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We now know that Avallon contains the body of Jesus and that Mary Magdalene, if she accompanied Joseph with Jesus’ body to England, would not only know of the location, but would wish to be buried in the same place. Hence this place became known as ‘Mons Tumba’ the mount of the tomb but then through some strange quirks became associated with a different St. Michael shrine; that of Mont St. Michel. The French tradition has Mary being originally buried in Aix en Provence and her relics to have been later removed to Vézelay. It does not take but a cursory read of the ‘The Little Book of Vézelay about the relics and translation of the Blessed Mary Magdalene’ to realise that the Glastonbury story of Arthur’s discovery and reburial is mirrored in this overly elaborate and contrived account with the same purposes of attracting pilgrims as a motive.
Let us return back to our investigation to the Templars after many digressions. The Crusades were undertaken by European states and also by British King's, ostensibly to recapture the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem, from the non-Christian Mohammedan’s. Each endeavour was being carried out with a clear conscience and religious fervour in the name of Christendom and political gain. The first Crusade took place in 1095 and the ninth Crusade ended in 1272 and in this same period of 200 years, the Templar institution was being continually empowered by knightly deeds for Christendom and having consolidated much power across Europe, the organisation outwardly came to an end on Friday the 13th 1307. As we have witnessed in the construction of the St. Michael churches, the power, wealth and knowledge amassed and wielded by them during this period was still to be seen in full operation, manipulating events on a grand scale.
It appears that The Templars or the brains behind the organisation were responsible for the release of a body of information that perpetuated a theme based largely upon legends of Joseph having transported a relic of Jesus to Britain. With embellishment this account became anachronistically and inextricably connected with accounts of the early Dumnonian Kings and these accounts were all consolidated by Melkin. A body of evidence showed that Joseph of Arimathea had come with Jesus’s relics to what was still the residue of the kingdom of Belerion, with the royal line of Kings having genetical ties to Judah. This body of evidence in the Book of the Grail included an account similar to the Acts of Pilate and the Gospel of Nicodemus. It seems likely that this Nicodemus account, which existed separately in Britain and probably derived from crossover material which Melkin had written that remained in Britain, was largely responsible for the Joseph tradition in Britain before the advent of the Grail stories. Melkin’s Manuscripts were transcribed incorporating this knowledge and accounts of events up to and including the time of King Arthur in around 550-650 A.D. It would seem then that both Bale and Pitts were wrong about Melkin ‘flourishing before Merlin’, (if Merlin were a contemporary of Arthur), otherwise he would not have been able to write his ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’ and the book of the Grail and more importantly, be able to relate the whereabouts of Arthur’s resting place.
As the Saxons and the original Britains intermingled, the Celtic Welsh, (like the of Celts of Dumnonia), overtime began to ascribe Arthur’s deeds to themselves, and the corruption of these accounts were based sympathetically on the common Celtic struggles against the Saxon foreigners and thus gradually they usurped Arthur’s Dumnonian heritage. This was simply achieved by association with the same struggle, eventually leading to Arthur's Welsh backdrop. These ancient associations through common struggle that glorified illustrious Celtic heritage were more proliferated through the Welsh monastic system, which was less prevalent in Dumnonia. William of Malmesbury was responsible for propagating this tradition, while at the same time, paying little attention to and thus diminishing the Joseph and Nicodemus traditions. However these traditions were mainly kept alive in the monastic system at Glastonbury, separate from any link with the Arthurian tradition until it became useful to do so. These Welsh traditions were further established and embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth. However, the Arthurian material, the original Joseph accounts, inclusive of the Nicodemus traditions, genealogical and occult material in the Book of the Grail, made its way over to France, after the Saxon invasion, and became the source of the Grail romances.
It is this relationship between a royal line established in Southern England and the Davidic line, which will be part of our further investigation. Joseph is central to this relationship, the one who brings the connection of Jesus and the Davidic line, conjoined with the fulfilment of the prophets, which will cause a new spiritual awakening. Joseph will be ultimately responsible for guarding the proofs of Jesus’s suffering by the evidence provided on the Turin Shroud. He is already responsible for the preservation over a two thousand year period of the arcane knowledge, which will agree with the Prophets (once they are generally understood in terms of Biblical time), which, if Melkin had not reiterated, would have been lost. Finally he will be responsible for the awakening of mankind as predicted by Melkin by acting as a Harbinger and a marker of Appointed Time in a Divine Plan that will change the world religions forever.
All four gospel writers confirm that Joseph of Arimathea claimed the body of Jesus after his death and buried him in a tomb owned by Joseph. The accounts of Luke 23:50-56, Matthew 27:57-61, Mark 15:42-47 and John 19:38-42, are bearing witness to his burial. Paul also in 1 Corinthians 15:4 writes that he (Jesus) was buried, but without the contrived eschatology there would have to be a body. Joseph was a wealthy man of standing but during Jesus’ life he became converted and was secretly a disciple of Jesus. Joseph not only witnessed his words and deeds in Jerusalem but had probably spent many hours with his nephew on ocean passages hearing his enlightened views on the prophets. As soon as he heard the news of Jesus' death, he "went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus." Mark15:43. Pilate who was reassured by a centurion that Jesus was dead, allowed Joseph's request before the Sabbath came, to remove and bury Jesus. Joseph immediately purchased fine linen, Mark 15:46 and proceeded to take the body of Jesus down from the cross. “So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb”. At the tomb, assisted by Nicodemus, Joseph took the body and wrapped it in the fine linen and applied myrrh and aloes these being substances which Nicodemus had brought, according to John 19:39. Myrr is a gum but also an essential oil like cedar. Jesus' body was then conveyed to the tomb that had been prepared for Joseph's own body, a man-made cave hewn from rock. Apart from the polemically motivated variations of the burial account related in the gospels that were provided to substantiate differing accounts of the gospel writers, we are left with the core theme that Joseph took charge of Jesus’s body. Eventually, through conflicting reports and the disappearance of Jesus’s body; we remain without a corpse and only three ways to explain this dilemma. The following are the three main scenarios which have been postulated to rationalise the dilemma.
1) Jesus’s, body and spirit were resurrected into Heaven leaving behind his grave cloth and the residue of ointments that were applied. At a later date, he appeared spiritually not bodily, but this would of necessity negate the account of doubting Thomas. Jesus then appears to the disciples during his resurrection appearances. This scenario would concur with the Gospel accounts and confirm the Pauline theology and apologist account of the Resurrection and Ascension. It would however negate any suggestion that Joseph brought the body of Jesus to England. It would also prove the Turin Shroud to be a fake and we shall discuss how it was formed shortly.
2) A second scenario is that Jesus was given a sedative in the sponge passed to him while on the cross and appeared to be dead. This would go some way to explain the eye witness account of positive blood pressure upon entry of Longinus’s Lance but would run contrary to evidence found on the Turin Shroud that shows this was a post Mortem wound. He was then laid in a tomb possibly in the hope of resuscitation but Joseph was unable to revive him after the unexpected lancing. Joseph then prepared his body with ointments, and secreted it for transportation to Britain with or without the help of Nicodemus or even the accompaniment of others mentioned by Rabanus.
3) A third scenario posited is that Jesus survived the ordeal of the cross, was revived and nursed back to health, appeared to Thomas and the rest of the disciples as the resurrection accounts attest and then left without the knowledge of Mary Magdalene, his mother and Salome. When his body is unveiled showing evidence that concurs with the markings found on the Shroud, this third scenario will obviously be negated.
These scenarios or a mixture of them have over the years tried to rationalise or answer some of the discrepancies found within the Gospel accounts, however we are now aware that Melkin’s ‘Duo Fassula’ is in fact the Turin Shroud and thus we are certain that Jesus’s body wrapped in this shroud was brought to Britain.
The subtext within the Grail romances, which themselves, as we have discussed, are probably derived from original eye witness accounts in England, are now substantiated by Melkin’s description of the ‘duo fassula’ which he must have witnessed at the burial of Arthur. He also must have left it there not knowing that later it would be removed because he actually states that the tomb would be untouched at its unveiling. He could not know that the one artefact that he states is in the tomb would be removed by a Templar.
Regardless of this new revelation, the Grail stories perpetuate a contiguous theme, of an arrival or at least burial of a Jesus relic at an island subsequent to Jesus’s crucifixion, while at the same time having a connection with Joseph of Arimathea resulting in the blood line of Kings and knights related to Arthur.
The Grail sometimes described as an Ark or Box containing oil from the earliest unembellished accounts seems to account for a preserved corpse arriving in Britain. Although we are told the spices were Aloe and Myrr this could have been an attempt at early resuscitation or acted as an interim preservative concoction enabling Joseph to embark on his journey to obtain the amount of embalming oil to fill what was to be called the Grail ark. This may be the confusion of the Grail writer’s account of Sarras being in Egypt if indeed it was in Egypt that Joseph had to bypass to obtain the oil. This seems unlikely as the Cedar oil would have more probably been manufactured in Lebanon and the Egyptian confusion being derived from the Prophets understanding of a Spiritual coming out of Egypt. The Grail stories indirect suggestion of an Egyptian connection stemming from the occult information in the Grail material providing insight by Biblical reference to the stages of spiritual enlightenment, as we touched on earlier. This occult meaning of Egypt is witnessed in the passage in Revelation 11:8 ‘And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified’. This is in fact a reference to the two witnesses. (Jesus being one, the other being St. Michael), which speaks directly of spiritual Egypt which, as we will get to, is part of the understanding pertaining to the ‘Gradatim’ or degrees to spiritual enlightenment that is bound up in ‘Biblical Time’. So let us not dwell on the Egyptian connection to Sarras for the moment and let’s look at the evidence for the Turin Shroud being synonymous with the ‘duo fassula’ that Melkin says was in the same tomb as Joseph.
Since Jesus's body has never been retrieved and the fundamental creed of Christian faith is substantiated by the fact that his body has never been recovered, it would not be expedient of Melkin to report before the ‘appointed time’, that the body of Jesus existed or that the evidence of his crucifiction existed on an imprinted grave cloth. Not wishing to be accused of heresy, but safe in the Gnostic knowledge he had obtained (supposedly by angel but more likely by a visit to the island to bury Arthur), Melkin chose to obscure the fact that Jesus’s body was buried in Britain but made sure that we knew the cloth that provided the proof of who he was, rested in the Grave with them both. So we have the one man who knew of the cloth’s existence providing a clue in his prophecy and also leaving behind evidence of its existence in the book of the Grail.
During the body’s voyage from Jerusalem with Joseph to the Isle of Avalon it would have been covered with a cloth, the same cloth which was reported in the Gospels, while the body lay in the Grail ark or box. This highlights the polemic specifically centred on the cloth from the gospels and the different accounts surrounding it. For the wounds to be so clearly defined in blood and the outline on the Turin Shroud to be formed, it surely must show that the cloth spoken of by the gospel writers never remained in the tomb in Jerusalem but remained wrapped around the abused and suffered corpse of Jesus for a very long time while being submerged in oil.
Controversy has certainly surrounded the Shroud due to the carbon dating system used to test its age. This piece of cloth, known as the Shroud of Turin, is one of the most important Christian relics in the world. It depicts a full-scale imprint of the body of a crucified man evidencing within the image the scars and wounds that are recorded in the accounts of Jesus’ death. The importance of the burial cloth should not be underestimated since the cloth is mentioned several times in the gospels. Apart from Melkin’s testimony and that of the gospel writers, not only did a burial cloth exist but it plays an important role as each of the gospels describes the body of Jesus being wrapped in this linen cloth after having been recovered by Joseph from the cross. The shroud as seen today depicts all the right features that concur with the crucifixion account of Jesus down to the minutest details. In fact the surest way to know that the Shroud is in fact the burial cloth of Jesus and was formed over a long period of time in the oil of the Grail Ark is to look at the 3-d imaging from many experts. All of them show quite plainly by the cloth having been partly suspended in oil, the ripple effect in the 3-d imaging on the visage of Jesus.
The Shroud of Turin was first heard of in 1357 when it was displayed in a church in Lirey, France. It was allegedly discovered in the vaults of a property belonging to Geoffrey de Charny a Templar who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. He and his wife Jeanne de Vergy are supposedly the first recorded owners of the Turin Shroud. It is often cause for confusion that a Geoffroi De Charney was burned at the stake with Jack de Molay the final Grand Master of the Templars in 1314. This later Geoffroi De Charny was said to have participated in a failed crusade under Humbert II of Viennois in the late 1340s and is known to have visited the British isles twice around 1350. In 1453 a Margaret de Charney supposedly the Templars granddaughter, deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy and in 1578 the shroud was transferred to Turin.
The Turin Shroud measures 4.4 by 1.1 m. It bears the faint front and back, feet to head and head to feet imprint of a naked man. It could not fit the description of a doubled swaddling cloth described by Melkin more accurately. The image depicts the nail wounds of the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the New Testament accounts. The shroud was stored in a silver chest in a chapel in Chambery, France and in 1532 a fire raged through the chapel. Part of the chest melted and droplets of molten silver burned through the shroud. Luckily most of the damage did not interfere with the outline of the figure, but left a symmetric pattern due to the way it was folded in the chest. Later the burn holes were patched.
The image on the shroud is much clearer in black-and-white negative than in its natural sepia color. The negative image was first seen in 1898, on the reverse photographic plate of an amateur photographer, named Secondo Pia, who was permitted to photograph it while it was on show in the Turin Cathedral. When Pia developed his negative, he expected to see an image on the negative that was more faint or ghost-like in appearance than the original positive image of the photographed sepia coloured cloth, the image becoming positive only when the light values are reversed in a photographic negative. The light areas observed normally appeared as dark, and the dark as light and the negative image of the Shroud appeared as a well-defined picture of a crucified man laid to rest.
Since the actual image on the Shroud was ghostly to begin with and hard to make out, Pia was initially shocked at the result in his developing pan when the image became crystal clear. What he had done in effect was to create a positive image that originally had been formulated in negative. An incredible artistic feat for a forger but then one must ask, ”why fabricate something that is barely recognisable and none can know of its artistic craft or beauty until the advent of Photography”? Many experts still think that the shroud is an elaborate hoax and that position is simply based upon a logical set of blinkers. For most, the lateral evidence of being formed in a liquid is precluded by association with the shrouds gospel associations with the tomb in Jerusalem. Even for the sceptical examiner bent upon proving the shroud a hoax, there is no precedent of such an artwork being formed in a liquid.
In 1978 a detailed examination was carried out by a team of American scientists (S.T.U.R.P). They found no evidence of forgery and were baffled but could not give a definitive answer as to how the image was formed or even any propositions. Many ensuing scientific enquiries have followed all with inconclusive results as to the genuineness of the shroud as pertaining directly to Jesus. The Shroud accurately represents an abundance of three-dimensional information. When modern image analysis began in 1974, the image of the shroud was found to contain an impressive amount of accurate three-dimensional spatial information.
At the advent of Pia’s photograph, no longer was there a ghost like image and lack of definition between light and dark areas but instead, Pia witnessed a picture that was so lifelike that it could not have been a painting, but more akin to an actual photograph. The image on the Shroud originally created or formed in negative, led researchers to think that the shroud was composed as if one would normally construct an artistic image, except in reverse. With the evidence of the Grail stories and the fact that we now know Jesus’s body was submerged in oil, it is plain to see how residue from the Cedar oil itself left an overall residue on the cloth as it evaporated and is responsible for its sepia quality. This in conjunction with build up from anaerobic micro-organisms impregnate the cloth internally forming a denser build up where the body was touching the cloth and restricting free movement. This is precisely how the negative image was formed. The Turin Shroud has been examined with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, thermography, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser-microprobe Raman analyses, and micro-chemical testing but interestingly enough not one scientist has posited that the image was formed by particle movement in liquid. There has never been evidence of pigments (paint, dye or stains) as some have claimed, nor has there been evidence of an artist's intent found anywhere on the Shroud of Turin.
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