Rosslyn Treasury

by P. L. Snow

  In a Christian setting we cannot help but remember the Dragon of the Apocalypse of Saint John, whose influence is kept within bounds by Saint Michael. The dragons on the wall in Rosslyn, though, are peaceful creatures. The question is: why are they there? To answer that, we must look into the central myth of Britain, that of King Arthur.

  The mountain Arthur’s Seat, named for the Celtic warrior hero so glorified in medieval romance, sits in the midst of the city of Edinburgh, surrounded by rocky crags and cliffs, in the Queen’s Park. The first mention of Arthur in literature occurs in a work called The Gododdin, by a writer known only as Aneurin. The Gododdin were a Brythonic tribe who lived in the Edinburgh region, and we are told that one of their heroes was a great warrior, ‘though he was no Arthur’. This fleeting and slight reference is the first in which the great leader of the Dark Ages is named, but it shows that Arthur was known as a great hero in Scotland; in fact, Alistair Moffat argues forcibly in his book Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms that Arthur was a Scottish hero, and Camelot was in Scotland, though he is still claimed by the descendants of the Brythonic people, the Welsh and Cornish, as their own. But once, the land of the Britons stretched from Cornwall to the Firth of Forth and the Clyde Valley. The story opens with Vortigern, the leader who usurped the place of Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon. His real name is lost in infamy; Vortigern is simply an old Celtic term meaning ‘Great Chief’.

  Vortigern and the Saxon princes

  Vortigern, King of the Britons, was growing desperate as his enemies were growing stronger and more numerous. He hoped that in the mountains of Snowdonia, he could hold out against those who sought his overthrow and death. Therefore, he ordered the construction of an impregnable fortress wherein he could outlast any siege, and from it ride out to confound and destroy his enemies. The construction work began in the high mountains, but soon the builders found that when they came to work in the mornings, the previous day’s work lay all in ruins, and they had it all to do again.

  When the last of the Roman legions left Britain, he intrigued and plotted his way to the leadership, and had not stopped at murder. But now men from beyond the Forth and Clyde valleys and from Ireland were attacking his lands, and he did not have the military strength to meet them.

  He had invited two Saxon leaders, Hengist and Horsa, to come with their armies to help fight the incursions from the north and west, and in return he would reward them with rich lands within Britain to settle as their own.

  He met the Saxon warriors on the Kentish coast, and marvelled at the dragon-headed longships in which they had travelled the cold North Sea.

  ‘Welcome, welcome in Christ’s name,’ Vortigern cried, spreading his arms to receive them.

  The Saxon princes, Hengist and Horsa, looked at Vortigern with clear, blue eyes.

  ‘Thanks for your welcome, King of the Britons,’ said Hengist, ‘but we worship the god Odin, whom you know as Mercury. He it was who gave us safe passage over the waves.’

  As he spoke, his eyes seemed to take in immense distances. Horsa, on the other hand, looked shrewdly at the land that lay before them, assessing its worth, and finding it good. He spoke never a word. A cold feeling spread through Vortigern as he realized that there was far less common ground between his potential allies and himself than he had hoped. The men who had accompanied the princes were battle-hardened soldiers. Already, standing on the wind-scoured beach, Vortigern had begun doubt the wisdom of inviting them to fight on his behalf.

  The Saxon leaders agreed to help however, and their strength and determination in meeting the attacks from the Picts and Scots was considerable. But the land that they had been offered was indeed rich, and they wanted more. Soon, Vortigern found it necessary to fight his erstwhile allies, while those who had been dispossessed to pay the Saxons were angry, and in arms against him.

  Now, he stood among the ruins of the fortress that he relied upon to be his stronghold and source of power. Great stones and wooden beams lay tumbled all about, as though brought down by an avalanche.

  At last, Vortigern summoned his advisers and counsellors, and demanded to be clearly informed why the structures would not stand.

  ‘The foundation land needs a sacrifice, O King,’ he was told.

  ‘Very well then; take a ram from the flocks and sacrifice it.’

  ‘This needs more than the blood of a ram,’ they told him. Vortigern pondered. He was loath to sacrifice a stallion, but if that was what the work needed, so be it.

  ‘No stallion, no, not even the best of your stable, can pay the blood price here,’ they told him. Vortigern then understood that they were looking for a human sacrifice; for human blood to be spilled on the ground of the foundations so that the work could continue.

  ‘Find your sacrifice and make ready,’ he ordered.

  Now there was a lad living in the south of the country whose mother was a princess of the Demetian people, though she now lived as a holy anchorite in a convent near the sea. As a young girl she had a child born out of wedlock, and the tale she told was that Lucifer himself had come to her, in spite of all locks and bars on the doors and tight-closed shutters on the windows. He had lain with her, and the fruit of that union was this boy named Myrddin, or Merlin, who was now a youth. He sought no company, but loved to wander in the forests, where he could commune with the nature spirits and know their secrets.

  Merlin was seized and brought in chains to Vortigern’s camp, where the construction was progressing no further.

  ‘Who is this?’ demanded the King.

  ‘This is the boy born of a human woman and the devil. His blood will make the foundations sure,’ said the advisers. Merlin looked at the old men, and could see that their understanding was dim. He laughed out loud at their pretensions to knowledge and wisdom.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’ asked Vortigern. ‘There is little for you to find funny here.’

  ‘I laugh at these old fools! They think my blood will save the work? It will make no difference at all.’

  The look in Merlin’s eyes, his proud stance and complete lack of fear in the face of imminent death impressed Vortigern.

  ‘Perhaps you can tell us more than they can of the reasons why the work is destroyed daily?’ he asked. Merlin smiled, and Vortigern began to grow angry.

  ‘Answer or die!’ he commanded. Merlin looked at him steadily.

  ‘Tell your men to dig down below the foundations,’ he said. ‘They shall find a cave in which there is a pool. Two dragons live in that pool. By night, they fight so that the ground is shaken, and the building work is destroyed. By day they sleep. Expose the pool by day, and your men will come to no harm.’

  Despite the protestations of the advisers, Vortigern gave orders for the ground beneath the foundations to be excavated. All of a sudden, a cry came from the men digging. The ground beneath them was falling inwards. There was a cave underneath them.

  The hole into the cave was made bigger, so that men could go down with lights to see what lay within it. There was a pool, just as Merlin had said, and the water was stirring, as if a great creature breathed below its surface. The news was relayed to Vortigern, who looked slowly and meaningfully at his advisers, before giving orders for the pool to be drained.

  The work was slow and hard, but at last, in the cold, dark cave, in the flickering light of the torches, two sleeping dragons were exposed to view; one red and the other white. Once again, messengers were sent to tell Vortigern what had been found. Merlin, still with the chains binding his slim wrists, stood before the King, and looked at him steadily.

  ‘Will you go down and look at this sight?’ he asked. Vortigern shivered and looked away.

  ‘I will not!’

  ‘Then order your men to leave the cave, for the sun is setting, and the dragons will awaken soon.’

  Even as he spoke, the men in the cave saw the waters heave and boil, and the dragons appeared, breathing fire and smoke. Their fighting began before the men had escaped, and they turned to wa
tch the battle. All night the dragons fought, sometimes the red gaining the advantage, at other times the white overcoming the other. Just before the sun began to rise, the red dragon was in the ascendant, but the white, driven to the edge of the pool, gathered its strength, and was about to rally, when the first rays of sunlight came over the mountain. The only knowledge that the men watching had of the coming of the dawn in that torch-lit cavern was that the dragons turned away from each other, and sank back into the water.

  Vortigern turned to his advisers when the men returned to tell of what they had seen in the dark hollow beneath the mountain.

  ‘What does this mean, these fighting dragons? What does it portend for us?’

  Merlin laughed again. ‘You ask these ignorant old men, these bewhiskered liars what is the meaning of the sights below the mountain? They know nothing. They can tell you nothing but lies and half-remembered verses of which they understand nothing. Send them away, O King. They cannot help you.’

  ‘Tell us, then, arrogant boy! Tell us what these things mean,’ thundered Vortigern.

  ‘First I must ask you this,’ said Merlin; ‘Are you prepared to go down yourself into the cavern?’

  ‘Why should I do that?’ Vortigern demanded.

  ‘The Cauldron of Ceridwen is found in many places. For you, O King, it lies beneath the mountain. For you it contains dragons. For other men, the challenge is different. But if you can tame the dragons in the pool, if you can cause the red and the white to be in peace waking, as they are in sleeping, then you are the true king of the Britons. If you cannot, there is another, yet unborn, who can, and his father shall be your death.’

  Vortigern thought of going down into the darkness, to the dragon pool that this youth had called the Cauldron of Ceridwen. Tame the dragons? Cause them to be at peace waking as they are sleeping? What did it all mean? It was impossible! He turned to the old men shuffling and fearful in the corner.

  ‘What has the goddess and her cauldron to do with me?’ he shouted. One of them stepped forward.

  ‘Sire, the red dragon is our own, and the white is the dragon of the Saxons. The red dragon will prevail! This is the meaning of the tarn in the cavern.’

  Merlin laughed harshly.

  ‘Believe that if you like, old man, but this is no scuffle between totems. Either the King takes up the challenge, or he does not. If he does not, look to yourselves. Will you end your days starving by the roadside?’

  The advisers were, as the boy had said, no use to the king at all. They were now looking at each other, pale and frightened, whispering together. Vortigern drew his dagger from his belt and turned in a cold fury to Merlin, just as a messenger entered.

  ‘Uther Pendragon is coming from Brittany!’ the messenger cried; ‘There is a great army at his heels! Prepare yourself, O King! It is said that he seeks you above all men, and will not rest until you are dead!’

  ‘What!’ shouted Vortigern; ‘Uther Pendragon is on the sea?’

  ‘No, Sire! He is landed with a great army of Breton men, and it is you that he seeks.’

  Vortigern turned again to Merlin, but he was gone. The chains that bound him lay on the floor, but the boy himself had vanished. No-one had seen him go.

  Vortigern fled from place to place, until at last he was besieged by Uther’s army in a wooden fort on a Welsh hillside. Uther’s men came with flaming torches, and Vortigern was consumed in the flaming ruins of his last redoubt.

  ***

  Many people visit Rosslyn, with many different purposes. Once a party of psychics came, and one of them, on the basis of sudden and direct experience, described William Sinclair, the founder of the chapel, as a true Merlin. Indeed, the Victorian painter Joseph Michael Gandy painted a picture entitled the Tomb of Merlin in 1815, and Rosslyn, William’s tomb, was clearly the inspiration for it. The twin dragons on the west wall are a sign that William Sinclair, the initiate, the illuminatus, had successfully met Ceridwen’s challenge. The dragons are awake and in harmonious embrace.

  The twin dragons.

  15. The Legend of the Holy Grail

  We know that in the East, there exist paths of inner transformation, such as yoga, Zen Buddhism and others. But is there a path of spiritual enlightenment that is native to the western world? The short answer to that is: yes, there is, and the Holy Grail lies at the heart of it. However, the Grail is one of the most misunderstood themes in western culture. Part of the reason for this is that there are different versions of the medieval Grail stories in existence.

  Our task here is not to describe any spiritual path, but simply to recall some of the versions of the Grail that are to be found in the literature of the past and present.

  The jewelled chalice

  The Holy Grail is often pictured as a rich chalice, and we are told that Joseph of Arimathea gave it to Jesus Christ; that He used it at the Last Supper, where He shared bread and wine with his closest disciples. We are then told that Joseph of Arimathea used this same chalice to gather up the blood of Christ that flowed from His wounds on the Cross of Golgotha.

  There is an old legend that tells us that Joseph was thrown into prison for many years, suspected of a plot to remove the body of Jesus from the tomb, and so cheat the authorities. But Joseph took the chalice with him into his narrow prison cell, and was sustained by it, never aging, all the long years of his captivity.

  The legend continues: Vespasian, Emperor of Rome heard of Christ’s Passion from a knight who had been travelling in the Holy Land. Vespasian was fascinated by the stories that he heard of the humble teacher of love, who had been executed, but had risen from the dead. He travelled to Jerusalem, and tried to force the authorities in Jerusalem to produce the body of Christ. This they could not do, but one of the priests questioned told of the cell where Joseph was imprisoned. He was discovered showing no signs of age, and no sign of suffering. Through the orders of the Emperor, Joseph was set free. He and his sister and her husband, and a small group of pilgrims, left the Holy Land, and travelled to Europe.

  Here, Joseph began a pilgrimage of his own, stopping in certain places to allow a few drops of the Holy Blood to fall on the earth. Such places became the object of pilgrimage themselves. The legend tells us that Joseph came at last to the south west of England, and could go no further. He wanted to travel as far as Ireland, but he died at Glastonbury.

  The chalice that he bore was later sought by Knights of Arthur’s Round Table, once Arthur and the knights had brought order into a moral chaos, through the code of chivalry which they upheld. The Grail appeared to Arthur at the Feast of Pentecost, and it was made clear that the Quest for the Grail was the new task of the Round Table; the culmination of their work in the world. The knights of Arthur who attained to the Fellowship of the Grail were Bors, Perceval and Galahad. Lancelot was vouchsafed a glimpse of the holy vessel, but because of the sinful love he had for Queen Guinevere, he could not be part of the company that celebrated Mass. He could do no more than to look on, while three Frenchmen, three Danes, three Irishmen and three Scotsmen, all of them knights, celebrated Mass with the Holy Grail itself at the centre of the ceremony.

  The stone from the crown of Lucifer

  The Red Knight Parzival was told by his uncle, the holy hermit Trevrezent, a somewhat different story, according to the tale told by Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach; though it echoes in some respects the first account.

  Trevrezent related that long before the creation of this world, there was a war in Heaven. Lucifer, the bright archangel, was cast out from among the Heavenly Host, and as he fell, a green stone was loosened from his crown. Sixty thousand angels had bestowed this crown upon him, and the stone was placed there by the Most High God. But now it fell to earth, where it was carved by angelic hands into a vessel of great beauty and exceeding worth.

  After many ages had passed, the legend tells that it came into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, who offered it to Jesus of Nazareth. He used it at the Last Supper, where He invited H
is disciples to eat and drink with Him, saying that the wine was His blood and the bread His body. The following day, Joseph used the same cup to hold some of the blood that flowed from the Cross.

  He took this with him on his travels, and, as we have already learned, at certain places, poured a few drops of the Holy Blood on to the ground. But the most secret of the places visited by Joseph of Arimathea was the Hill of Montsalvasch.

  The story now goes on to tell of a man named Titurisone. He was a virtuous man, and sorrow filled him, as he had no heir to continue his race. Following the advice of a wise soothsayer, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, and there laid a golden crucifix upon the altar.

  On his return, great was his joy to discover that his wife had borne him a son. This child was called Titurel, who grew to become a great warrior for the Christian faith.

  One day, while Titurel was walking in solemn meditation in the woods, he was met by an angel, who told him in a voice of music that he had been chosen as the Guardian of the Holy Grail. He would find this precious thing on Montsalvasch, but he was to guard his tongue against letting the slightest mention of this task escape him, for the Grail was so precious a thing that none but the purest of heart could catch sight of even a glimpse of it.

  Titurel sold all his worldly goods, except his sword and armour, with which he travelled to Montsalvasch, to protect it from all who would desecrate its sanctified ground. Yet he knew no more than this how to go forward in his destined path.

  At last, he returned to the place where the angel had appeared to him, to try to discover what he should do next. As he stood gazing into the blue sky, he saw a cloud that appeared to beckon him onwards. He followed the cloud through trackless woods and desert ways until he came to a steep and perilous mountain. The ascent was difficult and dangerous, but at last he reached the summit, where he saw the Holy Grail, the brightly shining emerald vessel, held in invisible hands. He fell to his knees in wonder, giving thanks for this vision, all unaware of cries of welcome that came from the throats of men in armour, who called him their king. Once he became aware that there were others present, he asked them who they were. He learned that they called themselves Templars.