by Tracy R. Twyman

Oct 25, 2004

from DragonKeyPress Website
 

Ever since I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in 1996, at age seventeen, I believed that its premise would constitute a new paradigm, defining the next great zeitgeist that would sweep public consciousness. This new paradigm, I believed, would include a widespread support of monarchy as a form of government, based on the understanding that most European royal families are descendants of Christ, and have a divine right to rule. I believed that these monarchs would, with the help of a secret society called the Priory of Sion (discussed in Holy Blood, Holy Grail) ascend to their thrones, turning the European Union into a renewed Holy Roman Empire, and eventually, a global government.

I believed that these kings would also become the leaders of a new global religion, and that all monotheists would accept their leadership because of their descent from King David. I also believed that a new understanding would arise within the public about the role that secret societies such as Freemasonry have played on global events for the last few centuries - an understanding that would lead not to paranoia, but to acceptance of this fact, as an outgrowth of the hierarchy of nature. I believed that the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, France, as discussed in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, did include the Holy Grail itself, and that this treasure belonged to the Priory of Sion.

I believed that on the day that the Priory revealed the Grail (whatever that might be), it would become the state symbol of this global empire - the foundation-stone of the realm - and that the occult mysteries of the Grail - the true secrets of the universe - would at that time be publicly revealed.

In order to hasten what I believed were inevitable events, I (and a few like-minded friends) have been producing Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine for the last seven years. We formed a fraternal organization called the Ordo Lapsit Exillis (OLE) to back this effort. Our goal has been to prepare the public intellectually for these changes - to “soften them up”, so to speak, about the idea of being ruled by Christ’s descendants. We wanted to spark a movement, a subculture centered on these ideas, and we named that movement “the Arcadian Mystique.”

In the course of these efforts, we have come to discover a lot of information about the origin of Christ’s bloodline, which, as it turns out, goes back beyond the beginnings of recorded history. We learned that Christ’s progenitors were in fact the most influential men of the ancient world, recorded as both gods and kings in the annals of various mythologies throughout the globe. They were the descendants of Cain, and they were nothing less than the makers of civilization. The society that they created, with its arts and sciences, customs and religious traditions, became the basis for every society that has existed since then. Furthermore, it appeared, by all accounts, that there was something different about the members of this royal line that set them apart from the rest of humanity, something physically different that did make them worthy of being called “gods“ or “angels.”

Some of them decided to breed with mortal man, and it was their miscegenation with a lower race that caused the metaphorical “Fall” (represented in myths as the Fall from Eden, the Fall of Atlantis, the War in Heaven, etc.). Thus Christ’s ancestors were also the “fallen angels” of the Bible and The Book of Enoch, the literal truth behind the myth of Satan and his demons. Christ’s role as both the “Son of God” and the “Son of Man” was representative of the genetic mix of God and man that resided in his blood. But He also carried the blood of Satan, and therefore, as the Messiah, represented the perfect, holy balance between the divine and the infernal. So too does the symbol of the Grail. It seemed to us, then that this subject matter of the Arcadian Mystique had the power to constitute an entirely new religion - more than that, an entirely new way of life. But it wouldn’t really be new, as we were aware. Rather it would be a renewal of the Golden Age once ruled over by the ancestors of Christ.

So for years we have worked towards this goal, discouraged from every direction by those who did not believe that we could achieve any level of success dealing with an obscure subject matter such as this. Nonetheless, we have made steady progress in the spreading of our message, gaining praise and loyal fans because of the quality of our work, never knowing when or if the Arcadian paradigm shift we were hoping for was ever going to occur. We’ve produced volumes of research, and made widespread appearances on radio and television. Over the past three years following these appearances, we have watched the subjects of Atlantis, ancient Sumeria, and The Book of Enoch become increasingly popular, and the public increasingly aware of their importance. But still, the links to the Grail, Christ’s bloodline, the Priory of Sion, Freemasonry, and Rennes-le-Chateau have remained relatively unknown, as these subjects themselves have been also. We wondered how long the Grail could possibly be ignored.

Then, all of the sudden, Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code was published, and the hype we have all witnessed ensued. At the time of this writing, the book has been at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List for months. Now there is a film, being directed by Ron Howard, which will be released in the coming year or two. There has already been a prime time television special on ABC, in which the basics of the story surrounding the Priory of Sion, the Merovingians, and the bloodline of Christ (including His marriage to Mary Magdalene) was discussed, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail co-author Henry Lincoln was interviewed. The next day, on the lesser-known Travel Channel, a special about the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau aired, in which Henry Lincoln was also interviewed.

It seems that the genie is definitely out of the bottle now. The paradigm shift has begun, and the Arcadian Mystique is here to stay. People everywhere, even vagrants I have met at bus stops, have read The Da Vinci Code, or are aware of its premise. Recently, Holy Blood, Holy Grail was ranked number 10 on Amazon.com’s list of book sales, twenty years after its initial publication! And numerous other authors have been riding the wave as well. At a local bookstore, there was an entire table laid out displaying books about the Grail, the bloodline of Christ, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and Opus Dei, labeled “Books Related to The Da Vinci Code.” People who have tried to discourage the work of Dagobert’s Revenge and the OLE in the past have now suddenly become interested (although none have apologized for their previous lack of faith or admitted their error in judgment, and frankly, we are not holding our breath).

It was with much pleasure, then, that I broke my customary abstention from the reading of fiction and devoured The Da Vinci Code, which, while not exactly classic literature, is quite a pleasure to read. It is hair-raising to think that almost three million people across the world have read this stuff already, and that many millions more will soon be seeing it in “a theater near you.” Millions are not only reading about the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar, but also about their confrontational relationship with the Vatican, and their modern feud with Opus Dei. People are reading not only about the marriage of Christ and Mary Magdalene resulting in a child, but about the symbolic alchemical portent of that marriage. They are even learning about the rites of sex magic, which the Priory if Sion is portrayed in the book as practicing!

One of the recurring elements of this novel is the significance of the pentagram in relationship to both Venus and the Magdalene, and of its use as a hidden reference to these figures in art from the last several centuries, such as in the works of Poussin and Jean Cocteau. The sacredness of the Fibonacci Spiral and the attendant “golden ratio” to ancient man, and to modern occultists, is also discussed, as well as the use of the letter “M” to symbolize the Magdalene. In fact, the main character of the book, Robert Langdon, is an expert in “sacred symbolism in art”, so various examples of the use of occult emblems in art are mentioned throughout the entire book.

There is even a section in which the occult symbolism of Disney movies is discussed. Of course, numerous hidden messages in Da Vinci’s work are explored, including: Mona Lisa (in which Da Vinci depicts himself, in drag); Madonna of the Rocks (which contains a hidden reference to the Johannite heresy, and to the beheading of John the Baptist); The Vitruvian Man (which celebrates the pentagonal and golden geometry of the human body); and of course, The Last Supper (which depicts Mary Madalen as Christ’s closest disciple.) The latter, by the way, was discussed in depth on the ABC prime time special.

Dan Brown’s discussion of sacred symbolism extends to its use in architecture as well. Indeed, many sites that have been considered important to Grail researchers for decades make their appearance in this novel, including Paris’ Saint Sulpice and Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel. Brown even mentions the relationship between these sites and the “Roseline” - the ancient Paris meridian observed by the Priory as the world’s authentic Prime Meridian. He suggests that the word “Compass Rose” evolved from this term. Strangely, Rennes-le-Chateau is not mentioned anywhere in the book, and instead, the Louvre in Paris is portrayed as the home of the Grail.

Specifically, the Grail is said to be hidden there within a three-dimensional representation of a Star of David, depicted literally as a pyramid joined with an inverted pyramid. Such imagery strikes quite a cord with us, for we have talked in previous articles about the possibility is that the Grail is actually a tomb, the Cave of Treasures of Judeo-Christian apocrypha, and we have suggested that cave is within a sacred mountain. This, we have said, is symbolized by occultists with the Star of David, the same image used in The Da Vinci Code for the Grail’s location.

In addition to sacred symbolism, the importance of cryptology (used extensively by the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, and the Priory of Sion) is key in this novel. In fact, it constitutes one of the story’s most intriguing elements, and is it is often the anticipation of breaking a code that keeps the reader plunging ahead from one chapter to the next. The Templars’ most sacred and most oft-used cipher plays a major role in the plot: the Atbash cipher, which we have discussed extensively in past Dagobert’s Revenge articles in relation to the Compass of Enoch. The blasphemous idol of the Templars known as “Baphomet” is rumored to be a symbol of Wisdom mainly because his name, in Atbash, is a code for “Sophia”, the Greek word for “wisdom.” This fact is mentioned in Dan Brown’s novel, in which one of the main characters is named “Sophia”, and her name turns out to be the key to cracking one of the book’s main puzzles.

One of the things we have pointed out about the Atbash cipher is how ideal its use is with the English language, using the modern 26-letter alphabet. One of the leading figures in the Rennes-le-Chateau affair, Abbe Henri Boudet of nearby Rennes-le-Bains, wrote a book called Le Vrai Langue Celtique, indicating that English was a sacred language, perhaps even the original language that was spoken before the destruction of the Tower of Babel, according to the Bible. Commentators have suggested that Boudet’s book has some hidden, coded message within it, and that this was his only purpose in writing the book.

Thus they have concluded that his arguments were intentionally fraudulent, and that Boudet did not actually believe in the sacredness of English. But I have always thought the opposite: that there must be some truth to this notion, and that the Priory of Sion really does revere the English language for some reason. Interestingly, this is portrayed as being the case in The Da Vinci Code, where it is stated that the Priory likes English because it is derived less from Latin than other European languages are, and therefore, has been contaminated less by the Church. This is a fascinating idea, although one that I have not heard mentioned previously.

A distinct anti-papal attitude is displayed throughout this novel, not only by the characters affiliated with the Priory of Sion, but by the story’s two heroes, and indeed, it seems, by the author himself. This is, of course, an attitude historically associated both with the Priory, and with their offshoots, the Knights Templar, so it is not at all out of place. But we know that one of the Priory’s ultimate goals has always been to take over the Vatican from the inside, and remake the Church according to their own beliefs. Thus, they have always wanted to put a Priory-controlled Pope on the throne, and there is evidence that in the past they have done just that. In The Da Vinci Code, a new Pope has recently assumed office, and much is made of the fact that he is trying to liberalize the Church, seemingly according to Priory guidelines. The story seems to take place approximately in modern times, and it does appear that we will be getting a new Pope soon, so Dan Brown’s predictions certainly seem like a distinct possibility.

However, Brown’s apparent anti-papal sentiments seem to stem from what constitutes the only unfortunate part of the book: an emphasis on the “sacred feminine” and “goddess worship”, which, as the novel attempts to show, the “patriarchy” of the Catholic Church has viciously suppressed for more than a millennium, because of their fear and hatred of the female sex. Feminism is, of course, a 20^th century political movement, but some revisionist historians, as well as many Grail scholars, wish to see it as some ancient, sacred truth. The revisionists choose to interpret historical events, like the editing of the Bible, from a twentieth century point of view, attributing 20^th century morals, beliefs and motivations to our ancestors, to whom such ideas were completely alien. There was no “patriarchy” until feminists invented the idea, and women were not perceived as a “threat” to anything.

Mary Magdalene is held up by many Grail researchers as some feminist hero, and they claim that she was “written out of the Bible” because the church was threatened by her femininity. But neither Magdalene nor the Church fathers thought in such language, nor would they even have conceived of such a notion. Magdalene was a threat to the church not because she was a woman, but because she was the mother of Christ’s children - the heirs to his royal and priestly lineage. By all rights they should have been the proper inheritors not only of Christ’s church, but of his royal throne in Jerusalem (which in the eyes of some should have also held hegemony over the entire world). Both of these claims were a threat to the Church, which not only wished to rule the world spiritually, but secularly as well, for the Church proclaimed that it had the right to make kings, regardless of their birthright.

In The Da Vinci Code, there doesn’t seem to be as much emphasis on the bloodline itself, and its claims to the various thrones of Europe, as one might expect. Nor is the Priory of Sion portrayed as really making a grab for world power, which we know, in reality, they are. The Priory is portrayed mainly as the protector of the bloodline and its secrets - secrets that consist largely of hidden spiritual truths about the sacredness of the feminine principle. They are shown to be guarding the bloodline against its enemies in the Church, who are portrayed as constantly trying to wipe the bloodline out (presumably because of the threat it poses to the Vatican’s anti-feminist agenda).

Dan Brown appears to be trying to soften the image of the Priory, making them look not like elitists from Europe’s nobility, plotting to topple modern governments and replace them with global monarchy, but instead as champions of women’s rights. Perhaps this explains a curious statement made in the book, which purports that the only members of Christ’s bloodline still alive today are those with “Sinclair” or “Plantard” as their last name - two families unlikely to be grasping for the reigns of power any time soon. Of course, we know that there are many bloodline members who have different last names, but this appears to be the author’s personal belief. Brown is known to have turned down an artist who petitioned to be on the soundtrack for the Da Vinci Code film because he did not believe her claim to be of the “Grail family”, since her last name was neither “Plantard” nor “Sinclair.”

Given Brown’s de-emphasis on the bloodline in favor of the sacred feminine principle, it should not be surprising that there is nothing in the book of Christ’s ancestors, beyond a brief mention that He was from the House of David. There is certainly no discussion of His descent from Cain or the fallen angels of the Bible - also known as the “Watchers” of The Book of Enoch. Indeed, the “fact” that Christ was “only a man” is portrayed as being one of the Priory’s most explosive secrets, and at no time is it hinted that Christ’s ancestors could have been anything more than human. There is a curious passage, though, that does seem to allude to the existence of that antediluvian race, and to the unusual physical appearance that the Watchers, as well as their descendants (the biblical patriarchs) were said to have had. A character named “Silas”, who has albino eyes and snow-white skin, is told by another character:

“Were you not aware that Noah himself was an albino?... Like you, he had skin white like an angel.”

Another related allusion, this time to the Garden of Eden, occurs later in the book, but it is misleading. The promising reference to the apple eaten by Eve that caused the Fall turns out to be none but yet another reference to the sacredness of Woman.

Despite whatever shortcomings there may be, The Da Vinci Code and the hype surrounding it have done in months what the “Grail community” has been trying to do for the last twenty years: it has captured the attention of the public at large, and in the process has set in motion what will eventually result in a complete rethinking of the Western world’s predominant religious, philosophical and historical beliefs. The Priory has always said that they would reveal their secrets “when the time is right.” Perhaps, as is indicated in the novel, that time has come. Perhaps the Priory of Sion is partially responsible in some way for the success of this book.

It is curious that Henry Lincoln, co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, has turned a complete about-face in response to the Da Vinci Code hype. Following the publication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its sequel, The Messianic Legacy, Henry Lincoln embarked upon a career researching the sacred geometry that he has found hidden in the landscape of Rennes-le-Chateau, to the exclusion of all other subjects. He eventually came to conclude that the pentagonal geometry formed by the mountains in this village is the only verifiable phenomenon in the entire Grail/Rennes-le-Chateau/Priory of Sion saga. He began stating publicly that the Priory of Sion, and the idea of a bloodline coming from Christ, was nothing but a hoax, as was the notion of any “treasure” hidden at Rennes-le-Chateau, beyond the pentagram, which he believed was “naturally formed.” In a recent interview with Dagobert’s Revenge, Mr. Lincoln stated:

“The Priory of Sion I know nothing whatsoever about. It is purely hearsay. We don’t know whether it ever existed in the form which Mr. Plantard suggested, or not. We only have their words for it.... I don’t know who the Priory are.”

Statements like this have caused some to speculate that Lincoln was under the employ of the Priory during the writing of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and that after the first two books were published, he became disillusioned. When he terminated his relationship with the Priory, the theory goes, he began trashing the authenticity of their claims in print. Well, if this is the case, he would appear to be back on the payroll. For on the recent ABC special, Lincoln told host Elizabeth Vargas something quite different. The transcript reads as follows:

Vargas: So the first Merovingian queen was impregnated by a sea creature, a fish, which you theorize could symbolize Jesus. So the Merovingian bloodline would be descendants of Jesus.

Lincoln: Mmm hmm.

Vargas: ...and this bloodline was threatened by the Orthodox Church...

Lincoln: Mmm hmm.

Vargas: ...so the Priory of Sion was established to protect this bloodline, the Merovingian bloodline.

Lincoln: Beautiful. That’s very good. You’ve done it.

So if Dan Brown’s novel has the power to change the mind of someone as stubborn as Henry Lincoln, who knows what else it will change. The time is ripe for the Arcadian Mystique, as it would seem that the lost souls of the modern world are hungry for this sort of thing. Having been told by rationalists for 200 years that there is no such thing as God and that existence is meaningless, they are ready for a little bit of mystery, especially in the spiritual dimension. A set of concepts such as those presented by Dan Brown is perfect for modern society, because it appeals both to Man’s spiritual needs, as well as his logical mind. The ideas of secret societies, occultism, and Divine Right monarchy, as well as the existence of a true “Christian church”, appeal to our neglected mystical sides.

At the same time, the idea that Christ was a biological being who married and had children seems so “logical” and “scientific”, and that appeals to the rational side of the mind that is usually ignored in religion. When these ideas are finally attached to those of the Watchers and Atlantis, and the true, ancient pedigree of the Grail bloodline and tradition is shown, these concepts could then appeal to almost every major cultural group throughout the entire world, for these ideas can be shown to be at the root of all the world’s various religions and mythologies.

Once the public is satisfactorily “softened up”, it will be time for the unveiling of the treasures - the true Grail. I would assume that this would include unearthing whatever lies beneath Rennes-le-Chateau. I have no doubt that whatever it is, it will be of immense importance, and will change the hearts and minds of people the world over. At that time, the institution of a global government and church, shepherded by the descendants of Christ and the Grail blood, will no doubt occur.

Will we see all of these changes within our own lifetimes? It is impossible to say. After all, there are so many steps to be taken in order to achieve this. However, the amount of rapid change in public consciousness that has occurred since The Da Vinci Code came out has been staggering. For my part, I feel like I am living in a somewhat different world that that which existed prior to the publication of that book. The possibility of a paradigm shift within our own lifetimes seems much more likely now than it did before.

And for that, Mr. Brown, I am grateful.