The Holy Grail

The Norman Conquest

Battle of Hastings, Bayeux Tapestry

Edward the Elder was the father of his successor, Ethelred the Unready, who married Emma of Normandy, daughter of Richard I Duke of Normandy. Richard was the great-grandson of Rollo Ragnvaldsson, a Norman Viking leader, who married Popa of Bavaria, the great-granddaughter of William of Gellone, from whom were descended the Dukes of Normandy. Rollo the Viking was the son of Rangvald the Wise, Jarl of Orkney. Orkney consists of about two hundred small islands just north of Caithness in northern Scotland. The islands were invaded by Vikings in the ninth century AD, where they ruled as Jarls, and made the islands the headquarters for their raiding expeditions.

Studies have discovered that the genetic component of the population of Orkney is characterized by a type not found in other British samples, but one in high frequency in Russia, Ukraine, Bohemia, and throughout Central Asia, and rare in East Asia and Western Europe. According a study, titled The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity, conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, the distribution of this gene grouping is “...likely to represent traces of an ancient population migration originating in southern Russia/Ukraine”, where it is found at a high frequency.^[1] In other words, this specific genetic type originated in Scythia.

The Orkney Islands north of Scotland

The infusion of the racial component of these new invaders into the peoples of Scotland resulted in a prevalence of the red hair which was characteristic of the Scythians. Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads of any country in the world, with around thirteen percent of the population having naturally red hair. A further forty percent of Scots carry the variant gene which results in red hair. Ireland, as well, has the second highest population of naturally redheaded people in the world, amounting to about ten percent of its inhabitants.

Ragnvald was the great-grandson of Halfdan the Old. According to Snorri, Halfdan the Old was the most famous of all kings. Halfdan performed a human sacrifice at the winter solstice, that he might live three hundred years. Instead, however, he received the answer that he would not live more than the normal span of a man’s life, but that for three hundred years all of his descendants would achieve great repute.

Ethelred the Unready was forced to flee to Normandy, to seek shelter with his brother-in-law, Robert. When England was invaded by Sven I of Denmark. Sven I, the son of Harald Bluetooth, married to Gunhilda, the daughter of Dubrawka and Mieszko I of Poland.^[2] Ethelred returned to England in only 1014, after Sven died, but he himself also died only two years later.

Ethelred the Unready was then succeeded by his son, Edmund II Ironside. However, Canute the Great, the son of Sven and Gunhilda, enjoyed greater support from the English nobility.^[3] Canute himself married Emma, the daughter of Richard I of Normandy, and the grandson of Rollo. Nevertheless, Ethelred and Canute, negotiated a peace, in which they agreed that upon either of their deaths, territories belonging to the deceased would be ceded to the living.

When Edmund II died, Canute became King of England, Denmark and Norway. To associate his line with the overthrown English dynasty, and to insure himself against attack from Normandy, where Ethelred’s other son, Edward the Confessor, and Alfred Atheling, remained in Exile, Canute married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. He then designated their son Harthacanute as heir to the throne, in preference to his other son, Harold Harefoot, an illegitimate child by Aelgifu of Northampton, a concubine.

William the Conqueror

In opposition to his brother, Harold proclaimed himself King of England in 1037, after the death of his father, and had Alfred Atheling blinded and killed when they attempted to return to England. Harold himself died in 1040 AD, and Harthacanute, who was just then preparing an invasion, succeeded him to the throne. Harthacanute then invited his half-brother Edward the Confessor back from Normandy, to become his co-ruler and heir.

Edward the Confessor then heard that another half-brother, Edward the Exile, the son of Ethelred the Unready by another woman, was still alive, he had him recalled to England and made him his Heir. When only a few months old, Canute the Great had sent Edmund’s son, Edward the “Exile” to be murdered in Denmark. Instead, he was secretely brought to Kiev, and then made his way to Hungary. In Hungary, Edward the Exile married Agatha of Bulgaria, the daughter of Gavril Radomir, son of Samuil of Bulgaria. Agatha’s mother was Hercegno of Hungary, daughter of Geza and Adelaide, daughter of Mieszko I.^[4]

However, Edward the Exile died shortly after his return, so Edward made his great nephew Edgar Atheling his heir. But Edgar had no secure following among the nobles. The resultant succession crisis opened the way for the successful invasion William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, a direct descendant of Rollo the Viking. Though Edgar Atheling was elected king after Harold’s death, he was brushed aside by William of Normandy, who would use his relationship as grandnephew of Ethelred the Unread as the basis of his claim to the throne, claiming that the childless Edward the Confessor had chosen him his heir.

William further strengthened his claim by marrying, in 1053 AD, Matilda of Flanders. Matilda was descended from Baldwin II of Flanders, of the Guilhemids, who had married Ethelswith, the daughter of Alfred the Great. Baldwin II was the son of Judith of England, the daughter of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orleans, herself the daughter of William of Gellone.^[5] She was first married to Ethelwulf before she married Baldwin’s II father, Baldwin I Count of Flanders. Baldwin II’s grandson, Baldwin III Count of Flanders, was married to Matilda of Billung, whose father, Herman Billung, was the brother to Oda Billung, mother of Otto “the Illustrious”, Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda’s grandfather, Baldwin IV Count of Flanders, married Otgive of Luxembourg, daughter of Frederick of Luxembourg, brother of Saint Cunigunde.

Camelot

Marriage of Malcolm III
to St. Margaret of Scotland

The daughter of Edward the Exile and Agatha of Bulgaria was St. Margaret Queen of Scotland.^[6] When she married Malcolm III of Scotland, who was descended from Aidan, the father of King Arthur, the joint Saxon and Khazar heritage was joined to the Scottish. Malcolm and Margaret’s son became David I of Scotland, while David’s sister, Editha, married Henry I King of England, the son of William the Conqueror. Arthur, however, had supposedly been a king who defended the Britons from the Saxon invasions. Despite that fact, Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, provides the reasons for the renewed in the Arthurian legend:

During a period of five hundred years the tradition of his exploits was preserved, and rudely embellished, by the obscure bards of Wales and Armorica (otherwise known as Britany), who were odious to the Saxons, and unknown to the rest of Mankind. The pride and curiosity of the Norman people prompted them to inquire into the ancient history of Britain; they listened with fond credulity to the tale of Arthur, and eagerly applauded the merit of a prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common enemies.^[7]

David I of Scotland

One influencing factor in the rise of Arthurian legend among the Normas was that William the Conqueror was also a desceandant of the Bretons, who had also supported William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, providing a large proportion of the knights. The Bretons had kept alive the legends of King Arthur, brought with them when they fled Britain during the Saxon invasions five centuries earlier. As the authors of the Holy Blood Holy Grail have shown, in contrast to later Grail chroniclers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, instead locating of Arthur in Britain, maintained that his court of Camelot was situated in France, quite specifically at Nantes in Brittany. According to Wolfram, then, Arthur’s court is in Brittany.

Originally settled by Celtic tribes, Brittany was conquered by Julius Caesar in 56 BC. Christianised in the third century, Brittany was successively invaded by the Saxons, in the third century. In the fourth century, Romanized Britons from across the English Channel started to settle, and at an increasing rate Roman troops began their withdrawall from Britain, and having pushed pushed by the raiding Anglo-Saxons. The immigrant Britons gave the region its current name and contributed to the Breton language, Breton language, a sister language to Welsh language and Cornish.

Henry II of England

Eleanor of Aquitaine

During the ninth century, Brittany was severely affected by Viking attacks, contributing to the nobility being frought by dynastic disputes. The authority of the reigning dukes suffered even further from the pressures of resisting claims by both the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou. This process of fragmentation was halted and reversed from the eleventh century, when intermarriage resulted in the ducal title vesting in one individual, Duke Alain IV, who was a Templar, and scion of a direct line of descent of kings of Brittany, and before that, of Britain, descended Llyr the Celtic Sea god, the father of Bran the Arch Druid, who married Anna, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea.^[8]Bran had and Anna had twelve sons, and it was Alain le Gros, their youngest son, who became known as the Fisher King, and Keeper of the Grail^[8].

Alain IV Duke of Brittany married Ermengarde of Anjou, the daughter of Fulk IV. The counts of Anjou were descended from Ingelger, comte d'Anjou, who was knighted by Louis, son of Charles the Bald, as the first lord of Anjou. Ingelger was the father of Fulk I of Anjou, whose grandson, Geoffroi I comte d'Anjou married Adelaide of Vermandois. The House of Vermandois were Guilhemids, descended from from Guillaume’s daughter Cunigonde and Bernard of Italy, grandson of Charlemagne. Their son was Fulk III Count of Anjou, whose daughter, another Ermingarde, was the mother of Fulk IV.

Ermengard had previously been married to William IX Duke of Aquitaine, who lived from 1071 to 1112. He was direct descendant of Guillaume de Gellone. His granddaughter was Eleanore of Aquitaine. Her father was William X of Aquataine, and her mother, Philippa of Toulouse.

Richar Lionheart

Eleanor inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine, and, marrying Louis VI, the grandson of Philip I, became queen of France. However, Eleanor’s conduct aroused Louis’s jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. Their marriage was finally annulled in 1152.

Eleanor then married Henry II King of England. Fulk IV’s son, Fulk V was the father of Geoffrey Plantagenet, through whom were united the Guilhemid, Norman, Saxon and Khazzarian lines. The daughter of Edward the Exile and Agatha of Bulgaria, was St. Margaret Queen of Scotland, who married Malcolm III of Scotland, who was descended from Aidan, the father of King Arthur. Their daughter, Matilda, married William the Conqueror’s son, who became Henry I King of England. Their daughter, also named Matilda, married Geoffrey V Plantagenet, the son of Fulk V, of the Guilhemid House of Anjou.

Their son was Henry II, who became King of England in 1154, and married Eleanore of Aquitaine, the granddaughter of William IX of Aquitaine. Thus, Henry II ranks as the first of the Plantagenet kings of England, and through his marriage to Eleanor, established the Angevin Empire, as it is called, that controlled a domain dwarfing the power of France, and incorporating all of England, half of France, as well as Scotland and Ireland. Eleanore bore him five sons and three daughters, one of whom was Richard I, “the Lion-Hearted”, who succeeded his father as king of England, and under whom the Angevin Empire attained its height.

The Cathars

Cathars captured

William IX of Aquitaine is recognized as the first of the troubadours, who were part of a culture of “Courtly Love” that developed out of the influence of the heresy of Catharism, which flourished in the Languedoc, particularly the regions of Toulouse and Aquitaine. Essentially, the Cathars were Gnostic. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God, but that the God of the Old was evil, equating him with Satan. They believed also that the Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was an evil man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine. For the good Christ, as they claimed, never ate, nor drank, and never assumed physical form, except spiritually in the body of Paul. They also regarded the Church of Rome was a “den of thieves”, and as the harlot of the Apocalypse.^[9]

The Cathars also practiced vegetarianism and believed in a form of reincarnation. Marriage was frowned upon, and they believed that those who bore children could not be saved in this world. It was as a result of this particular belief that the term “buggery” was introduced, since if they were to give in to sexual temptation in this manner, it would at least ensure that no children resulted. Like the Gnostics before them, the Cathars were accused of engaging in sexual orgies, sometimes involving incest, and of practicing secret rituals in worship of the Devil, involving the sacrifice of children and eating their flesh in cannibalistic rites.

Scholars have generally accepted that Catharism drew influences from Bogomilism and from Paulicianism. Another source, which is less well acknowledged, however, is that of the Kabbalah. Several thirteenth century Christian polemicists had reproached the Cathars for their relations with Jews, and historian Paul Johnson notes that, “the Church was by no means wide of the mark when it identified Jewish influences in the Cathar movement...”^[10] In Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements, Louis I. Newman concludes:

... that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains.^[11]

Gershom Scholem acknowledged that Catharism was influenced by a Kabbalistic text known as the Sepher ha-Bahir. The origin of the work is unknown. Though there had been an important speculative development leading up to that time, the teachings of the Rabbis of the Languedoc region underwent a powerful transformation, due to the infusion of a new mystical tradition, as exemplified in a work by the name of the Sepher ha-Bahir. Scholars of the Kabbalah have been unable to account for the source of this tradition, however, because it represented a form of classical Gnosticism of a kind that had disappeared since the first centuries AD.

The Crusades

Sir Galahad brought
to the court of King Arthur

One possible avenue for the transition of the Gnostic knowledge of the Sepher ha-Bahir, corroborated by rumours familiar in the occult, is that the famous Knights Templar had undertaken excavations beneath the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The Templars became the focus of the verioius Arthurian romances, which gained popularity in the twelfth century. Arthur was said to hold court at Camelot, and to have gathered the Knights of the Round Table, including Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and others, who were descendants of the Fisher Kings. These knights engaged in fabulous quests, most importantly, the quest for the “Holy Grail”.

The Grail legends therefore refer cryptically to the Templar project in the Holy Land. The Guilhemid family seems to have conspired to ignite the Crusades against the Muslims, in order to conduct excavations in the Holy Land, to retrieve Kabbalistic texts, that were known to have been buried there. The agents of the Guilhemids, were the Templars. It was among the Jews of Narbonne, who were governed by the Guilhemids, that what scholars refer to as the Medieval Kabbalah was developed. When scholars speak of the Kabbalah, specifically, they refer to the school of mystical thought that originated in the Languedoc, in the late twelfth century, incepted by the appearandce of the Sepher ha-Bahir, while acknowledging that it was based on a tradition dating back to at least to Babylon in the sixth century BC.

The trigger for the First Crusade was when Emperor Alexius I, although the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church of Rome was brewing, appealled to Pope Urban II as a fellow Christian for mercenaries to help him resist Seljuk Turk advances into the Byzantine Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem. In 1099, Jerusalem was taken and the population massacred.

Another branch of the Oghuz Turks was the Seljuks, a dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th century to 14th century. The Seljuks migrated from the north Iranian provinces in Central Asia into mainland Iran, formerly the Persian Empire. Some debate has arisen to the name of the founder, Tougrul was cited as the successor to the Khazar Khanagate, with whom, according to the eleventh century historian ibn al Athir, he trained, sparred, and studied under.^[12] According to ibn Habreus, Tougrul “began his career in the army of the khan [beg] of the Jewish Khazars, the two peoples having been connected by trade for already quite some time.”^[13]

double-headed eagle

The Seljuk Turks emigrating from Central Asia occupied Baghdad in 1055, and Tougrul captured Mosul, and upon returning to Baghdad in 1058. Tougrul was thenn invested by the Caliph with two crowns held over his head, as symbols of his authority over East and West, which confirmed that the he now was the Commander of the Faithful. At the time the double-headed eagle became his and the Seljuk state’s coat of arms and flag, one head symbolizing the east and the other one symbolizing the west.^[14]

The double-headed eagle also became the heraldic symbol of the other European descendants of Turks, including the Russians, and the rulers of the Byzantine Empire, after Alexis I Comnenus. Alexius I was married to Eirene Doucaena, the great-granddaughter of Aaron, the brother of Samuil, the Bogomil Kings of Bulgaria.

The double headed-eagle of the Seljuk Turks, of bicephalous, would become an important Illuminati symbol, first being applied to Alexius II Comnenius, in whom the lines Khazar ancestry of East was combined with the Guilhemid line of the West. The son of Alexius I Comnenus, John II Comnenus, married Piroska of Hungary. She was the daughter of King Ladislau I of Hungary, the great-grandson of Michael, brother of Geza, and Adelaide, the daughter of Mieszko I King of Poland. John II’s son, Manuel I Comnenus, married Maria, the daughter of Raymond of Antioch, the son of William IX “the Troubadour” of Aquitaine, and Mahaut Countess of Toulouse, whose father, William IV of Toulouse, was the brother of Raymond IV, leader of the First Crusade. His mother, Constance, Princess of Antioch, was the daughter of Bohemund II, the grandson of Robert Guiscard, and Alix Princess of Jerusalem, whose father, Baldwin II King of Jerusalem, shared a grandfather with Godfroi de Bouillon, Manasses III.

Godfroi of Boullion

The first to respond to Pope Urban’s call was Raymond IV Count of Toulouse, the grandson of William Taillefer and Emma of Provence. Raymond’s mother, Almodie de la Marche, was a descendant of Gilbert de Rouergue, the brother of Rabbi Makhir. His son Fredelon married Bertha of Autun, the sister of William of Gellone. Their grandson son was Raymond I of Toulouse.^[15]

Raymond was joined by Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, who was married to Constance of France, the daughter of Philip I King of France. Philip I’s father was Henry I King of France. Henri married Anne of Kiev, the daughter of Yaroslav I the Wise, one of numerous sons of Vladimir Grand Duke of Kiev. Yaroslav’s mother was the famous Rogneda of Polotsk. It has been speculated that her father Ragnvald, who came from Scandinavia, and established himself at Polatsk in the mid-10th century, belonged to the Ynglings royal family of Norway. In or about 980, Vladimir of Novgorod, on learning that Rogneda was betrothed to his brother Yaropolk I of Kiev, took Polotsk and forced Rogneda to marry him. Having raped Rogneda in the presence of her parents, he ordered them to be killed, along with two of Rogneda's brothers. Rogneda gave him several children, among which was Yaroslav.^[16]

Most importantly, Raymond and Bohemund were aided by Godfroi of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine. Godfroi’s father, Eustace II, was descended Baldwin I of Flanders, Alfred the Great, and from Siegried, the father of Cunigunde of Luxemburg, whose wife was Hedwig of Nordgau, the granddaughter of Henry the Fowler. Siegfried’s mother was Cunigunde of Hainaut, the great-granddaughter of Charles the Bald. Godfroi’s mother was Ida of Verdun, who was descended on her father’s side from Hugh the Great, and Friedrich of Upper and Lower Lorraine, the brother of Siegried of Moselgau. Ida’s mother is descended from Hedwig’s sister, Albrada of Lorraine.

The Templars

In 1118, the order of the Templars, one of two of the principal order of crusading knight, along with the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, was founded in the conquered city of Jerusalem. The Templars, are well recognized as the typical image of the crusaders, with long white mantles, emblazoned with the equal armed red cross “pattee.” Originally concerned with ensuring safe passage of Christian pilgrims between the port of Jaffa and the city of Jerusalem, the order was founded in 1118, by a French nobleman, Hughes de Payens, and eight other soldiers, who took the name, Poor Knights of the Temple, from Temple of Solomon, from where they were first stationed.

Knights Templar

It has also been speculated that the mysticism of the Bahir was transmitted through the Sabians of Harran, often referred to also as Mandaeans. Nathaniel Deutsch, in The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism and Merkabah Mysticism, recognizes that:

At present, we must be satisfied with acknowledging the phenomenological parallels between the Mandaean and Kabbalistic traditions, although we must also seriously consider the possibility that both Mandaean and Kabbalistic sources drew on a common pool of earlier (Jewish?) theosophic traditions.^[17]

The legend recounted in occult circles is that the Templars learned from certain “initiates of the East”, a Jewish doctrine which was attributed to St. John the Apostle.^[18] These Christians of St. John, known as Johannites, and reputed to inhabit the “banks of the Euphrates”, are identified with the Mandeans of Iraq, a Gnostic sect that endures to this day, and who revere John the Baptist as their prophet.

The Hermeticism of the Sabians, and taught by the Ismailis at the Grand Lodge of Cairo, was thought to represent the preserved the “wisdom” of the Ancient Egyptians. According to Johannite doctrine, derived originally from Talmudic or Kabbalistic sources, Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary, and as a boy, was taken to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests of the Essenes, and returned to Palestine to deceive the people with his magic.^[19] According to Kabbalistic legend, it had also been in Egypt that Moses was initiated, where he learned the highest mysteries, which he then passed on to his brother Aaron and to the leaders of the Israelites. Jesus, therefore, was then supposedly instructed in these traditions, at a school in Alexandria, in the degrees of Egyptian initiation, giving rise to the legend that he had belonged to the Essenes, by which he initiated or baptized his disciples in the manner of St. John.

Templar cross,or Beauseant

Because the Mandeans revered John the Baptist as the prophet of the ancient religion of Moses, Kurt Rudolph, noted scholar of Gnosticism, has pointed out, “the attempt has been made to deduce from this that we have here historical traditions of the disciples of the Baptist, but this cannot be proved up to now. It is more likely that the Mandeans took over legends of this kind from heretical Christians, possible Gnostics, circles and shaped them according to their ideas.”^[20] From the Mandeans, the Templars appropriated the teaching that Jesus was a false Messiah sent by the devil, for they had, as occultist Eliphas Levi described, “two doctrines; one was concealed and reserved to the leaders, being that of Johannism; the other was public, being Roman Catholic doctrine.”^[21]

While stationed in Jerusalem, the Templars were rumored to have discovered a “treasure” that made them phenomenally wealthy and powerful. In 1867, Captain Wilson, Lieutenant Warren and a team of Royal Engineers found strong support for these rumours. They had re-excavated the area and uncovered tunnels extending vertically, for some 25 meters, before fanning out under the Dome of the Rock, which is generally thought to be the site of King Solomon’s temple. Crusader artifacts found in these tunnels attest to Templar involvement. More recently, a team of Israeli archaeologists, intrigued by the Warren and Wilson discovery, reinvestigated the passage and concluded that the Templars did in fact excavate beneath the Temple.^[22]

The Templars may have discovered texts that had been hidden beneath the site prior to its destruction by the Roman invasion in 70 AD, thus accounting for the mysterious appearance of the Bahir, described by the Kabbalists as having reached them from Palestine, “in extremely mutilated form, as remnants of scrolls, booklets and traditions.”^[23] Once in southern France, this new mystical approach touched off not only a revolution in Jewish thinking producing what is now known as the Medieval Kabbalah, but contributed to the Christian heresy of the Cathars, and from them the Templars.

The influence of the Bahir, through the Cathar culture of Courtly Love entirely transformed the legend of King Arthur, known as the Matter of Britain, makes its appearance in French literature, in the years following the Templar discovery. Eleanore became instrumental in turning her court, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of her day, into a center of courtly love. But it was Marie of Champagne, daughter Eleanor, who was a decisive influence in the transmission of Courtly culture across Europe. Marie encouraged the composition of Chretien de Troyes’ Lancelot, that started the association of the Grail with king Arthur.

Parzival, written between 1200 and 1210, by Wolfram von Eschenbach’s, a knight of Bavarian origin, was the most celebrated romance of the time, and has been considered by some to be of profound mystical significance. Wolfram believed Chretien’s version of the Grail story was wrong, and less accurate than his own which was based on privileged information. Wolfram claimed to have obtained his information from a certain Kyot de Provence, who would have been Guiot de Provins, a troubadour.

Lohengrin, tapetry by A. v. Heckel

At Toledo, where Kyot is said to have learned the Grail, was a famous Kabbalistic school. There were other schools at Gerona, Montpellier and elsewhere in the south of France. As well, there was also such a school at Troyes, which dated from 1070, and was conducted by Rashi, perhaps the most famous of Medieval Kabbalists. Wolfram maintains that Kyot, in turn, supposedly received the Grail story from a Jew named Flegetanis. According to Wolfram:

A heathen Flegetanis, had achieved high renown for his learning. This scholar of nature was descended from Solomon and born of a family which had long been Israelite until baptism became our shield against the fire of Hell. He wrote the adventure of the Grail. On his father’s side, Flegetanis was a heathen, who worshipped a calf...

The Heathen Flegetanis could tell us how all the stars set and rise again… To the circling course of the stars man’s affairs and destiny are linked. Flegetanis the heathen saw with his own eyes in the constellations things he was shy to talk about, hidden mysteries. He said there was a thing called the Grail, whose name he had read clearly in the constellations. As host of angels left it on the earth.

Since then, baptized men have had the task of guarding it, and with such chaste discipline that those who are called to the service of the Grail are always noble men. Thus wrote Flegetanis of these things.^[24]

According to Wolfram, the Grail sustained the lives of a brotherhood of knights, called Templeisen, referring to the Templars. Like their real-life counterparts, who made their home in a palace near the site of Solomon’s Temple, the Templeisen were headquartered in a castle. This fictional castle was called Munsalvaesche, or “mountain of salvation,” a name which recalls Montsegur, the mountain fortress of the Cathars in Languedoc. In fact, the Cathars were said to be the guardians of a great treasure associated with a fantastic and ancient knowledge, and Wolfram’s veiled references finally sparked contemporary speculation that he was himself a member of the sect.

Ultimately, the secret of the Holy Grail, as the authors of the Holy Blood Holy Grail discovered, is that of a sacred lineage. Therefore, the authors concluded, the Sangreal should be translated to mean, “Sang Real” or "Royal Blood”. However, the authors, like Dan Brown after him, erred in asserting descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Grail lore, like that of the Cathars, is Gnostic. Rather, Mary Magdalene is an esoteric symbol, referring to the goddess, and the royal blood of the Grail is a Lucifarian bloodline, which stems from the unholy conspiracy against the life of Jesus.

According to a anonymous Grail legend by the name of the Perlesvaus, we find: “here is the story of thy descent; here begins the Book of the Sangreal.” Theodoric was known as Aymery in the romances, and was the father of Guillaume de Gellone, about whom there were at least six major epic poems composed before the era of the crusades, including Willehalm, by Wolfram. In a Wolfram poem, Perceval is the father of Lohengrin, the Knight Swan. One day, in his castle Munsalvaesche, he hears a bell toll as a signal to come to the aid of a damsel in distress. According to some sources, she was the duchess of Bouillon, whom Lohengrin hastened to her rescue in a boat drawn by swans. Having defeated her persecutor, he married the lady, though, requiring of her that she not question about his ancestry. At last, wrought with curiosity, she broke the vow, at which point Lohengrin was forced to leave. Though, he left her with a child, according to various accounts, that was either father or grandfather of Godfroi de Bouillon.

Baphomet

Baphomet of the Templars
according to Eliphas Levi

At first, the Church tried conversion, by sending a number of legates into the region of Toulouse. But the local nobles protected the Cathars, and the Bishops of the district rejected the authority of the Pope’s legates. Papal legate Peter of Castelnau, known for excommunicating the noblemen who protected the Cathars, excommunicated Raymond VI, the Count of Toulouse. Raymond VI was the great-grandson of Raymond IV who led the First Crusade. Raymond VI Count of Toulouse, was the great-grandson of Raymond IV and Elvira of Castille and Leon, the daughter of Zaida of Denia, of the Ismaili Fatimids, who married, Alfonso VI “the Brave” of Leon.^[25] Zaida’s daughter was Elvira of Castille and Leon, who married first Roger II Guiscard, and Raymond IV of Toulouse. Raymond VI’s mother was Constance Capet of Toulouse, the great-great-granddaughter of Constance of Arles and Vienna.^[26] Raymond VI was himself married to Joan Plantagenet, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II King of England.

Peter was then murdered near Saint Gilles Abbey in 1208 on his way back to Rome. As a response, the Pope, in what is known as the Albigensian Crusade, in reference to the Languedoc center at Albi, moved in to extirpate the heresy. Finally, in 1229, the Pope established the Inquisition to root out the Cathars, and in 1244, final defeat came upon the Cathars at their famous stronghold of Montsegur, when more than 200 Cathar priests were massacred by the Crusaders.

de Molay burned at the stake

A half-century later, the Templars would come under similar suspicions. Though the Templars had grown very powerful, by 1291, Jerusalem fell to Muslim leader Saladin, and nearly all of the Crusader holdings in Palestine came into Arab control. The Templars established their new headquarters in Cyprus, but with the loss of the Holy Land, the purpose of their existence was lost. Suspicion about order began to mount. The true allegiances of the order were in doubt, as it became generally believed that the Templars were engaged in forming secret pacts with the Muslims. This rumor seems to have been confirmed when the Order entered into an alliance with the Amir of Damascus against the Hospitallers of Knights of St. John. It is known that there were frequent examples of the Templars forging alliances with the Muslims, and that they had established contacts with the Ismaili Assassins in plot to gain control of Tyre.

Pope Clement V came under strong pressure from Philip IV the Fair of France at this time, and in response, in November 1307, ordered the arrest of the Templars in every country. King Philip had every Templar in France arrested on Oct. 13 of that year. On March 22, 1312, the Templars’ property throughout Europe was transferred to the Hospitalers, or confiscated by the state. Many Templars were executed or imprisoned, and in 1314 the order’s last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake.

The Templars were charged with practicing witchcraft, of denying the tenets of the Christian faith, spitting or urinating on the cross during secret rites of initiation, worshipping a skull or head called Baphomet in a dark cave, anointing it with blood or the fat of anabaptized babies, worshipping the devil in the shape of a black cat, and committing acts of sodomy and bestiality. Despite the fact that a great number of the knights, including the Grand Master himself, Jacques du Molay, confessed to most of these accusations, modern historians continue to apologize for the Templars, instead accusing Phillip of political ambition or greed in seizing the order’s property. However, those acts of which the Templars were accused are typical of those that had been attributed in times past to the Ancient Mysteries, Gnostics or the Sabians of Harran.

The Sinclairs

Robert the Bruce and
Elizabeth de Burgh

Nevertheless, despite their supposed persuction, the Templars were reputed to have survived in Scotlland, where they were represented by the influential family of the Sinclairs. Legend has it that, when the Templars came under trial, their leader de Molay arranged for the Templar treasures to be removed in a fleet of galleys from the port of La Rochelle. The majority of these treasure ships sailed to Scotland. Templars have been suggested as the source of mounted soldiers who assisted Robert the Bruce’s forces at the battle of Bannockburn, as the Scots themselves did not have a mounted force. The Templars had apparently chosen Scotland because they knew they would be immune from attack from the Catholic Church there, because King Robert the Bruce, and the whole Scottish nation, had been excommunicated for taking up arms against King Edward II of England.

The famous “Scottish Declaration of Independence”, which was drawn up by Bernard de Linton, Chancellor of Scotland in the year 1320, should prove of value. Preserved as it is in the Register House, Edinburgh, this historic document bearing the seals of all the Scottish barons of the day was signed by Robert the Bruce and addressed to Pope John XXII after he attempted to secure Scottish submission to Edward II of England. It reads:

We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and from the chronicles and books of the ancients gather, that among other illustrious nations, ours, to wit the nation of the Scots, has been distinguished by many honours; which, passing from the greater Scythia through the Mediterranean Sea and Pillars of Hercules, and sojourned in Spain among the most savage tribes through a long course of time, could nowhere be subjugated by any people, however barbarous; and coming thence one thousand two hundred years after the outgoing of the people of Israel, they, by many victories and infinite toil, acquired for themselves the possessions in the West which they now hold ... In their Kingdom one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, no stranger intervening, have reigned.^[27]

The Battle of Bannockburn

In Scotland, the a Templar force at the Battle of Bannockburn was led by Sir William Sinclair, of the Sinclairs who, Genetic researchers Elizabeth Hirschman and Donald Panther-Yates, authors of a forthcoming book, When Scotland was Jewish, hypothesize were a family of secret Jews, among the many Sephardic Jews from Spain and southern France that entered Scotland from around 1100 onward. The first group would have accompanied William the Conqueror and assisted in setting up the civil administration in England. Some then made their way to Scotland, around 1150, at the invitation of Malcolm III and David I.^[28]

The Sinclairs, like all Norman nobility, were also descended from the Viking, Rollo Ragnvaldsson and Poppa of Bavaria. Charles the Simple, King of France, met Rollo at the castle of St. Clair, and there made him Duke of Normandy. The Sinclairs soon multiplied to such an extent that they could not all stay at the castle of St. Clair, and were given various other castles around France. However, they all went to England with the Conqueror. One Sinclair, named William, did not like the Conqueror, his cousin, so with some other discontented barons, he went to Scotland. William St. Clair, like William the Conquerer, and Alain IV of Brittany, were descended from Conan I of Brittany. The two Williams were the grandsons of of Emma of Normandy’s brother, Richard II “the Good” of Normandy, and Judith of Brittany, the daughter of Conan I of Brittany and Ermangard of Anjou. ^[29]

Rosslyn Chapel

William St. Clair served on a delegation for his father’s cousin, King Edward the Confessor, to escort his successor, Atheling Edward “the Exile”, back to England. Edward the Exile’s daughter was Margaret who would marry King Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland. Malcolm III was the father of David I “the Saint” King of Scotland. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, in 1128, soon after the Council of Troyes, Hugh de Payens, the Templars’ first Grand Master, met with King David I of Scotland. King David granted Hugues and his knights the lands of Ballantradoch, by the Firth of Forth, but now renamed Temple. King David later surrounded himself with Templars, and appointed them as “the Guardians of his morals by day and night”.^[30]

David married to Maud of Northumberland, whose mother was Judith of Lens, the daughter of Godfroi de Bouillon’s brother, Lambert II de Boulogne, and Adeliza, the sister of William the Conqueror. Godfroi’s younger brother, Eustace III, married David’s sister, Mary Scots. Their daughter, Mathilde married Stephen I King of England, who was the son Stephen II Henry Count of Blois, and Adela of Normandy, the daughter of William the Conqueror. Adela’s brother, Henry I King of England, married David’s sister, Editha of Scotland. Their daughter, Mathilda Empress of England, married Geoffrey V, Comte d’Anjou, whose son Henry II, married Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Mary Magdalene
by Anthony F. A. Sandys c. 1860.

Robert the Bruce claimed the Scottish throne as a great-great-great-great grandson of David. He was also a descendant of Robert the Brus II, who married William St. Clair’s sister Agnes. Robert the Bruce was also the grandson of Walter Stewart, 3rd High Stewart of Scotland. Walter Stewart, the sixth High Steward of Scotland, played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn. Walter Stewart then married Majory, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and their son Robert II, he eventually inherited the Scottish throne after his uncle David II of Scotland died. From them were descended all subsequent Stewart, or Stuart, kings of Scotland.

Before his death, Robert the Bruce had requested that his heart be taken to Jersusalem, and buried in the Templar Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The heart was taken by Sir William Sinclair, great-grandson of the first William St. Clair, and Sir James Douglas, but the two never made it to the Holy Land, having been killed in Spain in battle with the Muslims.^[31] His grandson, also named William Sinclair, in the fifteenth century, became the third Earl of Orkney, first Earl of Caithness, and High Chancellor of Scotland. William’s mother was Jill Douglas, the great-granddaughter of James Douglas. James Douglas’ mother had been Elizabeth Stewart, the daughter of Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland.^[32]

In 1441 King James II Stewart appointed William Sinclair to the post of Hereditary Patron and Protector of Scottish Masons. These were not Freemasons but working stone masons. It was not until well later that “speculative” Masons joined the guilds, which came to be known as Freemason. William Sinclair also designed the most sacred site in Freemasonry, Rosslyn Chapel, a church in the village of Roslin, replete with occult symbolism, and has often been rumored to be the burial site of the Holy Grail, being the remains of Mary Magdalene.

The myth of the family has recently bee popularized by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. It is at Rosslyn Chapel that Sophia, his protagonist, finds out about the pedigree of her parents, who, “incredibly, both had been from Merovingian families — direct descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. Sophie’s parents and ancestors, for protection, had changed their family names of Plantard and Saint-Clair.”^[33]

William St Clair
first elected Grand Master
Grand Lodge of Scotland 1736

Dan Brown also divulges the ultimate secret of the Illuminati bloodline, which is perceived to be red hair, which of course is at its highest concentration in Scotlland. Red hair, having been introduced by their Scythian ancestors, is believed to be its characteristic trait, a mark of their Luciferian nature. Not only is Sophia a redhead, but Brown makes repeated references to the importantce of red hair, and most importantly, carefully notes that Mary Magdalene was portrayed by Da Vinci as having red hair, as a deliberate reference to her “sacred” heritage.

According to Dan Brown, Rosslyn takes its name from the rose, which the traditional secret symbol of Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. As Brown explains:

The chapel’s geographic coordinates fall precisely on the north-south meridian that runs through Glastonbury. This longitudinal Rose Line is the traditional marker of King Arthur’s Isle of Avalon and is considered the central pillar of Britain’s sacred geometry. It is from this hallowed Rose Line that Rosslyn — originally spelled Roslin— takes its name... or, as Grail academics preferred to believe, from the “Line of Rose”— the ancestral lineage of Mary Magdalene.^[34]

There are hundreds of stone carvings in the walls and in the ceiling of the Rosslyn Chapel, which represent biblical scenes, Masonic symbols, and examples of Templar iconography. There are swords, compasses, trowels, squares and mauls with images of the Solomon’s Temple. In addition to the Jewish and occult symbolism, there are also some traces of Islam and pagan serpents, dragons, and woodland trees. The fertility figure of the Green Man, a European version of the dying-god Dionysus, is to be found everywhere on the pillars and arches, together with fruits, herbs, leaves, spices, flowers, vines and the plants of the garden paradise.

The remains of William St. Clair, great-grandfather of the founder of Rosslyn Chapel, are said to be buried in Rosslyn, in the style of the Templars, in a grave marked by a skull and crossbones.^[34]

Genealogical Chart

Lineage of Stuarts and Sinclairs: From King David, Joeeph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Odin and Guillame de Gellone. [PDF]

Footnotes:

^[1] Wells, R. Spencer, et al. The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity. 2001, The National Academy of Sciences. [PDF]
^[2] Robert Brian Stewart, “Królewna Polska Gunhilda Piast”. Peter Townend, editor, Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, One Hundred and Fifth Edition (London: Burke's Peerage Limited, MCMLXX (1970)), pg. l.; Mike Ashley, The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens (7 Kensington Road Church Court, London W8 4SP: Robinson Publishing Ltd., 1998), [M32];
^[3] ibid.
^[4] Robert Brian Stewart, “Adelaide, Królewna Polska”. Ian S. R. Mladjov, “Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile”, The Plantagenet Connection Summer/Winter (2003); D.S.O. Lt.-Col. W. H. Turton, The Plantagenet Ancestry of Elizabeth (daughter of Edward IV, and wife of Henry VII) The Heiress of the Plantagenets (1001 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202: Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc, 1993), pg. 110.
^[5] Jacques Saillot, Les Seize Quartiers des Reines et Imperatrices Francaises, p. 139 (Tableau LVIII).
^[6] “Agatha of Bulgaria”, Wikipedia.
^[7] Chapter 38, Footnote 138. quoted from “King Arthur”, Wikipedia.
^[8] David Hughes, Davidic Dynasty. “King of the Silures Bran Fendigaid ap Llyr Lleddiarth of Britain”http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cousin/html/p195.htm#i11937;http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cousin/html/p187.htm#i11505; “Caradoc ap Brân of Britain”.
^[9] Raynaldus, Annales, translated by S. R. Maitland, History of the Albigenses and Waldenses, (London: C. J. G. and F. Rivington, 1832), p. 392-394.
^[10] A History of the Jews, p. 214.
^[11] p. 142-43
^[12] Lissner, Jonah Gabriel. Jewish History in Turkmenistan: An Overview.
^[13] ibid.
^[14] “Eagle (Heraldry)”, Wikipedia.
^[15] James Allen Dow. “Gilbert de Rouerge”.
^[16] "Henri I of France", Wikipedia.
^[17] p. 123.
^[18] Cours Philosophique et Interprtatif des Initiation anciennes et modernes, quoted from Webster, p. 65
^[19] Talmud Shabbat 104b; Sanhedrin 67a; and Talmud Sanhedrin 107b, Sotah 47a.
^[20] Gnosis, p. 363
^[21] The History of Magic: Including a Clear and Precise Exposition of Its Procedure, Its Rites, and Its Mysteries.
^[22] Ben-Dov. In the Shadow of the Temple, p. 347
^[23] Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. p. 313.
^[24] Baigent. Leigh and Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail, p. 293
^[25] "Roger II of Sicily", Wikipedia.
^[26] James Allen Dow, “Raymond VI (Count) of TOULOUSE”.
^[27] Hollins, L. THE ANGLO-SAXON PEOPLE - PART 2.
^[28] Elizabeth Hirschmann, “Possible AMH Jewish Migrations to England and Scotland”.
^[29] James Allen Dow. “William the Seemly de St. Clair”.
^[30] E. J. Boyd. A brief history of the Knights of the Temple and of the Preceptory and Priory of St. George Aboyne 1794 – 1994.
^[31] Baigent and Leigh, The Temple & The Lodge, pp. 26, 28-30
^[32] James Allen Dow, “Egidia (Jill) DOUGLAS”.
^[33] p. 324.
^[34] p. 317.
^[34] Scotsman.com. “From St Clair to Sinclair – the family who built Rosslyn".