Friday, May 26, 2006
CASHING IN ON THE CODE
Stories appear from time to time about tours being arranged to cover DaVinci Code territory. Curious people will pay good money to pursue the mystery. Maybe I could even say gullible people, though I suppose they are sincere.
Rosa Templum is a website devoted to this cash crop. There you can sign up for Grail Quest Seminar this coming June, and go on your own grail quest complete with "experts".
One of those experts is Barry Dunford, who offers "Rosa Templum: The enigmatic arcanum of Rosslyn Chapel and the Bride of Christ", an explanation of the Jesus and Mary Magdalene myth Dunford-style. I'll bet you never knew that Jesus visited Scotland, did you? It's starting to get funny! Call the Discordians!!
Well, anyway, Dunford would like you to know:
There was a strong gypsy presence at Roslin during the Middle Ages under the patronage of the St. Clair (Sinclair) family. The gypsies were called "Egyptians" and, like the Celtic Gael, they were credited with psychic abilities or 'second sight', which the Australian aboriginals call 'sacred sight'. According to Basil Ivan Rakoczi: "The fact is that the Gypsies have wandered from the beginning of time and the gift of clairvoyance has always been theirs. They did not steal the esoteric wisdom of the Tarot in Egypt or anywhere else. Rather, as one civilisation after another fell and, later, as the pagan cults became the object of Christian persecution, their dying priesthoods deposited the sacred lore in the hands of the Gypsies who undertook to travel on with it, to hide it and only to transmit it to the trustworthy. Who would suspect a mere Gypsy of possessing the accumulated wisdom of Chaldea and Egypt, or of the northern Druids, or of holding the Yoga teachings of the East in his head? So the Gypsy tribes became the repositories for all that wisdom which was denounced as heretical by the established order of the day. The Gypsy took over the wisdom of the Gnostic, the Montanist, the Donatist and the Manichean, ascending the heresiarchical ladder of experimental mysticism to mediaeval sects such as the Cathars, the Patarini and the Bogomils who, in turn, produced the creed which threatened to change completely the whole face of Europe." (The Painted Caravan). If such arcane knowledge was held within the gypsy tribes, then perhaps the St. Clairs of Roslin were drawing upon this for their own esoteric purposes and agenda; hence their especial patronage to large numbers of gypsies living in Roslin Glen.
You can discover there that the painting of St. Mary Magdalene by Piero della Francesca is a picture of a pregnant Mary Magdalene. Just because she doesn't look pregnant in the picture in the website is no readon to doubt Dunford. He's is a scholar following in the footsteps of Dan Brown, afterall.
The Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Templars, Celts, even Rudolf Steiner makes an appearance. It seems that one of his followers, Walter Johannes Stein, claims that two spiritual traditions meet at Rosslyn Chapel, one a macrocosmic point of view and the other a microcosmic aspect. (Hey, don't ask me--I found Steiner BORING, but don't remember him mentioning this.) Apparently Walter Johannes Stein believes "man can strive to become Divine" just as "the Divine became flesh". Too bad I never met Stein. After all of this reading about new paradigms, I bet I could have sold him my little piece of acerage on the artic circle for a nice profit. If he thought I could become divine, surely omnipotent would not be too much of a stretch.
You can also read that "Thupton Tushi, the Dalai Lama's archivist, [who] described his visit to Rosslyn Chapel as 'a truly spiritual experience'." Should we assume that the Dalai Lama, himself, passed on the opportunity to check it out, or that he didn't have anything quotable to say?
Steiner's Akashic Record makes its appearance on another page in the website where "The fifth dimension, of Eternity, contains different levels of unification or togetherness." Get your unity over here folks and never mind about British reserve. We're all in the brotherhood now. (Sorry, I couldn't bring myself to read through the whole thing to see what other comedies it might contain.)
Of course the tour wouldn't be complete without the cash quest. Get your "economic awareness" and "Prosperity" newsletter here.
God help the world if these people ever get the upper hand.
This mythmaking seems to be big business. I'm going to be thinking about that for the next day or so. Maybe even I could write a myth. Surely I can get my paradigm to shift long enough for that. Stay tuned.
While you're exploring the glories of the "paradigm shift" of the Tarot folks, give some thought to von Balthasar's glowing approval of Valentin Tomberg's MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT, and to our last Pope's (and the current Pope's?) enthusiasm for the theology of von Balthasar, who himself claimed that he owes all of his theology to the seer Adrienne von Speyer. God help us!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
