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by Philip Gardiner
Author of The Ark, The Shroud
and Mary
from
Scribd Website
Contents
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Blood Ritual - The Ark and The
Shroud
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What is The Real Truth of the Ark and Mary?
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The Ark, the Shroud, and Mary
Blood Ritual -
The Ark and The Shroud
A Sacred Ritual at the Heart of the
Secret World of The Ark
In my new book and DVD, The Ark, The
Shroud and Mary I set about revealing the inner wisdom traditions we
know as the esoteric. This inner wisdom is at the heart of the
world’s religions and often due to oppression by the Orthodox Church
this mystical element of our psyche has been forced underground.
This underground stream has occasionally surfaced throughout time
and we can see from these trickles that the elements of truth were
in fact widespread and ancient.
This water of wisdom has in fact
given life to the plants that have grown on the surface and
sometimes even great trees have emerged and have refused to be
chopped down by intolerance or bigotry. These trees are the great
mysteries we know today such as the Holy Grail, Great Pyramid and
Ark of the Covenant. If we grasp these growths firmly and pull hard
enough we uproot the hidden secrets that first gave life to them.
One of these roots I found was to branch off into Islam and it would
reveal a mystical world that was connected so firmly and so
obviously to the main trunk that almost everybody had missed the
connection.
This root had a name – baraka.
The term baraka is a Sufi one and from which our French barque and
Italian barca is derived. Indeed in contemporary France the term
baraka, of Algerian origin, still has connotations of luck or
blessing and this would eventually make complete sense.
Egyptian Mystics
The ancient Egyptians believed that everybody was a unique
individual. The people were said to have two distinct parts, the ba
and the ka. These are not simple concepts and have in fact baffled
and amused Egyptologists for over two hundred years. But we need to
break them down, for within the names of these two human domains
attributed by our Egyptian ancestors lies the truth of the term baraka.
The ba is close to what we would call the personality, the traits
and acts of the man or woman developed over the course of life. The
ka was the life-force or soul. It is the first, or in number, one.
This is found to be true in the Indian concept of the word as well
where ka means supreme and together with ar means the ‘supreme
light’ or ‘one light’ (arka) and ‘essence’.
The ka itself came into
being when a person was born and was often depicted as the person’s
twin or double. This is of course ancient Egyptian alchemy at play,
whereby both the ka and ba must be united to become one and the twin
element has come down to us through the centuries in our Tarot
cards, fables and of course the twin riders of the Templar symbol.
Because the ba was the personality of the unique individual, it too
was unique, whereas the ka, as the life-force was the same for
everybody – it was the creative force running through us. The ka
itself was made by the god Khnum on a potters wheel – hence it was
an energy vortice exactly like the vortices found within the very
atom. This energy is required for life and is also raised by the
efforts of the processes in the mind - akin to the kundalini chakra
- in raising enlightenment.
The kings or pharaohs had many ka’s due
to their own immortality like the Gods. In fact the goal of every
individual was to remain united, or fused with the energy of the
life-force, ka, and the personality, ba, after death and to join Ra
(sun) on his journey of perpetually re-creating creation itself. In
this way the individual wanted to return to the creative point, the
alpha and omega, at the same time and same place. In essence they
wanted to reside in that perfect state. This perfect union comes
down to us in the uniting of the three principles require, ba, Ra
and ka – baraka.
In fact, this is most likely the reason for mummification after
death – to keep the body and the symbolic representations of the
personality in place for the ka to unite with Ra and reinvigorate
life. Should the body rot away the coffin and in fact the very death
shrouds or bands of cloth would act as the spare body. Now we are
beginning to see the value of the Shroud, as the body of Jesus
joined his father (Ra) leaving behind his personality infused with
the energy of his ka. It is itself a baraka or Ark.
Ra himself as the personification of the sun of the one-Egyptian God
is in essence wishing a reunification. This is described as the
‘greatest of mysteries’ by the ancient Egyptians and it occurs at
precisely midnight – the middle hour, the in-between state. Ra in
fact must reunite with his body by midnight in-order to be
resurrected as the morning light of the sun. This is personified as
the body of Osiris, who is the Underworld personification of the
Egyptian one-god.
You see, I tend to agree with the writer,
Egyptologist and researcher, Alan Alford, that Egypt was a
monotheistic culture, but that different personalities and aspects
of the one God were given different, but meaningful, names. In the
Underworld state, the ka and ba of Ra was Osiris and Osiris once
reborn is Horus, who became Jesus in the Christian mysteries.
These
great acts of the deities are not just re-enactments of the sun,
moon and stellar cycles, they are also deeply held esoteric truths
and I am not alone in this statement:
“The mystical character of these ‘books’, in the sense of a
codification of an esoteric and secret knowledge…” [1]
It is indeed a secret knowledge and one that has remained so for
generations, so much so, that we still search for literal treasures,
when we truly encompass them all ourselves.
In fact Osiris personified the old self or the old creation and Ra
was the new birth, the new man. Just like medieval Alchemy, creation
was made from a mixture and through transformation.
“The Egyptians did not believe in creation ex nihilo. On the
contrary, the religious texts state clearly that the cosmos was
created from pre-existent materials, namely primeval water, matter,
and air. Creation involved the transformation of the materials from
the state of chaos into a state of order. It involved the
construction of a new cosmos from the remains of an old cosmos.” [2]
This mixture required the reduction of the self (ba and ka) and the
reformation in the midnight hour of the parts to create the true
trinity of the ba Ra ka.
The Egyptians believed that when the ka left and the body died, it
returned to the divine but remained close to the body. In fact even
false doors were created in tombs for ka’s called ‘ka doors’, so
that the ka could access the earth at will. Now the ba could roam
the earth, but only when Ra, the sun-god, was in ascendance in the
sky. When Ra returned to the underworld, so too did the ba. This is
in fact the Egyptian explanation for ghosts.
In symbolism the ka was represented by two upturned arms and the ba
by a human headed bird. Offerings of food were given to the ka and
it was believed that the ka did not eat the food, but instead drew
off the life-force from the offering.
The union of the ba Ra ka is indeed a true blessing and this is
where the Arabic barakah and the Hebrew Barach takes the word – both
different versions of the Sufi baraka. Blessing of course is now an
English word derived from Old English bleodsian or bletsian meaning
to ‘sprinkle with blood’, being derived from the blood rites called
Blots and from where we get the term ‘to blot out ones sins.’
The Blot rite is Old English or Old Norse and is even followed today
by modern pagans or ‘heathens’. The origins of the rites are
supposedly lost, but the term means ‘sacrifice’ or ‘feast.’ The term
Blota means ‘to worship’ or ‘to sacrifice’. Indeed in the Hakanor
Saga gooa from Heimskringla, Snorri describes how at these Blots,
blood was sprinkled on the altar and temple walls, just as they were
in Egypt and indeed in the Jewish Temple. In fact there also appears
to be an extrovert use of the term for fusion:
“The meaning of the sacrificial feast, as Snorri saw it, is fairy
plain. When blood was sprinkled over altars and men and the toasts
were drunk, men were symbolically joined with the Gods of war and
fertility, and with their dead ancestors, sharing their mystical
powers. This is a form of communion.” [3]
Again here we see that this union is found with each other in
society and not just with the Gods:
“When an article of value is passed across the boundary of frith and
grasped by alien hands, a fusion of life takes place, which binds
men one to another with an obligation of the same character as that
of frith himself.” [4]
This is the true offering of the life-source spoken of above and I
had one of those wonderful moments of excitement when I realised
that the Ark of the Covenant, in-order to ‘work’ properly also had
to be sprinkled with blood. It had to in effect have a ka offering.
This was the same as the Shroud, which was to be ‘sprinkled’ with
the blood of the Christ, himself seen as the offering by the pagan’s
who converted to Christianity and who had previously practised the
Blot rituals.
The blessing then, seen here to be entirely related to the term
barach or baraka, is to infuse something with holiness or the divine
will (which is also another word for ka.) The blessing has always
been officially given by the priest of the orthodox church and so is
the same as the baraka of the Sufi’s - a blessing or word of will
passed from the master to pupil.
Of course I could not miss the fact that to the Sufi, the term
baraka was symbolized by a boat and itself became fused with the
symbol of the dove. The dove itself was the Christian and Gnostic
symbol of the word or spirit of the Lord and hence it was the baraka.
The later Gnostic Christian Heretics,
the Cathars took this symbol
and with their own links within Islam fused the two devices
together:
“… One important Cathar symbol was the dove. It represented for them
then, as it does for us today, the idea of ‘peace’ or, more
accurately the more subtle concept of ‘grace’, that state of being
in God’s love. After the first crusades, when the European Cathars
in the entourage of Godfroi de Bouillon established some contact
with the Sufi mystics of Islam, the symbolism of the dove sometimes
became linked iconographically with the Islamic mystical idea of
baraka, which also means ‘grace’ and with the idea that a person can
be a ‘vessel of grace’…
In some instance, the Cathar dove flying
with its wings outstretched was rendered in an artistic motif very
similar to the stylized ship meaning baraka in Sufi calligraphy,
with the feathers of the dove and the oars of the vessel alike
representing the flight and freedom of the soul.” [5]
Orthodox Christianity could not allow these ancient esoteric truths
to be spread abroad as it had built its power base upon the
literalism’s of the Bible and so they persecuted the Cathars and
burnt them out of sight. However it does seem that these Cathars did
hold the secret of the Temple of Solomon. They were the ‘perfecti’
who protected the esoteric wisdom of the Ark, for they were the
Western version of the Eastern Sufi who themselves protected the
ba-ra-ka. The only ‘vessel’ that they spirited away from their
ill-fated Montsegur was the vessel of grace – knowledge.
In essence the term baraka is an original term for Ark and is
thought by many to be derived from the ancient Egyptian b’arque or
boat. The Sufi’s have often been said to have originated or at the
very least to have origins in Egypt, and so having some knowledge of
Sufism I embarked upon a journey into the term, knowing full-well
that what lay before me was an often contradictory and argumentative
subject matter.
I had spent many hours listening to a Sufi master
and I often recall his methods – which to many would seem offensive,
but to me were esoteric teachings. I once asked him where my path
might lay and he replied that the only path I had no longer existed.
This path of course was the one behind me, for the path in front had
not yet been made. He told me that if I concentrated on my only path
I would stumble and fall over and I quickly worked out that this was
because I would always be looking behind me, whilst trying to walk
forward.
There is only now, between yesterday and tomorrow – again,
it was the place between.
Sufism
Sufism, for those who may never have heard the term, is called ‘the
way to the heart’, which of course means the centre. It is the way
of the pure, as Sufi may derive also from the word Sata or saaf
meaning cleanliness or pure. Another viewpoint has the word being
derived from the Arabic word for wool – suf - thus implying the
cloak worn by the Sufi or the fact that every Sufi was seen to be a
shepherd. It may also come from the Ashab al-Suffa or Ahl al-Suffa,
meaning ‘companions of the veranda’ or ‘people of the veranda’.
The
veranda spoken of is the one on the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque, and
these ‘people of the veranda’ were said to spend their days in
prayer and meditation during the Prophets lifetime. These special
adherents were from many lands, including Persia, Ethiopia, Egypt
and even Rome, bringing a great many diverse beliefs and interests
with them. There is, however, a more telling term from which the
word Sufi may be derived – Sophia.
This is the concept of wisdom
spoken of again and again in esoteric literature and which has come
down to us today via all-manner of faiths and creeds, even into
secret societies such as the Freemasons. This version of the name
was espoused by Abu Raihan Niruni, a Persian mathematician,
astronomer, scholar, philosopher, historian and much more, of the
late tenth and early eleventh century – a veritable Renaissance man
before his time.
The fact that a Persian stated this belief relates
to something Springett said in his book Secret Sects of Syria:
“the Sufees are a secret society of Persian mystic philosophers and
ascetics, whose original religion may have been that of the
Chaldeans or Sabeans, who believed in the unity of God, but adored
the hosts of heaven (Tsaba), especially the seven planets, as
representing Him.” [6]
Whatever the true origin of the word Sufi, it cannot easily be
summed up in just a few words due to its mystical mix. For sure,
this is an Islamic cult, much akin to the likes of the Albigensians
or Cathars of the Christians, who were known as the pure ones.
However, absolutely nobody is sure of the true origins of the
movement and indeed it could and probably does even pre-date Islam
in many respects and could even have influenced Muhammad himself.
Sufism then, is this mystical side of Islam continued, and this is
why it is so important to the Sufi’s to keep this baraka, this
continuance, so strong, because the base instincts of man will steal
the truth and turn it to profit and gain. This is why the baraka
seems so strange to those outside of the loop, because it is the
mystical world that is unknowable. To be a true mystic, one must
know oneself and ones own unconscious world. Not everybody has the
will and the time to do this and others can do it as if by accident.
The Sufi’s see themselves as moving through this world of ours as if
they are part of it and all the time knowing there is so much more.
They feel at all times the divine presence and yet look upon mankind
with an eye of mercy. At least, that’s the story. To them each one
of us has a spirit or Ruh, which originates from the Alam – a
creation of the divine light itself. The food of the spirit is
therefore more light and not that of the external sun, but the inner
sun of Allah.
To mirror and reflect this wisdom of the light is all
that can be asked – to be like the moon, and we all know, the
crescent moon is a symbol of Islam. The one who truly reflects this
light of Allah, does not take the light away from Allah, but instead
glorifies His name. The one who does this can give divine blessings
via the baraka – the baraka is therefore not himself, but the light
and wisdom and power of God. One becomes the crescent moon, the Ark.
One of the literal reasons that baraka has become our barge, b’arque,
barca, Ark and of course bark, is because it is involved in the art
of ship building. This kind of ship building though involves no
floating upon real water, it is more to do with the water of the
mind. By having baraka, one is able to access divine information and
to be able to pass this on. But, before being able to do this, one
must learn how to build a decent ship.
In some Muslim traditions if the baraka (or b’ark-at) is strong then
when the wise Sufi dies it will remain with his non-decaying body
and may even transmit wisdom to his successors. This is the reason
that shrines are so important to the Muslim traditions – because the
shrines are seen to be infused with this divine essence from the
Almighty Allah – via the Sufi master who is to all intents and
purposes the Ark. In this way, we can now see why the kaaba at Mecca
should be so important – as this is a location of this universal
baraka energy.
These sacred relics were only thus sacred due to the fact that they
were seen to contain the baraka, just as Christian relics held a
similar power or latent energy following the crusader invasions of
the Muslim lands. It became therefore spiritually important and
esoterically aligned for the father to pass down these baraka filled
items – thus continuing the process of baraka, through the ages
physically as well as esoterically.
My question now was simple and yet complex: Was the Shroud of Turin
a kind of Blot offering? Infusing power in a divine relic? And who’s
blood was it?
Notes
1 Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, Jan Assmann, Cornell
University Press, 2005.
2 The Midnight Sun, Alan Alford, Eridu Books, 2004, page 95.
3 Myth and Religion of the North, Gabriel Turville-Petre, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1964, page 251.
4 The Culture of the Teutons, Vilhelm Gronbech, Vol 2, page 55. Out
of print, publisher unknown.
5 Holy Grail Across the Atlantic: The Secret History of Canadian
Discovery and Exploration, Michael Bradley, Hounslow Press, Canada,
1998.
6 Secret Sects of Syria and the Lebanon, Bernard H. Springett, Kegan
Paul International Ltd, 2005.
Back to Contents
What is The Real Truth of the Ark and Mary?
Wisdom of the Ark and Mary
The Ark of the Covenant was supposedly kept in the centre of the
Temple, what is known as the Sanctum Sanctorum. Sir Isaac Newton
related this to a perpetual fire of light, radiating in a circular
fashion and yet also falling back towards this sacred centre.
“In line with this thinking, a point within a circle was indeed a
symbol for Light in ancient Egypt and, in the lodge ritual of
Freemasonry, there is a related conversation which takes place
between the Worshipful Master and his Wardens concerning the lost
secrets. The Master asks the Question: ‘How do you hope to find
them?’ Answer: ‘By the centre’. Question: ‘What is a centre?’
Answer: ‘That point within a circle from which every part of its
circumference is equidistant’. … a point within a circle is the most
important of all masonic devices.” [1]
This dot within the centre of the circle is said to be symbolic of
the sun from the very earliest of times and some would have it that
the dot is the sun in the centre of the solar system. This would of
course pre-date the knowledge of the sun being at the centre of the
solar system and there is much debate over this. The symbol in fact
can cover a great many things and I have personally seen it used in
rituals for both physical and metaphysical purposes.
The standing
pole from which with a string we may draw a perfect circle on the
ground and hence begin our sacred geometrical structure is but one
perfect union of both the esoteric and exoteric. Seen from above
this would of course become our dot in a circle, as would a conical
hat, so often seen in the ancient world to be symbolic of
enlightenment and wisdom and seen today as the wizards hat.
The dot could also represent the inner sun, the enlightenment
within. This is itself seen as the centre point of all things,
collecting all to a singularity, like a black hole drawing in all
knowledge. It is the place seen to possess all the energy required
for the creative spark, like the very atomic structure itself, which
mirrors our own solar system. And the dot itself resides in the void
or empty space from which our ancients believed derived all thought.
This inner concept of the self, of the deity and of all knowledge is
clearly seen upon the mark our Hindu friends place upon their brow –
this is the dot at the centre of the true Temple. The symbol in fact
became so important due to the fact that it was symbolic of so many
perfect things.
The very fact that this symbol is so old and is seen so widely to
encompass all-manner of physical and metaphysical concepts reveals
one thing – that our ancestors were not fools and that they
understood a great deal more than they have previously been given
credit for. We are only just beginning to comprehend the true wisdom
of the ancients and I want to concentrate upon this aspect in this
article so that we may get to the centre of the Temple ourselves and
look outward instead of always trying to look in. First we must
erect the temple and in modern times this is the role of the
Freemasons.
The use of the number 7 to get to the centre
“The Liberal Arts were, in effect, perceived as routes towards
personal enlightenment in the finer things that were the keys to
harmony and justice. In the 2nd degree of Craft masonry (the Fellow
Craft degree), it is explained to the candidate that there are seven
levels to the winding staircase that leads to the middle chamber of
Solomon’s Temple. They are important aspects of the journey to
wisdom…” [2]
In this extract from Laurence Gardner’s book
The Shadow of Solomon,
we find that the centre point is accessed via a spiral staircase.
This spiral itself is seen across the globe in visions brought on
via altered states of consciousness, linked inextricably to the
process of divine wisdom. The processes, known by different methods
and names across the world, send the adept into a vision trance
whereby he or she believes they are actually contacting the spirits
or the divine in another world.
The spirals are seen across the
world upon rock art, carved into stone and in the drawings and
fables of our ancestors, sometimes appearing as serpents. In this
the Freemasons are physically depicting the inner and thereby
esoteric concepts, creating art, texts and even structures to
manifest this ‘fire’ and hence God appears within the pillar of
smoke, just as he does above the Ark. They also reveal another level
of truth, the number seven.
In my previous work I have pointed out the number seven and its
importance again and again, and we must revisit the symbolic truth
of this number one more time. In truth there are a great many
reasons for the number to have been used by our ancestors. One thing
we will always find when researching the past is that unlike us, the
universe and life in general is not separated into dogmatic
sciences.
Religion is not different to astronomy or
astrology; it is
not separate from plants and animals and nature itself is in harmony
with our own internal and mental world. All things were and indeed
should be seen as being interrelated. So, whether the number seven
indicates the planets, the days of the week or the levels of heaven
they are also related to a process that man developed in accordance
with these things for enlightenment and access to what he saw as the
divine. In the kundalini system of the Hindu’s the number seven
became the number of chakra points which reside upon the axis of the
body from the sacral regions to the brow and even above that to the
bindu point above the head.
By raising energy levels within the body
and by a process of self-improvement one could supposedly achieve
enlightenment. Reaching seven was seen as achieving this. If the Ark
is at all related to the wisdom traditions of the globe, then it
will also reveal the use of this number, just as many other fables
and folktales from across the globe with esoteric truths do also.
The kundalini is just another one of these processes – but all use
the universal numerological concept of seven.
When speaking of a tale from Ethiopia regarding the Ark, the authors
Roderick Grierson and Stuart Munro-Hay relay in their book
The Ark
of the Covenant, a moment when the Emperor Iyasu displays his
devotion towards the object called the Ark of the Covenant and
states that nothing can prepare the reader for the events of the
next morning when the emperor enters the sanctuary again commanding
the priests to bring forth the Ark of Zion. Of course the priests
have no choice but to comply, but the Ark is encased in a chest with
seven seals and which can only be opened by a special key, in a
special manner.
The keys are brought in and the priests start the task of unlocking
the seals. The chronicler explains how each of the seven levels is
opened. However when they reach the seventh they struggle in vain
and the seal cannot be broken. They struggle and in the end they
have no choice but to bring the chest to the emperor with the
seventh seal still unopened.
But, as they stand before him the seal
opens as if by magic and everybody is astonished, believing it to be
an act of the God of the Ark of Zion, who himself resides above the
Ark itself.
“He knows that the emperor is pure in spirit and devoted to the
Orthodox faith.”
The Ark of the Covenant,
by Roderick Grierson and
Stuart Munro-Hay [3]
Here we have similarities with the Grail and hence wisdom lore, in
that only those who are pure of spirit can access the wonders of the
Grail. In this case it is the Ark and the wonder is ‘simply’
connection to the divine. It is of course extremely interesting to
note that the level that our ‘emperor’ accesses the divine is of
course the seventh level, meeting the symbolic elements of the Grail
and the various enlightenment processes perfectly head on.
But we
must be ready, we must prepare ourselves – the true temple.
“According to 1 Kings 6:1, it was 480 years after the Exodus that
David’s son Solomon began to build his temple on Mount Moriah. Seven
years later the temple was ready to receive the Ark.”
Stuart
Munro-Hay,
The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant [4]
Again what we find here is that the Temple will take seven years to
erect – the Temple of man will take seven stages to be perfected,
like the Alchemical perfect man. And once made perfect this Temple
will hold the truth, the secret, within the Holy of Holies, the very
centre of the Temple.
As with all things, we cannot simply strive for perfection and hope
that it will arrive. We cannot just know that there are seven levels
and follow the path laid out in the various wisdom traditions, we
must always remain balanced. In many traditions and especially
Indian, this balance is perceived as two serpents – symbols of
opposites. This union of opposites is spoken of again and again in
Gnostic and esoteric schools and is to be found on every level of
our lives. The male and female opposites are obvious physical dual
natures, but these opposites were also seen to be within us.
Opposite sides of the mind continually struggle unless they find
common ground, which is in fact to be found in a neutral state. We
cannot strive to find the Grail, we must be neutral.
The Ark itself is in this centre, this neutral ground known as the
mid-point in the Holy of Holies. It is a spiritual realm or
substance.
“This spiritual substance is neither heavenly nor hellish, but an
airy, pure, and hearty body, midway between the highest and lowest,
without reason, but fruitful in works, and the most select and
beautiful of all other heavenly things. This work of God is far too
deep for understanding, for it is the last, greatest, and highest
secret of Nature. It is the Spirit of God, which in the Beginning
filled the earth and brooded over the waters, which the world cannot
grasp without the gracious interposition of the Holy Spirit and
instruction from those who know it, which also the whole world
desires for its virtue, and which cannot be prized enough.
For it
reaches to the planets, raises the clouds, drives away mists, gives
its light to all things, turns everything into Sun and Moon, bestows
all health and abundance of treasure, cleanses the leper, brightens
the eyes, banishes sorrow, heals the sick, reveals all hidden
treasures, and, generally, cures all diseases. Through this spirit
have the philosophers invented the Seven Liberal Arts, and thereby
gained their riches. Through the same Moses made the golden vessels
in the Ark, and King Solomon did many beautiful works to the honour
of God. Therewith Moses built the Tabernacle, Noah the Ark, Solomon
the Temple.”
[5]
In the above statement by one of my
favorite alchemists, mystics
and philosophers, Paracelsus, we have the absolute conviction that
whatever it was that allowed Solomon to build the Temple or Moses to
construct the contents of the Ark – it was something that was in
balance. It was something that was neither good (heavenly) nor bad
(hellish) – it was neutral. He also tells us that this is the
highest and most concealed of God’s secrets. No wonder then that
mankind has sought this truth ever since he became aware of it.
But this neutral position is also to be found in architecture,
placed there by the Freemasons who understood the concepts once.
Graham Hancock, speaking of his sight of the Ark at Chartres
Cathedral sees this duality standing on the front porch as the
columns, which he explains were situated midway between Melchizedek
and the Queen of Sheba:
“Indeed I found that I could draw a neat triangle connecting up all
three pieces of sculpture – with Melchizedek and the Queen of Sheba
at either end of the long base and the Ark of the Covenant at the
apex of the two shorter sides.” [6]
Hancock sees here the sacred geometry of the Freemasons at play,
revealing the divine balance at play in physical structures given
form by the Freemasons. The Ark is seen between the old male wisdom
of the Old Testament, Melchizedek (the Lawgiver or True Teacher) and
the young female Queen of Sheba, who would go on and give birth to
the Ethiopian ‘messiah’ king from a union with Solomon. The triangle
Hancock could draw was a sacred symbol of the divine trinity, which
will become all the more important.
It will also be revealed to be
the esoteric shape of the Tablets of Stone that Moses placed within
the Ark. This left Hancock with a more exciting outcome to think
about. Perhaps, he says, the people who were responsible for the
north porch of the cathedral had drawn a “cryptic map” for the
future generations to follow? Indeed, as Hancock asserts, this north
porch was also known as the “door of the initiates.” [7]
Indeed, the door of the initiates had been giving guidance, but
Gnostic guidance, for even the Latin inscription he found there,
which Graham Hancock says was incorrect even with his “schoolboy
Latin” was not incorrect at the time of its carving. At this
Medieval time, Latin was often misspelled and this has caused many
misinterpretations to occur throughout history. The original Latin
as Hancock points out of Archa Cederis and which very roughly
translates as ‘you are to work through the Ark’ is in fact what
those Medieval Masons were trying to get across. The Ark, as the
centre point, between male and female opposites, is the place where
we must be to produce the ‘good work’. It is the centre of the void
and is access to the Otherworld where peace and heaven lay – within
the mind of the adept.
The true union is also often portrayed as being divided or split in
two. This is an indication of the truth, the enlightenment itself
and the access to the divine, being lost.
Graham Phillips in his book The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant
tells us about the Ark and reveals this symbolism:
“As there is no further mention of it [the Ark] being used again,
either as a weapon or for communing with God, the general inference
among biblical scholars is that its power was lost when the
Israelites displeased God by dividing into two separate kingdoms
after Solomon’s death.” [8]
Of course, this is true, and yet not. It is true, the Ark does
disappear here and we almost never hear of it again. It is not true
to say that it was lost because God was displeased at the division
of the tribes. The tribes, symbolically, were divided because the
one power holding them together had been the last vestiges of the
wisdom of Solomon. Without this final strength the tribes could no
longer hold together and division set in.
None of this happened and it is pure Gnostic language speaking to us
across the pages of ‘religious’ and not ‘historical’ teaching. The
truth of course is that the connection to God (our true self),
imaged here by the Ark, is lost when we divide our minds and lose
balance. This internal balance I spoke at length upon in Gnosis: The
Secret of Solomon’s Temple Revealed. However I am not the first to
come to these conclusions regarding the Ark and the esoteric links.
Philo of Alexandria, born around twenty years before
Christ, was a
Jewish philosopher and he is one of the only non-biblical sources to
mention the Ark at all [9] implying it was not widely known as a
Jewish concept. Although coming from a wealthy family, Philo was
keen to see the inner and almost pagan traditions of spiritualism
come to light. He did not remain focused on the fate of the Ark, but
instead developed his belief that the Ark was a true key to real
enlightenment.
Philo spent a considerable part of his life attempting to reconcile
the differences that had emerged between Judaism and the Greek
philosophers in the Greek cultural mixing bowl of Alexandria. He
veered more strongly to pagan viewpoints and believed that one day
his spirit would escape the flesh and return once more to the deity
– in the same fashion as the Egyptians as we shall see. He said that
the very Ark itself was the essence of the presence of God and
everything sacred to the Jews.
It was the answer to the mysteries of
divinity itself. Amazingly, because of Philo’s cosmopolitan
religious viewpoint he even saw the Ark as having seven parts:
-
The Ark itself
-
The Law
-
The mercy seat
-
The two cherubim
-
The voice of the divine
-
The presence of the divinity
Each of these parts had mystical significance to
Philo and each
level ascended until it reached the actual presence of the Absolute
Being which itself in Greek beliefs radiated the same divine light
to which the Ark itself was said to radiate.
The Ark then was seen as the symbol of union or access even to God.
It was a Gateway, just as Mary was the portal for Christ into this
world, so too the Ark was a portal for God to speak to us from the
Otherworld. In a return fashion, we could also ascend to the
Otherworld via the Ark. Our ancestors would use this Ark, this boat
to heaven, as a method of esoterically reaching the divine with all
manner of requests and sacrifices. The dead were placed upon sacred
boats and floated out to sea, either literally or upon the sea of
the Otherworld.
In Ethiopia, where many claim the Ark to reside still, the dabtara
are the lay clergy and they have many esoterically implied ways as
we see in the book. The tabernacle of the Law (Ark) represents many
things to these esoteric dabtara and one of these things is the
Gateway:
“It is the mercy seat, a place of refuge, the altar, a place of
forgiveness of sins, salvation, the gate of life….” [10]
Again in another of Stuart Munro-Hay’s works,
The Ark of the
Covenant, we find confirmation of the gate to God aspect:
“What are we hoping to find as we begin our search for it? What
should it look like, and why should it matter? In even the most
austere accounts of it, the Ark is the moral heart of the universe,
containing the Law given by God. In more mystical or cosmic visions
of it, the Ark is the navel of the earth, a microcosm or universe in
miniature. It is a door to a higher world, an assurance of the
presence of the divine.” [11]
Here we have the term “a door to a higher world” and even the
“presence of the divine.” This is of course no different to the
vesica piscis, Mary, the Grail and so many other esoteric devices.
In fact the Grail itself has even been equated to the Shroud of
Turin, due to the link between Joseph of Arimathea, who was involved
with the burial of Jesus and who supposedly caught the blood of
Christ from the Cross.
However as Ian Wilson in The Blood and the
Shroud points out that researcher Dan Scavone looked into the
earliest roots of the Grail legends and came away with some
remarkable results. He first asked the question as to why Joseph of
Arimathea was also associated with the Grail legends in the 12th and
13th centuries.
He found:
“…a little-known Georgian manuscript of the sixth-century that quite
specifically and unmistakably described Joseph as collecting Jesus’
blood, not in any chalice or dish, as in the later stories, but in a
shroud. In the words of the manuscript, in which Joseph speaks in
the first person: ‘But I climbed Holy Golgotha, where the Lord’s
cross stood, and collected in the headband and a large sheet the
precious blood that had flowed from his holy side.’” [12]
It seems the Shroud, the chalice – often seen as a crescent moon and
the Ark – itself imaged as the crescent moon – are all related. The
crescent moon is the point between visible and invisible; between
empty and full; it is between the opposites – like the Gateway,
which is between gate posts.
The Gateway of course is between the Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and end, the creation and destruction, the way in and out. And yet
it is also the very centre or navel of all things, because the true
Gateway lies at the very centre of ourselves; at the centre of the
atom or indeed the universe. Jewish Rabbis themselves attest to this
fact:
“the Ark was in the exact centre of the whole world… standing on the
starting point of the creation” [13].
The Ark was at the very centre of Eden and the Tabernacle or later
on the Temple were representations of Eden, wherein would lie the
Ark – the knowledge and Gateway to God. If we are indeed at the
centre, we can see all things by simply looking around. Our vision
is flawed if we have to look from opposing sides. From a
psychological point of view, being centered is the same as being
balanced and the same is true of our ancient Gnostic and esoteric
beliefs.
Another clue to the Gateway struck me when I was reading Graham
Phillips entertaining book The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant.
Phillips points out that King David had ordered the Ark to be kept
in a house of a Levite priest by the name of Obed-edom and where it
remained for three months. The authors previous knowledge of Obed-Edom
had lead him to assume that the four supposedly separate men named
Obed-Edom in the Bible, were in fact all one man and were in fact
the Levite priest.
Phillips points out that this priest was a Gittite or a Philistine of the city of Gath, to which the Ark in 1
Samuel 5:8-9 and 6:17 had brought disaster.
“King David conquered Gath (2 Samuel 8:1) and probably brought these
Gittites with him back to Jerusalem. These Gittites worshipped Dagon
who was the son of El, the Shining One and Asherah, the serpentine
goddess found again and again in the Temple of Jerusalem throughout
the Bible. Dagon of course is Odakon, Jonah or Oannes – all of which
are fish-deities from which the Christian fish symbol, Bishop’s hat
and associations of the Jesus with the fish, originates.
Even Herman Melville mentions Dagon in his infamous Moby Dick
chapter LXVIII, “In fact, placed before the strict and piercing
truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl
idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the
ark of Israel, his horses head and both the palms of his hands fell
off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained.”
[14]
Of course what Melville reveals here is the stark fact that the Ark
stripped away all the ‘additions’, all the parts of the deity which
were not ‘him’ and revealed the true fish deity beneath – whatever
we wish that to be. The Ark then, can see straight through you and
get to the truth- it is at the centre. Moby Dick is a tale full of
symbolic language and reveals the journey of the ‘ark’ to capture
and kill the nemesis of the Captain only to discover it is the self
that is the true enemy. The fish is the animal our ancestors saw
that could journey into the Otherworld – water – the same water that
a boat or b’arque could sail upon.
So, what is it about Obed-Edom that is so remarkable that only he
could be the one to guard the Ark?
Well, we do know that in 1 Chronicles 13:13-14 the Ark is said to
have brought great blessings to the house of Obed-Edom and that
afterwards David was able to move the Ark with great ‘gladness’ to
Jerusalem where it remained in the tabernacle pending the erection
of Solomon’s Temple. So Obed-Edom’s house was obviously something
that was seen as beneficial to the Ark, and house generally meant
whole family and tribe, rather than mere dwelling place.
In 1
Chronicles 16:5 and 16:38 Obed-Edom is called a Levite musician who
ministers before the Ark and is given also another important role:
“And he [David] appointed some of the Levites to minister before the
ark of the Lord, to commemorate, to thank, and to praise the Lord
God of Israel: Asaph the chief, and next to him Zechariah, then
Jeiel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Mattithaiah, Eliab, Benaiah and Obed-Edom.”
16: 5-
“… and Obed-Edom with his sixty-eight brethren, including Obed-Edom
the son of Jeduthun, and Hosah, to be gatekeepers.”
16:38-
And of course this last role, of ‘gatekeeper’ is one of the most
important roles for any Levite. According to the standard biblical
dictionaries the gatekeeper was nothing more than somebody who
collected offerings and generally cared for the temple grounds. But
this denies the esoteric meaning and also neglects to wonder whether
any of this was literally meant.
The truth is, that the temple,
meaning ‘place of time’, was the ‘gateway’ to God and as the
gatekeeper Obed-Edom was the guardian of the gateway to God and in
this respect there is no wonder that he was able to protect the Ark,
which was the portable gateway itself. The Ark somehow disappeared
in Babylon, which means Gate of God – it went back. Later on in the
reign of King Amaziah (2 Chronicles 25:24) another one by the title
of Obed-Edom was the treasure keeper at the temple, a similar role.
These beautiful esoteric devices we find in the Bible and elsewhere
are then not surprisingly re-used in Freemasonry:
“..the Lodge itself is perceived as a bridge between the material
and spiritual worlds.” Laurence Gardner, The Shadow of Solomon [15]
The Coptic (Egyptian Christian Church) Clue to what’s in the Ark!
The Copts believed the Ark to be a wooden container for a chalice
containing itself wine mixed with water during the liturgy. Called
the maqta’, this chest occupies the central position on the altar
and is known as the throne for the crucified Christ and as a saving
device like the Ark of Noah or the blood of Christ himself. It also
represents the Ark of the Covenant and the Virgin Mary, thus
encompassing all three symbols of the “carrier” – the chalice
(carrying the blood of Christ), the Ark (carrying God) and the
Virgin (carrying the Son of God). [16]
The contents of the Ark then, whether New or Old Testament are
divine power, energy, food, all of which equate to life. They are
the food of the Otherworld, the nectar of the Gods, sustaining us
both physically and spiritually – like the ba and ka of the ancient
Egyptians. It was the very essence of life. But there was a New
Testament Ark and she was known as Mary, the mother of Christ. And
Christ himself was seen as the food of God presenting us with the
new body and blood offering.
Mary as the vessel and Ark
Mary as the “Theotokos” was the God-bearer. She was the sacred
vessel of the Son of God. In the Litany of Loretto from the
sixteenth century she was known as the “spiritual vessel” or the
“vessel of honour”. More importantly she was seen as arca foederis –
the Ark of the Covenant.
“In the twelfth century, the redoubtable Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
had also explicitly compared Mary to the Ark of the Covenant –
indeed he had done so in a number of writings.”
The Sign and the
Seal,
Graham Hancock [17].
Of course this very same Bernard is richly interwoven in the
historical tapestry of the Knights Templar, who, whether we like it
or not, seem to crop up in almost all of the Medieval mysteries and
will do so again in spectacular fashion in my book. I also knew from
my other works that Bernard certainly understood the Gnostic and
esoteric elements of the many folk tales and even biblical
traditions, the most profound of which were his connections to the
‘re-creation’ of the Grail myths, something Graham Hancock also
points out on page 61 of The Sign and the Seal.
This association with Mary, also reveals why the Ark in Chartres
Cathedral was seen by Hancock to be “moving towards Sheba”, as Sheba
is nothing more than the pre-Marian female principle to Solomon’s
male principle.
But I wanted to find some original texts speaking of Mary as the Ark
or in similar fashion, just to convince myself that what Hancock and
others were stating was true and so I searched. After hours of
hunting and several coffees later I came across some liturgical
texts (Menaia) translated by the Monastery of Saint Andrew the First
Called in Manchester, England. These texts speak of the Mandylion,
the image of Christ or Shroud, which we speak more of in the book,
but are here amazingly related to the Ark and Mary. At Vespers, tone
2 is spoken “With garlands of praise” and it goes something like
this:
“With what lips shall we, poor and worthless, call the Mother of God
blest? She is more honored than creation and holier than the
Cherubim and all the angels; she is the unshaken throne [mercy seat]
of the King, the house in which the Most High made his dwelling; the
salvation of the world; the hallowing of God, who on her Godly feast
richly grants the faithful his great mercy.
What songs of awe did all the Apostles of the Word offer you then, O
Virgin, as they stood around your death-bed and cried aloud with
wonder: The Palace of the King departs, the Ark of hallowing is
exalted. You gates be lifted up, that the gate of Gate may enter in
great joy…The company of the Disciples is gathered from the ends of
the earth in Gethsemane’s field, Mother of God, to bury your body
which held God. Arise, O Lord, to your rest: you and the Ark of your
holiness…”
Here, in this Greek text taken originally from the
Apostoliki
Diakonia in Athens we have confirmation that Mary is indeed seen as
the Ark of holiness. And why was this Menaion written? To
commemorate the moving of the cloth of Edessa (Antioch), the
Mandylion or Icon of Jesus Christ. The words for Mary
spoken in commemoration of the image of Christ, whom she had
carried, as the Ark of holiness.
Mary then was the vessel of Christ, the enlightenment. She is not
enlightenment itself, but the vessel of it, just as we ourselves are
vessels of the light too; we just need to give birth. Mary was to
pass the light of the Old to the New. She is the womb of wisdom, and
if we are to follow the Bible and believe that Christ ‘is all and in
all’, then we too should manifest our own Mary, our own vessel of
grace and let Christ as the enlightenment, be born within us.
Christ is the light aspect, the shining element of the sun, like
Horus of Egypt who is both the son of Isis (Mary) and Osiris (who is
both the father of Horus and Horus reborn). This light must be
reborn as Ra – the sun - each day in-order for the creative spark to
continue and for life to carry on. This is the light of wisdom, not
just the solar rays of the sun in the sky. We must find the creative
spark within us to enable life to be born anew each day. It is a
concept older than the Gnostics themselves and it is related to the
sun because the sun gives life to everything on earth.
The Ark as the light of wisdom
“In this day, they that are submerged beneath the ocean of ancient
Knowledge, and dwell within the ark of divine wisdom, forbid the
people such idle pursuits.” [18]
The Ark is a symbol for the light of wisdom, so say certain key
philosophers from our past. It is for this reason that it sheds
light so bright that all shall be blinded. In the following
Rosicrucian text we find the Ark explained from this perspective on
many levels.
“In the westernmost end of this apartment, the western end of the
whole Tabernacle, rested the "ARK OF THE COVENANT." It was a hollow
receptacle containing the GOLDEN POT OF MANNA, AARON'S ROD THAT
BUDDED, AND THE TABLES OF THE LAW which were given to Moses. While
this Ark of the Covenant remained in the Tabernacle in the
Wilderness, TWO STAVES WERE ALWAYS WITHIN THE FOUR RINGS OF THE ARK
so that it could be picked up instantly and moved, but when the Ark
as finally taken to Solomon's Temple, the staves were taken out.
This is very important in its symbolical significance. Above the Ark
hovered the Cherubim, and between them dwelt the uncreated glory of
God. "Three," said He to Moses, "I will meet with thee, and I will
commune with thee from above the Mercy Seat, from between the two
Cherubim which are upon the Ark of the Testimony.”
The glory of the Lord seen above the Mercy Seat was in the
appearance of a cloud. The Lord said to Moses,
"Speak unto Aaron thy
brother that he come not at all time into the Holiest Place within
the veil before the Mercy Seat which is upon the Ark, that he die
not, for I will appear in the cloud upon the Mercy Seat."
This
manifestation of the divine presence was called among the Jews the Shekinah Glory. Its appearance was attended no doubt with a
wonderful spiritual glory of which it is impossible to form any
proper conception. Out of this cloud the voice of God was heard with
deep solemnity when he was consulted on behalf of the people.
When the aspirant has qualified to enter into this place behind the
second veil, he finds everything DARK to the physical eye, and it is
necessary that he should have another light WITHIN. When he first
came to the eastern Temple gate, he was "POOR, NAKED, AND BLIND,"
asking for LIGHT. He was then shown the dim light which appeared in
the smoke above the Altar of sacrifice, and told that in order to
advance he must kindle within himself that flame by remorse for
wrongdoing. Later on he was shown the more excellent light in the
East Room of the Tabernacle, which proceeded from the Seven-branched
Candlestick; in other words he was given the light of knowledge and
of reason that by it he might advance further upon the path.
But it
was required that BY SERVICE he should evolve within himself and
around himself another light, the golden "wedding garment," which is
also THE
CHRIST LIGHT OF THE SOUL BODY. By lives of service this glorious
soul-substance gradually pervades his whole aura until it is ablaze
with a golden light. Not until he has evolved this INNER
illumination can he enter into the darkened precincts of the second
Tabernacle, as the Most Holy place is sometimes called.” [19]
So, what we hear from this little piece is that the Temple and the
Ark are in reality a kind of initiation into the deeper mysteries of
God and that this results in our own inner illumination. What point
is there then in searching for the real thing? In truth, even those
authors who have claimed to have discovered the Ark itself have
stumbled upon this ancient wisdom tradition. As Graham Hancock
points out in his book, he was excited to find that a number of
ancient Jewish traditions had “asserted” that the Ark itself was the
“root of all knowledge.”
He points out that the golden lid itself,
surmounted by the Cherubim, revealed the gift of knowledge, for:
“…the distinctive gift of the cherubim was knowledge…”
The Sign and
the Seal,
Graham Hancock [20].
This of course is reference to the words of the philosopher and
writer Philo of Alexandria (30 BC – 45 AD) who did not know what
these cherubim looked like, but that they must somehow be symbolic
of knowledge.
Because the existence of the Ark is taken literally, as if it really
existed, the elements of light emissions have brought all manner of
wonderful theories regarding their origin and intent. Graham
Hancock, however, in The Sign and the Seal was much closer to the
truth when he hit on the inspirational notion that the Ark was in
fact no different to the Holy Grail. What Hancock discovered was
that the image of the Ark and that of the Grail were said to give
off a luminescence and when lost the holy of holies or even the land
were plunged into darkness [21].
Chretien’s Grail was fashioned from ‘pure gold’ and the Ark overlaid
with ‘pure gold.’ However, it seems that the gold was not the reason
for the glowing light, which seems to have been down to the contents
of the Grail as blood of Christ, or the Ark, being the tablets of
the Law – both elements of the testament. It is supposedly the power
and energy of God and nothing short of that. It was God’s hand,
which inscribed the tablets and it was God’s blood in the chalice.
It was God’s power that made Moses face shine and it was the God
within that made Mary the light bearer – not forgetting that this
radiant Moses was himself “carried upon the Nile in the ark of
bulrushes”. It was also the brilliant ‘shining’ light of Christ
resurrected that imaged the Shroud as we shall see. In truth, the
secret of the Ark, the Grail, Mary and the Shroud is nothing more,
nor nothing less, than the power of the divine within. And we are
told where to find this divine, within ourselves, in the midst,
between man and woman, positive and negative in balance.
The fact that these are all esoteric devices does not however remove
the fact that man has cleverly manifested real objects to portray
the inner divine and so the search for the actual physical relics
was not over. In fact it was just begun and the trail would lead me
into the heart of an ancient and very secret society that claimed to
hold the secrets. It would also lead me into the world of the
Shroud…
Notes
1 The Shadow of Solomon, Laurence Gardner, Element, 2005, page 18
2 Ibid, page 24
3 The Ark of the Covenant, by Roderick Grierson and Stuart
Munro-Hay, Phoenix, London, 2000, page 2
4 The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant, Stuart Munro-Hay, page 17
5 The Book Concerning The Tincture of the philosophers Written
Against Those Sophists Born Since the Deluge, In the Age of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, The Son of God by Ph. Theophrastus Bombast, of
Hohenheim, Philosopher of the Monarchia, Prince of Spagyrists, Chief
Astronomer, Surpassing Physician, and Trismegistus of Mechanical
Arcana. Taken from Note 3 at the end of the book regarding The Book
of the Revelation of Hermes as translated by Paracelsus.
6 The Sign and the Seal, Graham Hancock, Arrow, 1992, page 51
7 Ibid, page 55
8 The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant, Graham Phillips, Bear &
Co, 2004 page 23
9 Philo, by F.H. Coulson, 12 volumes, Cambridge
10 The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant, Stuart Munro-Hay, page 47
11 The Ark of the Covenant, by Roderick Grierson and Stuart
Munro-Hay, Phoenix, London, 2000, page 10
12 The Blood and the Shroud, Ian Wilson, Orion, 1998, page 197
13 Tanhuma, Kedoshin 10.
14 The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant, Graham Phillips, Bear &
Co, 2004 page 22
15 The Shadow of Solomon, Laurence Gardner, Element, 2005, page 16
16 The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant, Stuart Munro-Hay, page 29
17 The Sign and the Seal, Graham Hancock, Arrow, 1992, page 59
18 Kitab-i-Iqan (Book of Certitude), part one.
19 Ancient and Modern Initiation by Max Heindel (1865-1919) The
Rosicrucian Fellowship International.
20 The Sign and the Seal, Graham Hancock, Arrow, 1992, page 333.
21 Ibid, page 69
Back to Contents
The Ark, the Shroud, and Mary
The journey to discover the Ark of the Covenant has been taken by a
great many people over time. It is a quest that does not differ from
the search for the Holy Grail or the lost city state of Atlantis,
and the reason for this is apparent in that nobody has yet
discovered any real archaeological artifacts to prove its existence.
This is about to change.
Please keep in mind that I cannot explain
the full extent of the research in the book in this short article,
but here is a taster.
My own journey began some time ago…
I was in Winchester, England and was
taking in the wonderful medieval cathedral before giving a speech. I
had my new digital camera clutched firmly in my grasp and was
walking around like some kind of zombie, staring at the floors,
walls, windows, ceiling and trying desperately not to miss anything.
I noticed a beautiful stone image of Prudence with the face of a
woman on the front and a bearded male head on the back. I silently
smiled and told myself that this was down to the wisdom of the union
of opposites – whereby our Gnostic ancestors believed that true
understanding could only be found in uniting the two elements of our
psyche. Then, nearby I noticed another beautiful carving, this time
with Moses leading his people out of Egypt. In the centre the people
of Israel were carrying the Ark of the Covenant on large poles, in
the background were the pyramids at Giza.
The Ark looked almost like
a small reliquary box I had previously photographed at Kykkos
Monastery in Cyprus – even though hundreds of miles and years
separated the two. On the other side of this beautifully carved
mausoleum was another wonderful image. This time Jesus is emerging
from a coffer – again looking exactly like the Ark itself. He held
the cross and was flanked by two praying angels as the Vesica Piscis
or almond shape radiated light from behind him.
It struck me that the whole design was interrelated and was telling
a story of the New Covenant or Testimony. The Ark was the old
Covenant, now lost and Jesus was emerging from the Ark as the
resurrection of the Testament. At that point, that singular moment
in time I suddenly realized the truth of the Ark, the Shroud and
indeed Mary. The rush to my head made me feel nauseous and it was
all I could do to take a few photographs before making for the exit
to get some air.
It is moments like this that make the role of the author and
researcher worthwhile. It is like uncovering ancient and sacred
treasure that has been lost for centuries. Ok, there are no fires,
rats, rolling balls or guardians with guns trying to take a shot at
you, but during the research for this book and DVD I uncovered
truths which brought me closer to secret societies like never
before. There were moments when I feared for my life and others of
pure elation; moments when I became unnerved by power and others
when I thought I was at a dead end. In each case, something would
happen to alter my course and always around the corner I was to be
completely surprised, whether pleasantly or not.
I also had a shock when I read the various books on the subject. You
see I scoured the book shops, the internet and even had “my man”
from a little old book store in the medieval streets of Lincoln pass
the word around. Eventually I had gathered around me every book ever
written on the Ark and most of those on the Shroud and Mary. As I
sat in my little office I looked like some crazy ancient wizard
surrounded by piles of fusty old books. Where to begin? Which book
to read first? I closed my eyes placed out my hand and came back
with an old book about sacred geometry that my book shop friend had
recommended. And so, I settled back with a cup of tea and a cigar –
my journey was about to begin.
The facts were so startling, so at odds with the base, cultural and
current popular beliefs. I would often scream inside my mind at the
lack of understanding shown by the one level perceptions of almost
everybody I spoke to. Even many authors seemed to want to view the
world according to how many books they could sell, regardless of the
truth, which once shown stared them in the face.
Sadly, I could not
tell the whole story to any one person short of my own wife for fear
of giving too much away myself. The torment of the tale of the Ark
is one I am sure I share with a great many researchers, authors and
thinkers out there in the wide world – but I can now rest my soul
and say, I am happy with what I have discovered.
The Ark
To almost the whole world the Ark of the Covenant is the sacred
relic discovered by Indiana Jones in the infamous movie. It is a
relic that has found links with the Knights Templar, the Cathars and
Graham Hancock [1] claims exists in Axum in Ethiopia.
I searched through all these theories and found some truth in most.
I trailed through Ethiopian lore, Egyptian b’arques and Templar
intrigue and found the Ark in the mystical interpretations, rather
than the physical form. In Ethiopia the tabot held sacred by the
priesthood were copies of the tablets of the Law brought down from
Mount Sinai by Moses and placed in the Ark. These tabot are then
wrapped in shrouds, mimicking a mystical Ark.
In these sacred relics
I found links with the ancient cabiri – the worship of stones fallen
from heaven. But they were not the Ark of the Covenant and so I
moved on and into India where my research led me on a trail into the
heart of the cult of the Jagganath (Juggernaut) and the massive Ark
that is processed through the streets still to this day. At last,
this was a true physical form that mirrored the ancient Egyptian and
Judaic concepts of God being carried in procession.
As I moved on I found more and more evidence for the actual Ark, let
alone the re-produced versions made real by the Freemasons.
Mary
The contents of the Ark whether New or Old Testament are divine
power, energy, and food, all of which equate to life. They are the
food of the Otherworld, the nectar of the Gods, sustaining us both
physically and spiritually – like the ba and ka of the ancient
Egyptians. It is the very essence of life. But there was a New
Testament Ark and she was known as Mary, the mother of Christ. And
Christ himself was seen as the food of God presenting us with the
new body and blood offering.
Mary as the “Theotokos” was the God-bearer. She was the sacred
vessel of the Son of God. In the Litany of Loretto from the
sixteenth century she was known as the “spiritual vessel” or the
“vessel of honour”. More importantly she was seen as arca foederis –
the Ark of the Covenant.
I travelled to Abu Gosh in Israel. There I found the overlaying of
Mary on one of the very locations that the Ark resided. We also have
a distinct correlation between Mary as the Christ carrier and the
Ark as the carrier of God via the pamphlet Sister Josephine and the
Ark of the Covenant (Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition and
sold on site):
“.. the Church looks to Mary, Ark of the New Covenant… she like the
Ark, was the repository of God’s presence… Mary… became the
repository not simply of the tablets of the Law, but of the
Law-giver Himself; not simply of the desert manna, but of the Living
Bread from heaven.. Hence they called her by such titles as Abode of
the King, Tabernacle of the Lord, Ark of Holiness, and Ark of the
Covenant… as the David danced before the Ark, so the child in
Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy… She is the Inmost shrine, the Holy
of Holies..”
What we have here clearly laid out and unopposed by the Catholic
authorities is the statement that Mary is the new Ark of the
Covenant – in that she represents the exact same thing – the
connection to and gateway to God.
So the Ark and now Mary are God-carriers. They are the method of
accessing the Divine. But the Shroud itself was also shown on the
statue and of course, this too was a device to carry the slain God –
it too was an Ark.
The Shroud
The Shroud of Turin is a pale yellow linen cloth that has been
fought over both physically and textually for centuries. It is
claimed by the ardent believers that the image, almost
photographically imprinted on it, is that of Jesus Christ. To others
it is a Medieval forgery carried out by Leonardo da Vinci [2]. In
the 1980’s carbon 14 dating launched the Shroud once again onto the
world headlines with so-called evidence that it was of a medieval
date. However, ever since that fateful day there has been even more
arguing and the latest ideas throw the dating backwards in time and
refute the carbon 14 dating, which has been shown by several
researchers to be highly flawed.
With this history and with the knowledge of the meaning behind the
Shroud I marched headlong into a world of dispute. What I found was
that the Shroud is highly likely from the first century; that it was
the image of a high-adept or enlightened one, probably later known
as Jesus, and that it was formed via an amazing science of
sub-atomic radiation. It was in fact the result of a profound and
sacred human physical reaction brought on by the mind.
I then discovered that this had been known for a very long time and
then I made contact with an ancient Brotherhood who claimed to know
who was behind the it all…
Notes
1 Hancock, Graham, The Sign and the Seal, Arrow, 2001
2 Picknett, Lynn, Prince, Clive, Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? The
Truth Behind the Centuries-Long Conspiracy of Silence, Harpercollins,
1994
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