caesar’s dimensions of ancient Britain also allow a square

to be developed from a circle, having the same perimeter as the circle’s

circumference.

1464

Caesar described Britain as a triangle with sides 475,

665, 760 miles. Britain’s geography bears no relation to this shape. Ehe

dimensions Caesar obtained are esoteric and the represent sacred

dimensions of a holy isle. The sides have the ratio of 5:7:8 and can be

used to Square the Circle follows:

1. Draw a circle with radius 7 units.

2. Place Caesar’s 5:7:8 triangle on the circle so

the apex of the 7 and 8-sides meet at the centre

of the circle and the 8-side is vertical. Mark

the point on the circle at the apex of the 5 and

7-sides.

3. Flip the triangle over with the 8-side in the

same position. Again mark the the point on the circle at the apex of

the 5 and 7-sides.

4. Draw an 11 unit line through the marked points. This 11 unit line

divides the 8-side into two pieces, one 5.5 units in length and the

other 2.5 units. As 5.5 units is half of 11 units, this 5.5 unit

measurement can be used as a scale to draw each half of the 11 unit

line.

5. The 11 unit line is the base of a square with the same centre as that of

the circle. Complete the square with 3 more sides of 11 units each.

The square’s perimeter is 44 units, which is the same as the circle’s

circumference (2 .

. 7 = 44 units). The error in this method is only

0.04%.

The Star of the Goddess

The 2 x 1 rectangle has another very

interesting property, the star of the Goddess. Herein

is the famous Alchemists’ formula of ‘draw a square,

circle, then a triangle then a circle.’ Starting with a

square (or bisecting the 2 x 1 rectangle in two

squares) proceed as follows:

422

1. Draw a circle centered in the middle of the

bisector of the rectangle, through all the extreme

two corners.

2. Extend the side of the square out to the large

circle. Its length is the Golden Ratio,

3. Draw an isosceles triangle using the Golden Ratio

as the base. The sides of the isosceles triangle are

each 1 unit, the same as the sides of the original

square.

4. Draw another circle passing through the three

corners of the triangle. This is a trial and error

procedure but quickly achieved.

5. Draw new triangles using the previous triangle as a

template. Rotate the template triangle clockwise.

The diagram shows the second position. Discard the

external circle and 2x1 rectangle for simplicity.

6. Completing the rotation of the template triangle forms

a perfect pentagon within the circle. Inside the

pentagon is a five-pointed star. This is the star of the

Goddess.

Virgin with Child

A smaller, inverted pentagon exists in the centre

of the Star and Pentagon of the Goddess. The new little

pentagon in the centre of the star of the Goddess is

therefore analogous to a perfect child. The Goddess

therefore is the House of God to the Son, a Virgin with

Child. The child is inverted, analogous to a human

foetus awaiting birth.

The recursive process of forming a star from the pentagon and a

new pentagon from the new star demonstrates the infinite procreation of

the Goddess.

423

Royal Star of David

It is a surprise to find that the six-pointed Star of David is also

based on the Golden Ratio as follows:

Starting again with the bisected 2 x 1

rectangle (two squares of side 1 unit each) and

circumscribing circle:

1. Draw a circle through the extreme four corners of

the rectangle. Its centre is in the middle of the

bisection.

2. Using the lower side of the rectangle (2 units long)

as the base for an isosceles triangle, draw the two

sides up to the apex of the circle. Repeat for the

lower triangle. The height of each of the two large

triangles is

3. Observe that there is also a length equal to

minus 1 (0.618) at each end of the rectangle.

The principle of God therefore includes that of

the Goddess. Alchemists see the Seal of Solomon.

One triangle points up and the other down,

symbolizing the famous formula As Above, so Below.

The Ratio of Osiris

Commencing once again with the bisected 2 x

1 rectangle (two squares of side 1 unit each) and

circumscribing circle:

1. Draw a circle through the extreme four

corners of the rectangle, with its centre in the

middle of the bisection.

2. Extend the bisection up until it

meets the circle. The height of

this line is

3. Rotate this line to the

horizontal and form a square.

The area of the square is

424

4. Draw a concentric circle of one unit radius from the centre of the

original circle. This circle has an area of

5. The area of the new circle is

exactly 20% larger than the

area of the square.

Leonardo de Vinci understood this

relationship by the mathematical

formula:

= (6/5)

The constant (6/5), which is of course 1.2, is known as the Ratio of Osiris.

The error in estimating

from and the Ratio of Osiris is only 0.002%.

425

Appendix 9 A Note on the Scholar Robert Graves

Robert Graves had a uniquely brilliant span of knowledge about

ancient times. He is highly acclaimed as an author, poet and classical

scholar. His histories of Roman and Greek times in I Claudius and the

Argonauts received many accolades. I Claudius became a successful

television series.

Graves’ books demonstrate extensive academic investigation. He

corresponded with collaborators such as Sir Ronald Storrs, Classical

Scholar and Orientalist, who was also a successor in office to Sergius

Paulus and Pontius Pilate.

One of Robert Graves’ major achievements is the least

understood. He re-established the lost knowledge of the Celtic Bards by

deciphering their holy tree alphabet.

A key feature of Graves’ method is that he publishes in true

Popperian fashion, baring all to public criticism. There is rarely much

criticism because few can keep up with his logic and even fewer can

critically match the breadth of his argument.

Graves' independent career risked all on the maintenance of

reputation and he is highly respected for this. His non-fiction book The

White Goddess and historical fiction novel King Jesus are prime examples

of Graves' straightforward ‘semi-circular saw’ analysis.

Graves is always incisive, eloquent, tested, important and scarce.

He constantly thinks about his own thinking in a feedback correction that

consciously avoids bias. His cognitive approach to personal psychology

and honest authorship based on argumentative self-disputation were not

formally recognized by US pioneer psychologists like Albert Ellis until at

least 20 or 30 years after Graves used it. Furthermore, despite the

awesome power of his mind, Robert Graves is a humble man. His respect

for the beliefs of all parties and the careful language of his books

demonstrates this, while not obscuring the thrust of his scientific approach

to mythology.

426

Appendix 10 Atbash Cipher

The Atbash Cipher is an old cipher used in the book of the

Prophet Jeremiah based on the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew

Alphabet.

1465

The cipher is applied by substituting the first letter of the

Hebrew Alphabet aleph with the last letter tav, the second letter beth by

the penultimate letter shin, and so on.

The new word that results from the encryption is equivalent to the

original word. It is very easy for the person employing the cipher to

create new words since the new word only has consonants like its

originating word. This is because the Hebrew Alphabet is composed of

twenty-two consonants and excludes vowels.

Hebrew

Letter Name

English

Letter Equivalent

Aleph (silent) Tav A Th

Beth (B/V) Shin B Sh

Gimel Resh G R

Dalet Qof D Q

He Tsadeh H Tz

Vav (V) Feh W P

Zayin Ayin (silent) Z O

Chet Samech Ch S

Tet Nun T N

Yod Mem Y M

Kaph (K/Kh) Lamed K L

The Atbash cipher converts Babel (

BBL),

meaning Babylon, to Shishak (ShShK).

1466

This is

achieved by substituting Beth, Beth and Lamed with

Shin, Shin and Kaph respectively.

A second Atbash method is cyclic rotation

with the alphabet as an endless loop. This is an

example of a cipher-wheel or alphabet clock. A

particular output letter is found by moving either

clockwise or anti-clockwise a certain number of steps from the input

letter. Another numerical sequence such as six, six, six or eight, ten,

twelve, fourteen is provided from other information. This indicates the

427

particular number of steps to shift. The shift direction can vary from

clockwise to anticlockwise for various letters in the same word.

Cyclic rotation together with regular letter substitution gives rise to

the full Atbash Tableau called the Alphabet of Hiyya.

1467

It has 22 rows

and 22 columns. The Atbash sequence

AThBSh is the first row. The

second is

AShBR through to the twenty-second row, which is AABT.

Multiple versions of the Alphabet of Hiyya result from irregular

letter substitution. This gives rise to 484 different permutations of the

Atbash Tableau.

Other cipher techniques include writing a word backwards, called

Thrashraq (see Appendix 11 for an example in the Triangular Manuscript

of St Germain), and Gematria extension and contraction of words keeping

the same numerical value.

Full text cipher techniques sometimes vary the calligraphy to create

irregular size letters or misspelling. These imperfections might indicate

the intended letters. Sometimes the correct letters are a certain number of

places to the right or left of an imperfection.

Alternatively, a whole text can use equidistant letters sequences to

build words. The word Torah exists in Genesis.

Another full text technique is to use the physical layout of the scroll

or parchment to create words vertically or diagonally for those who have

the eye to see. This is how Daniel read the words on the wall in

Babylon.

1468

It is also the way that the Priestly Blessing embodies the Holy

name

YHABLAWN.

1469

Further cipher expansion and contraction is

required to achieve a final solution.

1470

Yah is the God of Jedediah, Baal

the God of the King of Tyre and On the God of Hiram Abiff.

1471

These

are just three of the many names of God.

428

Appendix 11 Triangular Manuscript of Comte St

Germain

Manly P Hall of the Philosophical Research Society described the

Triangular Book of Le Comte Saint Germain as the ‘rarest of occult

manuscripts’. He kept his exciting and highly prized manuscripts in a

vault. After the death of Manly P Hall, the Getty Centre in Los Angeles

purchased two of the triangular manuscripts, MS209 and MS210. Simple

substitution deciphers these manuscripts to ritual text written in French.

The two manuscripts are described as follows:

1472

MS 209: 31 folios. Parchment. Triangular. 210 x 244 x 244mm. [Comte

St. Germain] 'No. Soixante & Seize'. De la collection maconnique du F :

illustre F : Antoine Louis Moret fondateur, et Véné honoraire de la R : ...

La Sincerite No. 122. Ex president du Souv : Chap : la Triple union Or :

maitre, Elu, chevalier commandeur, patriarch, Prince & Govr : Prince des

tous les ordres macon : et des tous les Rites : Francais, Ecossais, Anglais,

irelandais, Prussiens, &c. &c. &c. Govr : G : insp : Gene : du 33e degree

S : P : D : E : Or : de : New York Etats unis L'am : du Nord 5810. Ex

Dono Sapientissimi Comitis St. Germain Qui Orbem Terrarum Per

Cucurrit. [Blue and gold ink on various leaves of ruled parchment. Text in

cipher with three magical illustrations in gilt and several other colors of

ink.] This manuscript, bought from Frank Hollings, a London antiquary,

after 1933 (he apparently was unaware of the Hauser St. Germain

manuscript [MS 210 - below]) came from the occult library of Mme.

Barbe, who had it from the bibliographer Stanislaus de Guaita, who in

turn bought it at the auction of the library of Jules Favre. It is a copy made

from one of the magical texts in the possession of St. Germain by the

owner's permission. A number of such copies were executed for the

members of his Masonic lodge in Paris, and the following manuscript, as

different in style as it is, may be one of the copies too. It is unclear in both

cases whether the Comte St. Germain wrote these magical formulae or

owned a copy of an ancient text. This manuscript was made for Antoine

Louis Moret, a French emigre to America active in Masonry and in

politics.

MS 210: 24 folios. Parchment. Triangular 237 x 237 x 235mm. [Comte

St. Germain.] Ex Dono Sapientissimi Comitis St. Germain Qui Orbem

Terrarum Per Cucurrit. This manuscript was offered at the Hauser Sale in

1933 (item no. 527). The key to the cipher in an accompanying bound

429

volume was provided with the lot. A typed French transcription and

English translation are to be found in the bound volume, inserted in the

slip-case. Another French translation is in the bound volume

accompanying the other copy [MS 209] of this text, provided by the

bookseller. The litany of St. Germain's miracles -- his eternal

youthfulness, his incomparable painting of pigments made from the colors

magically pulled out of gemstones, his endless wealth, his invisibility, his

brilliant sonatas and inspired performances, the flaws removed from the

King's diamonds, metals transmuted, languages spoken, friends among

the long-dead -- these and many more tales, and a few unflattering

references in the shards of eighteenth century diplomacy constitute his

whole legend, the story of a man who whispered words of unheeded

advice in the ear of Marie Antoinette and whose image remains the

centerpiece of newly fabricated mythologies. There remain a number of

remarkable contemporary testimonies and unsolved puzzles. As for hard

evidence, there is none. St. Germain has been described as the greatest of

the European adepts. His prodigious knowledge of history and philosophy

was often commented upon in his day. In a letter to Frederick II, Voltaire

described St. Germain as "the man who does not die." This manuscript

bears an attribution on its face not independently verified in any source.

The Translation:

Robert Word studied the Triangular Manuscript in French and

made an English translation in 1979. The Philosophical Research Society

gave him ready access in several stages. First, he received the Triangular

Book itself, which is cipher plus diagrams. From this he copied out pages

of the cipher text and attempted to decipher it. Then he was given the

cipher key and later the French text to translate this French text to

English.

While Robert Word believes his translation to be accurate, it is

possible that the French text did not encompass all of the cipher text.

Furthermore, the colored figures are an important part of the part of the

manuscript.

Robert Word was also able to review the notes of Manly P Hall

made on the text. Manly P Hall was apparently trying to turn "ton Levite"

into "Ton le Vite" and allude to vibratory chanting.

A feature of the manuscript is Thrashraq, which is writing

important words or names backwards to produce an elementary cipher.

1473

430

The Triangular Book of the Count of St. Germain

The Holy Magic revealed to Moses discovered within an Egyptian

monument and preciously preserved in Asia under the emblem of a

winged dragon.

1. To find things lost in the seas since the flooding of the globe.

2. To discover mines and diamonds, gold and silver within the bowels

of the earth.

3. To preserve one's health and prolong one's life for a century, and

that with the freshness of fifty years, and the strength of that age.

You should do your operations for the first two objects only when

the sun, earth, and moon are found in conjunction in the same line, and

within the same plane. As for the third marvel, you may perform the

operation at any time, but it is necessary to carry on your person a figure

like that which you see here.

You shall take an appropriate vase (made of any material) and fill

it with fire which you shall exorcise in the following manner:

O Creature of Fire, I exorcise you by Him by whom all things

were made in order that you shall remove from yourself all phantoms.

Bless it, O eternal Father, for the glory of thy holy and immortal Name.

Thou who lives and reigns through all the centuries of the centuries.

A Levite which you shall have with you shall respond:

AMEN.

Next, you shall bless the incense and four lamps in the following manner:

0 eternal God, sovereign Being, bless this incense and these lamps in

order that their strength and their virtue shall augment the fear of their

enemies, that they may not enter herein. Thou who lives and reigns

through all the centuries of the centuries. Your Levite responds:

AMEN.

You shall pour this incense so blessed upon the fire and light the

lamps before your operations. The small concentric circle is the place

which you shall take during these operations. The other circle which is

below is the place to be occupied by your Levite; you shall be clad as in

the days of the sacrificial ceremonies. Upon entering your circle you shall

have in your left hand the following figure. Your Levite shall follow you

in carrying the characters of revelation.

When you shall have arrived at the destined place, you shall give

back to you Levite the figure with which you entered; then the Levite

having occupied his, you shall bless his circle in pronouncing these sacred

words:

431

NOTAMARGATET, -- bless that circle -- bless it YANODA --

bless it

MIOLE -- bless it ALAG -- bless it AOTHIO -- bless it SORIDIS --

bless it

APHAL -- bless it AGEMO, bless it THOBASSA -- bless it ARIF --

bless it

BCEORA, Thou who lives and reigns through all the centuries of

the centuries. Your Levite shall respond

AMEN.

Next you shall invoke the spirits to whom I have given the power

to preside over the hours of the night in commencing from the side where

the sun rises, saying:

LEAMAN, LECIAB, LATRANAVIO, RIBRAL,

TELARO.

From the side where the sun sets:

ELANA, LEPAB, USTAEL,

THAERRUB, SOTARECO, ILIBAPAC.

From the highest side of the circle:

ELIA, ELINA, AMIGABIREL.

From the lowest side of the circle:

PEDINBCE, FIALECHAM,

CHARSIEL.

You shall then make the following invocation on the side where

the sun rises, prostrated upon the ground:

We invoke you

YALATINA, and LEMIROT, LESIAB, and TELAR,

HERIBAG and ARNAVIO, TRABA and ARIOT, ANIEL and LEDIMAT,

YANAEL and CALMAS, LEASO and VIANOEL; we command you by

Him by whom all things were made and by all the other names of the

ETERNAL, and by these:

IANODA, EL MIHOLES, HOLAE MEBOTH, NOLICSAZ, and

NOTAMMARGATEL who is the Lord God exalted before you and

represented invisibly near this circle; Let me know by a just inspiration if

you judge me to be dignified by the purity of my soul -- the places where

there are mines of diamonds, gold, and silver, those who find precious

things lost in the seas -- to prolong my life in health and that for a century

-- I request these favours to be granted without incurring danger, risk, or

peril, by Y and V which Adam understood, by the name

AGLA for the

preservation of Lot and his family from the fire of Sodom and Gomorrah.

By the name Joth, for the deliverance of Jacob from the persecution of his

brother. By those of

SOIGCE, YANCEA, THEOS or NOTAMMARGATET,

and by the other names of the

ALL-POWERFUL who truly lives and

reigns. Such is the

WILL of Him who created all, and Whose empire

endures through all the centuries of the centuries. Your Levite shall

respond:

AMEN.

You shall place upon your head with your left hand the figure

which you gave to your Levite; then if your soul is pure, it shall be

exalted. You shall feel yourself to be inspired; you shall lend an attentive

432

ear to all that which the aerial spirits shall whisper, having care to trace

from right to left on a brass plate the inspired characters which; you shall

bless with these words:

Blessed Be

PAO.

THEOS. You may communicate these things to no person because

you would render unworthy my divine bounty and you would not have the

success for which you have obtained hope.

You shall then take the figure which was upon your head with the

same hand; then holding it in both hands and prostrating in adoration you

shall pronounce these characters:

In the name of the Eternal my God, true master of my body, my

soul, and my spirit, go, go in peace; retire that you may accompany me

always, and be ever ready to come when I shall call you.

AMEN and AMEN.

FINIS.

433

Appendix 12 Painted Ceilings at Crathes Castle

Crathes Castle, near Banchory, was the seat of the Burnetts of

Leys. The castle was commenced by the 9

Laird, Alexander Burnett, in

1553 and completed by his great grandson, also Alexander, the 12

Laird.

It is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

Room of the Nine Nobles

Beam 2

As a dog turneth to his owne Vomit, so the foole

returneth to his own foolishnes.

Blessed is the Riche, which is founde without blemishe,

And hath not gone after nor hoped in money &

treasures.

They that rejoyce at the fall of the righteus,

Salbe taken in the snare & anguishe,

Sall consume them before they die.

Leme gallant youthes to aternise your name,

As did thir nyn with deids of endles fame

Whose martial actes nobilitates for ay

Their glourious names not deing or decay.

Hector of

Troy

I nyntein kings, help of any slew

A thousand Greeks in on day I overthrew.

Had not Achilles slayn me tressonablie

Troy yit had stand & lost no libertie.

Alex' the

Coqueriour

I Alexander conquest in short space,

The world & Joyt this monarchie in peace,

Yet all this wealth fulfilled not my desire,

Sick was my lust by mesure to Impyre.

Julius Cesar

***** was emperiour & wan

By armies Africk, egipt, franco & Spain.

I past the rhyne & dantit Germanie,

Brutus at hame syne slew me crewalle.

Betymes I will destroy even

All the wicked of the land,

that I may from Gods citie cut,

The wicked workers hand.

434

Josuae the

Noble Chiftan

of Israell

Joshuae of Jewes first was frie

Ane & threttie kings conqerit he,

And reft thame of there lands also,

The floode Jordan he parted in tuo.

Judas

Maccabeus

This Judaes manheid all Israeli maid frie

From servile yok of heathen tyranny

He Vincult Licias & Antiochus,

After gryt weris slayn by Demetrius.

King David

For wit & manheid David was maid king,

From schepirds ranke over all Israeli to ring,

He slew the gryt Goliath hand to hand,

And did gryt damage to the heathen land.

A league wit Scottis of mutuall amitie,

This Charlis maid to last eternalie

Whais successors observis the same alway,

Inviolat unto this present day.

Charlis the

Gryt

This Charlis was for his Christian faith renownit,

And emperiour for deids of armis crounit

He be his micht & worthie chevalrie,

Was cheif defence of Christianitie.

King Arthur

King Arthur crounit was Emperiour & wan,

Gryt bounds in France & all the lands of Spain.

The knichts of the round table, he ordaind

Whais priase sall sound, unto ye warldes end.

Gotfrida

From rage of Turks, this Godofried, maid frie,

The holie land to Christian libertie

Gryt Soliman he slew and crounit was king,

Over all the land of Jurie for to ring.

Seaze not thy Hart on welth or earthlie gains

They perish suine but honor still remains

Gude reder tell me or thou pas whilk ofthir nyn

maist Valliant was

****** in earth hes spent there deyes

1602

435

The Green Lady’s Room

Beam 1

A maidin but modistie

A clarke but courtesie

A howsewyfe langinge fairleis to see

Wants all there seimleist propertie.

The begining of wisdome is the feare of the lord & the

knowledge of holie things is understanding.

The mouth of everie wicht

Defames that graceles man

Quha by his sloothe tynes onie richt

That his forbears wan.

Say not to they nightbour go & cum agayne &

tomorrow will I give you, if thou now have it.

The curse of the lord is in the house of the wicked,

but he blessed y habitatione of the righteus.

Praise be to him quhoise verteus deids,

Throughe payn and labor greins,

Schame to the belliegod yat feids,

On sueat of others brawis.

Thoughe the deceatfull speake favorable beleve

him not, for he hath seven abhominations in his hart,

Intending hurt against his nighbour, seing he doeth

duell without fear by the.

At vertues stoole lerne first thy grounds

Renounit if thou walde be

In segnarie conteins all bounds

Of true nobilitie.

The sluggard is wyser in his awen conceit then

seven men that can render a reasone

Stryve not with a man causlesle when he hath

done the no harm.

Thryce happy is that man indeed

That weids ane vertues wyf

Sho is ye blessing of his seid

And comfort of his lyff.

436

The slothfull hand makethe poore, but the hand of the

diligent maketh riche.

Blessed will his house for ever be

Quhe servis the lord always

Thais wallis his awin posteritie

Inherit sall for ay.

The lord will not famishe the soule of the righteous,

but the soule of the wicked salbe consumed

Wine, wemen taken insatiablie

Has brocht gryt kings to miserie

Therefor my god I pray to the

Keep me from crymes & harlotrie

The tresures ofwickednes profite nothing,

but

riendship ss delyvereth from death.

Ane avarious mans

riend,

As to him selfe hydropolie.

For quhy the mair in welth he flows

The thirst for riches gryter grows.

A wise sone makethe a glad father, but a foolishe sone

is an heaviness to his mother.

Contermne no man in miserie

Augment with spyt no poore mans

riend

For fortunes false inconstancie

May cause his case be thine tomorrow.

As the vapour and

rien of the chimney,

goeth before the fyre,

so evil words, rebukes, and threatnings go

before bloodscheding.

riendshi all naughtie companie

From fools no

riendship crave

Keip fellowschip with such as be

Both wittie sage and grave.

A theifis better than a man that is accustomed to lie,

but they both sall have destruction to their heritage.

437

The goode man sall give inheritance unto his childrens

children and the riches of the sinner ar layd up for the

Just.

All that are proude in hart ar an abominatione to the

lord, though hand Joune hand he sall not go unpunished.

438

Appendix 13 Jewish Rites of Tammuz

Extracts from ‘Ward, JSM 'Who was Hiram Abiff', The

Baskerville Press Limited, London, 1925.

Chapter VII THE ADONIS RITES OF JUDAH.

The vision of Ezekiel in circa 594 BCE

gives a clear picture of

the secret rites of Tammuz. He starts as follows:

He “brought me . . to the door of the inner gate that looks towards

the north where was the image of Jealousy which provoketh to jealousy.”

What was the “Image of Jealousy” opposite the north gate — the

symbolic place of darkness? It was Ashtoreth, that is to say, Astarte, the

Great Mother, the Lover of Tammuz. In II Kings

we read that the good

king Josiah broke down and defiled the high places “which Solomon the

King of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth,” and also for Chemosh and

Milcom. So that there should be no doubt of the situation of the shrine of

Ashtoreth, we are carefully told that it was on the right hand side. As the

temple had its Sanctuary in the west it follows that the right hand side was

on the North. The exact spot on which the shrine of Astarte stood was the

Mount of Olives.

Jeremiah

about B.C. 600, gives us the following significant

details concerning one of the ceremonies performed in honour of Astarte,

whom he calls “The Queen of Heaven,” which was one of her later titles.

“Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the

streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the

fire, and the women kneed dough to make cakes and to pour out drink

offerings unto other Gods.”

Here we should note the use of bread and wine for a sacra mental

feast, while we know from similar observances else where, which

survived in Europe up to the 19th century, that these cakes were in the

shape of the male organ.

Ezekiel 8. 3. sq.

II. Kings, 23. 13.

Jeremiah 8.17 sq.

N.M. Penzer, “Ocean of Story,” Vol. H. p. 13. Note 3.

439

Moreover, Jeremiah complains that even the remnant who fled to

Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem would not abandon this custom, and to

his protests gave an answer which explains exactly the purpose of these

obscene emblems, and of similar incidents connected with the worship of

the great Fertility Goddess, who by then had largely absorbed the

attributes of the Moon, just as her son and lover has partly absorbed those

of the Sun.

They “answered” Jeremiah saying

, “The Word that thou hast

spoken unto us in the name of the Lord we will not hearken unto thee, but

will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth out of our own mouth, to burn

incense unto the Queen of Heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto

her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the

cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of

bread, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn

incense to the Queen of Heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her,

we have wanted all and have been consumed by the sword and by the

famine.

“And when we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and

poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her

and pour out drink offerings to her without our men (husbands).”

From this answer we learn that the worshippers believed that

unless they offered the Goddess these Phallic cakes they would receive

from her no harvest. The reason is clear: the corn God represents the seed

which is buried in the womb of the earth. The male organ of the drone bee

is literally plucked out by the Queen bee and remains embedded in her for

the rest of her life; it is in this way that she is fertilised, but at the cost of

the life of the drone. In like manner Attis and Tammuz die that the earth

may be fertile, hence the reason why the Priests of Cybele and of Artemis

at Ephesus had to castrate themselves and offer up their male organs to

the Goddess.

Therefore the Jewish women, like other worshippers of the Great

Goddess, offered as substitutes for the male organs of their husbands,

models made out of the “Flesh” of the slain corn God, and poured out

Jeremiah 44. 16 sq.

It was the women alone who carried the obscene emblems in the

procession of Isis in Egypt. Frazer. “Adonis” Vol. 2. p. 112

440

wine to symbolise the blood which naturally flowed when the human

male organ was cut off, as in the case of the Priests of Cybele.

In order to make themselves one with the God, the worshippers

ate the bread and drank some of the wine. Similar rites were performed all

over the world to the Goddess of Fertility, and here we have clear

evidence of their survival among the Jews up to B.C. 587.

We learn further that naturally these offerings of cakes were made

only by the women and at the shrine of Astarte at the north gate. No doubt

it was at this time that the women wept for Tammuz slain, whose sad fate

they thus commemorated while hoping thereby to gain an abundant

harvest.

We also see why fire played an important part in these old rites.

The children gathered the sticks; at one time they formed the fuel for the

sacrifice of burning! The men lighted the fire; they had begotten the

children, and hence the symbolism of the act! It was the women, however,

who made the cakes, for from them come forth men, as does corn from

the Earth.

But what were the men doing while the women were busy at the

north gate? We shall find that some of them were at the centre in a hidden

vault, namely the tomb itself, while others stood watching the east so that

they might proclaim the resurrection of the slain God; that the corn would

come forth from the womb of Mother Earth; that a new son of the

Goddess would be born, destined like his father to wed the Goddess and

thereby lose his life. Thus Astarte was every year a widow, and her son

posthumous.

But though the women had their duties outside the closely barred

door of the hidden mysteries, they were evidently not admitted therein.

This was the men’s house and therefore we will return to Ezekiel and see

what he says on the subject, having thus decided whom the “Figure of

Jealousy” represented and what was taking place before it.

441

The Altar of Sacrifice

Ezekiel dismisses most of what is taking place before Astarte

with the words, see” . . . . the great abominations which the House of

Israel committeth here,”

and then turns to something which seemed to

him even worse, “And He brought me to the door of the court; and when I

looked, behold a hole in the wall;

Then said He unto me, Son of man dig

now in the wall; And when I digged in the wall, behold a door. And He

said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations which they do

here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping thing and

Ezekiel 8.6.

Ezekiel 8. 8.

442

abominable beast, and all the idols of the House of Israel, portrayed upon

the walls round about.’

We thus learn that this vault, which still exists, see illustration

page 100, was close tiled by being filled in with wet plaster or mud during

the ceremony. The creeping things, etc., would be the animals and beasts,

such as the bee, the serpent, and the goat, sacred to Astarte, who with the

other Gods were painted in frescoes round this chamber. We also notice

that the prophet does not call these the Gods of the Canaanites but of “the

house of Israel,” a most significant fact. What was happening in this close

shut chamber away from the light of day?

“And there stood before them the seventy men of the Ancients of

the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah, the son of

Shaphan, with every man his censor in his hand, and a thick cloud of

incense went up.”

The first fact that strikes us is that there were seventy, plus a

Master of Ceremonies, whose name is given. We are told these were the

ancients of Israel, and as we know that the Sanhedrin at the time of the

second temple consisted of 72 of the elders of Israel, we can hardly fail to

recognise that these men are the Sanhedrin. This would explain the bitter

indignation of the true prophet who thus saw the spiritual rulers of the

people presiding at what, to him, were unholy rites. But there were only

71, where then was the missing member? We may be sure he was there,

but perhaps he could no longer speak, and was either simulating a corpse

or, more probably, in grim earnest lying stiff and cold. He no doubt was

the representative of Tammuz whom the women were bewailing above

ground at the North gate.

This explanation is supported by the emphasis laid on the use of

incense. There were apparently no statues in this rock hewn tomb, for

otherwise assuredly Ezekiel would have mentioned them. He carefully

says, however, that the figures were painted on the walls of the chamber,

and incense is not offered to frescoes in religious ceremonies.

Let us refresh our memories as to what happened in Babylonia at

the lamentation for Tammuz. “The dirges were seemingly chanted over an

This actually exists to-day in the South East corner of the “Rock” of

the altar of sacrifice and leads into the vault. See later ref. Dean Stanley. “Sinai

and Palestine” also Dudley Wright. “Masonic Legends,” p. 87 sq.

443

effigy of the dead God, which was washed with pure water, anointed with

oil and clad in red robes, while the fumes of incense rose into the air, as if

to stir his dormant senses by their pungent fragrance and waken him from

his sleep of death.’

Thus we see that the stress laid on the use of incense is perfectly

intelligible: there was no need for Ezekiel to go into details which were

well known to every Jew, while if the figure was in truth a dead man his

repugnance in referring to it is perfectly intelligible. The Babylonians

who were more civilized at that epoch than the Jews may well have

substituted an image for a man, just as the Greeks did later; perhaps when

all went well the Jews also had learnt to do the same, but in the hour of

dread and danger, blood, and only human blood, could satisfy the

Goddess.

The prophets of Jehovah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had pro claimed

that He had doomed Judah to destruction. What then of the Great Mother.

Perhaps she at least would hear them? But in this hour of extremity no

paltry substitutes would suffice. We may well believe that the frenzied

worshippers of Astarte cried, “It is meet that one man should die for the

whole people.” And who but the High Priest of Tammuz could prove an

acceptable sacrifice?

But Ezekiel leaves us in little doubt on the point, for in the next

chapter but two he says :—‘Moreover, the Spirit lifted me up and brought

me unto the East gate of the Lord’s house, which looketh eastwards, and

behold at the door of the gate five and twenty men, among whom I saw

Jaazaniah, the son of Azur, and Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, Princes of

the people. Then said He unto me, Son of Man, these are the men that

devise mischief and give wicked counsel in this city: which say, Let us

build houses: this city is the cauldron and we be the flesh.’

The meaning of this phrase seems obscure, but we will follow it

up in a moment. Meanwhile we obtain one of the keys to the problem,

two verses further on, in the fiery denunciation of the Prophet.

“Ye have multiplied your slain in this city, ye have filled the

streets thereof with slain. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God; Your slain

whom ye have lain in the midst of it they are the flesh and this the

Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris.” 3rd ed. Vol. I. p. 9.

Ezekiel 11. 1 sq.

444

cauldron. . . . Ye have feared the sword, and I will bring a sword upon

you, saith the Lord God.”

Here, from the burning and justifiable wrath of the prophet we

learn that these twenty-five men, in order to avert the threatened attack by

the Babylonians, had recently had a great “Day of Blood,” no doubt like

that of Cybele in Rome, but with fatal results. We learn also that

Jaazaniah was one of the Princes of Israel, and have previously seen that

the old Syrian Kings considered that they were incarnations of the God

Tammuz. Thus there can, I fear, be little doubt as to whether it was a real

or simulated corpse which lay in the rock hewn tomb while the voice of

lamentation went up at the North gate.

The reference to the cauldron and the flesh must now be

considered. Jeremiah when the Lord asked him “What seest thou?”

answered, “And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is

towards the North.” It will be noticed that the face of the pot is towards

the place where stood the shrine of Astarte: the place of darkness and of

the Underworld, which is most significant. At first sight it might be

thought that this pot was merely a parable, but it appears that it was really

one of the chief causes of the wrath of Jehovah, since it stood for a Pagan

Rite which He abominated. There is a widespread magical process of

which we find many traces whereby if a man is slain, cut up and boiled in

a pot, he will be restored to youth and life. According to Greek legends

Medea took advantage of this superstition to encompass the death of her

father-in-law, and the ancient British God of the Sea had a magic

cauldron in which he placed the bodies of men who had been slain in

battle and brought them back to life again.

In the High History of the Holy Graal we have a very unpleasant

story concerning such a cauldron. The Son of a King who followed the

Old Law was slain by a Giant.

Sir Gawain killed the Giant and brought

back the boy’s corpse, whereupon to his amazement the father took the

corpse, cut it up, boiled it in a cauldron and then distributed the pieces

among his chief men.

Jeremiah 1. 13.

Mabinogion pp. 87, 44. Everyman ed

The High History of the Holy Graal. Trans. by Dr. S. Evans. Every-

man ed. p. 76

445

Many competent critics now consider that the Graal legends

incorporate incidents from the old cult of Adonis,

a view with which I

agree, and if so we at once see that this cauldron was used by the Jews to

perform a ceremony intended to assist in the rejuvenation and resurrection

of the slain Adonis, and for this reason it was placed with its face towards

the North. Whether the worshippers, like the King and nobles in the Graal

story, partook of the ghastly food, we cannot definitely say, but

unfortunately this seems probable. We know that similar cannibalistic

feasts take place among savage tribes; we know that the corn was spoken

of as the body of the Dead God, and as such was consumed as a

sacrament by the worshippers; we know that the wine was likened to his

blood, and that these substitutes were an amelioration of an older

cannibalistic feast. Therefore, at a time of crisis we may well fear that the

frenzied Jews who followed this cult would not hesitate to go so far.

Indeed, the very denunciations of the prophet point in this

direction. We know that the Prophet of Jehovah after referring to some

idolatrous practice constantly says a similar fate shall fall upon the whole

nation.

For example, in this very passage Ezekiel, after referring to these

slayings, says that the men who did them shall in their turn be slain.

Moreover, a few chapters later in denouncing Judah he says :— “Thou

hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast born unto Me, and

these hast thou sacrificed to devour them. Thou hast slain my children and

delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them.”

The combined effect of these two passages indicates quite clearly

that not only were the children sacrificed by means of fire, but they were

actually eaten.

In verse 13 of chapter 2, Ezekiel tells us that Pelatiah died.

Perhaps herein we receive a hint as to who was the silent corpse in the,

secret chamber, for there Jaazaniah alone is mentioned by name.

But there were other incidents connected with these rites of

Adonis, for “He said also unto me,

Turn thee yet again, thou shalt see

greater abominations that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the

J. L. Weston, “The Quest of the Holy Graal.”

See also the fate of the false prophets in Jeremiah 14, 15.

Ezekiel, 16. 20 sq.

Ezekiel, 8, 13.

446

gate of the Lord’s house which was towards the North;

and behold there

sat women weeping for Tammuz. And he said unto me, Hast thou seen, 0

Son of Man? turn thee yet again, thou shalt see greater abominations than

these. And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and,

behold at the door of the Temple of the Lord, between the porch and the

altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs towards the Temple of

the Lord, and their faces towards the east; and they worshipped the sun

towards the east.”

We learn further that “they put the branch to their nose.” This

might appear to be only a sign of derision, but a branch or a tree is always

closely associated with Tammuz, as we have already seen, and Mr.

Stanley Smith of the Assyrian Department of the British Museum agrees

with me that this also was one of the ritual practices of the cult. The soul

of the slain man was sup posed to enter into a tree, which symbolically

grew out of the grave. The original idea was that the seed which was

planted and died transmitted its soul to the plant or branch which grew

therefrom.

That the Jews enacted a tree drama, similar to that in the Cult of

Attis, is shown by Jeremiah. “For the customs of the people are vain: for

one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman,

with the axe.

They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails

and with hammers, that it move not.

They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs

be born, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them.”

This clearly indicates the ceremonial carrying in of a decorated

tree, probably with an image of Tammuz fastened thereon, as we find

elsewhere, particularly in the worship of Attis.

We know that they said of a stock, i.e., a pillar of wood, “Thou

art my father.” These stocks were plain pieces of wood, merely trunks of

trees, and it is clear that they were not only symbols of the phallus but

also the residing place of the Spirit of Vegetation. Among many primitive

Where stood the figure of Astarte and apparently the seething

cauldron.

Jeremiah 10. 3. sq.

447

races the belief is current that the souls of those waiting to become

incarnate dwell in the trees, so much so that many races think that a

woman can become pregnant if the seed or flower of certain trees falls on

her. Thus certain Central African races believe that if the purple blossom

of the banana tree falls on the back of a woman, even though she be

unmarried, she will have a baby.

In this belief we have the cause and origin of many stories well

known to the students of folk-lore in which a virgin gives birth to a child

because she has smelt a flower, eaten a fruit, or perhaps merely handled

either. For example, Attis himself is said to have been born because his

virgin mother, Nana, placed a certain seed in her bosom. Nana,

incidentally, means Mother, and is of course the name of the Great

Mother. Probably the answer given to the inquisitive child to-day who

wants to know whence the new baby has come, namely, that it was grown

on a gooseberry bush, is the worn down tradition of this once almost

universal belief. Fantastic as it sounds, even now many tribes do not know

that a woman cannot become a Mother without the help of a man.

They

say that she becomes a mother only when a soul which is waiting for the

opportunity can slip inside her, and the most common method adopted by

these waiting embryos is to hide themselves in a seed or flower, or merely

fall from a bush on to a woman. Races who still hold these beliefs are the

tribes of New Guinea and the Australian blacks. Hence to these people

there is nothing very remarkable in a virgin birth.

Now all these tribes believe in re-incarnation, and their line of

argument runs somewhat as follows:—We bury our dead in the ground,

and lo, a tree or plant grows from the spot. This contains the life-principle

of him who dies, his soul is in it, and from it he leaps into a woman and so

once more is born. Frankly, the modern man who, while acknowledging

that a human being has a soul, appears to believe that that soul is created

by the same procedure that creates the infant’s body is even more

illogical, for how can a material act create an immaterial and immortal

being?

The doctrine of re-incarnation attaches to the Spirit of Vegetation

in a much higher degree. The God dies and is buried, a tree springs up

Rev. J. Roscoe, “The Baganda,” pp.47 sq.

Prof. Malinowski, “The Beliefs of the Trobriand Islands, New

Guinea.”

448

from his grave, and therein resides the soul which can again enter into

flesh. So powerful is this divine soul that it can, as it were, eject, or at any

rate overshadow, the ordinary human soul resident in a suitable body, and

take its place. Therefore certain of the ceremonies of the Vegetation Cult

include elaborate details for transferring the soul of the dead God-man

into a strong and healthy physical body, which hence forth is supposed to

possess the Divine Soul, and ultimately suffers the same fate as its

predecessor. Among such rites are raising the Corpse and drawing in the

dead man’s breath; stepping over the corpse or over its grave, etc. Thus it

would appear as though the transference of the Divine soul of Adonis in

Judea was made by someone sniffing a bough which had either formed

part of the Adonis tree or had been planted on his grave. This fact

explains the significance of the sprig of acacia in masonry.

We now understand why the Jews said of a tree trunk or “Stock,”

“Thou hast begotten us.” The actual passage is as follows :—

“Saying to a stock, Thou art my father:

arid to a stone,

thou

hast brought me forth: for they have turned the hinder part of their necks

to me and not the face.”

The authorized version says, “Backs” but the above is the literal

Hebrew and conveys an important piece of information. “Their backs”

might be merely allegorical, but the other phrase admirably depicts what

the twenty-five elders were doing, i.e., with heads bent back gazing

upwards, watching for the sun to rise above the horizon, which would

indicate that the soul of the dead Tammuz had arisen and passed into the

bough which his successor was about to sniff.

Thus we see in both scriptural passages a reference to the worship

of the sun and to a tree, and in each case the primitive idea is clearly

rebirth, or the resurrection of the slain God, Tammuz, over whom the

women at the north gate were weeping, while the seventy and one elders

in the tomb were by means of prayer and incense striving to raise him.

We can have little doubt that a sprig, possibly of acacia, was sticking in

or “Hast begotten me.”

These seem to have been flat stones with a socket into which the

“Stock” was set. These would symbolise Mother Earth, and the “Stock” the Spirit

Vegetation. The Phallus and Yoni symbolism is obvious.

Jeremiah, 2.27.

449

the rock of sacrifice, beneath which lay the human representative of

Tammuz, while the silent watchers waited for the golden dawn in the East

to proclaim the great truth “Adonis, the Lord, hath risen from the dead;

the whole earth will be fertilised through his Divine energy.” Then, no

doubt, the watchers seizing the bough or tree sniffed it ceremonially.

Thus we see a tendency to unite in Tammuz, the Vegetation

Spirit, or Corn God, and also the Sun God, nor is evidence lacking that he

also gathered up details which in strictness belonged to the Moon. For

example, the mourning for Adonis lasted three days, which is meaningless

if he was either a purely Solar or a purely Corn God, whereas the Moon

vanished from the sky for three whole days every month. On the other

hand, this occurs thirteen times in the year and not once a year, as does

the burying of the seed. Astarte also takes on, at quite an early date, the

attributes of the Moon and of Venus, a point which is of some importance

to us. It should also be noted that she was from the very earliest not only

the Goddess of Love but of War and Destruction, therein showing her

similarity to Kali in India, and giving a good reason why her mate should

bear such a title as “He who destroys.”

The date of the mourning for Tammuz seems to have been near

Midsummer in Judea, in other words, at the gathering in of the Harvest,

which in Palestine takes place in two sections :—the barley in April and

the wheat towards the end of May and the beginning of June. The second

half of June and the first half of July is still called Tammuz by the Jews.

The mourning synchronized with the threshing,

hence the significance

of the fact that the Temple was built on the threshing floor of Arunah the

Jebusite. It is generally believed that it actually occurred about

Midsummer Day, or St. John in Summer, as we should call it, and

Professor Jastrow says :—‘ ‘The calendar of the Jewish church still marks

the seventeenth day of Tammuz as a fast, and Houtsma has shown that the

association of the day with the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans

represents merely the attempt to give an ancient festival a worthier

interpretation.”

Compare the ritual death and resurrection rite among the Australian

Blacks. See Chap. XX.

Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris.” 3rd ed. Vol. I. p. 231.

Prof M. Jastrow, “The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria.” pp. 547,

682.

450

We have thus learnt from the Bible itself a good deal about the

Rites of Tammuz, and here and now we must note that 600 years later

than the time of Ezekiel, namely in the days of Josephus, the Essenes

worked a secret Initiation Rite of four degrees, and though regarded as

good Jews, nevertheless prayed to the Sun just before the dawn as if

invoking Jiim to rise.

Surely this fact is most significant and suggests

that in the Essenes we have at least one of the links by which the old

Adonis Cult, cleansed and purified, was passed on to the Roman Colleges

of Architects, and so, via the Mediaeval Comacine Masons, to us.

Let us now recapitulate what we have discovered concerning the

Rites of Adonis among the Jews, as revealed in their own writings. There

were three courts in the Temple of King Solomon, which may hint at

three degrees. The first was the women’s court, beyond which they were

not permitted to pass, and which therefore would symbolise birth. The

second court was that of the men, and obviously symbolises life in this

world of work and war. The third was restricted to the Priests, and it was

here that the great natural rock altar of sacrifice stood; on this the burnt

offerings were made, and beneath it was the mysterious rock- hewn

chamber, still in existence. Is not this the open grave— the tomb, the

symbol of death and also, be it noted, of sacrifice?

Beyond this lay the porch, whence the twenty-five elders looked

east towards the Sun. Here at times stood the throne of the King; may we

not call it the chair of the Master? Behind lay the enclosed part of the

Temple, divided into two, and into the Sactum Sanctorum only the High

Priest himself might enter.

To us the porch would symbolise the Installed Master, the risen

King, and beyond lay the mystery of the unity of the God head and the

Sacred Name, while the innermost secrets were reserved for the High

Priest, who would correspond to the J. of the R .A., and his ceremonies to

the Masonic degree of High Priest, which seems to have been originally

part of the secrets of J.

It will be noticed that if so, the King or Master sat in the West,

which is precisely what we still find in an Operative Lodge, and the

Josephus, “The Wars of the Jews,” 11.8: “Antiquities” 18.5. par. 9:

18. 1. par. 5.

Ward, “An Explanation of the R .A. Degree.”

451

present position in a Speculative Lodge may be due to the increasing

triumph of the Solar Cult over the old Vegetation Cult.

Students are of the opinion that the Kings of Judah were anointed,

crowned and enthroned between the Pillars, and we know that Adonis in

other Syrian Kingdoms was the Divine King of the city. His robes were

red, like those of the Z. in the R .A., and when the Roman soldiery in

mockery crowned Jesus they robed him in Royal red

in a manner similar

to that in which the figure of Adonis lay in state.

The women were certainly not in the secret vault, that is clear,

and therefore the regulation which debarred them from approaching

nearer to the altar than their own court was not exclusively a Jehovistic

command. It is thus quite probable that there were in Judah, just as there

were in other ancient religions, an exoteric and an esoteric Cult. The

ordinary worshippers never got further than the substituted secrets, which

in this case would be an explanation that the ceremony was a magical one

intended to increase the fertility of the soil; the Priests, however, who

entered the Temple itself, learnt there not merely an allegorical

interpretation of the external ceremonies, but, still more important, that

God was one, and one only. This teaching, which as masons well know,

forms the essence of the R .A., is common to many faiths, but in Judea it

seems as if some members of this supreme degree, filled with zeal for the

true God, refused to remain silent. They shouted from the house tops their

great discovery that there was but one God, and, despite persecution, and

probably in many cases death itself, persisted in their teaching.

Nevertheless, there may have been other spiritually minded men

who, while recognising that the old Adonis Cult as it then stood contained

much that was repulsive, perceived that it also contained much that was

good, and therefore set themselves to purge it of certain objectionable

elements. And we shall see in the next chapter, in the writings attributed

to King Solomon, there seems to be the beginning of an attempt to attach

an allegorical meaning to some of the ceremonies. After the Captivity this

school of thought, I suggest, used this Cult as an allegory, and by

dramatic representations taught the great truth that death does not end all,

for beyond the grave of the willing sacrifice lies the resurrection, and only

Purple in Biblical and classical times means “Red,” not the violet

colour we now call purple.

452

by that path can men truly enter into the knowledge of God. These men, I

consider, were represented in the days of Josephus by the Essenes.

Let us now concentrate on what the Adonis Rites were:

(1) There was a tree and the slaying of a God-man; which

ceremony may in times of prosperity have been merely a dramatic

representation, but in times of stress, as even to-day in India,

no doubt

men were slain.

(2) There was a ceremony with a cauldron.

(3) The women offered cakes in the form of the phallus to

Astarte, and wept for Tammuz, the cakes being clearly a substitute for the

male organs of their husbands.

(4) Meanwhile in a secret cave under the altar of sacrifice the

Elders were endeavouring to raise the slain man to life.

(5) In front of the altar, and facing the rising sun, twenty- five

other Elders were invoking the Sun, waiting for it to rise, as that was the

sign that he who had died as a man had entered into Heaven as a God.

(6) After that a branch of a tree played an important part and was

sniffed by some of the worshippers. This branch was apparently growing

out of the grave of the dead man.

(7) There was a sacramental meal consisting of bread and wine,

symbolising the body and blood of the Vegetation God, which in all such

Rites replaces a more cannibalistic feast, hinted at in the presence of the

cauldron, which later appears in the Graal legend, even in the 12th

century. This feast seems to have been an integral part of the Essene

Rites.

Now all these features were, as we have seen, characteristic of the

Rites of the Great Mother and her lover Son all over the world, and most

In January 1915, I stood in the Kaligat at Calcutta and saw the goats

being slaughtered as a sacrifice in front of the door of the Temple of Kali. My

Brahmin guide said, “Before the British came they sacrificed men to her, and

even now when famine visits the land the people secretly offer a man to the Great

Goddess.” Kali represents the destructive side of Shiva, but she is also the Great

Mother. She is the only Divinity in India still worshipped with blood sacrifices.

453

of them in a more decent form survive in Freemasonry to-day, either in

the Craft or in the higher degrees.

Moreover, we have not yet exhausted all the information

concerning these ceremonies which we can obtain from the Bible itself,

and in the next chapter we shall learn a good deal from two books which

are supposed to have been written by King Solomon.

There existed, however, among the Jews not only the open Rites

of Adonis but also an inner secret ceremony. Can we there fore trace any

further features of the Adonis Cult, and in particular what was supposed

to befall the Soul of the representative of Adonis during the three days

between his death and resurrection? This quest we will take up in the next

chapter but one, for there is no doubt that the legend of Jonah deals with

this theme.

CHAPTER XII - THEIR SURVIVAL UNDER THE

ESSENES.

The Jews, like the nations around them, had a mystery system at

the beginning of the Christian era. This consisted of the four degrees of

the Essenes

and has always been a problem to students of antiquity, for

our knowledge is, alas, somewhat limited. What we have, however, is

definite enough and will bear recapitulating here.

They were a celibate order among the Jews, first mentioned in the

time of Jonathan Maccabee (161 -144 B.C.), but although this is the

earliest record of their existence the authorities agree that they were of a

far earlier origin. The three earliest authorities are Philo,

Pliny the

elder

, and Josephus.

Eusebius quoting a lost book of Josephus also

gives us some interesting details, and one of the last references to them is

in Epithanius, who died in A.D. 402.

Our best account is that given by Josephus, in which he tells us

that the Essenes were mostly ce1ib but that a few of them did marry. That

they formed a kind of brotherhood and could recognise each other, so that

Encycl. Brit. Vol. 9. p. 779, also Vol. 2. p. 457 sq.

Philo, “Quod omnis probus.”

Pliny, “Nat. Hist.” V. 17.

Josephus, “The Wars of the Jews.” U. 8. “Antiquities.” XIII. 5.para.9:

XVIII. 1.para.5.etc.

454

when traveling from city to city they neither took food nor money with

them because their brother Essenes would always supply them with the

necessities of life. They held all goods in common, despised riches, and

led very frugal lives. As he seems to have been admitted to the first

degree, although he went no further, he undoubtedly knew of what he was

speaking. He says, “As for their piety towards God, it is very

extraordinary, for, before Sun-rising, they speak not a word about profane

matters, but put up certain prayers, which they have received from their

forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising.”

On ceremonial occasions they clothed themselves in a white

garment and we are also told that they assembled in “an apartment of their

own, into which it is not permitted to any of another sect to enter; while

they go after a pure manner into the dining room, as into a certain holy

temple.” We learn that they were famed for their fidelity, truthfulness and

mercy, were particularly charitable to the poor and distressed, while they

abominated lax conduct or profanity.

THE INITIATIONS.

“Now if anyone hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not

immediately admitted, but is prescribed the same method of living which

they use for a year, while he continues excluded, and they give him also a

small hatchet and the aforementioned girdle and the white garment.

And

when he has given evidence during that time that he can observe their

continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a

partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he even now not admitted to

live with them; for after this demonstration of fortitude, his temper is tried

two more years and if he appears to be worthy, they then admit him into

their society.

And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is

obliged to take tremendous oaths, that in the first place he will exercise

piety towards God and then he will observe justice towards men, and that

he will do no harm to anyone, either of his own accord or by the

command of others; that he will always hate the wicked and be assistant

to the righteous; that he will ever show fidelity to all men and especially

Note the axe, the emblem of Sandan, etc., and the same as the gavel,

likewise the cord and the badge of innocence.

455

to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without

God’s assistance.

That he will neither conceal anything from his own sect, nor

discover any of their doctrines to others; no, not though anyone should

compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to

communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received

them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve

the books belonging to the sect and the names of the Angels.

These are

the oaths by which they receive their proselytes to themselves.

But for those that are caught in any heinous sin, they cast them

out of their society. . . . What they most honour, after God Himself, is the

name of their legislator,

whom if anyone blaspheme, he is punished

capitally.

They also think it a good thing to obey their elders and the

majority. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them

will speak while the other nine are against it.”

Now if my brother masons will cast their minds back to their own

ob. and to the charge after initiation they cannot fail to be struck with the

similarity.

Josephus further informs us that the society was divided into four

distinct degrees, one above the other, that the members believed that man

had a soul which survived death, therein differing from the Sadducees,

and that after death the souls of the righteous go to Paradise, whereas the

wicked are “in a place of punishment.” His words are:

“But when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh they then,

as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount up wards. And this is

like the opinion of the Greeks that good souls have their habitations

The phrase, “Names of the Angels” has always puzzled the

commentators, who suggest “messengers.” A more probable explanation is that

the names of the angels were the pass words of the degrees.

Some commentators suggest that this legislator was Moses, but

without producing the slightest evidence. On the contrary, had it been Moses

undoubtedly Josephus would have said so. Who this semi divine legislator could

have been we can only surmise, no doubt he was a reputed founder of the Order,

perhaps Solomon—possibly Hiram Abiff.

This means having the head cut off. Clearly the legislator who could

be “blasphemed” must have been semi-divine.

456

beyond the ocean in a region such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing

or a West wind, that is perpetually blowing through the ocean; while they

allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never ceasing

punishment. And indeed the Greeks seemed to me to have followed the

same notion when they allot the Islands of the Blest to their brave men,

whom they call heroes and demigods; and to the souls of the wicked, the

regions of the ungodly, in Hades.”

From the concluding lines it is clear that Josephus means that the

Essenes, like the Greeks, believed that the Paradise of the good was in the

Isles of the Blest. Later on he tells us that the Pharisees also believed in

the immortality of the soul. “They say that all souls are incorruptible, but

that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, but the

souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.”

This passage seems to imply that whereas the Essenes believed in

the ultimate re-incarnation of both bad and good after a period spent in

Purgatory or Paradise, the Pharisees believed that only the good were

ultimately reborn on earth (in a body) ; the wicked remained in perpetual

torment. He further tells us that the Sadducees did not believe in any form

of immortality at all.

If the Essenes were descended from the old worshippers of

Adonis we should certainly expect some trace in their beliefs of re-

incarnation, since that doctrine underlies the whole of the beliefs

associated with Tammuz. In any case Josephus’ account is of great

importance to us for it records several details which indicate that the

Essenes were really a reformed version of the old Tammuz cult, and that

they are a very probable link in the chain of the evolution of that cult into

modern Speculative Free masonry.

Firstly the worship of the sun is very remarkable in an orthodox

Jewish sect. Ezekiel thundered against it at the time of the Babylonian

Captivity, and yet we thus find it still going on among a recognised sect

of the Jews, circa 70 A.D.. More significant still, his denunciation of the

Solar Worship is linked up with a denunciation of women weeping for

Tammuz. And from that account we learn that Ezekiel either in the flesh

or, more probably, in a vision saw three sets of heathen practices taking

place about the same time in the Temple itself.

457

(a) The elders of Israel in a secret underground chamber offering

incense to all the Gods of the Syrians and Canaanites.

(b) The women weeping for Tammuz at the North Gate.

itself, looking towards the East and invoking the Sun.

Thus we see that the worship of the sun and the lamenting for

Tammuz were closely interlocked, and yet we find the Essenes

invoking the Sun at Dawn. Moreover, Ezekiel accuses the King of

Tyre of claiming to be a God, a claim which the King would certainly

consider himself entitled to make as an incarnation of Tammuz. Therefore

we are bound to conclude that Ezekiel was attacking a semi-secret cult of

Tammuz, or Adonis, popular in Jerusalem, which acknowledged the King

of Tyre to be the living representative of Tammuz.

It is obvious that Hiram of Tyre, who lived in the days of King

Solomon and David, could not have been alive 500 years later, and yet

Ezekiel speaks as if it were the same man who had helped to build the

Temple. He even says that he walked in Eden, which itself seems to imply

that he knew and believed the Rabbinic legends which say that Hiram was

allowed to enter Paradise alive because of the important service he had

rendered to King Solomon. The only feasible explanation is that Hiram,

like Pharaoh, is a title, and that Ezekiel, hearing men speak of a Hiram,

King of Tyre, thought that he was the same man as had helped Solomon,

and this probably explains why he seemed so distressed at having to

denounce him for what he regarded as a falling away from the light.

What, however, we must now realise is that a rite which involved

invoking the sun at dawn, and which was denounced by Ezekiel in the 6th

century B.C., was still being performed in 70 A .D. by an Order which

had secret initiation Rites, and taught the doctrines of the resurrection and

of re-incarnation. This Order, I suggest, was merely a reformed and

purified survival of the old Tammuz cult. If this be so we can well

understand why they tested their candidates so rigorously and bound them

by tremendous penal oaths.

The more closely we investigate the Essenes the more clear it

becomes that on the one hand they were derived from the old Cult, and on

the other passed on some of their ceremonies to kindred secret societies,

458

such as the Dervish rites, which still survive in Palestine. The ceremonial

bathing or kind of baptism which the Essenes practised was always

associated with the Adonis and Attis rites. It has survived in the Operative

rituals to day, although it is no longer enforced. According to the ritual

the candidate has to step right into a bath, after which he is clothed with a

long white garment, opening in front. I know quite a number of men who

had to go through this ceremony only ten or twelve years ago. Although

the bathing has now been omitted the white robe is still used, and similar

robes were in use in old Dundee Lodge, a Speculative Lodge, in the 18th

century, and were still in existence, though not in use, up to 1904, when

they were destroyed.

Similar robes were in use in Boston, U.S.A. in

1914.

The convenience of these robes when testing a man’s virility is

obvious, and this was a custom which had not died out in Wales 40 years

ago.

The celibacy adopted by the majority of the Essenes was almost

certainly a mild substitute for the emasculation at one time demanded by

the Great Mother, which still at this date (A .D. 71) was exacted from the

Priests of the more primitive forms of the cult at Heirapolis and

elsewhere.

The four degrees have a striking similarity to the Masonic

arrangement of the three Craft degrees and the R .A.. It is also worth

mentioning that the Essenes had a strong objection to slavery, and

protested against it as unjust and a violation of the brotherhood of man.

Have we here the origin of the Masonic objection to receiving into the

Order anyone who is not free? At any rate we may feel sure that any slave

made an Essene was immediately set free, and therefore the Order would

contain only free men. It may be noted that this humanitarian attitude was

unique at that time in the ancient world. Even the best Pagans saw no

harm in slavery, indeed accepted it as inevitable.

The very name Essenes presents an interesting problem. The

commentators have been entirely unable to suggest its derivation, except

that it may come from a Persian word, and here their arguments are far

from convincing. Now Diana, or Artemis of Ephesus, who was of course

merely another form of Astarte, had an order of Priests who were either

A. Heiron, “Ancient Freemasonry and Old Dundee Lodge,” pp. 49 sq.

Ibid.

459

called Essenes or at any rate had a High Priest over them known by the

title of Essen.

These priests were eunuchs, and the common name by

which they were known was Megabuzoi, which indicates a Persian origin.

It therefore seems probable that this Jewish secret society derives its

name, not from a Hebrew word meaning the “Pail,” as some have

suggested, but from the name also applied to the Priests of the Great

Mother at Ephesus, who like them were naturally celibates. The emblems

of this goddess were the bee, the lion, the goat and the bear, and three of

these are closely associated with Freemasonry.

The striking similarity of their obligation to ours and to our E .

Charge seems to link this order with Freemasonry. That all traces of the

old fertility cult were not extinct even among the orthodox Jews is shown

by the Festival of Purim. This feast, right down into the 18th century at

any rate, had nearly all the characteristics of the Roman Saturnalia, and

one of the most extraordinary features was the hanging of a figure of a

man on a tree or cross. The man was said to be Haman, but modern critics

are agreed that this is a substitute for the old fertility god.

4546

See “Artemis.’’ Encyl. Brjt. Uth. ed. vol. II.

Frazer, ‘Scapegoat.” p. 392 sq.

The double-headed Eagle of the Kadosh is also the insignia of a

Patriarch in the Eastern Church, and five years ago (1919) was bestowed on the

Archbishop of Canterbury by a vote of the Eastern Synod. In short it is still the

badge of an Eastern Priest-King.

460

Footnotes

See Appendix 9

Midrashim are traditional interpretations of Scripture based on legends. The commentaries are on

both legal and non-legal issues

Baigent, 1983, pp56-58

For the purpose of this book, the author prefers to focus on the Indo-Hittites rather than the broader

Indo-European population group

Bloom, p4

Pike describes the bowls in the Great work purported to be taken from the 29th Degree (Scottish

Elder Master or Knight St. Andrew) ritual

A nanometer is one thousandth millionth of a metre

Calculated from test results provided by Hudson

Hudson’s Portland workshop

Concord Research Corporation, 19 June 1989

Interview with David Hudson in Tampa, Florida, 31 May 1996

Hudson’s Los Angles Lecture

Hudson, Science of the Spirit Foundation Newsletter Issue 5, February 1996

Hudson, Science of the Spirit Foundation Pre-Shipment Information, April 1998

Hudson, Science of the Spirit Foundation Newsletter Issues 6& 7, March/April 1996

Hudson, Science of the Spirit Foundation Pre-Shipment Information, April 1998

Ginzberg, Vol III, pp194, 243 & 395 and Hancock, p276; see also Morgenstern, p20, note 25 and

The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol II, pp105-106

Bardeen, John, Robert J Schrieffer and Leon N Cooper (1972) for their jointly developed theory of

superconductivity, usually called the BCES - theory

Bednorz, J George, K Alexander Muller (1987) for their important breakthrough in the discovery of

superconductivity in ceramic materials; Lee, David M, Douglas D Osheroff and Robert C Richardson

(1996) for their discovery of superfluididity in helium-3

1 Samuel 5:6-12 and Sassoon & Dale, p228

Josephus, Antiquities 6:1.1

1 Samuel 4:3ff

Ginzberg, Vol III, pp157 & 228 and Hancock, p276

Zohar 3:67

Hudson’s source material has the following characteristics:

Element Oz/ton Percent

Ruthenium 250 10.34%

Rhodium 1200 49.62%

Palladium 5 0.21%

Osmium 150 6.20%

Iridium 800 33.08%

Platinum 12.5 0.52%

Gold 1 0.04%

Schwaller De Lubicz, p197

Ancient and Near East Texts 287-288 in Prichard, Vol. 1, p200-201

The first invasion in 597BCE is mentioned by Josephus in ‘Against Apion’, although he obtained

his information from Berossus, and by Eupolemus who derived his information from Alexander

Polyhistor

Jeremiah 52:1730

461

I Maccabees 1:21-23

Josephus The Jewish Wars VI-254 to 277

Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, p395-6

Josephus The Jewish Wars VI-254 to 277

Josephus The Jewish Wars, see Williamson & Smallwood, pp358-359

Schonfield, 1956, p5

Genesis 15:18 & 1 Kings 4: 20. Redford DB, Thutmose I and the Euphrates JSSEA 10 (1979), 68-

9, Liverani Prestige and Interest, pp. 38-9 and BAR II par.70-73 for identification of the Tuthmose

I’s northern boarder at the Euphrates River, which is inscribed as "...as far as the inverted water which

goes downstream”

Graves, 1961, p150

Kenyon, pp255-256

Prichard, 1974, p35

Bloom, p22

1 Chronicles 2

Velikovsky, pp148-154

Velikovsky, p159; Davies, pp53-54; Evans, p257

Gardner, pp266 & 310

Hall [1937], pp140 & 150 refers to The Initiation of Plato from a play called The Freemason,

printed in Paris in 1867 and reproduced in a magazine entitled The Kneph

BoM 19 refers to Ecclesiastes 2:8. See also Mathers, p101

Herodotus, Book 2, 111 and 132

Josephus, Antiquities, Book 8, Chapter 10

II Chronicles 12:2 & Jeremiah 25:26

1 Kings 11: 26-40 & 12: 1-17

BM8 (British Museum)

The Roman Emperor Septimius Severus ruled 193 to 211CE

Simms

Schonfield, 1984, p66 & Mathers, p11

Isaiah 11:1-11

Jeremiah 25:17-26

Joint expedition of the Hebrew University and the Albright Institution for Oriental Research, see

Gitin, S, T Dotan & J Naveh in Qadmoniot, Journal of the Israeli Exploration Society, 1997

1 Samuel 21:10

Revelation 18 to 21, thought to be written about 95CE

Mishnah is a collection of oral laws that forms the first or oldest part of the Talmud. These oral

laws were formulated between 135-220CE by Rabbi Judah ha-Kadosh also known as Judah ha-Nasi.

Some of this oral tradition dates from at least the first century BCE with the Elders of the Sanhedrin,

Rabbis Shammai and Hillel.

Graves, 1961, p14

Mathers, p272, note

Temple, 2002, p84

Ward, 1921, pp28 & 32-33; Mackey, On, pp619-620 & Hall [1950], p44

Yarker, [1878], p15 Note 16

Graves, 1961, pp464 & 469-471

Graves, 1961, pp464 & 468

Graves, 1961, p414

Graves & Patai, p38 note 3

Genesis 1:2

Habsburg, pp86-87

Graves, 1961, pp390, 392-393, 333, 418

Graves, 1992, p34 4.1, p55 13.4; Pausanias ix. 19. 2

462

Graves, 1992, pp13-14

Graves, 1992, p15 & p125 31.7

Graves, 1992, p19 & p187 53.3

Graves, 1992, p405 110.2 & p543 138.5

Graves, 1992, p15

Graves, 1992, p18 & p365 103.1

Graves, 1992, p85 22.1 & p42 7.2; Plutach Greek Questions 39

Graves, 1992, p255 75.4

Graves, 1961, p333

Graves, 1992, p47 9.4 & p107 27.1

Graves, 1992, p612 154.9

Graves, 1992, p347 98.5 & 98.6; Proclus Chrestomathia 28

Graves, 1961, p373

Graves, 1961, p332

Graves, 1961, p325

Graves, 1961, p330

Graves, 1992, pp87-88 23.1, p316 92.2 & p108 27.2

Graves, 1992, p316 92.4

Graves, 1992, p297 88.8; Pliny Natural History xxxvi. 85; Scholiast on Euripides’ Andromache

1139; Homer’s Iliad xviii. 592; Lucian On the Dance 49

Graves, 1992, p343 98u & p346 98.4; Plutarch Theseus 21

Homer Iliad xviii. 592

Graves, 1992, pp345-346 98.2

Graves, 1992, p346 98.3

Graves, 1992, p370 104.4

Ecclesiastes 11:30

100

Genesis 32:24-28

101

Song of Songs 2:1, Graves, 1961, p261

102

Ward, 1925, p113

103

Ward, 1925, pp117-118

104

Song of Songs 1:17; Graves, 1961, pp 265, 338 & 339

105

Canticles 2:1

106

Isaiah 35:1

107

Ward, 1925, p34

108

Graves, 1992, p72 18.7, p95 24.11 & p275 81.1

109

Temple, 1998, pp114-115

110

Patai, pp 20 & 27

111

Patai, p99

112

1 Kings 10:2

113

1 Kings 3:1

114

Graves, 1961, p356

115

Monson

116

Phillips, 2002, pp114-117

117

Wildung, p172

118

Wildung, pp170-175

119

Wildung, pp138-145

120

Hall, 1929, p401; note Isiac means of Isis, rather than of Isaiah

121

Rohl, pp175-176

122

1 Kings 9:15

123

Numbers 20:1 & 13

124

II Chronicles 8:11, Psalms 2:6, Joel 2:1 and 3:17, Daniel 9:16 and 9:24, and Nehemiah 11:1

463

125

Isaiah 48:2

126

Bernal, Vol 1, pp69 & 70

127

Hall, [1937] p69

128

Graves, 1961, p337

129

Horizontal dendrogram from hierarchical cluster analysis of data presented by Nei and

Roychourdhury 1993, see also Nei 1995, 1996

130

Magee, p34

131

Nature, 5 December 2002, the Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium

132

Cavalli-Sforza , 1998

133

Horizontal icicle plot with clusters combined using the average linkage between groups method

(called UPGMA)

134

Cann, Stoneking and Wilson, 1987

135

Nei and Takezaki 1996

136

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis; Rotation Method: Oblimin Oblique Rotation

with Kaiser Normalization. Correlation of Components: Asian to Caucasian 0.307, Asian to African

–0.615, Caucasian to African –0.119

137

Data Set I; Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis; Rotation Method: Oblimin Oblique

Rotation with Kaiser Normalization. Correlation of Components: African to Caucasian/South Asian

0.121, Caucasian/South Asian to North Asian/ Amerindian 0.517, African to North Asian/

Amerindian 0.00. Chimpanzee to Caucasian/South Asian –0.763, to African –0.415, to North Asian/

Amerindian –0.671

138

Wolpoff, Wu and Throne, 1984

139

Morgan presents the controversial Aquatic Ape theory of Sir Alister Hardy 1982 & 1985

140

Morgan 1990, pp50-58

141

Morgan 1990, p141

142

Morgan 1990, pp83-91

143

Benveniste and Todaro, 1976; Todaro, 1980; Todaro, & Bonner, Birkenmeier, Gonda, Mark,

Searfross, 1982; see also Morgan 1990, pp176-179

144

Morph or mt. Hpa 1-1 is commonly found in Asian man and Orangutans but not in the ancient

African populations of the Pygmy and Bushman

145

Natasja G. de Groot et al

146

See American Association of Physical Anthropologists 66

Annual Meeting; Hammer, et al 1997,

Hammer, et al 1998; and Harding, et al 1997

147

Jin, Li and P Underhill, V Doctor, R W Davis, P Shen, L Cavalli-Sforza and P Oefner

148

Krings

149

Dawkins, p272 note 43 and pp276-277 note 9

150

Yogananda, pp320-321

151

Semen, 1996; and Cavalli-Sforza , 1998

152

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p532

153

Vinci, p115 quotes Treccani’s Encyclopedia; see also pp118-119 & 219

154

Vinci, pp 11, 120, 131 & 201

155

Baring & Cashford, p156

156

Graves, 1992, p573 146.1

157

Graves, 1961, p62

158

Graves, 1992, p598 151.3

159

Graves, 1961, p241 & Graves, 1992, p589 149.1

160

Graves, 1992, p297 88.7 & p596 151e

161

Geoffrey of Monmouth, pp72-74 & 286

162

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p531

163

The Elba Tablets of Tell Mardikh in north-western Syria, excavated in 1964, contain early

Hebrew-Canaanite language in Sumerian cuneiform

164

Exodus 21:24-25

464

165

Hershel Shanks ‘Scrolls, Scripts & Stelae - A Norwegian Collector Shows BAR His Rare

Inscriptions’ BAR Sept/Oct 2002

166

Lambert, pp137, 141,146, 161, 173

167

Genesis 2:10-14

168

Gilbert 1996, p117

169

Manley, pp36 & 50

170

Manley, pp56-57

171

Manley, pp36 & 44

172

Greywacke is grey sandstone of biotite, chlorite, felspar, hornblende, magnetite, pyroxene, quartz

and serpentine minerals in a fine-grained clay matrix.

173

Petrie; pp99-100 & 131-133; see also Marston pp61 & 168-170 for biblical comment.

174

Wildung, pp86-87

175

Eckenstein, Petrie’s student, pp6-7 & 39-40

176

Herodotus, Book II, 104 & 105

177

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp25, 26

178

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp272

179

Ward, 1921, p193 6° of Ancient & Accepted Rite

180

Josephus History of the Jews Book I:22; Clearchus of Soli; Higgins, Godfrey vol. I; pp 400-405

181

Graves, 1961, p339

182

Graves, 1961, p339; Graves, 1992, p327 95.5

183

Graves, 1992, p42 7.2-7.4

184

Graves, 1961, p341

185

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p289

186

Allegro, 1970, p249, note VIII.54

187

Graves & Patai, p208 note 5

188

Sitchin, "When Time Began", p105

189

Wolkstein & Kramer , pp53-54

190

Allegro, 1970, p237, note VI.24

191

Allegro, 1970, pp 234 & 235, note VI.16

192

Graves, 1992, p600 152g

193

Graves, 1992, p602 152.5

194

Graves, 1961, p339

195

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p291

196

Graves, 1961, p339 quoting 1 Kings 4:33

197

Genesis 10: 2

198

Nennius, s18

199

Graves, 1961, p132

200

Graves, 1992, p598 151.3

201

Ezekiel, 38:17

202

Odyssey XI, 13-16,19; Graves, 1955, p170.4

203

Graves, 1961, pp207 & 237-238

204

Bernal, Vol2, 1991, p231

205

Reid, Howard pp 216-221

206

Adam of Bremen IV, 19; Vinci, p138

207

Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum VII, VI, 8; Vinci, p138

208

Gardner, pp245-247

209

Ashmole [1715], p15

210

Nerval

211

Collins, p119

212

Ferdowsi, pp47-48

213

Zend-Avesta, see Collins, p119

465

214

Eliade, p99

215

Graves, 1961, p218

216

Graves, 1946, p326

217

I Chronicles 2:54,55

218

Plinius mentions Magan in Arabia.

219

Genesis 10:8

220

Sanherib’s report about the Meluhhan help for Hiskija.

221

The discussion on the Meluhha comes from Bjarte Kaldhol on the Ancient & Near East forum.

222

Deuteronomy 2:23

223

Besor is the dialectal form of Misor.

224

Exodus 2:18, Exodus 18 & Numbers 10:29

225

Briffault, vol3, p108

226

Ezekiel 9:4

227

Joyce, p52

228

Graves, 1946, pp402-403

229

Graves, 1992, p38 6.2

230

Ward, 1925, p62

231

Ovid ‘The Death of Orpheus’ Book XI, 1-94, pp249-251; see also Graves, 1961, p99

232

Ovid ‘Medea and Aeson’ Book VII, 288-316, p153 and 159-218, pp140-141

233

Ovid ‘Tereus, Procne, and Philomela’ Book VI, 567-596, pp139-140

234

Exodus 15:20-23

235

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews – Book II, Chapter 4

236

Graves, 1961, p172

237

Graves, 1992, p615 155.2

238

Josephus ‘Against Apion Book II’ VIII; see also Aberro, Charles, 1976

239

Graves, 1992, p515 134b

240

Graves, 1992, p44 8.1; p47 9.2

241

Graves, 1961, p403

242

Graves, 1961, p404; Graves, 1992, p71 18.1, p302 89.3 & p651 160.10

243

Graves, 1992, p302 89.2

244

Graves, 1992, p417 112.1

245

Graves, 1992,p32 3.1

246

Bernal, Vol 1, 1987, p65

247

Herodotus, Book Two, 42-46, pp101-104

248

Dawkins, 1985, p95

249

Graves, 1961, p218

250

Dawkins, 1988, p62 and p268 note 24

251

Hall, [1937], Initiation of Plato, Third Tableau, Second Scene, p159

252

Odyssey X 234-235; Rig-Veda VIII, 29, 1 & IX, 3, 9; Vinci, pp114 & 208

253

Herodotus, Book 1, 198, p79. Book 4, 194, p and Book 7,31, p386 refer to man made honey.

254

Graves, 1992, p36 3.1

255

Gimbutas

256

Graves, 1992, p71 18.3 & p280 82.4

257

Graves, 1992, p169 47.1

258

Graves, 1992, p31 2.2

259

Graves, 1992, p72 18.4

260

Graves, 1992, p85 22.1; Ward, 1925

261

Wegner

262

Silver

263

Anderson, p23

264

Graves, 1992, p102 26.1

265

Graves, 1992, p103 26.2, p111 27.12, p651 160.10

466

266

Graves, 1992, p114 28.2

267

Graves,1992, Forward, p17 & p108 27.2

268

Graves,1992, pp176-177 50.2 - 50.3, p255 75.4, p359 101.1

269

Graves,1992, Forward

270

Mayor, pp 32 to 40

271

Onat, Yegen, Lawrence, Oktay A and Oktay S

272

Strabo: Geography

273

Graves, 1992, p517 134j; Pliny Natural History xxv. 12, 15, 27 & 37

274

Temple, 2002, pp101-109

275

Pliny Natural History Book XXV, 59, 106 trans Vol. VII, p215; Temple, 2002, p109

276

Harris, pp217-221

277

Eighth to sixth century BCE

278

Virgil, Book 6, p91

279

Mead, The Virgin of the World, Vol III, p78

280

Dawkins, 1985, p35

281

Graves, 1961, pp389 & 393

282

Graves, 1961, p472

283

Ovid ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ Book X, 1-100, pp225-228

284

Hall, [1937], Initiation of Plato, First Tableau, Seventh Scene, p114

285

Christoph Willibad Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice, 1762, Vienna

286

Graves, 1961, p399

287

Graves, 1961, p393

288

Graves, 1992, p57 14.5

289

Graves, 1992, p120 30.4

290

Graves, 1961, p195

291

Exodus 12:5

292

Ovid ‘The Doctrines of Pythagoras’ Book XV, 335-370, p362

293

Oeuvres de Philon Juif, French translated 1588, p341 see Charbonneau-Lassay, p328

294

Judges 14:14

295

Church, Chapter 6

296

Graves & Patai, p242 note 1

297

Graves, 1946, p56

298

Graves, 1961, p356

299

Genesis 24:15

300

Watts, p198

301

Charpentier, p142

302

Favier, pp32 7 98

303

Graves & Patai, p154 note 3

304

Genesis 15:10,17-18; Jeremiah 34:18; the Treaty of Mati'ilu of Arpad and Ashurnirari V; and in

Herodotus VII, 39 the Persian king Xerxes has his army march between the pieces of a cut up man.

305

Ward, 1925, pp 55, 70, 100, 110, 132 & 134

306

Exodus 4:24-26

307

Exodus 24:5-8

308

Cohn, pp60 & 61

309

1 Kings 11:1-4

310

1 Kings 11:41-43

311

Graves, 1946, p6

312

Exodus 13:2

313

Micah 6:7

314

Judges 11:30&31; Graves, 1992, p715 169.5

315

Leviticus 18:21 & 20:2; I Kings 11:7, 2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 7:35

316

Jeremiah 17:1-2

467

317

Jeremiah 7:31 & 32; see also Graves & Patai p175 note 3

318

Leviticus 27:29

319

Leviticus 1:11, Graves, 1961, p441 & Graves & Patai, p32 note 6

320

Cohn, pp72 & 73

321

Exodus 34:19&20

322

Genesis 22:2

323

Hebrews 11:19

324

Graves, 1946, p5

325

Graves, 1946, p5, repudiation or divorce of the Goddesses is found in Ezekiel: 26.

326

Genesis 17:3-12

327

Numbers 33:52-3

328

Deuteronomy 20:16-17

329

Graves, 1992, p715 169.6

330

Deuteronomy 20:13-14

331

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p356

332

Joshua 6:21,24

333

Baring & Cashford, p442

334

Manetho, Aegyptiaca, fragment 42, 1.75-79.2; Josephus, Against-Apion, I, XIV, 75; Tutimaeus is

unknown; the Egyptian word for Hyksos is Aamu.

335

Velikovsky, p64

336

Josephus, Against-Apion, I, XXVI

337

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp357

338

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p357

339

Tablet EA 256 (British Museum)

340

Daniel 2: 46-49

341

Zuckerman, p47 quotes Ahmed ibn Muhammad Al-Makkari

342

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp40-41 & Graves, 1992, p399 109.2

343

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp321

344

Collins, pp138-139 & 243

345

Manning dates Thera’s eruption dated to the later 17th century BCE, probably c.1628BCE

346

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, pp xxiix

347

Graves, 1961, p275

348

Lambert, p53

349

Bernal, Vol 2, 1993, p408

350

Prichard, 1955, p232-233, Carnarvon Tablet I.

351

Prichard, 1955, pp233-234

352

Annals of Karnak, James Breasted, Vol 2, Sec 416 in Velikovsky, p141

353

Tablet EA 288 (British Museum)

354

Schwaller de Lubicz, pp126-135

355

Cohn 1993, p9

356

Cohn 1993, p10

357

Cohn 1993, p21

358

Cohn 1993, p21

359

Knight & Lomas, 1996, p127

360

Collins, p190-191

361

Wilhelm

362

Sitchin, pp71 & 72

363

1 Kings 6:1 the Exodus took place 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon's reign

364

Simms, Kitchen, Lichtheim, Johnson 1988, pp26-46; 1991, pp231-6 and 1996, pp65-82

365

Wildung, p114

366

Desroches-Noblecourt, p130

367

El-Mahdy, p128; Evans, Lorraine, p127

468

368

Parkinson and Schofield, pp125-6; Evans, Lorraine, p171

369

Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica; Eusebius/St Jerome Die Chronik des Hiernyms (Berlin 1956) &

Manetho Aegyptiaca

370

Evans, pp26-32

371

Bower, Walter Scotichronicon, edited by D.E.R Watt, Aberdeen University Press, 1993, p112

372

Simms

373

Gaballa

374

Josephus retelling of Manetho’s notice

375

Papyrus Harris 75 dated to the early reign of Ramses IV

376

Ward, 1925, pp 101 to 108; Phillips, 2002, pp114-117

377

Stephen of Byzantium, Ethnica, London, 1925; Phillips, 2002, p271

378

Graves, 1992, p639 159.4

379

Graves and Patai, p262, note 1

380

Phillips, 2002, p119

381

Bernal, Vol 2, p36

382

Blum

383

Phillips, 2002, pp27-39

384

Habakkuk 3:3; Phillips, 2002, pp238-9

385

Josephus ‘Against Apion’ derived its material from Berossus' ‘Babyloniaca’; see Josephus,

Against Apion Book II, 2

386

Leiden Papyrus (1350BCE approx.), see Luckert, pp112-113

387

Exodus 3:14

388

Graves, 1961, pp266 & 337-8

389

Graves, 1961, p335

390

Graves, 1961, p440

391

Graves, 1961, p424

392

Graves, 1961, p287

393

Graves, 1961, p340

394

Graves, 1992, p29

395

Gilbert, 1996, p184

396

Briffault Vol3, p90

397

Graves, 1961, p366

398

Graves, 1961, p464

399

Graves, 1961, p370

400

Dawkins, 1985, p24

401

Wilhelm pp 54-55

402

Dawkins, 1985, p30 & p271 note 19.

403

Hall [1950], p44, shows that the letters AUM also stand for Artifex Universus Mundi meaning the

Great Architect of the World and by numerical cipher have the sum of 33, as does the name Bacon

404

Temple, 2002, pp148-159

405

Phillips, 2002, pp264-272

406

Williams ab Ithel, p41 and Gilbert, 2002, pp22 & 227

407

Graves, 1961, pp468 & 248-250

408

Graves, 1961, pp285-287

409

Graves, 1961, p468

410

Yarker, 1878, p14

411

Gardner, p257: also Ean Begg The Cult of the Black Virgin p103

412

Ward, 1921, p281

413

Ward, 1921, p281

414

Harris, p192

415

Numbers 6:22-27

416

Graves, 1961, p469

469

417

Genesis 36:13 & 17, 1 Chronicles 1:37, see also Bartlett, p89

418

Koestler, p11 quotes Ibn Fadlan

419

Ward, JSM, 1925, p167

420

Anon, ‘Ordo ab Chao

421

Koestler, p16 quotes Ibn Fadlan, Istakhri, St Julien, Frazer

422

The forty two letter name of God is ABG YThTz QRO ShTN NGD YKSh BTR TzThG ChKB

PhZQ YGL PhZQ ShQW TzYTh

423

Ward, 1925, pp 96 & 105

424

Graves, 1946, pp219-220, Graves, 1961, pp119 & 189

425

Zohar GHA 996 see Mathers, p235

426

GHA 1094

427

Zohar GHA, 90:996 see Mathers, p235, where antimony has been substituted for philosophical

Mercury

428

Wildung, p 100

429

Wildung, p 105

430

Morris Silver: comment on Ugaritic text KTU 1.23; see also Jeremiah 17:1-2 for Asherah poles

431

Ward, 1925, p35

432

Foxcroft English edition of 1690

433

Gesta Danorum III, VI, 24-25; Odyssey XI 174-175, 184-186; Vinci, pp32, 77, 85, 213

434

Macrobius Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Chapter XII: 1-5; Temple, 2002, p144

435

Hall [1937], p59

436

Hall [1937], p59

437

Graves, 1961, pp103 & 113

438

GHA 1090 & 1091

439

Dawkins, 1985, p285 note 153

440

LHA 382:

441

LHA 347 & 363

442

Pike, Chapter 32 (Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret) The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi –

The Ancient Mysteries, pp858-861

443

Act 4, Scene 1

444

Act 5, Scene 1

445

Graves, 1992, p96 25a

446

Mathew 27:46, Mark 15:34 & Anon, Ordo ab Chao, 32°, p377

447

Hall [1937], p155, The Initiation of Plato, Third Tableau, Second Scene, from the magazine The

Kneph

448

‘Form and Order of the Service to be used on Tuesday, 2

June, 1953 being The Day of

Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’ H.M.S.O London

449

Temple, 2000, p438

450

Collins, p161

451

Collins, p163

452

Moses Khorenats’i, p80, see Collins, p165

453

Graves & Patai, p147 (g)

454

Genesis 10

455

Moses Khorenats’i, pp84-92, see Collins, p165

456

Genesis 11:31&32

457

Genesis 24

458

Genesis 29

459

Dawkins, 1985, p272 note 25

460

Bright p70 and Graves & Patai, p132 note 1

461

Eusebius, of Caesarea, lib 9 & Josephus, ‘Antiquities of the Jews – Book I’ Chapter 7, Para 2

quotes the words of Berossus

470

462

Josephus, ‘Antiquities of the Jews – Book I’, Chapter 7, Para 2 quotes the words of Nicolaus of

Damascus

463

Genesis 12:9 & 10

464

Genesis 14:16 & 17

465

Pande, G D

466

Roux, p242 & Graves & Patai, p145 Note 1

467

Genesis 23

468

Briffault, Vol 3, p108

469

Bright, pp80 & 91

470

Gilbert, 1996, pp183-4

471

Mackenzie, p408 of first edition, 1877

472

Perry

473

Baigent, p189

474

Patai, p300

475

Graves & Patai, p141 notes that there is no scriptural authority for Abraham denouncing the idols

476

Chwolsohn, pp382-98

477

Baigent, pp185-187

478

Lambert, p212

479

Hall, [1937] pp127-128

480

Baigent, p185

481

Gilbert, 1996, p154

482

Gurdjieff, pp161-164; also Gilbert, 1996, p40

483

Gilbert, 1996, pp112 - 116

484

also Yamauchi, p415; Josephus History of the Jews Book I:22; Clearchus of Soli; Higgins,

Godfrey vol. I; pp 400-405

485

Mazumdar,, p 48

486

Stoyanov, p6

487

Stoyanov, pp3-11

488

Stoyanov p7, refers to the Gathas of Zoroaster, Avestan section of Yasna, 31:20, a book bound

with 7 seals.

489

Stoyanov, p17

490

Stoyanov, p10

491

Gilbert, 1996, p154

492

Patai, p75

493

Baigent, p181

494

Sinclair, 1993, pp 151 & 246, although this has been disputed

495

Sinclair, 1993, p151; 1996, pp83-84; Wren

496

Gilbert, 1996, pp 68-70

497

Psalms 72:10

498

Fulcanelli

499

Higgins, Vol I, pp 421-424

500

Ezekiel 27:23 & 24

501

Schonfield, 1984, p131

502

Briffault, vol3, p85

503

Revelation 12:1

504

Prichard

505

Genesis 36:39

506

Genesis 36:39; also Aesch-Mezareph or Purifying Fire, Chapter I

507

Patai, p443

508

Leiden Papyrus (1350BCE approx.), see Luckert, pp112-113

509

Baigent, 1994, p27

510

Baigent, p27

471

511

Zoroastrian Holy Book Bundahishn, see Collins, pp217-218

512

2 Samuel 8:17 & Luckert, pp143 & 156

513

Mazumdar,, p48

514

Graves, 1946, p57

515

Maccabees 7:13 & 42; See also Mackey, Chasidim, p179 & Pharisees, p656

516

Mackey, p656

517

Exodus 25:30, 29:40, Leviticus 27:30ff, Numbers 28:26ff & Graves & Patai, p150 note 5

518

Graves, 1946, p9

519

1Chronicles 24

520

Joyce, pp51-52

521

Genesis 14; Psalm 110

522

Graves, 1946, p10

523

Josephus The Jewish Wars XIII, 8, Antiquities 13:5:9 & 18:1:5; see also Ward, 1925, pp136-140

524

Josephus, The Jewish Wars, II, 165

525

Graves, 1946, p332

526

Comment from Steven Mizrach ‘Re: Rex Deus’ Yahoo! Groups priory-of-sion Message 38659

527

1 Samuel 10-15

528

Collins, p31

529

Diodorus Siculus The Library of History

530

Graves, 1946, p308

531

Kersten, p78

532

I Maccabees 2: 27; see also Joyce, p54

533

Joyce, pp9-14 7 & 171-214

534

Kersten, Holger, pp7-20 & 206-233

535

Jeremiah 35

536

Collins, pp147-150

537

Collins, pp147-150

538

Marconis (de Negre), 18º, p144, Ward, 1921, p253 & Dawkins, 1985, pp57 & 70

539

Dawkins, 1985, p57

540

Marconis (de Negre), 18º, p144; Ward, 1921, p253

541

Sepher-Toldos Jeshu, the Talmudist authors of Sota and Sanhedrin p. 19, book of Jechiel, and Tela

Ignea Satanae (the Fiery Darts of Satan), all quoted by Eliphas Levi in La Science Des Esprits, 1865,

who is in-turn quoted by Blavatsky Vol 2, p201; see also Epiphanius (Haeres. 78; Antidic. 5.vii.) for

the tradition Joseph’s family name Panther

542

Wilson, 1985

543

Levi, 1913, p208 & 210

544

Yarker [1909], pp156-7 & 167

545

Blavatsky Vol 2, p386

546

Levi, 1913, pp147-148

547

Drach I pp168-169, translated from the Hebrew in Abbé Chiarini, Le Talmud de Babylone, p. 45

(1831)

548

Lexicon Talmudicum, sub “Abanarbel” and Talmud Babli Sanhedrin 106b, 43a, 51a; see Graves,

1989, p vii

549

Psalms 2: 7 & 8; see also Graves, 1961, p423

550

Graves, 1961, p472

551

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas: 100

552

Yarker [1909], pp156-7, 167

553

Graves, 1961, pp473-475

554

Graves, 1961, p469

555

Ward, 1921, pp282-283 & 306-307, Yarker [1909], pp168-169

556

Apocryphal New Testament; p 288 Acts of Paul

557

Graves, 1961, p424

472

558

Penni, p231

559

Joyce, pp34-37

560

Bale

561

Mazumdar,, p48

562

Hebrews 7: 3; Graves & Patai, pp147 & 150

563

Genesis 14: 18

564

Hebrews 7:3

565

Hebrews 7

566

Graves, 1961, p161

567

Josephus, ‘Antiquities of the Jews – Book I’ Chapter 10, Para 2

568

Hebrews 7:3 and Schonfield, 1984, p5

569

Graves, 1961, p118

570

Allegro, 1970, pp 34, 35 & 102

571

Eisenman & Wise pp142-145

572

Exodus 16:31-34

573

II Chronicles 2-4; 1 Kings 7; and Yarker, [1909], p324

574

Yarker, [1909], p324

575

Collins, Andrew, pp25-27

576

Hancock, pp51-53

577

Fulcanelli, p103

578

Graves, 1961, p164 refers to Schonfield Historical Background to the Bible

579

Graves & Patai, p277 Note 4

580

Yarker, [1878], p75, note 1

581

Geoffrey of Monmouth, p282 refers to the similar British remnant

582

Amos 9:11-12

583

Schonfield, 1984, pp20-21

584

Josephus The Jewish War, II, 115 & Zuckerman, p5

585

Van Buren, p30

586

Judges 13:2

587

Zuckerman pp74-75 & 112

588

Zuckerman pp49-50

589

Zuckerman p56

590

Zuckerman p59

591

Zuckerman p82

592

Zuckerman p173

593

Zuckerman pp140-145

594

Zuckerman p260

595

Zuckerman pp374-378

596

Ward, JSM, 1925, p154-157

597

Mackey, Albert G, p244

598

Mackey, Albert G, pp736-737 & Anon, Ordo ab Chao, 33°, p401

599

Bernard of Clairvaux, xix

600

Yates, ‘The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age’

601

Geoffrey of Monmouth, p72-74 & p286; see also Dawkins, 1988, pp106-108

602

Genesis 49:1,16-18

603

Graves, 1992, p204, 60.3

604

I Chronicles 4-9

605

Judges 5:17

606

2 Chronicles 9:20-23

607

Ezekiel 27

608

Judges 18:11-12

609

Joshua 19:47, Judges 18:29

473

610

Judges 3:3 & I Chronicles 5:23

611

Unger , p191

612

Church, p124

613

Graves, 1992, p196 58.1

614

Judges 17, 18:30

615

Jerome Homily 45, p338 & Enoch 6:5-8

616

Freedman, p158 Hermon, Mount

617

Doresse, p225

618

Doresse, p39 note 97

619

Psalm 68:15,16

620

Freedman, p.159 Hermon, Mount

621

Johnson, Buffie, p315

622

Jerome Homily 66 p70 & Encyclopedia Britannica, 15

ed., 1987, p876, Hermon, Mount means

forbidden place

623

Cavendish, p1289

624

Van Buren, p142-143

625

Morris, p537

626

Unger , p273

627

Cirlot, p93

628

Hall

629

Psalm 110

630

Keating, p40; & Moore, Vol 1, pp59-63

631

Baigent et al, 1983, p275

632

Moore, Vol 1, p60

633

Van Buren, p141-142

634

Van Buren, p141-142

635

Chronicles of Eri., Vol. 2, pp98-103

636

Moore, pp 86-88

637

I Kings 9:27; 10:22

638

Jeremiah 40:2-5

639

Jeremiah 41:10

640

Isaiah 37:32 & 2 Kings 19:30

641

Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica; Eusebius/St Jerome Die Chronik des Hiernyms (Berlin 1956) &

Manetho Aegyptiaca; Evans, pp26-32

642

Genesis 38:26-29

643

Judges 9:6; 2 Kings 11:1-4; 2 Chronicles 23:13

644

Ezekiel 37:22

645

Genesis 28:12-22

646

Daniel 2:34

647

2 Kings 17:5-6

648

Bosanquet, Vol 3

649

Apocryphal book of 2 Esdras 13 vs. 40-44

650

Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 11:5: 2

651

Antiquities of the British Church, Stillingfleet

652

Graves, 1992, p378 106c & p381 106.1

653

Tumer, S, p57 & 87; Milton, Book 3

654

Phillips, 2000, p256

655

Bede, p7

656

Taylor, ‘The Celtic Influence’ pp19

657

Reid, pp145-146

658

Taylor, ‘The Magnet of the Isles’ pp13-14

659

Moore, p60

474

660

Graves, 1992, p296 88.3

661

Genesis 38:30

662

Genesis 49:17

663

Graves, 1992, p170 48b, p201 60f, p205 60.8 & p567 145.2

664

Graves, 1992, p330 96.2

665

Graves, 1992, p208 62.3

666

Diodorus Siculus 1:28:1 5

667

Graves, 1992, p28 & Strabo 5.2.40

668

Herodotus 6:53

669

Graves, 1992, p639 159.4

670

National Message Magazine, September 1976, page 268

671

Graves, 1992, p707 168.7

672

Maccabees I 12:20-21

673

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13: 5;8

674

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13: 5;8

675

Graves, 1992, pp27-28 Note 3: Pausanias viii. I.2

676

Graves, 1992, p330 96.2

677

Graves, 1992, p27 Note 1: Pliny Natural History iv. 35 & vii. 67; Homer Iliad xx, 223.

678

Graves, 1992, p28

679

Graves, 1992, p125 32b; Pausanias i. 33. 3; Homer Cypria, quoted by Athenaeus p. 334b;

Apollodorous iii. 10. 7

680

Graves, 1992, p649 160.1

681

Graves, 1992, p664 162.3

682

Geoffrey of Monmouth, p72-74 & p286; see also Dawkins, 1988, pp106-108

683

McCrum, MacNeil & Cran, p56

684

Diodorus Siculus Historical Library II 47; Vinci, pp 130, 138

685

Temple, 2000, p242

686

Moffat, pp73-76; Vinci, p 131

687

Vinci, pp13-14

688

Plutarch De Defectu Oraculorum XVIII; Aristotle fr. 687 Rose; Vinci, pp193-194

689

Tacitus Germania, 34, 2; Vinci, pp194

690

Odyssey V, 70-74; Genesis 2, 10-14; Vinci, pp194, 210

691

Smith, p5

692

Vinci, pp85, 120-121

693

Camden

694

Vetus Chronicon Holsatiae, p54

695

Milton

696

Vinci, p115 cites Treccani’s Encyclopedia

697

Plutarch De Facie quae in orbe lunae apparet XXVI; Vinci, pp216-217

698

Vinci, p117

699

Abbadie

700

Armstrong

701

Genesis 49:1,16-18

702

Ezekiel 21:25-27

703

Ezekiel 21:14

704

Ezekiel 21:27

705

Luke 1:32-33

706

Psalm 89:3-4 and 89:20-37

707

Judges 14:14

708

Judges 14:8-9

709

Exodus 31:6,7

710

Numbers 2:25a

475

711

Genesis 49:9

712

Deuteronomy 33:22

713

Psalm 22:12,13 & 21

714

2 Chronicles 2:13,14

715

Jeremiah 50:4,20

716

Romans 11:26

717

Irenaeus, Vol. 302 & Hippolytus, pp. 14 & 15

718

Jeremiah 8:16

719

Numbers 2:25 & I Kings 12:28-30

720

Amos 8:11-14

721

I Chronicles 4-9

722

Revelations 7:5-7

723

Jeremiah 8:15-17

724

Isaiah 14:29 -31

725

Jeremiah 4:15, 23-27

726

Hall, 1923, p108

727

Cirlot, p93 & Unger , p273

728

Anon, ‘Ordo ab Chao, p391

729

Genesis 49:17, Numbers 2:25 & Unger , p273

730

Exodus31:6,7

731

Baigent, pp199-200

732

Baigent, p194

733

The Disciples of Wisdom A fragment of Julian the Emperor (reigned 360-363CE) from Cyril’s

Contra Julianum V, 176 (Migne) col. 770A, see Mead, G R S, Vol III, p199

734

Godwin, Joscelyn, 1996

735

Gilbert, 1996, p78

736

Howard, p4

737

Dobbs, pp271-277

738

Secretum Secretorum

739

Needham

740

Temple, 2002, p96

741

Pliny Natural History 37,64; Temple, 2002, p96

742

Diodorus Siculus The Library of History, Book II, 51-2 translated by CH Oldfather, Loeb Classical

Library, Harvard University Press, USA, Vol II, pp54-56; Temple, 2000, p417

743

Steele, R. and Singer, p488

744

Godwin, 1996

745

Stoyanov, p12

746

Allegro, 1979, p114

747

Stoyanov, p13

748

Stoyanov, p15

749

Graves, 1961, p163

750

Stoyanov, p xv

751

Stoyanov, p xvii

752

Stoyanov, p xiv & p1

753

Stoyanov, p42

754

Begg, pp53-55 & 3-4

755

Yarker, 1878, p63 quotes Rymer - Foed. Tom. XII

756

Patai, p260, see Thermo Judaei (1325-1371 approx.) Physical Questions and Decisions of

Distinguished Men

757

Temple, 1998, p183 & Budge , 1904, Vol II, p164

758

Anon ‘Testament of Nicholas Flamel’; the ‘child of Saturn’ is Stibnite Sb

purified by melting

and dripping the melt into distilled water. This turns the water an orange-red color

476

759

Fulcanelli, 1991

760

Plutarch, De Isis et Osiris, xxxiii

761

Budge, 1974

762

Prichard, 1955 Fr. 54; Numen. fr. 35; Porph. 'de antro nymph.' 10

763

Prichard, 1955Fr. 58; Plut. 'de aud.' 41 a

764

Prichard, 1955Fr. 31; Hippol. 'Refut.' IX 10,4

765

Bakr Ibn Bishrun 'Treatise on Alchemy' in Rosenthal,

766

Skinner, Chapter 5

767

Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, p1893

768

Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, p61

769

Au + 3NO

+4Cl

+ 6H

----> AuCl

+ 3H

O + 3NO

770

Dasgupta, Rajib, Y Charles Guan and Kenneth N Han ‘The Electrochemical Behavior of Gold in

Ammoniacal Solution at 75°’ Metallurgical & Materials Transactions B, Abstracts, Volume 28B,

Number 1, Feb 1997

771

Sen, P K, A Sanyal and K K Sen Gupta ‘Kinetics and Mechanism of the Oxidation of Hydrogen

Peroxide by Gold (III) in Aqueous Hydrochloric Acid Medium’ Bulletin of the Chemical Society of

Japan, Volume 69, Number 6, June 1996, pp1543-1548

772

Fulcanelli, p153

773

Graves, 1961, p411

774

Graves, 1992, p401 109.8

775

Graves, 1992, p56 14c

776

Graves, 1961, p256 & Graves, 1992, p474 125.1

777