Welcome to the Heart of Europe

The Lower Austrian city of Wiener Neustadt - New Vienna City (here in a view from the local hospital) - is one of the Austrian "Lionheart places". It was built from the ransom money for the English King, who had been held captive after insulting the Austrian Duke at the Crusades. Back in the East Midlands of England, Robin Hood's hometown Nottingham, the capital of Nottinghamshire County near Sherwood Forest, is famous for lace making and has a reputation for beautiful women, whom one could take out to the annual Goose Fair (or an archery contest).


A Controversial Library

Meeting two old friends again after a while can bring back memories but also provide new impulses. In our conversation they had mentioned a recent TV-documentation about the Grail been found in Valencia, displayed at the local cathedral as Santo Caliz for only about 500 years. Picking up the topic, I decided to read Christian relic & UFO researcher Michael Hesemann's "The Discovery of the Grail (Die Entdeckung des Heiligen Gral, 2003)." Not too unknown nor flying the object this time.

My interest in Grail stories is a longer story on its own. Let's go way back for a start. What I have always enjoyed is reading books. Growing up, it started with Greek, Roman and German Hero Legends and went on from Karl May novels to Edgar Wallace crime stories. As an adult it reached from contemporary history to biographies of politicians and also religious books, less spiritual in content but more about historical foundations. The original interest in the Grail theme and connected implications and speculations on church history must have started as things do so often, by catching a line here and there, everywhere and nowhere.

The ruins of Duernstein Castle, overseeing the Danube River, represent another of Austria's "Lionheart places", for here the same English King had been interred in the winter time of 1192/93. Up to this day the young folk should be thankful to the Austrian margrave Leopold, who held the English King Richard the Lionhearted captive in the fortress Duernstein ("Arid Stone") after the same had insulted him by ordering for the Austrian flag to be torn down during the third Crusade. Bad luck that King Richard had to cross Austria on his way home from the Holy Land and his disguise as a pilgrim was blown. For some time he would be imprisoned at an undisclosed location - today we know it as Lower Austria's Duernstein Castle. In the meantime, his brother King John ruled England, had taxpayers hard-pressed and created the environment that brought forth the legend of Robin Hood.


Knight. Almost everyone has heard of the classic books and movies about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood and the story of King John replacing his brother Richard the Lionhearted during his absence. In particular I do remember Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, portraying the loyal gentleman-knight, who in 1192 helps raising funds to free King Richard the Lionhearted from captivity in the Austrian Duernstein castle. I guess, the English King shouldn't have insulted the Austrian Duke Leopold IV during the crusades in the Holy Land. A simple toy castle and miniatures of knights - typically dressed in white coats with red crosses on - may put a child in a position to perform its own stories. Inspiring creativity during elementary school years, Playmobil toys and other figurines may become favourite companions during child development, as I could observe once more with my daughter. Max Trell's novelization of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant could increase a youngster's interest in Knighthood and the Round Table further and I was happy to still find paperback reprints of the same tales for my son. Time flies. For homework my boy had to do a portfolio on the legend of King Arthur and research information about Camelot on the internet - school is going with the times, as well...

The history of German literature would be incomplete without Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parsifal, which we should have at heard of at school, but nowadays the Grail theme was picked up again by modern media. It even found its way into the "Age of Empires" computer game or a Batman graphic novel. The third "Indiana Jones" movie showed Harrison Ford on the Last Crusade, beating the Nazis in an archaeological race for the plain wooden cup of a carpenter. In fact, assuming the Holy Grail as the cup Jesus Christ used at the Last Supper, a wooden chalice seems to be out of question as the porous material was not considered ritually pure by the Jews, who would prefer a kosher stone vessel for the Passover meal.

Twilight. Even before that I remember seeing a movie called "Excalibur" with a plot that connected the Arthurian saga with supernatural elements like the Lady of the Lake, taking back the magic sword after King Arthur's death. And I had admired Ronnie James Dio & Rainbow doing a song about the same lady ("I know she waits below…"). Anyway, these appearances mirror incredible popularity on the entertainment sector for young & old ones (including those remaining young in spirit certainly).

It is funny that the interest in unknown traces and backgrounds appeared to come back every couple of years. It probably started during a stay in the U.S., when we followed TV-reruns of old "The Twilight Zone"-shows by Rod Serling. In particular, I recall the dense atmosphere of the episode "Living Doll," with a squeaky voice speaking to the mean stepfather (Telly "Kojak" Savalas' first role without hair): "My name is Talky Tina and I think I don't like you!" An ultimate warning to all parents to be nice to their children. Another remarkable episode featured a girl, whose face is covered with thick bandages for being considered "not normal." Cosmetic surgery is prepared by nurses and doctors keeping in the shadows. As the operation fails, her face turns out to be quite pretty, just everyone around her is deformed. Which is why the show is called: "(Beauty is in) The Eye of the Beholder." Have you ever felt like an outsider, too?

Conspiracy. Wandering through a book store, where I had already picked up a few biographies and other non-fiction literature, one day a paper back version of the bestseller "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Der Heilige Gral und seine Erben, 1982)" by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh hit my eyes. A previous visit to the Rosenau castle near Zwettl, Lower Austria, must have stimulated my initial interest, hosting an exhibition about freemasons, who often reference themselves back to the mythical Knights Templar.

As the Grail book now was based on a BBC documentary, it seemed serious enough to give it a try reading and it was kind of mysterious to read. At first it would support historical interests by describing the expansion of Christianity and transformation into a world religion under Emperor Constantine, who on the other hand was said to believe himself in the "Sol Invictus," the invincible sun god, a form of the Mithra cult, until being finally christened on his death bed bed - too weak to resist then or just to be sure. (After fighting Arianism for refusing the doctrine of Trinity, ironically his baptism was carried out by an Arian bishop.)

It provided background to Christmas being moved from January 6 to December 25 by the council of Nicene in 325 AD to overlay the winter solstice festival tradition. One of many efforts in extinguishing pagan rites by responding to them, through transformation making them your own. (Although explicit symbolism like Christ riding a solar chariot and wearing a crown of rays has vanished in the meantime, notably the portrayal of saints with haloes behind their heads has survived, symbolizing an aura or glow of sanctity today as much as within Hellenistic and Roman Helios and Apollo sun god cults and in portraits of Roman Emperors.)

Exclaibur - Sword of Kings, Sword of Power. Magnificent imagery from the Middle Ages. Excessive saga of King Arthur and his Round Table, including biting battles and glowing magic.

The rest of the book developed obscure conspiracy theories about Jesus Christ surviving the crucifixion and Mary Magdalene together with Joseph of Arimathea travelling via the Greek Arcadia to the later Templar base in southern France, not far from mystery church Rennes-le-Chateau, where at the end of the 19th century the local priest Abbe Berenger Sauniere should make great wealth by discovering valuable artifacts or sacred secrets before his sudden death. Written in a way that you feel a dangerous secret is shared with you as reader, by mixing the old French expressions "san grial" and "sang rial" it went on interpreting the Grail not as the cup or chalice from the Last Supper, but the blood line (Sang Royal) of the Holy Family, passed on via Merovingian kings and protected by a secret organization called the "Prieurs de Sion" with a possible connection up to Otto of Habsburg as heir of the old Lothian title "King of Jerusalem." Well, so much for shocking theory. "A little Church History (Eine Kleine Kirchengeschichte, 1988)" by August Franzen quickly helped to verify historic circumstances from the Constantine era and the development of Christianity into a world religion.

Theory. It kind of felt good to find possible scientific explanations in the classic "The Bible is right after all (Und die Bibel hat doch recht; originally published 1955, revised 1978)" by Werner Keller to support that the bible is right with miracles like quail and manna, which fed Moses' people in the desert, and a local flood at the time of Noah. Further it detailed the calculation error by Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who in 525 AD developed the Anno Domini system to replace the old Roman calendar, a chronology based on the legendary founding of Rome in 753 BC. The mistake became obvious as alternative sources confirmed that King Herod only ruled until 4 BC, when the biblical verse clearly puts the birth of Jesus "in the days of Herod the king" (Mt 2,1). The Star of Bethlehem on the other hand, mentioned in the following verse, is suggested not to be a comet as by common belief and portrayal, but instead identical with a triple conjunction of the planets Saturn and Mars in the year 7 BC under the star constellation of Pisces (associated with the Jewish people in astrology), a theory already depicted by 7th century astronomer Johannes Kepler.

More and more I had been interested in those explanations after finding out that in American schools it could happen that you are asked to raise your hand on whether you support Charles Darwin's Evolutionary theory or the strict sequence from the Bible's Genesis with mankind being installed before all other forms of life. For over here we had been already explained as part of religious education at school that the Bible's song of creation is naturally a tradition not conflicting with science, intentionally describing the reason why and not the way how things happened, an understanding not shared among more fundamentalist views at other places. Another time I found a book titled "The biblical Prehistory (Die biblische Urgeschichte, 1989)" by the Lutheran theologian Hans Schwarz, supporting the view that the Bible was inspired by God in all its content, but worded based on then existing knowledge and tradition. Reminiscing the biblical song of creation, obviously Adam and Eve were seduced by the evil in form of the serpent to eat a fruit of the forbidden tree, only to be expelled from paradise as a consequence. Recently a colleague asked me, why Adam and Eve couldn't have been Chinese? The answer was: For in this case they might have eaten the snake, not the apple! Too bad they didn't, we would still be in paradise... (Or as a Spanish colleague would ask back: "Aren't we?")

Defending a vision and more:
Knighthood with the eyes of a kid…

Isn't this World full of Mysteries,
Speculation and Fascination?

La Merika. America is often regarded as something very close to paradise, a blessed land, God's own country (or Coke's own Country, as an Austrian music combo would put it). How could the world survive so long without it? Rumour has it that Eric the Viking discovered America around 1000 AD, some 500 years before Columbus. And the Chinese may have landed in California over 3000 years ago, as scholars have suggested that refugees of the Shang Dynasty were first arrivals in the "praised land" as early as 1000 BC. As part of researching hidden or forgotten Masonic truths, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in their book "The Hiram Key (1996)" suggested the source of Genesis in a thousand year older Sumerian creation legend known by its first two words as "Enuma Elish," meaning "when on high." The Christian cross is identified in its earlier versions as the letter "T" or "Tau," usually drawn with long arms on all edges similar to a small Latin "t" and standing for Yahweh already even before Moses' times.

Rosslyn's Chapel, located some 6 miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland, is regarded as a link between Templars and Freemasons. Built by Scottish freemason William St. Clair (in modern days spelling Sinclair), its walls and pillars mirror the destroyed Jerusalem temple. As many sacred places, the site itself is said to be a major energy pole of the earth's magnetic field, the planetary grid system. Strangely, American plants can be found in the decorative stone carving of the 15th century chapel. Corn cobs for example are said to have been unknown in Europe prior the 16th century, and definitely before Columbus' crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. And the authors seem convinced that Hugues de Payen and his Knights Templar around AD 1119 discovered the Nasorean Scrolls beneath the Jerusalem Temple.

These scrolls speak of "the land of the star" called "Merika," in French probably referred to as "La Merika," pretty close to "America" already. We know how it ends with the destruction of the Templars on the very first unlucky Friday the 13th, namely in October 1307. However, their fleet is said to have vanished around the same time and have actually headed west, far west, until in the early weeks of 1308 landing in the Cape Cod (they must have been wealthy) or Rhode Island area of New England, setting foot on the New World way before Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci. But the end of the Templars the same authors described in more detail in another book, I had actually read first.

"I can see that you don't really want to know
What your future holds, as you travel down the road.
You'd rather believe that dreams do come true
Than to find out they can lie to you..."
(The Fortuneteller, Doro, 1991)

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