butswana

More Ron Wyatt bullshit. This site has all of his newsletters.
http://www.anchorstone.com/number3.html

spin

Go wash your mouth out... with ale.

Wads4

What I can't understand is that Ron Wyatt appears to have overlooked the Holy Grail to add to his trophies.

Wads4

The last I heard of it was that it was stored in a Monastary in Ethiopia, but the investigators who went to try and view it were turned away as the "time was not yet at hand"--usual story.

Amedeo

I'll post my two cents on it.

I am an atheist, but being an atheist does not imply a denial of what people believe or the rites they perform. The Ark is nothing less than the seat (or the house) of the Lord Sabbaoth, the warrior-god who is carried in battle to lead the carriers to victory.

A few posts will tell my story.

Celsus

Oh good. I propose a formal debate between Amedeo and Willowtree.

Joel

Amedeo

-------- HERE LIES THE ARK -------------
USA Copyright 1996 by Amedeo Amendola.
[A detective Story. Slightly abridged.]


Where is the Ark of the
Covenant? The detective work has already been done by
various people with different interests. All I did
recently was to put 2 and 2 together and I ended up with
something like 3.90 (since "4" would be
certainty.)

Almost any watcher of television documentaries can add 2
("The Shadow of the Templars" and "The Secret of the
Templars" narrated by investigator Henry Lincoln) and 2
("The Lost Ark" and "The Quest for the Ark" with
investigator Graham Hancock [also from England]) and make more
or less the same inferences I have made. All I will
do here is to present, from those 4 videotapes, points
relevant to my conclusion, as well as points of my own,
which were necessary for my conclusion as to where the
Ark is.
***

The Templars were soldier-monks who
originated in France. [The idea of a monk who is a soldier
seems to be self-contradictory, but that is the type of
monks that emerged in France.] They were known as
Knights of the Temple or Knights Templar after taking
residence near what was left of the Temple in
Jerusalem.

Jerusalem had been recently wrested (in 1099) from the
so-called Infidels by crusading Europeans under a special
French leadership, after a futile attempt (the First
Crusade) and a long siege. The leader, or at least the
theoretical leader, of the armed forces was Godfrey of
Bouillon, who is very much connected with the story of the
Templars, or vice-versa.

After the capture of
Jerusalem, Godfrey was made king of the city and the land by
a special group of French electors. His royal
palace was by the Temple. In 1118 nine soldier-monks
came from France with the alleged purpose of
protecting pilgrims on the highways toward Jerusalem. They
were welcomed by the king and were given part of the
palace. Eventually the whole palace was given to them.
Obviously they must have been very important people, and
obviously they were too few, if they had to patrol the
highways!

Those Templars searched through the rubble in the
basements called the Stables of Solomon, but apparently
they did not find what they were looking for. They
were on some kind of quest, but no Templar ever
revealed what they were looking for. It seems that both
Godfrey and the nine Templars has sprung, so to speak,
from a secret society in France and at least he
knew why the Templars had been sent and what they were
looking for. However, secrecy was never broken.

The secret society in question is L'Ordre de Notre Dame de
Mont Sion (The Order of Our Lady of Mount Zion [the
mount in Jerusalem]). After Jerusalem was captured, the Crusaders
built an abbey (with a church) dedicated to Our Lady of
Mount Zion in the city, but of course the Order existed
before the City was captured. From these and other facts, I
surmised that the promotion of the second, or armed and
successful crusade, the pre-planned kingship of Godfrey, and
the aims of the Templars are integral parts of one
idea or design which will soon become
apparent.

Some time after the arrival in Jerusalem, the Templars
wrote, reported back, to France that their work was
done (that is, their mission had been accomplished) and that
WHAT THEY HID AND SECURED was under their control --
that is, not under any civil or ecclesistical
authority. By the way, the Order of the Templars had no
allegiance to anyone but the Pope. The Order grew in number
and wealth and, living in both Jerusalem and in
France, they practically became an autonomous,
independent, society.

What was the mission of the
Templars? They never made it public. What was it that they
found, hid, and secured? There used to be a theory, more
or less relevant to this question, that the
Templars were the protectors of the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail
was understood to be the cup which Jesus used in his
last supper. There is a whole mythology about the holy
grail, but recently "san greal" (saint graal, or holy
grail) has been re-interpreted as "sang real" (= royal
blood). I am sure this interpretation is correct; that
is, I am sure that the early French speakers
intentionall said and wrote "san greal" so as to hide was they
were referring to. (Secret messages and documents
typically involved play on words so that most readers would
not be able to decipher them.)

On the basis of
Gardner's book, "Bloodline of the Holy Grail," Mr. Lincoln
observed that the royal blood in question -- the blood in
a bloodline -- is the royal blood of Christ, who
was in the bloodline of king David. [Two of the Gospels
take pains to trace Jesus back to David... and
eventually Jesus was crucified as the king of the Jews.
His very birth had been conceived as a threat to king Herod.
However the Gospels omit the biographical part of the
royal Jesus.]
The Order of Zion (short for the Order of Our Lady of Mount
Zion) and member soldier-monks in France before the
crusades may have indeed been protecting the royal blood,
but if this was the case, then the question as to
what the Templar in Jerusalem hid and secured remains
unanswered.

At any rate, how could Templars in France be
protectors of the royal blood in the line of David?
Apparently some French monks discovered some information or
documents which amount to the following: The three Marys
were at the crucifixion of Christ (on whose cross
there was an inscription in three languages: Jesus of
Nazareth, King of the Jews). Mary Magdalen was presumed to
be the wife of Christ (as a "golden legend" tells, though
not according to the canonical or church-official
Scriptures). After the crucifixion, she ran away as she was
pregnant or already had a child. She reached a small Jewish
community in southern France. Today the town's name is
Rennes-le-Chateau. So, the bloodline continued in France. The
Merovingeans married descendants of the Magdalene family.
Thus a Merovingian king acquired the royal blood of
David. (Any descendant of David is, by right, the king of the
Jews and of Jerusalem. That is the theory, according
to the ancient and barbaric way of thinking about
royalty.) As a matter of fact, the Merovingians were
recognized even by the Pope as being royal by blood, rather
than appointment or anointing. Now, it does not matter
whether there is any validity in the whole mythology of
bloodlines, or whether there is any truth in Christ being
married and having offsprings. What matters is that some
people believed all this and took actions on the
basis of their beliefs.

My historical view is that in a bright or dark moment in the
minds of some French monks, they realized that here we
have the legitimate king of Jerusalem, but the throne is
occupied by others. Let us procure the throne to Godfrey,
a Merovingian descendant.
The preaching of the first crusade was in different
terms: Let us liberate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem
and make it possible for pilgrims to reach it. (Of
course they knew that the Arabs who ruled Jerusalem were
very tolerant of Christians and Jews, some of whom
lived there, and that European pilgrims were welcome,
but the Crusade enterprise had to have the appearence
of promoting worship freedom.)

In connection
with the crusades, I should mention something which
turns out to be relevant to my quest of the Ark. The
Crusaders chose a Christian hymn as their marching song:
"Vexilla Regis" (composed by the Roman Fortunatus before
the year 600 and usually heard or read in the Good
Friday services of the Catholic church): "The banners of
the King advance; there shines the mystery of the
Cross... which proffers life through death..." This is a
hymn about Christ the King, which the crusaders
(cross-wearers) must have taken literally. To note that
in the days of the early crusades, Christ was understood
in the Byzantine Medieval tradition as the King and the Judge on
Judgement Day. These are the days before the foundation of
the "new religion" by Francis of Assisi, who preached that God is
love, before the Franciscan theologian Bonaventura, and
before Dante's Vita Nuova in which he speaks of
"my lord" (Christ) as love. Christianity was to be never the same.


The crusaders devoted
themselves to Our Lady and, once in Jerusalem, they built an
abbey to Our Lady of Zion, as I have already
said. Mary, of course, is the royal link between David and
Christ, and she would hardly play any part in the spirit
of the crusades, IF the crusades were really intent on
liberating the Holy Sepulcher! [By the way, it was and is
Catholic doctrine that Jesus was royal though Mary,
as Joseph was not his biological father. The two genealogies
in the Gospels trace Jesus' royalty to David through Joseph.
The fact is that the Gospels themselves contain two separate
biogrpahies of Jesus!]

The theme of the sepulcher liberation, on
the contrary, can be found in situations which were
not involved in the crusades. For example, when the
news of the conquest of Jerusalem reached Europe,
there were great celebrations. In Modena, Italy, a cathedral
had just been built and, after the news, the portals
were carved with this scene: There is a lady
(Guinevere) in a castle and knights headed by Arthur (whose
name, Artu`, was also carved) are moving to rescue her. This
Arthurian legend obviously is a symbolization of the
liberation of Jerusalem. (Incidentally, this portal was
carved prior to Monmouth's "History of the English
Kings" and before many invented Arthurian legends in Europe.
It is one of the earliest artistic representation of an
Arthurian episode... Undoubtedly some legends had been
brought from Brittany into Italy by the Normans -- brethrern of
those who in 1066 occupied England. (My own native town still
has a Norman baronial tower, as they occupied many
parts of southern Italy.)

Now, one main
investigative concern of Mr. Lincoln was the life, at the turn
of the 19th-20th century, of a French priest whose
name is Sauniere. When this priest was appointed to
the poor parish of Rennes-le-Chateau, he had to beg
for and borrow money for essential repairs of the
church. This church was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene.
When the altar was dismantled for repairs, certain
documents were found. Not too long thereafter, the priest
had repairs and constructions done as if he had found
a fortune. His own library building was named
Magdala. Did he find the treasure which the Templars were
always suspected of having? Even the king of France who, in the
course of history, ordered the slaughter of the
Templars, could not receive a hint about the treasure which
presumably they had found in Jerusalem. (Of course, everybody
equated treasure with gold or wealth.)

[to be continued]

Clivedurdle

Everyone is completely wrong! Michael Woods BBC saw the building it is in in Ethiopia.

Amedeo

--Here Lies the Ark [2] ---

The decoded message in one document reads, "The treasure
belongs to Dagobert II and to Zion," that is, to an ancient
Merovingian king and to either Jerusalem or the
aforementioned Order of Zion. (Obviously the treasure cannot
consist of the bloodline which some templars may have
protected. So, we should no longer be concerned with the
royal blood or the holy grail in connection with the
Templars.)

One of the items on the document says, "solis
sacerdotibus," which means "only for priests;" but since Mr.
Lincoln had his mind on the TEMPLARS' treasure, he
interpreted this inscription to mean "for the initiates in
the Templar Order only." So, he was misled by this
unwarranted interpretation. As a matter of fact, the Latin
phrase refers to the fact that access to the holy of
holies in the Temple was reserved to the priets
only. Only the official priest was allowed to
gaze upon the Ark of the Covenant while offering some
sacrifice on the altar. So, I thought, "the treasure is for
the gaze of the priests only; the treasure IS the
Ark." (As for the two voideotapes of the investigations that
involved Mr. Lincon, the Ark does not enter at all into
the field of their investigations.) Hence I conluded that what
the Templars found, hid, and secured was nothing but
the ARK of the Covenant! The Ark now belongs to the
Merovingians and to the secret society called, in brief, the
Order of Zion. (Hence, it belongs to Godfrey....)

Another and more cryptic document
mentions in French many things including Poussain the painter;
the shepherdess (that is, a figure in a painting of his which is
usually called "Shepherds in Arcadia"); "this horse of
God" (which I take to mean the battlefield horse on
which the Lord Sabbaoth rides, so to speak, namely the
Ark), and "681 pommes bleus" or blue apples. Playing
with words, this could mean "ble," a word which refers
to dough (money) rather than the blue color. Thus
the phrase could mean 681 satchels of money [which,
or part of which, made Sauniere rich overnight].
Actually, in the 17th century, another priest (that is
person who could read Latin) was somehow connected with
Poussain and got rich overnight. I venture to guess that
some of those 681 satchels are still around
somewhere.

Meanwhile, in the other set of tapes, Mr. Hancock reports
that his investigations led him to a city in Ethiopia
where a Christian community (originally Jewish in
religion) believes to be in possession of the lost Ark of
the Covenant. (He provides innumerable historical and
other details which are beyond the scope of my
presentation.) This Ark (or a copy of it?) is taken annually in an
outdoor procession. It is covered so that no one may gaze
upon it. In the (fortified) chapel where it is kept
hidden and secure, it may be gazed upon only by the
appointed priest. Next to the place where the Ark
is kept, there is the Church of St. Mary of Sion
[Zion]. Does that sound familiar? It may have been a copy
or the rebuilding of a copy, of the same church in Jerusalem, but the
investigators apparently did not make the connection. At any
rate, what is most impresive next to these buildings,
in Azum or Axum, is a mighty building, below ground level,
carved out of rock. Today it would take cannons or bombs
to destroy it.And what is most interesting is the
unmistakeable Templar sword carved on many spots of the
building. The templars had a specific design for their
swords and their crosses -- a very important fact.
Somehow, Mr. Hancock was not struck by this evidently
Templar fortress, as his mind was on the Ark.

What I suppose is that, following verbal leads (just as our
investigators followed verbal leads), the Templars went to
Ethiopia, where a Jewish community was supposed to have the
Ark. (The investigators tried to reconstruct the way
in which the Ark would have ended up in
Azum.) And I suppose that the Templars found, hid, and secured
the Ark, and even built a fortress to protect it. All this
must have happened toward the middle of the 12th century, before
1153, when the Cistercian Abbot, [St.] Bernard of
Clairveaux died. He is the one to whom the Templars had
reported that what they hid and secured was under their
own jurisdiction.

When Jerusalem was recaptured by the "Saracens" in 1187,
partly though the rash decision of the Templars to go outside
the walls, the Ethiopian Templars must have learned
the fact and done what I would have done -- pack
everything and return to France. They may have left a
replica of the Ark in Azum, where it still is.

My contention is that the Ark is in France. But where? That's
the question. Mr. Lincoln has superficially explored the
whole Templar country around Rennes-le-Chateau and
other Templar territories. The first document I
mentioned has mysterious points from where lines converge on
a point. Such "geometries" have been investigated
on the real terrain. Templar castles or villages of
hill-tops are disposed on a circular or polygonal
perimeter. Lines from them converge to a point, where
presumably the "treasure" is. The problem is that there are
two many geometries, even overlapping geometries, and
geometries even outside France, which means that they do do
serve as clues to the treasure. One geometry is
circular with five points (hence pentagonal), but the
investigators misinterpreted it as a five-point star
(as a pentagram}, which they
connected with the ancient summoning of the devil (the
circle being the boundary line within which the summoner
shielded himself from the devil -- good strategy!) Such
misinterpretations simply led to dead-end streets.

It happens that Poussain's painting mentioned in the second
document is largely a realistic painting of an area. When
mapped, its hill-tops have lines which converge on the
shepherdess, who is standing by a sarcophagus. In the real
territory there is a little dirt mount or tumulus. Lincoln
photographed it and on the videotape he compared the real and
the painted territories, but apparently he never
thought of excavating (or he may have been forbidden to
excavate) the tumulus. Two years later, when he returned on
the scene, he found that the tumulus had been
practically dismantled, for there are always people on the
trail of archeologists and the like.

Mr. Lincoln's mind was on the striking similarity of the
painted and the real territory, even though the tumulus
had not been painted realistically. At any rate, he
should have looked into it. To demostrate, he used a
copy of the painting and correctly showed that the
lines from the hill-tops actually converged on one eye
of the sphepherdess (painted in profile). While he
was talking, I was looking at the painting and
noticed that a cowering shepherd was pointing to a Latin
inscription on the sarcophagus. So, I said, Let me read with
her what the shepherd is pointing to: "Et in
arca......" I practically fell off my chair. The whole
inscription (which I was already familiar with), "Et in
Arcadia Sum" means "I [Death] am even in Arcadia," but
"arca" is the Latin for Ark and I actually read, "Even in the Ark
[or Ark-land] I am." My gosh, the shepherdess is the
personified treasure and she is saying that she in in the
Ark. Conclusion, the sarcophagus is/has the Ark, the gold treasure is
inside it, the speaking is from (the inscription is on)
the sarcophagus, which is the tumulus in the real
territory!

Does this mean that those who dismantled the tumulus
found the treasure? Not at all. I presume Sauniere is the
one who found the treasure (the Ark and gold) THERE at
the turn of the 19th-20th
century. He knew Latin, he did what I did, and he went
straight to collect. Of course, he did not put what was
left of the treasure back in the same place. Where is
the Ark now?

One of the documents and one stone carving (which later on
Sauniere tried to scrape off) has the inscription, "reddis
regis/cellis arcis," which I construe as "in the cellar
of the citadel in the king's city
[Rennes-le-Chateau]." The ruins of the citadel are still there.
Possibly Sauniere found part of the treasure buried under
the lowest floor of the castle. Were one to excavate
it today, the most he would find is some empty
wooden container. It seems that we are left
empty-handed.

When Sauniere rebuilt his church, he did not put back
the hollow base of the altar in which he had found
the documents. It is in the fine garden he created.
The garden or the adjacent cemetery has also a Calvary,
namely a big and sturdy pedestal which is surmounted by a cross.
In a way, it is like Calvaries which people used to build
on mountain paths and elsewhere. It is just one the
things Sauniere put in the garden. But we have to look a
bit more closely. Around the upper border of the
square pedestal, there is an inscription in Latin which
says, "Christ Conquers/ Christ Reigns/ Christ rules
[all of these being words from a Medieval, probably
French, march-hymn about the royal Christ]/ Christ
Protects the AMOPS." These are the initials of the
"Ancient Mystical Order of the priory of Sion [Zion]."
This Priory of Zion replaced the old Order of Our Lady
of Mount Zion after not only the loss of
Jerusalem, but also the repudiation of the Templars on the
part of the Order. (In France the autonomous and
wealthy Order of the Templars could no longer be
tolerated by a king of France, was accused of all kinds of
abominations, and was almost wiped out by the king.)

There is a French library document, which I find partially
fictitious. It gives a list of famous Europeans who headed the
Priory of Zion. The last name was that of Cocteau (who did a
painting in St. Mary's of Zion in England). A living
descendant of the Merovingians, who was interviewed, attests
that the Priory still exists. (Of course it does; it
is the Order of the Rosy Cross, or of the
Rosicrucians. The rosy cross was a Merovingian birthmark.
Probably he or others in England still aspire to become
kings of Jerusalem.) On one side of the
pedestal, there is the Latin inscription, "In cruce/vita"
(In the Cross -- Life). This does not mean much to
the casual reader, even if he knows Latin, but if he
knows the aforementioned hymn, "Vexilla regis," he
recognizes that this is a quotation from that marching hymn
of the crusaders. (It is one in a configuration of
clues.) A plaque between the two parts of this
inscription has been removed or lost -- probably it revealed
too much. Opposite to the side with "in cruce/vita," there is the
carving of the unmistakeable Templar cross!

By now you have figured out where the Ark is. Mr. Lincoln
did not, because he mistranslated one inscription
along the border. He said, "May Christ protect the
AMOPS." But the Latin does NOT say, "Christus defendat;"
it says, "Christus defendit," that is, he is
defending, protecting, the Order right now. Since the
treasure belong to the Order, Christ is protecting the
treasure. The protecting Christ is the Cross above the
pedestal. Hence, the inscription virtually says,
"Here lies the Ark" and possibly some gold as well.

As I said at the
beginning, the probability is 3.90 rather than 4 (perfect).
All one has to do is to dismantle the pedestal and
find out. By the way, private excavation are still
forbidden in Rennes-le-Chateau, but I informed the French
Consul in New York [and later on, the French Secretary of
Culture] that unless the government
investigates, the Calvary may end up being vandalized by
treasure seekers... and steal the Ark.

I bet Sauniere is smiling... Possibly he himself removed
the plaque from the pedestal: it would have been too
revealing, if it bore the inscription R.I.P. (requiescat in
pace -- may it/he rest in peace). Somebody might have asked:
Who or What is buried there? As things are, the mystery of
Rennes-le-Chateau is kept intact and the town remains a
tourist attraction.

*************************************************
P.S.

To fully understand the above essay, one should see the four
videotapes I mentioned. My understanding as to why there were crusades is not the conventional one; my later researches into French-papal events prior to the papal inauguration of the Crusade show the link between the French project to restore the kingdom of Jerusalem to Godfrey, and the Pope; the link is Matilde of Canossa in Italy.

post tenebras lux

Can I be the third one to vote for 'it' being in Ethiopia?

How old 'it' is, is a whole 'nother question.

Luxie