Hidden History

Shadow of the Templars Online

Greg — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:31:06 +0000

The Rennes-le-Chateau Research and Resource website have made available online the entire Shadow of the Templars documentary, from which grew the seminal hidden history books Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy (and, despite the legal view, The Da Vinci Code):

In 1974, British script writer Henry Lincoln introduced the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château to the English speaking world through his documentary "The Priest, the Painter and the Devil". The documentary created a storm of publicity and eventually led to the production of a 2nd documentary in 1979, Shadow of the Templars, which you can see on this page. This documentary was already co-researched by Michael Baigent, which later led to Henry, Michael and the late Richard Leigh writing the international bestseller Holy Blood Holy Grail.

The script and presentation of Shadow of the Templars were done by Henry Lincoln. It was produced by Roy Davies for the BBC Chronicle series.

Shadow of the Templars marks the beginning of the mythos of the Priory of Sion entering the public consciousness (at least in the English speaking world), and features all the main 'characters', from the village of Rennes-le-Chateau to that man of mystery, Pierre Plantard. Fun to watch!

The online video is broken into four parts, for ease of viewing.

Resurrecting the Quest for the Ark

Greg — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:00:48 +0000

Was Graham Hancock on the right track with his book The Sign and the Seal (Amazon US and UK)? A news story doing the rounds provocatively announces that German archaeologists may have traced the Ark of the Covenant to a temple in Ethiopia - claiming that they have found the remains of the palace of the Queen of Sheba, which has within it an altar "that may have held the Ark":

Professor Helmut Ziegert, of the archaeological institute at the University of Hamburg, has been supervising a dig in Aksum, northern Ethiopia, since 1999. "From the dating, its position and the details that we have found, I am sure that this is the palace," he said.

The palace, that is, of the Queen of Sheba, who is believed to have lived in the 10th century B.C. After she died, her son and successor, Menelek, replaced the palace with a temple dedicated to Sirius.

The German researchers believe that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem by the queen — who had a liaison with King Solomon — and built into the altar to Sirius.

"The results we have suggest that a Cult of Sothis developed in Ethiopia with the arrival of Judaism and the Ark of the Covenant, and continued until 600 A.D.," an announcement by the University of Hamburg on behalf of the research team said.

Interesting story, although other archaeologists are skeptical. Not to mention my own cynicism about the timing of the story, coming shortly before Indiana Jones makes his long awaited reappearance...

High Blood(line) Pressure

Greg — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:47:14 +0000

The hype and controversy surrounding the documentary film Bloodline has reached maximum levels in the lead-up to the first screening of the film in New York this Friday. Film-maker Bruce Burgess appeared on both Nightline and Good Morning America (click links to watch videos) to discuss the Da Vinci Code-like discoveries his team have allegedly made over the past few years. Some of the video presented includes footage of the discovery of a mummified body beneath a 'Templar' shroud. Bruce will also be appearing on Fox and Friends this weekend.

However, doubts about some of the discoveries have been increasing in the Rennes le Chateau research community, with this National Post article even quoting our good friend Andy Gough (from the Arcadia website) on some of the issues at hand:

The Internet hype is that Mr. Hammott has solved Sauniere's riddles -- that the Holy Grail has been found and is now held at a secure location by Hollywood producers -- but Mr. Gough said Mr. Hammott's behaviour after finding the bottles suggests a stronger interest in publicity than discovery.

"If you or I discovered a bottle that we thought contained great secret parchments and messages and codes, wouldn't you open it? But no, they bring it back to London and take it to a symposium in Glastonbury, and open it in public, and everyone says, 'Oh, that's red felt-tip pen. I didn't know they had soluble ink at the turn of the last century.' It looked totally implausible. Then, all of a sudden, there's three or four more bottles. And there's spelling errors. The priest [Sauniere] spells his [own] name wrong. It goes from bad to worse ... It's like an Easter egg hunt," Mr. Gough said.

The Rennes le Chateau Research Resource website has a detailed list of concerns about the discoveries presented in Bloodline, and the Arcadia forum has an evolving discussion with input from some of the key protagonists (or is that antagonists? You be the judge).

People familiar with the tale/myth of Berenger Sauniere's alleged world-shaking discoveries should be used to all this cut and thrust, controversy and innuendo - after all, it's been going on like this for decades. Which is why I think a lot of readers will enjoy this insightful essay by Mariano Tomatis Antoniono: "ARG as a new model for Rennes-le-Château phenomenon: Alternate Reality Game and the theories about the treasure of Bérenger Saunière". I'm also currently reading Jacques Vallee's interesting JSE paper on the anatomy of a great hoax (using the Philadelphia Experiment as an example), and I might post on the similarities to be found there at a later point.

The Michelangelo Code

Greg — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:57:03 +0000

We've all had quite enough of that Da Vinci guy this decade - but now a new book suggests that Michelangelo also hid messages in his artwork, most notoriously in the Sistine Chapel Fresco. In the book The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican. (Amazon US and UK), authors Roy Doline and Rabbi Benjamin Blech claim...

...that Michelangelo embedded powerful and even dangerous messages in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, that he encoded these messages using his knowledge of mystic Jewish texts and that he intended some images as insults to the pope.

...According to Doliner and Blech, Kabbalah is the key to cracking the code of many of Michelangelo's hidden messages. But their first clue didn't come from an art historian. Rather, it came from a tourist from Indiana who looked up at the famous panel of "The Creation of Adam," and was reminded of something else.

"In the late 1970s, a surgeon went into the Sistine Chapel, took a look at this [fresco]. He said to himself, wait, this is Anatomy 101.… This is actually a cross-section of the brain, the right hand side of the brain," Blech said.

An interesting comment on the similarity to a brain cross-section - see the ABC News picture gallery for this story to a visual guide. Not a sacred feminine in sight though...

Exploring the Great Year

Greg — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:45:56 +0000

I have posted a new video here on TDG, the documentary "The Great Year", narrated by James Earl Jones:

The Great Year is a compelling documentary that explores the possibility that the fall of ancient civilizations around the globe and the rise of modern civilization might be related to our Sun's motion around a companion star. The film examines evidence that ancient civilizations may have known of this celestial cycle and that our Sun may indeed display the characteristics of binary motion.

This documentary (official website here) was produced by the Binary Research Institute, and has a companion book written by our friend Walter Cruttenden, Lost Star of Myth and Time (Amazon US and UK). For those interested in a separate overview, Walter also wrote an article about these topics for Issue 2 of our free PDF magazine Sub Rosa. If you would prefer to watch the documentary in a more comfortable manner, you can pick up the DVD from Amazon US.

The Bloodline Tomb

Greg — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:15:29 +0000

The Rennes-le-Chateau Research website now have a large number of video clips from the upcoming documentary film Bloodline available for viewing. They give a good feel for the movie, with excerpts of interviews with key players and researchers, as well as visits to locations of interest.

Further to the topic of locations in the film, the producers of Bloodline have been kind enough to offer a pre-release exclusive from the film for Daily Grail readers: apparent confirmation from a Priory of Sion insider that the tomb discovery of 'Ben Hammott'/'The Tomb Man' (see attached picture) is genuine. Here's the entire release, with some of my own comments afterward:

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Priory of Sion confirms Hammott’s tomb: “One of three in the area”

Nicolas Haywood, representing the Priory of Sion, confirmed both by email and in phone conversations to the Bloodline producers, that Ben Hammott’s tomb is real and that it’s one of three tombs in the area near Rennes-Le-Chateau. He said that the three tombs each contain a shrouded corpse, and their locations form a triangle around a larger central ‘repository’, and that at least one the tombs contains a woman. He also said that there are items in all three tombs that come from this larger ‘repository’. He would not be drawn on any specifics about what was in this repository, but according to the producers, the inference was that it had been used to hold both Templar and Cathar relics, archives and treasure since it was first hidden there in the 13th century. ... Read More »

Attack of the Crystal Skulls

Greg — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:35:54 +0000

As expected, the 'mystery of the crystal skulls' is becoming more and more a hot topic in the lead-up to the new Indiana Jones movie, slated for release next month. As mentioned in the news briefs earlier this week, Archaeology.org have posted quite a detailed and interesting feature about the crystal skulls, which I recommend anyone interested have a good read of. As mentioned in the article, and previously here on TDG, most of the mystery/controversy revolves around the provenance of the "Mitchell-Hedges skull" - and there is a good website devoted to that topic, the official Mitchell-Hedges website. Lastly, we also now have a Red Pill entry about the skull, kindly provided by our good friend, researcher Filip Coppens.

Bush's War

Greg — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:36:10 +0000

I love history. And I'm a sucker for historical documentaries, which reveal how things unfolded, action by action. So, I just have to point you towards the recent Frontline documentary "Bush's War". It's just a wonderful, concise but insightful look at a defining part of our history - told by many of those who were there. On the Frontline website you can view the complete documentary (4 hours or so), which charts developments from 9/11 through to the modern day, as well as loads of extra content: complete interview transcripts, background articles, extra video content, timelines, etc. It's sad and enlightening, all at once.

I'm very sorry to have hardly heard anything about this documentary in the news or online. A sad state of affairs when something of this importance is ignored, but everyone clambers for their dose of celebrity gossip. What have we become...

Cracking the Maya Code

Greg — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:10:53 +0000

The wonderful PBS series Nova has created another excellent historical feature, which airs tonight: "Cracking the Maya Code":

The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script, carved on monuments, painted on pottery, and drawn in handmade bark-paper books. For centuries, scholars considered it too complex ever to understand—until recently, when an ingenious series of breakthroughs finally cracked the code and unleashed a torrent of new insights into the Mayas' turbulent past. For the first time, NOVA presents the epic inside story of how the decoding was done—traveling to the remote jungles of southern Mexico and Central America to investigate how the code was broken and what Maya writings now reveal.

As usual, the Nova website offers numerous interactive features which let you get right inside the topic, as well as a short preview video. Make sure you take a look at the show if it airs in your location. But if you can't, head back to the website after April 9th and you can watch it all online! (h/t Cosmic Log)

Bloodline Support

Greg — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:13:33 +0000

As you've probably noticed, there is a new banner advertisement on the site, for the upcoming documovie, Bloodline. The banner position here on TDG is vital to help cover expenses, so I just wanted to give a shout-out to the Bloodline folk for their support, and also to urge readers to check out the site (and the movie, when released from May onwards) if it piques your interest.