When you travel roughly a hundred and fifty miles to the west of London, you start to notice how weird everything becomes. Which is exactly what happened on January 17th, the feast-day of Saint Sulpice, as some of the gang decided to journey to the county of Somerset to do some investigations and carry out further repairs to the Saint Michael Line.
We began our work at the quaint village of Templecombe in the Church of Saint Mary, which contains a religious relic with an amazing history. In 1945, after a German bombing raid which destabilized a lot of structures in the village, a Templecombe resident, Mrs Drew, went out to her coal shed to collect a bucketful of coal. Looking up at the ceiling of the coal shed, Mrs Drew was shocked to see an unnerving face looking down at her. It subsequently transpired that this face, which had been painted around 1280 AD on four planks of wood, had apparently been left inside the roof of Mrs Drew’s coal shed--at a time unknown and by persons unknown--and subsequently plastered over.
The origins of the “Templecombe Shroud”, as locals call it, are still a mystery. Many believe that the head is a depiction of the face of Jesus Christ, which is why it now sits inside the Church of St. Mary. But what makes the image particularly interesting to us is that the face has been specifically painted on a Knights Templar charger, the glyph used to brand Templar-owned properties. There have been suggestions that the Templecombe Head is indeed that notorious head which the Templars, after their arrest on 13 October, 1307, allegedly confessed to worshipping and before which they had chanted the mysterious word “Baphomet”.
But Hospitaller historian, Jonathan Riley-Smith, claims that the face is not that of Christ but of John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Hospitallers (the Virgin Mary being the patron saint of the Templars), which was deliberately overlaid onto the Templar charger when the commandery at Templecombe passed into the hands of the Hospitallers in 1309 in the aftermath of the Templars’ suppression.
Perhaps we’ll never know the precise history behind the Templecombe Head, but I’m glad that I wasn’t the one who collected the coal that night in 1945!
Having paid our respects to the Templecombe Head, we set off to the magical town of Glastonbury, long believed to be the Island of Avalon, the seat of King Arthur, and the center of many mysteries and much skullduggery throughout the ages. The Isle of Avalon, once entirely surrounded by water, has now disappeared as a network of dikes have “liberated” Glastonbury from the surrounding waters and rivers and the town is now an integral part of the Somerset landscape.
I’ve never felt entirely comfortable in Glastonbury with its highly commercialized exploitation of the arcane “arts”, but I cannot deny the fact that the town seems to be the center of many spiritual markers and hard-to-explain geographical features. Whether you’re a cynic or not, it’s very hard not to feel that there are strong energies at work in Glastonbury and some of these energies just don’t feel right.
On any map of the leylines in Great Britain, it’s striking how many center around Glastonbury. In fact, I’m writing this column on one of the leylines which runs from Stonehenge through the center of Glastonbury all the way west to Bagborough Hill, where even the most skeptical locals sing of the calming effects of certain locations along this leyline.
Maybe even more interesting than the Head is a discovery made in 1935 by Katherine Maltwood, an English illustrator, who had been commissioned to make illustrations for possibly the earliest known Grail romance, The High History of the Holy Grail, itself thought to have been written in Glastonbury Abbey. In researching the local area, Miss Maltwood found that there were astonishingly close correspondences between the castles and adventures of the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table in The High History and the geographical locations around Glastonbury, where the adventures took place.
Stories of the Knights’ encounters with dragons, lions and giants corresponded with uncanny accuracy to topological features around Glastonbury. Miss Maltwood identified in the Glastonbury environs not just the physical manifestations of the twelve signs of the Zodiac in their correct order (!), but also a thirteenth figure--the Great Dog of Langport--outside the circle of the twelve Zodiacal signs. It pleased me enormously to discover that the long tail of the Great Dog of Langport sits astride the village of Wagg!
Everyone attributes their own personal interpretation to the signs of the Zodiac, but many believe that in Celtic societies King Arthur took on the role of the sun and, as he progressed through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, King Arthur’s Court would preside over meetings, festivals and judgments. According to the Norman legend of The Quest for the Holy Grail, King Arthur’s Round Table represents “the round world and the round canopy of the planets and the elements in the firmament, where there are to be seen the stars and many other things”, in a very similar manner to the metaphorical Temple of Solomon.
Returning to our pilgrimage to Glastonbury, we decided to commence our visit at the Eye inside the head of Orion at Dundon Camp, to the south-west of Glastonbury, to review the heavy repair work that was carried out in the 1980s in preparation for the 2012 “Stargate” alignment. Afterwards, we walked up the 3-D labyrinth leading to the magisterial Glastonbury Tor.
Verifying Katherine Maltwood’s findings is made somewhat easier thanks to the excellent “Map of the Ancient Landscape Around Glastonbury”, made by Palden Jenkins, but it still remains a challenge, as roads as have widened and natural features become eroded with time.
Every year the Ordre carries out repairs to the St. Michael Line, which has been repeatedly damaged by erstwhile “magicians” since before the Second World War. In case you don’t know, the St. Michael Line is not part of the London Underground, but a leyline--an electromagnetic energy circuit--running from the widest point of the English north-east to the south-west. Along the line are numerous churches--of which a vast number are dedicated to St. Michael--and ancient monuments, such as the Avebury Stone Circle and the Glastonbury Tor.
Some of the churches and ancient monuments along the St. Michael Line are built on stunning geographical features, such as the magnificent St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. The St. Michael Line also passes through the Royston Caves in Cambridgeshire, about which we’ll be saying more in the spring.
Helix-like “female” and “male” energy currents have been discovered, which run parallel to and intersect the St. Michael Line at the location of various ancient sites. This is why this leyline is also referred to as the Michael and Mary Line.
The Michael and Mary energy lines were first described in The Sun and The Serpent, written by Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller. There are said to be similar St. Michael Lines in Europe, one of which, for example, connects Mount St Michael in Cornwall with Mont St. Michel in Northern France and Monte Gargano in Italy, where the Archangel Michael himself is said to have made four personal appearances.
Going back to Glastonbury was a mixed experience for us. The magnificent ruins of the Abbey provide a sanctum of indescribable peace, although many people feel uncomfortable in the town itself--a feeling that something is not quite right. It’s hard to put in words, but it’s more de Nogaret than de Molay.
Repairs, however, have to be carried out to the St. Michael Line to ensure that the navigational frequencies remain intact. And, although we’ve managed to carry out some basic repairs in the past few months, there is more to be done. It’s a long-term project, but someone’s got to do it.
Leylines may, after all, be part of some “New Age” thinking, but the curious coincidences of their locations--in relation to so many churches and ancient monuments--and the peculiar feelings engendered by them certainly give one cause to think. Maybe our ancestors understood far more than we give them credit for?
Thanks for this very useful report, Bart - I've already got the list of "repairs" compiled for your next trip.
Special thanks to Jarrod, too, for embedding your video of Saint Mary's in Templecombe into the article - if you watch it in high definition, you can even see the Templar flag in the stained glass window!
And Happy 250th Birthday to Robert Burns today... if Mort's around, can he be sure to read Burns' ode To a Mouse out loud:-
http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/mouse.html
Enjoy your sheep's stomachs, guys... I'll be sipping Laphroaig tonight and eating Chinese tomorrow.
I wonder whether it is the head of Jesus Christ or the decapitated head of John the Baptist. If the Templars worshipped the head, why would they have chosen John rather than the Messiah? The face seems very sad.
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Thanks for this very useful report, Bart - I've already got the list of "repairs" compiled for your next trip.
Special thanks to Jarrod, too, for embedding your video of Saint Mary's in Templecombe into the article - if you watch it in high definition, you can even see the Templar flag in the stained glass window!
And Happy 250th Birthday to Robert Burns today... if Mort's around, can he be sure to read Burns' ode To a Mouse out loud:-
http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/mouse.html
Enjoy your sheep's stomachs, guys... I'll be sipping Laphroaig tonight and eating Chinese tomorrow.