Introduction

Over the past 35 years I have studied in most of the major libraries in Europe and have visited and photographed all of the major and most of the minor Megalithic sites and Gothic cathedrals, including Dark Age abbeys and romanesque chapels. I am convinced the cathedral builders knew about, revered and copied, the structures of the Stone Age and that they were heliocentric and understood the heliocentric nature of sites like Stonehenge, Newgrange and Kercado.

When certain megalithic temples are compared to the cathedrals their geometry and measurements are almost identical. Both architectural forms measure astronomy, solar centrality, planetary activity and especially lunar cycle timing. In addition most of the cathedrals are built on sites once occupied by megalithic temples dating to c.3800 BC and earlier. In many cases, the same celestial events were studied both before and after the Christian era, implying that some kind of conscious continuity or secret society was at work behind the scenes.

It took a few years, but eventually I realized that this secret intellect, this human link, has always been propelled by what is known as the quest for the Holy Grail… the secret of secrets for western mystics.

The Grail in the Cathedrals

It is my fundamental theory, that many Medieval architects were heliocentric and knew how to include proof of their knowledge in the measurement standards and codes of their buildings. This heliocentrism traces its origins, not to Persia or Egypt, but to England, Ireland, Scotland and France and to the ancient megalithic monuments found there. This information was handed down, through families and secret societies, over a period of at least 5000 years.

The essence, functionality and astronomy of structures such as Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in England, are all encoded into certain cathedrals, especially those dedicated to the Goddess known as Notre Dame or the Virge Noir who some think is a pseudonym for Mary Magdelene as an icon for the old Goddess religion. This path comes through Hermes and the pagan Hermetic codes. In addition to heliocentrism, the ancient cosmology is demonstrated in the cathedrals as music, alchemy and psychology.

The secrets of the old stones are embedded into the cathedrals. Unfortunately several very powerful groups do not want these hidden truths revealed.

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The Maze at Charters. Sunrise at Vernal Equinox casts colorful lights on the floor to exactly illuminate the labyrinth. The path winds close to the center, but does not reveal the inner circle until after the entire path has been traversed. The center once held an altar table above a plaque which said Jerusalem and other comments relevant to Templar initiation and the crusades. One esoteric description claims that the central tableaux consisted of six knights in full dress, each holding a symbol. The bodies of the knights in regalia blocked out the inner scene from anyone outside of the circle. In the center the grand master stood holding a chalice from which the initiate drank. This could have been the chalice used by Christ at the last supper. We now know this was not the Grail as defined here, but only a symbol of the gradual education undertaken by each applicant. An eighth knight, usually an apprentice stood at the beginning to act as an outside sentinel. Modern initiates, especially in the royal families on the continent, are convinced that some of the artifacts from Solomon's Temple (stables) were brought back to Chartres even before the Templars were officially formed.

The scene taking place at the center of the maze was a replica of the quest of Theseus. In this ceremony we see a convocation of the original eight knights who came back from the Holy land with the artifacts of the crucifixion and other special relics. The six knights and the grand master represent the cathedral builders themselves as the Cathedral resonates on a seven pointed star, this was well established long before Charpentier reveled it in his 1972 book The Mysteries of Chartres. The Initiate made up the final figure in the octagon which represents the synodic or lunar year. The knights, in turn, displayed a cauldron of holy water taken from the artesian well beneath Chartres, a sword, a candle, coins, earth from the Holy Land (Solomon's Temple) and a book. Here then fire, air, earth and water are represented as are all four suits of the Tarot. The exact ceremony and how each symbol was used in the ritual, is not known.

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By 1975 I felt humbled, but determined to get this material out. I had no idea the web would come along and make it possible. I knew I was getting better as a writer because my books were being rejected with cryptic comments from New Age editors who had no clue what was going on in Europe. I almost gave up. Likewise, the European editors were loath to publish a nonacademic "yank," especially on these topics, as they were waiting around for an Oxford Don to come through and write the definitive work. Nobody did. I sat in the wings. I had never experienced rejections before because my earlier books were all very popular, but as I continued to research the Grail and the cathedrals, my new style found a home. Luckily, the truth revealed itself to me through real human beings with real names and addresses, brilliant and compassionate people with no ax to grind. These sources guided me and directed me to museums, cathedrals and libraries all over the world. I was on an odyssey so wonderful, so fulfilling that just experiencing these discoveries was sufficient pay off, but my teachers urged me to publish. My sources are and were well adjusted, educated people, not UFO contactees, and their message is one of light, peace and hope.

I guess I fell into writing about the Grail because it was the ultimate challenge and because, if nothing else, the Grail is a social and psychological process. As a social psychologist and anthropologist I am tuned into social contracts, power at various levels of society and how the human spirit evolves and responds in social matrices in both ancient and modern societies.

Historical Perspective
Lately we have heard a lot about how the Holy Family were "marginalized" by the Apostles Peter and Paul and the string of Popes who came after them, but few have heard that certain families in Europe, were well aware of the secrets of the megaliths long before Jesus of Nazareth and his Mother, brethren and children. I mean to say that I have traced the secrets of the Megaliths from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages in an unbroken chain, championed by certain secret societies and cults and sponsored by several powerful families who held power in Europe, especially Celtic territories, long before the Pyramids were built. I urge my readers to consider The possibility that the wisdom of the Pyramids, the basic clock work astronomy contained in them, came, originally from the Atlantic Rim, and that the wisdom wove its way decidedly toward the east rather than the other way. This can be easily supported by the now emergent Radiocarbon dates being found consistently in the Orkneys and the Hebrides above Scotland to Ireland and Brittany; Spain and the Bay of Biscay.

To trace this line of inquiry further I began to look at the earliest legends of the Bronze Age, that period between the unknown Stone Age and, what we call "known" history. Good bronze requires at least 40% tin. At the height of the Bronze Age, tin to make bronze, was growing scarce in the middle east. Mining and smelting techniques were not as efficient as they are today. This forced the sea faring Phoenician tin traders to explore remote areas in search of raw materials. As they searched they set up a far flung network and developed contacts with the world outside of the Mediterranean sea, past the Gates of Hercules into Spain and to Great Britain and Ireland, islands they called the Cassiterides, the Isles of Tin. They also conveyed merchants, royal envoys, miners, foreman and entrepreneurs to and from the mining areas.

The tin traders were Baal worshipers, the ancient near eastern God of nature who created and grew all fertile things, the Green Man, an Osiris like figure, Tamuz and Adoni, almost like the God who inspired the organic Gothic movement at a later date. This god took many forms, but somehow the worshipers of Baal made mergers, not conquests, more like business deals, with the aboriginal people who lived in the tin mining areas. Legends of great stone mounds echoed back to Egypt. Tales of tattooed people who rolled fire bales down hills while worshipping the sun and moon carried eastward, across the seas. The astronomy of the distant people, who wore skins and spoke poetry for hours, came back to Sidon and Tyre with great regularity. Eventually the poets and bards themselves began to arrive, they being mutually curious. But the tin merchants and sea captains also brought back a great deal of surprising information, sketches, maps, land surveys and "hard data" about the world beyond the Mediterranean.

While searching for tin, the seafarers found silver and gold and observed wonders, even miracles. When they returned to Jerusalem and Alexandria they brought with them information about building and astronomy, about measurement and stone moving techniques, that would change the Levant and Arabia forever, especially the world of navigation and cartography. For this reason the Phoenicians suddenly became the greatest and richest navigators in the known world, making a brisk trade in charts and maps on the side.

The travelers and sea merchants also found that certain denizens of the distant isles wanted to sail to the Middle East as much as certain business men and miners wanted to sail west. This began a small network which grew to influence world history in a very profound way. The first contacts by the Phoenicians came to Cornwall and Ireland around 2300 B.C. the fall of the high Neolithic era. The traders were friendly at first, but eventually took over.

In Ireland a decisive battle took place c.2100-1800 BC, between the stone age aboriginal people, the Fir Bolg, People of Bolg, and the Milesians essentially the Children of Mel, from Spain meaning they were originally Phoenicians, in my opinion, who worshipped Baal or a variant of that omniscient God, It is no coincidence that the Irish Fir Bolg, worshipped a God named Bolg or Og (Gaulish Ogmios similar to Baal) and his consort, the fertility Goddess Boinne — as coequal spirits . The war, if you can call it that, was won by the Melesians. Spanish bronze was too strong for the Stone Age people. Changes came rapidly, but throughout this history the Ice Age shamanism reflected in the two main spirits carried on. It seems both Baal and Bolg arose from the same source some 10,000 years earlier.

Above: Loughcrew, Carnbane West, Ireland. Elevation 500 meters. Filmed at sunrise on Lugnasad, August harvest festival. Most of the grand Gothic cathedrals were built on ancient sites like this. Note the thin shadow line in the center foreground. This is a shadow dial. These sites were never graves, no human bones contemporaneous to the site were ever found. Although there may have been grave sites in the vicinity the majority of the sites were used for astronomy. At Loughcrew they are sighting loci for every known astronomical event. This is one of the worlds first planetariums. The Gothic cathedrals simply carried on the work.

The ore rich, seafaring Melesians dominated Ireland and Great Britain for many centuries, but eventually intermarried and grew isolated from their home ports, especially after the downfall of their home culture. These dates can be pin-pointed to the dates of the collapse of Sidon and Tyre, cutting off home and Mediterranean colonial ports to the western sea-traders. Thus they were forced to stay forever in the west. This is shown clearly in the archaeological record. From 1800 BC onward, a civilization blending the Neolithic religions and lifestyles with the technology and seafaring skills of the ore traders, grew into a relatively peaceful culture. This may also explain the rapid rise of oriental ideas and Druidism after those dates.

How whacky is this idea? I think DNA studies will be able to substantiate it in the near future. We know that Sidon and Tyre fought constantly for centuries. The life style evolving in these sister cities was fundamentally garrulous. This faction fighting took its toll on the economy. I believe that by 1100 BC, the entire Phoenician colonial network fell into a full-fledged decline. The ore monopolies were weakening, competition from other cultures and other metals was strong. The isolated colonies in Spain, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland were basically on their own. Eventually both Sidon and Tyre fell into abject desuetude, their crops blasted by scorched earth retreats — all sense of civic pride drained away by inbred rulers — their economies destroyed by usurious banking practices.

As the Phoenicians sailed from the Atlantic they were obliged to stop at their many ports of call in lieu of their capital cities, thus cities like Cadiz, Bristol, Narbonne and Marseille (once simple stopovers) grew into major trading ports assuming the role of Sidon and Tyre.

As long as Bronze was prevalent trade would be lucrative, but eventually Iron and steel became the preferred implements of conquest. At the advent of the Iron Age we see yet another abandonment. The Phoenicians more or less fade from premiere importance and their technology, their writing and learning, acquired from remote groups, blends into the Athenian, Alexandrian, Roman and Gaulish populations eventually prompting Plato to write about lost continents in the west.

This leaves us with a fractional population of astronomer kings and priests, sea captains and cartographers, miners and mineralogists bards and poets - along with their families - wandering around what was once Phoenician territory ranging from Spain and Ireland to Palestine and Syria, even Persia. These groups, I be live, went on to form and influence other groups. Like Sufi masters, they seem to have spread the old wisdom and magic wherever they went, especially to Greece and Egypt. I believe, these travelers met and merged with the Persian and Babylonian Magi, the Zadokea, the line of Melchizedek, mentioned in Genesis. Check the chronology, you'll see it just about dove tails with the end of the Bronze Age, a perfect fit for a great deal of biblical legend. As they traveled these strange priest-kings, (religious masters of war and peace) began establishing colonies and communes of their own, most quite secret, and they too merged with Arabic and Gentile families throughout central Asia and Southern France thus laying the foundation for the Mannachean cults and the Albigensians as close allies of Jerusalem and Judaism itself.

Let me repeat… By the early Bronze Age, several Phoenician colonies including, ship builders, miners and engineers, with the support of farmers and agricultural experts, began to form permanent trading colonies along the western Atlantic sea coast, particularly in areas which turned out to be rich in tin, precious metals and stone monuments viz., Stonehenge, Newgrange and Kercado.

One of these colonies we know as Cadiz on the river Quadlaquivere. Cadiz became a manufacturing center specializing in swords, axes, shields, raw ingots, ship anchors and fittings. Another, less well known colony, took hold in Ireland near Navan, up the river Boyne, another source of raw tin ore, gold and silver. But the largest colonies were found in Cornwall and in the mountains near Glastonbury where low drafted ships could sail in from the Severn estuary on tides predictable by the moons phases. They used dogs to haul out thousands of tons of raw ore each year. These ships also exported lessons learned at the monuments themselves, stone alignments which taught tide tables and the reckoning of the stars by different methods than those known in Lebanon and Egypt at that time.

In this way the eight seasonal periods of the ogdoad, the Coligny calendar the lunar method of calendar reckoning, and the aboriginal idea that the sun resides at the center of the solar system, was spread from west to east beginning about 4500 years ago. This process took at least one thousand years and then when both Sidon and Tyre, more or less, disappeared from the world stage, so did the colonization process. I repeat...I be live heliocentricity was well established thousands of years before Copernicus and finally repressed by certain groups, possibly even the Phoenicians themselves, to protect their sea trade routes.

In other words, the wisdom practiced by the Knights Templars and the Nazarenes may have come from the west to the east via the Phoenician tin trade conveyed by priests and bards from Atlantic encampments. I think we can now see an alternative explanation of history. Many scholars now reject the Victorian vision that depicts civilization, as we know it, sweeping west under the aegis of hordes of Indo-European vendors and warriors. In the process the Grail idea, the idea of the quest or pilgrimage for purity and self -perfection became linked to the pass over cup, the Seder-Kadosh as well as the Christian idea of communion with the High God through transubstantiation of the blood and body of the Priest-King, the Melchizedek, Christ incarnate etc. From this a very complex data base was developed and that data formed the fundamentals for what we now think of as the hidden meaning behind the Grail legends.

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The object, is to avoid arguing pet theories, however tempting, and focus instead on the Grail as an initiation ceremony, a series of rituals which reveal the secrets contained in the walls and windows of the grand Gothic Cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Secrets which, and this is not speculative, have survived since the Stone Age or earlier, secrets passed down in families and by esoteric societies since the dawn of civilization.

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These mysteries have never been revealed to the public in any form. Up until now everything has been transferred in the verbal or non-verbal dimension. I am taking a great risk in presenting them here as text. Many readers will be skeptical as was I, but I assure you I have no hidden agenda. Like a woodsman loads a donkey, this material was just stacked on my back by my teachers.

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Acrobat 4.0 or higher may be needed in some cases. HTML pages should answer a few preliminary questions. The Web also allows us to present the material in color and in more detail whereas color is extremely expensive to produce in and ink and paper book. The material presented here is an almost complete rewrite, setup with color and graphic specifically for the web, and is not quite as highbrow as the 4 books in the Grail Quarto. I have been working on this series since 1972 and have vowed to have the whole thing finished before I get too old to comprehend the critics. © Hank Harrison, aka G.H.Harrison III dba Arkives Press, Archives Publications 2001