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In the Realm of the Ring Lords

Part 2 of 2

To maintain its persecution of the Grail dynasts and heretics, the Church made sure it subverted the stories that would keep the true Grail legacy alive among the people.

(Go to part 1)


Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 6, Number 6 (October-November 1999).
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia.
editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at:
www.nexusmagazine.com

From a lecture presented by
Sir Laurence Gardner, Kt St Gm., KCD, KT St A.
at the 1999 NEXUS Conference held in Sydney, 22-23rd May
Transcript ©
Sir Laurence Gardner 1999


What the bishops did, however, at the 1545 Council of Trento in northern Italy, was they formally blacklisted and outlawed the prophecies of Merlin, withdrawing all related material from the public domain. Eventually, in order to weigh the literary balance in the Church's favour, a new breed of writing was born, and it came into its own as Gothic Romance.

The premise behind these tales was not so much about saving victims, but rather more about destroying the enemies of contrived "churchianity" - with crucifixes galore and gallons of holy water being the essential weapons in the dreaded undertaking against the sinister "evil ones".

Then, in time, the Christian movement had a wonderful idea for its own Merlin competitor: not a wizard as such, but an early Church bishop with canonised status. But, what a very strange choice they made!

Back in AD 325, one of the characters at Emperor Constantine's Council of Nicaea was a certain Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. At this Church conference the bishops were debating the nature of the Holy Trinity and of how Jesus was not simply the Son of God but was also God incarnate. The ageing Libyan priest, Arius of Alexandria, was not at all happy about this new concept and decided to make his feelings known. But when he rose to speak, Nicholas of Myra immediately punched him in the face!

This, of course, brought the debate firmly back onto the required track - subsequent to which, the violent protagonist was rewarded for his effort and duly became Saint Nicholas. This titular name was later corrupted in parts of Europe to become Sinterklaas or Sintniklaus, and then, in the English-speaking countries, to Santa Claus. Now, by virtue of a good deal of strategic propaganda, he is lovingly revered by children as the jolly, gift-bearing Father Christmas - a far cry from the original vindictive bishop of historical record.

Within the Celtic Church of the Dark Ages (in the days of Taliesin and the Merlin seers to the kings), there had been some very prominent adepts of the old wisdom: abbots and culdees such as St David, St Patrick and St Columba, all of whom were denounced in their day by the Roman Church for their so-called wizardry and pagan beliefs. Even the later papal establishment regarded them all as necromancers and sorcerers, but this is not the way things are currently portrayed. Although the Merlin prophecies were expressly banned by the Council of Trento, the teachings of David, Patrick and Columba were so firmly cemented in society that the Church pursued a different strategy of incorporation.

A thousand years after the lifetimes of these Druidic Magi, the Vatican elected to bring them into the orthodox saintly fold so that the real truth of their Celtic environment would be overshadowed. Then, only a couple of years ago, the British Post Office and the Anglican Church joined forces to promote the gentle St Columba of the Celts alongside his bitter Catholic rival, St Augustine of Rome, who came to England with an express papal brief to destroy the Columban movement immediately after Columba's death in 597. Notwithstanding this historical fact, however, the anniversary postage stamps and substantially hyped propagandist material of 1997 portrayed these two arch-enemies as if they had been blood brothers in a common cause - proving beyond doubt that new myths of "churchianity" are still being created to this day.

With regard to the werewolves, who were said to manifest at the height of the full moon, the definition of were is, quite simply, "man" (hence, "werewolf" is "man-wolf"), but it comes rather more precisely from an ancient High Druidic caste of Wood Lords (called Weres or Wallans). Their totem animal was the wolf - just as other tribes were represented by, say, a boar or a horse. These totems were really no more than the early predecessors of heraldry, whereby families became identified by the animals, plants, shells and other devices on their banners.

Historically, the Wallans became very influential, founding great kingly dynasties in Ireland, Wales and England. The great Cadwallan of Wales was of this Druidic race, as was King Casswallan, the intrepid son of Beli Mawr - the greatest of all the sovereign Wood Lords in about 100 BC.

Other totems, of course, were the various god and goddess representations, and it is especially relevant that one of these still holds a prime British national position today, having persisted though the centuries from the early culture of the Wood Lords.

The original Wallans were apparent in Mesopotamia around 3,800 years ago, in about 1800 BC. They were called the Yulannu, which meant, quite simply, Wood Lords. Indeed, it was from their culture that the original Yule tradition derived, subsequently making its way across Europe to Scandinavia.

The venerated Goddess of the Yulannu was Barat An-na (Great Mother of the Fire-stone). The Sumerians called her Antu. She was the wife of the god Anu, and the mother of Enki. In later times, she was identified with Diana of Ephesus (Diana of the Nine Fires). The cult of Barat An-na spread across Syria into the Phoenician kingdom, where they began to portray her on their coins. In these representations, she sat by the seashore with a torch of fire, and at her side was a round shield bearing the cross of the Rosi-crucis.

Along with the Wallan Druids, the culture of Barat An-na was brought to the British islands, where her name became compacted to Bratanna. And in those islands, her image persisted to the extent that she became the great tribal goddess - a goddess who, despite all the emergent centuries of Christianity, has prevailed to this very day. Her image on the coins has barely altered, except that her flaming torch became a lighthouse, and the Rosi-crucis cross of her shield was amended to become the Union Jack. But, after all this time, she is still the Mother Goddess of the land, the Lady of the Fire-stone: Britannia.

Earlier, I mentioned the mighty King Casswallan who reigned in Britain at about the time of King Herod the Great. By virtue of being the son of the great Beli Mawr, he was not only a Wood Lord but was also a Ring Lord of the Cassi; hence, he was Cassi-Wallan or Casswallan.

The Cassi tribes were also from Mesopotamia, prior to which (having previously settled in the northern Zargos Mountains along with the Yulannu) they were Carpathian princes of the Sidhé. They were, in fact, of the Tuatha Dé Danann Fairy strain. They reigned in regional Mesopotamia from the 18th century BC and, from about 1600 BC, they governed all Babylonia for another 500 years.

This particular race developed one of the oldest Ring cultures in history and, in ancient Ireland, they were the sacred race of the god-men: the Vere-Bolg. The greatest of their Ring shrines still exists, known as Newgrange today - originally a sacred royal seat identified as a Rath. These shrines ("fairy rings") were called the Creachaire (temple-tombs), and they housed the Raths which were turf-covered mound dwellings constructed upon a framework of poles. In later times, they were called Tepes (pronounced "tepesh") - from which derived the American Indian tepee - and they were reckoned to be Portals to the Netherworld, the sacred domain of ancestral souls.

It is from this mound-dwelling practice that the tribal name of the Cassi Kings evolved, for a Cassi was a Place of Wood. They were the seats of the Portal Guardians: the Oupires, the Ring Lords of the Sidhé, who, as we saw earlier, were later dubbed "vampires".

One of history's best known Grail Fairies was Princess Melusine, daughter of the Pictish King, Elinas of Alba - a descendant of the 2nd-century King Vere of Caledonia, Lord of the Dragon. In the year 733, Melusine (maintaining the family heritage) married Rainfroi de Vere, Prince of Anjou, and among their offspring was Count Maelo, the commander of Emperor Charlemagne's army. From Maelo's own marriage to Charlemagne's sister sprang the Vere Counts of Guisnes who, as previously mentioned, were the reputed Elf Kings and became England's Great Chamberlains and Earls of Oxford.

In the Arthurian and Magdalene traditions of the Ladies of the Lake (as discussed in Bloodline of the Holy Grail), Melusine was a "fountain fey" - an enchantress of the Underwood. Her fountain at Verrières en Forez was called Lusina (meaning "Light-bringer"), from which derived the name of the Royal House of Lusignan - the Crusader Kings of Jerusalem. The Fount of Melusine was said to be located deep within a thicket wood in Anjou, and Melusine was often depicted as a mermaid - as she is still beguilingly portrayed in an old painting at Count Dracula's Bran Castle in Romania.

In the 12th-century, Melusine's descendant, Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford and legal pretender to the Earldom of Huntingdon, was appointed as King Richard I's Steward of the forest lands of Fitzooth. As Lord of the Greenwood and titular Herne of the Wild Hunt, he was a popular people's champion of the Sidhé heritage - as a result of which he was outlawed for taking up arms against King John. It was he who, subsequently styled Robin Fitzooth, became the prototype for the popular tales of Robin Hood.

Of all the monarchs who ever sat upon the throne of England, the Tudor Queen, Elizabeth I, was by far the most in tune with ancient cultures and wood lore. She was even called the Faerie Queene and, before being formally crowned, she was installed by the people as their Queen of the Greenwood. This was an ancient ritual of the Shining Ones - the Elven Race of the Albi-gens. The ceremony was conducted in the mist of early dawn in the depths of Windsor Forest and, to facilitate the installation, the customary Robin Hood legacy of the House of Vere was brought into play.

At that time, the Queen's Lord Chamberlain was Edward de Vere of Loxley, 17th Earl of Oxford, and it was his office to invest Elizabeth by first deposing the Caille Daouine. This was the traditional King of the Forest (whose name had given rise to Scotland's Pictish realm of Caledonia) - the mighty Stag of the Seven Tines, upon whose back Lord Vere rode into the ceremonial clearing.

Edward de Vere of Oxford was a friend and student of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Secret Service operative John Dee, and he worked closely with the statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon (later Viscount St Albans). Between them (along with others) they comprised the Royal Court Syndicate which was responsible for providing much of the material for the works of their playwright colleague, William Shakespeare.

As mentioned in connection with Melusine, fountains, springs and water in general were always associated with the Ring Lord female line. This stems from the very earliest times of the Anunnaki, whose founding mother (as explained in ancient Mesopotamian literature) was Tiâmat, the Sea-dragon. In later times, these queens were commonly represented as mermaids (mere maids), and were often called Ladies of the Lake. This was a style granted to Mary Magdalene when she had settled in Provence from AD 44.

While the male descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus became the noted Fisher Kings in Gaul, the female line retained its Dragon Queen status, in a quite separate dynasty, as the matriarchal Queens of Avallon in Burgundy. They were known as the House del Acqs (the House of the Waters), and among their number was the great 6th-century Queen Viviane, revered as the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian romance. This heritage was so important to the Celtic Church that, when King Kenneth MacAlpin united the Scots and Picts in 844, his extant installation document made special mention of his descent from the Queens of Avallon.

The true significance of King Arthur was his immediate joint descent in both the male and female lines of the Albi-gens. His father was King Aedàn of Dalriada, the Pendragon of Britain in the year 559 and a descendant of the Wood Lord Beli Mawr. His mother was Ygerna del Acqs, the daughter of Queen Viviane, whose grandson (by Ygerna's sister, Viviane II) was the legendary Lancelot del Acqs. Ygerna (sometimes called Igraine in the Grail tradition) was the High Queen of the Celtic kingdoms, and her daughter Morgaine (by her first husband, Gwyr Llew of Carlisle) was High Priestess of the Sisters of Avallon.

Over the years, there have been any number of speculations concerning the historical Arthur, but these are mainly fronted by tourist establishments endeavouring to claim the Arthurian heritage for their particular parts of England or Wales. The fact is, however, that (in line with the traditional accounts) there was only ever one High King of Britain called Arthur. There was only ever one Arthur born as the son of a Pendragon. There was only ever one Arthur whose mother was Igraine of Avallon and whose grandmother was the recognised Lady of the Lake. There was only ever one Arthur with a son named Modred, and there was only ever one Arthur with a sister called Morgaine (or Morganna as some of the stories refer to her).

In this regard, the old annals of Scotland and Ireland, along with the records of the Celtic Church, are unanimous in identifying Arthur mac Aedàn of Dalriada. He was invested as Sovereign Commander and High King in the year 575 by the Druid, Merlin Emrys, and his primary seat was at Carlisle in the north of England, from where he controlled the military defence of the English-Scottish border country.

 

Returning to the Raths (or royal mound-dwellings), we should perhaps consider the fact that, as mentioned, these Portals to the Netherworld were called Tepes - for this was the very style afforded to one of the most enigmatic of all Gothic figures: Count Dracula. Historically, and quite outside the Christian propagandist mythology which surrounds the vampire character of Bram Stoker's famous novel, Dracula was Prince Vlad III of Wallachia, who is often referred to as Vlad Tepes.

Since the word tepes relates to "wooden poles", it is often thought that Vlad's descriptive nickname relates to his individual method of executing enemies of the State by impaling them upon wooden stakes. Hence, Vlad Tepes is sometimes said to mean "Vlad the Impaler". This, however, is completely untrue. He was called Tepes (as were many other Druidic elders before him) because, within the ancient Ring Lord culture of the Sidhé, he was an appointed Creachaire Portal Guardian.

Vlad Tepes, a 15th-century Prince in Romania, founded the capital city of Bucharest. His popularised name, Dracula, means "Son of Dracul", and Dracul (or Dragon) was a style by which his father was known within the Grail fraternity of the Ordo Draconis (The Imperial Court of the Dragon) from 1431.

During this past century, ever since the 1897 novel, Dracula, was published, Vlad has become an archetype of the Church-promoted Gothic tradition. However, the establishment's real fear of Dracula was not his harsh treatment of enemies, as is so often cited, nor that he was a blood-sucking vampire in the Stoker tradition. What they feared was his in-depth knowledge of alchemy and the fact that he was truly an operative Oupire - a venerated Overlord of the Rath, a Portal Guardian in the ancient Yulannu manner of the Ring Lords.

Those of you who have read Bloodline of the Holy Grail, or maybe even Genesis of the Grail Kings, will be familiar with the terracotta portrayal of the Sumerian goddess, Lilith, from around 2000 BC. In this depiction (as in those of other Anunnaki hierarchy) Lilith is seen to be holding the Rod and Ring of Divinely Measured Justice. The Rod was actually an instrument of measure, and in some portrayals it is very clearly marked in calculable units (like a modern ruler). By Babylonian times, it was referred to as the Rule, and the one who held the Rule was the Ruler - which is from where our governmental term derives.

The Ring (as mentioned at the beginning of this talk) was a symbol of wholeness, unity and eternity. It represented a continuance of Divine Justice - a justice that was measured by the Rod (or Rule). Hence, the Ring was the ultimate insignia of the Anunnaki Overlords - the enigmatic Oupires who were responsible for the establishment of municipal government and kingly practice - for they were the progenitors of civilisation from about 4000 BC.

In view of this, it is of particular interest to note that Tolkien, when asked about the Middle Earth environment of his book, The Lord of the Rings, answered that he perceived its setting to relate to somewhere around 4000 BC. "The cauldron has always been boiling," he said. "We simply add new ingredients to the soup." In this respect, his popular tale, although enthralling, was not actually new in concept. From the earliest of European times, the Saxon god, Wotan (or Odin, the equivalent of the Sumerian Anu), was said to have ruled the world with eight rings, having one more, the ninth ring (the One Ring), to govern the others.

During the mediaeval days of the Church's persecution of heretics and, indeed, through the Middle Ages and beyond, all manner of Grail-related subject matter fell prey to the wrath of the bishops and friars. Unsuspecting victims were accused of any number of apparently unsavoury practices, and any association with the Ring culture was proscribed. Indeed, when Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft, one of the charges laid against her by the bishops was that she used magical rings for enchantment and curative purposes. As a result, she was burnt at the stake in 1431. But, in 1920, the Church reconsidered her case and she was pardoned and canonised!

As detailed in Bloodline of the Holy Grail, not only were proscriptions levelled against the writings of Merlin - with a good deal of other literature confined to the supposedly "lost" coffers of the Dark Ages - but pictorial art also came under close scrutiny and many new rules were made. One of these was that the Virgin Mary could only be portrayed wearing blue and white (just as she is commonly depicted today). The reason for this was that other colours, especially the red of the cardinals, might have implied that she held some form of ecclesiastical office within a Church that afforded no clerical status to women.

 

What is not so commonly known is that the Church's regulations also applied to music - in particular, ancient music which could be traced to cultures other than that of Rome, Greece or Lydia. It is by virtue of these implemented regulations that so many of today's reference books determine that, for the most part, music evolved either from Greece or from various parts of the Roman Empire.

It is precisely the same with the English language, which is largely, but quite erroneously, said to derive from Greek and Latin. To cement this notion very firmly into our culture, we are taught from the classical literature of Homer and Virgil; but what is always forgotten is that both the Greek and Roman languages themselves evolved from other, far older, sources. Much of the language of Europe, including the English language, can be traced back into Phoenicia, Syria, Egypt, India and Mesopotamia, with many of the word stems being thousands of years old.

In the world of music, we have the very same scenario and, by virtue of discoveries made in the past few decades, there is no doubt that structured and sequenced music played a major role way back in the days of the Babylonian kingdoms and beyond. Silver pipes, bells and drums, along with beautifully ornamented harps and lyres, have all been unearthed in ancient Sumer from graves dating back five or six thousand years, and it is known that lutes were also used.

Buried along with kings and queens of the Dragon succession, these finely produced instruments were clearly ceremonial and would appear to have been used in ancient Star Fire and Fire-stone rituals, as described in Genesis of the Grail Kings. The Fire-stone ritual (the ritual of the goddess Antu, or Barat An-na) was largely a levitation ceremony conducted with the monatomic, superconductive element of the Highward Fire-stone (the white powder of gold).

Even in modern times, music has been used to perform levitational feats - notably in Tibet, where prohibitively large stone blocks have been lifted and positioned high in the mountains by using anti-gravitational sound frequencies. The ritual involves nineteen musicians and, behind them, 200 monks, radiating outwards in lines (in groups of five) at five-degree intervals, facing towards a mountain cave. The musicians use thirteen barrel-drums of variant sizes (weighing up to 150 kilograms apiece), suspended from wooden frames and directed towards a bowl-shaped cavity in which the required boulder is placed, between the musicians and the cave. Also, there are six long trumpets positioned at intervals between the drummers. On command, the trumpets and drums begin, with the monks at the rear providing a baffle whilst chanting. The time span before levitation of the stone occurs is four minutes and, in this manner, stones have been lifted some 400 metres, to be lowered into their necessary mountain temple positions.

Having made an intensive study of the intricacies of this ancient procedure, Adrian Wagner has recreated a musical enactment in "The Phoenix and the Fire-stone" track of the Genesis of the Grail Kings album - strategically breaking the sequence with a Golden Mean partition and concluding immediately before the four-minute deadline. Locked within this are frequencies that are so low as to be inaudible to conscious awareness, but which resonate directly with the frequency of the pineal gland. This, as many of you will know, is the gland responsible for heightened states of awareness and perception.

Also included within the Genesis album are aspects of musical harmonics which were banned by the Vatican in the Middle Ages, subsequent to their use by the Knights Templars and Cistercian monks in the construction of their Magdalene-dedicated Notre Dame cathedrals, which are noted for their architectural defiance of gravitational theory. The knights of this particular branch of the Templars (constituted by King Baldwin of Jerusalem in 1118) were called the Guardian Princes of the Royal Secret.

One of these musical sequences is the most famous of all: a tritone dubbed by the Church as "the Devil's interval". This is a direct extraction from the discovered harmonic scales of ancient Mesopotamian deities, which include the Enki scale, Enlil scale, Anu scale, Marduk scale, Kingu scale, Inanna scale and others.

No composer has done so much to preserve the legacy of Ring lore as Adrian's great-great-grandfather, Richard Wagner. His renowned 16-hour, four-part Nibelungen Ring Cycle - The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) - was largely drawn from Burgundian folklore, but derived ultimately from the very old Norse mythology of the Volsunga Saga.

The Ring's ultimately key character is the warrior Siegfried who, while under the spell of a potion, betrays the woman he loves - a goddess-turned-mortal called Brunhilde, who then masterminds his death. Subsequently, however, she realises her error and throws herself upon Siegfried's funeral pyre to be with him in eternity. The magical Ring that Siegfried gave to Brunhilde is retrieved from the ashes by the Rhinemaidens, the rightful Water Guardians of the Gold. And, by virtue of this, along with Brunhilde's self-sacrifice, a hitherto curse (placed upon the Ring by Alberic the Nibelung, Dwarf Lord of the Underworld) is lifted.

The Ring had originally been stolen from the Rhinemaidens by the Nibelung, who lost it to Brunhilde's father, the sky-god Wotan. Then Siegfried won it by killing a dragon. But, upon the final cleansing of the Ring by the Rhinemaidens, Wotan perishes, together with his dream kingdom of Valhalla. With the Ring now back in its rightful hands, the world is redeemed and the Cycle is complete.

And so, once again the traditional Ring lore is apparent, just as in Tolkien and the Grail stories, for the Ring is finally seen to destroy those who hold it without the right of affinity. The golden Ring itself (forged from the enchanted flat-stone of the Rhinegold) had the power to afford its master the lordship of all the world, but only at the cost of forsaking love and selling his soul to the Ring's awesome power.

 

In terms of the straightforward Messianic line of King David and Jesus, the most powerful of the Ring Lords was King Solomon, who, in the Hebrew Talmud, was said to be the mightiest magician of the age. His great wisdom and considered judgement as a sorcerer-king were directly attributed to his ownership of an enchanted ring, and the legend of King Solomon's Ring was clearly a major inspiration for Tolkien.

In the same manner as Solomon, Tolkien's Ring Lord, Sauron, used his One Ring to command all the demons of the Earth. Solomon used the demons to build a Temple of Jerusalem, whilst Sauron used them to build the Tower of Mordor. The rings were also similar (as is usual in the tradition), in that each had the power to corrupt and destroy its master. Solomon's Ring achieves his downfall through the agency of the demon Asmodaeus, whereas Sauron is, in effect, his own destructive demon.

Along with the rings, there are also story similarities concerning the possession of light-radiating jewels, with Solomon's being the Schamir and the Elf King Thingol's being the Silmaril - each of which is said to be an heirloom of the respective King's race.

By virtue of such Jewish writings, the Dominican wrath of the Spanish Inquisition (from about 1480) was largely directed against the Jews, especially those connected with Kabbalistic studies, and it was really as a direct result of this persecution that the witch-hunts began.

Prior to that, the Roman Inquisition had been more concerned with heterodox Christians: those heretics who were Christians of one sort or another (Arians, Nestorians, Nazarenes, or whatever), but were not members of the Roman Church, and whose culture revolved, to some extent, around traditions of magic and alchemy that were outside Church control. But, here were the Jews putting forward their own versions of the old lore - particularly those Jews in the Narbonne region of the Spanish Marches, where the House of David had once been given privileged rights of princely independence by Emperor Charlemagne.

It was recognised, therefore, that the net should be cast over a wider arena, so as to take account of those of completely different persuasions. It was no longer a matter of the Church simply endeavouring to clean up the Christian house. What of the Jews? What of the Muslims? What of the pagans in general?

And so, from the late 15th century, the Inquisition began a thorough process of "ethnic cleansing". No one who was other than a full-blooded and obvious Catholic was safe. But, there had to be some new form of classification to pull all the prey into the ever-expanding net. The Grand Inquisitor at the time was the brutal Tomâs de Torquemada, Senior Confessor to Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain. Under his direction, the answer was found and, very soon, the friars had set their sights upon "the most diabolical heathens who ever conspired to overthrow the Roman Church".

In 1484, two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, published a book called The Hammer of Witches. This evil but imaginative work gave full details of what was perceived to be the hideous new threat posed by all the practitioners of satanic magic. The book was so persuasive that, two years later, Pope Innocent VIII issued an official Bull to authorise the suppression of this blasphemous sect. Up to that point, the cult known as Witchcraft (to the extent that it existed at all) had not really constituted a threat to anyone. It rested mainly in the continuation of pagan ritual and fertility rites by the peasant classes. In real terms, it was little more than the vestige of a primaeval belief in the divine power of natural forces, focused above all on Pan, the mischievous Arcadian god of the shepherds.

Pan was traditionally portrayed with the legs, ears and horns of a goat, but the creative Dominicans had other ideas about the pipe-playing Horned One, and they blackened his image so that he was seen to correspond to the Devil himself. However, since the Inquisitors were all men, it was determined that witchcraft must be a form of depravity linked to the insatiable wantonness of women!

The problem was that nobody really knew who these presumed witches were, and so a series of ludicrously tragic trials and tests was devised to root them out. In the midst of all of this, the harsh Puritan sect became politically allied to the Roman strategy, implementing its own witch-hunts in England and, later, in America. Over a period of some 250 years, more than a million innocent men, women and children were murdered by the delegated authority of the witch-finders.

 

It was against the backdrop of this religious fanaticism and persecution that the Renaissance movement was born - an era of rebirth and resurrection, facilitated by an environment of democratic free-thinking. This era (with its height in the early 1500s) was the age when Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo developed the harmony of classical art to its highest form. And it was the age in which the excitement of pagan- oriented scholarship re-emerged in a burst of colour to cross new frontiers of science, architecture and design.

During the course of this, in 1614 and 1615, two tracts, entitled The Rosicrucian Manifestos, emerged from Germany. These were immediately followed by an associated romance called The Chemical Wedding, written by the Lutheran pastor Johann Valentin Andreae. The publications announced a new Age of Enlightenment and Hermetic liberation in which certain universal secrets would be unlocked and made known.

In view of the advent of Britain's scientific Royal Society and the inspired work of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley, Christopher Wren and others a few decades later, the prophecies were correct enough but, at the time, they were veiled in allegory and appeared to convey an even more pertinent message.

The writings centred upon the travels and learning of a mysterious character named Christian Rosenkreutz, a Brother of the Rosy Cross. His name was plainly designed to have Rosicrucian significance, and he was depicted wearing the apparel of the Knights Templars.

The action of The Chemical Wedding takes place in the magical Castle of the Bride and Bridegroom - a palace filled with lion effigies, where the courtiers are students of Plato. In a setting worthy of any Grail romance, the Virgin Lamplighter arranges for all present to be weighed on the scales, while a clock tells the motions of the heavens and the Golden Fleece is presented to the guests. Music from strings and trumpets is played throughout, and all is cloaked in an atmosphere of chivalry, while Knights in Holy Orders preside.

Beneath the castle stands a mysterious sepulchre bearing strange inscriptions, and outside in the harbour are twelve ships of the Golden Stone, flying their individual flags of the Zodiac. Amid this curious reception, a fantasy play is conducted to tell the compelling story of an unnamed princess who, cast ashore in a wooden chest, is discovered by a prince, whom she marries, thereby causing a usurped royal heritage to be restored.

This is another Lost Bride fairy story of the type we have already seen. But, when combined with the two earlier publications, The Chemical Wedding's Grail significance was blatantly obvious, and the Church wasted no time in bringing the full weight of its condemnation against the Rosicrucian movement.

 

Having considered the historical Fairies, Pixies and Elves, we can now take a look at some others of the so-called Shining Ones: the Sprites, Goblins and Gnomes.

The definition of "sprite" is no more nor less than a "spirit person" - one of the transcendental realm of the Sidhé. The original Sprites were the ancient Scythian ghost warriors who painted their bodies grey-blue to look like corpses when they entered the battlefield.

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the character Puck is described as a "sprite", and in traditional English wood lore Puck is identified with a certain Robin Goodfellow who was said to be a "goblin". His father was Herne the Hunter. Hence, Oberon and Herne are one and the same. The name Oberon (a variant of Albrey the Elf King, as we have seen) is itself a derivative of the Scythian Oupire (meaning "over") and Ron (meaning "reign"). Oberon, therefore, means "Over Reign", which is the same as High King or Pendragon.

The description of "goblin" stems immediately from the Germanic word kobelin, and the kobelins were said to be mine-workers or those who worked underground. In the context of the Ring culture, goblins were, in essence, attendants of the Oupire Portal Guardians of the Rath - the mound-dwellings of the Tepes gateways to the ancestral Netherworld - and they were just as human as the Oupires themselves.

Gnomes, like Goblins, were said to be the guardians of the underground treasures - which is why the word is today associated with banking, as in the so-called "Gnomes of Zurich". The word root is in the Greek equivalent of gno-, from which we get "gnosis" and "gnoble" ("noble"). The Gnomes were therefore, once again, of the noble race and were referred to as "the Wise Ones". Their job was indeed one of guardianship: they were guardians of the gnosis (the knowledge) and the Sacred Bloodline of the Albi-gens. It is by way of the noble (or gnomic) distinction that the Fairy Race in general was referred to as the Gentry - particularly the Druidic caste of the Pict-sidhé (the Pixies) who were the ultimate custodians of law and culture. Their female counterparts were the Behn-sidhé (the Banshee), which, in old Irish, simply means "the Wise Women".

In life, when presented with a seemingly unsurmountable problem, one can either submit to the stress and pressure that it causes or, alternatively, one can mentally diminish the problem. That does not mean that it goes away, but it can appear less harassing and more controllable. Well, that was precisely what the Church did with the Dragon succession - the Ring Lords of the Albi-gens, the Sacred Bloodline of the Holy Grail. By way of redefining all the original names - Fairies, Elves, Pixies, Gnomes, Goblins, Sprites, or whatever - they diminished the problem by miniaturising the nominal significance. In so doing, the transcendental race of the Sidhé was portrayed as minute little figures and moved into the realm of mythology. The fraudulent Donation of Constantine was then brought into play and, henceforth, only the Church could determine who was and was not a king!

If this strategy did not work sufficiently on its own, as was indeed the case in the Renaissance (a period of a more general awareness and enlightenment), then part two of the plan was brought into operation. This was more specifically targeted at the key members of the Messianic strain: the ultimate Dragon succession of the Albi-gens - the dynastic Kings and Queens of the Sangréal and their senior Oupires. These people were real, and everyone knew that, so they could not be confined to the superficial realm of fantasy. They could, however, be portrayed as if (being of the Dragon blood) they were of a weird, half-human strain, beyond the Christian pale. At best, they were perhaps mermaids and, at worst, they were vampires, but either way they were the evil, shapeshifting emissaries of Satan!

The fact that anyone believed such nonsense is difficult to comprehend in these more level-headed times. However, the myth is still operative and, to some extent, it is still working with a vengeance. It is even working on some whose apparent mission in life is to expose such propagandist dogma, but who - by way if its own cleverly contrived strategy - have actually fallen prey to it. In this regard, at this very moment there are some well-known, supposedly intelligent folk who should know better, claiming that the British Royal Family, along with myself and others, are really hideous reptiles from another planet!

 

One of the most surprising things about the Scythian Ring Lords is that their preserved remains from thousands of years ago (discovered even as far north as Siberia) show their bodies substantially tattooed with ring-tailed lemurs. Lemurs, we are led to believe, are native to (and pretty much restricted to) Madagascar and the Comoros Islands off Mozambique, but here they are, where we are told they never were, in northern Europe and the Black Sea regions!

It has long been known that there was once a continent, inhabited by a great king-tribe, which was noted for its lemurs. Hence, it has been dubbed "Lemuria", setting a good many enthusiasts searching for its sunken whereabouts beneath the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian oceans as if it were the lost city of Atlantis. Maybe such a concealed territory does exist. However, the fact is that (by whatever name it was once known) the mightiest Lemurian land tract was never lost. It was the great mainland continent which still exists today, stretching across eastern Europe through the one-time USSR.

This was the original realm of the great Ring Lords, tracing back to about 40,000 BC - the homeland of the Oupires of the Pict-sidhé. It was the land of the mighty Warlords of the Dragon before they migrated and battled their way southwards in the ever-cooling climate of the last ice-age. Undoubtedly, the environment was once very warm there, as is proved by the fact that the lemurs travelled about as far south as they could possibly go by land before Madagascar and the Comoros broke away from the southern African mainland.

What did these early god-kings look like? Well, they are now thoroughly identifiable from their preserved remains, which have been excavated at various sites from as far afield as Transylvania and Tibet. With their light-brown to red hair and pale eyes, the leather-clad men stood at least six foot six inches and upwards, while even the women were over six feet tall. Undoubtedly, these forebears of the Gaelic and Celtic High Kings were among the most awesome warriors of all history.

Of particular interest is the fact that the Anunnaki gods were as much a part of the Sidhé culture as they were of the Mesopotamian tradition. It was not for no reason that the settlement of Anu was hundreds of miles north of Sumer on the Caspian Sea. It was not for no reason that the ancient centre of Scythopolis (Sidhé-opolis), which the Syrians called Beth-Shean (the House of Power), was 800 miles away in Galilee. Indeed, it is now suspected that the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia - the culture which introduced municipal structure from about 5000 BC - was actually the Uper-ad culture: that of the Scythian Overlords, the Upers or Oupires.

It is also reckoned that the subsequent culture of the region, phonetically called Sumerian (pronounced "Shumerian"), was actually Sidhé-murian ("Shee-murian"). In fact, the case for this is now considerable, since the early Ring Lords of Scythia (the Tuatha Dé Danann king-tribe) were actually called the Sumaire. And in the language of old Ireland - to where many of the caste migrated - the word sumaire means "dragon".

So, why have we not learned about these people in our histories? The answer is straightforward. They were, in practice, the real Elves and Fairies of our heritage, but their story was quashed from the earliest days of Roman suppression and subjugation - as the diminution of their figures caused a parallel diminution of their history.

The fact is, however, that for all we have been told about our cultural identity being from the classical scholarship of Greece, or from the imperial majesty of Rome, these things are entirely untrue. Such establishments appeared very late in the day.

The true sovereign heritage of Western culture - the culture from which derived all the so-called myth and legend which sits so comfortably within a collective race memory (no matter what the Church and academics might say in their attempts to sway us) - comes from one place alone. It comes from a place and time that might just as well be called Middle Earth as by any other name. It comes from the long-distant Realm of the Ring Lords.

 

About the Speaker:
Sir Laurence Gardner, Kt St Gm, KCD, KT St A, is an internationally known sovereign and chivalric genealogist. He holds the position of Prior of the Celtic Church of the Sacred Kindred of Saint Columba, and is distinguished as Le Chevalier Labhràn de Saint Germain and Preceptor of the Knights Templars of Saint Anthony. Sir Laurence is also a Presidential Attaché to the European Council of Princes (a constitutional advisory body established in 1946), and Chancellor of the Imperial and Royal Court of the Dragon Sovereignty. He is formally attached to the Noble Household Guard of the Royal House of Stuart, founded at St Germain-en-Laye in 1692, is the Jacobite Historiographer Royal by Appointment, and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Editor's Notes:

  • Correspondence should be addressed to Laurence Gardner, Post Office Box 4, Ottery St Mary EX11 1YR, United Kingdom. Email: laurence58@btopenworld.com Website: http://Graal.co.uk
  • Sir Laurence Gardner's first book, Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, was published by Element Books in 1996 (ISBN 1-85230-870-2 h/c), and is available in paperback (ISBN 1-86204-152-0). The second book in his Grail Bloodline series is Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Pendragon Legacy of Adam and Eve, published by Bantam Press/Random House in 1999 (ISBN 0-593-04430-4).
  • Video and audio tapes of Sir Laurence Gardner's presentation at the 1999 NEXUS Conference are now available. Contact us at editor@nexusmagazine.com

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