by Steven Sora
The Guardians and the Holy Grail
The elite families of France and Scotland, the Prieuré de Sion on the Continent, and the survivors of the Knights Templar in Scotland, changed the world. They also attempted to bring about a major upheaval in religion and government. They attempted to alter the Roman version of Christianity with a style more dominated by the purity and dedication of the earliest Christians. A corrupt state and a corrupt church had allowed religion to be marked by abusive power, harsh taxation, and harsher penalties for those who searched for freedom of thought and expression. With the aim of finding such freedom, the Sinclair family and their European counterparts influenced not only the exploration of the New World, but also the single greatest body of literature to emerge from the medieval world. What has come down to us as the myth history known as the Grail romances of Arthur and his court is an inspired body of fiction placed on top of true historic events.
Arthur was a minor “king” who fought back the Saxons when all sense of order left England with her Roman overlords. Arthur’s family had been of Roman nobility and Celtic stock. When Rome abandoned England, barbarians sought to conquer the Celtic inhabitants. Ensuing warfare threw England into the Dark Ages.3 The historian Gildas was the first to write (c. A.D. 540) of the son of a Romano-Celtic family who stood up to the invaders, but he did not cite Arthur by name. A second text, the Welsh Gododdin, mentions the same event and calls the hero a king; again, he is not named. Finally, in A.D. 800, Nennius identified the king as Arthur. Welsh tales that were passed through generations by storytelling were finally put to parchment in the same century and developed the story of Arthur in the Annales Cambriae.4
At this point the Arthurian legend was mostly a realistic tale of a leader battling invading Saxons. Then Geoffrey of Monmouth added magic and mysticism to a story that once took place in northern England and Wales and transported his mythical version to the south of England. While some believe that Geoffrey was true to some sources that were available in his day, and have since been lost, he more likely added a liberal mixture of Welsh and Celtic lore into his “history.” Geoffrey wrote in Oxford, which may be why the story migrated to the south with his retelling.5
In France, in the province of the count of Champagne and the duke of Lorraine—the center of influence of the elite families of the Prieuré de Sion—the highly fictional narratives introduced the knights Lancelot, Gawain, Perceval (or Parsifal), Galahad, Kay, and Malegant.6 The French version of the Arthurian literature played down the role of Arthur himself and added pieces of Celtic myth to the Grail romances commissioned and written there. Marie de France may have been the first to demote Arthur. The king himself was less important; the men and women surrounding Arthur were all important. Her work is entirely fiction, and her critics believe her goal was to praise the ideals of her time. The main theme of her romances we call “courtly love.” In an age when many marriages were arranged political mergers, women of the court could be as adulterous as the men. While this loose morality was condemned by the Church, it was a natural reaction to the loveless marriages that were commonplace.
The Grail romances also attempted to validate, or invent, a religion born in Jerusalem and carried to the south of France by a contingent of Jesus’ followers.7 One French Grail writer even says that the knight Perceval descended from Joseph of Arimathea. Writing in the twelfth century, Robert de Boron declared that Perceval, a knight of the Round Table, was Jewish.8 If an armed band of Jewish knights were not enough of a surprise, the genealogy of de Boron had another shock. This new blood-line included a certain Laziliez (Lazarus), who was related to Mary Magdalene.
Robert de Boron wrote of the “three Worthies” of the west: Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. Arthur was named because he was the inspiration for all of the Grail stories and Charlemagne because, through marriage to a Merovingian princess, he was an heir in the royal bloodline. The third “Worthy” was Godfrey, who not only was a direct descendant in the Merovingian line, but also became the king of Jerusalem as a result of the Crusades. While the genealogies of Charlemagne and Godfrey could be traced to the Merovingians, Arthur fit in as a link to the survival of Celtic knowledge and legend that had been superimposed on the Roman Church. If the secret Prieuré de Sion manufactured a body of literature from its base in Champagne and Lorraine to represent the survival of a Jewish-Christian religion, it was not meant to be consistent with the mainstream Jewish religion.
The Jewish-Christian blend of thought preserved the ancient knowledge and myths that the modern Roman institution, the Church, had tried desperately to erase. While the Church had built its edifices over Celtic sacred sites, so had many stories of God, the family of Jesus, and the numerous saints likewise been conceived to disguise the ancient pan-European Celtic myths. The myths themselves are meant to convey knowlege on various levels. On one level a religious story can embody a moral lesson, while to an initiate it may be a device to pass on esoteric knowledge. In one form or another almost all civilizations have an annual ritual of death and rebirth. This most important mystery pervaded all of life. Why did crops grow in the spring and die in the fall? Why are babies born, and why do the old die? Each day the rising and setting of the sun signals a birth and a death and then a cycle of rebirth. Each night the moon follows the course the sun takes during the day.9
From very early on, humans recognized that the moon had a cycle of twenty-eight days—a life that lasted for a month. First there was the white new moon, then the red full moon, and finally a dark, dying moon. Humans also understood the connection between the cycle of the moon and female fertility. The sun provided heat, while the moon controlled the tides of the sea, the female menstrual cycle. The theme that was played out daily and regularly in the heavens was also was played out on Earth, and humans recognized this mystical similarity. The seasons of the year marked birth, fertility, and death.
The Church of Rome had never been sure of the dates of the events in the life of Jesus. They were, however, waging a campaign to fit the old religions into the new. The Resurrection of Jesus, possibly the most important date in the Church year, was fixed by the spring solstice—and then named for a Celtic pagan feast day that the Church wished to eradicate.10 Easter was named for Eostre, goddess of the east, the spring, and of course, fertility. She was depicted with a rabbit.
Christmas, also imposed over a pagan celebration, kept the trappings of the old way. Holly, sacred to the goddess worshipers; mistletoe, flowering from the oak and particularly favored by the Druids; and the Yule log, as well as Christmas tree, all were retained—although their functions changed to reflect the new beliefs.”11 The Christian Church then attempted to accomplish what the Jewish religion had tried a thousand years earlier, the assimilation of the old into the new. The Jewish religion came to fruition at a time when goddess cults were prevalent everywhere. The moon goddess was called Sin. Her name exists today in the Sinai Peninsula, which separates Israel from Egypt. The Hebrew faith first made Sin a male lunar god and then dropped all such multiple gods. “Sin” came to signify something evil.
To ensure the rebirth of the sun, primitive humans, and possibly even primitive peoples in modern times, conducted the ritual of choosing a king annually. He ruled with his queen for a year, as did the sun in its cycle. The rite was symbolic of the Earth as female married to the male sun. Each year both king and queen were picked anew. The king would have every benefit that came with being king, for twelve months only.12 The annual ritual in Greece started with a celebration that is preserved in part by the myths. A race was run by fifty contestants; the fastest of the fifty was chosen to be the high priestess, representative of the Earth Goddess. She became the queen and mate of the king for the year.
The new king would be chosen by the priestess for his virility. The mating of the high priestess and her chosen king was a joyous one if received well by the goddess, and the reward was a fertile Earth. The summer king, who had reigned during the previous year, would
not be so joyful—his rule was over, and his fate was death. This would become the chief celebration of the Celtic year, and it occurred on June 24, Midsummer Day.13 We find this date celebrated from Asia to Ireland. The Celts began to migrate in 2000 B.C., and they ranged from India to Ireland, but the practice of the annual choosing of a king might have been even older.
With the Bronze Age, more modern man discovered that he was at least as important as the female in the continuity of life and fertility. The sun (male) cults took ascendance over the moon (female) cults, but the change was not abrupt. The Achaean peoples of early Greece had had a female-dominated culture that survived in the Olympic Games. The old king, often called Hercules (from his devotion to Hera, the Mother Goddess), was put to death. The new king, “Green Zeus,” mated with the winner of the footrace. The death of the old king (not necessarily an old man) was a sacrifice to the goddess and was meant to preserve the fertility cycle.14
As the celebration was further modernized, the king sacrificed his first-born son instead of himself. The biblical representation of Abraham and Isaac suggests a break with the lunar cults of ancient Judaism, which demanded that a son of the king be murdered. God (now decidedly a male) stopped Abraham at the last moment and said he no longer required such a ritual. In the more “civilized” world, an animal sacrifice was made in place of the ritual murder of a living person. The animal would placate the god or goddess, dying in expiation for the people’s sins. The scapegoat was put to death for the faults of every person.15
In Celtic Europe and early cultures of the Levant, the oak tree represented knowledge. This throwback to nature religion never truly died away. The first letters of the alphabet in Celtic Europe were established for corresponding objects in nature. “D” in the Ogam alphabet was the seventh letter, duir. From “D,” we get our word for the product of the sturdy oak, the “door.” The early male gods were all oak kings. Hercules, Jupiter, Thor, and even Jehovah held sacred this mighty tree. In Rome the oak king was Janus. This two-faced god represented the door between two years, the old and the new. One face peered into the past, one faced looked to the future. His name is immortalized in the name of our first month, January, the dividing line between the years.16
Halfway through the year, the month of Jupiter began on June 10, and extended to July 7. And halfway through this midyear month, the oak king would be sacrificed. He could be burned to death, pierced, or beheaded. His wake would start on June 24 and end on July 1. As bizarre as this custom appears, in one form or another it has survived into modern times. In medieval days the week of the wake would be a time of hiring fairs all over Europe, where men would apply for employment for the harvest or in their crafts as masons and tradesmen. For the Celts it was the beginning of the year. In Masonic belief, Saint John the Baptist is the old king, the oak king.17 He is sacrificed (beheaded) shortly after anointing the new king (Jesus), who began not only a new year but a new era.
The Druids also took their name from duir the name of the sturdy tree.18 Druids were literally “Oak Knowers,” practitioners of an ancient art of worship. Their rites were conducted in circles, as in Greece. The cyrkles were sanctuaries of their magical practice, which was often directed to the goddess Circe (Kirk). The word for a circle used in magical practice later became kirk and then “church.” Churches today (circular only in Templar structures) are the sanctuaries where we can worship our god in ritual form. The original structure of the cathedral at Chartres was the round (female) church, which was later built over. The round church itself had been built on a pagan site of goddess worship.19
The more important deity of the pre-Celtic Druids was that of the goddess.20 Representative of the female, the goddess shared the characteristics of the female in her different aspects. She was sometimes the maiden—young, beautiful, ready for mating. Later she would be the mother, giving birth to and instructing her children. And then she would be the crone, the grandmother—no longer able to attract men or give birth, but jealous, dangerous, and horrible in appearance. When the male gods were imposed on the female, so were the words for god altered. Dia-Meter (god mother) became just Deu (god). Crone (aging goddess) was changed to Cronus (father time).21 Those devotees of the underground stream understand that the sciences were invented when the goddess reigned supreme. The word for mother and the root of the measurement “meter” are evidence of this correspondence.
Mathematics is derived from the science of numbers named after the mother. The learned would “matriculate,” a word still used today. For such mysterious peoples as the Druids, the measurement of time, space, and distance was a sacred science. Words associated with these sciences entered our language and remain. Chronology derives from the name of the goddess who determined time. From India to Ireland, this dark goddess was “Kali,” who measured both time and the lives of humans. We take our modern word calendar from her books of time, the Kalends.22 From the mother goddess herself came the word calibrate, meaning “to measure,” and caliber which is the diameter (of a projectile). The circle, named for the goddess Circe, was divided by the diameter (Dia-Meter).23 In its center was the core, named for the goddess Kore. Radius takes its name from the course of the sun (Ra) crossing the circle to its center, or core.
In Ireland, Kali’s priestesses responsible for watching the skies wore green (kelly green). Our word month is from moon, which in the time of the goddess measured divisions of time. The word hour derives from the temple prostitutes of Babylon, each assigned one period of time to stand watch and make herself available to passersby and strangers. The “ladies of the night,” those assigned temple duty in the evening, became the “whores.” Our word horoscope comes from horos, meaning “time,” and scope meaning “watch.” The horoscope is the product of the “time watchers.” Night itself was named for the goddess Neith, who was known by that name from the Atlantic to Egypt. In Mexico and Europe the fertility goddess shares the moon and knitting as symbols of her work.
The goddess had other duties besides protecting the sciences. She blessed men with good fortune in the hunt and in war. Artemis in her early forms was the huntress.24 Women may not have taken part in the hunt, but the goddess was responsible for the fruitful hunt. To Artemis, especially in Arcadia in Greece, the bear was sacred. It was called Arktos (Arctic) because it came from the north. To kill a bear, one required great skill and luck and the blessing of the goddess. Before embarking on a bear hunt, and after the completion of the hunt, men were expected to conduct a ritual honoring the bear. From the Ardennes, named for Arduina (the Germanic name for the huntress), to the south of France, bear hunters left sanctuaries to their patroness. In France, figurines and skulls of bears were found in caves, leaving us only to guess just what ritual was conducted. Drinking from bear (and human) skulls was one custom.
In war, the fearful goddess Hera protected her own. Those faithful whom she blessed with courage and strength would become “heroes” in her name. The goddess blessed the farmers as well. The blessing of Kore was the “cornucopia,” which was “plenty.”25 Corn may have been named for the goddess, and cereal was a grain product from the goddess Ceres. Between the time of David and the time of Jesus, crop and hunting magic began to be replaced by state religion, institutionalized magic. Unofficially, noninstitutionalized magic still survives in various forms and customs: blessings before meals, scarecrows, hex signs, and horseshoes on barns are just a few examples.
The ritual beheading of the king and the actual beheading of Saint John may have had nothing to do with each other, but the symbolism is appealing to those initiated into a world of magic. Going back to the Ogam alphabet, where each letter corresponds to a tree, the letter after “D” is “T.” Whereas “D” symbolizes June, the month of the oak king’s execution, the month for “T” is July, when the new king takes the throne. With “D” representing John and “T” representing Jesus, the fact that the “T” is symbolized by the Cross is significant.
Jesus starts as the “Green King,”
the young king, whose tree is the holly.26 Such tree magic survives in that holly and Christmas are inseparable. Jesus’ ministry started a short time after the beheading of John. June twenty-fourth is the death of John and June 24 to June 30 “the wake”; Christ’s ministry then started on July 1 in the symbolic Masonic mystery. The event appears to take on even greater cosmic importance. In the writings of the early Christian historian Nennius, the world will have seven ages. The fourth epoch began with David and the building of the Temple of Solomon. The fifth started with John the Baptist and the sixth with Jesus.
The Hebrew religion outgrew its pagan roots and was monotheistic by the time Jesus was born. The Hebrew people were not looking for another god, but the earthly Messiah, a king who would deliver them from the Roman yoke as they had been delivered by Moses from Egypt and as they had been libertated from Babylon. The concept of Jesus as God was not understood or accepted by the Jewish people in general, and for the most part it was not understood or followed even by his own family or village. After the death of Jesus, Paul became the follower turned leader who opened the door of the new religion to the same pagans that the brother of Jesus, James, wanted to exclude. While the Pauline Church grew and prospered under European rule, the Asian religion stuck to the belief in one god and the Asian-Islamic concept that Jesus was important only as a prophet.27 His own words were used as proof that he was not a god: “For the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).