The Anglo-Saxons

Britain

King Arthur

Though Joseph of Arimathea had already prepared his own tomb, because he was “waiting for the Kingdom of God”, in which he chose to bury Jesus, he lives on for at least another thirty years, and supposedly, around the year 63 AD, he was said to have travelled to England. In the eighth century, Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence, stated in the Life of Mary Magdalene that Joseph of Arimathea was sent to Britain, and he goes on to detail who traveled with him as far as France, claiming that he was accompanied by, in addition to Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, and again, Salome.^[1] With him was the “Holy Grail”, which he concealed for safekeeping at Glastonbury Tor, where he established the first church in Britain Isles, which developed into Glastonbury Abbey. His descendants would eventually culminate in the person of King Arthur.

The prominence of Britain in this tale is a mark of its long-standing affiliation with the practice of the occult. The Britons traced their descent to Brutus, grandson of Ascanius, who in turn was supposedly descended from Zerah. Scholars have in fact speculated that the Phoenicians ventured as far as Britain to exploit the tin trade. In addition, according to ancient Chronicles of Ireland, this lineage of the Britons was supplemented in the sixth century BC, with the royal blood of the House of David, resulting in the kings of Scotland.

Joseph of Arimathea
at Glastonbury Tor

Irish legend maintains that the Scottish originate from Fenius Farsaidh, a descendant of Edom, who founded kingdom of Scythia in the fourteenth century BC.^[2] Fenius’ son Nel married Scota, an Egyptian princess. Thus explaining why the name Scoti was applied by the Romans to Irish raiders, and later to the Irish invaders of Argyll and Caledonia, which became known as Scotland. Scota and Nel had a son, Goidel Glas, the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels, who was expelled from Egypt shortly after the Exodus of the Israelites by a pharaoh. After much traveling, his descendants settled in Hispania, also known as Iberia, or modern Spain and Portugal, where Mil Espaine was born. It was the sons of Mil, Eber Finn and Eremon, who established the Gaelic presence in Ireland.^[3]

According to the ancient Irish, Scottish, and English Chronicles, in or about the year 583-582 BC, a princess called “Tamar Tephi” came from Egypt by way of Spain, and landed on the northeast coast of Ireland. When the Jews were persecuted by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Mattaniah, the son of King Josiah, and a direct descendant of King David, was installed in Judah. Known as King Zedekiah, he acceded to the throne of Jerusalem in 598 BC. Twelve years later, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar, whereupon Zedekiah was taken to Babylon and blinded, and his sons were murdered, except for his daughter Tamar.

Tamar, it is said, arrived with an aged man named Ollam Fodhla, and his secretary, one Simon Brug. These have been identified with the prophet Jeremiah, his scribe Baruch, and Princess Tamar, the daughter of Zedekiah, who eventually traveled to Sicily, Spain, possibly even Norway and Denmark, and later, Ireland. Tamar married one of the later Irish Kings, Eochaid I, from which all the High Kings of Ireland descend. She and her companions brought with them a mysterious chest, supposedly the Ark of the Covenant, and a golden-colored banner, emblazoned with the heraldic device of a red Lion, or the Lion of Judah, and the Stone of Destiny.^[4] The Stone of Destiny, or the Stone of the Covenant, became known as Lia Fail. It is believed to be the original Pillar that Jacob dedicated to God after his all-night wrestling vigil with an angel. The Stone was installed at the stronghold at the Hill of Tara, where it served as the place of coronation for all the early Irish kings.

Druid

As early as the first centuries AD, it was believed that the Celts learned the arts of the Magi through the students of Pythagoras.^[5] According to Pliny the Elder, in the first century AD, magic, meaning the cult of the Magi, was so entrenched in Britain that he said it would almost seem as if it was the British who had taught it to the Babylonians, and not the other way around.^[6]

Magian, or Kabbalistic, teachings are clearly discernable among the Druids, who were particularly concerned with astronomy, or astrology, practiced vegetarianism, believed in reincarnation, and worshipped Dis, or Pluto, the god of the Underworld. Even after Patrick had converted the Irish to Christianity, the teachings of the Druids were never completely abandoned, but instead a unique culture developed, known as Celtic Christianity. Essentially, the arts of the Druids survived early Irish Christianity, as its abundant hagiography, steeped in magical ideas, plainly shows. Saint Columba, abbot and missionary traditionally credited with the main role in the conversion of Scotland to Christianity, after becoming a monk, lived and studied with a bard in Leinster, and later defended the cause of the Druids when their schools and teachings were attacked.^[7]

Vivien and Merlin

As well, in the fifth century AD, Fergus Mor, a direct descendant of Eochaid and Tamar, had migrated into Scotland from Ireland and established Dalriada in present Argyle. The Stone of Destiny and possibly other Jerusalem Temple artifacts were also relocated, where they remained under the care of the Celtic Christians at Iona established by Saint Columba. The Stone of Destiny was then moved to Scone in Scotland due to the Norse invasions of Iona.

Fergus’ grandson was Aidan Mac Gabhran of Argyll, King of the Scots, who lived from 574 to 608, referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth as the Uthir, meaning “terrible”, crowned King of Scots Dalriada and Pendragon of the Celtic Isle, by his third cousin St. Columba of Iona in 574 AD.^[8] Uther Pendragon’s mother, Lluan of Brecknock, was supposedly a direct descendent of Joseph of Arimathea.^[9] Uther Pendagran was the father of King Arthur. His mother was Ygerna del Acqs, the High Queen of the Celtic kingdoms.^[10] Merlin was also an elder cousin to King Aedan. Merlin was a Celtic Druid and Vivien del Acqs, the grandmother of Arthur was the Queen of Avalon and High Priestess of the Ancient Celtic Religion.

Constantine

Red Dragon of
the Pendragon family

King Arthur was also related to the Constantine the Great, the Emperor who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity in 333 AD. King Arthur’s mother, Igraine, was descended from Dionotus II King of Britain, the great-grandson of Constantine. His wife Elen Lwyddog verch Eudaf, whose mother was descended from the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who belonged to the Herodian line.^[11] Caesar’s grandson, Gaius Calpernius Piso, married Mariamne, the sister of Herod Agrippa. Their granddaughter, Pompeia, was the wife of Emperor Trajan, who was the grandfather of Marcus Aurelius. It was use of the dragon standard, or Draco, which according to Arrian, by Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, was of Scythian origin, that came to be adopted by the Pendragon family.^[12]

Dracos of Trajan's Column

Emperor Marcus Aurelius

As Emperor, Constantine was not only descended from Caesar, and Alexander the Great, but, according to British chroniclers of the Middle Ages, would also have been descended from Joseph of Arimathea, through his mother, Saint Helena, the finder of the “true cross”. Geoffrey of Monmouth made Saint Helena the daughter of Coel of Gloucester, and Strada “the Fair” of Combria. Her grandmother, therefore, would have been Gladys of Britain, who was descended from King Coel of Britain, whose mother was descended from Anna, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea, and Beli Mawr, and also from Tamar Tephi, through the kings of Ireland.^[13] King Coel’s father, Meric of the Britons Coel was the grandson of Emperor Claudius.^[14]

Constantine’s father was descended from Septimus Severus, who in 172 AD seems to have been appointed to the Roman Senate by Marcus Aurelius, before eventually becoming Emperor. Septimus married Julia Domna, the daughter of Julius Bassianus, who was the great-great-grandson of Gaius Julius Alexio, the Syrian priest-king Emesa, the son of Soaemus and Drusilla of Mauritania, the great-granddaughter of Marc Antony and Cleopatra.^[15]Drusilla had also been married to Felix Antonius.^[16] Gaius Julius Alexio married Claudia, daughter of Arrius Calpurnius Piso, King of Syria, and Servilla, an illegitimate daughter of Roman Emperor Claudius, from whom the subsequent priests of Emesa were descended.^[17]

Emperor Elagabalus

Included among these was the noted Neoplatonic philosopher, Iamblichus, who died in 325 BC. Iamblichus was the author of the most extensive text pertaining to the Mysteries of Mithras that remains in existence, titled On the Cave of the Nymphs, in which he describes the symbolism of a grotto mentioned in Homer, in relation to the cave rituals of Mithraism. Iamblichus, a Syrian philosopher, who lived from 250 to 330 AD, sought to revive paganism by a return to its roots among the Babylonians and Egyptians, the leading proponents of classical thought, like Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and finally, in the mysteries. It was he, along with his teacher Porphyry, who wrote biographies of Pythagoras, recounting his sojourn among the Magi of Babylon.

Iamblichus

Septimus Severus was the father of Caracalla, who succeeded him. But, in 217 AD, emperor Caracalla, was killed and Macrinus ascended to the imperial throne. His cousin, Julia Soaemias Bassiana, the daughter of Julia Domna’s sister, Julia Maesa, would not allow the usurper to stand unopposed. Together with her mother, Julia, she plotted to substitute Macrinus with her son, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, who appropriated the name Elagabalus, the name of the dying-god worshipped by the priest-kings of Emesa. In 218 AD, Macrinus was killed and Elagabalus became emperor.

Elagabalus replaced Jupiter, head of the Roman mythology, with a new god, Sol invictus, which in Latin means “the Sun, God Unconquered”. The cult of Sol Invictus was harmonized with the cult of Mithras, with which it was so similar that the two are often confused. Elagabalus forced leading members of Rome’s government to participate in religious rites celebrating Sol invictus which he personally led. Their rule was not popular and soon discontent arose. Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for eccentricity, decadence, and zealotry.

With the emperor’s death in 222 AD, his religion ceased, though succeeding emperors continued to be portrayed on coinage with the radiant sun-crown, for close to a century. The emperor Aurelian introduced an official religion of Sol Invictus in 270 AD, making the sun-god the premier divinity of the empire, and wearing his rayed crown himself. The worship of Sol Invictus was continued by Constantine, who some think never converted to Christianity. When he made Christianty the official religion of the Empire, he succeeded in fulfilling the Herodian plot of subverting the true Christian message, by instituting Paul’s version, known as Catholicism, which assimilated Jesus to the Gnostic figure of the dying-god.

The Saxons

The Britons had supported their allies in Gaul during the Gallic Wars against the Roman Republic, prompting Julius Caesar to invade the island in 55 BC. The whole southern portion of the island became a prosperous region of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned by the Romans, early in the fifth century AD, when the weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent. Unaided by the Roman army, Roman Britannia could not long resist the tribes from the area of modern Germany, called the “Anglo-Saxons”, who arrived in the fifth century and sixth centuries AD.

The Saxons were again descended from the Scythian tribes, who first appeared in Europe in the seventh century BC, when they crossed the Araxes River and passed out of Asia. The Araxes is the ancient name of the Aras River in Armenia, the area where the Israelites were last known, before settling east of the Ukraine, at the basin of the Don River near the Crimea, where they were known as Scythians. Strabo asserts that the most ancient Greek historians knew the Sacaea as a people who lived beyond the Caspian Sea. Ptolemy finds the Saxons in a race of Scythians, called Sakai, who came from Media. Pliny said: “The Sakai were among the most dis-tinguished people of Scythia, who settled in Armenia, and were called Sacae-Sani.” Albinus, the learned tutor of Charlemagne, maintained that: “The Saxons were descended from the ancient Sacae of Asia.”^[18]

A tradition that the Saxons are descended from the Sacae has been recorded by both the Camden and John Milton, the former in his Britannia, and the latter in his History of England. Camden writes:

The origin and etymology of the Saxons, like those of other nations, have been involved in fable ... Each of these writers adopts the opinion most agreeable to them; I mean not to controvert any of them, but that of the most learned Germans seems most probable and worthy to be embraced, which makes the Saxons descended from the Sacae, the most considerable people of Asia, and to be so called quasi Sacasones, q.d. Sons of the Sacae, and to have gradually overspread Europe from Scythia or Sarmatia Asiatica, with the Getae, Suevi, Daci and others.^[19]

The Saxons, like the Vikings, claimed descent from a Hunnish leader named Uldin, later Odin, or Wotan. According to the Yngling Saga, written from historical sources available to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, Odin came from the land of Asgaard, which was on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea, at the basin of the Don River:

On the south side of the mountains which lie outside of all inhabited lands runs a river through Swithiod, which is properly called by the name of Tanais [Don River], but was formerly called Tanaquisl, or Vanaquisl, and which falls into the Black Sea. The country of the people on the Vanaquisl was called Vanaland, or Vanaheim; and the river separate the three parts of the world, of which the easternmost part is called Asia, and the westernmost Europe...

The country east of the Tanaquisl in Asia was called Asaland, or Asaheim, and the chief city in that land was called Asgaard. In that city was a chief called Odin, and it was a great place for sacrifice.^[20]

Asgard is likely the same as Arsareth, to which the Lost Tribes, following the captivity, were to have been relocated. The apocryphal book of 2 Esdras records:

These are the Ten Tribes which were carried away captives out of their own land in the time of Oseas, the king, whom Salmanaser, the king of the Assyrians, took captive and crossed them beyond the river; so were they brought into another land, but they took this council to themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen and go forth onto a further country, where never man dwelt, that they might keep the statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they entered in at the narrow passages of the river Euphrates, for the most High then showed them signs and stayed the springs of the flood till they were passed over; for through the country there was great journey, even of a year and a half, and the same region is called Arsareth.

Odin

The Prose Eddas and the Heimskringla, also from Snorri Sturluson, recount that the ancestors of the Norse kings resided east of the river Don, and were led by Odin, or Uldin, who had vast holdings south of the Ural Mountains. He and his people were known as Ases, or Asir, and after many battles, he left two brothers in charge of his domains, along a ridge of the Caucasus Mountains, called Asgaard, likely Chasgar, and with his people headed north.^[21] Most, however, were men, as apparently they took “women of the land” in Scandinavia as wives. This would have been approximately 450 AD, when Odin’s descendants were said to have founded the nations of the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, and in Germany, the Saxon tribes.

Viking trade routes to and from the Black Sea

Thor Heyerdahl had suggested the people noted by Snorri as the Ases, or Alans, or the Asir, may have been the Azerirs of Azerbaijan.^[22] In turn, the Azeris are descended from the Medes, and genetic researcher David Faux has discovered that of all the groups anywhere, only the genetic samples from the Azeri contained haplotypes that were very similar to participants tested in the Shetlands, settled by “Vikings”.^[23]

Odin, though a real man, was eventually worshipped as a god by his ancestors. One-eyed, with a long white beard, he was a sorcerer who practiced divination from a severed head, and could change shape at will. Ancient scholars identified him with Mercury, known to the Greeks as Hermes, another species of dying-god that can be identified with Lucifer. Odin was married to Freya, the great-granddaughter of King Coel, whose grandfather, Aviragus, King of the Britons, married Genuissa, the daughter of Emperor Claudius, and sister of Servilla, who had married Gaius Julius Alexio, Priest-King of Emesa.^[24] Like Astarte, Freya came to be worshipped as a goddess of fertility, love and war. It is she who was thought to have taught her people witchcraft, and acted as a priestess of human sacrifices.

Genealogical Chart:

Ancestors of Charlemagne, King Arthur and Constantine the Great and Odin, from Judah, the Heroes of the Trojan War, Herod the Great, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Antiochus IV of Commagene, and the Priest-Kings of Emesa.

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Footnotes:

^[1] “Joseph of Arimathea”, Wikipedia.
^[2] “The Descent from Adam to the Tilghman (Tillman) and Whitten Families Through the Royal Houses of Scythia, Ireland, and Scotland”.
^[3] “Scota”, Wikipedia.
^[4] Dunham-Massey, John. Jeremiah, Ireland, the Stone of Scone, and the English Kings ... Tamar Tephi: or The Maid of Destiny, 1918, and J. J. Pearson, 1924. London.
^[5] See, Diodorus of Sicily; Christian Father Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies, Book I, chap. XXII; and Ammianus Marcellinus Roman History, XV, 9, 8.
^[6] Pliny. Natural History, p. 63
^[7] Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. The Messianic Legacy, p. 155
^[8] King Arthur and the Clan Arthur are direct descendants of King David of Judah and Israel.
^[9] “Áedán mac Gabráin, rí Alban”. Adomnan's Life of Columba (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), Book I, chapter 9.
^[10] Whittaker, Kelly. A new theory about King Arthur.
^[11] James Allen Dow, “Elen Lwyddog verch Eudaf”
^[12] Keith Blayney, King Arthur, the Red Dragon and improbable Blayney links; Robert Vermaat, The Draco, the Late Roman military standard.
^[13] James Allen Dow, "Constantine `the Great' of ROME".
^[14] Ernst-Friedrich Kraentzler, Ancestry of Richard Plantagenet & Cecily de Neville.
^[15] James Allen Dow, "Iamblichus (Prince) of EMESA".
^[16] James Allen Dow, "Eusebius".
^[17] James Allen Dow, “Gaius Julius Alexio (Priest-King) of EMESA”.
^[18] Allen, J. H. Judah’s Scepter and Joseph’s Bithright. Chapter VI.
^[19] Hollins L. The Anglo-Saxon People. Part 2.
^[20] Yngling Saga.
^[20] The Ynglinga Saga. Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #15b.

^[21] Prose Edda, Anderson Translation.
^[22] Heyerdahl, Thor. “Scandinavian Ancestry: Tracing Roots to Azerbaijan”, Azerbaijan International.
^[23] Faux, David. “Origins of R1a, Q and K in Scandanavia - Part 2”, GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives.

^[24] Ernst-Friedrich Kraentzler, Ancestry of Richard Plantagenet & Cecily de Neville; James Allen Dow, "Frigg (Frigida Frea Friege) of ASALAND"