Templar Globe

Karla Mauerova, a member of the Grail Movement Cult in the Czech Republic, admitted in court this week that she partially skinned her sons and fed the raw flesh to relatives. The Grail Movement Cult is a religious sect that has been around since the 1940s, inspired by the book In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message, a work by Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, and published under the pseudonym, Abd-ru-shin. The Grail Movement Cult has approximately 20,000 members worldwide, but operates predominantly in Western Europe. The Grail Movement Cult’s members believe In the Light of Truth to be more important than the bible, but the book still extols the teachings of Jesus Christ. Her affiliation with the Grail Movement Cult may have nothing to do with the horrific child abuse and cannibalism that took place, but as with many cults, abhorrent group behavior often goes hand in hand with Cult living, and oftentimes sub-groups become a perversion of the original cult.

The relatives who consumed the flesh of the young boys, Ondrej and Jakub, were also members of this Grail Movement Cult. The boys were caged, and made to stand for days in their own urine. Karla Mauerova installed monitors so she could watch the confinement and the torture of her sons. Besides the skinning, allegations of sexual abuse surfaced in court as well.

The torture and abuse were discovered when a neighbor installed a monitor in his own home to monitor his newborn child. Rather than seeing the face of his infant however, the man was horrified to receive a feed featuring the imprisonment, torture and humiliation of Ondrej and Jakub. Authorities were contacted and Mauerova and the other members of the Grail Movement Cult were exposed.

Not only did the members of the Grail Movement Cult inflict torture upon the boys, but it is alleged they forced Ondrej and Jakub to mutilate themselves, giving the boys knives with which to cut themselves.

Mauerova claims that Barbora Skrlova, another member of the Grail Movement Cult, brainwashed her into confining and torturing her sons. Skrlova, 34 was found at the scene, in with the boys, and was at first assumed to be another victim, described as looking like a 13 year old girl. The mastermind behind the whole thing is believed to be a man known only as “Doctor”, the mysterious leader of the Grail Movement Cult. Nothing more is known about the man called Doctor at this time. Mauerova’s trial is still underway with no verdict yet delivered in the horrific case.

AC Press

La fortaleza de Montségur es el paradigma histórico de la resistencia cátara, la herejía que arraigó en el sur de Francia durante la Edad Media. Actualmente, las ruinas de este castillo son la culminación de una ruta que parte de las tierras catalanas y que constituye una verdadera peregrinación por los santuarios y paisajes que fueron testigos de la Cruzada que los exterminó

El camino de los hombres buenos es un itinerario de 189 kilómetros que discurre por las rutas utilizadas por los cátaros durante los siglos XII y XIV, cuando huían de la persecución de la cruzada albigense y de la Inquisición. La senda empieza en el santuario de Queralt, en Berga, termina en el emblemático castillo de Montségur, en territorio francés, y puede efectuarse en coche, en bicicleta, a pie o a caballo. El Camí dels Bons Homes –como ha sido bautizado– ha sido institucionalizado como un sendero turístico de Gran Recorrido (GR 107) que atraviesa villas medievales, iglesias románicas y castillos. Además de su notorio interés histórico, la ruta nos permite contemplar paisajes encantadores, ya que transcurre por la zona protegida del Parque Natural del Cadí-Moixeró.

La religión de «los puros»

El catarismo es una doctrina procedente de una corriente de origen búlgaro conocida como bogomila. Se trata de una religión cristiana, con una interpretación muy peculiar de las Sagradas Escrituras, basada en el dualismo, que percibe la Creación como el escenario de una batalla entre los principios del Bien y del Mal. Esta doctrina arraigó con fuerza en el sur de Francia. Se dio a conocer en un concilio cátaro celebrado en la ciudad de Albí, en 1165, por lo que pronto sus seguidores fueron conocidos como albigenses. Sin embargo, ellos se consideraban cristianos u «hombres buenos». Predicaban a los humildes en plazas y mercados, aunque si eran invitados por los grandes señores para adoctrinar en sus casas a familiares y criados, aceptaban con agrado. Enseñaban el amor, la tolerancia y la libertad. Decían que Cristo no se encarnó entre los hombres, pues en sus concepciones la materia era una creación del Mal. Para los cátaros –término que según los expertos significa «puro»–, el Jesús que vieron los apóstoles y crucificaron los romanos no era sino una apariencia angelical engañosa. Pero el Cristo verdadero nunca fue crucificado ni sepultado. Estas ideas, como es lógico, les valieron la condena de Roma y una implacable persecución.

A principios del siglo XIII, el papa Inocencio III tomó conciencia del peligro que suponía para los intereses de la Iglesia la expansión de la herejía cátara en Occitania. Los intentos por convertir a los herejes habían sido vanos. Ante este fracaso y con el apoyo del rey Felipe Augusto de Francia –que deseaba hacerse con el territorio occitano a toda costa–, el Papa proclamó la «cruzada contra los albigenses».

Quienes formaran parte de la misma serían absueltos de sus pecados y se garantizaba la entrada al Paraíso de los fallecidos en combate. Los señores feudales que se sumaran a la iniciativa recibirían, además, las mismas prebendas que los cruzados en Tierra Santa. Sólo así se entiende la aparición de figuras como Simón de Montfort que escondían su desmesurada ambición bajo pretexto de erradicar la herejía.

Las tropas se organizaron bajo el mando del legado pontificio Arnaud Amaury y avanzaron hacia el sur por el valle del Ródano. El 22 de julio de 1209 los cruzados entraron en Béziers, matando a todos sus habitantes, sin distinción de creencias. Las crónicas aseguran que Amaury ordenó: «Matadlos a todos que Dios ya reconocerá a los suyos en el Cielo». Tras la masacre, los cruzados pusieron rumbo a Carcasona, donde resistía Raymond Roger Trencavel. Éste murió en prisión, después de ser desposeído de todas sus tierras. Más tarde caerían las plazas de Foix, Carbona y Comminges.

La muerte de Inocencio III hizo perder ímpetu a la cruzada y algunos de sus más importantes líderes abandonaron la empresa. Como consecuencia de este hecho el catarismo resurgió con fuerza. Pero en 1226, Luis VIII se lanzó a una nueva cruzada, dicen que influido por su esposa Blanca de Castilla, quien reivindicaba los territorios del sur para la Corona de Francia. Al parecer, sería ella quien habría instado al Papa Gregorio IX a crear la Inquisición. El terror se apoderó de Occitania. Los cátaros solicitaron protección a Raymond Péreilhe, señor de Montségur, y se prepararon para defenderse y resistir.

Esta legendaria fortaleza cayó en 1244. Y once años más tarde, en 1255, corrieron la misma suerte Quéribus y Puylaurens. La guerra había terminado con el extermino de la Iglesia de los hombres buenos, o «del amor», como también fue conocida. Con ella desapareció una tradición cristiana que llevaba su respeto a la vida hasta el extremo de abstenerse de matar o maltratar a los animales, y de cuya enorme piedad dejó testimonio incluso San Bernardo de Claraval, después de intentar en vano que renunciaran a su fe para abrazar el catolicismo.

El paisaje y su historia

Muchas de las rutas que hoy conforman el camino de «los hombres buenos» eran senderos de huida de los cátaros hacia Cataluña. Allí estuvo exiliado en 1240 Raymond Trencavel, un hijo de Raymond Roger que intentó en vano recuperar Carcasona. También fue utilizado por los tejedores cátaros y conocido como «la ruta de la lana», que llega hasta Sabadell o, más al sur, hasta Morella, en Castellón.

La senda señalizada hoy por el Consejo regulador del camí dels bons homes, entidad formada por diversos consejos locales, diputaciones y entidades culturales, discurre por las comarcas catalanas del Berguedà, la Cerdanya, el Alt Urgell, el Solsonés y el departamento francés del Ariège.

Parte del santuario de Queralt, en la cueva donde fue hallada su virgen románica presidida por una hermosa cruz cátara y, desde allí, se dirige a la pequeña localidad de Gòsol, en medio de un paisaje bellísimo presidido por el macizo del Pedraforca, un lugar mágico relacionado con la brujería catalana desde la Edad Media. Una vez en Gòsol podemos visitar las ruinas de su castillo o contemplar las tumbas del cementerio anejo, con numerosas cruces cátaras y templarias. Después recorreremos por carretera Gòsol, Saldes y Guardiola de Berguedà, hasta llegar a Bagá, en el límite norte de la provincia de Barcelona. Esta villa fue el feudo de los barones de Pinòs, señores de un extenso territorio que iba del Baridà y la Cerdanya hasta el Alt Berguedà. Algunos han relacionado a Galcerán de Pinòs con el fundador de los templarios Hugues de Payns, en una polémica que dura hasta nuestros días. En Bagà podemos visitar el centro medieval, el museo de los cátaros o la iglesia de San Esteban, donde se puede admirar una pequeña cruz bizantina del siglo X u XI, que fue llevada a Bagà por los cruzados. También cabe destacar la vidriera que representa «El rescate de las cien doncellas», concretamente el momento en que San Esteban libera a Galcerán de Pinòs de una prisión sarracena.

La ruta continúa por la comarca de la Cerdanya, a la que accederemos cruzando la sierra del Cadí por el Coll de Pendís, a 1764 metros de altitud y, desde allí, cruzaremos la frontera hasta Porté-Puymorens, L’Hospitalet y Ax les Thermes. En este punto ya estamos en el departamento francés del Ariège, donde nos aguardan impresionantes castillos, como Puylaurens que, junto a Quéribus, resistió hasta 1256.

Tras hacer una parada en el castillo de Puivert, escenario del film de Roman Polansky La novena puerta, y cuna de los trovadores occitanos, encaminamos nuestros pasos hacia la culminación de la ruta: Montségur.

El castillo de Montségur fue construido entre 1205 y 1211 en lo alto de una montaña extremadamente escarpada y de difícil acceso. Quienes lo «descubrieron», sin embargo, no fueron los cátaros. Desde tiempo inmemorial este lugar era considerado sagrado. Algunos autores, como el fallecido «papa cátaro» René Nelli, suponen que la fortificación fue erigida sobre un antiguo templo solar. La cima de este enorme bloque calcáreo se alza 1207 metros sobre el nivel del mar. El edificio está orientado astronómicamente. Nelli apunta el importante papel jugado por la figura del pentágono en la simbología cátara. Y lo cierto es que este castillo está construido sobre un plano pentagonal. Desde el interior, recuerda la forma de un gigantesco cofre. ¿Fue ésta la última morada del Grial, como algunos sostienen?

En cualquier caso, quienes asuman a pie los casi doscientos kilómetros del «peregrinaje cátaro», hallarán sin duda su particular Grial en el esfuerzo, la dedicación y la constancia, valores necesarios para llegar a cualquier Verdad trascendente.

The focal point of the cold, bare room is a stone table on which rests a plain cup held in a jewelled stand.

It seems ordinary, but it’s anything but. “This monastery was a resting place of the Holy Grail,” our guide Belen Bistue says casually. “It’s now in Valencia Cathedral; that is a replica.”

For anyone steeped in the many and varied legends of the Grail – the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper – it’s a momentous announcement. What’s more, there’s not a trace of doubt in Bistue’s voice, despite the fact that the Valencia Grail – a Middle Eastern chalice and jewelled medieval stand – is only one of several claimants in various parts of Europe.

Of them all, however, this particular Grail probably has the best provenance. It is believed to have been in Huesca Cathedral in about 553 AD, but following the Muslim invasion in the 8th century, was hidden away in various places in the region, including this remote monastery about an hour’s drive north of Huesca. San Juan de la Pena possessed the cup from about 1071 to 1372 when it was the medieval equivalent to a tourist attraction.

A major pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain runs through the area and pilgrims would stop at the monastery, hoping for a glimpse of the Holy Grail.

Built underneath a huge, overhanging rock, the monastery is high up in the mountains, and about 30 kilometres southwest of Jaca. The small lower church is the only part left of the original building – the monastery was founded in 920 – while on the second level there’s a pantheon with the tombs of Aragonese rulers such as Pedro I and Ramiro I. One of the monastery’s best features, however, is the lovely cloister, built in the 12th century.

Huesca Cathedral doesn’t capitalize on the Grail legend but does contain several items of interest, including a magnificent alabaster retable created by sculptor Damian Forment in the 16th century.

“It is the most famous thing we have in Huesca,” says local guide Ismael Navarro. It also has an impressive portico dominated by the Virgin Mary and with 14 stone figures either side of her.

Beneath her is a female sinner, identifiable by her long hair and exposed breast.

Entering the cathedral, there is (or so we were told) a sculpture high on top of one of the pillars showing a man and woman “misbehaving.” In what way, I can’t tell you – it’s impossible to make out any details with the naked eye.

The 11th century Church of San Pedro el Viejo – one of the oldest in Spain – is also thought to have housed the Grail for a while. It contains the tombs of Ramiro II (the Monk) as well as that of King Alfonso the Warrior, and also has a shivery little chapel specifically designed for exorcisms.

Best of all is its Romanesque cloister, with each of its wonderfully carved pillars showing what Navarro describes “the slippery slope of sex” – scene after scene of women tormented by sexual obsession, temptation, depravity and suffering. It’s strong stuff.

Talking of legends, a bloody drama orchestrated by Ramiro the Monk took place in the 12th century palace of the kings of Aragon, now the provincial museum.

Ramiro was being treated with contempt by the nobles, said Navarro. “He asked his spiritual master what to do about the rebels and his adviser didn’t say anything. He just went into a garden, took out a knife and cut the heads off cauliflowers.”

Ramiro got the message. He told the nobles that he wanted them to help him make a new bell and summoned them to a meeting. As soon as they arrived, Ramiro had their heads chopped off, then arranged all 12 of them in the shape of a bell.

The legend – of doubtful authenticity – is known as the Bell of Huesca. Today the room is used for weddings and other, more peaceful purposes.

In The Star

Rosslyn Chapel has chalked up a £1.35m surplus due to the stream of visitors who came to see the building in the wake of the Da Vinci Code film.

The 15th-century Scottish church, which featured in the controversial hit movie, saw the number of visitors climb from just 30,000 a year in 2000 to 120,000 in 2005/06 and 176,000 in 2006/07.

The cash is being ploughed into speeding up a planned £12.75m renovation of the building and a revamped visitor centre.

But the managers of the attraction, entrance to which costs £7 for adults and £5 for children, believe that Da Vinci Code fever has peaked and that annual visitor numbers are due to fall by about 20,000 a year.

They believe that the number of visitors in 2007/08 will fall to 155,000 as the effect of the film wears off – although numbers are still well above the annual target of 80,000.

Colin Glynne-Percy, the director of Rosslyn Chapel, said: “We think it’s clear now that the initial interest in the aftermath of the film has peaked. If you look at the figures for the August bank holiday, they were 31,000 in 2006 and 29,000 in 2007.

“We did achieve the aim of getting visitor numbers up and we want to make it an essential destination for visitors to Scotland.”

He explained the takings were being used to speed up a major series of works to the building.

Glynne-Percy said: “The money raised may only be used for the upkeep of the building. The renovations will be completed within five years. Without the extra money, they would have taken considerably longer. Several years longer.”

The chapel features in both the Da Vinci Code book and the film. It emerges in the film as the ultimate location of the Holy Grail.

Among Rosslyn’s many intricate carvings are a sequence of 213 cubes or boxes protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. It is unknown whether these have any particular meaning.

Many people have attempted to find information coded into them, but as yet no interpretation has proven conclusive.

By Murdo MacLeod

Rock-and-Rollers and hippies have long had a soft spot for the decorative appeal of William Morris’s Gothic Revival, with its fair-haired maidens in flowing robes and its air of medieval mysticism. So it is not surprising that when Paul Reeves decided in 1973 to break out of designing avant-garde clothes for David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and The Who, he started selling Arts-and-Crafts furniture to some of the most famous musicians of the day, including George Harrison and Roger Daltrey.

Mr Reeves has organised a week-long selling exhibition and an auction at Sotheby’s next month. They will show just what a good eye he has, and how crucial he has been in encouraging furniture collectors to buy British design from the Gothic Revival onwards, a turning point in western architecture and interior design. About 120 items from Mr Reeves’s personal collection will be for sale at fixed prices. Another 120 pieces from other collectors—many of whom originally bought them from Mr Reeves—will be sold at auction.

Many of the period’s best works found their way to America. Mr Reeves helped collectors and museums alike—including the Getty brothers, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Wolfonsian-Florida International University Museum in Miami Beach—build substantial collections of fine 19th- and 20th-century British design, centred around such luminaries as A.W.N. Pugin, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Ernest Race and William Morris.

Mr Reeves initially faced a small market, but as this work has become more popular, prices have risen dramatically. A magnificent Anglo-Japanese sideboard by Edward William Godwin, an architect and designer who built houses for Oscar Wilde and James Whistler, sold last year for nearly £1m ($1.9m) to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Next month’s sale features a number of Godwin pieces, including an ebonised hanging bookcase, estimated at £60,000-80,000, and an ebonised chair, estimated at £10,000-12,000. But the star piece will undoubtedly be “The Quest for the Holy Grail: The Achievement” (pictured), a 25-foot (7.7-metre) tapestry based on the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Designed by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, a leading pre-Raphaelite artist, and woven by William Morris, it represents one of the two artists’ principal collaborations.

William Knox D’Arcy, an Australian mining engineer, commissioned the tapestry in 1890. It was the most important piece in a set of six hangings made for the dining room of his grand house, Stanmore Hall, on the outskirts of London.

It has only been sold twice: once in 1920 after D’Arcy died, when the whole set was sold to the Duke of Westminster, and again in 1978, when the current duke sold three of the hangings, thus breaking up the set. On that occasion, Mr Reeves bought “The Achievement” and one of the other pieces for Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin’s guitarist. The third hanging, which is much smaller than “The Achievement”, was sold again at Christie’s in 2004 for nearly £390,000.

“The Achievement”, which Mr Page is selling because it is too big to fit into his new home, is expected to fetch more than £1m. Nothing like that price has ever been paid for a Burne-Jones tapestry, but there are many reasons why this piece will be eagerly fought over. “The Quest for the Holy Grail” was woven in several editions, one as late as the 1920s.

But only the original set, of which this is the most important piece, retains the lovely details of Burne-Jones’s faces and hands. In the later editions, the shading is far more generic, giving the tapestries a blander look. Even the carpet of flowers in the foreground, which had been traced for the weavers’ guidance by Morris’s assistant, J.H. Dearle, is virtually unrecognisable.

Burne-Jones resented Dearle’s floral foregrounds, complaining that they cluttered up his designs. No one, however, could deny their botanical accuracy. In 1895, soon after the tapestries were completed, D’Arcy’s gardener, a man by the wonderful name of W. Tidy, studied Dearle’s flowers and was able to identify every one: daffodil, saponaira, campanula, dianthus, foxglove, hawkweed, tulip, convolvulus, snowdrop, lychnis, winter aconite, celandine and poppy. Such intricate details make this particular work a glory of its kind.

“The Best of British: Design from the 19th and 20th Centuries” will be on view at Sotheby’s from March 14th. The auction is on March 20th.

in The Economist

Like the unicorn, the white stag (or hart) is the stuff of legends. Its origins lie deep within the ancient Celts and pre-Indo-European cultures. When a rare white stag was spotted, it was always the sign the otherworld was near for man or kingdom.
The white hart also appears when someone is transgressing a taboo, as it does in the Holy Grail legends. The knights of King Arthur often encountered the white hart on their quest for the fabled lost Grail.

Unfortunately, the last white stag in Britain was shot by poachers in October 2007 on the border between Devon and Cornwall. It was found headless. Miraculously, another of these very rare creatures has just been sighted and photographed in the Highlands, but its location is being kept secret for obvious reasons.

What does the advent of yet another white hart portend for Britain and Scotland? Is there bad news to come – recession, falling house prices, or Tony Blair becoming president of Europe? Are we trespassing where we have no business – Iraq and Afghanistan?

Or is it a sign that Scotland is being led to an unexpected victory in the Six Nations? Time will tell. But as the poet Ezra Pound wrote:

When the white hart breaks his cover

And the white wind breaks the morn.

‘Tis the white stag, Fame, we’re a-hunting,

Bid the world’s hounds come to horn!

in The Scotsman

Head of rural district Hrunamannahreppur Ísólfur Gylfi Pálmason believes an ancient knife found in Kjölur mountain pass in 1990 in Iceland’s central highlands could lead the way to a secret underground dome where some believe the Holy Grail is being kept.

“The knife was discovered […] in a place where there is a good overlook of Skipholtskrókur, where the dome is believed to be located,” Pálmason told Fréttabladid. “A guard may have stood there to watch over the place.”

Pálmason has authorized a team of scientists, led by Italian cryptographer Giancarlo Gianazza, to search for an underground dome in Skipholtskrókur which they believe the Knights Templar created in the 13th century for hiding the Holy Grail.

“Gianazza has submitted some very credible theories on this matter,” Pálmason said. “The ancient knife […] may support his theories further.”

A group of scientists believe the Holy Grail and other lost objects, which according to Christian mythology were guarded by the Knights Templar, may be located in the rural district Hrunamannahreppur in southwest Iceland.

“There are strong indications that the solution to this mystery may be found in Iceland,” architect Thórarinn Thórarinsson wrote in a letter to the local authority of Hrunamannahreppur, requesting permission for himself and Italian cryptographer Giancarlo Gianazza to search for the treasure in the region, visir.is reports.

According to visir.is, Gianazza believes to have found important clues to where the Holy Grail is hidden in poems by Dante and artwork by Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance painters. His research has led him to conclude that the treasure is located in a five-meter-large secret underground dome by Skipholtskrókar near Kjölur mountain pass.

One of the clues is a consistency between da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper and an aerial photograph of the area. (Click here to see a picture overlaying the painting and the aerial photograph.)

The theory is that the Knights Templar came to Iceland in 1217 to find a hiding place for their treasure and that Snorri Sturluson, the author of Prose Edda and other mediaeval scripts, helped them create the underground dome in Iceland’s central highlands.

“We have investigated that place since 2004 with field work both in summer and winter and undertaken extensive geological measurements,” Thórarinsson said in his letter. “The information that we have gathered during these trips as well as further research of original sources give us reason to investigate the area in more detail.”

Thórarinn was given permission by the local authority of Hrunamannahreppur to dig a two-meter-deep and five-meter-wide ditch by Skipholtskrókar with the condition that the ditch will be closed after the research is done.

“Although we have our doubts, we think this project is exciting,” said head of the local authority Ísólfur Gylfi Pálmason. “It is at least a different kind of project than what we have to deal with on a daily basis.”

in Iceland Review

La pequeña tocaba el piano intentando que aquellos oficiales nazis no descubrieran su secreto. En un céntrico piso de Madrid en 1940, nuestra protagonista amenizaba con su música las reuniones de los militares alemanes de visita en España quienes, ajenos a la discreta testigo, conversaban sobre operaciones militares, estrategias y otros asuntos de su gobierno. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, Albert Speer, arquitecto del Führer, y Wilhelm Canaris, Jefe de la Inteligencia Militar, solían frecuentar el lugar.

Aquel salón fue testigo de conversaciones por las que los aliados habrían pagado cualquier cifra. El secreto de la niña consistía en que entendía perfectamente el alemán, aprendido de su abuela austríaca. Muchos años después, ya anciana, los investigadores David Zurdo y Ángel Gutiérrez dieron con ella, rescatando de su memoria interesantes datos sobre aquel piso franco de los nazis en España. Entre lo que allí pudo escuchar destaca el relato sobre una expedición que los nazis preparaban a las Islas Canarias en busca de algún tipo de tesoro. En La Vida Secreta de Franco, los autores citan la anécdota, asegurando que se había fletado un submarino para realizar la misión, aunque lamentablemente la pista acaba ahí, sin posibilidad de seguirla, debido al carácter fortuito del comentario de los oficiales. La naturaleza del tesoro y los detalles de la supuesta expedición quedan en el ámbito de la especulación. No obstante, es un valioso dato que aporta una pieza más al rompecabezas de la intrahistoria del nazismo –en la que anidaron creencias ocultistas y empresas peregrinas– situando a Canarias en el tablero de ajedrez pangermanista del nacionalsocialismo.

Los guanches arios

Antes de sumergirnos en tan sugerente tema, debemos detenernos en el documentado interés que los nazis mostraron por los guanches, los antiguos pobladores de Canarias. Y es que, aunque la conquista de Canarias no concluyó hasta finales del siglo XV, desde al menos dos siglos antes se acumulaban las referencias sobre su existencia y las peculiaridades de sus pobladores. Los aborígenes canarios eran descritos en aquellas primeras noticias –como las aportadas por Giovanni Bocaccio– de manera un tanto romántica, realzando sus virtudes y poniendo de manifiesto su desconcertante refinamiento y desarrollo social y religioso, frente a las condiciones casi salvajes en las que se veían obligados a vivir por la limitación de recursos. Bocaccio explicó que eran de gran estatura, rubios y de ojos azules, estableciendo unos rasgos corroborados por otros cronistas en épocas posteriores y que, como el lector adivinará, se adaptan al prototipo ario que tanto codició Heinrich Himmler para las SS. Se trataba de una civilización desarrollada, a la que el medio natural había paralizado y hecho retroceder. Para cuando la arqueología y la antropología pusieron las cosas en su sitio, contextualizando estos rasgos predominantes dentro de otros mucho «más comunes», la figura del «buen salvaje» ya había cautivado a los estudiosos germanos, que no tuvieron reparo en adjudicarles un origen centroeuropeo, contemplándoles como descendientes de los pueblos que inspiraron la heroicidad de los mitos teutónicos.

Un papel destacado en esta vinculación entre guanches y germanos la estableció Franz von Löcher, escritor y viajero alemán que, por encargo de Luis II de Baviera, viajó a Canarias en 1873. Al más puro estilo de los nacionalistas que apenas dos décadas más tarde darían forma al movimiento ariosofista, del que se nutriría el ocultismo nazi, Löcher formuló en su libro Los germanos en las Islas Canarias (1886) la teoría de que los aborígenes isleños eran de origen germano y que, de hecho, guanches –o guarache como los cita– era una deformación del término wandches, que significa «vándalos».

Según su tesis, en el año 492 d.C. el pueblo de los Vándalos, de origen germano, ocupó el Norte de África conquistando Cartago y doblegando a los bizantinos. El general bizantino Belisario se tomó la revancha hacia el 533, aunque un nutrido grupo de vándalos logró escapar de las represalias. Parte de ellos se habrían establecido en el sur de Marruecos y el resto prosiguió su éxodo hasta alcanzar Canarias tras divisar el Teide. Su superioridad cultural y militar no encontró resistencia entre los nativos que ya habitaban las islas, imponiéndose también racialmente, aunque paulatinamente entrarían en retroceso, según Löcher, «al perder el uso de los metales y la construcción de embarcaciones (…). Su lengua se anquilosó y su cristianismo se deformó».

Ignoramos si su obra fue conocida por Hitler o los altos mandos del nazismo. Pero su difusión, en un momento en el que el pangermanismo nacionalista y la ariosofía cobraban fuerza, no debe ser despreciada y constituye un ejemplo del interés de los científicos alemanes de la etapa pre-nazi por la población prehispánica de Canarias. Además, sin ser un autor de culto, la obra de Löcher difícilmente podía haber pasado desapercibida, teniendo en cuenta que su obra más notable llevaba el título de La importancia del pueblo alemán en la historia universal. Un interés que también se dejaría notar, ya en plena gestación del nazismo y con una documentada influencia en el mismo, en la obra del historiador Gustav Kossina, quien apuntó la existencia de una gran oleada de pueblos indio-arios que a partir del tercer milenio a.C. habían dado origen a las culturas védica, zoroastrista, megalítica, griega y romana, ocupando el África bereber y alcanzando Canarias. Aunque su propuesta fue muy criticada, en torno a su figura se creó el Instituto Arqueológico de Marburg, que gozó de la simpatía del ideólogo nazi Alfred Rosemberg, por lo que no es descabellado pensar que, para entonces, Canarias empezara a ser un objetivo de interés en la búsqueda de los orígenes de la raza aria impulsada por la organización nazi Ahnenerbe o «Herencia de los ancestros».

¿Un tesoro templario?

Al mismo tiempo, los raciólogos alemanes fijaron su atención en los guanches a través de personajes como el antropólogo Eugen Fischer, quien en los años veinte se interesó por los aborígenes canarios, estudiando sus vestigios y rastreando la supervivencia de los rasgos físicos en la población de la época. Fischer, utilizado como fuente esencial por Hitler en su Meinf Kampf, escribió sobre los guanches: «son rostros de ángulo facial muy abierto, pómulos prominentes y base de la nariz algo hundida, de tipos de huesos bastos y de gran estatura, que se distinguen perfectamente de las razas mediterráneas». Su trabajo abriría el camino al etnólogo austríaco Josef Dominik Wölfel y a la antropóloga Ilse Schwidetzky, quien estudió los restos óseos y la población viva de las islas, corroborando la pervivencia racial entre los campesinos, conclusiones que coinciden con los planteamientos de los grupos völkisch, que veían en el campesinado alemán a los auténticos guardianes de la pureza aria.

Schwidetzky, cuyo retrato ocupa un destacado lugar junto al de Fischer entre los pioneros de la investigación de los guanches en las salas del Museo Arqueológico de Tenerife, mantuvo durante su juventud una colaboración con las publicaciones raciales cercanas al nazismo. La duda radica en saber si éstos y otros estudiosos acudieron a Canarias financiados por entidades nazis o si este movimiento simplemente se aprovechó de su trabajo, descontextualizándolo a su favor como hizo con otros estudios.

En cualquier caso, resulta sugerente que los antropólogos alemanes fijaran su atención en la tipología racial de los guanches, desde antaño descritos con los rasgos del ideal de hombre ario y, simultáneamente, los grupos ocultistas ariosóficos de los que surge parte del nazismo comenzaran a reescribir la historia germana, idealizando a sus antepasados y a sus dirigentes a rastrear los vestigios allí donde fuera necesario y a recuperar su raza, que consideraban divina.

Un dato más: la supuesta vinculación de Canarias con la mítica Atlántida. Si los ocultistas nazis –y líderes como Hess, Himmler o Rosenberg– estaban convencidos del origen atlante de los arios y no descartaban la posibilidad de su supervivencia en lugares aislados ¿no implicaba esto un motivo más para buscar en Canarias?
Como se explica en otro artículo de este dossier, en 1938 el naturalista Ernst Schäfer, acompañado por el doctor Bruno Berger, buscó en el Tíbet a los ancestros de la raza aria. ¿Qué les habría impedido hacer lo mismo en Canarias? En las inmediaciones del Tíbet los ocultistas nazis también ubicaron ciudades o reinos subterráneos, que buscaron siguiendo los testimonios de quienes aseguraron haber estado en ellos. Curiosamente, en el Barranco de Badajoz, en Güímar, se sitúa un relato apócrifo sobre una expedición alemana que buscó en las entrañas de este enclave mágico la entrada a una ciudad subterránea. ¿Se podría estar refiriendo el relato de la niña con la que comenzamos este artículo a esta supuesta expedición? Es imposible saberlo, como también lo es saber sí el tesoro tenía algo que ver con unas cuartetas de Nostradamus que, presumiblemente, aluden a un tesoro en Canarias vinculado con los templarios: «Puesto tesoro Temple, ciudadanos hespéricos / en aquel retirado lugar secreto / el Temple abrir… (…) Debajo dencina Guien, del cielo cortado, no lejos de allí está escondido el tesoro que durante largos siglos había sido amontonado».

Está documentado el interés nazi por las profecías del médico francés, así como la obsesión por templarios, teutones y otras órdenes de caballería pero ¿se referían estas cuartetas a un tesoro oculto por los templarios en Canarias? La pregunta más intrigante sigue sin respuesta: ¿encontraron los nazis los que buscaban en las islas?

Reincarnation, a rebirth which involves a return to earth by the dead with the characteristics of his past, is still shrouded in mystery despite the empirical evidence often manifested in the near death experiences. How real is the belief? asks Olu Osunde.

When Ehimema 30 from Benin in Edo State came into the world like every other babies before her, the parents rejoiced to high heavens. But as the process of getting the new baby girl cleaned up continued, they expected that, at a stage, the shriek cry ought to subside or at least have a breaking point, but instead, the cry continued unabated till the next day stressing the baby beyond a tolerable level.

To save the situation, an elder in the family was called in, opening up a traditional process of calming the new born baby. On enquiry through divination, it was discovered that the non-recognition of the important position of the baby in the past world by members of the family some of whom she expected to call her name in the previous world, informed the unusual cry.

What the baby expected, it was discovered, was to be called Edede meaning old woman- a nickname she was called during her first coming and which, the divination revealed, she cherished so much.

Without hesitation or expression of disbelief, the father picked her up and sonorously called her the name repeatedly while intermittently cuddling her.

Within a few seconds and to the dismay of the people around, the baby stopped crying and the chant of praise God! rent the air.

As the situation became normal, the seer brought by the elder warned that the baby, at adult, must not be deprived of going to worship God in the church as according to him, it was part of her unfinished works in the past life.

To reincarnate is to cause to be born again in another body or form; to embody again in flesh.

In the African traditional setting, the belief is strong as contact is often made with the past in dealing with the problem of the present.

Within the traditional circle, the belief is enhanced by the seeming efficacy of the references they make to their ancestors in process of divination which often manifests in the response of the spirits of the dead to their request.

With such response of the spirits, the belief has been extended to include the potentiality of the dead to transform into another body and get born again into the same family he previously left to the world beyond. The indication of such reincarnation is often insinuated to reflect on the token of identity which the family of the reincarnate often claimed to recognise. With such recognition, the baby is thus given name that suggests or indicates that he or she reincarnated.

Example of such names are: Babatunde, Iyabo, Nore in Bini, Remilekun, Babajide etc. In the traditional setting, a lot of empirical facts derived from the experiment of having to inflict a bodily marks on a child branded Abiku has given credence to the belief in reincarnation.

In the rating of most of the traditionalists contacted, a child reborn several times could be identified with the return of the marks inflicted on him or her in the previous life. Such child usually with short span of life if not stopped spiritually according to them could continue to come and go tormenting the parents.

In the gospel of the Grail, although there are indications of their believe in such reborn, they however, made it emphatically clear that a reborn is only possible only when there is need for such person to return to earth to finish the job he or she left uncompleted.

Those who have completed their works on earth according to the Grail messengers have no business coming back to earth. To them, you come back only when your Sojourn on earth in the previous life was abruptly brought to an end. But in the word of Mr. Enoghownayeke Festus a traditionalist now a trainee pastor, “everything about being reborn or reincarnation is a ruse. Those they call by special names like Babajide are so called because their birth coincided with the death of their grandfathers or fathers as the case may be.”

Though it somewhat sounds odd to some Christians to discover that there are those amongst them who share similar belief with those they regarded as infidels believing that the bible says “it is appointed for man to die once and after death, judgement,” the conflicting issue of John being the reincarnate of Elijah poses another challenge.

For some Christians who believe in reincarnation, John that was beheaded in prison could not be saved by Christ because he was Elijah that reincarnated as John and got beheaded in fulfillment of God’s law that he who killed by the sword will die by the sword- a law some christians believe was contravened by John in his encounter with the prophets of Baal in his first coming as Elijah.

Lending voice to those who are aversed to the belief, a lecturer at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ibadan, Alhaji Ismail Oloye explained that reincarnation has no basis in Islamic religion.

He said, the spirits of those you see hovering around after death are those of Muslims who failed to adhere to the Islamic tenet that they bath with their underwear on while on earth.

According to him, a good Muslim must not bath completely naked because he or she would by so doing risk being possessed by the evil one who might get their spirits contaminated.

In Celestial Church of Christ, a white garment church, Asst superior Akolade explains that the recognition that the spirit of the dead could stray about instead of resting informs the extra-burial service the church holds after the burial of a member. “If the spirit of a dead member is seen anywhere whether in the dream, such weid appearances stopped immediately after such service he referred to as amissal.

Although the issue of reincarnation is still shrouded in mystery, what appears more real is near death experiences. There have been series of reports of some men for instance who died and were buried only to be seen far away from where they earlier lived and died living another life even with wives and children.

There was a case witnessed by this writer in Benin where an accountant, man of about 50 then, abandoned his flat for the church the night his dead father physically appeared to him in his bedroom wrapping around himself the white cloth with which he was buried about a year to the time of the incident. He ran to the church when he heard that the strange visitor had banged the outer door and disappeared into the thin air.

In similar circumstance, there have also been reported cases of a man’s spirit returning to his dead body after an accident.

Such repossession of one’s body by a departed spirit even when doctor had certified the person dead has continued to rekindle the belief in life after death.

In India, it is even believed that humanbeing can be a reincarnate of god or goddess as the case may be. For instance, a two-year old India girl born with four arms and four legs and who was recently operated upon is said to be a reincarnation of a goddess.

Relating how important it is to know one’s past life, some California Psychics say it can be valuable information for living a better life here on earth right now.”

The soul, according to them inevitably comes into this world with past life experience or memory adding that the ultimate benefit of knowing about our past life is to become self-aware.

Being aware of the past, according to Astrologer Rainbow is one way to look at the soul’s past behaviour in terms of fears, weaknesses and challenges as well as gifts and strengths. She said, “recognising soulmates, understanding how we were connected to a particular place or person can be helpful in understanding our relationships in this life time.”

According to her,” people contact me wanting to know why they cannot disentangle themselves from a bad relationship. As I look at the situation I can often see the Karmic link.”

“When you meet someone with whom you have a strong immediate connection or bond that is almost a guarantee of a past life connection,” explains Jesse a tarot reader for California Psychics. The connection can be for the positive or negative.” “Some people, she said are under the misguided idea that a soulmate is one who has agreed to be with them for the rest of their lives.” That is rarely the case.” She believes that a soulmate is actually a being who is here to help you embrace and transcend a part of your spiritual journey. Sometimes a soulmate can make you very angry and propel you into an area of life where you would never have gone adding that, in many cases, fears are leftovers from a past lifetime experience”.

To the Buddhists, their teachings “offers the most satisfactory explanation of where man came from and where he is going. According to their teachings, “when a man dies, the mind, with all the tendencies, preferences, abilities and characteristics that have been developed and conditioned in this life, re-establishes itself in a new being”. “Thus, the new individual grows and develops a personality conditioned both by the mental characteristics that have been carried over from the previous life and by the new environment”.

“The personality will change and be modified by conditional effort and conditioning factors, like education, parental influence and society but once again at death, it will re-establish itself as life in a new being”.

“This process of dying and being reborn will continue until the conditions that cause it, the mental factors of craving and ignorance cease”.

In the last 30 years, it is said that “some parapsychologists have been studying reports that some people have vivid memory of their former life. It was reported that Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology has described dozens of cases of this type in his books”, a situation which appears to be a further evidence of reincarnation.

The Yorubas like the Buddhists have strong belief in a bad person in the previous life reincarnating into animals or some inanimate materials. While the good come as human beings into ccomfortable life.

in Nigerian Sunday Tribune

Richard Leigh, co-author of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, one of the most controversial books of the 1980s has died November 21st, aged 64; in 2006, with Michael Baigent, he lost his plagiarism case against the American Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, the spectacularly successful thriller which they claimed was based on their book.

Written by Leigh, Baigent and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail claimed to have uncovered a massive conspiracy to conceal a bloodline descended from Jesus of Nazareth that has influenced the course of European history.

The protracted court case boosted sales of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which had stalled at 3,500 copies a year in Britain, to 7,000 copies a week, a 100-fold rise. (Similarly, The Da Vinci Code returned to the bestseller lists with sales of 20,000 copies a week.) But against their royalties windfall, Leigh and Baigent - Lincoln took no part in the case - were left with a legal bill for their failed action of about £2 million.

Originally published in January 1982, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail achieved enormous commercial success; by last year it had reportedly sold two million copies.

Richard Harris Leigh was born on August 16 1943 in New Jersey. His father was British, his mother Austrian. Leigh graduated from Tufts University in Boston and took a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago before studying for a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He spent several years working as a university lecturer in the United States, Canada and Britain.

In 1975, at a summer school in England where he was lecturing on aspects of literature, Leigh met the writer Henry Lincoln and discovered that they shared an interest in the order of medieval warrior-monks known as the Knights Templar.

Lincoln had already started researching the strange story of an obscure 19th-century French country priest, Bérenger Saunière, who had apparently been able to spend huge sums of money in the years around 1900, refurbishing his parish church in the remote Languedoc village of Rennes-le-Château in the foothills of the Pyrenees. In Leigh, Lincoln found a sympathetic and knowledgeable fellow-traveller.

When Leigh offered to help Lincoln with studying the Templars he recruited Michael Bagient, a psychology graduate who was researching the shadowy order for a film project.

Between them Leigh, Lincoln and Baigent developed the Saunière story into a full-blown hypothesis: that Saunière had stumbled on a sensational secret. This was that Jesus had not died on the Cross but had married Mary Magdalene and fathered at least one child; his descendants, they suggested, continue to exert an influence on European history through the Prieuré de Sion, a secret society originally founded in Jerusalem during the First Crusade.

In a follow-up book, The Messianic Legacy (1986), Leigh and his co-authors claimed that the then Grand Master of the Prieuré, Pierre Plantard de Saint Clair, was seeking to restore the Merovingian dynasty to rule France while also taking on a monarchic role in the running of the European Union. It was later proved that Plantard had made up the Prieuré as a hoax in 1956.

Further collaborations with Michael Baigent included The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, alleging a Roman Catholic conspiracy to conceal the scrolls, and The Temple and the Lodge, a history of Freemasonry (both 1991); Secret Germany (1994), the story of a plot to kill Hitler; The Elixir and the Stone (1997); and The Inquisition (1999).

Although best-known for his non-fiction work, Leigh preferred to think of himself as a writer of literary fiction. In Erceldoune & Other Stories (2006) he included an essay on “Ireland, Mythic Logic”, which explored the forces at work where the country’s past, present and future intersect.

His last novel, Grey Magic, published this year, was semi-autobiographical, the narrator and protagonist being born in the United States but moving to Britain in his early thirties.

Richard Leigh, who died on November 21, was unmarried.

in The Telegraph

To late mythologist Joseph Campbell, there has only been one story ever told. Every myth and legend involves identical themes, and every hero undertakes the same basic journey. If he’s to be believed, there’s no essential distinction between the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, a computer-animated adaptation of which opens today, and, say, Dukes of Hazzard. While the idea that a heroic epic of sacrifice and bravery is thematically identical to a movie about hillbillies trying to poison their neighbours with methanol is somewhat depressing, the mono-myth theory might explain why Hollywood can easily rely on ancient legends when they run out of TV to adapt. Interested viewers can explore Campbell’s theory of the über-myth in the documentary series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, or embark on their own heroic journey through some DVD adaptations of classic myths and legends.

Beowulf

Robert Zemeckis’s new film is not the only retelling of Beowulf’s battle with the Grendel clan. In 1999, John McTiernan directed The 13th Warrior, a multicultural demystification that has an Arab writer fighting alongside Vikings to exterminate the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals, sort of like It’s a Small World with genocidal tendencies.

Another version of Beowulf stars Christopher Lambert and sets the tale in a futuristic dystopia. Sort of. The only real concession to the sci-fi conceit is the techno soundtrack, and even that only seems futuristic if rave pills are flashing you back to 1998.

A more faithful adaptation comes from the excellent 2005 Icelandic/Canadian/U.K. co-production Beowulf and Grendel. The film maintains the poem’s strange ahistoric hybrid of paganism and Christianity, though I don’t remember quite so much of Sarah Polley having sex with trolls in the Cliff Notes version.

King Arthur

Like Beowulf, the legend of King Arthur and his quest for the Holy Grail is deeply infused with Christian themes of sacrifice, healing, and unity. Also incest and dismemberment, which spices up the Sunday-school motifs with fleshy exploitation-film fundamentals. John Boorman’s 1981 Excalibur retains the legend’s more salacious elements, though the broad comedy occasionally missteps and gives Arthur the nobility of Mr. Bean.

On the other hand, 2004’s King Arthur replaces magic and mysticism with gritty realism, portraying Merlin not as a wise old wizard but as a pagan warrior-priest mixed with an aging hippie trying to cure a head cold with mandrake root and half a potato.

Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991) takes the same approach, and completely re-contextualizes elements of Arthurian legend in a modern setting. Robin Williams plays Parry, an insane homeless man whose quest for what looks to be a Grail-shaped bowling trophy cures shock-jock Jeff Bridges of hubris, arrogance and guilt.

Greek myths

In Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Jason searches not for the Holy Grail, but rather the Golden Fleece. The legend’s imaginative creatures, brought to life by stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen, prove there was more to ancient Hellenic culture than the bellowed catchphrases and mindless warmongering of 300.

In Clash of the Titans (1981), Perseus quests for Medusa’s head, and Harryhausen’s work is also the centerpiece. It’s a good thing, too, because otherwise the focus would be on star Harry Hamlin, who appears to have taken acting lessons from a sunlamp. As it stands, he gets upstaged by a robot owl with the voice of a rusty R2D2.

The acting is also not the highlight of 1960s Italian Hercules films starring Reg Park, a blundering British bodybuilder who all evidence suggests is a golem made of pressed meat. Nevertheless, 1961’s Hercules in the Haunted World is worth watching for the rich visuals of director/cinematographer Mario Bava, who drenches Hercules’s various quests in so much fog and atmosphere you barely notice his resemblance to Bo Duke.

AL KRATINA, Freelance

The final resting place of the Holy Grail is shrouded in mystery - or is it? Adam Edwards visits a remarkable mansion for sale in Wales, where many believe the sacred relic once resided. Was it the real thing? And is it now in a bank vault in Herefordshire?

The search for the Holy Grail has never ceased. This legendary, sacred vessel, from which Christ is thought to have drunk at the Last Supper, is the most important relic in Christendom, and has not been found. Or has it?

It is a story that has fascinated generations of Englishmen, from Malory to Monty Python. Many scholars believe that the bowl passed into the possession of Joseph of Arimathea, after he used it to gather the blood of Christ following the Crucifixion. Later, Joseph reputedly brought the olive-wood cup from the Holy Land to Glastonbury, in Somerset, where he founded an abbey in the first century.

And yet the final resting place of the Holy Grail remains shrouded in mystery. The Knights Templar were rumoured to have acquired it. Others believe it was taken to Nova Scotia in 1398. Many others, including a generation of hippies, think Joseph hid it either in the Chalice Well in Glastonbury or beneath the Tor.

And then there are those who are convinced it is lodged in a much less romantic resting place - the vault of a branch of Lloyds TSB bank somewhere in Herefordshire, taken there for safe-keeping from its last home - a grand, if fly-blown, house in west Wales.

It is a long and winding road to Nanteos Mansion. One must cross the Black Mountains and the Cambrian Mountains and negotiate the Devil Bridge Gorges before dropping down into the soft, remote countryside of lowland Ceredigion (Cardiganshire).

And then it is easy to miss the dowdy and discoloured hotel sign and to overshoot the hidden turning. Only after half a mile, when the narrow lane merges into an overgrown drive that hugs the hillside, does one finally arrive at the gravel apron outside the front door. Nanteos Mansion is, as far as anyone knows, the only Grade-I listed, 18th-century Palladian mansion that is a starless bed & breakfast.

Sadly, it has been allowed to degenerate into a run-down crash pad that is used for a few, down-at-heel Aberystwyth functions and by the occasional, penny-pinching tourist. It is a haunted shadow of its former self, a backwoodsman aristocrat of a building now on its uppers that is faded and might have been forgotten forever but for the search for the Holy Grail.

For hundreds of years, generations - in particular, the more drugged-up of the 1960s hippies - have believed that a cup housed at Nanteos was the Grail. The “Nanteos Cup”, as it became known, arrived there after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when a group of Glastonbury monks, attempting to escape the ravages of Henry VIII’s commissioners, ran first to Strata Florida Abbey, in South Wales, and then over the hills to nearby Nanteos House, the old country home of the Powell family.

The former Prior of Glastonbury became chaplain to the family and the other monks became servants around the estate. Only when the last monk was on his deathbed did he reveal that the Holy Grail had not been left behind in Glastonbury but that his group had brought it with them. He entrusted it to the Powells “until the church shall claim her own”.

Nanteos, the Welsh name for Nightingale Brook, was rebuilt in 1739 by Thomas Powell, the MP for Cardiganshire, who was married to the wealthy sister of the then Lord Mayor of London. It was a square house of enormous grandeur, three miles from Aberystwyth, that drew elements of its design from Sir John Vanbrugh’s Castle Howard. It was similar in height and length and divided into three bays. Built of local stone with decorative stonework, it was set in broad, landscaped parkland. And in an upstairs room was housed the five-inch wide, three-inch deep Nanteos Cup.

For the next two centuries the cup stood behind glass, apparently performing miracles and attracting pilgrims by the hundred. Richard Wagner - who wrote the Grail opera Parsifal - made a visit to see it at the invitation of the then heir to the house, George Powell, a masochistic homosexual with a fondness for the birch and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Powell, who was friends with the poet Algernon Swinburne and fed roast monkey flesh to Guy de Maupassant, believed that the cup possessed miraculous healing powers. Water poured into it was sent around the world to those afflicted with various diseases and ailments.

Others mocked the idea that it was the Holy Grail and thought it more likely to be a 12th-century artefact that had been brought back from the Crusades. But, whether real or fake, it turned into little more than a sliver of chewed wood over the years, due to pilgrims biting large chunks out of it. And when the last of the Powells died in 1952, the house (and the cup) were sold to a Major Merrilees, who later moved to Herefordshire, taking the Nanteos Cup with him, and later depositing it in a bank vault somewhere in the county.

The current owners, apparently, neither want the publicity nor any more bites taken out of the cup. It did, however, make an appearance in a television documentary in 1997, although its whereabouts remained a tightly guarded secret.

Carys Hedd is the caretaker and, currently, the only resident of Nanteos. She is a slight, ethereal figure dressed in battle fatigue trousers and clogs. When I arrived, she was sitting at her computer in a spartan room that was cheered up by a few crystals dangling in the window and a cheap, portable hi-fi churning out New World music. The sound spilled into the barren grand hall, which was redolent of incense and the wood-burning fire of the previous night. It is where Carys plays her guitar at night… the last hippie at the last home of the Holy Grail.

We walked through the house and grounds, admiring the old gamekeeper’s cottage and the stables rebuilt in the 1830s with a neo-classical entrance. There is a dog cemetery outside the derelict, two-acre walled garden where Gin and Roman and the bones of other faithful old friends lie.

The main hall, with its fine, stone fireplace and moulded plaster wall panels, leads into a stone-flagged hall with a pair of massive Tuscan plaster columns and an elegant dog-leg staircase constructed from oaks from the estate. On the walls are a few portraits of forgotten Powell worthies.

Upstairs there is a magnificent music room, with elaborate cornices and plasterwork, and the main bedrooms (one of which is now a dowdy bridal suite labelled “boudoir suite” in brass on the door). Finally, I saw the room where the Nanteos Cup once lived. It is now an en-suite bathroom.

As we climbed up to the third floor, used some years ago as quarters for students from Aberystwyth University and since left to moulder, Carys apologised for not having the keys to give us access to the roof. It was not, as I imagined, because she wanted me to admire the fine view but because, as she told me breathlessly, the Incredible String Band had once played there.

Next week, Nanteos goes on the market for the third time in four decades. FPDSavills is asking for offers in excess of £1.25 million for the house that was, until the 1950s, a shrine to the “small shard of crumbling wood in its glass case”. The cup, wherever it is, cannot be bought - what price the Holy Grail? - but the Palladian mansion that became famous as its home can.

“It is the most important house to go on sale in Wales for years,” according to John Vaughan, of FPDSavills. The building is sound and structurally solid, although Mr Vaughan admits it is a little weary. “It is very unusual to find such a wonderful building in less than perfect repair,” he says. “They have nearly always been kept in reasonably habitable condition, passed on by the family and cared for. Nanteos is like a lost, Georgian house in Ireland or Scotland. It is a chance for somebody with real imagination to restore it to its former glory without huge expense.”

The odds are that it will become a boutique hotel. But Carys and I would prefer it to go to a sympathetic hippie.

It may be too late for the cup to do for Nanteos what the Shroud did for Turin, but pilgrimages by old hippies could still be on the cards as they come to worship where the Incredible String Band once played.

In http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Rosslyn Chapel is surely Britain’s most extraordinary building, with a richly carved stone interior of such barbaric splendour that, if you were shown pictures of it without any clue as to location, you might guess it to be somewhere completely alien - Moldavia, perhaps, or Transylvania. In fact, the chapel is located in the prosaic hinterland of Edinburgh’s bypass: to reach it you must run the gauntlet of car dealers, Ikea and other temples of modern consumerism, until you turn into the lane leading to the village of Roslin.

Whether spelt Roslin - as the village and its neighbouring glen are - or Rosslyn, as the chapel and ruined castle are, the name derives from the Celtic ross (promontory) and lynn (waterfall) that are such picturesque features of the glen; although those of New Age mystical bent hold that the chapel lies on the Rose Line, a major European ley line.

The chapel’s roof is currently shrouded by a canopy on scaffolding to allow its stones to dry out very gradually. Ironically, the building has suffered more from Ministry of Works “conservation” measures in the 1950s than from five-and-a-half centuries of Scottish weather. The stones were coated, inside and out, with an impermeable magnesium fluoride solution, thus trapping water containing salts and pollutants inside them. A walkway in the scaffolding allows visitors to look at the roof close up; and the shrouded exterior only adds to the visual impact of entering Rosslyn’s astonishing interior.

Scarcely a square foot of stone remains uncarved - and, doors apart, the entire building is of stone. I have never seen elsewhere a church roof without supporting timbers, but Rosslyn’s is of solid stone, barrel-vaulted and divided by ribs into five compartments, each decorated with carved flowers or stars. Another idiosyncratic feature is that although the choir is lined with Gothic arches, set apart from the medieval norm only by their curious carvings, the aisles to either side have horizontal transoms, as used in Babylon and Egypt before the arch was invented. In fact, these apparently structural crosspieces are merely decorative, masking conventional arches: clearly, an intentionally backward-looking style statement by the chapel’s 15th-century builder, the third and last St Clair Prince of Orkney.

Also more prosaically known as Sir William from his Scottish barony, St Clair was essentially buying his way into heaven - or rather, shortening his time in purgatory - by building a church, as many of his contemporaries among the Scottish nobility did when they began to feel death approaching.

Rosslyn Chapel, as it stands, is only a fraction of Sir William’s intended collegiate church, designed to be a secular foundation for the propagation of learning. The building was to have been cruciform, with a tower at its centre, and the existing chapel is merely its choir (with a baptistery added in 1880-81).

The foundation stone was laid in 1446 and work continued for 38 years until Sir William died, but by that time the choir was still unroofed and only the foundations for the nave had been laid. Sir William’s perfectionism made its completion in his lifetime unrealistic. His masons were handsomely paid (£40 a year for the master mason) and were given purpose-built houses (thus founding the village of Roslin), but in return they had to work from carpenters’ carvings, submitted for personal approval by Sir William, before work could begin on carving any of the chapel’s thousands of figures, bas-reliefs and motifs. The masons nonetheless managed to introduce one major mistake into the decoration of the south aisle: charity appears among the seven deadly sins on one architrave, while avarice is among the seven virtues on the other.

The bizarre nature of many of the carvings makes it worth peering closely to find every piece. However, you can hardly miss the green men, because there are 103 of them. It is not uncommon to find one green man in a medieval church, but according to Mike Harding’s book on the subject, Rosslyn Chapel is unique in having so many.

At Rosslyn Chapel, even the Judaeo-Christian imagery may seem strange to modern eyes: Moses, for example, sports a large pair of horns. This is attributed in the guide booklet to a mistranslation of the Hebrew queren, which “can mean either horn or ray of light”, but I am not sure that such a distinction is necessary - my Holman’s Bible Dictionary says simply that for the ancient Jews, the horn was an “emblem of power, honour or glory” (Michelangelo’s Moses in the Vatican is also, albeit more discreetly, horned). Other carvings to look out for include the Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre, pairing people of all degrees with their skeletons; and Lucifer, upside-down and heavily bound.

There is a hoary legend attached to Rosslyn’s most famous piece of carving, the apprentice pillar: when the master mason was confronted with the design, he felt the need to improve his knowledge of carving by travelling to Rome. While he was away, his apprentice dreamt that he had completed the carving himself, and on waking, set to work. The master mason arrived home to find the pillar completed, and was so inflamed with jealousy of his apprentice’s skill that he killed him with a mallet blow to the head. This tale strikes me as a classic reworking of an earlier legend: the murder, by a blow to the head, of the master mason in Solomon’s temple at Jerusalem.

The pillar’s swirling vines emanate from the mouths of eight dragons around its base - probably the eight dragons of Neifelheim, which supported Yggdrasil, the great tree binding heaven, earth and hell, in Nordic myth. There are also motifs associated with the Templars, and by extension (though this strikes me as anachronistic) with modern “speculative” freemasonry, which was founded in the early 18th century.

Most intriguing to me are the “Indian corn” (maize) motifs around one window in the south aisle. Maize is an American plant, unknown in 15th-century Britain, so is there truth in the story that Henry, first Prince of Orkney, sailed to Nova Scotia in 1398 with Antonio Zeno, the Venetian navigator, as claimed by Zeno’s great-great-great grandson in 1558? According to the younger Zeno’s book, Prince Henry and his comrades spent a winter with the Micmac Indians before setting sail again and being blown by storms to the Massachusetts shore.

A Micmac legend of the man-god Glooscap, who came from the east in a ship and taught them to fish with nets, is still current (present-day Micmac make pilgrimages to Rosslyn Chapel). There are two curious pieces of corroborating physical evidence to support it: a canon, identified as 14th-century Venetian, dredged up in 1849 from Louisburg harbour on Cape Breton island, Nova Scotia; and a rock carving at Westford, Massachusetts, accurately depicting a 14th-century armoured knight - whose shield device matches that of Prince Henry’s shipmate, Sir James Gunn of Clyth, who allegedly died there.

Rosslyn Chapel underwent centuries of neglect after its creator died; his son merely roofed over the chapel as it stood and buried his father within, but the stone structure survived even Cromwellian troops’ use of it as a stable.

The 18th-century vogue for “sublime” scenery, particularly when filled with romantic ruins, brought artists, poets and even royalty to visit Roslin Glen, its chapel and castle. The roll-call of visitors includes Dr Johnson, Wordsworth, Robert Burns, Turner and Queen Victoria. Rosslyn Chapel today remains the burial place of Sir William’s family, who became earls of Rosslyn in 1801, and the present (7th) earl created a charitable trust in 1996 to oversee and fund the ongoing restoration.

Rosslyn basics
Rosslyn Chapel, Roslin, Midlothian (0131 440 2159 www.rosslyn-chapel.com). Open: Monday-Saturday, 10am- 5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Candlelit services: Sunday, 10.30am and 5pm. Refreshments; gift shop (Roslin Rambles leaflet is recommended for exploring Roslin Glen).

Adjacent to the chapel grounds is College Hill, originally built as an inn for visitors to the chapel and now a Landmark Trust property sleeping six, which makes a charming base for exploring the Lothians, Border country and Edinburgh. Three-night weekend breaks, midweek breaks and full-week bookings available (01628 825925, www.landmarktrust.co.uk).

By Anne Campbell Dixon in http://www.telegraph.co.uk

In his breezily comic novel A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, Mark Twain pokes fun briefly at the cult of the Holy Grail. “The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several-years’ cruise. Every year expeditions went out holy Grailing and next year relief expeditions went to hunt for them. There was worlds of reputation in it, but no money.”

The satire seems gentle enough, but this, at the time when Twain was writing (1889), was already verging on the Victorian equivalent of The Life of Brian. For few subjects had captured the imaginations of poets, artists and composers as strongly as the Grail Quest and its associated Arthurian legends. Wagner was obsessed with it, and Pre-Raphaelite painters lovingly depicted the radiant visions experienced by their androgynous Sir Galahads. Victorian spirituality had seized greedily on a body of myths which, unlike the mythology of Greece and Rome, had an indisputably Christian message at its core: the search for the original cup or dish used by Christ at the Last Supper was a powerful symbol of humankind’s quest for spiritual perfection.

From the hotbed of late 19th-century medievalism, however, some much stranger growths emerged. Members of the “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” (a group which included Yeats) tried to revive the practices of medieval magic and alchemy, and became convinced that if only they could penetrate the secrets of the Grail romances, alchemical treatises, Tarot cards and suchlike, they would become the possessors of a hidden higher truth, a secret doctrine which had been passed down by adepts throughout the ages.

Since then, bizarre theories have proliferated: that the Grail story related to a particular place in Persia, that it was a version of Jewish ritual, or (most famously, given the use made of this theory by T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land) that it was a remnant of an ancient fertility cult. Others have argued, on the slenderest of evidence, that it was bound up with either the Templars or that other standby of medievalist conspiracy theories, the heretical Cathars.

One best-selling modern book even claims, preposterously, that the true secret of the Grail was the “holy blood”, the blood-line of biological descendants of Jesus Christ. Enter any big bookshop, go to the section marked “mysticism” (this sort of thing does sorely test the descriptive powers of bookshop employees), and you will find shelves full of this stuff. Aspiring authors are, in Mark Twain’s words, “taking a flier” at the Holy Grail all the time - and, contrary to Twain’s remark, finding that there is really quite a lot of money in it.

Anyone who has more than a fleeting interest in this subject must often have longed for a rational and reliable account of the whole Grail phenomenon - one that would set out the known facts of when and where these stories appeared, and test the theories against the evidence. This is not an easy task; it requires not just a good grounding in medieval literature and history, but also certain mental or moral virtues - the ability to deal patiently but firmly with the intellectual equivalent of time-wasters. But Richard Barber, who possesses both the medievalist expertise and the requisite calmness and clarity of thought, has managed it at last, and has produced a really valuable and fascinating book.

As Barber clearly demonstrates, the Grail stories were the product not of immemorial legend, folklore or secret cults, but of individual authors: Chrétien de Troyes (who started the whole fashion), Robert de Boron, Wolfram von Eschenbach and some others. They were writing romances, similar to the other (non-Arthurian) romances they also produced, and subject to the same conventions; so, for example, when they claimed that their story was derived from a previous “book” by a mysterious author, this was just a standard fictional device.

In most of these early texts the “secret” of the Grail is, as Barber points out, a secret withheld only from characters in the story (above all, Parsifal, who fails to ask the essential question about it); nothing special is hidden from the reader. These romances do have a theological message, about the veneration of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ (the Grail is first described as a dish holding a communion wafer, and is later identified with the cup that held some of Christ’s blood at or after the Crucifixion); but it is a message openly proclaimed in the text. Far from being coded presentations of Cathar heresies or pagan nature-cults, the romances are, as Barber puts it, “quintessentially orthodox in their presentation of the Christian faith”.

One popular theory attributes a purely Celtic origin to the Grail stories, arguing that Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval (the first text, dating from the 1180s) was inspired by an earlier Welsh poem called Peredur; it is also claimed that the Grail itself originated in the “magic cauldrons” of Celtic mythology. Barber argues convincingly that Peredur is a later imitation, not a predecessor, and politely points out the difference between a communion dish or a chalice and a cooking-pot.

He also describes some of the contemporary factors that must have stimulated interest in the idea of the Grail: the cult of relics (stimulated by the grotesque looting of Byzantine relics during the Fourth Crusade), and the new trends in the liturgy of the Mass. His only notable error comes when he states that in the Catholic Mass both bread and wine are given to the congregation. In fact communion under both kinds was common in the earlier Middle Ages, but the reserving of the wine for the priesthood only was a change that was under way in the period he discusses; this fact would surely have been relevant to his story, as it supplies a further motive for his orthodox romance-writers to promote the veneration - at a distance - of the chalice.

Not only has Richard Barber dealt skilfully with the original medieval evidence; he has also traced the long after-life of the Grail legend, above all in its various 19th- and 20th-century avatars. This not only gives him the chance to investigate some modern literary history (Charles Williams, John Cowper Powys, et al); it also enables him to take a properly historical attitude to the various “loony tunes” modern theories, by setting them in their own historical context.

Overall, then, this is the most reassuringly sane of all modern writings on the whole “Holy Grail” phenomenon. One finishes the book just wishing there were more works like it. Anyone for Nostradamus?

 ____________________________

Book details
The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend
By Richard Barber
480 pages; £6.49.
Buy it on the Templar Globe Store