Vincent Bridges Archive

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Light in Extension:The Path of RA 1995 Vincent BridgesIn the theology of the priests of Heliopolis, we catch a glimpse of mankind s earliest spiritual understanding of the nature of light. Those clever theologians managed to describe its relativistic quality nothing with any matter at all can go faster than light in terms of a mythological unity of great depth and philosophical complexity, the operative and creative power imagined by the Egyptians as the great god RA.This powerful archetypal image was crafted by the rehket-sa, or assembly of sages, of Heliopolis, with the help of a group of beings known as the Henmemet, or The Shining Ones. From earliest times, (the spelling of the name of the city itself, Annu a finned spear-head, a jar and the symbol for city suggests the place where the space-ships land their cargo). Heliopolis seems to have been a very cosmopolitan place, one where several races and a few interplanetary species mingled freely. The spelling of the name Henmemet suggests a group of physical beings, definitely not spirits, who are filled with light. This phrase re-occurs as the priests of RA try to describe life for the departed believer in the Boat of a Million Years; in a sense, the followers of RA would become like the Henmemet and travel the stars fed and clothed with light. Perhaps it is these celestial voyagers who educated the sages of Annu in the arts of mathematics, geometry, physics, astronomy, and so on through the familiar list of the early dynasties unexpected sophistication. Wherever they learned or discovered the information, the priests of Annu were the first humans to code these physical constants, clues to the structure of the universe, into a mythical theology that is descriptive of the actual nature of both physical and psychological reality.If we think of RA as the personification of all that we now call the nature of light, then his role as the original creative principle suddenly comes into sharp focus. Time, we are told, began with the first appearance of RA; eternity is referred to as since the time of RA. These are ideas that strongly suggest the role of light as the ultimate yardstick of the space/time continuum. Without the activity of photon binding and threshold kindling, our physical reality would not exist. It is the discontinuous nature of quantum events, the absorption and emission of photons, which creates this discreet and sentient existence. Therefore, RA, when understood as the nature of light, does creatively enact our world and all its parts.The ancient Egyptians expressed this in the way they spelled the word, ra. The r sound is rendered as a mouth, or a vesica piscis and the a is the out-stretched hand symbol. The determinatives are: a sun symbol with a line to the ground and the seated god figure, which tells us that this ra is a god who localizes the energy of the sun, or great light. The phonetic symbols suggest, in hieroglyphic rebus fashion, that the waves give or supply the energy of the sun. The mouth of RA is a schematic for the sine wave of a vibrating string, and, as the vesica, generates the irrational number of the square root of 3. This number divides the volume-form of the cube (a cube with edges equal to 1; a rectangular plane is passed diagonally through the cube, the diagonal of which equals the square root of three) and, remember, every form in the created universe is a volume. Think of the square root of the as a form generator, regular polygons arising one after the other in the succession of vesica constructions unfolding from the self division of unity. This form-creating flow, the glyphs suggest,is the gift of the local energy source, the sun. This gift of form is the essence of what the Egyptian theologians considered divine. In that sense, RA was indisputably the One God, the unity at the heart of diversity.Hang on to that realization. It is a clue to understanding the basic mysteries of Egyptian theology. The Followers of RA, like the Henmemet, who visited Heliopolis in the early dynastic era, were real people, not spirits. It is from them that the concept of God the Principle, the RA Function passed to the priests of the City of the Sun. The Light Beings, that is, creatures who are fed on, clothed by, and enveloped in light, naturally became the focus of the religious concept they taught. If we believe (as the early Egyptians thought) in the RA Function, the One God who is All Gods, then we will become like these light beings when we die. Like them, we will voyage forever in the Boat of a Million Years Beliefs like these were popular with the priests and the intellectuals, but the mass of Egyptian people never wavered from their faith in the shamanic paradise of Osiris, a vegetation god whose worship created a cult of the deified dead. If the RA function existed since the beginning of time, then the Osiris cult surely has its beginnings in the moment the first Handy monkey learned of death. The only god worthy of respect to that grieving monkey was one who could assuage the awful lonely emptiness of extinction. An afterlife of judgement and reward ensured that existence was continuous and that it had meaning, even if that meaning was judged as negative. Ausar Un-Nefer, Osiris the Justified One, filled the existential void of death with a panoply of shamanic ordeals and divine interaction. Life was anything but dull in the Hall of the Lord of the Dead.The genius of the IVth Dynasty Heliopolitan theologians and social scientists lies in their creative resolution to the problem of these two contrasting afterlives. Ausar (Osiris) was invited into the Boat of a Million Years and was asked to sit at the right hand of RA. In fact, he was asked to be RA s regent, his viceroy among the monkeys, as it were. The name, Ausar is spelled with the eye of RA above a throne, and the god figure as a determinative. His distinctive function, stability, symbolized by the backbone-like djed, was once, along with light, considered one of the powers of RA. Osiris worship, with its shamanic paradise, was thus elevated by its merger with the RA function to the level of an universal religion. As such it long out lasted the priests of RA, whose functions were usurped by Amun of Thebes. (Although a memorialized form of the ancient wisdom continued to be celebrated among the ruins of Heliopolis until the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century of the Common era.)The union of these two god-forms produced the central mystery of the Egyptian religious experience. A line of the Vth Dynasty Pyramid Texts reads: The Great Secret, The Great Mystery; it is RA, it is Osiris. This could be interpreted as: The Great Secret: we are of extra-terrestrial origin The Great Mystery: we can return to that level of being; it is RA (who reveals the Great Secret), it is Osiris, (who shows us the Great Mystery). This blending of cosmological and metaphorical values supplied the inner tension that kept the Egyptian mysteries vital for over three thousand years. The path of RA offered a transcendentally cosmological existence in the boat of a million years, while the path of Osiris promised eternity in an astral metaphor for life along the Nile. We are told in the Book of the Dead that RA and Osiris are twin souls, united between the pillars of the Djed, but we are left with few clues as to how this unification was to be accomplished.The clues that we do have (see discussions at Edfu and Letopolis) point to the agency of Heru-Ur, the elder sky god who somehow manages to be both cosmological and metaphorical and therefore acts as a medium for their unification. Strangely enough, the Neophyte Ritual of the nineteenth century magical group, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, suggests the same process by having the god-form of Heru-Ur (Aeouris) be the active or initiatory form of Osiris. In that same ritual, much is made of an Egyptian phrase, Khabs m Pehket, which is translated as Light in Extension. With this inspired choice, the Order penetrated to the core of the Egyptian mysteries.The Egyptians had many words that meant light, showing a subtle and sophisticated understanding of both physics and optics by their varied spellings and usage. But one, the one used by the Order, had a very unusual series of meanings associated with it. Khabs in its root meanings suggests to shine or sparkle like a star. It can also mean the star itself, or any other celestial lamp, as in the Lamps of the Decans. This meaning of lamplight became a mystical phrase associated by the experience of being filled with light, as were the Henmemet. In this sense it passed into Islam as the 35th verse of the 24th sura of the Koran, becoming over time the focus of many Sufi sects, including the Al Hagag Sufis of the Temple Mosque at Luxor. Khabs implies the whole mystery of RA and the Path of Becoming Light, as pehket (the word translated as extension by the Golden Dawn), expresses the physically focused nature of the Osiris cult.How these fragments of Heliopolitan wisdom found their way into a nineteenth century English magical society is quite another story, but their very survival indicates the deep archetypal power of these formulations. Light in Extension seems to be the key to activating the Equinox of the Gods, the Unification of the Paths of RA and Osiris, and the medium through which this will occur (is occurring!) seems to be that of the ancient God of the Sky, Heru-Ur. After all, March 21 in the Cairo calendar is called the feast of Re-constituting Heaven: The Company of the Gods, union of the houses of RA, Ausar and Heru. 1995 Vincent Bridges The Path of Ausar and the Mysteries of Resurrection 1995 Vincent BridgesTHE DJED AND THE TREE OF LIFEThe Djed seems to be a pre-dynastic fetish which somehow was absorbed into the Egyptian language as the ideograph for stability. The best we can say is that in its original connotations, the djed was connected with fertility, the supernatural life energy of the grain itself. When the First Dynasty priests began their grand synthesis of Egyptian theology, the djed became one of the fourteen power or kaw of the Great God RA. Each power was given to one of the Memphis triad, and so Ptah ended up with the djed.Ptah s Djed was often shown with a Uas scepter sort of plugged into the top of it, along with the crook and flail that would later become the emblems of Osiris himself. It would appear that Osiris assumed those objects from the ideograph of the djed. Ptah has become associated with Sokar, the God of the Land of the Dead, which Osiris absorbed at the beginning of the Old Kingdom.A Variety of Djeds showing a pillar supporting four horizontal tiers.Fortunately, Egyptian is very logographic as well as ideographic and phonetic. This means that word signs can be spelled out using similar sounds and meanings to the sign. Djed is also the Egyptian word for to speak, to declare, to say. With emphasis, Ddd-jed, it is the sacred word itself, speech deified. Interesting as this is, it is the other roots that really strike a suggestive nerve. Djedd, same word, slightly different emphasis, means, star, or actually, the culmination or azimuth, of the star.And now, suddenly we erupt into the Kabbalah. Again, the same word, djedd, is also a perfectly good Hebrew word dzeth, and they both mean an olive tree. The same word, in very similar pronunciation, is found in both Coptic and Arabic. Note also that the Hebrew letter teth, the serpent, spelled in full, is similar both in pronunciation and in numerical value dzeth is 417 and teth is 419.The olive tree connection leads us to fertile ground. The olive tree is the original Tree of Life, perhaps even the burning bush of Moses (Again, see Koran 28:37). The combination of the idea of star and the image of the tree of life suggests an interesting cluster of meaning associated with the djed. Even more interesting, 417, in Hebrew, is the value for Noah s Arc. The djed is an object that can safely carry us through the vast waters from one world to the next.The concept of the Djed as a sacred object can be broken down into three categories:1) Djed as an idea is found from early Dynastic times associated with the Uas and the Ankh, as in the three in one concept life/stability/serenity. From this came the verb djed, which meant stable, to be permanent.2) The Djed-pillar is the sacred object worshiped in pre-Dynastic times in the Delta as the world tree. In a small Osiris shrine against the north wall of the Karnak complex, there is a beautiful relief of the World Tree blossoming from the djed.3) The third category is the djed amulet, a small usually gold or bone replica of the djed pillar that was worn to ensure that the deceased had the permanence and stability of Osiris. The name, backbone of Osiris, is written as a djed pillar with a sperm-like tear drop shape moving upward toward an hemi-sphere. We can see this as emblematic of the sexual force, the sperm, moving upward to the dome of the cranium the rise of the force of kundalini.This concept is made even clearer by the specialized word for astral light or psychic brilliance in Egyptian, which is also pronounced djed. Written as the combination of the kaw powers light and stability, this word has very definite magical connotations. The light ideograph, a sun disk shown radiating energy downward, has no phonetic value but indicates a being of light. In this sense it finds its way into the word aakhu, a spirit being, a description or title very similar to the Mayan Ahau. Light in this sense is divine light, the cosmic beam mediated through the vibrations of the sun itself. It also shows us the nature of the Equinox of the Gods and gives us a clue to creation of the twin soul RA/Osiris.The Djed is the ancient image of the world tree as the focus of a sort of planetary kundalini force. To be disconnected the Djed on its side is to be out of touch with the greater galactic community. To raise the djed was to open a portal between the worlds, to reconnect the human community with the greater community of sentience in the galaxy. It was the function of the Pharaoh to perform this essentially magical feat, as it was the function of the Mayan Kings. Djed is the channel for the galactic communication beam, as well as the beam itself. The raising occurs in all of us as we become in tune with the flow of telluric kundalini, and then we become Djedi, the stable ones. Raising the Djed from AbydosTHE CAIRO CALENDARThe Cairo Calendar is an ant-eaten piece of papyrus bought by the Cairo Museum in 1943. The second section of this work, whose title is something like An Introduction to the start of Everlastingness and an end to Eternity, gives a reading for each day of the year. (These concepts could be productively worked. They suggest the root of the concept of spiritual consciousness, a sort of self-remembering similar to that of the Sufis and Gurdjief). As part of determining whether or not a day is auspicious, the mythology related to that day is also given. The Cairo calendar is our only source for how some of these concepts relate to time and the framework of the year. The Calendar gives many pieces of several different mythologies, and ties them together by how these archetypal and mythic events impact upon humanity. A truly amazing document!The Cairo calendar mentions the Djed three times. The first comes in September, the nineteenth day of the second month of Inundation. The Calendar tells us; It is the day of the going forth of Nun to set up the Djed pillar in its place to compensate the gods in its presence. Now this is most intriguing. If Nun is the primal water, the original being, then who are the gods? Two days before, on Day 17, we are told that the Major and Minor Ennead emerged from the chaotic waters of Nun. These are the gods before who Nun sets up the Djed. In its place would, of course, be the primal mound at Edfu, but how are the gods compensated by its presence? Why do gods need to be compensated? What does the Djed pillar do for these primal beings?The next Djed date, October 25 in our reckoning, the 26th day of the third month of Inundation, is very important. It is the day of establishing the Djed of Atum in heaven and on the land of Heliopolis at the moment of the uproar. The Two Lords are reconciled, causing the land to be in peace. All of Egypt is given to Horus, and all of the desert to Set. Tehuti goes forth to be judged before RA. The Cairo calendar is a curious collection of folkloric fragments. Its hieratic script dates it in the New Kingdom, but some of its phrases are extremely obscure, suggesting that they go back to the Old Kingdom and perhaps beyond into pre-dynastic times. Certainly this glimpse of the resolution of the conflict between Horus and Set is rather unusual, with its almost deus-ex-machina-like djed. The djed of Atum is an unique concept, which I can find no where else. Atum is the Heliopolitan creator god, the self-created lord of all. In the 175th chapter of the Book of the Dead, Atum addresses Osiris concerning the end of the world: I am but doing away with all that I have done since the earth emerged from the watery primal state of the abyss of Nun. I am fate and Osiris. I have changed into other serpents. Neither the gods nor mankind can perceive the double beauty I have created for Osiris, greater than all the gods. I have granted him the Mound of the Dead. This begins to resemble the image of a caduceus, the serpent-entwined rod of the Greek psycho-pomp Hermes. The serpents of course, are connections to the earth current, the word serpent is Egyptian, djed-ft, is related to the roots used in the Djed itself, indicating that the concepts were related. Atum s statement, I am fate and Osiris, is the core of the mystery. We can read the meaning of this as close to the Buddhist s suffering and the release of suffering. Granting Osiris the Mound of the Dead is to give him the position of the original Nun djed-pillar, as a sort of mediator among the worlds.The last Djed day in the Cairo calendar is the sixth day of the second month of Emergence, January 3rd in our current reckoning. It is the day of putting up the djed-pillar of Osiris. The gods are sad, with their faces downward when they remember Osiris. The Calendar lists the other Djed days are very favorable, but this one is listed as very unfavorable. The sadness of the gods suggests their compassion for the human condition. In that sense, the djed of Osiris can be seen as a sort of divine rescue. Saddened by our fate, the gods gave us an escape mechanism, the Djed.THE WORLD TREENow, let s try to pull all of this information into a coherent picture. The djed began as a power object to the Neolithic cultures of the Delta. It symbolized stability, or rather divine establishment. The world tree or axis is a common motif in shamanic practices, indicating an awareness of the infra-structure of the universe. As this idea became a word, it was associated with similar sounding words in order to have a phonetic spelling. The root complex of the spelling of the word djed encompasses the concepts of speech, including divine speech, the culmination of a star and an ol;ive tree, the world tree itself. This tells us that the ancient Egyptians thought of the Djed as something divinely pronounced, a tree that links the earth and the stars.Interestingly enough, the Indo-European group of languages have a complex of root words that are very similar to that which we have just outlined in Egyptian. The world tree in this case is the oak, *dorw in ancient Indo-Aryan. Just as the olive tree was the Tree of Life in the Mediterranean because of its ability to supply food, and therefore ensure stability, it was the oak that provided this stability for the ancient proto-Europeans wandering in the vast oak forests of the post-glacial warm spell. The word for oak also meant firm, strong, stable and enduring. Our modern English words truth, trust, and even tree come from these roots. Druid is also in the *dorw family, and means, seer of the oaks. Whenever we trace the decendants of the root words of the oak family in the various Indo-European languages, from Ireland to India, we find that they are prominently featured in a religious usage. And in India we find large pieces of the puzzle.A passage in the Rigveda echoes the notation in the Cairo Calendar: Which is the tree, which is the forest from which they have fashioned Heaven and Earth, the stationery, undecaying, and giving protection to the deities. The word for tree here, daru, is the direct derivation of *dorw. Daru is The Tree, the World Tree, the Cosmic Pillar around which the entire universe was thought to revolve. The world tree is often shown in ancient Indian folk art as a great tree crowned with the Pole Star. Polaris is called dhruva, another derivative, which meant the firm, or fixed one.So far, we are no further along than we were in the Egyptian tradition. But in sixth century BC India, the methodology was scientifically recorded and therefore preserved. Pantajali left us a kind of psychology lab manual, a do-it-yourself handbook on enlightenment in his Yoga Sutras. This is a work containing very specific formulas for the systematic unfolding of consciousness.This is not the place to discuss yoga or Indian philosophy. We are on an intellectual scavenger hunt for forgotten ideas, looking for the connections. The connection here lies in Formula 28 in the third section of Patanjali s work, which is concerned with powers, or abilities. It states that by performing samyama on the Pole star (dhruva), one gains knowledge of the motion of the stars. On the surface, this seems obvious. Watch the night sky from anywhere in the northern hemisphere of the planet and you can t help but observe the relationship of the Pole Star to the motion of the other stars. This is not a power but an observation. What happens then when you make samyama on the dhruva? We have no equivalent in English for the Sanskrit word samyama. To Pantanjali it meant a degree of meditation in which the three qualities of the mind merge. In essence, this means the ability to focus the mind, while permitting the mind to flow freely and, at the same time, unite the mind with the object of the meditation. It s a sort of mental calisthenics, like patting one s head simultaneously with rubbing the stomach: it produces a deep state of rapport with whatever one is focusing upon, be it an image of a deity, or the Pole Star. This intense rapport allows for an actual exchange of energy, a transferral of power, hence the name of the section. Some of this power is of course, knowledge.Thanks to the explosion of interest in eastern meditation practices, we now have a large group of individuals who have learned the trick, but do not have the cultural infra-structure of the Hindu world view. In a sense, what the trained western meditators have done is provide a degree of proof for the contention that the methods are indeed scientific, and not culturally dependent. The technique and its expression in the Sutra, is very precise, and its results are repeatable, as has been demonstrated by an experiment at Maharishi University.In the late seventies, Dr. Jonathan Shear put together an experiment based on the very Yoga Sutra in which we are interested. Published in the January 1981 edition of Metaphilosophy, his paper is extremely thought provoking. He states that, just as we have done, one would expect to perceive the motion of the stars in the context of the heavens as we are accustomed to perceive and think about them. But this doesn t happen.The early stages of the experience, the meditators reported, had that sort of imagery, but something else began to happen: The Pole Star is seen at the end of a long rotating shaft of light. Rays of light come out from the shaft like the ribs of an umbrella. The umbrella-like structure on which the stars are embedded is seen as rotating The whole experience is described as quite spectacular, blissful, colorful and melodious. The meditators themselves were taken by surprise. They had no idea that this image of the World Tree was an actual archetype until they stumbled across it. Dr. Shear is emphatic when he states the experience is the innocent by-product of the proper practice of the technique. Above is our archetypal Djed. The cosmology of the ancient Hindu Puranas echoes both Dr. Shear s meditators and the legends of the Djed. Dharma, the Cosmic Law that resides at the highest point of the celestial structure, is also an oak-root word. The Rigveda tells us that on top of the distant sky there stands/ The Word encompassing all. The Djed is one of Plato s Ideal Forms, as he describes in the story of the ascent of Er to the Realm of Ideal Forms in the Republic. It doesn t matter whether the seer resides in India or in Egypt, Britain or Greece, when the glimpse comes, a great tree upon which the universe turns appears as a shaft of brilliant white light, its streaming branches clusters of galaxies.Stability then becomes the link between earth and stars. We are stable only as long as we are connected to our stellar source. For the ancient Egyptians, this meant internal as well as external. They envisioned everyone as connected to a Khabs or star body. The djed, the spine of the individual, became the channel for that divine, or stellar connection. A person who had this internal stellar connection was seen as one who had control of the life force itself, a Djedi. There are many elements of sexual energy in this connection, suggesting both Hindu and Tibetan Tantric practices.The Cairo Calendar gives us some tantalizing fragments of a Djed myth, one that connects Nun, Atum and Osiris in new and unusual ways. If this can be accepted as a fragment of Heliopolitan secret lore, and I think it can, then we have the key to the mystery of the djed.Nun raises a djed, on the primal Edfu mound, to compensate the gods. For what? It can only be that they are no longer in heaven or the watery abyss of Nun, which is perhaps interstellar space. The Djed supplies their much needed connection to that heavenly base. The second appearance of the djed is a shock in both heaven and earth, an uproar, the Calendar noted it. A direct channel was opened so that the council of the gods, RA and the holders of his kaw could be physically present to judge the conflict. This djed of Atum is unique, perhaps the only time the Djed beam was used in this manner. The third djed is the memorial to Osiris. The gods take pity on mankind; the rescue is established.The Djed is our connection to the galaxy; the Egyptian equivalent to the Mayan Xibalba Portal, the gateway to the Otherworld. The madness of Set caused the Djed to fall on its side. Pharaoh must raise it up, that is, re-establish the divine or extra-terrestrial connection. Our illness is the illness of aggression and violence, the power to destroy. Our cure is the sense of our place in the greater universe, an end to the isolation of humanity. These are concepts that the Egyptians were concerned with thousands of years ago. Let s hope we understand them in time. 1995 Vincent Bridges NOTES ON EGYPTIAN RELIGION 1996 Vincent BridgesI. Notes on the Great MythWe see the religion of ancient Egypt through the filters of the royal cult and the theology of immortality. Consequently, much of the marginally related, but nonetheless significant, material has been lost or overlooked. The Great Myth, the mythological framework in which Egyptian Theology functions and gains expression, was unstated; perhaps because it was secret, jealously held by the temple initiates, or possibly because it was so well known as to be universal. Recovery of this lost Great Myth supplies a pattern in which the chaotic pieces of Egyptian mythology can be comfortably accommodated.To discern the Great Myth, we must first examine the different theological systems co-existent in Egyptian religious thought. The ancient Egyptians never codified their myths into one orthodoxy; mythology for them was a sub-set of philosophy or natural science, not a revealed truth. Therefore, the Egyptians creation myths read like anthropomorphised versions of cosmology texts. In fact, the great intellectual feat of the Memphite Recension was the insistence that these concepts are abstract images, not concrete, placed-in-time events. Humanity has seldom formulated a more inclusive and subtle statement of ontological and eschatological concerns than the Memphite theology. Its inclusiveness points up the lack of orthodoxy by accommodating several other traditions within the metaphor. Atum-Ra, Tehuti and Osiris are seen as forms of the Great Design, Ptah. As such, they are complementary, not antithetical.In this spirit, we can begin to look for the threads of inter-relationship that define the boundaries of the Great Myth. We shall examine this question from three perspectives: 1) the five great traditions and their relationships, 2) the mythic structure derived from these relationships, and 3) the nature of myth as language.1) The Five Great Traditions - These traditions can be sub-divided into the three traditions based on temples and localities: the Memphis/Hermopolis/Heliopolis, the Theban and the Edfu/Dendara of Upper Egypt; and two non-local traditions, that of the Great Goddess and Osiris.a) Memphis/Hermopolis/Heliopolis - Because of its political clout in the IVth through VIth Dynasties, the tradition of Heliopolis is the best known of all the Egyptian theologies. It was also extremely influential in the development of all the other traditions. The myths of Heliopolis form one portion of the bedrock on which the Great Myth rests. Only slightly less influential are the traditions of Hermopolis. These very esoteric myths are the intellectual underpinning of the later Memphite Theology. Tehuti, Thoth of the Greeks, was never assimilated as were Atum-Ra and Ptah. He remained as the Divine Ambassador no matter who was High God. Tehuti s peculiar relationship to all the traditions is an important clue to the structure of the underlying myth. We will return to this point later. At some time during the late Vth or early VIth Dynasty, the priest of Ptah in Memphis produced a unitary version of the creation myths that tried to gather both Hermopolis and Heliopolis into the same mythic form.b) Thebes/Luxor - The Egyptian city of Waset attained political prominence at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Its creator deity, a fragment of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad known as Amun with the attribute of invisibility, did not become the state deity until the New Kingdom. Amun, said to be simultaneously created by the spirits of Hermopolis and Ra the Sun God, was a composite, and ultimately political, tradition. The ancient local deity of the nome was Montu, the falcon-headed warrior god related to the Edfu/Dendara tradition. As Amun, the Hidden One, seen as an ancient serpent god who formed the world and then retreated, evolved during the Middle Kingdom, Montu became Khonsu, the Moon God; while Sekhmet, as Mut, became the Sun Goddess. This Theban Triad became a syncretic focus for the official religious expression of the New Kingdom.c) Edfu/Dendara - This tradition spans the whole range of Egyptian history, from the pre-dynastic murks to the last flash of Ptolemaic splendor. Focused on the myths of Horus the Elder and Hathor/Sekhmet, this tradition presents a somewhat revamped cosmology, although it agrees in outline with the basic Heliopolitian position. This tradition holds the divine right by which the King held office. The union of the disk, a new year ceremony, was an Edfu tradition that was celebrated in every temple and affirmed the authority of Horus as Divine King. The sacred marriage of Horus and Hathor, celebrated at both Dendara and Edfu, commemorated an important but almost overlooked moment in Egyptian mythological history. The Edfu traditions were overshadowed by the Cult of Amun, but managed to retain a degree of political power until Roman times. The Goddess myths of Dendara survived as a component of the Great Goddess Tradition.d) The Great Goddess Tradition - The Isis cult formed a core for a large collection of goddesses. She was Isis at Philae, Hathor at Dendara, Neith at Sais, Mut at Thebes, Sekhmet at Memphis, and Ejo at Buto and Nekhabit at El Kab; these last two the goddesses of Lower and Upper Egypt whose union was symbolized by the snake and vulture crown of the King. The Goddess tradition supported the various political and traditional arrangements, but was most closely identified with Osiris and the Younger Horus.e) The Osiris Tradition - Osiris is the theological glue that holds the Egyptian system together. Traces of the Osiris cult are found in pre-dynastic cultures, surviving until the Arab conquest. The Osiris tradition emerged in the late IVth Dynasty as a component of the Heliopolitian orthodoxy. This was a brilliant stroke of theological politics, and perhaps formed the basis of the Heliopolitian influence. The matter of Osiris bridged the mythological gap between cosmology and human history. Osiris was worshipped in many places, even Karnak, the Egyptian Vatican, has its Osiris chapel. Busiris in the Delta and Abydos in Upper Egypt were both important cult centers.2) Mythic Structure - We can think of the Egyptian myths as episodes in a vast cosmic drama that stretches from the creation of the universe to the founding of Kingship by the followers of Horus. This drama is played out in five great acts: 1) The Creation and Emergence of the High God, 2) the Departure of the High God and the Separation of Earth and Sky, 3) the Reign of Osiris and the Fall of Set, 4) The Great Conflict between Horus and Set, 5) the Salvation of Osiris and Kingship of Horus.a) Creation and the Emergence of the High God - At the beginning of all Egyptian creation myths there is only Nu, the primeval water of the universe. This can be pictured as an active void or a field of potential order. In this water, this field, the original Spirit moved. Heliopolis thought of this spirit as Atum, who self-generated the first twain, or pair of dualities, Shu, moisture, and Tefnut, heat and dispatched his eye, his sentience, to survey the void. In Hermopolis this was pictured as the union of the Negative Qualities to form the Cosmic Egg of existence. The sages of Memphis imagined this as the Original Spirit, here called Ptah, designing and braiding together the pattern of the future.The Original Spirit emerged from the primeval waters as a mound, or a point of stability in a universe of undifferentiated movement. This emergence was variously imagined as a flower opening, a serpent rearing, a pillar rising or even a child emerging from the flower. The Spirit then re-called his Eye, and flying up like the Primeval Bird, tamed his sentience, his Eye, as his daughter and embraced her. Her tears of joy became the small fragments of sentience that spread through the universe as human consciousness. The Original Spirit became the High God, and the first Golden Age began.2) Departure of the High God and the Separation of Earth and Sky - The High God, after a while, retreated from his creation. This is a key theological point in Egyptian mythology. The absence of the High God supplies a transcendent void in which the evolution of sentience unfolds. As The High God departs, Shu and Tefnut give birth to Geb and Nuit, the Earth and the Sky. The stars, our local universe, were created by another act of separation. Shu separates his children, literally opens up space/time, and gives birth to the stars. The body of Nuit becomes the river of stars and Geb swallows the seven cobras that form the ring of the world. Geb, matter, becomes the pattern through which Nuit, time, flows.3) The Reign of Osiris and the Fall of Set - Nuit also gave birth to the Five: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys and Horus the Elder. Osiris became the overseer of the High God, and taught mankind the skills of civilization. Another Golden age ensued. But Set grew jealous of his brother s authority and plotted against him. The Fall of Set introduced evil into the world: the will to power overcame the will to be compassionate. Set murdered Osiris and dismembered his body. Isis, with the help of Tehuti, (Thoth) gathered the pieces and magickally impregnated herself. Isis and Nephthys sat vigil over the body of Osiris while Set ruled the world in confusion and fear. Set fought the serpents of Geb, seeking to gain power over the earth itself. Isis went to hiding in the Delta and gave birth to Horus, the re-incarnation of Osiris.4) The Great Conflict between Set and Horus - Horus survived a series of childhood adventures in the Delta and the desert. As a young man, Horus set out to avenge his father. He challenged Set to a series of great battles that came close to destroying the world. Tehuti called upon the Council of the Gods to settle the dispute. Horus is eventually judged the victor and given the Kingship. Set is demoted to a being of storms and made to serve the Divine Boat.5) The Salvation of Osiris and the Reign of Horus - Horus the Elder brought the news to Osiris in the Duat, the netherworld, that Horus had avenged him and become King. Osiris was liberated to become the judge of the afterlife, and Horus the Younger became the living God on earth.Soon however, Horus the Younger grew unstable. His conflict with Set had poisoned him with violence. He soon joined Osiris in the Duat. Horus the Elder became King, but the Council of Ra decided that the contagion of Set was too pernicious for humanity to survive. Ra dispatched his Eye to destroy mankind. Tehuti and Horus the Elder outsmarted the Eye: the fiery lion-goddess became the nurturing cow. Horus and Hathor dwelt in Upper Egypt until the forces of Set emerged again. In the war against Set s monsters, Horus and Hathor passed their divine DNA onto a group of human sages, the Shemsu Hru, or the Followers of Horus. From this group came the organization that created the first King of a unified Egypt.3) The Nature of Myth as Language - For the Egyptians, myth was a language, one that expressed great wisdom about nature and the mind of man. The cosmological myths describe mathematical processes; for instance Ptah can be understood as Phi, which can be derived from the hieroglyphs used to spell p-t-h. Ptah can be seen as the master weaver, braiding the future course of evolution into our DNA. The Children of Nuit are different. They are more metaphorical than mathematical. Osiris can be seen as the force of compassionate order; Set as the individualistic impulse to power. The Fall of Set creates a mythic politics that explains the nature of evil. The ongoing mythopoetic drama continues into history; King Aha/Menes, founder of the Ist Dynasty who united the Two Lands, was the son of Horus and therefore not separate from the mythological past, but a continuing part of it.The mythic language of ancient Egypt provided an incredibly high level of civilization. Society had meaning that was deeply embedded in the structure of the culture itself. The Great Myth was the thread on which the interplay of intellectual components was strung.II. Notes on the PriesthoodIt is important to remember that the priesthood was a civil function in ancient Egypt. Recruited from the local population, the priests served three months at a time then returned to their daily lives. A small core of superior priests, or adepts, served the temple full time. During the New Kingdom, every temple, no matter how small, had at least one resident priest. The function of a priest was to maintain the universal order as dictated by the Gods in the Zep Tepi, or the First Time, the original Golden Age of the High God. To this end, their primary function was to perform the rituals of the Divine Drama, the Great Myth, at the appropriate time and in the correct way. By involving a large portion of the local population in its services, the temple became the center of local culture.The initiation, or installation, of a priest was essentially the same in all temples. A baptism in a sacred pool, symbolic of the waters of Nu, the Cosmic Ocean, washed away all evil. Then the candidate was sprinkled with oil and water as purification, led to the statue of the Goddess and instructed in the secret ways of touching and working with the statue. The candidate then undertakes a ten day fast, at the end of which the mysteries are revealed by some sort of psychic/shamanic experience.Within the temple structure, there were classes of priests. The administrative officials in the large temples, such as Karnak, functioned as a separate group, one not too concerned with religious perspectives. They took care of the business end of the temple and its property. The religious establishment also had its classes. The temple of Amun had five different priestly sections, each with its own sub-divisions. The High Priest of Ptah at Memphis was called the great chief of all artisans, as all crafts were under the protection of Ptah. These first and second prophets, mis-translated by the Greeks from the Egyptian servants of the God, were mostly royal appointments and could be chosen from any level of society. They led the higher ranks of the priesthood in the ritual functions of the temple.The upper ranks of the priesthood were drawn from the class of priestly specialist. This included: The Stolists, who dressed and cared for the divine image; scholars and scribes; timekeepers and astrologers; and the musicians, dancers and singers. Of these, the scribes and scholars were the most diverse.Below the specialists were the purified ones, the low clergy who acted as the participants in the rituals. They carried the lesser cult objects, the standards and the banners of the God or Goddess. Among this group could also be found the public oracles and interpreters of dreams.III. Notes on Priesthood of Memphis in the Early XVIIIth DynastyIn the early New Kingdom, Memphis was still a great city, even though no longer the political capital of the country. The Hewet-ka-Ptah, the Palace of the Spirit of Ptah, dominated the city, which spread from the Nile banks to the hills of Sakkarah. The main function of the Temple was the regulation of all industry. The specialists of Ptah include a master of every known craft. We known little of the ritual structure of the temple, but portions of its cosmology have survived on the Shabaka Stone. From this we glimpse a rarefied atmosphere of philosophical speculation, from which the practical crafts of Memphis grew.Within the temple complex was the smaller House of Sekhmet. This was tended by both men and women, but the High Priest and most of the specialists would have been women. Drawn from the local nobles, admission to the house of Sekhmet s priesthood would have been available to an outsider only through the specialists. Most of the major specialties, time-keeping and so forth, would have been shared by the entire temple, but Sekhmet would have had some specialties all her own. From the oblique hints we have left, these seem to have been: 1) skill with animals, including possibly shape-shifting or totemic shamanism, 2) dancing and 3) trance skills.As Ptah was the protector of crafts and craftsman, so Sekhmet was the ruler of all animal life, huntress and the creator in a way of domestication. Osiris is credited with domesticated the animals of the field, but Sekhmet is said to have made a pact with the wild animals, the cats and the cobras, to protect the grain of Egypt. Shape-shifting would have been a part of the Sekhmet festival that re-enacted the Eye of Destruction. There is some suggestion that the priestess of Sekhmet had the ability to become a lioness and render judgment, particularly on the servants of Set.Dancing was an important component of the Sekhmet mysteries at Memphis. Little has survived of these dances, though we can suppose that they demonstrated the geometric principles of the Memphite cosmology and were based on Phi and the square root of 5. The trance skills were related to the oracular specialties, some of which involved allowing the Goddess to take possession of a body and speak through it, much as the state oracle of Tibet does to this day.Politically, this period was a turbulent one for the priestly caste. The Precinct of Amun at Thebes emerged as the state religion and its high priest became the chief of all prophets of the South and the North. This pontificate ruled the religious environment and eventually became a rival to the royal power. The smaller precincts, such as Memphis, retained some political power, but were essentially caught between the power plays of Thebes and Heliopolis. The Servants of Ptah and Sekhmet would have occupied an uneasy neutral ground, and they would have been careful to support who ever was in power. We know that they supported Hatshepsut, just the Heliopolitian tradition supported Tutmose III. 1996 Vincent Bridges Abydos, the Osireion and Egyptian Sacred ScienceBy Vincent Bridges 9/1/2000Far up the Nile in Upper Egypt, sometime during the fourth millennium BCE, three great confederations, formed around the cult centers of what our earliest references call the living gods, unified to create the first great Egyptian kingdom. Eventually, this federation would spread north and south to conquer the Two Lands of the Nile and become the 1st Dynasty. In the south, a cult of Horus the Elder formed around Edfu and Neken and grew into its own state. Just north of Neken, in the bend of the great river, the living god was a goddess, Hathor, the consort of Horus. Since time immemorial, far back into the mists of Egyptian prehistory, the Lady of the House of Heru sailed down the river each year to meet her mate, Horus the Elder, at the ancient mound of Behdet at Edfu and celebrate the sacred marriage.This ancient closeness between the cult centers of the two early confederations led to a degree of political unity. However, Upper Egypt did not become a truly powerful federation until the addition of the third great independent confederation, that of Thinis down river from Nubt of Hathor. The living god of the cult center and capital, Abydos, was a dog deity named Khent-Amenty, which meant something like Head of the West. Since the entrance to the underworld, the land of the dead, was said to lie through the gap in the Libyan hills to the west, Khent-Amenty was seen as a kind of psycho-pomp or guardian of the land of the dead.This of course is supposition, as the cult of Osiris later overlaid and distorted most of the original doctrines of Khent-Amenty. We can not even say with any degree of certainty when this happened. As early as 3,000 BCE, Osirian funeral artifacts appeared at Abydos. Within a few hundred years, the 1st Dynasty kings of a unified Egypt built tombs and cenotaphs at Abydos in order to be near the tomb of Osiris and the gateway to the Land of the Dead. From then on, Abydos was the center of the Osirian mysteries.But the core of the Osirian mysteries may lie within the ancient cult of Khent-Amenty. Even though not much remains of the cult, the ancient cenotaph reconstructed by Seti I in the course of building his temple to Osiris, provides us with our most valuable clues. Called the Osireion to give it a proper Greek emphasis by its 19th century rediscoverers, Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray, this structure is one of the most unique and intriguing in all Egypt.To understand this, we must imagine what the area looked like during the rise of the Thinite confederation. Abydos, or Abedju (which, curiously enough, can be loosely translated as heart of the world axis, perhaps the same concept as the Greek Omphalos), in its wide bowl-shaped valley was primarily a ritual and funeral site. The administrative and trading center lay a few miles north, near the current village of Birba. The deep green valley, where the cultivated land reached almost to the Libyan hills, was seen as a spiritual enclave. In the center of the bowl, angled on a southeast/northwest axis from the western gap in the hills, lay the original Thinite necropolis.Standing among its ruins, the eroded mounds of pre-dynastic mastabahs, one is immediately struck by the alignment to the western gap. Because of the angle, the equinox sunset does not fall in the gap. The ancient Thinite necropolis is aligned so that it is the summer solstice sunset that shines down on it through the gap. Following this line through the old necropolis brings us to Seti s temple grounds. The line itself crosses the Osireion before running through the western wall of the Hall of the Djed in Seti s temple. Of course, Seti s temple was built in the 19th Dynasty, and so wasn t there in the Thinite era. But something like the Osireion just might have been there, and served as the terminal point of the sacred path of the Dead guarded by Khent-Amenty.An image from an Old Kingdom sarcophagus suggests how it may have originally looked. We see a hemispheric mound, similar to other omphalos images, with a chamber deep inside labeled Osiris lives. On the top of the mound are four large and prominent trees, representing the four axis of the celestial sphere, the four Trees of Life. We can easily imagine this tall mound rising from the valley floor and defining the central alignment of the Thinite necropolis as it guarded the path and its mysteries. Thus the term Khent-Amenty or Head of the West, from the top-of-the-head like appearance of the Osireion mound.Equally curious is that Khent-Amenty, a dog-like deity shown recumbent on a black standard, may in fact reflect an earlier understanding of the zodiac. The guardian of the west suggests a match for that guardian of the east, the Sphinx, and both can be related to the same constellation, that of Leo. Primitive cultures have often seen Leo as a dog-like creature, and it has even been suggested that the Sphinx originally depicted a dog. At the time of the earliest pre-dynastic cultures at Abydos, the ancestors of the Thinites around the turn of the 5th millennium BCE, the summer solstice sun was in Leo. So, standing in the sacred grove on top of the Osireion mound, one would have seen the sun set, and there, sparkling in the night sky, would have been Khent-Amenty, the black dog of Leo, guarding the path of eternal life.With this in mind, we can glimpse the greater pattern of precessional astronomy behind all of Egyptian sacred science. The Aker or horizon of the Sphinx marks the half round, every 13,000 or so years, rising of Leo on the equinoxes. The Aker/horizon of Abydos and there is a curious sphinx-like Aker shown in the Osireion s Book of Caverns marks the quarter cycle with the summer solstice alignment of Leo. Thus using Leo, or more precisely the cusp of Leo/Cancer, which would allow the maximum visibility of Khent-Amenty through the gap, it is possible to track with great accuracy the turning of the seasons in the Great Year.Interestingly enough, the date for the best viewing of Khent-Amenty/Leo from the location of the Osireion is the early 7th millennium, the approximate date, given the water erosion of its figure, for the construction of the Sphinx. There are also similarities in the construction of the Osireion and the Sphinx s so-called Valley Temple. Both use massive unadorned blocks of granite as their prime architectural component. But while the Valley Temple has sophisticated polygonal shapes to its blocks, reminiscent of the stone work at Tianahuaco in Peru, the Osireion uses severely simple blocks of regular, although massive, size. The temptation is to suggest that both structures belong to the same ancient culture, with perhaps the Osireion being the oldest because of its simplicity of design.Given the totality of the evidence, it seems likely that this is true, to a degree. Some head-like mound surely existed as the terminus of the summer solstice alignment, probably with some kind of simple chambered tomb inside of it. However, according to the evidence of the experts, Seti I extensively rebuilt the Osireion. On the main superstructure of the central island, it was once possible to see, three courses of masonry down, the cartoche of Seti I. Since this implies massive structural work in Seti s time, we might as well suppose that he completely rebuilt the structure according to some ruined original. He as much as tells us this in the inscriptions in the antechamber. The Old Kingdom sarcophagus mentioned above suggests that its basic design was well known, and there is some evidence in the Osireion itself that an earlier king, the 11th Dynasty Mentuhotep II, did some rebuilding at the site.What we do know is that sometime in the decade before 1300 BCE, work on the main Osiris temple halted until the early years of Rameses II reign. The temple itself has a curious L shape that is unique in Egyptian temple architecture, and which seems designed to avoid building over the Osireion. Even those scholars who insist that the Osireion is Seti s cenotaph do not explain why the design of the main temple was shifted to accommodate the Osireion. Most unexplained of all is the sudden appearance of another Book of the Dead style version of the underworld known as the Book of Caverns.While this is not the place to go into the intricacies of the Osirian mysteries, the importance of the Book of Caverns information must be stressed. Here, the creation drama is taken over to form the mythology of the salvation of the Prisoner in the Underworld. This unusual viewpoint forms the basis for a kind of Gnostic shamanism that lies at the core of Egyptian sacred science.The Book of Caverns depicts the underworld journey of the sun through a series of caverns, bringing light to the depths and the darkness. In those depths is Osiris, protected and isolated by the cosmic serpent Wer, the ancient One, or Nehaher, the Fearful Face, or as we are told in the Book of Caverns, Neheb-kau, the primeval snake power. As the sun shines into the depths of the chamber beneath the Sphinx-like Aker, Osiris begins to revive, his life force returns, symbolized by the erect penis. In order to free himself from the primeval snake power, an exchange must take place with the sun. O you who were in the coils of the serpent, the sun declares, I deliver him to you by the order which comes from my mouth. I will cause you to breathe with what comes from my mouth and may my light give illumination to your caverns without the serpent seeing. Osiris had always been mysteriously connected with the idea of divine light, either of the sun and/or the moon. Chapter 183 of the Book of the Dead has Thoth, a moon god, announcing to Osiris that he made the light shine on your inert body, for you he illuminated the dark ways. This echo from the ancient mysteries continues down to the 19th century magical order, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which used similar words in its ritual of the Neophyte. However, the clearest exposition of this idea can be found in the Gnostic text known as the Paris Papyrus, one of the gems looted from Egypt by Napoleon s savants.In papyrus IV, lines 475 830, we find a ritual to attain immortality by inhaling light. The aspirant is first told to perform seven days of rituals, and then three days of dark retreat. On the morning of the eleventh day, the aspirant is to face the rising sun and perform an invocation: First source of all sources perfect my body (so) that I may participate again in the immortal beginning that I may be reborn in thought and that the holy spirit may breathe in me. With this, the aspirant inhales the first rays of the rising sun and then leaves his body behind, rising into the heavens, filled with Light. For I am the Son (of the Sun), I surpass the limits of my souls, I am (magical symbol for Light). During the late New Kingdom, the ideas from the Book of Caverns became popular enough to be included on tombs and coffins. On the coffin of a late 20th Dynasty noble, we can see how these ideas reached their common form. Osiris as Sokar is entombed in a seven-step mound formed from the coils of the primeval serpent. The inner sun shines down on his body, and on glyphs identifying Abydos. Above the apex of the pyramid formed of the serpent s body, Osiris sits enthroned on the gnomonic cube of space, his arms crossed in the position of the resurrected god. Isis and Nepthys stand behind him, with Horus before him offering a lotus on an omphalos-like mound. At the edge of the picture, behind Isis and Nepthys, is a strange being with an unidentifiable glyph on his head. He is holding two straightened snakes at right angles to each other over his navel center.This simple ideograph holds the key to many mysteries, but for now let us direct our attention to the two most cogent, the mystery man with the straightened snakes and the offering from Horus. According to the authorities, including A. Piankoff (who suspects that the entire Book of Caverns is a remnant of the ancient Abydos cult), this mysterious figure represents the primal forces, the faceless beings found in the underworld. Why such a being should be holding two crossed snakes is left unexplained.One of the main themes in the Book of Caverns is that of straightening the primeval serpent. In some versions, the serpent is chopped into pieces, an idea echoed in the checkerboard snake seen here. To straighten the cosmic snake then is to align one s self in space/time. In that sense, our primal force is holding two of the three alignments of the cube of space, the axis of the Great Year defined by the Leo alignments of the Sphinx and Khent- Amenty. This suggests that the mystery of Osiris resurrection, the mystery of immortality, is also the mystery of time itself.And then, there is that gift of Horus In most scenes of this kind, we would expect to see Horus presenting Osiris the magical Eye or an Ankh, and so the offering of a simple lotus is unusual. The lotus is the symbol of Upper Egypt, but this is no political symbol Horus is presenting. It is a simple lotus, but perhaps one of a particular kind. The mound suggests Abydos, and there might have been a rare kind of lotus grown just at Abydos.Given the recent revelations concerning the psychotropic qualities of the Blue Lotus of Upper Egypt, perhaps this supposition is correct. However, once we start thinking along these lines, other ideas spring to mind. If, as seems most likely, the active ingredient in the Blue Lotus is in the Tryptamine family of psychotropic alkaloids, then we might have to rethink our basic understanding of the entire Osirian myth. Most tryptamines have trouble passing the blood-brain barrier without synergestic help from other alkaloids, usually in the beta-harmoline/beta-carboline families. In South America, these synergestic brews are known as yage, and are extensively used as a shamanic agent. Indeed, the complex knowledge of nature displayed by the native peoples of the rain forest and high plateau of the Andes seems to have been gained directly through the use of these shamanic agents.Perhaps that is how the ancient Egyptians came by their sophisticated knowledge of the cosmos and human destiny. But do we have any evidence of anything like yage, other than the Blue Lotus, in ancient Egypt?Recent Jordanian ethno-botanical research has disclosed that a type of yage brewed from Acaia tree gum, Syrian rue seeds and various grasses of the genus Phalaris has served as the major Bedouin shamanic agent for thousands of years. This is interesting because the Acaia tree has always been held to be sacred to Osiris. From the Middle Kingdom on, we have images showing Osiris being fed or even suckled from the Acaia tree. The sacred trees shown growing from the top of the Osireion mound are often described as Acaias. Even more curious is the fact that several of the barley grasses grown in pre-dynastic times, as today, in raised Osiris beds are rich in natural tryptamine alkaloids.This casts the so-called barley hymns to Osiris, such as Coffin Text 330, in a very different light. Whether I live or die, I am Osiris, I enter in and reappear through you The Gods are living in me for I live and grow in the grain that sustains the Honored Ones. And again: I am the Lord of Khennet, I have entered into the natural order of the world, I have reached its limits Khennet is often translated as a name for the royal granary, but may in fact be related to the Osireion, in its ancient form of head of the west. Khen-net, could be a contraction of KHENt-aMEnTy. In this sense, we might think of the Osireion as not just a temple or a tomb/cenotaph, but as a sophisticated shamanic laboratory and botanical garden.Horus is also the god of Light, in the sense of a mystical or inner sun. His offering of the lotus brings the light motif full circle, presenting us with the idea of inner and outer light sparked by the unusual, straightened snakes of the times. To unravel this final mystery, we must focus on the question of the light. Why are the texts insistent on certain kinds of light?The Paris Papyrus suggests sunrise, while the alignment at the Osireion suggests sunset. The midnight sun of the Book of Caverns suggests starlight, while the strange insistence on including Thoth suggests moonlight, or possibly, an eclipse. The cosmic alignment gives still another kind of light, a unique eruption from either a nova or the center of the galaxy, as proposed by Dr. Paul LaViolette, and which could be related to the Great Year of precession if the eruptions are regular.So we have four categories of light to consider. Sunrise and sunset could be considered as red light, that is sunlight filtered of all but the longest, and therefore the reddest, waves by the atmosphere. Starlight is a natural form of luminal coherence, such as is achieved in modern lasers. While starlight is nowhere as coherent as a laser, it does exhibit some of the same properties of frequency coherence. Also certain stars have light of a particular frequency, exhibited as their color; Canopus is green, Antares, red and Sirius a brilliant blue-white. Light from such stars exhibit coherence around these color frequencies.Moonlight is simply reflected sunlight. However moonlight, like sunlight, seems too common for the scenario. Moonrise and moonset would also be reddened by the atmosphere, in addition to polarized by reflection, so that this would give these moments a unique light signature. Unfortunately, these moments are not indicated in the texts. But there are intriguing indirect pointers to suggest that an eclipse, and their light, could have been very important.Around the central portion of the Osireion s inner chamber are seventeen small chambers. This is an unusual number, a prime, which seems to have no relationship to any cosmic or planetary cycles. But when we add to this the ten pillars of the central island, we get 27, a key precessional number. Even more curious, when we account for Osiris as the central section of the island, we find that we have 18.6, the number of years in an eclipse cycle. We arrive at this by means of geometry. The center of the island contains another well, a square, and a smaller island reached by faux steps. The space defined by the small island and its steps is related to the square well in the proportion of 1: Phi, or 1.618. If we assign this value to Osiris, then we have a total of 18.618, which will define eclipse cycles within a few hours of accuracy.So, if the hidden secret of the Osireion is the ability to predict eclipses, then what is the quality of eclipse light? Lunar eclipses would seem to be the absence of light, except perhaps for reflected starlight. A solar eclipse however is another matter, particularly a total eclipse. The body of the moon blocks the main light of the sun, allowing only the corona light to reach the earth. This is rich in the higher frequencies of the ELM spectrum, appearing almost ultra-violet blue, and is known to have a pronounced effect on all life, including humans. Perhaps this is the midnight sunlight which revives Osiris in the underworld?Our fourth kind of light is even harder to get a handle on. This new light, timed by some portion of the precessional cycle, would exhibit unknown characteristics that could include radical shifts in our perceptions, and given the brain chemistry connection between the life cycle and the serotonin/melotonin cycle, perhaps even an enhancement of our species life span. In that sense, the resurrection of Osiris is something that happens rarely, once or twice during the Great Year, and produces radical shifts in human development when it occurs.In many ways, this interpretation makes the most sense. The Osirification of a species is something that happens regularly, along with the burst of new precessional light. This new light drives us toward our future, and our destiny as a sentient species. Indeed, this seems to our modern consciousness the most likely explanation. But it does not explain those, throughout history, who have tried to hasten this process of Osirification.However, if we assume that some kind of cosmological, precessionally timed Osirification did in fact occur, then perhaps we can reverse engineer the techniques of the Osiris cult who tried to reproduce it. While we cannot know exactly the qualities of light from, say, a galactic core eruption, we can determine some of its characteristics. Since it is exploding outward at the speed of light, we would see it as doppler-shifted toward the upper end of the spectrum. It would appear as deep ultra-violet blue. Also, the effect of the clouds of dust that obscure the center of the galaxy at the moment would act as an eclipse giving the impression of bluish light pouring out from around a block of darkness.With these similarities, it easy to see the importance a solar eclipse would have. In many ways, it could be seen as a smaller and less intense version of the eruption light, down to the sense of having most of it blocked out. The light would also be rich in the upper ELM frequencies, just as the eruption light. However, a total solar eclipse happens only once or twice a generation at any locality. Surely, the Osiris cult would look for other sources of the proper light qualities.And the place to look would be starlight, the blue white stars such as Sirius or the Pleiades. Both of these stars have mystical antecedents, with Sirius being deeply involved in the Osiris cult. Traditionally associated with Isis, through whose auspices Osiris was resurrected, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. But is there a connection between the Osireion and Sirius?Strangely enough, yes. If we assume that the orientation of the Osireion chamber itself was not changed by Seti s reconstruction, then another intriguing alignment emerges. At the same time period, the turn of the 7th millennium BCE, when Khent-Amenty/Leo was setting on the summer solstice sunset through the mountain gap, Sirius was high in the southwestern sky, perfectly aligned with the central axis of the Osireion. This certainly suggests that the midnight sun whose light resurrects Osiris is the focused, coherent starlight of Sirius, seen by the ancient as the best available analog for the eruption light of the precessional Osirification.This idea would also connect the sunrise/sunset light. These moments, and their red-light qualities, would be used to anchor the physical containers, both the bodies of the initiates and the physical structure of the mound and chamber. It might also be useful for the growth of the initiates psychotropic pharmacology. In this perspective, the pattern of light delineated by the Osirian mysteries becomes part of a larger sacred science that includes such cosmological ideas as the quality of time being related to the quality of light, a sophisticated pharmacological technology to achieve resonance with that frequency wave of new light, and knowledge enough to make use of eclipse light and Sirius light to mimic the new light of the precessional moment.Of course, the process of Osirification remains obscure. A major clue is provided by the geometry of the Osireion itself. We have seen how Osiris is described as Phi by the geometry of the central structure. This tendency, as shown by the analysis of the Osireion by Lucy Lamy, extends in several very interesting directions.First, the basic geometry she delineates is an edge-on double pentagram. Interestingly, this is also the indole/receptor pattern formed by serotonin and typtamine alkaloids when they are absorbed by the brain. In this instance, geometry and architecture mimic the internal process. This is a powerful clue to the inherent sacred science of Osirification.The geometry found in the Osireion also suggests a nest of 3D generative roots, the square root of 2, 3 and 5, and the Golden Mean ratio of Phi. As Mayan scholar John Major Jenkins elucidates in his Mayan Sacred Science, these incommensurable numbers form the connective tissue that holds the collective and the individual worlds together.The geometry of the Osireion displays this level of understanding, and extends it to include the merging of the Cubes of Space. Any pentagon can be used as the basis of an exercise called squaring the circle, or in 3D, cubing the sphere. The double pentagon of the Osireion allows two such cubed spheres, interpenetrating in the space of the central Osiris island, whose Phi structure allows us to generate another pentagonal figure. This pentagon pair, unlike the original, interpenetrates to a degree that suggests that the resolution to the whole geometric complex is the dodecahedron, composed of 12 pentagonal faces. Traditionally, this platonic solid is used to represent the spirit.As witches have alleged for centuries, the pentagram is also a gateway to higher dimensions. The simplest 3D solid, the tetrahedron, has its 4D complement, the pentatope, which is a tetrahedron with another tetrahedron on each of its four faces. The shadow of a 4D wire figure pentatope in 3D is a pentagon/pentagram. Two back to back pentagon/pentagrams allow the packing and unpacking of tetrahedrons into and out of the 4D space of the pentatope, in effect forming a cascade channel for energy of a higher order, 4D, to flood into a lower frequency space, 3D.Deeper than this into the process of Osirification, I am afraid we cannot go. Further work remains to be done, but the outline of my Stargate Hypothesis, as presented here, provides us with clues and connections. The mystery of the Osireion has taken us a long way toward the goal. Empire of the Sun: Ancient Mysteries of NostradamusSunday, September 28th, 2003quotes by Fredric Mistraltexts and photos by Vincent Bridges 2003 As far back as I can remember, I have in front of me a barrage of mountains whose hillocks and slopes, cliffs and narrow valleys were blue from dawn til dusk; a blue that varied in intensity according to the time of day. This is the chain of the Alpilles, surrounded by olive groves like some mountain of ancient Greece and a lofty keeper of legends and glory Caius Marius, the savior from Rome still popular throughout the region awaited the barbarians at the foot of this rampart, behind the walls of his camp; his trophies have been gilding under the sun of Les Antiques, near St. Remy, for two thousand years On the steep rocky cliffs of the the mountain the princes of Les Baux built their stronghold. The gracious chatelaines held their courts of love in the fragrant vales of Les Baux at the time of the troubadours. Oh delightful fragrances! Oh light! Oh gentle nature s peace; what longings of paradise you place in my child s soul Think of a triangle, with a town and its castle at each of the points. There s a river on two of the three sides, but the third side drifts so openly toward the marshes of the south and the sea that the delta might as well be an island. Across the center of the triangle, almost due east to west, runs a jagged chain of sharp cliffs and steep valleys known as the Little Alps. In actuality, they look more like an Impressionist version of the mountainsides of ancient Greece, shrunken to a more human scale, and placed like a stage set in the middle of a rocky plain.A few million years ago, the pressure from the growing Alps and the Pyrenees buckled a portion of the ancient seabed and thrust it straight up into the air. As the sea retreated, the bed on either side of the buckled rock silted up and became a stony and desert-like plain, the little Crau to the north, and the Crau to the south. The chain of limestone peaks that separates them runs roughly 20 miles, from Eyguieres, the eastern edge and the highest peak at just under 1,500 feet, to St. Gabriel in the west. At the widest point, the Alpilles are barely three miles across. Small in scale, but rich, as Frederick Mistral put it, in legends and glory. The legends began six thousand years ago when the Neolithic hunters formed small communities in the safety of the mountain-top caves and springs at Les Baux and Eygaliere. Around three thousand years ago, a proto-Celtic civilization developed, one which welcomed the Greek traders who arrived half a millennium later in the 6th century BCE. Three hundred or so years later when Rome arrived in the first flush of its empire building, the Ligurians were cultured philosophers who had dwelt in peace so long they had virtually forgotten the art of war. Rome saved them from the more nomadic Celts sweeping down from the north, but at the price of their independence. The Salian confederation of Ligurian tribes was defeated by the Romans within a generation and soon thereafter the entire region was annexed as Rome s first province, the Provincia Narbonenis. A century later, Augustus and Julius having made safe the roads back to Rome and in doing so made Celtic Gaul Roman the first province, Provence, became the centerpiece of the transalpine empire.The ancient city of Glanum Livii, at the foot of its sacred mountainNestled in a narrow valley to the north of the Ligurians sacred mountain stood the ancient capital of Liguria, the Celto-Greek city of Glanon, Romanized as Glanum Livii. Founded half a millennium before the turn of the common era, Glanum s authority depended on its closeness with the Druidic priesthood at Les Baux and in the Valley of the Ancients at Cordes. In the Roman era, it was eclipsed by Arelate (Arles), which had wisely backed Julius Caesar in his dispute with Pompey in 49 BCE. Even as Arelate grew, Glanum adhered to its old ways, absorbing first the Romans, and then in the middle of the first century CE, an influx of Jews from Palestine and other parts of the new Roman Empire. Some of these Jews were followers of a rabble-rousing magician, Jesus the Nazorean, who had just claimed the ancient throne of David in Jerusalem, and been executed for treason by the Romans for the attempted restoration of the ancient lineage. The fleeing followers included, perhaps, members of Jesus immediate family. As they spread throughout the region preaching their Gospel, the cultured and thoroughly Helenized Druid philosophers were also converted to the new faith. From this unique blend of spiritual influences would grow an alternative version of what, a century or two later, would be called Christianity.original lion guardian of the spring at Ste. Maries-de-le-Mer, circa 1st century CEThis blending of spiritual influences began when the Egyptians of the 18th and 19th Dynasties arrived, more than a millennium before Glanum was founded at the foot of its holy mountain. The Egyptians built trading forts off what was then mouth of the Rhone, near the present day Ste. Maries-de-le-Mer, and traveled up the Rhone as far as Lyons. In the Greek era, trade flowed freely from Alexandria by way of Massilia. With the trade came an influx of ideas and philosophies from the east. In the late third century BCE, Buddhist missionaries arrived, dispatched by King Asoka in India to preach the Eight-fold path to all the ends of the earth. For the next three centuries, small enclaves of Buddhist hermits could be found living in the ancient grottoes and caves of the region. Helenized statues of the Buddha have been unearthed in the caves near Lamanon, and in at least one grotto said to have been used by St. Marie Magdalene, north of Nimes. This unique overlapping of influences created the very cosmopolitan and syncretic context from which the new faith emerged, appearing suddenly and full blown with the fervor of a Jewish messianic cult, the compassionate techniques of the early Buddhists, and an emphasis on the Goddess-mother and child, that is pure paganism, recognizable all the way back to the first Neolithic hunters.Street corner Madonna and Child, St. Remy-de-ProvenceSt. Remy-de-Provence, where statues of the Virgin and Child still bless every important street corner, grew from the ruins of Glanum s destruction. Depopulated first by Diocletian s persecution at the end of the third century CE, there was little left to sack by the time the Visigoths arrived in the early fifth century. At the turn of the sixth century, the area was revitalized and given a new name by one of those odd quirks of fate that seem to drive the history of the Dark Ages. The Visigoths made Arelate their new capital, and Alaric II proclaimed himself king of the new empire of the Goths. They were opposed only by the newly Christianized Merovingian Franks under Clovis. Declaring that it was against God s will that the fairest portion of Gaul should be ruled by heretics and heathens, Clovis invaded the south and defeated Alaric II at the battle of Vouille. In the bargain, he became the master of southern France all the way to the Pyrenees.The Municipal Arch at Glanum, Les AntiquesDuring the campaign, Clovis traveled the ancient Roman road from Arelate to Avenio (Avignon) and camped with his army in the fields north of the ruins of Glanum, around what would come to be called Les Antiques. While camped at Glanum, Clovis experienced a miraculous visitation from his mentor, St. Remy, who prophesied for Clovis the future of his dynasty - The Kingdom of France is predestined by God for the defense of the only true Church of Christ. This kingdom shall one day be great among the kingdoms of the earth as well as his personal future At the end of his most glorious reign, he shall go to Jerusalem, and shall lay down his Crown and Scepter on the Mount of Olives Clovis was so impressed by this experience that he gave the entire area to the church of Rheims, and so the new hamlet that grew on the site was called St. Remy s town. Clovis went on to become the greatest of the Merovingian Kings, and St. Remy-de-Provence remained ever after woven into the sacred tradition of French kingship.Hilltop farmhouse or mas in EygaliereThe fortified hilltop villages, such as Eygaliere, fared better in the next few centuries than did the new towns such as St. Remy. Hit hard by the plagues of the sixth century and the Arab invasion of the eighth, a small measure of stability returned to the region with the rise of the Carolingians. The area around St. Remy became virtually independent as a kind of Dark Age city state, and survived in this form until the rise of the Lords of les Baux in the middle of the tenth century CE. Around 950, a local nobleman named Hughes claimed by right of descent, the ancient lineage once again, the old Roman watchtower and Druidic observatory at the entrance to the Valley of the Ancients at Cordes, directly in the center of the Alpilles. Perched like a vast boat hence the name les Baux, the beam or keel of a ship that would in local usage come to mean any sharp uprising of rock floating to the south of the sacred mountains, the terrace has an unobstructed view of the entire southern horizon, making it possibly the most significant Neolithic and megalithic astronomical location in all of Europe. Militarily, the site commanded both the Roman road to the north, through the passes it looms above, and the east/west road across the Crau, which ran directly below the rocky fortress. Possession of this site made Hughes and his descendants the masters of the medieval empire of the sun.Les Baux, as seen from across the Valley of the AncientsThe Lords of les Baux adopted the idea of a semi-divine lineage, proclaimed by Clovis after his vision at St. Remy, and combined it with the ancient local traditions of Druidic astronomers to produce what to their contemporaries was the odd idea that they were descended from the third wise man, Balthazar. But from within the local mythic context, this was the only description possible for a tradition that clearly preceded Christianity, even as it recognized and embraced it. Of course the Druids of the Valley of the Ancients had foreseen the new age in the sky, so why shouldn t they have sent a wiseman, a magi, in search of the meaning of the Star? The Lords of les Baux took the mythic Star, shown with 16 rays, as their family crest.At the height of their power and influence, the Lords of les Baux ruled roughly one hundred villages and hilltop keeps on both sides of the Alpilles and by the late twelfth century had taken on a role in international power politics. Their support encouraged Frederick I Barbarossa in his end-run around the Roman church, resulting in his 1179 coronation as King of Arles. The facade of St. Trophime in Arles, designed and sculpted for the occasion, has a frieze depicting the entire story of the Magi as a direct nod to the influence of the Lords of les Baux. It was also the time of the Troubadours, who sang at the courts of love held in Les Baux, Romanin and Roquemartine, and the Cathar heresy, which the Lords of les Baux embraced, as well as the first appearance in written form of the Kabbalah, the transcendent light mysticism of the Jews, whom the Lords of les Baux held as being under their direct protection. The troubadour cited as the source for the original Grail legend by both Chretein de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach, one Guyot de Provence, was a vassal of the Lords of les Baux, and it is therefore not unusual to find images and motifs from the Grail Romances springing to mind as one contemplates the fortress of Les Baux.Les Baux as Grail CastleWithin a generation, all would be on the verge of ruin, as first the Pope and then the French King launched crusades against the heretics of the south. After invasion and inquisition came the first waves of the Black Death, and the Lordship of les Baux passed to the Counts of Provence. In the fifteenth century, this was Good King Rene D Anjou, who gave Les Baux to his second wife, the beloved Queen Jeanne. It is fitting that in its final days of independence, Les Baux was ruled by a Queen. After her death, King Louis XI of France destroyed the fortifications, but Les Baux continued to be an important fiefdom. In the sixteenth century, it passed to the Marechal of France, Anne de Montmorency. With the good Marechal, we arrive in the time of the region s most famous historical figure, Michel de nostra domina, nicknamed Nostradamus by his contemporary, Francois Rabelais. The sixteenth century was a crucial point in the history of France and Europe, and Nostradamus was part of all the conspiracies and diverse intellectual currents of the era. Within his lifetime, his influence would begin to shape the events of European power politics, and after his death his shadow would continue to haunt the future, touching even our own more rational age.The Rue Hoche, the old Jewish quarter of St. Remy-de-ProvenceMichel, eldest son of Jaume de nostra domina, a local grain merchant and notary, was born in mid December 1503 in his grandmother house on the Rue Hoche, the main street of the ancient Jewish section of St. Remy-de-Provence. He spent his first fifteen years in St. Remy, playing in the shadow of Les Antiques and absorbing the region s legends and history from his two grandfathers. At that period, Glanum was a legendary memory, but one that was accessible to the adventurous. The crypt of the small chapel of St. Jean, a few hundred yards from Les Antiques, opened on to the ancient buried temple of the Goddess of the spring, the nympheum, of Glanum. And from there, miles of underground water chambers and sewers were available, running from Glanum and the monastery of St. Paul de Mausole out to the ancient quarries and beyond. His youth in St. Remy, with its mixture of myths and ancient history, had a profound effect on the future Seer of Provence. In six quatrains of his famous Prophecies, he returned to the scenes of his youth, implying that a great secret, the local myth of the Silver Goat, would be discovered there one day.The Dome of the Rock and the Palace of the Popes at Avignon from across the RhoneAt fifteen, young Michel departed for the university school at Avignon, the scene of the French Captivity of the Church in the fourteenth century and still the center of the region s intellectual life in the sixteenth century. In September 1521, his studies interrupted by an outbreak of the plague, Michel left Avignon and began his first period of wandering. By 1529, he was in Montpelier where he applied for admission to the medical school. One of his fellow students, the already famous humanist Francois Rabelais, Latinized Michel s surname as Nostradamus. It is not clear whether Nostradamus ever received his doctorate, but by the early 1530s he had settled in Agen, in southwestern France, in order to study with the Italian humanist Julius Ceasar Scaliger. Nostradamus married a local girl, and quickly had two children. But disaster soon struck, and both his new wife and their two children died of the plague. By 1534, Nostradamus was on the move again.For a decade, Nostradamus wandered the south of France, from Provence to the Basque coast and Bordeaux and back again. By 1544, we find a contemporary mention of him studying the plague and its treatment with Louis Serres in Marseilles, and then, a year or so later, he was summoned to Aix and Salon to organize the fight against the plague. He was so successful that the next year he was called to Lyon for the same reason. These exploits made him well-known, and along with the division of father s estate, he found himself wealthy enough to married the most eligible young widow in Salon-de-Provence, Anne Ponsard. But before he could settle down to wedded bliss, Nostradamus found it necessary to make a trip to Italy.Of all of Nostradamus mysterious periods of wanderlust, this last journey to Italy is perhaps the most odd. He married Anne, bought and began to refurbish a house in Salon, and then left for a two-year excursion. It is hard not to consider that he was in some way summoned to Italy, or at least compelled by reasons more powerful than just gathering recipes for his book on cosmetics. His old friend Rabelais was in Italy, and may have been the source of the invitation. Nostradamus alludes in his later works to collecting a number of volumes on occult philosophy during his trip that would later serve as the source of his magickal practices. Soon after the election of Pope Julius III in 1550, Nostradamus returned to Salon-de-Provence and began the work that would make him famous for the next half a millennium.Salon-de-Provence, Nostradamus home for the last decades of his lifeNostradamus was famous almost from the moment of his return, becoming a sixteenth century superstar within the decade when his prediction of Henri II s death came true. Before his death in 1566, he was the confident of the Queen of France, and officially proclaimed the royal Councilor and Physician in Ordinary to the Crown. He charted the future of French Kings, Henri II and his sons, discovered the founder of the next dynasty, the ten-year old Henri de Bearn, recognized a future Pope, and composed a history of mankind s possible and alternate futures in the Green Language of the Hermetic adept. And he accomplished all this without having his work placed on the newly developed Index of prohibited books, or even running afoul of the Inquisition. That alone shows that Nostradamus had many friends in powerful places.Whatever we make of his prophecies, there can be no doubt that they have continued to fascinate us. Each era has seen the reflection of its own time and problems in Nostradamus enigmatic verses, but he was right enough, often enough, with his predictions that our fascination is warranted. From a historical perspective, we can see Nostradamus as part of a reformation movement, not just within the church or the state, but an attempt to chart out the reformation of the human spirit through the vehicle of time. Nostradamus saw himself in the larger tradition of the Old Testament prophets and others such as the Sybils of ancient Rome and the more recent Joachim of Flores. But, and here s the important twist, he also saw himself as a man of the renaissance, a man of science, pragmatic and empirical. His prophetic abilities were to him a kind of future science, known to the ancients, dimly reconstructed by the scholars of his era, but surely to be perfected sometime in the long reach of human history. In that sense, we can see his Prophecies as an attempt to communicate not just across time, but across levels of awareness as well.Michel-de-Apocalypse, Salon-de-ProvenceThe mystery of Nostradamus is ultimately the mystery of the region itself, the ancient empire of the Sun. From the Druid Seers of Les Baux, the philosophers and early Christians of Glanum, to the Merovingians origins of St. Remy, the Magi of Les Baux, the Cathars, the Kabbalah, the Templars and the legends of the Grail, Nostradamus vision rested on a solid basis of local myth and tradition. For example, just out Nostradamus back door in Salon-de-Provence, where he would have to have seen it everyday, is the Eglise St. Michel-de-Apocaylpse. On its arched tympanum we find not just St. Michel holding the sealed book of esoteric knowledge, but also posing as Ophiucus, the serpent holding esoteric 13th sign of the zodiac marking the center of the galaxy. Below his central figure is a lamb and shofar horn, the horn of judgment, beneath a Templar cross. Around these central figures are Green language images of the Tree of Life along with the Merovingian fleur-de-lis. Nostradamus had but to take a walk in the evening to contemplate, on one church front, the deepest core of his philosophy.Vincent BridgesSeptember 28, 2003 A New Jerusalem in BohemiaThe Mystery of the Prague Jerusalem Alignment:A New Jerusalem in Bohemia Vincent Bridges 2011In the heart of Prague s Old Town, just off the main tourist routes and a few blocks southeast of Charles Bridge, is the semi-restored church of St. Anne and St. Lawrence, now a cultural center sponsored by the former Czech President, Vaclav Havel, and his wife Dagmar s foundation. I had no idea, when I attended a reception there last October, that I was in fact at the center of a fascinating mystery, one that is virtually unknown, even in the Czech Republic.I was mingling, drinking excellent champagne and making good use of my half dozen or so words of Czech, when I stopped to look at one of the exhibits on the restoration of the church. It contained a timeline of the church s history, which informed me that it had once been the property of the Knights of the Temple, The Templars, then passed to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, now of Malta, before becoming the property of the Dominican Order in the mid 14th century. The arc of that ownership was striking enough, but under the Templar reference was a line about the church as V Jerusalemu. Now, even my far from adequate knowledge of Czech could handle that one: In Jerusalem. Why, I wondered, would a church, especially a Templar church in the depths of Prague s Old Town, be called In Jerusalem? As I considered it, I could remember only two connections between Prague and Jerusalem. The cornerstone of the Old-New Synagogue had supposedly been flown straight from the ruins of the Old Temple in Jerusalem to Prague, making the city something of a second Mother Israel to the Jews of the Disapora. Curiously enough, that legend had emerged at the same time the second connection to Jerusalem was established. Charles IV, the Luxemburg Emperor and King of Bohemia in the mid 14th century, had been somewhat obsessed with building churches modeled on the New Jerusalem of St. John s Revelation. One such model church had stood in the center of Charles Square for over 400 years. Neither of these stories, however, had anything to do with the Templars, or the Church of Sts. Anne and Lawrence.The reception wound down, and, standing in St. Anne Square waiting for my taxi, I tried to put this new idea into the context of Prague itself. Within a few blocks in any direction of where I stood, one could find traces of mystics and alchemists, from Giordano Bruno and John Dee to Jan Kominsky and Jan Hus, scientists, Kepler and Tesla, freemasons, theosophists, spiritualists, musicians and artists. Prague is perhaps the most densely esoteric city in Europe. And that deep substratum of esotericism seems to rest on the bedrock of an unseen web of inter-connected places, thresholds actually, portals in the original mythic sense of praha itself. Could there be one of these energetic portals, doorways, between Prague and Jerusalem?The idea tickled my fancy and so, a few weeks after my return from Europe, I turned my attention to unraveling the mystery. Within days of my decision, a good friend in the Czech Republic, Radka Slooten, sent me coincidentally a website on Prague Castle that included a whole page on the work of Jan Cihak. Suddenly, it all clicked and a strange pattern emerged, one that I found hard to believe. Think of a Great Cross, centered on a Holy Crossing point, aligned to the winter/summer solstice axis, the Solar Cross, and anchored on what was then the spiritual center of the world, Jerusalem, built, maintained and elaborated on for over a millennium as a great city grew up around it. What was the purpose? And why here, why Prague?The starting point of any answer, of course, is the curious story about the stones from the Temple in Jerusalem being brought by an angel to the Old-New Synagogue. The story as commonly told is that the angels brought the stones of the Temple to Prague on the condition that they would be returned when the Messiah came. In Hebrew on condition is al tnaj; which can be divided, incorrectly, to give us the German alt neu, or Old-New, according to its sound. While this derivation is unlikely, for many reasons, it does give us a very curious Green Language pun. The old becomes new under certain conditions, the arrival, or return, of the Messiah. It is in this sense that the Jews called Prague the City and Mother in Israel, and considered it second in importance only to Jerusalem.However, no one is quite sure when the Jews arrived in Prague. David Gans, in his 17th century Branch of David, gives a date of 995 CE for the first settlement, but there surely would have been Jews in Prague long before that date, with or without a fixed settlement. The Old-New Synagogue was built in 1270 CE and there is no contemporary mention of stones from the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact the earliest versions of its origins describe another sort of miracle: the synagogue was supposedly discovered fully constructed under an ancient mound. The Jerusalem story apparently dates to the era of Charles IV, the mid 14th century, who had a curious interest in connecting Prague and Jerusalem. By the early 16th century, Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand I could be reassured by the Old Town council that the Jews shouldn t be banished, as they had lived in this land before their Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The Jewish legends are suggestive of some kind of link to Jerusalem, but they depend on other influences. Those influences are mostly Christian and they provide a context in which the legends of a direct Jewish connection to Jerusalem become plausible, if not actually required. And curiously, the era that Gans notes as the beginning of Jewish settlement in Prague is also the era we must turn to next to understand the Christian context of the Prague Jerusalem connection.For the first thousand years or so of the Christian era, from the 1st century to the 10th, Bohemia was a pagan no man s land beyond the Danube border of the Old Roman Empire. Dark Age states came and went, built on shifting tribal alliances and trade with the west. Around the turn of the 10th century, a new dynasty, the Premyslid, gained ascendancy over the other small states by straddling the divide between the newly Christianized civilization of the west and the ancient tribal and pagan culture of the Slavs. From these tensions came the beginnings of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The Premyslids created their own national myth in the story of All-Father Czech, his son Krok and his three daughters. The youngest of those daughters was the mystical Libusse, who traditionally named Prague, foresaw its future and made Premysl the Plowman a Duke, founding the dynasty bearing his name.In 995 CE, the same year Gans credits the Jews with a permanent settlement in Prague, the Premyslids conquered the last remaining tribal holdouts, the Slavnikovici, to become the uncontested Dukes of the region. Over the next two centuries, they consolidated their power, creating Bohemia in the process. The Premyslids did not become Kings until the later part of that process; the Bohemian region remained under the authority of the church, and indirectly under the Pope. During those centuries, as a sort of undercurrent to the political strife, betrayals and assassinations, a group of small round churches were built across Prague and Bohemia. These vaguely Byzantine small domed rotundas were built by design on the older pagan power places in a conscious attempt to co-opt the sacredness of the landscape into a new Christian pattern.It began with the early Premyslids. To show the power of his new religion, Duke Brivoj, the first Christian Premysl, had a chapel to the Virgin Mary built on the sacred hill, the pagan Gigi or world center on the plateau where Prague Castle now stands. This chapel, built in the late 9th century, was also meant as the Premysl family mausoleum. When Duke Vaclav, the future St. Wenceslas, was murdered in the early 10th century, he was buried in the new rotunda to St. Vitus built on or near the site of the earlier chapel. This rotunda lasted only 140 years or so; it was rebuilt on a much grander scale in 1060 CE, then rebuilt again as the core of St. Vitus Cathedral.Around this center point, a constellation of Christian institutions developed. On the Hradcany plateau, the St. George Basilica, with its convent, and the lost rotundas to St. Maurice and St. Bartholomew were built near St. Wenceslas rotunda. Further out, the Praemonstratensian Monastery claimed the high point of the saddle between Petrin Hill and the Hradcany, calling it Mount Zion. The Benedictines had earlier claimed Brevnov Hill, near the ancient settlement at Sarka to the west, and The Knights of St. John built a monastery and command center on a key location by the left bank of the river. Between the arrival of the Knights of St. John in the mid 12th century and the arrival of the Templars in the early 13th century, there was a wave of rotunda building across Bohemia, including the three remaining rotundas in Prague, St. Martin at Vysehrad, St. Stephan in what would become New Town, and Holy Cross near the Old Town riverfront.By the time of Premysl Ottakar II and the height of Premyslid power in the mid 13th century, the transition from pagan sacred spots to Christian churches was almost complete. From the Hradcany plateau with its growing cluster of Christian structures, the ancient pagan alignments were maintained. To the north, a line ran through the Premysl stronghold at Levy Hradec to Rip Mountain, which also has its 12th century rotunda perched on top. The St. Vitus rotunda, and later the cathedral, acted much like the long vanished Gigi; it became a switching point in the web of leftover pagan astronomical alignments and the newly Christianized dynastic alignments. One of the most important of the pagan alignments was the sight line toward the winter solstice sunrise, and this also became Christianized.Sometime after 1060 CE and the rebuilding of St. Wenceslas rotunda on Hradcany, but before 1090, a small chapel was built on the southern end of the Romanesque Old Town, near the river s right bank. It was originally named the chapel of the Finding of the Holy Cross, after a local miracle involving a Christian girl tied to a cross and thrown into a sacred spring. The cross was returned to the surface by a high wind; the girl drowned however, and the rotten cross was buried in the crypt of the 12th century rotunda. In this story, we can see the transition from pagan to Christian in stark relief; the pagan virgin spirit of the lake or spring is sacrificed to the new power of the Cross. And, as with the old castle at Vysehrad, there are stories of hidden crypts filled with ancient treasure under the rotunda.But we are left wondering: what makes this cross particularly holy?Perhaps the simplest explanation is that someone did find the Holy Cross spot, the sacred lake and its legends, and by making it the center of a sacred alignment created its own special quality of holiness. From the St. Wenceslas rotunda on the Hradcany plateau, the Holy Cross Rotunda is in the general direction of the winter solstice sunrise. A third point is needed is make a clear alignment, and this point is provided by another rotunda, built within a generation of Holy Cross, on another watery sacred spot. The Rotunda of St. Stephan was the center of a small village, Na Rybn ?ku ( By the Pond ) just outside the Old Town wall and whose springs would provide the water for the 14th century expansion of New Town. It falls in line with the St. Wenceslas rotunda and the Holy Cross to point directly toward the winter solstice sunrise.We can think of this as the vertical axis of a cross, aligned to the winter solstice sunrise. The horizontal axis was also part of the plan. Two other Romanesque chapels, with towers if not rotundas, fall in a line perpendicular to the winter solstice axis; St. Clement in Po? ? , or riverside, the center of an old settlement along the Vltava, and the church of Sts. Phillip and James, on the ancient pagan sacrifice spot dedicated to Petrun, at the foot of the hill named for him, Petrin, on the far left bank of the river. St. Clement, although extensively and heavily rebuilt through the centuries, has at least survived. The church of Sts. Phillip and James was demolished in the late 19th century, and its place is marked by the modern Arbes Square in the lower part of the Little Town. These churches however were built equidistant from the Rotunda of the Holy Cross, at about 2,400 meters, or 7,200 feet, roughly one and a third miles.Thus the Romanesque Prague of the 13th century was incorporated within a great Holy Cross aligned to the solstices, winter solstice sunrise and summer solstice sunset along the vertical axis, and anchored east-west by a pair of chapels with towers on pagan sacred spots. Another Romanesque church from the mid 12th century, St Peter s on the Riverside, marked the summer solstice alignment from the Holy Cross rotunda through the more distant location of Old Boleslav, an alignment deemed important by the early builders on the Hradcany plateau. But, to the Christians of the 11th and 12th century who built the pattern, even a great Cross based on the solstices would not have been considered as a Holy Cross. Unless it also pointed to another, even more sacred location?Curiously, the winter solstice sunrise at the latitude of Prague is in fact in the direction of Jerusalem, which makes the alignment from St. Wenceslas rotunda through the Holy Cross and St. Stephan s, who was martyred in Jerusalem, even more remarkable. In the era when the western Crusaders were in fact conquering Jerusalem, the builders in Prague were constructing their Great Cross in an alignment with the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. No wonder the Knights of St. John and the Knights of the Temple were attracted to Prague.These two crusading orders occupied opposite sides of the river, with the Knights of St. John, who arrived first, taking the area near the old settlement below the castle on the left, and the later arriving Templars taking the right bank in Old Town, just north of the Rotunda of the Holy Cross. In that sense, the proximity of the Templar Church of St. Lawrence to the Jerusalem alignment of the Holy Cross line could be said to give meaning to the In Jerusalem of the church s name. The church was in Jerusalem because it was, roughly, within the Prague/Jerusalem alignment. Soon, the idea of In Jerusalem would become even more prominent as the last initiated King in Europe, Charles IV, tried to transform Prague into a new version of Jerusalem.A century after the Templars built St. Lawrence, the Luxemburg dynasty having married into the last of the Premyslids, Prague was in the hands of Charles I of Bohemia, Charles IV in terms of Holy Roman Emperors, and he was an Emperor with a plan. Prague was going to surpass Rome by being rebuilt in the shape of Jerusalem itself. The upper portion of New Town, the region between Wenceslas Square and Charles Square and down to the river, was laid out using a 12th century map of Jerusalem as template and the major squares and thoroughfares follow the same pattern to this day. The central region of the upper portion of Charles Square corresponded to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and Charles eventually built a small church there, the Church of the Holy Body, built, like his reworking of St. Wenceslas Chapel in St. Vitus, as a model of the New Jerusalem from St. John s Revelation.In his Jerusalem template for the New Town, the region near the Rotunda of St. Stephan corresponded to the hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem, and since, as Holy Roman Emperor, he owned the original Spear of St. Loginus, the Roman soldier who thrust his spear into Christ s side on the hill of Golgotha during the Crucifixion, Charles renamed the rotunda for St. Longinus. This of course fixed the winter solstice alignment with Jerusalem, specifically Golgotha. Jan Cihak, a Czech researcher who has spent years following these esoteric clues, finds that the line from St. Wenceslas, through Holy Cross and St. Longinus, falls almost exactly on the Rotunda Anastasia built in 335 CE on Mount Calvary (Golgotha). Such precision indicates that the early 12th century cartographers were sophisticated enough to account for the curvature of the earth s surface.The mystery is not about Prague s connection to Jerusalem, but who created the alignment of rotundas that defines the connection? And why?The best we can do is to suggest an anonymous, or at least unrecorded, organization of monks or clerics, operating with church and state approval and charged with the process of absorbing and transforming the infrastructure of the local paganism. Around the time Jerusalem fell to the 1st Crusade, 1099 CE, the basic outline of the alignment and the urban Great Cross was in place. And, perhaps, this was the moment when the realization dawned that the winter solstice sunrise line also pointed to Jerusalem. Hence the naming of the third marker in the winter solstice line for St. Stephan, the first martyr of Christianity who was stoned to death in Jerusalem. There is also the connection between St. Wenceslas and St. Stephan, martyrs who shared, early on, the same Feast Day, December 26th, as noted in the 19th century Christmas carol: Good King Wenceslas looked out/On the feast of Stephen From the Rotunda of St. Wenceslas one can indeed look out on a winter sunrise over St. Stephan s on St. Stephan s Day.And that is also the best answer to the question: why? To the Dark Age and newly Christianized builders, working to establish a Christian gloss on the local pagan sacred spots and alignments, the accident of the winter solstice s alignment with the almost infinitely remote Jerusalem, the center of the known universe and the place where the new Dying God of Christianity saved the world, must have seemed the epitome of the miraculous. This allowed the superimposition of Duke Vaclav s murder over St. Stephan s martyrdom to create the new patron saint of Bohemia, St. Wenceslas, whose rotunda and tomb marked the sighting point for the line, through the Holy Cross and the Rotunda of St. Stephan to the Holy City.A thousand years ago, when the pagan sites and alignment were Christianized, the winter solstice sunrise fell half way through Sagittarius, a thousand years from the cusp of Sagittarius/Capricorn, the winter solstice point in Ptolemy s era, and a thousand years from our present point on the cusp of Scorpio/Sagittarius. To cartographers and astronomers smart enough to create the alignment to Jerusalem with such precision, then the knowledge of the precession of a fixed point, such as an equinox or solstice, through time would have been apparent. And so, in this way, the rotunda builders were also creating a pattern that pointed unerringly toward a very specific moment in time, a thousand years later, our current era.At the present moment, the winter solstice sunrise over Prague, viewed along the axis of the Holy Cross, presents us with an amazing vision. In the predawn sky, the figure of the 13th sign of the Zodiac, Ophiucus the Serpent Holder, stands with his left foot on the rising sun, in alignment with the hidden sun of the center of our galaxy, which appears from Prague to be the center point where all these images come together, Jerusalem. Could it be that this is the real mystery of the alignment? Could a thousand years of visionary Emperors and alchemists, magicians and scientists and astronomers, all have been attracted to and working with the energy of Prague as a kind stage in which to glimpse our current era?This literal sign in the sky also suggests Fulcanelli s idea, from the Hendaye chapter of Mysteries of the Cathedrals, of aligning the celestial and terrestrial crosses as a way to predict the season of catastrophe. The celestial cross of the solar and precessional year aligns in Prague with the terrestrial cross of the city itself, and the very earthly cross of the crucifixion. Could the creators of this alignment have been aware of this ancient way to time the apocalypse? It seems quite likely and perhaps the most telling piece of evidence is the use of the symbols on the Hendaye Cross, the angry Sun, man in the moon face and the eight rayed star, on the old stained glass windows of the Templar Church In Jerusalem and dedicated to St Lawrence. The only change is the four ages have here become an explosion from the sun, the 17th ray, which echoes the use made of this symbol by the Knights of St. John on Malta.In 1585 Dr. John Dee, perhaps the smartest man in the world, arrived in Prague to preach the coming apocalyptic new age to the Emperor Rudolph II. Rudolph was perhaps unimpressed by Dee s angelic warnings, but the choice of Prague as the imperial city had not been by accident. Rudolph had a sense for the larger destiny of Prague, one that definitely included its mysterious alignment with and affinity for Jerusalem, and perhaps had a better idea of its importance to our current era than did Dee.As I mingled last October, enjoying the ambiance of the restored church and the convivial atmosphere, I knew that I had indeed found some sort of nexus, a crossroads or a doorway, I just didn t know to what. Turns out it was not only a doorway to a mystery, the Jerusalem alignment, but a portal to our future as well. I plan to be there for the solstice in 2012. Seems like a good place from which to watch the show.1/17/2011Vincent Bridges Astronomical Images in the Vaticinia Michaelis NostradamiAstronomical Images in the Vaticinia Michaelis Nostradami de Futuri Christi Vicarii ad Cesarem Filium D. I. A. Interprete: A 13th Century Look at the Galactic Centre and its Role in the Timing of the Apocalypse 2009 by Vincent BridgesPresented at the 44th International Medieval Conference,May 7th, 2009, Kallamazoo Michigan, for the Societas AlchimicaThe Vaticinia Michaelis Nostradami de Futuri Christi Vicarii ad Cesarem Filium D. I. A. Interprete (The Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus on the Future Vicars of Christ to Cesar his son, as expounded by Lord Abbot Joachim) is a collection of eighty watercolor images compiled as an illustrated codex and a version of the well-known Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus of the 13th-14th century. In this version, and unique to it, is a series of seven images that allow us to glimpse the time period in which the heretical Joachimites believed the Apocalypse would occur. These seven images contain the earliest known representation of the center of our galaxy, and its location between Scorpio and Sagittarius. As Fulcanelli described in the Hendaye chapter of Le Mystere, this is a clue to the timing of the season of catastrophe, and the secret of the alchemical transformation of time.In 1994, an article by Italian journalist Enza Massa in the Giornale dei Misteri caught the attention of Ottavio Cesare Ramotti, a former Italian state policeman and encryption expert. The article concerned the rediscovery of a manuscript in the Italian National Library in Rome.Originally uncovered in the 1930s by Vatican University professor Ernesto Buonamico, who used some of the images in an attempt to find a role for Mussolini in Nostradamus predictions, the folio had an uncertain origin. Claiming to have been in the Vatican Library, it was sold to the National Library in 1888 by a mysterious and somewhat unscrupulous bookseller. The manuscript languished in obscurity until 1982, after the attack against pope John Paul II, when three journalists from Giornale dei Misteri began to study the manuscript and 12 years later one of them, Enza Massa, wrote the article that Ramotti read.Ramotti was already a Nostradamus scholar at that point, having figured out a method of decrypting the quatrains into, of all things, modern Italian. When he began to look deeper into the manuscript itself, he found more and more points of similarity between the images and his interpretations of the quatrains. He explained these connections in his 1998 book, translated into English as The Nostradamus Code. In his zeal to prove that the images were somehow connected to Nostradamus, and therefore prove his new interpretation, Ramotti completely lost sight of the original manuscript.The manuscript is small, only 83 pages in total. Eighty pages contain illustrations of an obviously allegorical nature; two pages contain notes linking some of the images to figures in the Papacy, from Urban VIII to Alexander VIII. One page was obviously meant to serve as an introduction, but it survived heavily damaged.This introductory page reads:To the honest reader,From the prophetic mosaic of the Roman pontiffs (from Urban VII) (and) those preceding him are missing here by reason of the injuries of devouring time, according to divine will, which is uttered not by possession but in sleep, and not by divine inspiration in the most eminent Abbot Joachim I, but by other ways, for our forebears have sent us a soothsayer of good and scarce possession.Cino gave this in gift to the most eminent Cardinal Barberini who has beseeched it with the permission of the most reverent Abbot.The prophecies seen by the venerable Joachim from Sir Ce (mus) that which Abbot foresaw.Brother Cinus Beroaldus of the Carthusian Librarians at Corati, 6 September 1629The two pages of notes bear the following heading: Visions of Michele Nostradamus on the future Vicars of Christ to his son, Cesare. This note is signed D.I.A. Interprete, which is likely Dominus Ioachim Abatis. (See appended notes for a translation of this section.)Also, and most curious, the last page of the illustrations contains a note as well. It reads: Apocalyptic predictions by Anito Efesio, prince of painters of his epoch, later clarified by the prophetic inspiration of Abbot Ioachim, Tommaso Guidini of Saint John s, by approval of the most pious Carthusian Fathers, copied and restored it in the year of our lord 1343 from the corruption of time and corrosion inflicted by the conflicts of this place. No Nostradamus there, and a date of 1343 points to a longer history indeed.Ramotti does make the suggestion that the images are part of Nostradamus inspiration, perhaps even one of those ancient books that he supposedly burned after writing his prophecies, but actually passed on to his son, Cesare. This seems at first a likely answer, but it leads to even more significant questions. In his book, Ramotti follows the commentary of the Abbot Joachim, and mixes in the prophecies of St. Malachy, a 12th century Irish mystic, whose enigmatic references to future Popes were discovered and published in the 1590s. While not conclusively, some of the imagery in the illustrations does suggest the mottoes of St. Malachy. Abbot Joachim, who wrote the two pages of interpretation, seemed to think so. However the author of the 1343 note refers only to Joachim of Flores, and not St Malachy.Can we authenticate the basic manuscript as having been created in the 14th century? Actually we can, and fairly easily. The manuscript, handwriting and ink experts consulted in the History Channel s special The Lost Book agreed that the notes on St. Malachy dated from the 1690s, the introductory note mentioning, possibly, Cesare de Nostradame dates from no early than 1590, and the other 80 or so pages are consistent with an origin point in the mid 1300 s, as stated in the note actually written on the last page of illustrations. All we need to put the Lost Book of Nostradamus into its proper context is to find other collections of manuscripts with the same or similar images.The origin of the work is clearly the 13-14th century Vaticinia de Summis Pontificibus, Visions of a Summation of the Papacy, a Latin text that collects portraits of popes and prophecies related to them, which circulated from the late thirteenth to the early fourteenth century in a broad range from Provence to Bohemia, following has been described as the Cathar refuge trail. Originally a series of some thirty prophecies, based on Greek prototypes, known as the Genus nequam prophecies, derived from the Byzantine Leo Oracles, a series of twelfth-century Byzantine prophecies that foretell a savior-emperor destined to restore unity to the empire. Their poems and tempera illuminations mix fantasy, the occult, and pseudo-history in a chronology of the popes. Each prophecy consists of four elements, an enigmatic allegorical text, an emblematic picture, a motto, and an attribution to a pope. The series was augmented in the fourteenth century with further prophecies, written in imitative continuation of the earlier set, but with more overtly propagandist aims. By the time of the Council of Constance (1414 1418), both series were united as the Vaticinia de summis pontificibus and misattributed to the Calabrian mystic Joachim of Flores, actually a pseudo-Joachim. There are close to fifty manuscript versions of this collection.Most of these collections contain images that are almost the same as those in the Vaticinia Michaelis Nostradami some even in a similar sequence. One these collections, Marston MS 225, in the manuscript and rare-book library of Yale University, comes from the German areas of Bavaria and Bohemia, probably from within the courts of Emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I, having had an impact on the various sovereigns of the Holy Roman Empire, down to Charles IV and Rudolph II. (See appended note for a list of manuscript collections with similar images.)The oldest of these folios, Carpentras Bm Ms 0340, dates from circa 1280, just a few years after the crusade against the Cathars in Southern France. The town of Carpentras was a center of Catharist activity, and because of its inclusion within the new Papal enclave of Avignon, it remained such until the late 14th century. The Carpentras version contains most of the same images as the Lost Book and most of the Vaticinia material, including some fairly standard apocalyptic images. Another manuscript, Lyon Bm Ms 0189, from just a little further up the Rhone River, has the same core images as the Lost Book and the others, but it contains some strikingly apocalyptic images. These images, however, are fairly direct representations of Revelation s apocalypse without much in the way of occult or arcane symbolism.In the British Museum Rare Book Collection, there is another rather splendid version of the Vaticinia Summis Pontificibus, Harley 1340 British Library. This collection also has the same core images, all extremely heretical, as the Lost Book and it dates from the late 1400 s in Imperial Bohemia. Like the version in the Yale Library, this collection can be said to have had an influence on, or been influenced by, the Catharist survivals in Bavaria and Bohemia. This collection in fact is close to in time or contemporaneous with John Huss, the early Czech protestant against the Church of Rome.There are also the repeated images that reference the famous 12th century mystic Joachim of Flores. The Church condemned his Trinitarian view of time in 1215, but it managed to survive in an underground form until the Renaissance. Exactly how Joachim and St. Malachy overlap, and when, points to a solution to the problems presented by the manuscript s purported origins.Thirty years after Nostradamus death, in the late 1590s, and about the time Cesare was working on his history of Provence, Dom Arnold Wion discovered and published the enigmatic mottoes of future Popes attributed to St. Malachy. They had been circulating privately for perhaps as much as a decade before Wion made them public. Also, the Trinitarianism of Joachim of Flores was making a come back as part of the new Hermetic movement, which included Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee.Politically, the royal line of France was failing, and King Henry of Navarre, a protestant picked by Nostradamus at age 12 as a future king of France, became Henry IV of France in 1589. Even though he became Catholic to ascend the throne, his supporters saw this as a move toward moderation and even a loosening of the Church s stranglehold. The emergence of prophecies implying the eventual end of the Catholic Church was an appealing part of this movement.This suggests that possibly Cesare held onto this part of his father legacy, and then used it to gain favor with the Church at the start of the Counter-Reformation. The future Pope Urban VIII might have found such a document to be intriguing enough to give it to the Abbot Joachim, who seems to have been a scholar of St. Malachy s mottoes. Perhaps he was looking for clues to his own elevation.The time line is the key. It is just possible that this manuscript was in Nostradamus possession, and that he gave it to his son Cesare, who in turn gave it to Cardinal Barberini for the reasons speculated on above. The possible mention of Cesare Nostradamus from 1629 is damaged and very obscure. The only clear mention of Nostradamus, in the heading of the two pages of St Malachy commentary, can be dated no earlier than 1690, as Pope Alexander VIII is mentioned. By then Nostradamus fame had grown to be as great as the ancient seers, and so the last Abbot Joachim used him as reference to confirm the mottoes of St Malachy. The original visions of Joachim of Flores have now long disappeared from the interpretation and the new, and Church approved, visions of St Malachy have replaced them. And they are attributed, strangely enough, to Nostradamus as if that made them somehow more relevant.What is clear from all this is that whether or not Cesare Nostradamus ever owned it, the manuscript is proof of a very heretical and apocalyptic movement or society that survived at least until Nostradamus era. Since the manuscript was in fact produced sometime around the mid 14th century, as the note on the last page says, and that it sums up the apocalyptic tradition of both Joachim of Flores and an obscure group of apocalyptic visionaries with Catharist leanings, then it is likely that if this particular version of the Vaticinia originated in Provence (as seems probable from its similarities to both the Carpentras and Lyon versions) then it passed through the hands of Rene D Anjou, who was a collector of apocalyptic manuscripts and obscure artists. He also stands at that peculiar junction point in both time and space, Provence in the mid 1400s, where the last gasps of the Cathar heresy could become the tarot cards, the Holy Grail could be openly searched for, and Kings could still found orders of chivalry with esoteric preoccupations. In his last years, one of his physicians was Nostradamus maternal grandfather, Jean de St. Remy.And it is just possible that his first teacher and father figure, his maternal grandfather Jean, did pass on to his bright young pupil an ancient volume of mysterious images of heresy and apocalypse that he had received for his service to Good King Rene. And if so, then it is easy to see why Michael de Nostradame chose not to burn it along with his other books and magical papers, but to pass it along to his son, Cesare.We will perhaps never really know if this is true. The connections are not solidly historical. There is a letter by C sare, written to the French scientist Fabri de Peiresc, in which mention is made of several miniatures painted by C sar, and of a booklet that was destined as a gift to King Louis XIII in 1629, however there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection between these and the Vaticinia. The connections to St Malachy appear to be stronger, but, given the dates, the manuscript could have influenced Wion in his reconstruction of St Malachy s mottoes. The influence of Joachim of Flores is just as obvious as St Malachy, but even that could be a misreading.Looking just at the images themselves, without the struggle to shape them into a prophetic pattern, an outline begins to emerge. Many of the recurring images, Popes as or riding on dragons, burning towers or furnaces and wheels of fortune, viticulture and the slaughter of the innocents, the Three Fates and so on, are clearly heretical and/or alchemical in intent. Others, and these are unique to the Vaticinia Michaelis Nostradami, appear to have a direct astrological or astronomical meaning. Something is being communicated, but just what is very obscure indeed. If they are the remnants of an almost lost apocalyptic tradition, as seems most likely, then the need is even greater to interpret them on their own terms, and within their historical framework.When we do that, we arrive back in Provence and the lower Rhone River a generation or so after the end of the crusade against the Cathars. They would clearly have resonated to the Pope as the Beast of Revelation, images of destruction and genocide and slaughter, as well as demons controlling King and Church. However, the component of the Vaticinia Michaelis Nostradami that makes it truly unique are the series of seven images found in no other version of the Vaticinia.In the first of these seven images, a seven-rayed sun rises in Leo, above a Lion and a seven-spoke wheel hangs in the sky below a blank banner. The blank banner is a recurring motif in this series of images. The other versions of the Vaticinia have some degree of commentary, while this complete collection has none. From this we might suppose that phrases or sentences were meant to appear on the banners. The next image also has a few blank banners, but here a man sits a book on the Tree of Life, with an eight-spoke wheel above and an archer and two fish, probably meant to represent Sagittarius and Pisces, below.The next image continues the eight-spoked wheel motif, but the Tree of Life is being attacked by a club-like thing, and arm hold an upright sword, around which another banner entwine while below yet another banner are a scorpion and a ram, again perhaps Scorpio and Aries. Next, the wheel motif continues, except here a crescent moon hangs below it. Beneath that an archer with a blindfold and a mythological woman struggle over a bow and arrow, amidst even more blank banners and a bull and a pair of scales, Taurus and Libra. These first four images then give us seven zodiacal signs: Taurus, Libra, Leo, Scorpio, Aries, Pisces and Sagittarius.Note that Taurus and Aries share a cusp, as do Sagittarius and Scorpio and Libra and Pisces are opposite each other. Also, Libra and Scorpio have a cusp, as do Pisces and Aries. The traditional spring and fall equinox falls on the cusp of Aries/Pisces and Libra/Virgo. The pattern then points to the equinox moving a whole sign backward, from Pisces/Aries to Aquarius/Pisces and Libra/Virgo to Virgo/Leo. The sun in Leo then is clearly the fall equinox on Leo/Virgo. This gives a rough date for this sequence of events, and that date is now, as the fall equinox began its move into Leo in 1999.The next image pinpoints the date. From the wheel hangs, like a medallion, a V with three crescents, and suspended from it is what looks an eclipse. In August of 1999, most of Europe experienced a total eclipse, and a lunar eclipse both before and after the solar eclipse. Counting the one in February, there were three lunar eclipses that year. Below the medallion like eclipse image, is what looks like a badly drawn scorpion with an arc and a spiral between its claws. 1999 was also the year when the solar system aligned with and crossed the galactic meridian. Could the arc and spiral represent the center of our galaxy? The simple answer seems to be yes.The last two images continue and complete the eight-spoke wheel motif; in the last of the series, the wheel is shattered. In the next to last, it remains intact, as a veil is lowered apocalypsis in Greek means simply that, lowering the veil. A man is studying under a mystic symbol, and below him are three women, divided by another set of blank banners. The last image shows the wheel as shattered, a wild man raving, holding a blank book, and below that, two women and a stag deer. The immediate future, from this viewpoint, doesn t look that promising.However, the symbolism itself points to the Great Cross at Hendaye, which uses the same basic symbols and temporal markers to locate the same era, roughly the twenty years from 1992 to 2012, as the traditional date of the apocalypse. (See The Mysteries of the Great Cross at Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time, Weidner and Bridges, Inner Traditions 2003 for more detailed information on the Cross.) This somewhat amazing overlap of concepts, between an alchemist of the 20th century writing about a monument created in the 17th century that actually seems to encode the information of a small group of heretical Cathar from Provence, on the other side of France from Hendaye, would seem to be solid proof that some kind of heretical Catharist Chiliasm sect or society survived long enough to pass along the information.And there is one further intriguing bit of evidence, in, of all places, the Voynich manuscript. This enigmatic text was once owned by Rudolph II, and perhaps was studied in reference to the other astro-alchemical texts of the day, including perhaps versions of the Vaticinia. The Voynich has one image in its collection of stars patterns and peculiar zodiacs that looks very much like a top down view of our galaxy. When compared to a computer-generated image, the similarities are stunning. The very idea of a galaxy wasn t conceived of until the early 20th century, and even then, with powerful telescopes, no one could see the center of our own galaxy.Yet the Chialists of Provence knew all about it in the 13th century. The next question to ask is how did they learn this amazing bit of information? Or perhaps that should be, from whom?Other Vaticinia by CollectionArundel 117 British LibraryBeinecke Marston Ms 225Bildindex 1Bildindex 2Bildindex 3Bildindex 4Bildindex 5Carpentras Bm Ms 0340Ch lons En ChampagneGnm Hs 86851Harley 1340 British LibraryLyon Bm Ms 0189Lyon Bm Ms 0195NN Spencer 185NN Spencer 212NN Spencer 223Pierpont Morgan Library Ms M 402Stift KremsmuensterTours Bm Ms 0520Unknown Misc.Vaticinia Siue ProphetiaeProphesiesMichael Nostradamus On the Future Vicars of Christ to [his] son Cesar 1st ProphecyLet he who has ear[s] hear what the spirit says to [or in ] the Churches, receive the book, and I consumed it, and it was like sweet honey in my mouth, and when I had consumed it my stomach became bitter, and lo a powerful lion, from whose mouth a long-lasting sweetness came forth, and a voice was heard in the city weeping over its citizens [literally city men ], the sun was made dark, the stars were scattered, the Holy City will call it [it looks like someone wrote called and then changed it to will call ], and then death will come. Urban VIII Barbernius [i.e. his original name was Maffeo Barberini ].2nd ProphecyAt length the peacemaking dove will fly in the Vatican [or on the Vatican hill ] __ed by a shrewder witch, when [or as ] the eagle consumes, when [or as ] the raven lives, when [or as ] the solitary sparrow dies on the roof, peace will cry out on all sides, and [he/she/it, the dove?] will dedicate a temple to peace. Innocent X. Pamphilius Romanus [i.e. his original last name was Pamphili and he came from Rome].3rd ProphecyThe plant-bearing guard of the mountains will send down its roots in the Church of God, will de-feather the eagle, and more quickly [or more rapaciously, more greedily ] than a she-wolf will the winged messenger of day be raised up over the wings of the hunter [the Latin looks like ventoris, which is not a word. But of the hunter is venatoris. Perhaps a copying error has been made.]. Alex: VII. Chisius [?] Senensis [? It s not clear to me what these last two adjectives are. Alexander VII s last name was Chigi and he came from Siena. Based on the endings of the other sections, I am guessing that Chisius Senensis maps on to these facts.].4th ProphecyTurbot, and Toad, Toad, and Turbot [the Latin is Rhombus and Bufo for turbot and toad respectively. Rhombus also means a magician s circle and rhombus .] will rule the Roman citadels. In his days the bloody muzzle will flow to the winged lions, and he himself will die from the pain more [or rather ] un-praised. Clement IX. Rospigliosus Pistoriensis [his name was Rospigliosi and he came from Pistoria, which apparently as a Latin adjective is Pistoriensis ].5th ProphecyThe new stars above the highest hills will rouse a certain fox, the seed will become haughty, in their councils my spirit will not enter. Clement X. Alterius Romanus [ Alterius does not make good sense: it looks like it should literally = another Roman (vis- -vis Innocent II in section 2?), but that should be Alter Romanus or Alius Romanus . His family was Altierir . Perhaps some confusion has occurred.]6th ProphecyThe most cunning serpent under the appearance of the lion, will both drink six cups to the eagle, and spread the [or his ] poison in [perhaps through ] the whole world, he does not come to send peace, but the sword, he will stir up all the leaders [or Princes, first men ] to war, he will conceal [or perhaps overpower, check ] the moon, but during his days a beast, whose number is 666, will boast that he is the scourge of God. Innocent XI. Odescalius Comensis [His family was Odescalchi and he came from Como].7th ProphecyIron plants at the crossroads will be adorned over the winged horse, while the lion, and the eagle run, let us crown ourselves with roses, before they begin to droop, many run, but flowers have appeared in our land. Alexander VIII. Ottobonus Venetus [his family name was Ottoboni and he came from Venice].8th ProphecyLight of terrible aspect to the one rising, a dragon [or serpent ] a crown [Presumably this section will have ended with the name of Innocent XII] Dee and Shakespeare:The Origins of the Hermetic Revolution in the Elizabethan Theatre 2009 by Vincent Bridges and Teresa BurnsIn 1921, The Occult Review, a British illustrated monthly journal, ran an insightful article entitled Shakespeare and the Occult that quite plausibly concluded that many of his plays were unintelligible without an understanding of the esoteric subjects they featured. Today, if you google the words Shakespeare plus Occult, you ll find over half a million hits. Included are modern Rosicrucian claims that: No one familiar with esoteric doctrines can have any question as to Shakespeare s familiarity with the wisdom of the Illuminati. You ll also find Jewish community groups studying Shakespeare, Kabbalah and the Occult. Dozens of books explore similar connections. From this, we can be fairly safe in concluding that the consensus on Shakespeare s knowledge of esoteric wisdom is almost unanimous, from scholars to the public.But that agreement raises the vexing question of how did even a well-educated young provincial with a definite gift for language come by such a wealth of occult knowledge? This question opens the door to the issue of Shakespeare s identity; and, while it doesn t prove that the Bard was really someone else (Bacon, or de Vere or even Marlowe) it does suggest that Shakespeare had some kind of secret life, one that brought him into contact with a mentor who could provide him with sources from Holinshead to Aggripa. If we follow the trail of Shakespeare s esoteric themes and their sources we come to the conclusion that only one library, one knowledgeable teacher, existed for the necessary range of subjects: that of Dr. John Dee.John Dee was the Einstein of the era, a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and occultist, who collected the largest library in England and one of the best in Europe. Dee occupied that middle ground in the history of science where mathematics and magic had not yet split into widely different disciplines, and much of his life was devoted to alchemy, angelic communication and Hermetic philosophy. Beginning in the early 1580s, Dee, along with his scyer or clairvoyant Edward Kelley, conducted a years long series of communications with angelic intelligences. In 1583, Dee, Kelley and their families embarked on a kind of apocalyptic missionary journey in which they attempted to enlisted both Stephen I and Rudolph II, the rulers of Poland and The Holy Roman Empire. Dee returned to England in 1589, leaving Edward Kelley behind in Prague, and found his library ransacked and his reputation wrecked. Elizabeth I eventually made him Warden of Christ College, Manchester, where lived until a few before his death in 1609. Kelley apparently died in Prague sometimes during the mid 1590s while attempting to escape from one of Rudolph II s prisons.From the work of Joy Hancox, who concluded that Dee was the most likely channel for the sophisticated geometry of the original Elizabethan theatres, we can place Dee and Shakespeare roughly in the same milieu, that of the Burbages and the Globe Theatre. However, even though Dee was in London during Shakespeare s meteoric rise to fame in the early 1590s, and kept many journals and diaries of visitors and events, there is no mention of the name Shakespeare. If Dee knew Shakespeare, then he knew him under another name and from very different circumstances.Curiously, some kind of oral or family tradition connecting Edward Kelley and Shakespeare seems to have survived long enough for Elias Ashmole, in the mid 17th century, to pick up on it and in his 1652 anthology dedicate Edward Kelley s poem Concerning the Philosopher s Stone (Ashmole s title as well) to Kelley s especiall good Friend, G.S. Gent. Calling William Shakespeare G.S. would not be much of a stretch; especially since Shakespeare s baptism records in Stratford-upon Avon, from April 26, 1564, list his name as Gulielmus Shaksper. But if Shakespeare was the G. S. of Ashmole s dedication, how did he become the especiall friend of Edward Kelly?The original title of the 1589 poem was simply: The praise of vnity for frendship s sake made by a stranger/ to further his frende his Conceyts. Since the poem itself is an instructional piece, designed to give insight into a kind of alchemical theatre, then we suppose that the conceyts, or conceits in the sense of personal creative endeavors, involve both the theatre and alchemy. Clearly, Kelley is writing to someone who knows the secret, has perhaps actually witnessed the art of transmutation. And just as clearly, that someone is a poet, nature s sower, and a member of the schoole mentioned in the poem s last line.In Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the same collection that includes Kelley s poem, we find an important clue. Ashmole s commentary on Dee and Kelley s continental adventures contains a description of Kelley s transmutation, performed to gratifie Master Edward Garland and his Brother Francis. Garland is a name that appears in the same collection of Danish documents that contains the original of Kelley s Philosopher s Stone poem. And both brothers turn up in Dee s diary; indeed Dee refers to several Garland brothers; Francis, Edward, and Robert; and a fourth Garland, Henry. None have ever been positively identified, even though they re most frequently described acting as couriers. No archival records in England have ever been found that show a payment to or letter from any of these men; no civic record of any kind lists their names.Given their roles as couriers, it is quite likely that Garland is a code word, and brothers meant in the sense of members of an exclusive organization, such as a fraternity or a secret society. So these Brothers of the Garland are lumped together by Dee in his diary as a generic way to refer to these agents, and possibly students. Edward Garland is perhaps the easiest to identify, because his name disappears quickly from Dee s diary entries to be replaced in the same context with the name of a person we can trace, Edward Dyer.Dyer was a member of a schoole, the Areopagus circle around Sir Philip Sidney whose uncle, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, had been tutored in his youth by Dr. Dee and as such was certainly known to Dee before he arrived. The transition from Edward Garland, in the early diary entries, to Edward Dyer just over a year later shows how Dee used the concept of the Brothers Garland. They were the couriers, spies and students who were part of a larger group, or school, of poets and playwrights.Francis Garland continued to appear in Dee s diaries, including six mentions along with Edward Dyer. In fact a group that included Francis Garland, Joan Kelley s brother, Edward Dyer, and Dyer s man Rowles left for England just ahead of Dee and his family. If Dyer, an informant for Lord Treasurer Burgley, was indeed one of the witnesses of Kelley s transmutation, then Burghley s insistence on getting the now-knighted Sir Edward Kelley away from Rudolph II s court and back to England becomes clearer. Dyer had seen the trick worked, and had persuaded his superiors so convincingly that when Kelley wouldn t return, Dyer was dispatched back to Prague to become his student.But what of Francis Garland? Here s a man who apparently doesn t exist outside of his connections to the circle around Dee and Kelley, and mainly appears in Dee s diary connected with Edward Dyer. As with his brother Edward, we can safely assume that his real name wasn t Francis Garland. Could this person be the G. S. or Gulielmus Shaksper to whom Ashmole thought Kelley had dedicated his poem on the Philosopher s Stone? Could Francis Garland, confidant of Dee and Kelley and a witness to an alchemical transmutation, actually be William Shakespeare?The simple answer seems to be yes.Comparing the dates when Dee notes Francis Garland in his diaries with the known dates of Shakespeare s life shows clearly that the idea is impossible to disprove. Most of the dates for Francis Garland fall in what is known as the Lost Years of Shakespeare. We know that Shakespeare left Avon around 1585, probably soon the birth of the twins Hamnet and Judith, and we know nothing of what he was doing until the early 1590s when some of his plays were produced. The next firm date we have is April 18, 1593, when his poem Venus and Adonis was registered in London. Francis Garland appears in Dee s diary from December 1586 through March of 1595, and in all that time we find not a single instance of Shakespeare being somewhere else when Francis Garland was visiting Dee.In fact, if we assume that Garland is Shakespeare, it appears that he visited Dee before the registration and publication of both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Francis Garland visits Dee on March 17th 1593, and Venus and Adonis is registered on April 18th. Garland visits Dee on March 28th 1594, and The Rape of Lucrece is registered on May 19th. It is tempting to think that the young pupil, Garland/Shakespeare, was showing his mentor his latest works of alchemical poetry; Venus and Adonis in particular is filled with alchemical symbolism. By Garland s last visit in 1595 it is possible that both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night s Dream were finished and read with approval by Dee.If we make the identification of Dee s Francis Garland with the rising playwright William Shakespeare then most of the mysteries surrounding Shakespeare s life disappear like actors at the end of a play. A sudden light is thrown on the so-called lost years, and a real person, not a cipher or a mask, emerges. The young Will didn t waste his time holding horses in front of playhouses and apprentice as an actor; he went directly to the source of the national literary Renaissance; the Sidney group. And in that circle he met Dyer, who was perhaps in need of another bright young poet who could write quickly and cleanly. And so, off to Prague as Francis Garland Garland, or Shakespeare, was likely a member of Dee s inner circle for close to nine years. In the later years, he was Dee s main point of contact with Kelley, and he was, in light of Kelley s poem, perhaps even closer to Kelley than Dee. During those years, full of adventure and marvels, we can easily see Shakespeare, or Garland, maturing and learning, absorbing everything, from politics and court protocol to intrigue and esoteric insights, that he would later turn to such good use in his plays.And what of those plays? If we see Shakespeare as a poet who was also a spy and an occultist, then where did the theatre come from? Perhaps he was already interested in acting and playwriting when he met Dyer, and Dee and Kelley, or perhaps the idea came from Dee, who was known from his youth for being interested in the mechanics of stagecraft. Indeed, many of the standard theatrical devices of the Elizabethan stage, such as ending a show with a curtain drop, apparently have their origins in Dee and Kelley s angelic workings. It is even likely that Dee designed the sacred geometry of the theatre space itself.When Dee returned to England in December 1589, he found that much had changed. But he still had the Queen s ear and lost no time in heading to Richmond and her court. Elizabeth would stay in touch, including a private visit to Mortlake in December 1590, where Dee apparently wanted permission, and money, for some unnamed venture. Two days later, a visitor, Richard Cavendish, confirmed her agreement with Dee s venture in philosophie and alchemie. Early versions of both Spenser s Fairie Queen and Sidney s Arcadia had been published since Dee s return, and young playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe were inventing a new form of literature down in Shoreditch and on Bankside. Even Garland/Shakespeare was at work on a play, Henry VI part one. Perhaps part of Dee s philosphie endeavor was the encouragement of the new theatrical art form, which was indeed allowed to flourish over the next few years until the plague closed the theatres. Dee s role was of necessity behind the scenes, but Shakespeare/Garland took up front and center stage. By 1594, he was a member of The Lord Chamberlain s Men and one of the most popular of the rising playwrights.The rise of Shakespeare s popularity in the mid-1590s represents a watershed for art, politics and occultism. In the best sense of turning the wheel, this was truly revolutionary. Suddenly, very deep and powerful ideas were turned loose in the public consciousness without the control and interference of the Church. The Elizabethan theatre was essentially a magical theatre, from the sacred geometry of the space in which they were presented to the subject matter and language of the plays themselves. And because of Dr. Dee s influence, this was a Hermetic revolution.This Hermetic revolution in the theatrical arts served as the starting point for further revolutions, both political and scientific. The Tempest, whose main character Prospero is thought by some scholars to be based on Dee, and by others on Shakespeare himself, , was performed for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in 1613. Frederick V would go on to become the King of Bohemia and the leader of the Protestant revolution in central Europe until he was deposed in 1622. This was also the years when the Rosicrucian manifestos were circulating, attracting minds such as that of Liebnitz and leading the way toward the Royal Societies in England and France.Dee s work, particularly his Monas Hieroglyphica from 1564, was a major influence on Rosicrucian philosophy, and there are echoes of Shakespeare s A Midsummer Night s Dream in The Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosencrutz. Dee and Kelley s alchemical work and the work of their followers can be seen as the origins of modern chemistry and physics. In the same way, Shakespeare s plays are the origin point of modern psychology.Once we begin to see Shakespeare in the light of his years as Francis Garland, and begin to appreciate the deep and long lasting influence of Dee on Shakespeare s life and development, the outlines of a larger plan emerges. Dr. Dee had lost none of his missionary fervor, which had launched the long exodus to begin with, after his return in 1589. It was simply channeled in a different direction, toward perhaps the growing hermetic revolution in the Elizabethan theatre, spearheaded by his old pupil Garland, or William Shakespeare.One last point: The 1623 collection of Shakespeare s works opens with The Tempest. His friends who published it must have known his connection to John Dee and gave the pride of place to the play that makes the point most clearly. From Shakespeare s point of view, the play can be seen both as a nod toward his old mentor, and as a salute and elegy to his own career as a magician and hermetic revolutionary. Dee could expect no less from a friend like Francis Garland.***Vincent Bridges is an author and esoteric historian best known as the co-author of Mysteries of the Great Cross at Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time and for his work on Nostradamus for the History Channel. Teresa Burns is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville and is the author, along with Vincent Bridges, of Shakespeare, John Dee and the Hermetic Revolution: Alchemy and Espionage in the Magickal Theatre of Elizabethan England. NOSTRADAMUS: On The Verge of World War IIIBy Vincent BridgesSunday, March 9th, 2003Apocalyptic Sequence of Events:I/16Saturn joined with (Scorpio) transiting toward SagitarriusAt its highest, saluting the increase, exaltationPest, famine, death through military hands,The century and the Cycle aproaches its renewal.I/30Because of the tormented seas, the strange ship,Will arrive at an unknown port:Notwithstanding the signals from the branch of palm,After death, pillage: good advice (or birds) arriving late.I/55Under the opposite Babylonian climate,There will be great shedding of blood:Heaven will appear unjust both on land and sea and in the air,Sects, famine, kingdoms, plagues, confusion.I/69The great mountain seven stadia around (4,247 feet),After peace, war, famine flooding:(The impact) will spread far, drowning great countriesEven antiquities and their mighty foundations.I/70Rain, famine and war in Persia will not cease,A trust too great will betray the monarch:For the end was planned in France,A secret sign for one to be more sparing.II/19 (Jewish State)Newcomers build a place without defense,Occupying a place (which) until then (was) inhabitable:Meadows, houses, fields, towns, to take at pleasure,Famine, plague, war, extensive arable land.II/46After a great misery for mankind an even greater approaches.The great motor of the centuries is renewedIt will rain blood, milk, famine, iron and pestilence,In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a trail of sparksII/62Mabus will soon die, then will come,A horrible undoing of people and animals,At once one will see vengence,One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.II/96A burning torch will be seen in the night skyNear the end and the source of the Rhone:Famine, weapons: the help provided is late,When Persia turns to invade Macedonia.III/19In Lucca it will come to rain blood and milk,Shortly before the change of governor:Great plague and war, famine and drought will be seen,Far from where their Prince rector will die.* VI/6 (Comet and Eclipse prediction)There will appear towards the seven stars of Ursa major and Polaris,Not far from Cancer, the bearded star:Susa, Siena, Boetica, Eretria,Great Rome will die, the night having vanished.VI/10In a short time the colors of templesBlack and white, the two will be intermingled.The red and the yellow ones will carry off their possesions.Blood, earth, plague, hunger, fire, maddened with thirstVII/6Naples, Palermo and all of SicilyWill be uninhabited through barbarian hands,Cosica, Salerno, the island of Sardinia,Hunger, plague, war, the end of the extended evils.VIII/17Those at ease will suddenly be cast downThe world put into trouble by three brothers,The enemies will sieze the marine city,Famine, fire, Blood, plague, all evils doubled. Lost Book of NostradamusBy Vincent BridgesSunday, October 28th, 2007Okay, so I m watching Scary Movie 3 on Comedy Central last night when an odd commercial comes on featuring all kinds of signs saying: The end is coming, and the end of the world. This catches my interest and I un-mute just in time to hear my own voice saying something about the exact date of the Apocalypse. Then the logo for Lost Book of Nostradamus, my new History Channel special, comes on; it is a promo spot, done especially for the comedy channel.This morning, while channel surfing over breakfast, I found a whole three-minute piece on Fox Friends, featuring one of my segments from the show as a teaser and an interview with my friend Victor Baines, who is also on the show. Who would have ever thought that I would make Fox News announcing the end of the world? Reality is stranger than any fiction. Trust me, you couldn t make this stuff up if you tried!What started as a way to get the History Channel interested in making a follow up to my first Nostradamus special, Nostradamus: Five Hundred Years Later, has blossomed into a gargantuan enterprise, backed by the largest promotional blitz ever done by the History Channel. They even had an hour long Behind the Scenes on the TV Guide channel and a countdown clock on the History Channel itself. This show seems planned to take Nostradamus and the End of the World into the mainstream.For the first hour, the show s reenactments and forensic drama are mixed with a few nods to Nostradamus prophetic abilities, and lots of teasers that whatever the Lost Book turns out to be, it is going to be very important. The second hour moves deeper into the prophecies, and eventually concludes that the book wasn t likely to have been created by Nostradamus, although it could have belonged to him. It could even have been one of his sources, one that helped him pinpoint our present time period as one to watch.And here the show turns into the Vincent Friends Apocalyptic Comedy Troupe, as Victor Baines and my former co-author Jay Weidner back me up as I interpret the crucial seven images in the series from the Lost Book as pointing to the events happening in the sky right now, culminating just five years from now in 2012. The connections between the imagery in the Lost Book and these celestial events are made even more apparent by the symbolism of a 13th century church front just a few feet away, around the corner, from Nostradamus s door. I point all this out in the show, and the producers did a fine job of animating it, and it is quite convincing.So, how did the core of our book, The Mysteries of the Great Cross at Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time (2003, Destiny Books) end up on television, with a huge media blitz behind it, in a special on Nostradamus?That is actually a long and complicated story going back more than eight years to our first research trip for Mysteries. We stayed in the 18th century chateau built on the estate of Nostradamus brother Bertrand, and some sort of connection was made. The Balkan war insights came less than a month after we returned, and I got my start as an authority on Nostradamus. After the 2003 television show, where I actually did some of my talking head shots on the ground in France, my connection to the Maestro became even closer. But I had no idea what was coming next.I had seen some of the images in the Lost Book in an earlier book by O. C. Ramotti, The Nostradamus Code. The images in that book were definitely intriguing, and the main reason to buy the book, but Ramotti s interpretations left much to be desired. I find it far beyond belief that Nostradamus, when decoded, was actually writing in modern Italian. But still, those images were very strange!Last spring, as the Lost Book was being examined forensically in Rome, I got to see for the first time the complete series of images and I knew very quickly that the core series not only depicted the center of our galaxy, but also was talking about the galactic alignment itself. Here was manuscript evidence, dating from at least the 16th century, that someone had known of the center of galaxy and even its spiral shape, long before modern astronomy discovered it in 1917.That alone made the Lost Book of Nostradamus a truly unique discovery. Here was solid evidence that a main point of our argument in Mysteries, that an unknown group of initiates or believers had retained sophisticated knowledge concerning the end of the world galactic alignment at least since the Middle Ages, was in fact correct. A heretical and possibly chilaist group of initiates kept the knowledge, in the form of images that were eventually perhaps only semi-understandable. These images were treasures, copied and recopied, until finally they disappeared into the Vatican Library.And now, I get to announce their true meaning and value on nation television!I told you, you couldn t make this stuff up if you tried! Vincent Bridges was a husband, magickian, friend, mentor, scholar and world traveler who died way too early.These are his collected works.Maintained by the Fifth Way Mystery School & the estate of Vincent Bridges.

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Vincent Bridges was a husband, magickian, friend, mentor, scholar and world traveler who died way too early. These are his collected works. Maintained by the Fifth Way Mystery School & the estate of...

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