Chelsea's Beltane Presentation on the Da Vinci Code and the Merovignian Tradition

Chelsea has been reading voraciously for months to prepare for a presentation on "The Da Vinci Code and the Merovignian Tradition" for the big Beltane Celebration on Long Island next weekend. She first volunteered to do this at a meeting of Long Island pagans at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Rockville Center back in February. All the people jumped at her suggestion, saying that it was a great idea. Some people at that first meeting thought Chelsea was Marilyn Manson.

Chelsea is quite nervous as the big date approaches. I feel as if the best thing I can do to help her is to ask the questions which occur to me on this subject. I have read the Da Vinci Code, and grew up in a masonic family, but a lot of these perspectives are new to me. I have heard of gnosticism once in a while in a lifetime of attending Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches, but neither clergy nor laiety seemed to take it seriously in the circles which I knew. I remember when the Dead Sea Scrolls were first found, and how there was a great deal of worldwide interest in them, but I never was interested in finding out why. I am not a person with a bent toward thelogical or philosophical speculation, although I have an intuitive sense of spirituality.

We were just talking about the Knights Templar at lunch. I mentioned to Chelsea that my (great) Uncle Paul, Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar in the United States, was seen by my mother (who was quite close to him, she a widow, he a widower) as a sort of knight who was in the world helping widows and orphans. He had a code of moral conduct which involved being democratic and fair with all people, and helping them when he could and they were hard workers. Chelsea immediately said that she saw herself as a knight, following the code of the knights templar. I didn't say it, but in my mind I thought that I too actually had an attitude much like uncle Paul's. In fact, he has in many respects been a prime role model in my life.

As I understand it, getting back to Chelsea's talk, the Merovignian tradition places Christianity in an organic relationship with many earlier pagan traditions. The Merovignians believe that Mary, who the orthodox Christian Church calls "Magdalen", was actually the wife of Christ, and that they had a daughter. This bloodline continued through history, and through emigration, was carried by certain families such as the Stewarts of Scotland, are carried through to this day.

The da Vinci painting of the Last Supper shows the figure of a woman next to Jesus. Da Vinci was a Master of the Priory of Sion and a Merovignian. The painting is one of the codified representations of Merovigninan (ie. matriarchal) Christianity which you only see if you know what to look for. It is a part of the parallel universe of the Merovignians which most "Christians" are not even aware of, but which the "Da Vinci Code" has revealed to tens of millions of people.

Articles of faith for the orthodox Christian Church (both Roman and Eastern) such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the resurrection after crucifixion are not parts of the Merovignian and gnostic traditions.

It seems that Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome as a strategic manuvre for the empire. He later called the Council of Nicea, at which the definition of the books which constitute the Christian Bible was agreed upon. Only four out of dozens of gospels were included in this "Bible". Paul, who never knew Jesus face to face in the flesh, was given a prominent representation in the Roman Christian Bible as an interpreter of the faith. The Council of Nicea took place 400 years after the death of Christ. The Nicean Creed is a codification of the basic orthodox (East and West) beliefs.

Gospels which were left out of the "Bible" were systematically denigrated and suppressed in subsequent centuries. The Roman Church in some sense can be seen as all about earthly power.

The Priory of Sion, and its related military arm the Knights Templar, came into existence at the time of the first Crusade to the Christian Holy Lands. These groups became the protectors of the bloodline family of Christ, and of the Merovignian tradition, through the ages up to the present time. The Roman Church brtually repressed the Knights Templar in the 1200's and continues to see the Masons as bitter enemies to this day of Pope Benedict the VI.

Most of the mythology (religious feasts and holidays and practices) of orthodox Christianity was lifted whole cloth from earlier "pagan" religions going back to the time of the Goddess Cybele, Mother of Life, originating in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). Cybele, the great earth mother, had a son, Attis, who was a god-man in his own right, and who was eventually executed by hanging from a tree.

The Merovignian tradition follows the Cybeline and other traditions of matriarchy, rather than the orthodox Christian tradition of patriarchy. The Holy Mother as the origin of life is a tradition which draws more and more people in the 21st Century.

The above is beginning to make sense to me, but probably is very incoherent to others at this stage.

The Knights Templar were brutally repressed by the Roman Church in the 13th Century, but have continued to exist up to the present time as a secret society, understood by the general public as the equivalent of the Elks, Moose, Raccoon and Oddfellows Clubs.