Da Vinci Code Writer Stole Idea, Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors claim
Posted on 11/01/2005 7:51:17 AM PST by gobucks
AS A BUILDING, Rosslyn Chapel, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is intriguing. The exterior features Gothic gargoyles and flying buttresses, while inside there are ornate pillars, carvings and an extraordinary ceiling.
As a place of mystery, it is a magnet for those with exotic - some might say outlandish - theories.
Built in the mid-15th century by some of the best stonemasons in Europe, the chiselled scenes and symbols would have been easily understood by their medieval audience but seem baffling to us today.
The most striking example of their craft is the Apprentice Pillar, which is beautifully carved and entwined by stone coils. It symbolises the Tree of Life, with carvings snaking round from the bottom to the top. Supposedly carved by an apprentice, the master stonemason was so enraged when he saw the young man's work that he murdered him. The pillar itself has a number of outlandish theories attached to it.
The Apprentice Pillar is ornately carved One theory has it that these coiled spirals look just like our modern-day representation of the double helix of DNA. Isn’t it just too coincidental that in the 15th century a young man so carved out the exact form of DNA when hundreds of years later, down the road at the Roslin Institute, Dolly the Sheep would become the world’s first animal to have their DNA cloned? Did that somebody know about DNA back then or did they supernaturally foretell the news?
Beneath the floor of Rosslyn is a massive underground vault. The chamber was sealed in 1690 and has never been reopened. Obviously, there has been a lot of speculation as to what is inside the vault.
The village of Roslin, where the chapel sits, is considered by those who believe in such things to be a "thin place", where the line between our world and other worlds is fuzzy, where the unusual is usual and the impossible is possible.
Roslin, about 20 miles south of the capital, has been part of an odd series of events over the years. A Scottish army of only 8,000 won an unlikely victory over an English army of 30,000 in the 13th century. The hamlet of Bonnybridge, about 35 miles northwest of Roslin, is a leading UFO hot spot, and people there are known to have had success in winning the lottery. And, in Roslin, in 1446 Sir William St Clair decided to build a chapel.
To understand the mysteries surrounding Rosslyn, a quick history of the Knights Templars is required. This order of warrior monks was created in 1118 to protect pilgrims on the way to and from the Holy Land. They were housed in the Temple of Solomon and soon became wealthy despite their vow of poverty. They became so influential that in 1307 Philip of France acted to destroy them. Many were burnt at the stake but some were said to have escaped and found sanctuary in Scotland.
Over the centuries many have hypothesised that the Templars were guardians of a great secret. The Ark of the Covenant or other religious relics have been suggested. According to legend, whatever the Templars knew or found sailed with the survivors of the coup and found its way to Scotland.
Among the contenders are the following:
The One True Cross The least fanciful theory is that the vaults contain the remnants of the "one true cross" upon which Jesus Christ was crucified.
Templar Treasure Read more Scotland becomes the headquarters for the Knights Templar. Another vaguely possible theory holds that when the Templar fleet escaped from La Rochelle in Western France they took with them their treasure of gold, silver and jewels. This legendary treasure also suggets a striking explanation for some of the more unlikely carvings. Botanists have confirmed that there are depictions of sweetcorn and cacti in the chapel, South American plants that were unknown in Europe at the time the chapel was built.
Sir William St Clair’s grandfather, Sir Henry Sinclair, may have sailed from Orkney to America in 1398, nearly 100 years before Columbus. The reason he sailed? To take the Templar treasure from Rosslyn to the New World, where it could be buried in safety - a place that no-one would think of searching. The sweetcorn? While Sir Henry stayed in Nova Scotia building a treasure pit, some of his shipmates possibly sailed further south and brought back samples of indigenous plants.
The Holy Grail In 1962 Grail-seeker Trevor Ravenscroft claimed that a lead casket was buried in the Apprentice Pillar. This casket contained the Holy Grail itself – the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and used again at the foot of the cross to collect his blood. Buried for years under the Temple of Solomon, it was found when the Templars excavated the area and has been kept hidden ever since. Quite what Ravenscroft used for evidence that it ended up in the pillar has never really been explained. The whole notion of there being a Holy Grail is speculative in itself, never mind trying to prove that it’s in a pillar in Rosslyn.
Holy Scrolls In their book The Hiram Key (1996), Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas claim the pillar contains ancient scrolls that prove Jesus was a mason and the whole Masonic ritual goes back to pre-Christian times. Once again, the theory claims the Templars found this out during excavations. Once again, the evidence is lacking.
The Head of Jesus Christ Scrolls and cups are all very well, but not nearly as exciting as Dr Keith Laidler’s theory. In his 1998 book The Head of God, Laidler claimed the head that the Knight Templars worshiped (sometimes called Baphomet) was actually of Jesus Christ. He writes that the head was brought out of the Holy Land and removed from France once things got too hot and, yes, hidden in the Apprentice Pillar. As they say, we will believe it when we see it.
The Blood of Jesus Christ The piece-de-résistance of Rosslyn lore is the most startling of all. Rosslyn’s imagery, the figures, the ceiling, the pillar, the floor, point inescapably to the real secret encoded there. We have had Jesus’s blood, Jesus’s head and, lo and behold, we also have Jesus’s DNA. For the Holy Grail is nothing less than the bloodline of Christ. The child of the child of the child … of Jesus Christ and Mary of Magdalene is alive and well and living in Rosslyn.
And before you make a fool of yourself, be warned, Jesus’s ancestor is not the lady who runs the teashop round the back.
That looks a lot like the bombed out church in the game, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". Did they find a ritualistic dagger to be used to bring back a demon-possessed German leader from the 1300's; only for be wiped out by an Arnold-look-alike armed with brass-knuckles, a .45, a Tommy Gun, an MP45, a shotgun, a double-barreled shotgun, a battery-powered gatling gun, WW2 GI-issued and German potatomasher handgrenades, a silenced machine gun, a sniper rifle, a bolt-action rifle, bullet-proof armor, a rocketlauncher, and first aid kits up the wazuu?
There are some pretty freaky things there, too. BUt, mainly in the form a freaky people getting on and off the metro trains.
Thank you for the additional info.
Many thanks for the update and email report...
There are quite a few ways the vaults could be examined these days ... pencil thin wire cameras, etc...
bump
Mercator's 1569 world map isn't detailed enough to show Narragansett Bay. He does have various symbols as do other maps, but they frequently reflect what was thought to be the case rather than personal knowledge. So the Norse were known, through the sagas at the very least, to have been in NE North America, and he shows that.
As for measurements, there are at least half a dozen competing claims about the measurements used, each used to prove that a different group designed it - they can't all be right! This applies to architectural style as well.
C14 dating suggests that it is colonial and very unlikely to be much earlier.
Then there's the fact that the one dig carried out showed absolutely no signs of anything not Native American or colonial.
And finally, there's the stone Chesterton Windmill in England, built just a bit earlier than the colony and which could easily have been the inspiration for the Norfolk Tower.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/leicester.street/ambling/chesterton.html
As for the alleged corn at Rosslyn - is it corn? How can you tell? What did corn, highly evolved from the original, look like around 1500 which is probably about the time of the carvings (and 100 years after Sinclair's alleged voyage). I know people who are sure it does not look like corn/maize, - the 3-lobed leaf could be one of a number of plants.
Most of the information on the web regarding the original purpose of the Chesterton Mill is copied verbatim from a piece written by Dorothy Noden who states that the structure was originally constructed as a mill. This would be interesting as there appears to be no other mill structure constructed in a similar fashion anywhere else.
I have read in many places that it was built as an Observatory in 1632 & converted to grinding grain later. One quote is from a mill expert, Rex Wailes writing in 1937: “The Chesterton windmill has been converted to its present (or more properly past) purpose beyond all doubt. This can be seen by inspection of the ‘cap’ which is the revolving top portion carrying the sails...
I'm not an archeologist (though I have been involved in post grad fieldwork - more out of curiousity than anything) and am not debating the origin of the Newport structure but it does not appear that anyone has come up with a difinitive theory as to who built the structure, when and for what purpose. Any radiocarbon dating should really be conducted on the moartar used as - presumably - the shells ground into lime used in the mixture would give some indication as to the general age of the construction.Perhaps ther is some organic material other than shells that could be tested. Then again, the shells could well have come from old deposits on the shore with a far older date than their ultimate use.
If you conduct tests on organic materials at the base of or somewhere near the tower, all that is liable to tell you is that there was activity in that area at a given time. Similarly, if you carbon date a fire pit at a site and that site had been in use for 5k years but the materials you test come back saying 1k years, all you can conclude is that the particular combusted material indicates a presence at some time along the site's history but certainly not at that time the site was first occupied/used. People do adopt sites well after those who first established or built them are dead and gone for centuries. On top of that, organic objects - bones, shells, horn - fashioned into ceremonial or heirloom objects are often much older than their last or most recent owner/user.
I also have not made any assertion that carvings at Rosslyn are meant to depict corn/maise or Aloe as some have postulated. I've seen the carvings and it is a bit of a stretch to say that they resemble corn http://www.antoranz.net/CURIOSA/ZBIOR4/C0402/11-QZC09072_kukurydza.HTM
Corn in the 1400-1500's did look a lot like modern corn. Until the mid 1600's the Tunxis were growing "modern" corn along the banks of the Farmington River in CT and it was standard enough for a monetary excahange rate to be established by the first settlers of Farmington and Hartford. Certain areas known to be used for growing the corn have been examined and found to have been in use for a few hundred years. Ancient "corn" achieved its modern look over 4k years ago. See: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61210,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3
Are the carvings a stylistic interpretation of corn? Who knows. The stonemasons who did it aren't talking.
Thank you for your common sense.
OK, so why has the vault not been opened since the 1600'd?
Geraldo Rivera hasn't heard of it yet?
No, chainsaws are for the Martian atmosphere where the human weilder needs an oxygen tank, but somehow allows the combustion engine of a chainsaw to run indefinately.
The radiocarbon dating was done on the mortar.
http://www.ramtops.co.uk/newport.html
And the invoices for the construction of the Chesterton Windmill as a windmill were found about 20 years ago.
Doug
Interesting...Thanks for the link. I imagine that had the British not damaged a good amount of the top of the tower - which I have read referenced to - the investigation would have yielded more concrete results sooner.
I wonder why they did not test the clay pipe fragment they found. First I heard of that.
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Note: this topic is from November 1, 2005. |
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“To date no hard evidence supporting the Norse explanation has been found”
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