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Chapter 9
Percy-ing the Veil
Return to Camelot
Littleton and Malcor discovered the link between the stories of
Arthur and the Sword in the Stone and the Sarmatian sagas of
Batraz
and the Narts. But their research did not end there. They point out
that the earlier opinions of scholars that there may have been
ancient contact between the ancestors of the Ossetians and the
ancestors of the Celts does not answer all of the issues of the
Scythian origin of the Grail stories.
For example, it does not
explain the Lancelot problem. Many Arthurian scholars accept tacitly
that Lancelot is derived from Lance a Lot, or Lanz a Lot, and refers
to the spear or lance of the Celtic God Lug. Some of the present day
“alternative scholars” have bizarre etymologies, including
references to Lazarus, the man raised from the dead by Jesus (a
function of the Cauldron of regeneration if ever there was one!),
most of which are more silly than serious. As Littleton and Malcor
demonstrate, Lancelot comes from “Alanus-a-Lot”, or “The Alan of
Lot”, a reference to their lands in the Lot River Valley.
The Alans were first cousins to the Iazyges who, along with the
Visigoths, Vandals, and other Germanic tribes, had settled in small
enclaves in Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula in the early years of the
fifth century. It seems that the Alans had brought with them a
variation on the Grail stories that had evolved after the Iazyges
had left the region. In short, Lancelot was also derived from the
same prototype as Arthur and Batraz.
He was the local variation of
the original prototype, and when the stories were combined, since it
was not known to the scribes that they were talking about the same
individual who had been given a different name relating to some
favored hero or ancestor of the particular tribe, they wrote the two
individuals into the same story, and rearranged the relationships to
accommodate this maneuver. Again and again we will see this
treatment of ancient legends in action.
One of the items Littleton and Malcor discussed stuck in my mind as
significant:
it was that one of Lancelot’s early magic items was a mirror. This
is a Sarmatian element in the story with Alanic correspondences.
Many experts discuss the Sarmatian practice of carrying mirrors, and
many Sarmatians, especially the warrior women, were buried with
mirrors. Littleton and Malcor note that Sulimirski argues for the
Sarmatian rather than Visigothic ethnicity of an occupant of a grave
based on whether or not a mirror is found there.
Sulimirski feels
that many brooches found from Troyes to Carthage, including the
Saone Valley, the Department of
the Aube, and Albaci, Spain, that are currently identified as Gothic
may actually be Alanic. If that is the case, then we cannot
understand Gothic in any way at all without understanding the
Sarmatian-Scythian origins in the Northeast Iranian traditions that
constitute its foundation.
One of the more fascinating discoveries of this intrepid team of
Grail questors was Linda Malcor’s elucidation of the fact that one
group of Alanic Sarmatians allied with Alaric’s Visigoths, seems to
have been responsible for a famous theft of some vessels of great
value from the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the sack of Rome in
410 AD. Whether or not one of these vessels was a sacred chalice
associated with the Last Supper is not definitively known, but the
fact is that the pagan marauders carried the treasure to southern
Gaul, to the very region traditionally associated with the Grail
legends.
The treasure disappeared shortly thereafter, and it seems
that the stories of these stolen “holy vessels” were combined with
the stories of the Holy Cup of the Narts, the Nartamongae, which was
hidden from all but the bravest and purest warriors. And so, a cup
stolen from a church became the object of a sacred quest, obscuring
the true history and meaning of the stories.
The genealogies given for the Grail knights, Perceval, Galahad, and
Bors, are extensive, and they are all related to Lancelot -
Alanus-a-Lot - a specific tribe or family of Alans from the region
around the Lot river in France. In the Perlesvaus, Perceval’s father
is Alain le Gros de la Vales. Littleton and Malcor present a
fascinating etymology of many of the names involved in the stories,
showing their connection to the Nart Sagas, and the reader is
encouraged to dig more deeply into these matters there.
For the
moment, let us just mention that the prenomen “Pant”, as in
“Pantdragon”, evolving to “Pendragon”, in what now seems to be the
most likely Scythian-Steppe culture etymology, was a word meaning
“king” or “ruler over” whatever followed. Thus, the family of
“Pendragon”, rather than being “sons of the dragon”, become “rulers
over the dragon”, or Dragon Slayers. The title Ban, Pant, and Pen
was very likely an original Scythian word, carried to Britain by the
Iazyges and to Gaul by the Alans.
Thus, the banners of the Sarmatians emblazoned with dragons signify their function as rulers
over, and slayers of dragons, in the same way that warriors collect
trophies of their victories to display and advertise their prowess
in a particular famous battle. This subtle difference will be very
important as we go along.
Perceval was the best known of the Grail heroes, but he was not the
original one. There are also many medieval stories about this
Perceval that have nothing to do with the Grail. He was so popular
that he was depicted on wall frescoes, carvings on assorted items,
tapestries, and so on. You could say that he was a “Star” in the
Medieval Hollywood. The question is: was this just propaganda, or
was it, as is suggested by experts on esotericism, conveyance of a
symbolic meaning?
Perceval was also known as Parsifal, Percival, Persevelle, Peredur, Perlesvaus, Paladrhir, and so on. His name has
been generally interpreted as meaning “Pierce the valley”, implying
a tantric connotation, or general balance in a person’s life, as in
Taoist teachings. He has been called the “Spearman with a Long
Shaft”, relating him to Osiris, who was the “Mummy with a Long
Member”, which would be literally “he who Pierces the valley” in
sexual terms - a sexual reference that probably did not originally
relate to sex.
The Celtic story of Peredur has been explained as an allegory of
Druidic initiation, and the adventures were “staged” in order to
describe the levels of initiation. Peredur spent twenty-one days in
the castle of the witches of Caer Loyw as opposed to Perceval in the
castle of the Fisher King. In the women’s “great court”, he
witnessed the Cauldron of Regeneration performing resurrections of
the Sons of the King of Suffering, near a sacred cave with a phallic
pillar at its entrance.
Two women who closely resembled the
functional relationships of the Biblical Mary and Martha to Jesus,
gave Peredur bread and wine to serve at a banquet that was obviously
not a copy of the Last supper, but must have been derived from an
older source, which suggests that the Biblical Last Supper may have
originated from the same inspiration. A Shakti-like Lady Love who
wore the colors of the Triple Goddess guided Peredur through his
initiations.
At her departure, she told him,
“When thou seekest for
me, seek in the direction of India”.211
211 Goodrich., pp. 63-69.
A similar Shakti figure
instructs Perceval in the twelfth century Roman de Perceval, where
the Welsh hero metamorphoses into the Desired Knight sent to cure
the world’s ills. It was claimed that Perceval would heal the lame
Fisher King and restore the Waste Land to Fertility.
Like many “Divine Children”, Perceval was born under mysterious
circumstances; he was hidden and brought up in poverty and secrecy
by his mother, a “widow”. His instructress, Blancehflor, or White
Flower, revealed to him the secret meanings of chivalry and the
mysticism of love. Spiritual union with Blanceflor, achieved through
sexual union, made Perceval invincible in battle.
The Christian church took hold at this point, and reformed Perceval
into a saintly, abstinent hero who was strengthened by his
virginity. Monks worked on the unfinished Roman de Perceval for
about thirty years, Christianizing the poor guy until he discovered
that the true meaning of chivalry was not what his Love taught him
at all, but the doctrines of the church. The monks vilified
Blancheflor as a “Jewess named Blanchefleure” who fornicated with
Satan at the Witches’ Sabbath and gave birth to the Antichrist. This
“evolved” Perceval was no longer the champion of women, but the
champion of the Church.
He then castrated himself so as to become
one of the pure knights. With this final shift of the original
stories, manipulated by the church, interest in the subject declined
and Grail legends fell in popularity until their later discovery in
more modern times. At present, the legends of the Quest for the
Grail have the ability to grip the imagination and trigger our
unconscious minds into transforming the muddled and confusing story
into anything we want it to be.
“Muddled and confusing?” Indeed.
Very few “believers” in the Holy Grail have actually read any of the
dozen or so original Grail romances. Even
fewer are fully apprised of the pagan and apocryphal models upon
which the legends are framed. Yet most believers will sagely nod
their heads and agree that the Quest for the Holy Grail is the
greatest of all spiritual endeavors, most likely related to the cup
or platter of the Last Supper of Christ. They will then point to
this or that “True Grail” in the possession of any of several
families for many centuries as proof that the Grail is a “Christian
Matter”.
Chretien de Troyes, who is, in the end, the one individual who was
mostly responsible for the subsequent popularity of the Arthurian
legends of the period, wrote one of his early romances under the
strict guidance of Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of
Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England. Eleanor (Alienor - the
“other Alan-Elen-Helen”) was descended from the great Alanic
bloodlines and traditions.
One of the earliest contemporary Christian references to the Grail
appears in a passage from the Chronicle of Helinandus, a monk of
Froidmont, right at the turn of the twelfth century. Helinandus
writes about a hermit living in eighth century Britain who had a
vision of Joseph of Arimathea, keeper of the bowl used by Christ at
the last Supper. This theme was expounded in a work called the
Lancelot Grail, which gives the precise date of the vision as Good
Friday evening in 717 AD.
Supposedly, Christ appeared to the hermit
and announced:
“This is the book of thy descent, Here begins the
Book of the Holy Grail, Here begin the terrors, Here begin the
marvels”.
Yet, even though Chretien was supposed to be writing a Christian
work, he never actually mentions any connection with Christ in his
final romance, Le Conte del Graal. For Chretien, the Grail is a
costly and magical dish whose function is never quite revealed
because the work is unfinished. Whether Chretien died before
finishing, or just put it aside at the time is unknown. But, it was
so popular that the next twenty-five years saw a spate of
continuations and imitations. At this point, we have a very good
idea where Chretien got the inspiration for his story, and the
reader will soon see how fruitful this discovery of Littleton and
Malcor will turn out to be.
But what we notice is that the later
writers of sequels and prequels, and alternative versions, all
claimed to have access to some original, secret documents, described
variously as direct transcriptions from Christ himself, from an
angel, from a mysterious alchemical work that came either from
Britain, Spain or the Far East. We then look back at Chretien’s
story, and see that his imagery has obvious and traceable elements
with precedents in Celtic-Scythian traditions, and we realize that
what we are observing, post facto, is a huge cover-up going into
operation.
The astonishing variations of the later Christian and
alchemical versions, written by individuals who were practiced in
the art of Jewish Kabbala, seem to exactly fit the criteria for
disinformation.
Wolfram von Eschenbach created the German version of the Grail story
with his Parzival. In this rendering, he saw the Quest as the
individual struggle toward wholeness expressed in the Grail. For
Wolfram, the quest occurs between the two extremes of black and
white, or the Eastern Way of Tao. His primary message was that the
individual ought to take the path of allowing the natural flow of
life to guide one’s actions.
We don’t wish to go into all the versions and variation, as there
are many fine books that undertake such a task with excellent
scholarship. The point we wish to make here is that the grail
legends are composed by different authors, at different times,
coming from different backgrounds, with different agendas, and for
the most part, the central mystery is obscured in alternating
historicizations and mythicization processes. The essential story is
that of a hero who is destined to achieve the quest for an
otherworldly object with particular themes that repeat whether the
action is set in Britain, Wales, Scotland, Brittany, Southern
France, India, Egypt or the Near East.
Different authors, at different times, have set the story in any of
these places, giving a wealth of detail which lures the researcher
to believe that there is a real, physical object called the Holy
Grail, waiting somewhere to be found, which will bring the
discoverer unlimited power and glory, or will “heal” the land, in
any of a dozen various ways.
The conception and birth of the hero, who is variously named Arthur,
Gawain, Peredur, Perlesvaus, Parzival, Perceval, Galahad, or Bors,
is generally the result of the mysterious conjunction of parents who
possess unusual potency in some respect that varies from story to
story, but generally includes courage and purity.
The hero is reared
under conditions of extreme restriction in some way. He often lacks
worldly comprehension, and is thus called a Fool. He is usually
distinctive in some respect, but not quite “acceptable” in polite
company because he is a sort of geek, or dork as they called them
when I was young. There is always something prodigious about him in
terms of strength or intellect, and he always has an impeccable
pedigree. At some point, by some divine bestowal of gifts, he is
marked as the “Chosen one”, or “The Heir”.
The adventure of the Grail Quest has a number of elements that
repeat often enough to be considered an ensemble. The initiate-hero
has to ask the “right” question, avenge a wrong, win the Grail,
remain pure even after his achievement, and finally capture a
castle. Through all of these actions, he is transformed, and the
environment is changed as well. A “wounded king” is healed, and the
world becomes a paradise.
After considering all of these issues, we still come back again to
that most annoying of simple-minded questions: Why Perceval? Why was
the hero named Perceval in Chretien’s original story, and was this
based on some particular meaning known to those who guided his hand
in the construction of the tale? As Littleton and Malcor point out,
the notion that the figure of Perceval was derived from an Iranian
source was discussed amongst Arthurian scholars in the early part of
the 20th century.
It was even suggested that Wolfram’s Parzival was
a free translation from the Persian stories. Unfortunately, most of
this scholarship has been ignored in favor of the Celtic hypothesis
advanced by Loomis. It is proposed by some of those who follow the
Celtic formation, that all of the Grail manuscripts ultimately drew
upon Robert de Boron’s Joseph as their source.
Littleton notes:
Although Perceval was well known in the continental Grail tradition,
the British Sir Perceval of Galles (ca. 1300-1340) makes no mention
of the Grail, even though images that employed the motif of the
Chalice at the Cross were already known in Britain at this time.
This makes it unlikely that the Perceval branch of the Grail tradition developed out of the Welsh
Pryderi or Peredur tales, as Loomis has suggested. […] The presence
of large numbers of Sarmatians and Alans in Britain and Gaul during
the period in which the Arthurian tradition was formed has once
again made the eastern-origin hypothesis attractive.212
212 Littleton and Malcor, op. cit., 130.
There is a
tradition of “Peronnik l’idiot” found in the region of Vannes. These
are folktales about a hero who fights the Devil, and they bear a
strong resemblance to the stories of Perceval. It is likely that
these are among the earliest survivals of legends of Batraz carried
to the region by Alans in the fifth century. As it happens, the very
name “Perceval” does connect us to these Eastern sources.
The
Iranian words gohr, gohar and djauhar, which form the root of the
Alanic name Goar, translate into German as Perle, with, as Littleton
notes, the semantic field of a jewel, gem, or stone. When we
consider the etymology for Perlesvaux, we find that vaux is well
established as “valley”, and thus “Perlesvaux” is Perle’s valley, or
“Gohar’s valley” or “Valley of the Stone-gem”.
We find in this
etymology the subtext of the association of Perceval with a grail
that is a “stone” as opposed to a chalice or cauldron.
The fifteenth
century German poem Lorengel describes the grail as a “stone of
victory” with which Parsifal drove back Attila and his troops at the
moment they were going to destroy Christianity. In this clue, we
find a curious shadow of the Ark of the Covenant, which ensured
military might, and victory for its possessors. The most interesting
fact of this matter is that it was the Alans of Orleans who, in 451
AD, actually held the line against Attila. The fifth-century leader
Goar originally commanded these Alans. The reader who is familiar
with the literature of both the scholars of the Grail, as well as
the many “alternative” theory books being published in the present
time, will have no difficulty in identifying the
cross-correspondences between the Grail stories and the stories of
Jesus in the New Testament that seem to be highly sanitized versions
of the same general schemes.
For example, in addition to the
reference made above to a “Last Supper,” there are also the stories
of the multiplying loaves and fishes juxtaposed against the head of
John the Baptist on a platter. We note that the Head of Bran the
Blessed and other “talking heads” on platters were associated with
multiplying loaves and fishes, prophecy, and abundance in general.
It is fairly simple to see how present day researchers have been
misled to associate the Grail stories with the myths of Jesus (with
a lot of disinformation produced by the church at the time, it must
be admitted), and to assume that the “bloodline of Jesus” is the
primary issue of the so-called “Sang Real”, or “Holy Bloodline”.
However, with this firm connection to an older Ossetian story, a
Scythian cycle of sagas, we find that we must look much further into
the past for the origin of our Perceval/Christ. We note in passing
also, the curious story in the Bible of the
“Pearl of Great Price”, and the casting of “Pearls before Swine” as
hints of these relationships.
At this point we would like to make note of a curious series of
remarks by the Master Fulcanelli in the first pages of his book
Dwellings of the Philosophers. He tells us in his first sentences
that there is a gross misconception about the Middle Ages common
among scholars and laymen, produced by a written history that is not
supported by the evidence. History tells us that the Dark Ages were
a time of invasions, wars, famines, epidemics, and a host of
disruptions to life and culture; yet the very same period was the
time of the building of great cathedrals, monuments, houses, cities,
and so forth; none of which bear the marks of such scourges.
He then
goes on to point out that art is entirely reflective of a culture,
and generally only thrives during times of peace. The Gothic
buildings - cathedrals and others - all undeniably reflect peace,
serenity, prosperity, and a flourishing, happy society. The
statuary, obviously having used live models, shows us plump,
well-fed people, with jovial expressions, fond of good living and
satire. Even gargoyles are more comical than frightening, and the
suffering Christs are generally depicted as “resting” rather than
actually in torment.
As Fulcanelli points out, if that period of
history had been as “dark” as it is depicted, had the people been
suffering and moaning in misery of human affliction, the art would
have depicted it. But it didn’t. Something is, indeed, inexplicably
amiss here.
And, as Fulcanelli points out:
it is easy to fabricate texts and documents out of nothing. […]
Falsification and counterfeiting are as old as the hills, and
history, which abhors chronological vacuums, sometimes had to call
[counterfeiters] to the rescue.213
In the seventeenth century, a
Jesuit Father, Jean Hardouin, uncovered a fraud wherein locals were
creating ancient Greek and Roman coins and medals and burying them
about the countryside to “fill in the gaps” of history as well as
make money by selling such “finds”. In 1639, a certain Jacques de
Bie published The Families of France, Illustrated by the Monuments
of Ancient and Modern Medals, which, according to Anatole de
Montaiglon contained more “invented medals than real ones”.214
213 Fulcanelli, Dwellings, pp. 25,
26.
214 Anatole Montaiglon. Preface of Curiositiez de Paris, reprinted
after the original edition of 1716, Paris 1883.
Fulcanelli goes on to cite more instances in which the possibility -
probability - that our history has been largely fabricated looms as
an ever-growing specter of confusion. We will discover, as we go
along, that this problem of falsification of history is not just an
idea, but also a fact.
As it happens, there are some eminent experts in the present day who
have smelled the rat and who propose the exact same thing that
Fulcanelli has suggested. When we investigate the matter, we
discover that the chronology of ancient and medieval history in
its present form was created and completed to a considerable extent
in a series of works during the 16th and 18th centuries, beginning
with J. Scaliger (1540-1609), the “founder of modern chronological
science”. and D. Petavius (1583-1652). Chronology is what tells us
how much time has elapsed between some historical event and the
present. To determine real chronology, one must be able to translate
the data in the ancient documents into the terminology and units of
modern time reckoning. Many historical conclusions and
interpretations depend upon what dates we ascribe to the events in a
given ancient document.
The accepted traditional chronology of the ancient and medieval
world rests on a foundation of quicksand. For example, between
different versions of the dating of such an important event as the
foundation of Rome, there exists a divergence of 500 years. What is
more, falsification of numbers was carried out down even to
contemporary history.
Alexander Polyhistor took the first steps
towards filling up the five hundred years, which were wanting to
bring the destruction of Troy and the origin of Rome into the
chronological connection. But, was he helping, or further confusing
the matter? As it happens, according to another chronology, Troy had
fallen at the same time as the foundation of Rome, and not 500 years
before it.
Isaac Newton, as we will see, devoted many years to historical and
chronological studies. He made up his own tables that came to be the
generally accepted timeline. A lot of people are not aware that some
of the important events of Greek history were arbitrarily moved
forward by him as much as 300 years, and those of the Egyptian were
moved forward up to a thousand years. Naturally, penetrating minds
were able to discern the problems and as early as the sixteenth
century. A.D., Professor of Salamanca University de Arcilla
published two papers in which he stated that the whole of history
earlier than the fourth century AD, had been falsified.
In more modern times, the first serious attempt to systematize the
considerable critical material, and to analyze historical paradoxes
and duplicates from the standpoint of natural science was undertaken
by a Russian scientist and academician, N.A. Morozov (1854-1946).
In 1994, A.T. Fomenko, a Russian Mathematician, published
Empirico - statistical analysis of narrative materials and its
applications to historical dating.
The abstract of this book says:
These two volumes represent a major, unique work, which is the first
of its kind published in the English language. A comprehensive set
of new statistical techniques is presented for the analysis of
historical and chronological data. These techniques constitute a new
important trend in applied statistics.
The first volume concentrates mainly on the development of
mathematical statistical tools and their applications to
astronomical data: dating of ancient eclipses, dating of Almagest
etc. The problems of correct dating for ancient and medieval events
are discussed.
The second volume concentrates on the analysis of ancient and
medieval chronicles and records (such as Egyptian, Byzantine, Roman,
Greek, Babylonian, European etc.). An astonishing wealth of
historical data is considered.
The conclusions, which are drawn concerning the accepted
chronological dating of events in ancient history, will certainly
provoke controversy and serious debate. The author suggested a new
chronology, which is dramatically different from the traditional
one. […]
The book provides the necessary background and material for
intelligent participation in such debates.215
Fomenko’s work
deserves far more discussion than I can devote to it here. I would
like to note that mainstream historians and archaeologists are
crying “Foul!” about it, despite the fact that the work has drawn
some extraordinary conclusions and presents a thorough analyses with
logical arguments and a sincere desire to get at the Truth.
215 Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1994. P.O.Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
ISBN 0-7923-2604-0 (Volume 1) ISBN 0-7923-2605-9 (Volume 2).
As we
have already noted, it is increasingly clear that the “status quo”
is more important to some people than the Truth. Regarding the
medieval period with which we are presently concerned, Fomenko
points out that:
We have discovered that there exists a strong
parallelism between durations of reigns for English history of
640-1327 A.D. from one side and Byzantine history of 378-830 A.D.
continued by Byzantine history of 1143-1453 A.D. from another side.
[This parallelism] suggests that Byzantine is an original in above
parallelism, and England before 1327 A.D. - a reflection. It could
be seen […] how English history before 1327 A.D. was constructed
from several reflections of the Byzantine Empire of 1143-1453 A.D.
[…]
The reader asks: How could the Byzantine chronicles be inserted into
medieval English history (of the island Anglia)? The answer will be
extremely simple if we will erase from our minds the picture, which
is imposed by traditional Scaliger’s chronology.
Starting from 11th century, several crusades stormed the Byzantine
Empire. Several feudal crusaders’ states were founded on the
territory of Byzantine empire in 11-14th cc. In these states many
nations were mixed: local population, the crusaders from England,
France, Germany, Italy etc. In these crusaders’ regions and in
Byzantine Empire the new culture was created, in particular, were
written a historical chronicle. Among Byzantine inhabitants were a
lot of people from Europe, in particular, from some island, which
later will be called England. In 1453 AD Turks conquered
Constantinople. Byzantine empire was ruined and the crowds of its
inhabitants left the country. Many of them returned to Europe, to
their old homeland. In particular - in the island Anglia.
These descendants of crusaders took with them their Byzantine
historical chronicle, because these texts describe their own real
history in Byzantine Empire (during many years - one or two hundreds
years). Several decades passed. On the island
Anglia starts the writing its history (i.e., the history of the
people living on the island). In 16-17th centuries some qualified
historians appear and start to create the general history of the
whole land Anglia (“from the beginning”). They search for ancient
documents. Suddenly they find several old trunks with “very old”
documents. The documents are dusty, the paper is very fragile, and
the old books fall to pieces. These chronicles were transported from
Byzantine Empire. But now (in 16-17th cc.) nobody knew this.
Unfortunately, the prehistory of these trunks is forgotten. And,
unfortunately, is forgotten that these chronicles describe the
history of ANOTHER LAND.
The English historians of 16-17th centuries carefully analyze these
texts as the history “of island England” and put them into the basis
of “old British-island history, which started many centuries ago.”
In some strong sense they were right because, really, the authors of
the chronicles were closely connected with island Anglia (but, let
us repeat, described ANOTHER LAND - Byzantine empire). This process
is quite natural and does not suggest any special falsification of
the history. Such natural errors were inevitable at the first steps
of creating of the general history. As a result, appeared such
chronicles as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Nennius’ chronicle etc.
After some time this wrong version of an old English history
standing stock-still, becomes a “monument”. Further historians
simply modify (only a little) the initial scheme of the history, add
some new documents. And only today, using some statistical and other
methods we start to discover some strange regularities inside the
“history textbook” and start to realize that the real history was
possibly sufficiently shorter and that today we need to remove from
the “old English history” its “Byzantine part” and return this piece
to its right place (in time and in the geographical sense). This
procedure is very painful. We realize this because we discovered the
same problem in the old Russian history, when we also found several
chronological duplicates.
It is possible, that this process of “insertion of an old Byzantine
chronicle” in the beginning of a “local history” is presented for
several different regions, which were closely connected with
Byzantine Empire. In particular, it is true for Russia, for England,
for Rome, for Greece. […].216
216 A.T.Fomenko,
G.V.Nosovskij, New Hypothetical Chronology and Concept of the
English History British Empire as a Direct Successor of
Byzantine-Roman Empire.
And what are those corollaries?
Well,
if Fomenko is correct, the ancient histories of Byzantium were
carried to Europe, and because many of the local legends also
arrived from that region of the world, i.e. the Nart sagas, it was
assumed that this was the real history of Britain and even Europe.
In short, Fomenko’s idea connects events from the time of Jesus, and
the area of the world in which Jesus was said to live, to the
general area of the world from which the Nart Sagas originated, the
roots of the Grail Legends, and they may all be a mythicized
history, and historicized myth of actual seed events of real history
that has been, until the present time, incompletely understood.
Again and again we are finding the threads leading off to the east -
to Russia, Siberia - which happens to be the general area of the
land of Colchis. Apollodorus tells us about Hercules:
When the labours had been performed in eight years and a month,
Eurystheus ordered Hercules, as an eleventh labour, to fetch golden
apples from the Hesperides, for he did not acknowledge the labour of
the cattle of Augeas nor that of the hydra.
These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas
among the Hyperboreans. They were presented (by Earth) to Zeus after
his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a
hundred heads, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with
many and diverse sorts of voices. With it the Hesperides also were
on guard, to wit, Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa.
[…]
Now Prometheus had told Hercules not to go himself after the apples
but to send Atlas, first relieving him of the burden of the sphere;
so when he was come to Atlas in the land of the Hyperboreans, he
took the advice and relieved Atlas. But when Atlas had received
three apples from the Hesperides, he came to Hercules, and not
wishing to support the sphere, he said that he would himself carry
the apples to Eurystheus, and bade Hercules hold up the sky in his
stead. Hercules promised to do so, but succeeded by craft in putting
it on Atlas instead. For at the advice of Prometheus he begged Atlas
to hold up the sky till he should, put a pad on his head.
When Atlas
heard that, he laid the apples down on the ground and took the
sphere from Hercules. And so Hercules picked up the apples and
departed. But some say that he did not get them from Atlas, but that
he plucked the apples himself after killing the guardian snake. And
having brought the apples he gave them to Eurystheus. But he, on
receiving them, bestowed them on Hercules, from whom Athena got them
and conveyed them back again; for it was not lawful that they should
be laid down anywhere.217
217 Apollodorus, Book II:5.11. cited by Graves, The Greek Myths, pp.
509-11.
It is extremely interesting to note the
similarity between the hydra - a hundred headed snake - and the
gorgon slain by Perseus. We also note the connections to the
Hyperboreans, and the fact that the Golden Apples were given to
Athena, who was also gifted with the head of Medusa by Perseus.
Another interesting note is that the area where these apples were
located was the Hesperides which is said, in the account above, to
be in the Land of the Hyperboreans.
We also want to note that the
same general story is told about the Quest for the Golden Fleece:
No sooner did Pelias hear that than he bade him go in quest of the
fleece. Now it was at Colchis in a grove of Ares, hanging on an oak
and guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Medea guided Jason to the fleece by night and used her drugs to send
the guardian dragon to sleep, and then, carrying the fleece with
her, made her way back to the Argos with Jason.
Curiously, the name “Pelleas” occurs in a number of Grail Stories.
The important thing is, however, that we have a sneaking suspicion
that this Colchis is also the Hesperides - the Land of the
Hyperboreans. We also wonder about the possible relationship between
“Arcadia” and Colchis. If the ancient “Athenians” of Plato’s tale
were not actually from Athens, as we know it, then it is also
possible that a far more ancient “Arcadia” existed as well.
Why Perceval?
At this point we are brought back to face the puzzle of “Why
Perceval”? Was it indeed, a hint from the hand of Eleanor of
Aquitaine and her daughter Marie de Champagne, to embody something
that was generally known at the time, into a corpus of stories by
giving the hero of those stories the name “Perceval”?
As it happens
so often, a series of funny synchronous events brought the issue
into sharp focus and gave me the key. I had been pondering the
question for weeks on end, searching through etymologies,
mythologies, genealogies, and a host of other references, none of
which truly dealt with what I felt to be the central issue of the
name.
Yes, I read endless esoteric interpretations, and most of it
is nonsense. I read books about the “Pierced Eye” of Dagobert, the
“Merovingian Marvels”, and the Sinclair Solipsisms, and other absurd
notions, and it was all piling to heaven with wishful thinking of
every would-be “savior” or claimant to the role of the “Desired
Knight”. At the end of the day, none of these things really answered
the question: Why Perceval?
So, there I sat, at the end of the line. No more books, no more
references to search, no more hope for the answer to my question:
Why Perceval? At that very moment a tremendous blast of lighting
struck nearby, followed almost immediately by thunder that shook my
house and nearly made me jump out of my skin. My first thought was
for my dog who was terrified of thunder, “Poor Percy!”, I thought.
And as I thought the thought, I received the answer. You see, we
call him “Percy”, but his name (given to him by my children some
years earlier when they were avidly reading Greek mythology), is
Perseus.
With that one realization, the biggest part of the puzzle
fell into place.
-
Perseus Pen Dragon - the dragon slayer par-excellence!
-
The beheader
of the Gorgon; the slayer of the sea monster, the rescuer of
Andromeda the “Ruler of Men”
-
the child of a widow, impregnated by a
God
-
brought up in isolation, hidden away from his birthright,
gauche and simple, sent to do an impossible task in hopes that it
would kill him;
-
Perseus, the babe fished out of the ocean with his
mother, by a fisherman, brother to a king - a “fisher king”
-
Perseus, gifted with the initiations of the “witches”, of the
Hyperboreans, who obtains the “eye of Horus”, of the Graea
-
Perseus,
aided by Athena, to whom he presents the head of the Gorgon, from
whose blood sprang the winged horse Pegasus, with all the elements
of the Scythian story, right down to the Scythian mirror, and like
the Urim and Thummim of the Levites, Athena places the head of the
Gorgon, the prophesying Head of Bran or John the Baptist, on her
breastplate.
Perseus uses the head of the Gorgon like the Ark of the Covenant to achieve victory over
his enemies, turning them to stone. Finally, a thousand connections
made sense: the grail hero is called Perceval because he must be of
the royal bloodline of Dragon Slayers, the semilegendary Perseids.
Perseus is David, a semi-divine being, the founder of a line of
kings, “semites” because of his marriage to Andromeda, the “ruler of
men”.
There are two main royal figures in the Grail tradition: the
Maimed King and the Fisher King. At some point, they merge, but in
the earliest traditions, they are still separate.
The Maimed King
has suffered a wound that leaves him impotent. It is described as
being “wounded in the thigh” and is the result of some sort of sin
on the part of the wounded king. The emphasis is usually a sickly
king, rather than a wounded one. In any event, this is known as the
Dolorous Stroke. It gets all twisted around and elaborated in the
many Christianized versions of the story that we won’t go into here.
What we are interested in is the figure from the Nart Sagas who not
only most closely resembles the Maimed-Sickly king, but also gives
us insight into the issue of the Golden Fleece.
Uryzmaeg, the husband of the Goddess Satana (nothing to do with
Satan, trust me!), is an aged man who is depicted sitting on a hill
near the sea, watching the sheep or horses because he is too old to
do anything else. In a variation, he is named Uaerxtaenaeg, and he
sits in the village square waiting for his son to return, but he is
the same figure.
His chief claim to fame is the fact that he has a
shirt of golden mail that he wears as he sits and waits in his aged
condition. As he sits wherever it is, three sons of an evil sorcerer
take the shirt away from him, as well as two strips of flesh from
his back, and they retreat to the mountains and hide in a cave. When
the son, Sybaelc comes home from his adventures, his mother tells
him that he can’t come in the house until he brings back the golden
shirt and heals his father’s back.
Sybaelc, with the help of his maternal grandfather, goes off on a
quest for the golden shirt and the skin from his father’s back. He
finds the sons of the evil magicians, kills them, recovers his
father’s skin and shirt, and returns to the house to restore the
skin to his father’s back, and gives him back his golden shirt.
Besides the obvious relationship to the theme of the Golden Fleece
(and it sure gives new meaning to “the shirt off his back”!), we
find the detail that his maternal grandfather aided Sybaelc.
In
several of the Grail stories, Perceval’s maternal grandfather is the
Fisher King who helps him in his quest. This is a curious reference
to a matrilineal transfer. The title of Fisher King was hereditary;
being transferred from Uncle to nephew, a son of a sister.
We begin to suspect that when we speak of Theseus, Jason and the
Argonauts, and Perseus, we are talking about variations on a single
core event or archetypal occurrence. And we will discover that this
archetype has a very far-reaching influence as we go along. The
evidence that the answer to my question, “Why Perceval”, is that the
original story of all these variations was the story of Perseus,
receives curious support in the Stars. You see, the myth of Perseus
is the only one to be fully depicted in the heavens, with all its
main players present.
We find the players all arranged around a Ram
that was inserted into the zodiac at a certain point in history.
There they are, Perseus the hero holding aloft the great magical
sword and the severed head of the serpent-haired gorgon, with his
mirrored shield and helmet of invisibility; Andromeda, the woman in
chains, Cassiopeia her mother,
the seated, or enthroned Queen, Cepheus her father, and Cetus the
sea serpent. No other myth of all the fascinating stories in
mythology is so fully displayed to our senses as the answer to “Why
Perceval?”.
If the reader will recall, the story of Perseus has many of the
motifs found in the story of Theseus. Prince Theseus of Athens
volunteered to become one of the intended victims of the Minotaur,
the devouring power at the center of the Labyrinth. However, the
priestess Ariadne fell in love with him and helped him by giving him
a ball of golden thread. He unraveled this as he penetrated to the
heart of the maze, where he slew the Minotaur and was able to find
his way out and escape. Afterwards, Theseus sailed away from Crete
with Ariadne and the other Athenian youths and maidens who had been
held captive in the labyrinth, and arrived at Delos.
There he set up
a shrine to Aphrodite and he and his companions executed a dance,
which imitated the winding twists and turns of the labyrinth. We
also recall that, in our survey of labyrinths, we found that the
majority of experts tell us that the plan and meaning of the maze
originated in Egypt, where it was the scene of the religious dramas
involved in killing the God-king in the form of a bull. They further
tell us that the sacrifice was only token, and that a divine bull
was substituted for the king in the culmination of several days of
ritual dance, drama and combat performed in a labyrinth.
Most
scholars of ancient history and archaeology are powerfully
influenced by the theories of Egyptology, which posits that all
civilizations diffused from ancient Egypt, or from Mesopotamia, at
least. However, the sheer volume of physical evidence suggests that
this is not the case. We also wish to recall that there are two
types of mazes. The Egyptian labyrinths were always composed of
straight lines, and the abstract mazes on seals were usually made up
of square fret patterns.
Cretan coins from classical times often
show labyrinths, some of which are of the Egyptian fretwork kind,
but most of them show a maze of a very different construction - the
square or rounded spiral design - the Greek meander - of European
tradition, which is never found in Egypt.
It seems that Crete was
the meeting ground of two completely separate traditions.
Arcadia?
The Ukraine is a fascinating and mysterious place. Most of it is a
vast, flat plain extending East from the base of the legendary
Carpathian Mountains. The soil is rich and black in the central and
southern areas, and the temperature ranges from temperate
Continental to sub-tropical on the Black Sea coast. It is easy to
understand why this area may have been the cradle of the great
Celtic tribes that settled Europe and created one of the most
mysterious civilizations on Earth.
The oldest house in the world has
been found in Ukraine. It is a 15,000 year old assemblage of mammoth
bones which was probably covered with mammoth hides.
A Ukrainian farmer who was digging a new cellar six feet below his
home found
this house. It formed part of a village and was so strongly built,
it was obviously
intended to last for several generations. In Kostienki, Ukraine,
there was a huge
house from the same period, which measured 115 feet by 50 feet with
eleven
hearths for cooking, warmth and light! And, speaking of cooking, the
oldest
known primitive, but identifiable, ovens were also found in Ukraine
and date from
20,000 BC! There were probably
a lot of mammoths in the neighborhood because, not only the oldest house, but the oldest
map in the world was also
inscribed on a mammoth tusk
and discovered in Ukraine in
1966, dated to about 10,000 BC.
According to accepted
historical research, the first
horseman rode in Ukraine about
6,000 years ago. Trousers may
also have been invented about
the same time
 and were the
typical clothing of the Scythian warriors documented to 2, 600 years
ago. It is interesting that Herodotus, 2,500 years ago also
described the Celts of Europe as wearing trousers and being
extraordinary horsemen.
The gold work of the Scythians is legendary and bespeaks a culture
far finer than is generally supposed by current scholars. The
jewelry of the region of Ukraine is so similar to the work of the
European Celts that it is hard not to see the connection. But, even
older than many of the specimens of metal and stonework jewelry is a
20 000 year old bracelet carved from a single piece of mammoth
ivory, found at Mezin, Ukraine.
This piece has a magnificent design
which can be found to this day in the embroidery of Ukrainian
costumes. This pattern is also similar to, but predates the famous
Greek “meander” pattern, or “maze”. These materials indicate to us
that there is absolutely nothing Egyptian about the Troy mazes, and
there is every reason to believe that they are indigenous to the
megalithic cultures, which were independent developments from the
civilizations of the Near East.
In the stories of the Hyperborean girls, the myths of Theseus, as
well as several other myths, we find two independent aspects of the
maze puzzle meeting and interacting, and what they have in common
is, in our opinion, ancient technology - a device that may have been
at the center of the dance of the God at Stonehenge, utilized to
manipulate gravity, space and time. That similar powers were much
later available to the Egyptians seems to be evident, but it is also
clear that their perception of the world, their reaction to it, and
their utilization of this technology was quite different.
In the stories of the Egyptian labyrinth, the object at the center
was a terrible, devouring power. In the story of the Hyperboreans,
the dance of the God was a celebration of life, of bounty, of
victory over the serpent. The “spear-armed Maruts” danced and
brought forth baskets of bountiful blessings, materializing from the
waves of the great Star Goddess, the Enthroned Queen, Cassiopeia.
We
remember at this point that Fulcanelli has told us that we would
derive great benefit from his little book on the Cathedrals,
providing he did not despise the works of the Old Philosophers, and
if he would study with care and penetration the classical text so as
to understand the obscure points of the practice. Naturally, we cannot possibly include a
page-by-page examination of Le Mystère in this volume, but there are
a number of important points to be made here.
In the first edition, Canseliet tells us right at the end of his
preface:
The key to the major Arcanum is given quite openly in one of the
figures illustrating the present work. And this key consists quite
simply in a color revealed to the artisan right from the first work.
No Philosopher, to my knowledge, has emphasized the importance of
this essential point. In revealing it, I am obeying the last wishes
of Fulcanelli and my conscience is clear.218
Most of the preface to
the second edition is taken up discussing a, “star shining on the
mystic virgin - who is at one and the same time our mother (mere)
and the hermetic sea (mer) - announces the conception”.219
Canseliet
tells us, “the star is the great sign of the Work”. Naturally, this
is wrapped in parables, with a sufficient amount of diversion to
occupy the puffers. But, having said all that, Canseliet tells us
even more. He comments that the reader might wonder that he has
spent so much time discussing the star, but the reason is that it
leads us straight into Fulcanelli’s text.
He next tells us:
Indeed, right from the beginning my Master has dwelt on the primary
role of the star, this mineral Theophany, which announces with
certainty the tangible solution of the great secret concealed in
religious buildings. This is the Mystère des Cathédrales, the very
title of the work.220
218 Fulcanelli, Mysteries, p. 7.
219 Ibid., p. 13.
220 Ibid., p. 17.
The only problem is, for the puffer, these
remarks are nonsense. Fulcanelli begins Le Mystère talking about
cathedrals in general, the feast of fools, and wanders all over the
place. He most certainly does not begin by talking about “the
primary role of the star”, this “great sign of the work”, or does
he? Yes, he does.
Remember what Canseliet said?
The key to the major Arcanum is given quite openly in one of the
figures illustrating the present work. And this key consists quite
simply in a color revealed to the artisan right from the first
work. No Philosopher, to my knowledge, has emphasized the importance
of this essential point.
Well, for a mind that thinks in terms of Kabbala, there is no way to
understand this. But, for a mind that thinks in cabala, the language
of the Gods, the birds, the mother tongue, the solution is easy. If
one opens to the very first “work of the artisan”, or sentence of
the book, there is a “figure” given - figure = number also! - and
that figure that is the key to the Major Arcanum is the number
seven. In the first sentence of the book, “the work of the artisan”,
Fulcanelli writes…
The strongest impression of my early childhood - I was SEVEN years
old…221 …and we have the “key to the major Arcanum”.
How to interpret the number seven? Well, there are several ways to
think about it, but the simplest is just to find chapter seven in
the book to see what it says.
So, we turn the pages over and begin
to read:
Varro, in his Antiquitates rerum humanorum, recalls the legend of
Aeneas saving his father and his household Gods from the flames of
Troy and, after long wanderings, arriving at the fields of
Laurentum, (Laurente - Laurentium is cabalistically l’or ente, or
grafted gold) the goal of his journey.
He gives the following
explanation:
“After his departure from Troy, he saw every day and
ruling the day the Star of Venus, until he arrived at the fields of Laurentum, where he ceased to see it. This fact made him realize
that these were the lands allotted by destiny.” 222
221 Ibid., p. 35.
222 Ibid., pp. 51-2.
Indeed we have
found a star that is the “great sign of the work”, leading to a
color: Gold. We have the figure seven which takes us to a color and
then, to confirm that we have made the correct interpretation, we
find that a star, which was the major part of the discussion of the
second preface, is the guide to the “fields of Laurentum”, or gold.
This paragraph is, as Canseliet said, The Key to the Major Arcanum.
And the Major Arcanum is not, as the puffer Kabbalists would like to
think, referring to the Tarot. It refers to the “Great Work”. That’s
cabala, not Kabbala. And part of that key is related to the legend
of Aeneas, the burning of Troy, and the fields of Laurentum - the
Dwellings of the Mystics, all of which takes us to the North, to the
“Athenians”, who stood against Atlantis, the archetypal myth of the
Trojan wars, the Perseids, the Scythians living in the Hesperides,
Laurentum, the original Arcadia.
But, Fulcanelli is busy wrapping his parable in a parable, and it is
absolutely delightful to dive into the sea (mer) of his mind. After
giving us this huge welcome, a reassurance that we have discovered
his intent, he now begins to give us many more “keys” that we ought
to keep in mind while reading all else he has written, as these are
the themes that indicate to us whether what we are reading is a
false turn in the labyrinth, or whether it is an idea that will lead
to understanding.
First of all, Fulcanelli has identified for us a
Trojan connection and the name of Aeneas as being significant. We
also find that whatever it is we are looking for left Troy and
traveled to Laurentum - gold - East.
This is both a literal and
symbolic meaning. He then connects us to the name of Seth - or Scyth - and tells us,
“A race existed in the Far East on the shores of the
Ocean, who possessed a book attributed to Seth, which spoke of the
future appearance of this star … which prediction was given as
transmitted from father to son by generations of the wise men”.223
In this remark, Fulcanelli has established the route of
transmission. We then think of the Central Asian shamanic tradition.
Fulcanelli incorporates this information into the legends of the
birth of Jesus, which produces a number of interesting connections.
First he mentions Judaea, which suggests to us that the original
teachings of the man around whom the Jesus legend formed, and then
he connects this to Persia and inserts a most curious remark:
Chalcidius… taught that the Gods of Greece, the Gods of Rome and the
Gods of foreigners should be adored, has preserved a record of the
Star of the Magi and the explanation for it given by the wise. After
having spoken of a star called Ahc by the Egyptians, which announces
bad fortune, he adds:
“There is another and more venerable story,
which attests that the rising of a certain star announced not
sickness or death, but the descent of a venerable God, for the grace
of conversation with man and for the advantage of mortal
affairs.”224
Fulcanelli has here indicated to us, oh so subtly, that
the Egyptian “star”, or following the Egyptian trail, is the path to
“bad fortune”. And so, the reader has been warned that when Egyptian
matters are brought into the discussion, they are following of the
star of Ahc. He then clearly identifies the knowledge of the
“descent of a venerable God” as being transmitted by the Magi, and
further explicates that Diodorus was on the right track when he
said,
“this star was not one of those which people the heavens, but
a certain virtue or urano-diurnal force, having assumed the form of
a star in order to announce the birth of the Lord among us”.225
223 Ibid., p. 52.
224 Ibid., p. 54.
225 Ibid.
The
English word magic is derived through the Latin, Greek, Persian,
Assyrian from the Sumerian or Turanian word imga or emga (“deep”,
“profound”), a designation for the Proto-Chaldean priests or
wizards. Magi became a standard term for the later Zoroastrian, or
Persian, priesthood through whom Eastern occult arts were made known
to the Greeks; hence, magos (as also the kindred words magikos,
mageia, a magician or a person endowed with secret knowledge and
power like a Persian magus.)
Herodotus said that the Magi were the sacred caste of the Medes.
They provided priests for Persia, and, regardless of dynastic
changes, retained their religious influence.
Media was an ancient country of Asia. The Hebrew and Assyrian form
of the word Media is mdy (Madai) which corresponds to the Mada by
which the land is designated in the earliest Persian
cuneiform texts. The origin and significance of the word are unknown
The earliest information concerning the territory occupied by the
Medes, and later in part by the Persians, is derived from the
Babylonian and Assyrian texts. In these it is called Anshan, and
comprised probably a vast region bounded on the north-west by
Armenia, on the north by the Caspian Sea, on the east by the great
desert, and on the south by Elam.
It included much more than the
territory originally known as Persia. Later, however, when the
Persian supremacy eclipsed that of the Medes, the name of Persia was
extended to the whole Median territory. Ethnological authorities are
agreed that the peoples who, under the general name of Medes,
occupied this vast region in historic times, were not the original
inhabitants.
They were the successors of a prehistoric population
about whom little or nothing is known. The Medes appeared at the
dawn of history and, if they did have a written language, no
fragments of it have survived, so nothing is directly known
concerning their language. Judging, however, from the proper names
that have come down to us, there is reason to believe that it was
similar to Old Persian. They would thus be of Aryan stock.
The first recorded mention of these people is in the cuneiform
inscription of Shalmaneser II, King of Assyria, who claims to have
vanquished the Madai in his twenty-fourth campaign, about 836 BC.
The records of the succeeding reigns down to that of Asshurbanipal
(668-625), constantly refers to the “dangerous Medes” (inscriptions
of Tiglath-Pileser IV, 747-727), in terms which show that they were
an ever-increasing menace to the power of the Assyrians.
During that
period, the power of Anshan was gradually strengthened by the
accession and assimilation of new peoples of Aryan stock, who
established themselves in the territory once held by the Assyrians
east of the Tigris.
By virtue of the rising influence of another branch of the Aryan
race, there came about the transition from the Median to the Persian
rule. Cyrus first appeared as King of Anshan, and later became King
of Persia. In 549 B. C. he defeated Astyages, becoming master of the
kingdoms of Anshan, Persia, and Media. Cyrus is known as a great and
brilliant conqueror, and his fame is memorialized in the fantastic
legends associated with his name by the Greek and Roman writers.
His
power was a menace to all western Asia, and Nabonidus, King of
Babylonia, Amasis, King of Egypt, and Croesus, King of Lydia, joined
together to fight Cyrus. But even such a formidable alliance was
unable to stop Cyrus who, after having subjected the whole of the
Median empire, marched into Asia Minor. Croesus was defeated and
taken prisoner in 546, and within a year the entire peninsula of
Asia Minor was annexed to the new Persian empire.
The west being fully subdued, Cyrus led his victorious armies
against Babylonia. Belshazzar, the son of the still reigning
Nabonidus, was sent as general in chief to defend the country
against Cyrus, but he met with disastrous defeat. After this Cyrus
entered Babylon, where he was received as a liberator, in 539 BC.
The following year he issued the famous decree permitting the Hebrew
captives to return to Palestine and “rebuild” the temple. It is
interesting to note in this connection that Cyrus is often alluded
to in Isaiah as the Lord’s anointed. In addition to sending the
Hebrews back to Jerusalem to build a temple - which event will be
even more interesting further on - Cyrus conquered the sacred caste
of the Magi.
His son Cambyses
further suppressed the Magi, who then revolted and set up Gaumata,
their chief, as King of Persia under the name of Smerdis. He was,
however, murdered in 521 BC, and Darius became king. According to
Herodotus, this downfall of the Magi was celebrated by a national
Persian holiday called magophonia . Still the religious influence of
this priestly caste continued and, at the time of the birth of
Christ it was still flourishing under the Parthians. Strabo says
that the Magian priests formed one of the two councils of the
Parthian Empire and there is a legend that the Magi represented the
three families descending from Noah.
Regarding the Parthians among whom the Magi continued to exist up to
the time of Christ, we find that there was a district named Partukka
or Partakka which was known to the Assyrians as early as the seventh
century BC. The origins of the Parthian people are obscure, but we
find that Strabo226 says the first king, Arsaces, was a Scythian man
who, with the semi-nomadic Parni tribe, invaded and conquered
Parthia. Strabo also mentions those who claim Arsaces was a Bactrian
who escaped from Diodotus after a failed revolt. Other ancient
sources agree that Arsaces was a Scythian.
226 xi, 515
In 53 B.C. Crassus and over 40,000 Roman troops were annihilated by
the Parthian forces of Orodes II and the peoples from the
Mediterranean to the Indus were made acutely aware of the strength
of Parthia. By 40 BC, Rome had to acknowledge Parthia whose forces
had penetrated into the heart of the Roman East and captured the
provinces of Asia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Syria, and as far south
as Petra.
The western border between Rome’s dominions and Parthia
was finally established on the banks of the Euphrates. Major
campaigns by the Romans were seen in AD 116, 161, 195, 217 and 232,
but Parthia was never conquered. In AD 224, Ardashir, Parthian
governor in the Achaemenid home province of Persis (Fars), overthrew
Artabanus IV and established the Sasanid dynasty. The Sasanians
would rule Iran until the Islamic conquest in AD 641. The Sasanians
were ardent Zoroastrians in conflict with their Armenian subjects
who originally were Zoroastrians but subsequently embraced
Christianity.
The ancient Iranian religion of fire, light, and Wisdom was founded
by the Prophet Zarathustra over 3000 years ago. The powerful
influence of Zoroastrianism on Judeo-Christianity and all of western
civilization is not generally known, but the fact is that the
twisting of Zarathustra’s words changed the nature of civilization
in the west.
Hardly anything is known about Zarathustra’s life and it is not even
certain
when he lived. The ancient Greeks speculated that he lived six
thousand years
before the philosopher Plato though several scholars have argued for
a date at the
beginning of the sixth century BC. Modern scholars believe that
Zarathustra is the
author of the Gâthâ’s (a part of
the Avesta), which they date - on linguistic grounds - to the
fourteenth or thirteenth century BC. This corroborates the date
given by Diogenes Laertius, who states that, “Zoroaster lived six
hundred years before Xerxes’ invasion of Greece”, that is 1080
BC227.
227 Lives and opinions of the philosophers 1.2
It is unclear where Zarathustra was born and where he spent the
first half of his life.
Following the “assimilation of the hero to
the myth” model, every tribe that converted to Zoroastrianism made
up new legends about his life, and nearly all of them claimed that
the prophet was “one of them”. On linguistic grounds, we may argue
that the author of the Gâthâ’s belonged to a tribe that lived in the
eastern part of Iran, in Afghanistan or Turkmenistan.
This fits with
a tradition that connects Zarathustra with the ancient country named
Bactria and a cypress at Kâshmar but it doesn’t really prove
Zarathustra’s origins. It is interesting that the same mythical
model is in place for both Zarathustra and the first king of the
Parthians, Arsaces.
The Gâthâ’s do contain some personal information, but not enough to
complete a biography. The Denkard, a late Avestic text, does contain
a summary of an older biography consisting of legends that are
questionable as to reliability. According to what is pieced together
from these sketchy sources, Zarathustra was born in Bactria or Aria,
now known as Western Afghanistan.
The Arians (The name means
“noblemen”), were nomads from central Asia, who settled in Iran at
the end of the second millennium. As the son of a lesser nobleman
named Purushaspa and a woman named Dughdhova. Zarathustra was the
third of five brothers. He became a priest and seems to have showed
a remarkable sympathy for all living creatures.
Zarathustra’s life changed when the God Ahuramazda granted him a
vision. A spirit named Good Thought appeared and told Zarathustra to
oppose the bloody sacrifices of the traditional Iranian cults and to
give aid to the poor. Zarathustra started to preach that there was a
supreme God, the “wise lord” Ahuramazda, who had created the world,
mankind and all good things in it through his holy spirit, Spenta
Mainyu. The rest of the universe was created by six other spirits,
the Amesha Spentas (“holy immortals”).
However, the order of this
sevenfold creation was threatened by The Lie. Good and evil spirits
were fighting and mankind had to support the good spirits in order
to accelerate the inevitable victory of the good.
Zarathustra used words to describe the demons which are remarkably
similar to words from the Indian Rig veda. Now it is reasonably
certain that the language of the Rig veda was spoken in eastern Iran
at some stage in the history of the second millennium BC and it is
reasonable to assume that Zarathustra opposed the old religion,
which was to flourish in the Punjab.
According to Zarathustra, it was the duty of the believer to align
himself with Ahuramazda, which was possible by avoiding lies,
supporting the poor, several kinds of sacrifices, the cult of fire,
and so on.
Additionally, Zarathustra warned the people that there
would be a Last Judgment, where the friends of The Lie were to be
condemned to Hell and the pious allowed to enter Heaven.
Yasna 30.1-6, 8-9
Truly for seekers I shall speak of those things to be pondered, even
by one who already knows, with praise and worship for the Lord of
Good Purpose, the excellent Wise One, and for Truth. [...]
Hear with your ears the best things. Reflect with clear purpose,
each man for himself, on the two choices for decision, being alert
indeed to declare yourselves for Him before the great requital.
Truly, there are two primal Spirits, twins renowned to be in
conflict. In thought and word, in act they are two: the better and
the bad. And those who act well have chosen rightly between these
two, not so the evildoers. And when these two Spirits first came
together they created life and not-life, and how at the end Worst
Existence shall be for the wicked, but the House of Best Purpose
shall be for the just man.
Of these two Spirits the Wicked One chose achieving the worst
things. The Most Holy Spirit, who is clad in the hardest stone,
chose right, and so do those who shall satisfy Ahuramazda
continually with rightful acts.
The daevas indeed did not choose rightly between these two, for the
Deceiver approached them as they conferred. Because they chose worst
purpose, they then rushed to Fury, with whom they have afflicted the
world and mankind. Then when retribution comes for these sinners,
then, Mazda, Power shall be present for Thee with Good Purpose, to
declare himself for those, Lord, who shall deliver The Lie into the
hands of Truth.
And then may we be those who shall transfigure this
world. O Mazda and you other Lords, be present with support and
truth, so that thoughts may be concentrated where understanding
falters. 228
228 Translated by Mary Boyce.
There seem to have been some conflicts between Zarathustra and the followers of the religions of sacrifice.
Zarathustra was forced to flee his country since not even his family
would help him.
Finally, Zarathustra obtained asylum from a king named Hystaspes who
may have ruled in Chorasmia (modern Uzbekistan) or Aria. At his
court, the prophet debated with the priests of Mithra; on an
official gathering, they discussed thirty three questions, and
Zarathustra’s opinions prevailed.
Many noblemen followed the example of Hystaspes and converted to
Zarathustra’s new religion. From then on, Zarathustra lived at the
court of Hystaspes, until he was killed at the age of seventy-seven
by invading nomads.
Some locate his death at Bactra (Balkh, near
modern Mazâr-e Sharîf), in Afghanistan.
Zarathustra’s teachings are strongly dualistic; the believer has to
make a choice between good and evil thus making Zoroastrianism one
of first world religions to make ethical demands on the believers
Western civilization owes mainly to Zarathustra its fundamental
concept of linear time, as opposed to the cyclical and essentially
static concept of ancient times.
This concept, which was implicit in Zarathustra’s doctrines, makes the notion of progress, reform, and
improvement possible. For the most part, ancient civilizations, were
profoundly static, believing that the ideal order had been handed
down to them by the Gods in some mythical Golden Age and they saw
their religious task as a necessity to adhere to the established
traditions as closely as possible. To reform or modify them in any
way would have been a deviation from and diminution of the ideal.
Zarathustra gave to Persian and Greek thought the idea that there
was a purpose and goal to history. All people, he declared, were
participants in a supernatural battle between Good and Evil, the
battleground for which was the Earth, and the very body of
individual Man. This essential dualism was adopted by the Jews, who
only after exposure to Zoroastrianism incorporated a demonology and
angelology into their religion with a twist: instead of ethical
conduct that depended on wisdom, it was Yahweh who was going to save
them if they obeyed his rules, adhering to the established
traditions as closely as possible.
You could say that, in a way, the
adoption and twisting of the ideas of Zoroaster just provided more
ammunition in the arsenal of Yahweh for absolute control of his
“chosen people”. From Zoroastrianism, belief in demonic possession
came to be a cultural obsession, as is reflected in the Gospels
where Jesus was the savior and redeemer rather than Yahweh and his
endless rules.
Nevertheless, in terms of hyperdimensional realities,
we find Zarathustras’ teachings to be of great interest.
Zarathustra
claimed special divine revelation and had attempted to establish the
worship of one supreme God, Ahura Mazda, but after his death, the
earlier Aryan polytheism reemerged. Many other features of his
theology, however, have endured to the present time, through the
religions that eventually superseded and twisted them.
The Babylonian captivity of the 6th century BC transformed nascent
Judaism in a profound way, exposing the Jews to Zoroastrianism,
which was virtually the state religion of Babylon at the time. Until
then, the Jewish conception of the afterlife was inherited from
their Sumerian origins, a vague shadowy existence in Sheol, the
underworld, land of the dead (not to be confused with Hell).
Zarathustra, however, preached the bodily resurrection of the dead,
who would face a last judgment (both individual and general) to
determine their ultimate fate in the next life: either Paradise or
torment. Daniel - an advisor to King Darius - was the first Jewish
prophet to refer to resurrection, judgment, and reward or
punishment.
The new doctrine of resurrection was not widely accepted by the Jews
and remained a point of contention for centuries until its ultimate
acceptance and twisting to mean that only Jews, the
Chosen People of
Yahweh, would participate in this earthly kingdom of Yahweh. The
Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 22:23, records that the dispute was still
going on at the time of its writing, with the Sadducees denying
resurrection and the Pharisees affirming it. We might also wish to
note the similarity between the names Pharisee and Farsi or Parsee,
the Persians from whom the doctrine of resurrection was borrowed.
In addition to incorporating the doctrines of resurrection and
judgment, exposure to Zoroastrianism substantially altered Jewish
Messianism as well. Zarathustra predicted the imminent arrival of a
World Savior who would be born of a virgin and who would lead
humanity in the final battle against Evil. Jewish Messianism merged
these conceptions with their preexisting expectations of an earthly
Davidic king who would save the Jewish nation from oppression.
It was at this time, as a response to their captivity, that
apocalyptic literature appeared in Judaism, based on Babylonian
models and patterned after their symbology. This was to have a
strong influence on later Christian theology.
With the key elements
of,
...it can
be concluded that Jewish and Christian eschatology
is Zoroastrian
from start to finish.
This suggests that Zoroastrianism may be the
source of Primitive Chiliasm as referenced by Fulcanelli.
The similarities don’t end with eschatology either. A lot of the
tradition and sacramental ritual of Christianity, particularly
Catholicism, traces back to Zoroastrian precursors. The Zoroastrian
faithful would mark their foreheads with ash before approaching the
sacred fire, a gesture that resembles Ash Wednesday tradition. Part
of their purification before participating in ritual was the
confession of sins, categorized into three types: thought, word, or
deed.
Zoroastrians also had a Eucharistic ritual, the Haoma ritual, in
which the God Haoma, or rather his presence, was sacrificed in a
plant. The worshipers would drink the juice in expectation of
eventual immortality. There is a curious connection here to the
Epic
of Gilgamesh where he was told that a plant could give him
immortality.
One wonders, of course, if this wasn’t a later addition
utilizing consciousness altering substances to imitate mystical
states of ecstasy.
Finally, Zoroastrians celebrated All Souls’ Day,
reflecting, like the Catholics, a belief in intercession by and for
the dead. We should also note that the story of the Magi, who were
said to have visited the newborn Jesus, resembles an earlier story
of Magi who looked for a star foretelling the birth of a Savior, in
this case Mithras. Magi were not kings but Zoroastrian astrologers,
and the birthday of Mithras - and other “dying and resurrecting
Gods” - on December 25th was appropriated by the church.
Christianity also seems to have borrowed the story of the temptation
in the desert from Zoroastrianism, since an earlier legend placed
Zarathustra himself in that situation. The principal demon, Ahriman,
promised Zarathustra earthly power if he would forsake the worship
of the supreme God. Ahriman, like Satan when tempting Jesus, failed.
A final interesting parallel is the three days that Jesus was said
to have spent in the grave. This concept may have been derived from
a Zoroastrian belief that the soul remains in the body for three
days before departing. Three days would have established death yet
left his soul in a position to reanimate his body. As a Messiah,
Jesus functioned purely along Zoroastrian lines.
While purportedly
of the Davidic line, he offered only redemption from sin, rather
than national salvation for the Jews. He was a world savior rather
than a Jewish Messiah. The Jews did not recognize him as their
Messiah, and in a real sense he wasn’t and isn’t. Their Messianic
expectations, which preceded any foreign influence, went
unfulfilled; in fact, their nation was ultimately destroyed once and
looks to be heading in the same direction at present. Neither did
Jesus effect a final triumph over Evil. This has been reserved for a
second coming in conjunction with the last judgment and the rewards
and punishments of either Heaven or Hell.
The Magi who were featured in the story of Jesus were probably not
completely Zoroastrian. As the Zoroastrian faith, and the Persian
empire, expanded westward into the territory of Media, the priests
of an extremely ancient religion, the Magi, adopted themselves into
Zoroastrianism, though not without major social upheavals.
The
general scholarly opinion is that these priests of the old
Indo-Iranian faith, which Zarathushtra preached against in the
Gathas, re-adapted many practices of the old religion back into the
faith - such as reverence for subordinate divinities, the haoma -
sacrifice, and purity rituals.
“The teachings of Zarathushtra were intermingled with the old
religion, and the Magi’s position was transformed into the priests
of the new religion...”, writes Dariush Jahanian.
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