13 - The Da Vinci Code Fiasco

We have spoken much of the Grail in this book because it is the goal or quest of the individual.

For this reason it is seen as central to the symbols of the secret societies. There has recently been a lot of excitement about the Grail - a cyclical phenomena in humanity for the past 2,000 years. There are huge implications today with the Grail being a secret of various secret societies and I want to investigate this before we move on.

One question regarding the Holy Grail that the early medieval writers asked was "whom does it serve?" Well, let's have a look at the current Grail world and see if it is serving us - or are we serving it? We shall also discover just who it is behind this fiasco that has been manipulating the story from the very earliest of times.

Very briefly and for those among us who have been on the planet Sanity for the last few years, the Da Vinci Code is a fiction based around a man who discovers a code that reveals the true identity of the Holy Grail to be nothing more than the very bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

Unfortunately the author of this work, Dan Brown, claimed his now infamous book to be based upon real factual organizations and events. This could not be farther from the truth.

Let's take it apart.

Priory of Sion

This supposedly ancient and enigmatic group allegedly once had Leonardo da Vinci himself as a Grand Master, not to mention several other notables such as Nicolas Flamel and Isaac Newton.

However, there is no truth in it at all. Sion was the name of a hill nearby the residences of Pierre Plantard and Gerade de Sede - the two original creators of the Priory of Sion hoax.

The documents of the Priory secreted in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris have been proven to be forgeries. In fact, the only truthful copies of anything for Mr. Plantard in the Paris Library are newsletters from the 1950s for a rather boring housing association, complaining about the state of the streets - and even this is in extremely poor French.

All the instigators of this surrealist hoax have admitted their creation on record. On the one hand they said it was a surrealist joke; on the other, a kind of egotistical ploy to be accepted by society. Yet the world still goes mad with every new bloodline myth.

Sang Real

One of the main pieces of evidence for the books about the bloodline of Christ, from Holy Blood, Holy Grail to the Templar Revelation, has been the interpretation of the original term used for the Holy Grail - San Graal.

In the 1980s book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent et al, we find that it is interpreted differently, placing the g from graal onto the end of san, making sang real. This then translates as royal or holy blood. Mistaking a simple error by a 15th century writer - the only time the error was ever made until the 1980s - an entire theory is based upon something that was simply not true.

Sir Walter Skeat, one of the greatest etymologists in England, said, 100 years ago, that this error was "very early falsified," and for what ends he did not know.

He pointed out that the original concept meant "mixing bowl," which relates entirely with the theory I put forward in The Serpent Grail.

Leonardo da Vinci

So, now that we know the true etymology of San Graal and that the Priory of Sion never existed, we should also know that da Vinci could not have been a grand master of a nonexistent order that protected a secret that also didn't exist.

The Holy Chalice in St.Peter's Rome

In fact, all the historical background and information on da Vinci reveals that he was a skilled and wonderful artist - no great revelation there.

However, there are those strange elements of his paintings, which the Da Vinci Code and other works of fiction pick up on. Take the female-looking character in the Last Supper, for instance: Many have pointed to the fact that this individual looks remarkably feminine. Well, he does. Others have pointed to the Mona Lisa as being not quite feminine enough, and that surely the sitter must have been a boy.

Using these assumptions many have claimed that da Vinci was, therefore, homosexual. It is more and more amusing by the day just how far this rubber band can be stretched, before it comes hurtling back and hits somebody in the face.

So what is the truth? Is that a lady in the Last Supper? No.

There was a tradition of painting the disciple whom Christ loved, John the Evangelist, as a slightly boyish individual, thereby bringing questions to the mind of many as to whether Jesus was gay.

I discovered this to be part of an ancient Gnostic tradition whereby the two Johns (John the Baptist and John the Evangelist) were two sides to the duality - male and female, positive and negative - which needed to be rejoined in order to be complete. Therefore, John the Evangelist was perceived as the feminine principle in this relation, and John the Baptist was the manly, bearded, wild figure.

It was also part of the hidden tradition of the painter's guild of the time to include androgynous elements within their paintings - hence Mona Lisa seeming a little boyish. This androgynous element is there a symbol of the third force, the union of opposites mentioned before, of man and woman, of male and female, of the two sides of our mind that need to be brought into union once again to form the perfect human.

There is no evidence whatsoever pointing to da Vinci being involved in any secret society, but the theories of the union of opposites was a rising current in the renaissance world in which he lived, and so that influence would have been absorbed by this perfectionist of a painter.

Did Jesus and Mary Marry and Have Children?

Who would have thought that such a simple question would raise such a controversy and even be taken seriously? To answer this one we need to break it down.

Firstly, if Jesus married Mary Magdalene then we have to admit that Jesus and Mary existed in the first place. Although we have a substantial amount of textual evidence for these biblical characters, this is due to the sheer amount of copying being carried out hundreds of years after the supposed event. We have no actual texts naming either character from the period; most of the texts date to hundreds of years after.

Even if we do admit that these people were real, then we would have to admit that Jesus did walk on water, cast out demons into pigs, and die and resurrect. That, or we would have another option: That the character of Jesus, just like that of Robin Hood and King Arthur, was based upon a real man somewhere, and all the extra mythical and mystical elements were added into the story. Just as Robin married Marion (Mary), and Arthur married Guinevere, so too in this mythical way, Jesusmay have married Mary - even though there is no textual evidence for this.

Marion and Mary are the same and imply water and wisdom. Guinevere comes from similar roots, especially as the queen of heaven, which was a title for Mary the mother of Jesus and Isis the mother of Horus. And, as many scholars have pointed out, the two Marys may be amalgamations of a much older myth.

Guinevere is also the queen of serpents and, therefore, knowledge and wisdom, and her name is related in etymology to Eve, which means female serpent and is an indication of wisdom.

Just as the early Christian Church was forming groups such as the Gnostic Ophites or serpent worshippers, raising their communion cup to the good serpent, they were also splitting the threefold mother goddess - Mary - into distinct parts. First the Mother Mary, then the Sister Mary, and then Mary Magdalene, a mysterious element, and we shall see why.

Mary the mother is Isis the mother of Horus. As Horus is the son and in fact reincarnation of Osiris, so Isis or Mary is also his sister and lover. She is all three, the feminine trinity. Mary Magdalene therefore is the hidden lover of Jesus who is both God and the son of God, just like Horus. And all of this mystery tradition relates back to the ancient serpent cult, as Isis, Osiris, and Horus had strong associations with the creative, wise, and immortal serpent.

Jesus was eventually likened to the Mosaic "brazen serpent in the wilderness" and imaged hundreds of times as a serpent upon the cross. Here we have that parallel with Arthur, whose name, Pendragon, means "head serpent" or "head of the serpent."

Now we can see with just these few examples that there is a real code afoot - an ancient code going right back into ancient Egypt and beyond, through Osiris and Isis and to Enki and Ninkhursag in Sumeria and Mesopotamia, who were known themselves as serpent priests or doctors.

But what is this code telling us?

Simply that in order to give birth to our own messiah or anointing, or in order to save ourselves, we need to be in union with wisdom, which is symbolized as both water and the serpent - hence Arthur Pendragon and his wife the queen of serpents, or the early Enki and Ninkhursag, who were serpent deities or Shining Ones and were therefore symbols of enlightenment.

As God was upon the face of the waters of the deep in Genesis, so too must we submerge ourselves in wisdom to bring about the divine creation within us.

So, now we understand that Jesus and Mary, in union, could be a metaphor or a copy of this ancient system. But what are we left with?

There are characters such as Yeshua who, it seems, may have been a real character of the 1st century or thereabouts, and who did preach a new Gnosis. But, there was also Apollonius of Tyana.

Apollonius of Tyana

He was born in the 3rd or 4th year B.C. in Tyana in Cappadocia.

At age 16, he apparently became a disciple of Pythagoras, renouncing flesh, wine, and women (so he obviously could not have been that clever). He wore no shoes and let his hair and beard grow long - the first hippy.

He soon became a reformer and fixed his abode in the Temple of Aesculapius, who was a serpent healing deity and is still seen in the sky as Ophiucus, the serpent handler. Here it was said that many sick people came to be cured by him, and so we can only conclude that he learned the methods of healing from this serpent-worshipping cult.

Apollonius was claimed to have been a wise man, which is probably due to the fact that the Nagas of Kashmir in India taught him. These Nagas were the followers of the serpent cult found across the globe and often known in the West as Ophites - the very early Christian Gnostics who perpetuated the hidden wisdom of unification of the opposites.

These Ophites were also connected to the Essene community, otherwise known as followers of Isis and who worshipped the serpent, and who are picked out by scholars to be the very people who created the Christ myth.

The biographer of Apollonius, Philostratos, tells us of his journey to Kashmir and the "emerald valley set in a rim of pearls" and of the tales that Apollonius told to his trusted friend, Damus, of dragons that lived in the hills, meaning the Naga serpent sages.

The hill where these wise men lived was defended on all sides by immense piles of rocks. As soon as the travelers had dismounted, a messenger from one of the Masters appeared, wearing, of all things, a serpentine Caduceus on his brow indicating the 6th chakra of the kundalini or coiled serpent enlightenment process.

Platitudes were given, and in conversation, Apollonius learned that these Nagas had delivered their wisdom to the Egyptians and that Cush,

"was inhabited by the Ethiopians, an Indian nation."

We can only take this to mean that the idea of serpent-worship found a brotherhood in Ethiopia, and it only became named after the serpent following influence from the Naga sages of India.

Apollonius more than passed on wisdom wherever he went, and according to many he lived to be well over 100 years old. Others say that he never died at all, but simply disappeared from view, much like Nagajurna (who gained his wisdom from the same sources and is a possible original of John). This idea of never dying often tends to imply that the "secret Gnostic wisdom" of the sage continued in a sect of some kind - in this case, most likely the Gnostic Ophites.

According to theosophist H.P. Blavatsky, a wise prince of India, a Naga, skilled in magic, made seven rings for the seven planets, which he gave to Apollonius. The great sage wore one for every day, and it was via these, it is said, that he maintained good health and long life. Of course, it may be that he was very small, lived in a mound, and was called Bilbo.

In the Valley of Kashmir, where Apollonius went, there is a place called SriNagar, meaning serpent king.

Founded by the Buddhist King Asoka in 300 B.C. there is a local tradition that a great sage or adept came from Europe in the 1st century and eventually died there. Some have said that this was Apollonius, others that it was Jesus himself. There may be some truth in this, as Philostratos does mention a "Temple of the Sun," which matches very closely with one just a few miles away from SriNagar called the Temple of Martland.

Aurelian vowed to erect temples and statues to his honor, "for was there ever any thing among men more holy, venerable, noble, and divine than Apollonius? He restored life to the dead; he did and spoke many things beyond human reach" (The Magus by Francis Barrett).

Truly, temples and statues were erected to Apollonius in many places, including his own town of Tyana, even though later Christians destroyed many of them. Unlike Jesus, there is evidence to prove that Apollonius actually existed. As Moncure Conway said in his book Modern Thought, "The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus." Even though they were writing about a man with no provenance.

In the fourth gospel it is said: "There are also many other things that Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."

The library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us: All these books relate to a person concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of contemporary information - not one!

Nobody can say with any conviction in truth, and not faith, that Jesus was a real person.

Rostau Modern Mound

On the other hand and by accepted tradition, Apollonius was born in the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject.

In the Augustan age, historians flourished; poets, orators, critics, and travelers abounded. Yet not one of them mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident of his life. Jesus left us nothing in writing, although there is a growing speculation that the Gospel of Thomas was written by his hand. This is growing due to modern Christian propaganda. If, indeed, he existed, then he traveled only in Judea and Egypt.

Apollonius traveled extensively and wrote extensively.

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius admitted that it was to Apollonius that he owed his own philosophy, and erected temples and statues in his honor. No statues or temples were erected to Jesus.

Faust said, "Everyone knows that the Gospels were written neither by Jesus nor by his apostles, but long after their time by some unknown persons, who, judging well that they would hardly be believed when telling of things they had not seen themselves, headed their narratives with the names of the apostles or disciples contemporaneous with the latter."

Conversely, the written record of the life of Apollonius is very sound, and Philostratos, who wrote the Life of Apollonius, was the close friend of Damus, who had related the whole thing in person.

Philostratos said:

Some consider him as one of the Magi, because he conversed with the Magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of India and the Gymnosophists of Egypt. But even his wisdom is reviled, as being acquired by the magic art, so erroneous are the opinions formed of him.

Whereas Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus, though they conversed with the same Magi, and advanced many paradoxical sentiments, have not fallen under the like imputation.

Even Plato, who traveled in Egypt, and blended with his doctrines many opinions collected there from the priests and prophets, incurred not such a suspicion, though above all men on account of his superior wisdom.

But the end was near.

The very fact that Apollonius was in danger of usurping the "idea" of Christ with his own "factual" life caused much consternation among the early Christians. Justin Martyr, one of the Church Fathers of the 2nd century, said,

"How is it that the talismans by Apollonius have power over certain members of creation, for they prevent, as we have seen, the fury of the waves, the violence of the winds, and the attacks of wild beasts. And whilst Our Lord's miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested in present facts, so as to lead astray all beholders?"

The book by Philostratos was therefore, and not surprisingly, kept back from translation and distribution.

In fact, the books of the New Testament did not appear until at the very least 100 years after the Life of Apollonius. Even the birth of Apollonius bears some remarkable similarities to the fictional life of Christ.

While his mother was pregnant with Apollonius, Proteus, the Egyptian god appeared to her and said,

"Thou shalt bring forth me!"

The mother of Apollonius was to bring forth a god.

Incidentally, Proteus was known to take the form of a snake, and so wisdom gave birth to the real Christ.

Perhaps the fact that so much was written about Apollonius made it impossible to "use" him as the new religious icon. The new creation of the Christian Church needed a fresh start, which would include as many elements of other Pagan beliefs as possible in order to maximize its effectiveness. According to Phillimore, Apollonius actually founded a church and a community, made up of his disciples.

It is highly likely that these were connected to a branch of the Essene, known as the Therapeuts and Nazarenes.

Indeed there was a group known as the Apolloniei, the adherents of Apollonius, who actually survived some centuries after his death. These constituted what became the Christian Church, after the Council of Nicaea - so Apollonius did indeed begin Christianity, based upon serpentine myths and traditions of the oldest order.

Eunapius stated that Philostratos should have called his book "The Sojourning of a God Among Men." Instead Philostratos' book was titled the Life of Apollonius - and once the decision had been made to plump for the newly created Christ, the name Apollonius was repressed. It is basically because of books such as the one of Philostratos that the ancient libraries at places such as Alexandria were torched. Destroy the evidence of the opposition and there appears to be no opposition.

As Dr. Lardner pointed out in his book, Credibility of the Gospels:

It is manifest, therefore, that Philostratos compared Apollonius and Pythagoras; but I do not see that he endeavored to make him a rival of JesusChrist. Philostratos had never once mentioned our Savior, or the Christians, his followers; neither in this long work, nor in the Lives of the Sophists...

There is not so much as an obscure or general description of any men met with by him, whom any can suspect to be Christians of any denomination, either Catholics or heretics.

However, the same is true of Apollonius, who is not mentioned in the New Testament. Or is he?

In 1st Corinthians 3:3–6 it says,

"for while one saith, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who, then, is Paul, and whom Apollos, but ministers, by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase."

I could so easily have overlooked this had it not been for a chance discovery of an ancient version of 1st Corinthians found in a French monastery by a Huguenot soldier entitled the Codex Bezae.

The name Apollos is spelled Apollonius! In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the name Apollo in this context can also mean Apollonius. Indeed this Apollos was said to have even visited Paul (the apostle who did not suffer from snakebites) and he was called an Alexandrian Jew. Now we can understand how Paul managed to "see" the Lord on the road to Damascus.

It is possible that Apollonius brought back a new gospel of Chrishna or Christna from the Kashmir interlude, and it was this that gave birth to the Christ of Chrishna and the idea of Christ being the serpent god.

In many respects this answers the issue of Jesus marrying Mary, as this tradition of the uniting of opposites is most profound in the Indian kundalini expressed through the rising serpents upon the rod, which is the third force. This rod became the tree or cross in Christianity with the male Jesus and the female Mary both in association.

The truth of the Da Vinci Code is more real than people know. Jesus and Mary did marry, in the Gnostic sense and not the literal sense. They did spawn a child and he was known simply as Gnosis.

However, the evil twin brother known as Catholicism tried to wipe him out, as Seth tried to destroy Osiris, or Mordred killed Arthur, or the sheriff of Nottingham killed Robin. In the end, Seth, Mordred, and the sheriff were themselves brought down, so what will be the verdict on the Catholic Church?

It is possible that a Gnostic revival could occur now that the Da Vinci Code has done us the service of raising the questions of the doubtful validity of the literal Jesusmyth. It is possible, but, with greed, lust, and hatred being powerful tools in the mind of men, I doubt it. Maybe, by understanding that religion should be more than the rules written by man, we will question our existence again - looking for an answer we thought we already had.

At the center of each one of us, at the very core, there is a place where we become conscious of our unconscious state.

Where we wake up to a whole new world that resides within us. This inner world is at peace and is in perfect balance. It is interconnected through the world of the subatomic particle to the very universe. Just as our eyes see the sun, our unconscious senses feel the warmth and absorb the goodness, without our conscious mind giving it a second thought.

There is a whole world within us untapped and unknown to modern science, but one that was perfectly understood by the ancients, and they left clues for us to decipher. They understood how to remain conscious and to perceive the unconscious world of senses, and they gave voice and imagery to their experiences, and these became spirits, demons, and gods. We have a lot yet to learn, that has already been forgotten.

There is a world full of Gnosis awaiting us.

The question now is, whom does it serve?