This page includes my comments on one aspect of the broad subject of the Holy Grail, and links.
Nicolas Poussin's "The Shepherds of Arcadia" (See below.)
"This Myth of Christ has served us well." - Pope Leo X
This page is concerned primarily with one aspect of the several possible meanings of the term Holy Grail: the bloodline of the possible descendents of Jesus Christ, and the implications it has for history, religious and otherwise. For a brief summary of the subject covered by the influential book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its sequels, see Grail summary below.
. . . Introduction
Links (With partial name of page.)
. . . Links (L10) _____ America (L10)_____ Art (L10) _____ Bloodline (L12) _____ Existence of Jesus (L18)
. . . General (L10) _____ Grail summary (L10) _____ Hitler (L16) _____ Masons (L20) _____ Rennes le Chateau (L10)
. . . Scotland (L14)_____ Templars history (L10)
The term Holy Grail has several possible meanings. The one primarily pursued here is the concept that there are alive today, linial descendants of Jesus, born to him by his wife Mary Magdalene -- a bloodline that later became the Merovingians in France. Remembering how it was that even Hitler came to be seen as a Messiah by a vast majority of people in Germany -- that praises to Hitler were sung as hymns in the mainline churches of Germany under the swastika flags proudly flown there by the clergy, infused by the Christian hatred of the Jews instilled by the rantings of Martin Luther and several Popes, that Nazism was a kind of religion, with all of the power to gain the devotion of so many people and churches -- how much more easily might it be for an individual to be seen in that same light and role if the world was led to believe that that person was literally descended from Jesus Christ himself?
Whether it be the religion of Christianity or the religion of Nazism, it does not matter so much what the truth is, as what the perception of the truth is: what people are willing to believe, and to which god -- whether it be imagined or fantisized in some Pollyannaish dream world -- they are willing to sacrifice their lives, and especially those of others, unfortunately.
Does it matter what the Holy Grail is? Does it matter what the quest for it is? Did it matter what Nazism was -- and still is? Has the fundamental basis of much of what is now known as Christianity been based on several false beliefs for these past two millennia? In particular, has the Roman Catholic Church departed in several very major ways from the teachings of Jesus Christ as instantiated in what we might term the Church of the Nazarene? The Roman Church appears to have distorted and suppressed history in its denial of the following probable facts: (a) Jesus survived the ordeal on the cross; (b) there was no resurrection in the sense of what that Church means by that term; (c) Jesus was married (to Mary Magdelene) and that they had children; (d) Mary Magdelene was a true disciple of Jesus -- a valid and honoured priestess; and, Mary Magdelene and her children survived to carry on the bloodline of Jesus, in France. To support its distorted view of history, the Roman Church has cast the role of Mary Magdelene (and, by inference, all women except Mary, the mother of Jesus) as being that of a whore in its invented dogma of denigrating the role of women in the Church and in society. How much does it matter what people believe in? If history has not left us enough clues as to what the answer is, we are still in trouble.
We shudder to think of the burning of the grand library of Alexandria (and its 500,000 documents) and of the Catholic Spaniards burning those of pre-Colombian Central America. It is estimated that perhaps only 10% of what was written in the ancient world still survives, most of the remaining 90% being destroyed for religious purposes by the dominating religions of Christianity and Islam. (See The Destruction of the Past and UC Berkeley Library.) Can we be so overly secure as to think that these acts of religious belief are just barbarisms of long ago? But, wait! We now have the Taliban, in the year 2001, destroying, in their zealous devotion to Allah, ancient statuary, both large, and small -- in the display cases of their museums. Should we be so surprised? At least two billion people on earth believe in their sacred scriptures, which state that thou shalt have no graven images before thee. See the Bible and the Koran; the quotations are almost exactly identical, which is no coincidence. Dictatorships, whether of belief or of politic, need to have group solidarity -- under penalty of death for not conforming. The Taliban are just pursuing the same path trod by the Christians and the earlier Moslems -- it is just that it is only a few hundred years later. Oh, and we forgot to mention that other religiously inspired burner of books -- Adolf Hitler.
Thus, under the "inspiration" of religion, has the destruction of great works of art and scholarship occurred yet again. How can people deny that, under the "inspiration" of a renewed religion of Nazism, that the Holocaust could not happen again? Actually, at least one such has already since happened. Have you heard of Rwanda? Religious belief was an important contributing factor in that carnage, as was the despicable involvement of several major churches.
One credible answer as to why the Holocaust happened, and could happen again, is the realization that the Third Reich of Nazi Germany was the first state in Western history since Rome to be based ultimately not on social, economic or political principles, but on religious principles. This helps in a major way to explain just why it is that Nazism flourished in Germany because it was the most Christian nation on earth, not in spite of it being the most Christian. Do you think that, if Germany had been a nation of atheists that Hitler could have appealed in such an effective way to not just the intellectual strivings of the people, but more importantly, to their irrational (religious) sentiments and a visceral hatred of the Jews? Martin Luther and several Catholic Popes had begun to pave the way for Hitler 400 years earlier in Deutschland. As to the general question as to what to do with the Jews, one Pope's learned advice was to bury them all alive! On that "sacred" tradition, Hitler rose to power, beatified and glorified in the devoted hymns of his people to the New Messiah that would rule the earth upon new blood that would be shed in his name. The new crosses for which the disciples of the New Messiah, Herr Hitler, would deify their sacrifices in holy blood, would be made of Iron, not the wood of Gallilee.
Let it not be forgotten that history is being distorted by many preachers and politicians. They are heard on the airwaves condemning atheists and routinely claim Adolph Hitler was one. Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religio-political institution as an infant in Austria. He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was confirmed as a "soldier of Christ" in that church. Its worst doctrines never left him. He was steeped in its liturgy, which contained the words "perfidious jew." This hateful statement was not removed until 1961. "Perfidy" means treachery. (See Hitler Was Not An Atheist: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/murphy_19_2.html.) Hitler was never excommunicated by the Vatican. In George Orwell's 1984, it was stated, "Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past." Who is going to control the present -- fundamentalism or freedom?
This page offers some stepping stones additional to the ones in the Religion pages in the quest for finding out why we believe some of the things we do, and what dire consequences can unfold from them.
See also Was Hitler a Christian?, Hitler and Christianity: http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/hitlrxt.htmand, and Clone the Messiah page .
One of the greatest accomplishments of the United States of America is our first amendment right of the separation of church and state . . . Too bad that Canada does not have the same! See George W. Bush's Faith-Based Initiative: a very regressive idea.
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You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca
