The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (35 page)

In Celtic Europe and early cultures of the Levant, the oak tree represented knowledge. This throwback to nature religion never truly died away. The first letters of the alphabet in Celtic Europe were established for corresponding objects in nature. “D” in the Ogam alphabet was the seventh letter,
duir
. From “D,” we get our word for the product of the sturdy oak, the “door.” The early male gods were all oak kings. Hercules, Jupiter, Thor, and even Jehovah held sacred this mighty tree. In Rome the oak king was Janus. This two-faced god represented the door between two years, the old and the new. One face peered into the past, one faced looked to the future. His name is immortalized in the name of our first month, January, the dividing line between the years.
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Halfway through the year, the month of Jupiter began on June 10, and extended to July 7. And halfway through this midyear month, the oak king would be sacrificed. He could be burned to death, pierced, or beheaded. His wake would start on June 24 and end on July 1. As bizarre as this custom appears, in one form or another it has survived into modern times. In medieval days the week of the wake would be a time of hiring fairs all over Europe, where men would apply for employment for the harvest or in their crafts as masons and tradesmen. For the Celts it was the beginning of the year. In Masonic belief, Saint John the Baptist is the old king, the oak king.
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He is sacrificed (beheaded) shortly after anointing the new king (Jesus), who began not only a new year but a new era.

The Druids also took their name from
duir
the name of the sturdy tree.
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Druids were literally “Oak Knowers,” practitioners of an ancient art of worship. Their rites were conducted in circles, as in Greece. The
cyrkles
were sanctuaries of their magical practice, which was often directed to the goddess Circe (Kirk). The word for a circle used in magical practice later became
kirk
and then “church.” Churches today (circular only in Templar structures) are the sanctuaries where we can worship our god in ritual form. The original structure of the cathedral at Chartres
was the round (female) church, which was later built over. The round church itself had been built on a pagan site of goddess worship.
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The more important deity of the pre-Celtic Druids was that of the goddess.
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Representative of the female, the goddess shared the characteristics of the female in her different aspects. She was sometimes the maiden—young, beautiful, ready for mating. Later she would be the mother, giving birth to and instructing her children. And then she would be the crone, the grandmother—no longer able to attract men or give birth, but jealous, dangerous, and horrible in appearance. When the male gods were imposed on the female, so were the words for god altered. Dia-Meter (god mother) became just Deu (god). Crone (aging goddess) was changed to Cronus (father time).
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Those devotees of the underground stream understand that the sciences were invented when the goddess reigned supreme. The word for mother and the root of the measurement “meter” are evidence of this correspondence.

Mathematics is derived from the science of numbers named after the mother. The learned would “matriculate,” a word still used today. For such mysterious peoples as the Druids, the measurement of time, space, and distance was a sacred science. Words associated with these sciences entered our language and remain.
Chronology
derives from the name of the goddess who determined time. From India to Ireland, this dark goddess was “Kali,” who measured both time and the lives of humans. We take our modern word
calendar
from her books of time, the Kalends.
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From the mother goddess herself came the word
calibrate,
meaning “to measure,” and
caliber
which is the diameter (of a projectile). The
circle,
named for the goddess Circe, was divided by the diameter (Dia-Meter).
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In its center was the
core,
named for the goddess Kore.
Radius
takes its name from the course of the sun (Ra) crossing the circle to its center, or core.

In Ireland, Kali’s priestesses responsible for watching the skies wore green (kelly green). Our word
month
is from
moon,
which in the time of the goddess measured divisions of time. The word
hour
derives from the temple prostitutes of Babylon, each assigned one period of time to stand watch and make herself available to passersby and strangers. The “ladies of the night,” those assigned temple duty in the evening, became the “whores.” Our word
horoscope
comes from
horos,
meaning “time,” and
scope
meaning “watch.” The horoscope is the product of the “time watchers.” Night itself was named for the goddess Neith, who was known by that name from the Atlantic to Egypt. In Mexico and Europe the fertility goddess shares the moon and knitting as symbols of her work.

The goddess had other duties besides protecting the sciences. She blessed men with good fortune in the hunt and in war. Artemis in her early forms was the huntress.
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Women may not have taken part in the hunt, but the goddess was responsible for the fruitful hunt. To Artemis, especially in Arcadia in Greece, the bear was sacred. It was called Arktos (Arctic) because it came from the north. To kill a bear, one required great skill and luck and the blessing of the goddess. Before embarking on a bear hunt, and after the completion of the hunt, men were expected to conduct a ritual honoring the bear. From the Ardennes, named for Arduina (the Germanic name for the huntress), to the south of France, bear hunters left sanctuaries to their patroness. In France, figurines and skulls of bears were found in caves, leaving us only to guess just what ritual was conducted. Drinking from bear (and human) skulls was one custom.

In war, the fearful goddess Hera protected her own. Those faithful whom she blessed with courage and strength would become “heroes” in her name. The goddess blessed the farmers as well. The blessing of Kore was the “cornucopia,” which was “plenty.”
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Corn may have been named for the goddess, and cereal was a grain product from the goddess Ceres. Between the time of David and the time of Jesus, crop and hunting magic began to be replaced by state religion, institutionalized magic. Unofficially, noninstitutionalized magic still survives in various forms and customs: blessings before meals, scarecrows, hex signs, and horseshoes on barns are just a few examples.

The ritual beheading of the king and the actual beheading of Saint John may have had nothing to do with each other, but the symbolism is appealing to those initiated into a world of magic. Going back to the Ogam alphabet, where each letter corresponds to a tree, the letter after “D” is “T.” Whereas “D” symbolizes June, the month of the oak king’s execution, the month for “T” is July, when the new king takes the throne. With “D” representing John and “T” representing Jesus, the fact that the “T” is symbolized by the Cross is significant.

Jesus starts as the “Green King,” the young king, whose tree is the holly.
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Such tree magic survives in that holly and Christmas are inseparable. Jesus’ ministry started a short time after the beheading of John. June twenty-fourth is the death of John and June 24 to June 30 “the wake”; Christ’s ministry then started on July 1 in the symbolic Masonic mystery. The event appears to take on even greater cosmic importance. In the writings of the early Christian historian Nennius, the world will have seven ages. The fourth epoch began with David and the building of the Temple of Solomon. The fifth started with John the Baptist and the sixth with Jesus.

The Hebrew religion outgrew its pagan roots and was monotheistic by the time Jesus was born. The Hebrew people were not looking for another god, but the earthly Messiah, a king who would deliver them from the Roman yoke as they had been delivered by Moses from Egypt and as they had been libertated from Babylon. The concept of Jesus as God was not understood or accepted by the Jewish people in general, and for the most part it was not understood or followed even by his own family or village. After the death of Jesus, Paul became the follower turned leader who opened the door of the new religion to the same pagans that the brother of Jesus, James, wanted to exclude. While the Pauline Church grew and prospered under European rule, the Asian religion stuck to the belief in one god and the Asian-Islamic concept that Jesus was important only as a prophet.
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His own words were used as proof that he was not a god: “For the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

Britain had not yet outgrown its own pagan roots, but it shared one thing with Israel—foreign oppression. Britain and Israel both had the need for a king. The Jews wanted an earthly king to emancipate their people from Rome, as Britain needed one who would free the Britons from Roman and then Saxon oppression. The earthly Jesus failed to liberate Israel from Rome and died in his mission. His empty tomb offered the hope of his return. The Camelot of Arthur, too, failed to last. In legend Arthur was wounded and carried away, presumably to return again.

The similarities of Jesus and Arthur do not end there. As the mysterious magician Merlin had prepared the way for Arthur, Saint John had prepared the way for Jesus. Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, was named for a great white goddess and was considered unfaithful by the Grail writers. The companion of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, whose symbol, the dove, is reminiscent of the goddess Isis, was also regarded as a sinner and a prostitute by later Christian writers. As women attended to Jesus in his tomb and were the first to reveal that he had departed, so also would women deliver the wounded Arthur from the last battle and take him to Avalon by boat.

Hundreds of books have been written that show the comparisons among the Celtic myth cycle, the life of Arthur, and the life of Jesus. It is not coincidence that the Prieuré de Sion families and their commissioned writers strove to identify the connection. The Grail romances served to bring back the higher purpose in life. The Arthurian quest for the Grail can be compared to the Greek search for personal excellence,
arete
. It was the quest for the Grail that was important, rather than the attainment of the Grail. Greek devotion, too, was never fulfilled, yet always strived for. Jesus taught in a similar vein. The law was made for man and woman not man and woman for the law. One’s highest goal was the love of God and neighbor for its own sake.

These values were not part of church or state in the medieval age; the Grail literature was an attempt to revive them. Bringing all religions together was one step—the Freemason credo of worshiping any supreme deity was an example. And bringing the true message of Christ to the world through the Grail literature was another. But there was still a third step—incorporating the older beliefs into the modern. Celtic Christianity still had one foot in the world of Druids, vegetation gods, and mysterious magicians.

The strange character of Merlin formed a bridge between the misty Celtic past and the medieval age. Once the “wild man,” the “Green George” of the Britains, Merlin became almost Christianized. Merlin’s birth story is even stranger than that of John the Baptist, who was born to a “barren” mother. As revenge for Christ’s victory over hell, a demon is sent to torment a religious family.
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The family, already bankrupt,
has nothing left save three daughters. The demon compromises the chastity of the youngest two but is resisted by the third. This oldest daughter, still a virgin, is raped by the demon on a night that she has forgotten her evening prayers. The child Merlin is born—a human, but completely covered with black hair. Such tales are symbolic devices, although their full meaning has been lost in time. The Frankish Merovingians had their own odd tale about their ancestor, Merovee, who was miraculously conceived by both a king and a sea creature.

The Welsh patron saint is David (Dewi in Welsh), which means “waterman.”
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The calling of the waterman in Christian Wales was to baptize the Welsh people. Saint John’s mission was also to baptize. The name John stems from the Greek “Ionnes,” which in turn derives from the Babylonian “Oannes.” Oannes was a half-man, half–sea creature who brought civilization to the ancestors. The name Merlin also has water connotations in that
mer
means “sea” and
lin
often has a water meaning as well (pool). What ancient tradition unites these three watermen? Modern humans may never know. Almost every culture has a legend of a man bringing civilization who arrives from the sea. From the Incas and Mayans to Native Americans to Egyptians and Babylonians, a stranger arriving from over the water gives human beings the arts of building, writing, agriculture, and healing. The waterman is always the civilizer. Were Merlin, Merovee, and John outgrowths from shared myths?

The Masonic explanation of their tradition is that Solomon himself, the king who built the temple, founded a secret society of Masons that survived through three millennia. A more likely aim of Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the “Invisible College,” and other such orders was to create a more free society. Europe was a melting pot of peoples—Christian and pagan, Asian, Islamic, and Celtic. State governments and religions tried to deal with such differences by imposing a regime of vicious repression. The Roman Church and the Norman state together made dissension very dangerous.

Europe was just entering into the Dark Ages. Barbarian invaders from the west finally turned back at the Battle of Troyes in
A.D.
451, and the Huns were stopped. But it was too late for the Roman Empire, which
had given way to successive hordes of Visigoths, Vandals, and the Frank-ish Merovingians who ruled western Europe. The Norse Vikings and the Norman invaders ruled the British Isles and parts of Europe. The conquerors practiced domination by death and mutilation and ushered in one of the cruelest ages in modern times. Statecraft and churchcraft meant torture and execution for those who refused taxation and uncompromising obedience. The taxing state offered no protection of law to its oppressed citizens, only war. The Church, too, offered no earthly reward and comfort and instead forced upon the people taxation and conscription to its religious wars.