A local newspaper in the UK has revealed an elaborate network of secret tunnels and passages beneath Hertford, the ancient county town of Hertfordshire.
Local historians were aware of only one part of the network which was mapped in a document on public record dated 1898. The newspaper details numerous tunnels, many of which were blocked during the last century, and shows photographs of two other entrances. The existence, extent and purpose of the tunnels were leaked to a journalist by members of a mysterious secret society in the area said to be related to the Knights Templar and the Illuminati.
These revelations are restoring Hertfordshire to its rightful place in Templar legend, and literally put Hertford on the map in the Quest for the Holy Grail, and there is more to come...
A legendary medieval Order, the Knights Templar, established a base in Hertfordshire during the Crusades. It is said that some of their descendents still live here today and maintain the original Templar tradition.
A rural county on the Northern boundary of London, Hertfordshire has been a sacred place since prehistoric times - particularly the county-town, Hertford, where ancient rivers meet.
In St Andrew's church in Hertford there are many beautiful stained glass windows. They are said in certain circles to hold a clue to the secrets of the Holy Grail.
There are similar rumours about other locations in the UK, such as Staffordshire in England and Rosslyn in Scotland. The windows of St Andrew's and the characters and symbols in them do seem rather like a riddle that can be unlocked by certain knowledge:
1. John holds a cup, a famous scene from the Last Supper, hence the cup is the Holy Grail. Jesus and Mary Magdalene gaze meaningfully at each others, resonating with the famous heresy regarding the Bloodline of Christ.
2. Joseph of Arimathea represents the famous legend that Jesus went with him to Britain (hence the hymn "And did those feet...") and his staff sprouts living shoots symbolising a new family tree.
3. Theodore of Tarsus is like a signpost pointing to Hertford, because he called the first ever church Synod, held in Hertford Castle, where the date of Easter Sunday was decided.
4. The craftsman who created the window based the cup on a genuine relic. The chalice has been dated to the century when the Knights Templar went underground, but it still exists today. (cont.)
Were the Templars bred for rule on Earth by a higher intelligence?
excerpts:
The Quinotaur: an extraterrestrial?
One of the secrets of the Templars is that Mary Magdalene's heirs married into the Visigoth families of the time, and gave birth to the sacred Merovingian ruling family. The Visigoths of the area might have been descended from the House of Benjamin, which had fled to the Arcadia region of Greece, and thence north into France, a thousand years earlier. The Merovingians were not wiped out by the Carolingian usurpers, and their lineage survives in some of the other royal families of Europe; apparently the goal of the secret society known as the Prieure du Sion is a Merovingian restoration in France.
The code in the parchments is only decipherable through the use of the knight's tour -- a logic puzzle wherein one "jumps" a knight to every square on a chess board, once and only once. It is a puzzle that has only one solution -- as does the code, clearly. But the use of chessboard imagery at Rennes-le-Chateau is striking. Elizabeth van Buren, a "cottage industry" writer in the area, asserts that Rennes-le-Chateau is the site for a Manichean chess-like struggle between the cosmic forces of good (the Merovingians) and darkness (which would seem to be the Church). Van Buren feels that the "Quinotaur" (literally, "five-horn"), which mated with King Merovech's mother in the sea, giving King Merovech "double parentage," may have been an extraterrestrial.
Many writers are connected with the mystery of the Templars and Rennes-le-Chateau. It might be productive to reexamine their works with a new eye for such hidden codes. One, novelist Victor Hugo, and another, playwright Jean Cocteau, are said to have presided over the Prieure. But other writers appear to be strongly connected to the mystery. Three in particular are the so-called "Inklings": fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, "Screwtape" writer C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. Lionel Fanthorpe also suspects that Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, George McDonald, and Umberto Eco may somehow have provided clues to the mystery in their books. Sir Walter Raleigh, who is now thought to have been involved in an esoteric body known as "the School of Night" (whose motto was that "inspiration comes to the philosopher at night, when nature and the rest of humanity sleeps"), may have also been part of the Order of Sion.
The theme of "Arcadia" was prominent in Elizabethan literature, and it appears in the works of writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Phillip Sidney, and even Shakespeare, for whom the word was synonymous with the Golden Age. Through the historical detective work of Frances Yates, we now know that this era was a time when many "Rosicrucian" ideas were moving to the Continent, and esoteric thinkers were congregating around Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate of Bohemia, as the figure who would usher in the reforms of Church and State many expected.
and
The story of Sion only comes into focus in the Middle Ages. In 1070, a group of monks from Calabria, Italy, led by one Prince Ursus, founded the Abbey of Orval in France, near Stenay, in the Ardennes. These monks are said to have formed the basis for the Order de Sion, into which they were "folded" in 1099 by Godfroi de Bouillion. For about one hundred years, the Order of the Temple (Knights Templar) and Sion were apparently unified under one leadership, though they are said to have separated at the "cutting of the elm" at Gisors in 1188. It appears that there are vast connections between Sion and numerous sociocultural strata in European thought -- Roscicrucianism, Freemasonry, Arthurian and Grail legends, "Arcadianism," Catharism.
