Monday 4 June 2012

The Tomb of Jesus in the Island of Avalon




The following is an extract from a book  called 'And Did Those Feet' by Michael Goldsworthy, which decodes an old Prophecy by a monk called Melkin.




In the Dark Ages a monk called Melkin left a riddle that purported to expose the burial site of Joseph of Arimathea. This Location has long been thought to exist within the Glastonbury  abbey grounds, but the author has meticulously re-looked  at some of the oldest Latin texts from Glastonbury concerning King Arthur and  Joseph of Arimathea and found that the association of King Arthur is exaggerated and much of the tradition concerning Joseph of Arimathea and Glatonbury stems from Melkin's 6th century writings. 

 The Book 'And did those feet' has solved the monks riddle in the form of a prophecy which spells out with pinpoint accuracy the whereabouts of the resting place of Joseph pf Arimathea in the Island of Avalon. The geometric puzzle describes precise directions that are derived from the Ley line system built by Neolithic man. The book describes how this huge display of geometrical earth works that were built upon subsequently with churches dedicated to St. Michael were built to mark out the location of the Island of Avalon. For this monk to give directions from the Ley line long before it was even set out as a marker system shows that Melkin understood at least the existance of the St. Michael ley line and even perhaps its funtion. It was only recently rediscovered by John Michell when he discovered that an array of churches had built upon this ancient system. What is only recently understood is that these churches were erected by the templars to point out for posterity the location of the tomb and the location of their treasure.

 This secret location is called the Island of Avalon and the same monk visited this island at the death of Britain’s famous King Arthur. Here he found arcane information from the Temple in Jerusalem that was brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. This information with an account of the first Christians arrival with Mary Magdalene was written in a book called The Grail that found its way to France and gave rise to the wide array of Grail stories.

‘And did those feet’ proves that the body of Jesus is in fact buried with Joseph of Arimathea and the whereabouts of this island is in Devon. It used to be known as the ancient Island of Ictis and contains within it an ancient tin vault that became their tomb which had originally been used to store tin ingots. The confirmation of the whereabouts of this tomb is given by precise geometry upon the British landscape left in the complex Latin puzzle by the monk Melkin but its position is also verified by a Jesuit priest who lived in the sixteenth century who was unaware of the significance of the clue he was given.

 The Templars in the middle ages were aware of the location of this tomb and deposited their treasure in the same tomb on Christmas day 1307. However they removed one item from the sepulchre within the island. This was what has now become known as the Turin Shroud. The Turin Shroud in the monk’s Latin puzzle has the same description once the Latin puzzle is deciphered. This artefact due to Melkin’s description, later became known as the Holy Grail by an inordinate amount of misunderstanding and direct obfuscation, but the Holy Grail is in fact something inestimably more valuable and this book sets out and explains what the Grail is and how the Grail stories came about. The body of Jesus, around which the Turin Shroud was once wrapped, is still within the tomb, steeped in Cedar oil and this is what formed the image on the Shroud over a period of six hundred years as it was formed within what became known as the Grail Arc.

 The reason this Island was chosen to house what is the holiest relic of all, is because it was not widely known in the ancient world except through a report by one of the first Greek explorers to Britain. Devon and Cornwall have a history in the tin industry and it was from this island that tin was traded with Joseph of Arimathea who, Cornish tradition has always maintained, was a tin merchant and was accompanied on his trading missions by Jesus. The book uncovers an ancient Biblical link to the Devon and Cornish peninsula through a bloodline from the first born of Judah one of the twelve sons of Israel, called Zerah. It is from his heritage a Line of Kings was born in the South west of England known as the kings of Sarras which culminated with the famous King Arthur.

 King Arthur, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are known to be buried on the Island today called Burgh Island but there is also with them the Arc of the Covenant and the Templar treasure. The book traces these events pulling together a wide source of detail linking the most powerful people in Europe like Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings with these events.

Leonardo Da Vinci visited this Island in the last three years of his life and left clues within four paintings, that show the geographical features of the Island and he let the world know by his picture puzzle (rebus) in the Windsor Library, that he was showing us a great mystery and went as far as saying he would show where it is, in his two paintings of the Yarnwinder.

 The amazing coincidences that have brought this knowledge into the modern era can only be viewed as having been determined by supernatural forces as this whole drama is played out to specific times that are spoken of by the biblical prophets. The implication and ramifications of the discovery of this tomb will have ramifications across the world as the book uncovers the relationship between this tomb’s unveiling and how it was predicted by the Prophets.

When this puzzle or riddle, (which is the main cause for Glastonbury’s perpetuated association with the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea) is fully understood, it shows that the two vessels that have been described as containing the blood and sweat of Jesus are in fact a misunderstood reference to the grave cloth of Jesus better known as the shroud of Turin.  

Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula(duplico Fasciola) alba & argentea,(covering) cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perim pleta: Joseph has with him in the sarcophagus a doubled white swaddling cloth covered with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus that was folded around him.

The monk Melkin has deliberately concealed the real meaning of the Grail which is explained in the Book which also describes how the Turin Shroud was removed from his body,by whom and how it first appeared in the middle of the thirteenth century in the possesion of the relative of one of the main Templar leaders.

Also the when the prophecy or puzzle is fully understood, we can actually determine that 'Abbadare', mentioned in this same sixth century prophecy, is in fact Jesus and his body is preserved in the Grail Ark which is also in the same Tomb  along with Joseph of Arimathea and both lay still undiscovered in the real Island of Avalon, which Melkin leads us to with pinpoint geometrical Acurracy. This hitherto unknown location being less than 100 yards out over a measure of 104 nautical miles and less than 9 seconds of one degree in error in the 13 degrees that he gives as a direction from the Bifurcated line.



The saga of how this transpired is romanticised in the Grail stories but is clearly elucidated upon in a new book called ‘And did those feet’. A full understanding of how these events transpired and who is responsible for misleading information that for centuries has assumed Glastonbury as being Synoymous with the Island of Avalon, is fully elucidated in this recent book.

To get the whole sequence of events Click on the Links below


http://isleofavallon.blogspot.co.uk #3








The continued rumour of Joseph of Arimathea arriving in Britain has persisted for two thousand years. The only way of proving his arrival was to solve Melkin’s puzzle which he left in the form of a Prophecy which gives directions to his Tomb.  The fact that the Author’s house was recently discovered to be on the Ley line which just happens to be the line that leads us to Joseph is a remarkable coincidence. It is this set of events that drove the author to write this book and indicates that unknown forces were at work. It is almost as if the people in the book were waiting for the real account of events to be told and certain facets of information would guide the author to another avenue that needed to be elucidated. The real inspiration for the book was the need to explain the meaning of the British national hymn written by William Blake entitled Jerusalem. It is from this hymn that the Title of the book is derived because the question it asks has now been answered. Did Jesus come to Britain. The Grail romances declare that Jesus was brought to the south coast of England and laid to rest in what became known as the Grail Ark. This box or Coffin was filled with Cedar oil and was used to Transport the body of Jesus from Jerusalem to and Island that was then known as Ictis or the Island of Sarras. It is here that he was buried in an old tin storage vault in the Island of Avalon. This entire set of circumstances is explained in the book called 'And did those feet' by Michael Goldsworthy.

The Island of Ictis which traded in tin was known as the Island of Sarras because of Judah's son Zarah, but the prophet Melkin who shows us where the body of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are layed to rest calls it the isle of Avallon or Insula Avallonis. This has long been confused with Glastonbury Tor.

The relationship of Melkin’s prophecy to the French Grail material.



Father William Good, a Jesuit priest, born at Glastonbury, served mass in the Abbey at Glastonbury as a boy just before its dissolution. This was before Queen Elizabeth I changed the religion of the country to Protestantism. He also held a secret as to the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea’s burial place.  Father William was educated in Glastonbury, and later attended Corpus Christi College in 1546 where he became a fellow in 1548, and studied for his Master of Arts in 1552. Throughout all the early days of his life while he studied and before he came to the priesthood, he carried around with him the information that was passed on to him by Abbot Richard Whiting at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

As was usual in those days, secret knowledge was handed down to chosen choirboys or likely candidates for the priesthood, by Bishops and Abbots rather than writing it down and running the risk of having it discovered by persons who were not privileged.  Just before Richard Whiting was about to be hanged on Glastonbury Tor at the start of the dissolution, he related to the young William Good, that Joseph of Arimathea was ‘carefully hidden in Montacute’,  most probably with the added instruction to say nothing to anybody.  Father Good, while Queen Mary reigned in the interim, obtained the benefice of Middle Chinnock in Somerset, the prebend of Comba Octava in the Church of Wells, and was given the head-mastership of a school in Wells.

The folly tower on St. Michael's hill which replaces an old church built by the Templars to act as a marker that leads to the tomb of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea as Father good had Indicated.
When Elizabeth I came to the throne, he travelled to Tourni where in 1562 he was admitted into the Society of Jesus, thereafter travelling to Ireland to become a missionary for many years.  Afterwards he travelled to Belgium, where he met Robert Parsons, who persuaded him to become a member of the Jesuit order, while the rest of his days were passed as confessor to the English College in Rome.

It was during this time in Rome that he passed on the message to alleviate himself of the burden he had carried with him since he was a boy. He left to posterity at the English college in Rome the information conveyed to him by Richard Whiting with the added addition of his own précis of the last part of Melkin’s prophecy, indicating how important he felt it was; “The monks, never knew for certain the place of this saints burial (Joseph’s) or pointed it out.  They said the body was most “carefully hidden” on a hill near Montacute and that when his body would be found, the whole world would wend their way there, on account of the number and wondrous nature of the miracles worked there”.

In Archbishop Usher’s account describing the Arms of Glastonbury, he quotes from an account given by William Good, and refers to him as “a Jesuit born at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry VIII”:

"Antiqua arma Glastoniensis Monasterii sunt hujusmodi. Scutum album, in quo per longum erigitur stipes crucis viridis & nudosas, & de latere ad latus extenduntur brachia seu rami crucis stipiti consimilia. Sparguntur guttse sanguinis per oninem aream scuti. Utrinqwe ad latera stipitis, & sub alis crucis, ponitur ampulla inaurata. Et haec semper denominabantur insignia Sancti Josephi, qui ibi habitue pie credebatur, & fortasse sepultus esse.



Such are the ancient Arms of the monastery of Glastonbury. A white shield in which, for a long time, a green and gnarled stake of a cross sticks out, and from side to side stretch branches or boughs as if they were the beam of the cross. Drops of blood are spattered around the whole expanse of the shield. And at the sides of the stake, under the beam of the cross, is placed a gilded flask. And these were always referred to as the tokens of St Joseph, who is believed to have lived piously, and perhaps to have been buried there.’



 The Reverend Walter Skeat make his own remarks on Father Good’s passage; “The knotted cross evidently refers to the legend of St Joseph's thorny staff (from which a tree had sprouted at Glastonbury until recently cut down by vandals), the drops of blood denote his receiving the blood of Christ in the Holy Grail, and the two cruets are the "duo fassula" mentioned in the book of Melkin, which resulted from the duplication of the Grail of the original legend”.

We can conclude from this, that Father Good had read Melkin while in the British Isles and had been privately engaged investigating the whereabouts of the sepulchre of Joseph.  It would seem that Father William assumed that within the Heraldry depicted on the shield, there could have been a clue to where Joseph lay. It would also appear that he was probably taking this line of investigation, having previously read the Seint Graal, and its associations with Joseph, where "a white knight relates to Galahad the mystery of a certain wonderful shield." It is fairly evident that Father Good had tried to locate the burial place of Joseph having been motivated by the possession of a clue but unfortunately didn't piece together the relevance of Montacute.



Figure 22 Showing the Folly tower where there once stood a chapel dedicated to St.Michael on this hilltop ‘marker’ site.



Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in 1130 makes no allusion to the Graal, or to Lancelot or Gawain, or to the prophecy of Melkin and does not say one word about Joseph of Arimathea in his popular Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey wrote many works, all in Latin, but in his History of the Kings of Britain, he writes about Arthur, Merlin and Vortigern at length, but draws nothing from Melkin’s genealogy of Arthur, yet includes the previously unknown prophecies of Merlin.  Geoffrey claims in his dedication that his book is a translation of an "ancient book in the British language that told in orderly fashion the deeds of all the kings of Britain", given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford.  Much of his material was invented, but the main body of manuscript text was supplied by the Archdeacon of Oxford, which mainly came from Welsh sources, most probably from the writings of Melkin that were embellished upon and subsequently places Arthur in a Welsh backdrop. Geoffrey's works seem to show acquaintance with the place names of the region and most commentators think Geoffrey was Welsh and spoke Welsh.  He seems to have come from the French-speaking Welsh border country and was probably educated in a Benedictine monastery.  There were probably many French speaking Bretons in this region from the monastic houses that were to influence the likes of Gerald of Wales (Gerald de Barri), who is half Welsh, half Norman and Walter Map. Maep or Mapes was born on the Marches of Wales and calls the Welsh his countrymen, and England ‘our mother.’  It is posited that the Bretons and the Welsh spoke a similar language and it was from this connection that the Grail stories were easily assimilated with a similar Arthurian tradition that existed in Wales.  William of Malmesbury the product of intermarriage between Norman and Saxon noticed but a slight difference in his time between Welsh and Breton:  ‘Lingua nonnihil a nostris Brittonibus Degeneres’  and Giraldus calls the Breton an old-fashioned Welsh. : ‘Magis antiquo linguae Britannicae idiomati appropriato’.

This tradition could have existed in Wales through copies of the works of Melkin that remained in Britain but as we have covered, it seems that the Book of the Grail went to France caused by the Saxon invasion and later returned to revitalise and mix with Welsh legend after having come from a French romanticisation of original, yet overlapping historical Material. The route of this information having probably travelled to Mont St. Michel near St. Malo and Avranche which of course would have had links with the tin traders since ancient times and as we will cover in a later chapter the probable landing point of Melkin which is why Helinand relates the account of the Graal and the supposed apparition to the Hermit (in Britain) taking place in 707 or as Walter map has it as 717AD. It becomes apparent later that Melkin probably took this book to France in his old age and thus an account of a British monk experiencing an angelic apparition was known in France.

Geoffrey’s omission of the Joseph material, despite his book's popular success, meant that the French tradition was not as widely known and did not appear until after Geoffrey’s death in 1154. If there was an early tradition that included the Nicodemus and Joseph stories at Glastonbury it was ignored by William and Geoffrey, but then proliferated at the advent of the French Grail material as if in response, to set the record straight and counter the more Welsh and strictly Arthurian material.  That's not to say that the legends had not persisted about Arthur and his connection with Joseph before then, this being evidenced by St. Augustin's argument with the Britons, "who preferred their own traditions before all the churches in the world", which of course is a referral to the Joseph tradition and possibly the bloodline ties of Arthur to Joseph.

Helinand, the Cistercian Abbot of Froidemont or in latin Frigidus Mons on the river Tera near Beauvais wrote a chronicle. The Abbey was founded in 1134 but found among manuscripts in the library including accounts of the lives of St. Bernard and St. Thomas of Cantorbery is ‘La Chronique d’Helinand’ written around 1215AD. Here in the diocese of Beauvais was a Cistercian monk who died circa 1220, but he wrote a chronicle of events in history which terminates with the year 1209 and seems to have heard an account of Melkin having had an apparition of an Angel and this account seems to relate to the Grail and matches the date when Melkin possibly visited Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy around 700AD.

John of Tynemouth, writing later quotes an extract from Helinand (below) referring to the Graal for the first time by its name at a date given in his chronicle as 707A.D. As the chronicle was laid out by date and it was at this point in time where the extract was inserted in the chronicle, it infers that the Graal was so named at this date. There has been much discussion about the early date of the insertion of this reference to the ‘Graal’ and due to preconceived ideas of the ‘Graal’ being an invention of the Grail writers, commentators have looked for reasons to show this date to be inaccurate and a fabrication of a later date.

The extract from Helinand:

De loseph centurione: Hoc tempore in britannia cuidam heremitae demonstrata fuit mirabilis quaedam visio per angelum de loseph decurione nobili, qui corpus domini deposuit de cruce, et de catino illo vel parapside in quo dominus cenavit cum discipulis suis; de quo ab eodem heremita descripta est historia que dicitur gradale.  Gradalis autem vel gradale gallice dicitur scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda, in qua preciose dapes divitibus a solent apponi gradatim, unus morsellus post alium in diversis ordinibus. Dicitur vulgari nomine greal, quia grata et acceptabilis est in ea comedenti, tum propter continens, quia forte argentea est vel de alia preciosa materia, tum propter contentum ordinem multiplicem dapium preciosarum.  Hanc historiam latine scriptam inuenire non potui sed tantum gallice scripta habetur a quibusdem proceribus, nec facile, ut aiunt, tota inueniri potest.

‘At this time a certain marvellous vision was revealed by an angel to a certain hermit in Britain concerning St. Joseph the decurion who deposed from the cross the body of our Lord, as well as concerning the paten or dish in which our Lord supped with his disciples, whereof the history was written out by the said hermit and is called ‘Of The Graal’ (De Gradali). Now a platter, broad and somewhat deep is called in French ‘gradalis’ or ‘gradale’, wherein costly meats (with their sauce) are want to be set before rich folk by degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in divers orders, and in the vulgar speech it is called graalz, for that it is grateful and acceptable to him that eateth therein, as well.  For that which containeth the victual, for that haply it is of silver and other precious material, as for the contents thereof, to wit, the manifold courses of costly meats. I have not been able to find this history written in Latin, but it is in the possession of certain noble written in French only, nor, as they say, can it easily be found complete.  This however,  I have not hitherto been able to obtain from any person, so as to read it with attention.  As soon as I can do so, I will translate into Latin, such passages as are more useful and more likely to be true.’

The fact that Helinand could not find a copy of an early French source indicates contrarily as some commentators have proposed. The commentators have supposed that the reason that Helinand is unable to locate a French copy is because of its recent popularity and production. The opposite is true in that it is not widely copied and those bits that have been obtained from a copy in the original Latin are held by some un-named noble family. It is more likely, the reason for the books scarcity is that it had been in possession of a French noble family from a very early date and from which troubadours close to that family accessed and romanticised its material into the French. The fact that Helinand is not finding (but has heard of the Latin original) shows us that he has come across Grail extracts in French from which he understands are derived from a Latin source. The fact that it is purportedly only fragmentary or not easily found complete, adds to the veracity of this supposition as having been written by an early Grail writer . One explanation of the French book not being found complete is that troubadours were given extracts to embellish upon by the noble French Family.  Was the sense of the Graal as assumed by Helinand and elaborated upon as relating to a Dish, originally conveying the sense of a ‘container’ of the Graal and can this container be the Grail Ark or box that contained the Grail that Joseph of Arimathea conveyed to Britain. 

Let us assume that a French noble family possessed a manuscript of Melkin’s original compilation of ancient Joseph material written in Latin and later had it translated into French, to be called or referred to as the ‘Book of the Graal.’ The reason behind this assumption is, we know definitively that Melkin has knowledge of Joseph’s whereabouts around six hundred years after his death. He knows also of the place where Arthur is buried because it is the same location at which Joseph was buried. Melkin was said to have written a book about Arthur entitled ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’, which means he lived contemporaneously or soon thereafter but given Melkin’s understanding of directions to the tomb and his accuracy in describing what will be found within it, we must conclude he entered it at Arthur’s death. It would also seem probable that Geoffrey sourced the location of Arthur’s burial as being in Avalon from Melkin’s work that remained in Britain and Geoffrey’s - 'Arthur's grave is nowhere seen, whence antiquity of fables still claims that he will return', is based upon Melkin’s knowledge that Joseph’s grave would be found thus uncovering Arthur.  The probable scenario might be that Melkin, witnessed Arthur’s interment in Avalon but it is still unfathomable how Melkin was able to give us such accurate co-ordinates, not only Geometrically but topographically describing the locale, in a clearly well-constructed puzzle, if he had not visited the site.

The inclusion of the Grail in French, Welsh, Irish and English variations of the romances, makes it virtually impossible to divine its substance, provenance, or essential meaning and most elucidations are fraught with supposition and contradiction so, digressing slightly, let us assume as we posited earlier, that the book of the Grail was written in Latin from a source that included Hebrew arcane terminology and material brought by Joseph and his associates to Britain. It was expanded upon, with information of a bloodline that existed from Joseph (or possibly Jesus through the Magdalene) down through Arthur inclusive of his exploits and that of the family from Roman to Saxon times. This book was originally written as a compilation of this body of knowledge, giving the origins of the religious nature of the Grail, (i.e. the gradual steps or degrees of enlightenment) that conveyed and gave meaning to the substance of the Grail and this book was compiled by Melkin.

Hardyng, Leland, Capgrave and Bale all cite Melkin as an ancient authority on Arthurian and British history and of the four titles he is supposed to have written that are referenced by these later chroniclers, let us assume a crossover of material between these manuscripts and the ‘Book of the Grail’. Melkin’s Grail book in France not only contained a historical account of Joseph’s journey to Britain but also occult temple knowledge having come directly from Jerusalem that explained or gave meaning to the original purport of the Grail. Let us also assume that this Gnostic material from the Temple contained an account of the Divine plan, the striving of man for spiritual enlightenment and its history through the Davidic heritage. Over time the Grail metamorphosed into an object and this transformation was partly due to Melkin who had written his riddle which included mention of the ‘duo fassula’. Now this misrepresentation of the ‘duo fassula’ were said to contain liquids of blood and sweat and thus the necessity for a receptacle to hold a liquid or two.  This puzzle or prophecy survived in one of his other four books or was duplicated in other manuscripts to be reproduced by John of Glastonbury and possibly from other sources. Melkin’s book ‘Arthurii mensa rotunda’ obviously supplying much of the early Arthurian material for Welsh manuscripts that would, of necessity be void of the specific Grail material that was to emanate from Melkin’s Book of the Grail that had wound up in the hands of a noble family in France.

The Welsh Greal material however, contains the adventures of Gwalchmei Peredur and Lancelot, and of the Knights of the Round Table; but these are not found in Malory’s "Morte d'Arthur". The Peniarth manuscript is dated to Henry VI, the earlier part of the fifteenth century. This is similar to that of the "Mabinogion of the Llyvr Coch Hergest", which is of that same date but it is probably transcribed from an earlier copy and it is not known when it was first translated into Welsh, some scholars  saying it was written around 1070 or in Henry I’s time, but this is debatable. Whatever the date of the Welsh version, the translator had no great mastery of the original French from the source and the Welsh scribe by his own volition chose not translate portions, because the French was difficult to translate and the story was itself erratic and for the most part misunderstood by the French collator. It can be seen that the Welsh versions have been assimilated from French sources and sometimes changed or interpolated or polemicized conferring a Welsh perspective to names places and events as can be witnessed in the early Welsh versions which gives a differing outlook from those in the French and can be so examplified. Perceval in the Welsh is called Peredur. Perceval's father, Alain li Gros, is in the Welsh Earl Evrawg, and his sister Dindrane becomes Danbrann. King Arthur becomes Emperor Arthur while Queen Guenievre becomes Gwenhwyvar and so on. This leads to a comparable lack of rigour with place names;  Cardoil becomes Caerlleon on Usk, Pannenoisance, Penvoisins; Tintagel translates into Tindagoyl and Avalon becomes Avallach.  These are examples of deliberate alterations, and it is probable that those capable of such practice would have been prepared to usurp Arthur’s Cornish heritage.

This passage in the History of Fulke Fitz-Warine, originally written around 1260 is the first to mention the Graal from Welsh sources:

‘And when Kahuz was awake, he put his hand to his side. There hath he found the knife that had smitten him through, so telleth us the Graal, The Book of the Holy Vessel. There the King Arthur recovered his bounty and his valour when he had lost all his chivalry and his virtue’

 This is the Joseph line running through Montacute as described by Father Good stretching for 104 miles down to Burgh Island in Devon which is the Island of Avalon. This line Bifurcates the St. Michael Ley line at 13 Degrees exactly as Melkin had informed us in his Prophecy. This is the Avaron of the Grail romances an island found in the west where also King Arthur was buried.
Thus it seems that "The Graal, the Book of the Holy Vessel" to which the Welsh biographer of Fulke refers is from a French source. It would seem that because he uses the definite article, it indicates that he thought this book to be the original authority on the subject either having heard about it from a different source or seeing this in his written source. Melkin’s works had been in amongst older books at Glastonbury now lost, burnt or dispersed which John of Glastonbury describes as “Vetustissimi”. The Vetustissimi were the books of very ancient scribes, copied before the Norman Conquest, so copies of Melkin’s original Arthurian material had plenty of time to be transformed to a Welsh arena.   In around 1280, the troubadour Sarrazin also refers to ‘The Graal’ as ‘li Graaus’ with the same definite article, when he was trying to assert a confirmation of established fact that King Arthur was at one time ‘Lord of Great Britain’. The references to ‘The Graal’ or ‘Book of the Graal’ as being the established authority or source for all the Grail literature even before Chrétien de Troyes, is further evidenced by Sarrazin’s following statement ‘the Romance that Chrestien telleth so fairly of Perceval the adventures of the Graal’. The statement tells us that Chrétien had used a source and had portrayed or conveyed the contents with clarity and it commends him for doing so.

 Let us assume the Grail is an account of a religious rite or process of which a written explanation came to Britain with Joseph. Because what he brought was connected with Jesus, what was originally an account of a spiritual nature became synonymous with the box, Grail ark or receptacle that Joseph was believed to have brought to Britain. This gets even more confused if the French Troubadours heard news of the British account of a ‘Vessel’ buried with Joseph, which  at least would have given them something physical to romanticise rather than what seems to be some kind of unexplainable processional religious quest an hence the very erratic nature of the early Grail stories.

If Helinand’s date is nearly correct it would explain the lack of continuity and provenance in the early French versions. It would also allow for Melkin’s Arthurian material to  be corrupted in Wales, but who could have been responsible for putting together the misinterpreted ‘duo fassula’ that became a ‘vessel’ from British sources and combining them with French sources that were a Processional and which was described as a plate. This was the turning point of the Grail when it became a physical object that singularly tried to encapsulate Jesus’s body, the Turin Shroud and an account of occult meaning and this will become clear shortly.

As we have just seen, the "Book of the Graal" is to be found as a reference also in the "Chronicle of Helinand", who was also a troubadour at one time in high favour at the court of Philip II. Philip Augustus had strong Templar connections, he was on the third crusade and it has been posited that the Arc of the Covenant was retrieved in this Crusade and kept by the Templars. If there was knowledge of the Ark’s whereabouts in Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’, coming directly via Joseph (a Sanhedrin member), there could be some substance in the rumour that the Templars possessed the Arc.  It could equally have been Eleanor of Aquitaine during the second crusade, who also could have possessed this knowledge as she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe as well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France (1137–1152) and of England (1154–1189) but more importantly she was patron to Chrétien de Troyes. Eleanor of Aquitaine is the only woman to have been queen of both France and England and as Queen of France, she participated in the unsuccessful second crusade but may also have been the personal owner of Melkin’s Book of the Grail. Eleanor had two Daughters by Louis VII, Mary who in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne and  Alix, who became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Theobald who had made Eleanor avoid Blois in 1152 because of his eagerness to have Eleanor as wife, after her divorce from Louis. Henry and Theobald were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis VII in 1160, eight years after Eleanor’s divorce. The family ties that were forged were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides her two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen.  Eleanor’s son Richard the Lionheart could also have found opportunity to recoup the Arc on the third Crusade if anyone did in fact achieve this goal.

The name of the original author of the Book of the Grail is recorded nowhere but we know that Melkin had knowledge of Joseph having brought and been buried with a relic of Jesus. So the probability that Melkin wrote a tract specifically covering Grail material, that disappeared to France, yet left evidence and crossover material that existed in the meantime in other works in Britain, seems to be the only rationalisation.  The concurrence of two existing bodies of information that were to re-emerge and confirm their united theme at the advent of the gradual release of French material, through the Troubadour tradition, gives us an answer as to why British history was emanating from France.

Many have thought that the originator of the French material is referred to in the "Elucidation", prefixed to the rhymed version of "Percival le Gallois" under the name of "Master Blihis" and this pseudonym seems to refer to Henry de Blois who in French circles would have been known as Monseigneur Blois but in British circles as Henry of Blois (1101–1171). He was often known as Henry of Winchester and Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey from 1126, and Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to his death.

Henry de Blois was the nephew of King Henry I, and he was one of five sons of Stephen II, Count of Blois, by Adela of Normandy (daughter of William the Conqueror) and the younger brother of King Stephen.  Henry’s father died in the Crusade at Razes when Henry was only two years of age. After an exeptional education and at the young age of 23, Henry was appointed Prior of Montacute in Somerset which becomes relevant later in our investigation, where his uncle Henry I, was planning to create a royal abbey and it is for this reason we can be assured that the information which Father Good gave us about Montecute could only have come from Melkin’s book in France.
The poem of Chrétien de Troyes is the earliest surviving literary version that mentions the Grail and Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tradition concerning the matière de Bretagne. The process of romanticising arcane knowledge contained in Melkin’s book had already begun with various degrees of interpretation and misunderstanding which had built layer upon layer of obfuscation from the core relevance of the original purport of the Gradatim as a spiritual pattern or divine plan laid out for mankind. If Henry of Blois is the author of the ‘High history of the Grail’ it would explain the reverence with which he treats the subject even if he had to uncomprehendingly interpret the depth of information revealed by Melkin’s original and certainly he would have been in a position to correlate this evidence with extant material at Glastonbury. It would appear that corruption of Melkin’s text into the French had taken place already. It would seem that it was probably Henry’s understanding of the ‘duo fassula’ as a vessel; understood certainly as a receptacle(s) in Britain, that might have transformed the religious rite, processional or quest of the French material into an eventual reliquary or Chalice.
 
Hear ye the history of the most holy vessel that is called Graal, wherein the precious blood of the Saviour was received on the day that He was put on rood and crucified in order that He might redeem His people from the pains of hell. Josephus set it in remembrance by annunciation of the voice of an angel, for that the truth might be known by his writing of good knights, and good worshipful men how they were willing to suffer pain and to travail for the setting forward of the Law of Jesus Christ, that He willed to make new by His death and by His crucifixion.

The High Book of the Graal beginneth in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. These three Persons are one substance, which is God, and of God moveth the High Story of the Graal. And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the wickednesses that they have in their hearts. For right profitable shall it be to all them that shall hear it of the heart. For the sake of the worshipful men and good knights of whose deeds shall remembrance be made, doth Josephus recount this holy history, for the sake of the lineage of the Good Knight that was after the crucifixion of Our Lord. Good Knight was he without fail, for he was chaste and virgin of his body and hardy of heart and with courage, and so were his conditions without wickedness. Not boastful was he of speech, and it seemed not by his cheer that he had so great courage; Nonetheless, of one little word that he delayed to speak came to pass so sore mischances in Greater Britain, that all the islands and all the lands fell thereby into much sorrow, albeit thereafter he put them back into gladness by the authority of his good knighthood. Good knight was he of right, for he was of the lineage of Joseph of Abarimacie. And this Joseph was his mother's uncle, that had been a soldier of Pilate's seven years, nor asked he of him any other favour of his service but only to take down the body of Our Saviour from hanging on the cross. The delight to him seemed full great when it was granted him, and full little to Pilate seemed the favour; for right well had Joseph served him, and had he asked to have gold or land thereof, willingly would he have given it to him. And for this did Pilate make him a gift of the Saviour's body, for he supposed that Joseph should have dragged the same shamefully through the city of Jerusalem when it had been taken down from the cross, and should have left it without the city in some mean place. But the Good Soldier had no mind thereto, but rather honoured the body the most he might, rather laid it along in the Holy Sepulchre and kept safe the lance whereof He was smitten in the side and the most Holy Vessel wherein they that believed on Him received with awe the blood that ran down from His wounds when He was set upon the rood. Of this lineage was the Good Knight for whose sake is this High History treated.



Adela of Blois, wife of Stephen, Count of Blois, Henry’s father who had fled from the Siege of Antioch in 1098, was so ashamed of her husband that she would not permit him to stay at home. Henry's father died in 1102 while on crusade. He left, leaving an estate with more than 350 castles and large properties in France including Chartres which as many will know is a shrine of sacred geometry, which has Arthurian overtones mentioned in Lois Charpantier’s account of ‘The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral’. Coincidentally the town of Chartres was under the judicial and tax authority of the Counts of Blois. The current cathedral, mostly constructed between 1193 and 1250 just after Henry’s Death, is one of at least five that have occupied the site since the town became a bishopric in the 4th century.

Henry of Blois was educated at a monastery in Cluny in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France. This was a Benedictine Cluny Abbey, founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in AD 910 which adhered to the principles of Cluniac reform, including a sense of intellectual freedom and humanism, as well as adherence to a high standard of devotion and discipline. Here Henry studied in the seven liberal arts; trivium (rhetoric grammar, and logic), quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy) along with architecture and he was essentially renowned later in life, with all this schooling, as a sage. It was, probably while in France during his formative years, that he heard of these early tales and later while at Glastonbury he combined later material to comprise the High history of the Grail.  It is interesting to quote from Miss Jesse Laidlaw Weston’s revealing book  From Ritual to Romance’  as this gives a clear impression of the early Grail writers development.



While the poem of Chrétien de Troyes is our earliest surviving literary version, there is the strongest possible evidence that Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tale.  The Grail Quest was a theme which had been treated not once nor twice, but of which numerous, and conflicting, versions were already current, and, when Wauchier de Denain undertook to complete Chrétien's unfinished work, he drew largely upon these already existing forms, regardless of the fact that they not only contradicted the version they were ostensibly completing, but were impossible to harmonize with each other.
 
It is of importance for our investigation, however, to note that where Wauchier does refer to a definite source, it is to an evidently important and already famous collection of tales, Le Grant Conte, comprising several 'Branches,' the hero of the collection being not Chrétien's hero, Perceval, but Gawain, who, both in pseudo-historic and romantic tradition, is far more closely connected with the Arthurian legend, occupying, as he does, the traditional position of nephew, Sister's Son, to the monarch who is the centre of the cycle; even as Cuchullinn is sister's son to Conchobar, Diarmid to Finn, Tristan to Mark, and Roland to Charlemagne.  In fact this relationship was so obviously required by tradition that we find Perceval figuring now as sister's son to Arthur, now to the Grail King, according as the Arthurian, or the Grail, tradition dominates the story. The actual existence of such a group of tales as those referred to by Wauchier derives confirmation from our surviving Gawain poems, as well as from the references in the Elucidation.
 
On a couple of occasions in the re-telling of these Gawain tales, Wauchier refers to what he thinks is the original author by name and calls him ‘Bleheris’ the first time. On the second occasion he states specifically that this Bleheris was of Welsh birth and origin, ‘né et engenuïs en Galles’.  He says this in connection with a tale being told to a certain, Comte de Poitiers, whose favourite story it was, saying ‘he loved it above all others’, which would infer that it was not the only tale the said ‘Bleheris’ had recounted to the Count.
Even though it is posited that Henry was born in Blois Castle in France, this cannot be substantiated but certainly Henry used much Arthurian material for the Elucidation which might have made others think he was Welsh. Henry could possibly be the Link that combined Arthurian Welsh and Glastonbury Joseph material with French Melkin, Joseph and Nicodemus material owned by Eleanor of Aquitaine. The ‘Elucidation’ prefaces its account of the Grail Quest by a solemn statement of the gravity of the subject to be treated as ‘God moveth the High Story of the Graal. And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the wickednesses that they have in their hearts’. These stark warnings are said to have come from a certain Master Blihis, concerning whom we hear no more but the warning does seem to derive from a firm believer with an understanding of the Grail’s sanctity in connection with a divine plan.  A little further on in the poem we meet with a knight, Blihos or Bliheris, who, made prisoner by Gawain, reveals to Arthur and his court the identity of the maidens wandering in the woods, of the Fisher King and the Grail, and is so good a story-teller that none can weary of listening to his tales. This in a form, is autobiographical by Henry speaking of Blihis as other than himself and is confirmed by the Count of Poitiers’ commendation of Blihis’s storytelling.
Monseigneur is an honorific appellation in the French language and it would seem that it has been mistranslated or wrongly scribed for Monsieur or ‘master’ by later translators from the French. It has occasional English use as well, as it may be a title before the name of a French prelate, a member of a royal family or any dignitary; all of which might be applied to ‘Monseigneur Blois’. Also it is sometimes used as a name for a Frenchman who has a position on the court which would also apply to Henry. It would seem that having studied rhetoric and Grammar, Henry would qualify in some degree as a raconteur of Grail material to William X, Count of Poitiers between (1126 - 1137), Father of Eleanor of Aquitaine just as it was said that Master Blihis had done and not forgetting, Henry would have been abreast of the Glastonbury material since 1126.

William IX, known as the Troubadour, 1071 - 1126 was Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou between 1086 and 1126. He was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife Hildegarde of Burgundy. He inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen. In 1088, at the age of sixteen, William married his first wife, Ermengarde of Anjou the daughter of Count Fulk. It is interesting to note that the biographer of Fulke in the History of Fulke Fitz-Warine the first to mention the Grail in Welsh literature and more importantly the book of the Holy vessel, is Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Grandmother’s family name (Fulke). William IX’s greatest legacy in history was his renown as a poet. He was the first known troubadour or trouvère, a lyric poet employing the Occitan or Langued’oc tongues. Eleven of his songs survive and they are attributed to him under his title as Count of Poitou. This seems to have become a family tradition as the first Romance poets of the Middle Ages emerged as founders of the troubadour tradition because like his father before him, William X, Eleanor’s father was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and gave his two daughters an excellent education. Henry of Blois was obviously entirely fluent in French and had family ties to Eleanor (His cousin Theobald was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine´s daughter, Marie) who also was a patron to Chrétien de Troyes and thus makes the Aquitaine’s the most likely noble family to possess Melkin’s ‘Book of the Grail’ and to provide Henry with the French source material.  In the fragmentary remains of Thomas's Tristan we have a passage, in which the poet refers, as source, to a certain Bréri, who knew "all the feats, and all the tales, of all the kings, and all the counts who had lived in Britain." With Henry’s privileged education and fascination with books he would have found available at Glastonbury, in conjunction with his royal connections; he does appear to be the obvious person to correlate British and French sources that had been temporarily separated.  Blois became Bleheris which was mispronounced as Blihis which got Latinised into Bledhericus and far from the bounds of our enquiry at the moment one can trace Henry as Gawain in his own writings.

Briefly, Giraldus Cambrensis refers to the ‘famosus ille fabulator’, Bledhericus, who had lived "shortly before our time" and whose renown he evidently takes for granted and was familiar to his readers not necessarily for his personage, but rather for the material said to have been written by him. Now if Gerald of Wales was writing around 1210 this would be when the High History of the Grail was at its most Popular. Although Henry employed his own pseudonym in his work, it would seem that other appellations from other writers; the Bleheris who, according to Wauchier, had told tales concerning Gawain, and Arthur's court, one of the tales of which was certainly the Grail adventure; the Master Blihis, who knew the Grail mystery, and gave solemn counselling about its revelation; the Blihos-Bliheris, who knew the Grail, and many other tales; the Bréri, who knew all the legendary tales concerning the princes of Britain; and the famous story-teller Bledhericus, of whom Gerald of Wales speaks, are not separate people, or mere inventions of the separate writers. It would seem as if Henry, may well have deserved the titlefamosus ille fabulator,’ but he was only accounted as the originator of the Grail because people thought Monseigneur Blois, the consolidator of Melkin material, was the writer of the original book of the Grail. He was not but he understood the sanctity of the Material.  It was however the coincidence of his being privy to knowledge from British and French sources that was really responsible for his renown as master Blihis but it seems as if we can account Henry in some way responsible for the Grail’s evolution as an object.
Glastonbury abbey where King Arthur is said to have been Discovered but this was just a ploy by the monks to assert themselves as the island of Avalon where Joseph of Arimathea was supposed to be buried. If they unearthed Arthur which they fabricated for all the world to see with a fake cross indicating the location of Glastonbury, then they assumed all the world would believe Joseph of Arimathea was buried there.

The assumed tomb of King Arthur where the monks staged his disinterrement but Arthur still lies in the island of Avalon with the bodies of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea.  The Island of Avallon in Devon was part of Dumnonia where Arthur ruled the people of Devon and Cornwall.

In 1126 at the age of 29, Henry was appointed Abbot of Glastonbury and would certainly have come into contact with the works of Melkin which were extant at that date. He joined the Abbey in a state of decline when the monks lived in penury. Abbot Henry took immediate action, proving himself as an excellent leader and architect. He renovated and restored the monastery and it was through his efforts that by 1143, Glastonbury Abbey is noted in the Doomsday book as “the wealthiest in England”. Henry’s brother, King Stephen with Queen Matilda were two of the greatest benefactors to the Templars and it is through the Templar connection of Eleanor and her proximity to the Crusades that threads of Templar material got embedded in the romances and as we shall see became the main guardians of the truths behind the Grail. Henry might have obtained some of his other material from Templar sources across Europe as Henry’s brother gave the Templars land in London and other tracts of land where the Templars had their Manors. It would seem therefore that Henry can be accredited for having written one of the first compilations of Grail Romances called ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’.

 It appears to have been collated sourcing from Chrétien de Troye’s work and from sources which Eleanor’s family owned, not only evidenced by the author portraying in his writing, such good local knowledge of the environs of Glastonbury, but also becoming clearer because of his family connections and the likelihood of Henry and Chrétien’s paths crossing.

If our assumptions are correct, the ‘Book of the Grail’ was written by Melkin which approximately concurs with Helinands’ date. Henry of Blois was also aware of Melkin’s other writings at Glastonbury, adding to the fact that it is also credited in the Latin version of the ‘High History of the Holy Graal’ to have been written by a monk at Glastonbury who, incidentally must have been fluent in some dialects of the French.

 Melkin as we know through his prophesy appears to have associations with Glastonbury and appears to be single handedly responsible for coalescing the Joseph tradition. Melkin through the construction of his riddle kept alive a tradition from great antiquity through conjoining the Quest of the Grail with a search for Joseph and what was with him in his tomb. It would seem therefore that Henry de Blois was the ‘famous fabulator’ named ‘Master Blihis’ in the prologue called the Elucidation of Le Conte Del Graal where it says, "Master Blihis is ‘one who knew all the stories of the Graal’.

Chrétien de Troyes working for Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughters states that he had been given a Grail book by them, to be romanticised (inferring a more historical or factual account), so that it could be read out at court. It would appear therefore, that the French noble family in possession of Melkin’s work which contained the historical Joseph account including the gospel of Nicodemus (which Chrétien was aware of), was Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’ in the possession of Eleanor.  Henry of Blois was uncle to Theobald V, Count of Blois and Troyes who was married to Alix de France, daughter of Louis VII, King of France from his first wife Eleanor d’Aquitaine. Theobald’s  brother Henry was married to Marie, Eleanor’s other daughter, so through the Aquitaine’s possible ownership of Melkin’s book of the Grail, it is not difficult to see how Henry of Blois, appraised of the fact that Melkin was the originator of these truths, and being acquainted with the Glastonbury tradition could have been the one responsible in part for the British re-emergence. This helped through Crusader and Templar influences of the Joseph and Arthurian histories, couched and propagated as popular troubadour tales. In addition, the Count of Blois’ court in Troyes became a renowned literary troubadour centre. Walter Map was among those who found hospitality there along with Chrétien.

It would appear that the source in the ‘Conte du Graal’ came originally from Britain but it seems likely that Henry used other works of Melkin’s at Glastonbury to draw upon. We should not forget that Melkin was probably the hermit (pious monk) referred to by Helinand and that Melkin had of course, to have been aware of arcane Joseph material, to have portrayed the Joseph and Grail material as the base for his Prophecy. As we shall see further in our investigation, it is through Melkin’s thorough understanding of the essence of the Grail that he can link its discovery with the unveiling of the tomb with a specific point in time.  It is partly due to this prediction of the unveiling that subsequent commentators referred to his extract about Joseph’s tomb and the ‘duo fassula’, as a prophecy.

Henry was a highly intelligent person, probably not wishing to be associated with the more romanticised and plainly embellished Grail material proliferating at the time because he understood the Grail’s sanctity in that it was originally an expression of God’s work in man. He Knew that it was a subject (although not fully comprehended by him) that should not be treated irreverently and so for reasons regarding his ecclesiastical position, ‘The High History of the Grail’, was written and alluded to himself by a pseudonym or nickname.

 Henry was brought to England by King Henry I, to be Abbot of Glastonbury. On 4 October 1129, he was given the Bishopric of Winchester but allowed to keep his beloved Glastonbury Abbey. He was consecrated as bishop on 17 November 1129.  He had ambitions to become Archbishop of Canterbury but was thwarted. However he did not abandon his work and obligations to Glastonbury. Except for a few brief months in 1141 when he changed his alliance to Empress Matilda, when he thought he would be on the winning side, Henry supported and advised Stephen his brother and is credited as one of the clergy who helped convince William of Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to crown Stephen.  Soon after his appointment to the See of Winchester, Henry came to resent his subservience to Canterbury. Henry was the patron of great writers one of whom was Archdeacon, Gerald of Wales who later unwittingly referred to him as Bledhericus and through his family connections, had links to the Templars and the Crusades and was well acquainted with William of Malmesbury. One of the finest buildings Henry had constructed, was the Hospital of St. Cross on the outskirts of Winchester. A few years after completion, Henry was to assign the guardianship over to the Knights Templar.  In William of Malmsbury’s work, ‘De Antiquitate Glasttonie Ecclesie’, which he dedicated to Henry, he tells us that “the monk he knew personally and in fact whom he “served” was shy, learned and a great writer”. Henry of Blois gave some sixty books to the great library at Glastonbury and had ancient books copied, such as Pliny’s Natural History, the book of Enoch, and several other books of Origen, St. Jerome and St. Augustine which probably would have been lost except for his efforts. Mostly he will be remembered for sponsoring the Winchester Bible, the largest illustrated Bible ever produced (which was still unfinished at his death).

It is in 1155 though, that Master Robert Wace completes his "Roman de Brut," a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s "History" in French. Wace dedicated his work to Eleanor of Aquitaine his patron, and is remembered as being the first writer to introduce the concept of the "Round Table" to the Arthurian cycle.  Presumably it was Eleanor who had provided him with a source containing arcane geomatria supplied by Melkin’s book mixed with the information from British sources found at Glastonbury supplied by Henry of Blois that were to be included in the Architecture of Chartres then under the jurisdiction of the Counts of Blois. Of Arthur, Robert Wace says,

"I know not if you have heard tell the marvellous gestes and errant deeds related so often of King Arthur. They have been noised about this mighty realm for so great a space that the truth has turned to fable and an idle song. Such rhymes are neither sheer bare lies, nor gospel truths. They should not be considered either an idiot's tale, or given by inspiration. The minstrel has sung his ballad, the storyteller told over his tale so frequently; little by little he has decked and painted, till by reason of his embellishment the truth stands hid in the trappings of a tale. Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable.



Melkin was a geometer, which was not only borne out by his Prophesy, but also if we take into account information regarding Montacute as a marker.  This Information would have been derived from the Grail book originally and passed on by Henry of Blois the first Abbot to pass on this clue that seems to have come down through the ages to Father Good. It was generally understood that Joseph was hidden within some geometric puzzle, all the clues of which seem to emanate from Melkin, the one man who knew the whereabouts of Joseph. Henry of Blois, being Abbot of Glastonbury, presumably would have passed on the information that Father Good was to possess at a later date regarding Montacute (that he could have only gleaned from Eleanor’s Book of the Grail) and the clue it gave to Joseph’s burial site.

 It also seems a little suspect that he chose to be appointed at the young age of 23, as Prior of Montacute. The one person we suspect of having read Melkin’s Grail book and who most likely discovered that there was a connection between Montacute and finding Joseph, just happens to be prior there.  If we assume that the studious Henry had come across the Joseph material from a source that Melkin had written i.e. the Book of the Grail, then one can understand how the detail of Montacute was probably obtained by Henry and this information acted as a motivation for Henry’s first post as a mature man recently arrived from his education in France.



Strangely enough, it was Eleanor who married King Henry II, the same King Henry who was supposedly told by a sage the exact place to start digging at Glastonbury Abbey to find King Arthur’s bones there between two pyramids. As we have covered Henry II was already dead when Arthur was unearthed but the story could have a grain of truth, if indeed Henry had learnt of Arthur’s burial in Avalon from Eleanor or her material. If it was widely accepted that Joseph was buried in Avalon and because of Joseph’s Glastonbury connection to the church there; it is possible that the King, learning Arthur was also buried in Avalon also from the French source, may indeed have put this very idea of Avalon being equated with Glastonbury into the monks heads. It is possible that subsequently after the kings death they eventually, having lost their patron, decided to carry out the bogus unearthing of Arthur citing him as a witness.



Although John Leland, in 1534 says that the book he saw of Melkin’s, he dated to 450AD and this passage from Helinand’s chronicle relates the angels appearance to Melkin in 717, it seems safe to assume that the 500 year difference until Helinand actually wrote would allow for an error of a century or two.

One can only deduce that Helinand is referring to Melkin, as Melkin deals with the same two subjects, that of Joseph and the Grail in his Prophesy. It will become apparent to the reader, as we progress, that Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’ or ‘Of the Grades or by Degrees’ had express knowledge of what the Gradatim was, as a series of ‘grades’ toward spiritual enlightenment and this revelation of the Grail was known and understood by Melkin. He knew that it would be marked by an event in time, i.e. the unveiling of the tomb at a predestined point in time, but we will deal with this explanation of ‘Time’ later.

One cannot be certain if Helinand’s extract is the first passage which refers to the Grail directly at this early date, but the same date was quoted by Walter Map, an early Grail writer in reference as a source. If it is genuine, it is the closest we get to the original source of Melkin the consolidator of material found in the tomb. This is the point at which it becomes a question of faith for those who believe in Angels or for the pragmatic to answer  ‘from where did Melkin receive instruction’?  If we consider the Grail as arcane knowledge linked to a Divine Plan then divine intervention by apparition should not be excluded especially when we consider Melkin’s link to an apparition by St. Michael that is attributed to St. Aubert at Mont –St- Michel discussed in a later chapter.



Who imparted the knowledge for the original source if it was not an angel that indeed gave Melkin his insight? More importantly, how were they or he able to leave behind such exact geometrical and geographic instructions with surveying pin point accuracy?  One must remember that if Melkin did live around 450 to 650AD then where was this source and in what language, before Melkin transcribed all its information into Latin? This source and the Grail book will be found at the unveiling of the tomb. The arcane source material will have remained in the tomb but certainly the Grail book was returned to the tomb by the Templars. There must be a source book for Melkin to have transcribed from Hebrew to render Shirei ha Ma'a lot’ but to understand and relate in the Grail book about the Grades of Enlightenement would indicate some exterior inspiration.



In Helinand’s chronicle, he derives ‘graal’ from ‘gradalis’ and sets the date for the British hermit's vision of the Grail at 707 or 717 A.D, but we are told that Melkin was ‘before’ Arthur and Merlin. This proposition now seems inaccurate if we take this date and the fact that Melkin knows where Arthur is buried.  It is still not certain how this transition of the ‘Grades’ evolved into an object except from obvious misinterpretation, but Helinand's ‘gradalis’ did not resemble a chalice but rather a dish on which meats were served. This semantically fits with the other descriptions of the Holy Grail as a receptacle, since Joseph of Arimathea uses the Grail to catch blood and sweat alluded to by Melkin and implies that it is a vessel that holds liquid.  Helinand states that Gradalis or Gradale means a dish, wide and somewhat deep by definition, in which rich meats are served to the rich in degrees- gradatim. One wonders again if this is not a misunderstanding of the spiritually rich as opposed to the wasteland or dearth which is cured on attainment of the Grail in the romances. The singular Chalice is often thought of as the receptacle used at the Last Supper or is a relic of the Passion in which both blood and sweat were contained. Some scholars posit that the concept of the Grail as a platter preceded the notion of the Grail as the "Kiddush Cup" from the Last Supper positing that primarily it was a Paschal Dish and not the Eucharistic vessel used by the twelve disciples. The Grail is none of these because Melkin describes it so accurately, he leaves no doubt as to its composition.



 When Chrétien de Troyes refers to the ‘Graal’ in ‘le Conte du Graal, Chrétien refers to his object not as “the Grail”, but as “un graal”, “a grail”, implying that in the source document it was used in context as a common noun and that there were more than one as implied by Melkin’s book of the Grail about Grades or Degrees to enlightenment which is the whole essence of what the Grail is; an objective description of the ‘Divine Plan’ and the romances have in a way achieved a heightened awareness or preparation in readying the world as a form of pre-cognition.



It is difficult to ascertain whether Melkin, did survey the angles and distances that we will be elucidating when we investigate Melkin’s prophecy, because this art was supposedly lost in the sixth century Dark Ages, when European mapping techniques were still very crude.  Melkin, however, passes on precise and accurate information given in his riddle so where did he get it from?  If it was not Melkin who surveyed the British landscape by his own skill, which points to where Joseph and Jesus were buried in the Island of Ictis, then how was it that he could leave us such precise directions? Was it truly by divine intervention as Helinand posits, or was there original ancient mapping instructions which indicated and marked Ley lines from which Melkin compiled his prophecy? If one considers that an entire body of knowledge may have existed since very early days from the offspring of Zerah through a line of Kings that ended with Arthur, then Melkin could have had access to this when he buried King Arthur.  Was he, like Father Good, just the messenger, perpetuating a tradition and preserving directions to Joseph’s resting place to be found in a future generation?  The hardest question to answer is; “who did the original surveying and at what stage in history were the coordinates of these Ley Lines recorded and surveyed as pertaining to what was hidden in Ictis”? If we assume that the French Templars possessed knowledge of this Ley line system (which will become apparent), then this geometry was also contained in the French Book of the Grail. If this assumption is correct then it might explain where Henry of Blois got the information about Montacute that was passed on to Father Good down through the ages by the Abbots. The argument against it being divine intervention leaves only two options, one being Melkin did survey the lines but how is this then linked to the Geometry of the pyramid. The other option would be that the Island was surveyed long ago as part of the pyramid construct but to what purpose and what part does the island play in relation to the original St.Michael Ley line before the Templars put their stamp on it and named it as such.

If the extract account of the Grail from Helinand was written in Latin around 707AD, it indicates that, before the five main romance writers, Guiot le Provencal, Chrétien de Troyes, Walter Map, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Albrecht von Scharfenberg, began their works, there was a Latin original which would explain how Henry of Blois might have made the Montacute connection that was passed to Father Good. But then one has to question whether Henry actually saw the French original translation of the Grail book or the original Latin from Melkin.

 As regards to when the original was written given the Saxon connection to Arthur, it would seem soon after Arthur’s demise and possibly even written in France although Helinand’s source seems to indicate an Apparition as taking place in Britain.  The original Latin version written by Melkin we should guess at around 650 AD to be followed by a French translation (the one Helinand is referring to) and this is what Eleanor’s father and Grandfather were captivated by.  It is with this family that the troubadour tradition concerning the Grail commenced to evolve into the various forms of romances. Before any of the early named Grail writers mentioned above came on the scene there was most probably a more oral court tradition and it would seem these early troubadours recognised at this early date that the Grail book contained sacred information. The Grail books appearance was either then ascribed the date by Helinand or more probably given the date of when his source wrote of the Latin originals first appearance at court.  Because of the book’s profundity, knowledge and the nature of its material, it was assumed it could only have been delivered by an angel who duly relayed it to the hermit better known as Melkin. In a later chapter we will cover the possibility that Burgh Island’s association as a Tomb in connection with St. Michael preceded even the Templars and if indeed it is the cause for the naming of Mont- Saint-Michel as Mons Tomba and its association with an angelic apparition by St. Michael to a monk.   



It was Robert de Boron circa 1170 who relates the story of the shield that was later to become the Arms of Glastonbury that Father Good investigated to find a clue to Joseph’s burial site. The shield given to Evalak by Josaphes, Joseph of Arimathea’s son, had a red cross on it that was also to become the symbol of the Rosicrucians and the Templars.  Robert tells us that, following Evalak's victory over Tholomer, the red cross upon it disappeared, then Josaphes, just before his death, asked Mordrains to bring the shield to him.  Continuing the story he then recounts that Josaphes with his own blood inscribed another cross on the shield and gave it back to Mordrains, and afterward it was placed upon the grave of Duke Nasciens, until Galahad would come and retrieve it. Galahad then possesses a sword which had belonged to King David, the hilt of which was covered by King Solomon with precious stones and the story ensues with an adventure with the holy bleeding lance, and Galahad’s eventual achievement of the Saint Graal, followed by his death at Sarras.

Thomas Malory's Morte D’Arthur has very much the same story with his own additions, the early French tradition keeping links with the Holy Land threaded throughout the narrative. Is Solomon’s sword’s iconic appearance in the original sources hinting at the inter-relationship of the two twins Pharez and Zerah’s separate bloodlines, as far back as King David, Solomon’s father, but somehow imputing the transference of kingship to Britain. The shield obviously being transformed in the tale with blood marks on it, to a Rosicrucian emblem and an association with the Templars, who not only were probably at this stage in possession of the Latin source in France after Eleanor but were now releasing their source material in response to the new interest shown in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s widely read history of the kings of Britain.

  Evalak’s shield then by close association with Joseph was adopted as the Arms of Glastonbury. Glastonbury substituted the knotted wooden cross from the staff planted by Joseph at Glastonbury and then added the two vessels each side to coincide with the ‘duo fassula’ while the blood inscribed cross of Evalak also become the Templar emblem.

The subject matter of our investigation seems so wide, and interrelated from Ictis to Avalon via Glastonbury and the Grail stories.  Evalak king of Sarras, Knights looking for the Graal in the East, Egypt, Jerusalem, the Templars’ cross, stories of Jesus in England, Joseph of Arimathea being buried with the Grail, Arthur, the oil with which Josaphes was consecrated, being kept in the Grail-ark. This oil with which a line of Kings are consecrated, while being kept at Sarras, swords and ships from Solomon, pyramids at Glastonbury, and prophecies in riddle form, but all of these having a link to Jesus.



Man from the dawn of consciousness, has advanced and gained a large amount of knowledge from stories recounted by previous generations that sometimes lived millennia before him and the individual has to learn and judge the validity of this corpus of knowledge in his short 70 years of life.  The relevance of the stories in this enquiry are for mankind as a whole, as if we are being prepared for a revelation, occult information couched within the Grail stories, and bardic prophecies without which, we would not comprehend a coming of heightened consciousness, and the proof that mankind needs. A proof that aligns with scriptures held as sacred by the Abrahamic religions i.e. the Prophets. The proof that is necessary for Mankind to progress in consciousness is the knowledge that there is some form of divine intervention which directs events. If Man were to have a more intellectual knowledge of God rather than wholly Faith based, there would be a shift in the consciousness of Mankind. There is understanding of this expectation even outside the arena of our investigation in the prophecy of Paracelcus, and the reformation of the whole world order.

Quod utilius Deus patefieri sinet, quod autem majoris momenti est, vulgo adhuc latet usque ad Eliæ Artistæ adventum, quando is venerit.

"God will permit a discovery of the highest importance to be made, it must be hidden till the advent of the artist Elias." He also states;

Hoc item verum est nihil est absconditum quod non sit retegendum; ideo, post me veniet cujus magnale nundum vivit qui multa revelabit.

"And it is true, there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered; for which cause a marvellous being shall come after me, who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many things."

In Malachi 4:5 See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. This passage comes straight after an admonishment to obey the Law of Moses the very subject the Archangel is supposed to dispute with the Dragon. Jehosaphat mentioned in Melkin’s prophecy, is the same day to which Malachi refers; so is St. Michael synonymous with Elijah? It would seem that the different religions would need a proof of provenance of some sort to reunite them, especially those of the Abrahamic tradition, as all have been derived from one heritage and been guided by one divine plan.  Of course, in Jewish, Moslem and Christian traditions this unifier is Michael the Archangel, attested by Enoch first and then confirmed later by the Biblical prophets.  The very purpose of prophecy is realisation or gnosis and if St. Michael is to bring together these three Abrahamic faiths there will be a need to eradicate religion in all its divisive forms of theological dogma and creed.  The very reality of what was foretold by these prophets needs to actually transpire and then there will be the proof needed by mankind. The problem is that gnosis of an omnipotent God needs be re-cognised . The Grail stories with what they reveal, when aligned with the prophets are just the vehicle to bring about this paradigm shift of consciousness. After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and has been for 2000 years but it is only a heightened consciousness that recognises this fact until the time comes when this shift in consciousness occurs and this is at the discovery of the Tomb and what it reveals to mankind.



Chrétien de Troyes poem tells of the passages through life of a young knight called Percival, but it is written in an uneasy form and suddenly goes from a story about Percival into the adventures he has on the way to being a knight.  Percival is the first of the three Grail stories to be published and in the narrative it describes the vessel of the Holy Grail as a golden dish and also speaks of a Lance dripping with blood that appears with the Grail conveyed ceremoniously at times throughout a meal he is having. The Grail romances cover too many variations to be discussed here, but as we focused on the essential information provided by Pytheas that led us to the Island of Ictis, so, too, must we look at the essential core of what the Grail romances have in common, to understand their meaning. It is evident that the Grail writers were not really concerned with historical time as they interwove their various versions from a core body of material.

 The essential threads of information that align themselves even semantically and allegorically seem to consist of Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail, Knightly pursuits and a quest, but essentially it was a British matter.  Joseph has a connection to Jesus and most of the Grail heroes have a connection to Joseph and so it would seem a bloodline or inheritance is inferred.  The Grail seems to be an object with direct connections to Jesus having been brought to Britain by Joseph.  The quest appears to be, to find the Grail but the Grail seems hard to define and thus looking for it makes it all the more difficult. The Grail although greatly connected to Jesus (who was the one responsible for a major part of Man’s enlightenment) is also synonymous with the developmental stages of enlightenment in the individual, referred to as grades in the Book of the Grail and allegorised as knightly pursuits.

 Melkin having prior knowledge of this process or divine plan would in effect equate him as having equal standing with Biblical prophets, informing us of future events in ’Time’ but also having knowledge that his prophecy relates in part to degrees of Spiritual enlightenment which are set in a finite timespan.

Showing the bifurcating point of the Joseph line with that of the St. Michael ley line at 13 degrees that was foretold by the prophet Melkin who says that the body of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are to be found in the Isle of Avallon.

Insula Avallonis or the Island of Avalon next to the mouth of the Avon river in Devon known today as Burgh Island where King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus are all entombed and where King Arthur came to try to find a Miracle cure just before his death that was witnessed by the prophet Melkin, the originator of the Grail stories.



 A full explanation can be found in the Book 'And did those feet' by Michael Goldsworthy found on the links below.











http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781780883007-1


In the Dark Ages a monk called Melkin left a riddle that purported to expose the burial site of Joseph of Arimathea. This Location has long been thought to exist within the Glastonbury grounds but the author has meticulously studied some of the oldest Latin and deposited with them all texts from Glastonbury Abbey and has uncovered not only deliberate obfuscation of the facts surrounding King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea but has solved the monks riddle which spells out with pinpoint accuracy the whereabouts of the resting place of these illustrious men in the Island of Avalon. The geometric puzzle describes directions that are derived from the Ley line system built by Neolithic man and the book describes how this huge display of geometrical precision across the British landscape was understood and known to exist as late as late the 1300’s. An array of churches was built upon this ancient system to point out to posterity the location of the tomb.

 This secret location is called the Island of Avalon and the same monk visited this island at the death of Britain’s famous King Arthur. Here he found arcane information from the Temple in Jerusalem that was brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. This information with an account of the first Christians arrival with Mary Magdalene was written in a book called The Grail that found its way to France and gave rise to the wide array of Grail stories.

‘And did those feet’ proves that the body of Jesus is in fact buried with Joseph of Arimathea and the whereabouts of this island is in Devon. It used to be known as the ancient Island of Ictis and contains within it an ancient tin vault that became their tomb which had originally been used to store tin ingots. The confirmation of the whereabouts of this tomb is given by precise geometry upon the British landscape left in the complex Latin puzzle by the monk Melkin but its position is also verified by a Jesuit priest who lived in the sixteenth century who was unaware of the significance of the clue he was given.

 The Templars in the middle ages were aware of the location of this tomb and deposited their treasure in the same tomb on Christmas day 1307. However they removed one item from the sepulchre within the island. This was what has now become known as the Turin Shroud. The Turin Shroud in the monk’s Latin puzzle has the same description once the Latin puzzle is deciphered. This artefact due to Melkin’s description, later became known as the Holy Grail by an inordinate amount of misunderstanding and direct obfuscation, but the Holy Grail is in fact something inestimably more valuable and this book sets out and explains what the Grail is and how the Grail stories came about. The body of Jesus, around which the Turin Shroud was once wrapped, is still within the tomb, steeped in Cedar oil and this is what formed the image on the Shroud over a period of six hundred years as it was formed within what became known as the Grail Arc.

 The reason this Island was chosen to house what is the holiest relic of all, is because it was not widely known in the ancient world except through a report by one of the first Greek explorers to Britain. Devon and Cornwall have a history in the tin industry and it was from this island that tin was traded with Joseph of Arimathea who, Cornish tradition has always maintained, was a tin merchant and was accompanied on his trading missions by Jesus. The book uncovers an ancient Biblical link to the Devon and Cornish peninsula through a bloodline from the first born of Judah one of the twelve sons of Israel, called Zerah. It is from his heritage a Line of Kings was born in the South west of England known as the kings of Sarras which culminated with the famous King Arthur.

 King Arthur, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are known to be buried on the Island today called Burgh Island but there is also with them the Arc of the Covenant and the Templar treasure. The book traces these events pulling together a wide source of detail linking the most powerful people in Europe like Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings with these events.

Leonardo Da Vinci visited this Island in the last three years of his life and left clues within four paintings, that show the geographical features of the Island and he let the world know by his picture puzzle (rebus) in the Windsor Library, that he was showing us a great mystery and went as far as saying he would show where it is, in his two paintings of the Yarnwinder.

 The amazing coincidences that have brought this knowledge into the modern era can only be viewed as having been determined by supernatural forces as this whole drama is played out to specific times that are spoken of by the biblical prophets. The implication and ramifications of the discovery of this tomb will have ramifications across the world as the book uncovers the relationship between this tomb’s unveiling and how it was predicted by the Prophets.
The reader must now be aware of the impact that Melkin has played in British history, so let us now turn our attention to what it was that he intended to convey to us specifically in his English prophecy. Melkin has surely set out to manifest the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea's entombment, leaving specific and precise instructions within that prophecy.  For the last 600 years researchers have tried to interpret, disentangle or make sense of this riddle from the obtuse Latin phraseology. They have tried to translate it into something coherent so that the phrases link together and provide meaning to the reader.  There is no doubt that Melkin wanted us to understand this riddle, the clues in it are extraordinarily accurate.
 The Latin is archaic and grammatically incorrect, so, not only is it necessary to establish the geometry that lies beneath the riddle and the meaning of individual words on different planes, but  we need to try and unravel Melkin’s intended purpose, while also attempting to understand the mind of the man who wrote it. Melkin’s puzzle is literary genius conveying information on different levels and one can only wonder what his thoughts were as he constructed this riddle.
Let us briefly recap the current situation; Ictis had a huge vault within the Island and Joseph of Arimathea was to be buried with ‘duo fassula’ containing the blood and sweat of Jesus. Joseph is said to have brought with him what has since become known as the ‘Holy Grail’ to Britain in around AD 37. Since the advent of the Romances, the ‘duo fassula’ and the Grail have become one and the same.  Joseph came to proselytise the British. In part probably owing to his previous links, for he introduced Jesus as a young man to Devon and Cornwall, a kingdom known as Belerion by Pytheas. The Island that Pytheas describes, where Joseph and King Arthur are now buried, is the Isle of Avalon, but it seems others are there also as  we assume this was attested to by Melkin.

Glastonbury Abbey where King Arthur And Joseph of Arimathea were rumoured to be buried, but know we Know where the true site of The Island of Avalon is located.
Many commentators have assumed that Joseph was buried near the Old Church, in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey and for many years the institution at Glastonbury Abbey has proactively encouraged such a position. It seems, that Melkin has required us to solve a riddle for which he may have intended us to keep searching at Glastonbury until now. If this was the case, how could he be sure that Joseph would be found eventually? The answer and his confidence lay in the fact that he was cognisant that the Grail was a ‘Grade or Stage’ in ‘Time’ that would inevitably come as part of a divine plan?
 It was Melkin who wrote the ‘Book of the Grail’ which contained this Hebraic occult knowledge that the Romance writers could not comprehend and thus allegorised, building and elaborating on the substance therein, using metaphor and imagination. It seems that Melkin's prophecy, which cannot be traced back earlier than John of Glastonbury's ‘Cronica’ is based upon a body of information concerning Devon and Cornwall (Belerion). This historical sequence of events concerned Jesus, who as a single person, has changed the world as part of a divine plan set in ‘Biblical Time’. This historical source information was partly used by the French Grail writers who were not aware of Jesus’s body in Avalon, but knew something to do with him was brought from the Holy land to England. In the true prophetic tradition, Melkin prognosticates on what will take place when Joseph's tomb is found indicating that if not wholly, then in part, he was divinely inspired.
The Neolithic and Medieval renovated Ley system within which Joseph is buried has been accurately planned out and surveyed. Melkin has knowledge of the Ley system and the distances and angles within it. It appears that Melkin, is the source for all original Arthurian information that has come down to us today. He wrote his prophecy and therefore he is solely responsible for renaming Ictis as Avalon. Avalon connects Arthur and Joseph both being buried there and Melkin’s genealogy in the ‘Estoire’ and recorded in John’s Cronica, connects them in a bloodline.  Joseph is a blood relative of Jesus who is inextricably linked to the Grail, while the Grail, as the modern world understands its substance, is buried with Joseph and Arthur in Avalon and this entire tradition has stemmed directly from Melkin.
 How is it that a Monk knows so much, as to understand the essence of the Grail back in the sixth century and know that Jesus is buried in Avalon and also have insight into occult knowledge concerning God’s divine plan and a grasp of Biblical Time? Were Jesus’s remains witnessed by Melkin at the burial of King Arthur?
So let us look at the small fragment of his understanding that has come down to us, for as we further our enquiry, we will see that it is very probable that the Grail book is about to surface as the book of the Law did, when the Jews returned from captivity.

Hec scriptura inuenitur in libro melkini, qui fuit ante merlinum,
This scripture is found in the book of Melkini, who had been before Merlinum,

Insula auallonis auida funere paganorum, pre ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum omnium sperulis propheciae vaticinantibus decorata, & in futurum ornata erit altissimum laudantibus. Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum nobilissimus, cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi accepit. Inter quos ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum; Et iacet in linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum angulum oratori, cratibus praeparatis, super potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis  sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim. Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta. Cum reperietur ejus sarcofagum, integrum illibatum in futuris videbitur, & erit apertum toto orbi terrarium. Ex tunc aqua, nec ros coeli insulam nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere. Per multum tempus ante diem Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata. 
  Hucusque melkinus.

‘The Isle of Avalon, greedy for the death of pagans, more than all others in the world, for their entombment, decorated beyond all others by portentous spheres of prophecy, and in the future, adorned shall it be, by them that praise the most high. Abbadare, mighty in judgement, noblest of pagans, has fallen asleep there with 104,000 others (or 104 knights), among these, Joseph of Arimathea has found perpetual sleep in a marble tomb, and he lies on a two forked line, next to the southern angle of an oratory, where the wattle is prepared above the mighty maiden and in the place of the 13 spheres.
For Joseph has with him in his sarcophagus two white and silver vessels, filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus and when his sarcophagus is uncovered, it will be seen whole and undisturbed, and will be opened to the whole world.
Thenceforth those who dwell in that noble isle, will lack neither water nor the dew of heaven. For a long while before the day of judgment (
ludioialem) in Josaphat, open shall these things be and declared to the living’, thus far Melkin.

There are many variations on how this can be translated, but this seems to be an alternative generally accepted gist, that makes some sense also;

The Isle of Avalon, with greed for the death of pagans, before all others in the world, for the entombment of them all. Decorated beyond all others by the chanting spheres of prophecy and for all time to come, adorned shall it be by them that praise the Most High.
Abbadare mighty in saphat, noblest of pagans, has fallen on sleep with 104 other knights
Among these Joseph of Arimathea has found perpetual sleep in a marble tomb and he lies on two forked line next to the southern angle of an oratory, where the wattle is prepared above the mighty maiden and where the  aforesaid 13 spheres rest. For Joseph has with him in his sarcophagus two vessels white and silver, filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus. When his sarcophagus is discovered, it will be seen whole and untouched, And will be opened to the whole world. Thenceforth those who dwell in that noble Isle will lack neither water nor the dew of heaven for a long time before the day of judgment in Josaphat and
open shall these things be and declared to the living.

Rendered below is probably a more accurate translation (Melkin’s intended meaning), with reference to an abridgment of Ainsworth's English and Latin dictionary, by Robert Ainsworth, Thomas Morell and John Carey and the Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis by Domino Du Cange.
The first part of the prophecy we shall cover as a whole so the sense is not lost before we dissect each phrase. This first half of the prophecy is the instructional part, where pertinent facts are relayed as to the confirmation of the tombs location and entrance. The second half of the prophecy is assuredly divinely inspired as it speaks in Time with biblical metaphorical language and will be elucidated in the following commentary when we disentangle the various layers of meaning.

Island of Avalon, coveting the pagans in death, above all others (places) in the world for their entombment there, it is honoured by the circle of portentous prophesy (Avebury) and in the future will be adorned by those that give praise to the highest. The father’s pearl, (Jesus) mighty in judgement (or virtuous through new wine), the noblest of pagans, sleeps 104 miles from it (Avebury), by whom he recieved interment by the sea from Joseph named from Arimathea, and has taken his eternal rest there, and he lies on a line that is two forked between that and a meridian, in an  angle on a coastal Tor, in a crater, that was already prepared, (with powers from on high, as from an adorable maiden, up high in Ictis is the tomb and those dwelling there are at 13 degrees.) above which one can go at the extremity of the verge, high up in Ictis to the place they abide to the south at thirteen degrees.
Any commentator on this passage will find it impossible to transliterate, simply because Melkin is concealing information sub textually, word clues rendering the passage as a whole incapable of fluid translation. The puns and double meanings are carefully thought out, but obtuse by deflection. The only way to understand the difficulty he must have had, conveying his message in layers of meaning and grasp what he has achieved, is to evaluate his choice of words. What follows is some of the hidden sub text in meanings he was trying to convey. It is almost as if he was appealing through the layers to different ways of understanding. The task of elucidating becomes less muddled if we take each word separately or if inseparable from another, using the combination.
 Adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns seem to be intermingled without respect to tense, conjugation, case or declention and one may be lacking other scribal clues such as capitals or punctuation which are now missing.  There is evidence also within the text that words are split, which leads one to consider that these splits, may be interchangeable with other root words and thus a cipher could be disentangled if an original copy was extant.
So that we might discover the mind-set of Melkin, let us briefly transliterate what he was trying to convey in his riddle and manifest at the same time how his mind worked. Melkin formulates his prophecy in a combination of blurred Latin incorporating Teutonic and low Latin, purposely entangled double entendres, sometimes leaving little to be comprehended from the text that has survived. If one adds to this muddle any scribal changes made at Glastonbury, we are left with a collection of meaningless ‘word strings’, in effect rendering Melkin’s intended riddle as mute through the ages as it has remained.
The most powerful thing about this prophecy now we have understood, is the latent truth that it holds, and its ability to have survived down through the centuries while muted, to convey its intended message, a message of mystery and expectation that has entered the psyche of the British people and will be responsible for changing the outward expression of religion throughout the world.

Insula Aualonis avida funere paganorum:
·  island of Avalon, where both Arthur and Joseph are said to be buried, coveting (guarding preciously) pagans in death.
·  Avide; an adverb or avidus, an adjective-Greedy, Hungry or Covetous. The sense that Melkin portrays by use of this word is essentially, ‘not relinquishing’, nor ‘releasing’ (until the appointed time); The Island as a custodial guardian.
·  Funere; from funero, funera, etc, giving funeral, to bury or of a dead body.
·  Paganorum; from paganus, a man of the country or peasant.  ‘pagan,’ in classical Latin "villager, rustic, civilian, but in the medieval religious sense not Christian-of the old religion. The word Pagan has many connotations and could mean, not of Britain.  Overall a very difficult sentence to cobble together, possibly rendering the sense of a pagan island, rather than the bodies of pagans buried there.  The pagan island scenario would concur in conjunction with Ley Lines, and would indicate that Melkin was aware of the existence of the Ley Line system and the island's inter-relation with Avebury , Montacute  and the Lyonesse line.  This word string also could give a sense of pagan island that is guardian over those buried, and the ‘pre ceteris’ refers to their pre-eminence in all the world or alternatively it could be referring to the island, being covetous of the bodies in front of the rest of the world. Island of Avalon – hungering after (looking after, happy to be taking care of), being covetous of the buried occupants that are not from this island of Britain, before the entire world, (until the world is ready).  As the reader will understand shortly, Melkin’s use of the word ‘sperulatis or sperulis’, twice in this prophecy, is rendered with two completely different meanings, even though Melkin ostensibly refers back to its first meaning as being the same as its second use, by employing the word ‘supradictis’ (aforesaid).  So it is with the word ‘paganorum’ in the sense that it is used here as possibly being a pagan island (part of the old religion), yet the second use of the word after Abbadare, has a completely different sense. Remember that Melkin is directing our thoughts toward an Island in the true sense of the word (unlike Glastonbury) and this island is at the river Avon. Presumably this was the rivers name when Melkin was alive but the etymology of Avon is ‘river’, thus the explanation of so many ‘River Avons’ in Britain.  Another ruse that could have been employed by Melkin using the word paganorum, is in direct reference to the Pyramids at Glastonbury. These were step pyramids with writing on each step which most probably were of ancient antiquity but had been recently covered since the Saxon invasion and through centuries with the names of Saxons, as an attempt to denigrate a much older temple. Much like the British, the Saxons were hardly pyramid builders themselves and this could have been one of many misleading hints supplied by Melkin that Avalon was where the pagan pyramids were.
pre ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum omnium:
·  pre ceteris; gives the sense, before others or before the rest,
·  in orbe ; in the globe, planet or world, giving the sense of pre-eminence.
·  ad sepulturam ; from sepultura, giving a burial site or sepulchre.
·  eorum ; of them, or their.
·  omnium ; of all.
The sentence has generally been translated as: ‘at the burial of them all will be decorated (from decorata), beyond the others in the world’, which of course makes difficult reading.  The most likely sentence would be, ‘ their burial site is honoured above all others in the world’, as one is honoured in receipt of a decoration. This in fact, is confirming what later directions indicate,  that the sepulchre is on the island and is accounted above all others (places) in the world or there is no greater tomb (of importance). Melkin refers to the sepulchre twice in conjunction with the word ‘orbe or orbi terrarum’ (around the world), thus indicating, what we expect to be a global event, having global ramifications on the tombs unveiling.
sperulis prophecie uaticinantibus decorate:
Sperulis: Firstly let us look at the etymology of the word ‘pearl’.  The Arabic language called it a ‘dar’, a term which was then translated by the Greeks as "Pinna's stone", thus identifying its origin from the Mediterranean pearl mollusks.  The pearl is also referred to as "pirula" or "perula" in Latin texts, probably because of its spherical (sphaerula, pronounced "sperula") or pear-like shape. Also ‘perla’ is formed from ‘perula’ for ‘sperula’ the diminutive of sphaera. A more probable origin is that the word is formed from the Latin pirum as suggested by Diez in allusion to the pear shaped form of the pearl. Du Cange in volume five says that the extremity of the nose was called ‘pirula nasi’ from its resemblance to the form of a pearl. But ‘pirus’ which surely was not unknown by Melkin was used to denote a “boundary stone made in a pyramidal shape”.  Du Cange says also, this seems to have been the origin of the singular expression ‘pirula nasi’ as being something at the extremity and probably Melkin’s allusion to Avalon acting as a marker in our Pyramidal shape.  From Du Cange ‘sperula’ is given as; ‘parva rotunditas volubilis, sicut solet, in sphæræ modum,’-- round compass, of a small volume, as is usually the manner of a sphere. The word is used twice, once as ‘sperulis’ as in this instance and once as ‘sperulatis’ secondarily, both of them having different meanings. The meaning here though is in direct reference to Avebury stone circle.

·  Prophecie; that which is foretold in the future by a prophet.
·  Vaticinantibus; giving prediction, soothsaying, prophecy or portent from vaticinari from ‘vates’ meaning a prophet + canere to foretell. However this could be Melkin’s way of saying what is located in this sepulchre will be against the Vatican i.e. anti-Vatican.  It should not be forgotten that Jesus knew exactly what his mission entailed and the suffering (proved by the Shroud) that he was about to endure and was not about to be dissuaded from it by Peter, and said to him "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." The Roman Church is built upon Peter and in no way is peter at fault but Jesus knew that the Popes would usurp his legacy for this world and not the heaven that Jesus spoke of . The Grail keepers would certainly have precedence before Papal pretensions passing from Josephes to Brons and could be considered another line of succession or Branch other than the self-proclaiming imposter of Jesus’ inheritance. The Roman Pontiff the first Bishop of Christendom deriving his claim by hypothesis from St. Peter, who only by Roman self-profession was ‘episcopus primus et Pontifex primordialis’. Melkin knew of what lay in this tomb and therefore was aware of the inaccuracies peddled by the Roman Church.  Melkin understood the Divine plan and of the true meaning of Jesus’ reference to the Temple being rebuilt upon the third day (or within three days) and hence the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus three times being equatable with the three Grades to enlightenement. These three days are the grades of the Grail but we will come to this in ‘Time’. Are the words of Jesus ‘And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it,’ similar to the promise given to David from which the Church and Gentiles inherited. Is Christendom  and Islam along with the Jewish faith now to become like the Davidic line, to be the precursor of a global inheritance set forth in a Divine Plan by the God of Israel?  What is certain is that, without the Roman church most of the Globe would not be aware of the God of Israel.
·  Decorate from ‘decorates’ translating as, set forth or adorned.
This sentence is generally translated as ‘soothsaying spheres of prophecy or portentous circles of prophecy’.  It is essential to remember that Melkin is actually directing us on this quest from a starting place that is a stone circle namely Avebury.  His description of the circles or spheres having been ‘set forth or adorned’, might indicate that Melkin is referring directly to a stone circle. Stone circles were important to the ancients who were preoccupied with discerning the future. Melkin refers to stone circles as if they have a connection with man’s ability to predict or as if it is the circles themselves that have some impact on leading us to the tomb of Joseph through Ley lines. The irony of disentangling Melkin’s prophecy through our initial investigation into the ‘Perpetual Choirs’ and scribing circles on the landscape, gives rise to even more perplexity. Could Melkin’s sense be that, Avebury adorning the British landscape, from which Ley line's interconnect or thread through the tomb of Joseph, have some attribute or function in the foretelling of its discovery. The reader should not be too sceptical here as the two words following ‘sperulatis’ both impart a sense of future knowledge presently unknown. We must not dismiss the fact that Melkin has knowledge of the St. Michael Ley line; so is he imparting to us through this statement that these stone circles have some effect on, or direct our thoughts for the future collective benefit. No one today has an idea of the stone circles proper function, but recognising that Melkin probably understood the use of stone circles; is he implying some sort of telepathic system ordering the thoughts of the collective?  Melkin knew of the existence of the St. Michael Ley line, yet we have only recently rediscovered it. We should not ignore the use of two words which essentially mean ‘looking into the future’. So are the circles physical attributes on the landscape for channelling thought from individual communities or interlinking them in some way as their prevalence and conformity of shape seems to indicate relative functionality?

et in futurum ornate erit altissimum laudantibus:
·    in futurum; although being an obvious reference to the future, it is also a reference to ‘Biblical Time’ and is reiterated as a reference to the same time as ‘ex tunc’ in the penultimate sentence of the prophecy, which is indicating the thousand years of time from the discovery of Joseph's tomb, the day of Jehosaphat.  This is a sure indication that Melkin has understood ‘Biblical Time’ i.e. time, Times and Half of that time (or the Times Halved). We shall explain this concept in a later chapter  as it appears in Daniel 7:12 , 12:7 and Revelation 12:14
·  Ornate; adorned, arrayed, crowned with or decreed, in reference to the island of Avalon.
·  altissimum laudantibus, rendering praise to the most high.  The sentence giving the impression that when Joseph's tomb is discovered, the Island of Avalon will be arrayed by the mass of new converts, giving praise to God.  This sense does concur with the final part of the prophecy that indicates that Joseph's sepulchre will be opened to the whole world, giving an impression that the island will become a pilgrimage and a new religious re-awakening will occur globally on the discovery of Jesus’s body.  There will be a new cognitive view of the world order and an elevated understanding amongst spiritual Jews that the living and the dead are bound by a Divine plan. Those pilgrims visiting the Island of Avalon, giving praise to the most high. This could also be a reference to Britain rather than Avalon specifically as the last sentence of the prophecy infers.

Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum nobilissimus:
 
·  Abbadare, has given rise to much speculation about the word’s provenance and meaning, but it would seem to be a reference to Jesus, meaning “The father's pearl”, (Abba- father, Dar- pearl from the Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew).  As is intonated in the Grail romances, added to Joseph's connection with the importation of the Holy Grail, this reference would seem to indicate the presence also of Jesus's body within the island of Avalon. Joseph leaves Jerusalem, and arrives at Sarras, taking with him the Holy Graal, which is carried inside an ark or box. This refers metaphorically to Jesus, specifically with reference to a pearl being formed by the flesh just as it is grown in an oysters shell. It is formed in our body and its beautiful and precious substance remains long after the flesh that made it, has died. This is a profound reference to the spirit being a precious object born by something organic, yet remaining after the flesh has died. Not a metal, nor a gem but ‘a pearl of great price,’-a spiritual soul created through God’s divine plan as in Mathew 13:46.  As the reader will be aware the word ‘Abbadare’ would have been used by Melkin to avoid direct reference to Jesus's body to avoid adverse reaction from fundamentalist sensibilities.  The Holy Grail, having a direct connection with Jesus, but in no way a substitute for his body; the references to the Grail in the romances being of a different order involving a spiritual quest, the likes of which cannot be found by searching or by hastening its occurrence in a lifetime. The Holy Grail is a derivative of the Latin ‘gradus’ meaning by degree', 'by stages', applied to a dish from a transliteration by Helinand. This dish was brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal in the Chrétien de Troyes poem. Essentially the pearl of great price is Jesus through whom by the will of his Father spiritual enlightenement is attained, hence ‘the Father’s pearl’
·  Potens; powerful, mighty, of great virtue.
·        Saphat; by most commentators is translated as ‘judgement’ derived from its reference to Jehosaphat in the last sentence of the prophecy rendering, ‘Mighty in judgement’ from Jehosaphat’s meaning as ‘judgement day’ or God’s judgement. Shaphat in Hebrew translating as judge or judgement . Melkin could possibly be giving us a double entendre in ‘Sapa’, translating as ’New wine’. ’potens in saphat’ could then give the sense of “virtuous through new wine”, deriving its sense from having been made perfect through the Holy Spirit.  The most obvious translation is from ‘potens’ meaning also ‘pre-eminent’ or as Du Cange has it, ‘having pre-eminence’ rendering ‘having pre-eminence in the new wine’ which of course would be a precise description of Jesus as the pre-cursor to the New wine as in Mark 2:22;  ‘no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined’.   No, Jesus pours new wine into new wineskins and thus the passage through the Grades. (Also in Mathew 9:17 & Luke 5:37).  Most attempts at translation have rendered this word string as, ’Abbadare, mighty in judgement, most noble of the pagans’. One possible sense would be, if we can assume that Melkin is aware of the Zerah connection and his reference to ‘paganorum’ is the old religion or even Jewish; ‘Jesus preeminent in the new wine, the noblest of the Jews’. The most poignant transliteration of ‘potentem in Saphat’ should be understood as ‘he who’s might is in spiritual awakening’ which we shall see in connection with Jehosaphat.

cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi accepit:
·        cum centum et quatuor; translating as ‘with one hundred and four’.
·         Milibus; confusing most translators into thinking its meaning is derived from ‘Mille’, a thousand; but Melkin’s real intention is ‘mille passuum' which gives a thousand paces which equals one mile or miles even though he is referring to Nautical miles. The reader will remember the unit of nautical miles is used so that a unit of measurement correlates to a sixtieth of a degree; this same unit having been employed by the ancients.  The nautical knot only came into use in 1630 AD, but the ancients had sub divided the globe into degrees of a circle as was evident by Pytheas’s calculations.  Melkin was aware (being a geometer and astrologer) of this unit and probably named it after the Roman or statutory unit. The term was not commonly used but the Ancient Roman mile was 1,000 double paces, one-step with each foot, for about 4,860 feet, and there were many local variants, a modern statute mile measuring about 400 feet longer.
Most translations have used the word ‘Knight’s’ from the Latin word ‘Militus’ with the assumption that it refers to ‘the others’ that are said to be buried in Avalon. Other translators have opted for the word “saints” assuming a scribal error for 104. Some commentators, while not replacing the number, have assumed that a mistake has been made and that Melkin is referring to the 144 thousand saints that fall down, to give praise to God in Heaven in the Book of Revelation 7:4,14:1 & 14:3.  This misrepresentation has been highlighted by later interpolators as in the case of Capgraves ‘Nova Legenda Angliae’, which renders the sense of Melkin’s words to ‘milia dormientium accepit’ which has 104,000 sleeping with him, while some translators have added the word ‘Saints’.  In place of the common translation error rendering 104 thousand, Melkin is telling us that it is 104 nautical miles from Avebury to the Island of Avalon. This measurement is precisely 104 miles from a point just right of centre within the Avebury circle, to the ‘Huer’s hut’ on Burgh Island as seen in figure 25.  The Joseph line drawn from Avebury to the resting place of Joseph, confirmed by Father William Good as it passes directly over St. Michael’s Montacute.

Figure 24 Showing the Joseph line tangentially touching St. Michael’s hill Montacute. The Joseph line forming the acute angle of 13° at Avebury, between the St. Michael line and Mons Acutus (Montacute).

·         domiicionem ibi accepit; conveying the sense ‘took his sleep there or received his rest there’.  This sentence is usually translated as ‘Abbadare’, powerful in judgement, the most noble of the pagans took his sleep there with 104,000’. Obviously Melkin deliberately sets out his sentence to obfuscate, inserting the word ‘cum’ meaning ‘with’, so that ‘Abbadare’ is appearing to be taking his rest with 104,000 others, especially when the first words of the next sentence are ‘inter quos’ which translates as ‘among whom’.  The real information which Melkin is trying to convey here is that Joseph and Jesus are taking their rest there; 104 miles from the circle of prophecy, which is Avebury as seen in figure 25.
Inter quos ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum:
·         Inter quos; The usual translation of the sentence is: ’among these Joseph of Arimathea received eternal slumber in a marble tomb.  In the previous word string Melkin used ‘domiicionem ibi accepit’ and here he is using ‘cepit sompnum perpetuum’ immediately afterwards. Aware of Melkin’s cleverness and the fact that he is confounding normal thought processes, it would appear, as if he is clearly speaking of two different people. ‘Jesus received his rest there’ and ‘Joseph named from Arimathea took his perpetual sleep there’.  The word ‘Inter’ by most commentators is translated as ’among’ but Melkin has his derivative from ‘interrare’ "put in the earth, bury” or interr
·         amentum giving ‘to inter’.  ‘Inter quos’  most researchers have as ‘among whom’ but here Melkin is using a play on words and his meaning is ‘Interred’ or ‘Interred with whom’ also inferring two people.  The implication of this is; that it now establishes Abbadare as another separate subject and the translation becomes,’ interred with whom is Joseph, named from Arimathea taking his eternal slumber by the sea.


·         marmore  ‘Marmor’  translates as a marble stone or as ’the sea’; its derivative being the similarity of small wave motion in a calm water, giving the expression ‘a marbled sea’ and is also found in Ainsworth’s dictionary. It was said that King Arthur, when he was fictitiously found, was ‘not in a marble tomb’ to distinguish and confirm the monks find as ‘the other important body’  to be buried within the Glastonbury grounds.
·         cepit sompnum perpetuum: The repetition of ‘dormicionem’ as referring to Abbadare, then immediately followed by ‘sopnum perpetuum’, referring directly to Joseph of Arimathea, does clearly indicate that Abbadare and Joseph are two different entities especially since the mighty in Judgement is referring to Jesus. This example of Melkin’s direct obfuscation gives us an idea into the mind-set of the man.  He has set out to misdirect his readers with this pun on ‘inter’ while sub textually informing us that Jesus has received his rest there.  This he has done by not offending Christian sensibilities during the intervening years until the present, while at the same time in the same sentence, preparing his readers for the appointed time. It is strange to contemplate that Joseph has buried Jesus twice in a ‘hewn tomb’ that is owned by Joseph himself. Once with a ‘fasciola’ as related by the Gospel accounts and the second time with a ‘doubled fasciola’ which of course fits with the description of the Shroud of Turin which as we shall see shortly suddenly appeared on the world stage just after the Templars had visited the Isle of Avalon. As we have uncovered already, Melkin wrote the book of the Grail. The original source for Melkin’s book of the Grail was obviously Joseph. Joseph brought the Grail to Britain and so affirms that he was responsible for depositing Jesus’ relics in Avalon before being buried there himself.
Et iacet in linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum angulum oratorii:
·         Et iacet in linea this is the sentence most frequently quoted in reference to Melkin’s prophecy, the usual translation being, ‘and he lies on a two forked line next to the southern corner of the oratory’. Et iacet in linea; renders ‘and he (or they) lie(s) in a line’.  As all commentators have previously suspected correctly, the line thus referred to is an indicator to where the tomb is located and the root cause of all misdirection has been the word ‘oratorii’.
·         Bifurcata; to bifurcate literally means ‘to divide into two branches or forks’. Melkin becomes remarkably un-obtuse when he gets to his specific instructions about the bifurcated line. All translators agree that ‘he lies on a bifurcated line’ but Melkin obviously felt confident that this information would be hard to unlock. Without a St. Michael ley line and a point at which the two lines cross inside Avebury, the information given quite clearly, would be irrelevant. Melkin also could be assured that Joseph would not be associated with Neolithic stone circles or Ley lines.
·         Juxta; translates as nearby, next to, close to, bordering upon or beside.
·         meridianum angulum; A ‘meridian’ is half of a great circle that passes through the centre of the earth at the North and South poles; as if half a vertical plane on the globe, giving constant longitude. It could also be described as an imaginary line of half of a great circle route from pole to pole. Melkin is clearly trying to show the reader that the Joseph line is ‘Imaginary’ or conceptual much like a true meridian line only becomes real when plotted.  It is interesting to note that Capgrave, Leland and Hardyng say that Melkin was an astrologer but it is John Bale that tells us that Melkin, wrote the book called ‘De Arturii mensa rotunda’ while at the same time informing us that he was a geometer also. It would seem then that the mention by Bale of these two topics (the book, then the observation about geometry) would indicate Bale saw either Grail table geometry or landscape geometry in the book he was referring to.  It seems probable that at some stage this book, copy or fragment, existed at Glastonbury. The information about Montacute as a geometrical marker for the Joseph line could only have reached Father Good by two sources; Henry of Blois as already discussed or out of this possible geometrical source that Bale refers to.
Melkin was well aware of what a ‘meridian’ was but was possibly hinting to the Lyonesse line as a Horizontal Meridian, like a line of latitude. Most probably though the reference is giving the clue to look for a line that is similar to those found on a Map. Although lines of longitude (the truest definition of a Meridian) were not easy to calculate on a map at this stage and were largely responsible for their distortion, it clearly shows Melkin’s great grasp of technical issues such as these, through his precise surveying Data. ‘Meridianus’, in Ainsworth, is described as ‘pertaining to noon or noontide’, referring to the Sun’s change in longitude at its daily zenith. Ainsworth also has another translation which gives ‘Southern Meridional’ which would only be an accurate description if viewed from the northern hemisphere, so it is technically not a definitive translation. This somewhat oblique definition would be derived from the declination of the sun to the horizon viewed and defined by observers north of the equator.  However, it is from this translation that most commentators have derived ‘Southern angle’ from Melkin's text.  It is also worth noting that ‘meridianum anglum’ could be translated as an ‘English Meridian’; surely a pun not unobserved by Melkin.  It would seem, however, that Melkin is referring to the angle created at Burgh Island between the Lyonesse line and the Joseph line that runs from Burgh Island to Avebury as shown in figure 25. Essentially the word ‘meridianum’ is conveying the sense to us, of an imaginary line and this was surely Melkin’s intent. It could however be a word that he used to substitute for another descriptive word, known in his day, which would convey a sense of a Ley Line. The recent nomenclature of ‘Ley or Ley line’ must have had an earlier appellation before the knowledge of the system was lost and it is apparent that Melkin knew of its existence.
Again this brings us back to the question; was Melkin aware of the functions of the Ley line system, or did he just construct the riddle from geometric information given in another text that he sourced; that may have been old Judaic, from Zerah’s descendents and the Hebraic supplied by Joseph.  This presents a confusing set of circumstances where a Megalithic site is referenced by a Monk who lived anywhere from the fifth to the eighth century AD, that draws on Kabbalistic material; who writes a Grail book about the steps or grades to the temple ,thereby manifesting his understanding of a divine plan. Not only does he have knowledge of historical fact relating to Jesus and Joseph, four to seven Hundred years after they were buried in Avalon but also is aware that Avalon exists within a network of Leys, part of which was built before Zerah’s offspring came to England and was built by early Megalithic Man. Did Melkin really have an angel deliver this information as Helinand says, if so, was it Michael the Archangel?
We arrive back at the same circuitous dilemma of whether Melkin was the actual surveyor and the reader will only be able to make his own judgement at the penultimate sentence of the prophecy, where Melkin is giving directions within the local vicinity of the island. From this it becomes clear that he visited the Island upon which probably stood a small monastic building (rumoured to have existed by locals) built before the St. Michael Chapel referred to by Camden (circa 1610). By 1680 there is no mention of a chapel and by 1752 it was recorded as a ruin and brings us back to the point that it appears to have been purposely dismantled. This leads to another puzzle, who did the dissembling of the St. Michael churches and who tried their hardest to hide Father Good’s message from Rome by eradicating Maihews reference and is this group, society or order still actively suppressing through the ages? The most intriguing puzzle (second only to Melkin and his riddle) is the Megalithic usage of sites and Ley’s and the surveying of such a construct being conveyed to Melkin. Was this knowledge through Neolithic Zerah down to Joseph then passed on to Melkin over a period of two thousand years or even longer? If the Saxons had not invaded Britain would this information about Ley lines and stone circles be widely known today.


·         Oratori; from ‘oratorium’ in late Latin meaning a small or private chapel of prayer which would fit the description of the wattle church or the later wooden clad building in Glastonbury.  The question of whether Melkin’s prophecy has had scribal changes will seem to be an unanswerable question. Melkin has most emphatically set us a riddle but did he write the word ‘oratori’, or was this a later interpolation. The reason we should ask such a question is because if he wanted to keep our attentions at Glastonbury why did he write about the Isle of Avalon and how could he be assured in the seventh century that the Monks would  eventually change Glastonbury into Avalon.  Although his manuscripts were read by several chroniclers at Glastonbury, we do not know if he was a Glastonbury acolyte and therefore would have wished to concentrate the gaze of the quester toward the grounds of Glastonbury, but it seems logically highly unlikely. However when dealing with Melkin logic is the last attribute to use, to peel back the layers on every level of understanding.  We do not know if he set out deliberately to misdirect enquirers from locating the island of Avalon by confining their search to Glastonbury,  but the convoluted arguments involved to elucidate such an answer cannot be followed through with logic, as we take into account such concepts associated with the Grail as ‘Appointed time’.  It would seem that following the word ‘oratori’ with ‘cratibus’, which all commentators have translated as ‘wattled’, as in the construction of the first church; is too much of a coincidence, for it not to have been part of Melkin’s original text however if we start on this investigation we will be none the wiser. Cratibus fits descriptive clues in the local vicinity of Burgh Island and so does ‘ora tor’.  It is as if Melkin would have us blindfolded and pointed in the wrong direction and begs the question; just how difficult should a riddle be, to be solvable?  However Melkin’s original text could have read ‘orari’ from Orarius –giving ‘sea shore’ and an addition of the letters ‘t’ and ‘o’ to the middle of the word by a Glastonbury scribe would have rendered the word ‘oratori’.  This is a possibility having already seen the interpolations and fabrications that Glastonbury perpetrated, to locate Joseph's burial place within the Abbey grounds.  The best solution would be that the Latin word ‘ora’ and ‘tor’ from ‘torus’ were split.  ‘Ora’ translates as ‘the border or coast of a country; particularly the sea coast or maritime district’, while the Latin word ‘oralis’ translates as ‘mouth, entrance or mouth of the River’.  The word  tor’ from the Latin ‘torus’ meaning ‘a knoll or high mound of earth’, or from Old English torr; a ‘tor’ being a high rock, lofty hill or tower, possibly from Celtic, or Old Welsh, meaning a hill or a craggy outcrop of rock on the summit of a hill.  If Melkin set out to combine these words which gives the real sense of where Joseph's body lay i.e. ‘a Tor by the coast’; then the word string ‘oratorii cratibus preparatis’ has rendered the sense of a ‘hill at the mouth of the river’ or ‘Tor by the sea’ which has been pre-readied (this could either refer to the tomb which used to be the tin depository or the island within the ley line network), and which is interwoven (Ley Lines tangentially passing nodal points) in the Ley Line system.  If Melkin’s intention was to give us the sense of a tower (dedicated to the Virgin Mary) by the sea, this would admit to a previous building (maybe part of a monastic building) before the other St. Michael chapel was constructed  that existed prior to 1307. ‘Oratorii cratibus preparatis’ does lead the inquirer to conclude it relates to the wattled oratory in Glastonbury yet the ‘prepared’ in that sense has little relevance.  As an ‘oratori’ is a religious hymn and an oratorium is a place of prayer, there appears an obvious association with choir, thus an association with the Perpetual Choirs, of which, as we have seen Glastonbury is undisputed.  The translations that have written ‘chanting spheres of prophecy’, when ‘vaticinantibus’ has little to do with chanting; is realistically just a case of the mind associating ‘oratori’ (religious hymn) with church (wattled) where monks chant; giving rise to an association with ‘Perpetual Choirs’ singing an ‘oratori’ (religious hymn).  However it was this association of spheres, chanting and perpetual choirs that initiated our geometric structure.  The association of a geometric design, namely a sphere, coupled with religious hymns that would be sung in an oratory, has led many researchers to associate the Glastonbury choir with ‘Perpetual Choirs’ of the Triads.  This all combining and adding credibility as to Joseph’s burial site being within the grounds of the Abbey and subsequently enforced by geometric information supplied on the bronze plaque. This plaque as we have covered was purportedly to save for posterity’s sake, directions to where the Choir of “Yeald Chirche” was once located, before it succumbed to fire.  These directions were made to seem relevant to the shapes that were inscribed on the floor in lead that were now lost. This again as we have seen, was a gambit by Monkish acolytes to establish a proximity to a holy relic that had never existed on the site but we must not forget it was William of Malmesbury who first mentions the business of wattle. What is the relationship of this man’s ‘ut ferunt’ in reference to Joseph on the one hand, then Joseph’s wattled church being described by him on the other and  the corruptions of association we have seen so much of in the intervening years between when Melkin wrote and the obvious associations made from Melkin’s prophecy regarding ‘cratibus’ and Joseph. ‘Oratorii cratibus preparatis’  would seem to be best translated as ‘a tor on the coast with a prepared crater’

Cratibus preparatis,
·         Cratibus:crates’ from which we derive the modern word ‘crate’ (originally from a wicker basket for transporting) gives the Latin form ‘cratibus’, which translates as ‘a bundle of rods wattled together’ literally, wicker-work or hurdle, wattled or interwoven. ‘Cratibus’ as an adjective, literally means wicker, but ‘cratitius’ translated means wattle and daubed’. It would translate as ‘Wicker,’ as in woven strands of straight poles giving ‘hurdle’. This could be a play on words from ‘Crater’, a cup or bowl, goblet … a platter for meat, with an obvious association to the Grail stories and the Grail's association with Joseph, both rumoured to be buried in the Isle of Avalon. ‘Cratis’ gives us a ‘grill’ as in rods or wood interwoven. The monks of Glastonbury could have been trying to perpetuate an association with ‘wattle’ just to tie in with Melkin’s prophecy or indeed this was the construction method and a small scribal change establishing a direct link to Glastonbury. Melkin on one level could be referring to the wicker like way that ley lines have been interwoven throughout the countryside, ‘serpentinely’ weaving and tangentially touching the nodal markers on the landscape. Because of the words proximity to ‘Supradictis’ it would look as if Melkin could on one plane, be using the word in the sense of Crater which of course is a major feature on the Island. The author is unable to elaborate further as this gives direct instruction as to the tunnel entrance.
·         Preparatis  from ‘parate’, set purpose, by design, giving ‘pre parate’ predesigned or Paratum ‘a thing made ready’ The literal interpretation on one level could refer to the power that has been interwoven and prepared ‘aforetime’ from on high (by God).This could have been Melkin’s understanding of the old Neolithic networks supernatural power in as much as we are still ignorant today of its effect; yet at least he knew of the existence of Ley lines and may have had complete or partial understanding of their function. Melkin could also be using the term ‘Crater’ to describe a cave or cavern that was pre prepared that refers to the Ictis Vault. In the Glastonbury scenario the ‘preparatis’ is hard to rationalise but assuredly the cave was pre-readied because without the cave Ictis’ function of an Emporium would be redundant and the Island would not be specifically pointed to as the place where the tin was taken to. Now we know that Melkin’s puzzle works on many planes and if we use the word ‘potenter’ as meaning ‘effectually or Judiciously’ from the next line in conjunction with cratibus preparatis and super potentem adorandam uirginem, we could contrive the meaning ‘The Tor by the sea with a pre-prepared crater over which effectually is the Adorable Virgin’. There is a long standing tradition on the Island that a monastery once existed, so when Melkin wrote his riddle, did he know of a previous building dedicated to the Virgin Mary, situated over the Crater before the dedication of a chapel to St. Michael after 1307 AD.  One could even get the sense of ’a crate containing a preparation’ from ‘praeparatio’ and  from ‘crateris’ a receptacle or trough with a preparation, referring to the embalming fluid contained within. This will become clear when we investigate the cedar embalming fluid surrounding Jesus’ body .There is however on another level a completely different meaning that can be extricated specifically relevant to the tunnels entrance.  This seems to be the real clue to the Tombs entrance with specific localised instructions assuming in Melkins day there was a monastery on Burgh Island which becomes clear in a later chapter.
super potentem adorandam uirginem supradictis:
·         super, rendering above, upward or on high,
·         potentem, translates as mighty, powerful or being able ,having power or being capable, but it also has the sense of potential i.e  reaching  or attaining
·         adorandam , meaning adorable or venerable. ‘ad’ by itself translating as; on, at, to  or towards is directional. If we look at splitting the word into ad orandam we could be looking at the word orandam, giving ‘to pray to’ or be pleaded with, and also means to pray as in this usage ‘ad orandum vero et communicandum’ which translates as ‘to communicate truth and to pray’.  Is Melkin  sending us toward where one prays ? ‘Ora’ as we have seen translates as ‘by the sea coast’, but also has another sense giving ‘extremity, brim or edge’, so with ‘virge’ is this Melkin’s meaning ‘extremity of the verge’.
·         Virginem derived from ‘Virga’ giving virginalis with an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary. ‘adorandam virginem’ means “The adorable virgin or maiden”. This sentence essentially is intonating precise local instructions to the entrance of the vault, giving its relation in the local vicinity to the crater and where an old church used to be situated.  Perhaps on another level altogether and in reference to Ley lines, Melkin has knowledge or might be suggesting that, whatever the ‘praeparatis, super potentem’, the ‘pre-pared power from on high’ consists of; it is either entrapped or emanates from Avebury the A and the V subliminally indicating Avebury but this is dependant upon Avebury having that appellation in the 600’s.  Diodorus Siculus who leads us to Ictis in the preceding chapters, bears witness that:  “Opposite to the coast of Celtic Gaul there is an island in the ocean, (Britain) not smaller than Sicily, lying to the north… tradition says that Latona was born there and for this reason, the inhabitants venerate Apollo (the Sun God) more than any other god. They are, in a manor, his priests (Druids), for they daily celebrate him with continual song (Perpetual Choirs) and pay him abundant honours… In this island, there is a magnificent grove of Apollo (St Michael Ley line), and a remarkable temple of the spherical form (Avebury), adorned with many consecrated gifts” (Ley lines).  Latona had to give birth to Apollo and Artemis the twins of Zeus on an Island not accounted as land and not attached to the sea floor; Procopius’s ‘Otherworld’ which existed in Britain.
However, it would seem as if Melkin is giving direct instructions as to where the entrance to the sepulchre is. If we split ‘adorandam’ into ‘ad orandam’ it renders ‘in prayer’ if we use the root ‘oran’ it gives again the coast or brim or extremity or edge as before. ‘Vergere’ gives slope or incline which is a multi-levelled instruction.  The English word ‘verge’ has the same derivative root of virga which gives virgin or verga.  If we attempt this word stringsuper potentem adorandam uirginem supradictis’  as a whole whilst splitting ‘supradictis’ into ‘supra ad ictis’, we get the sense ’upwards one is able at the edge of the verge up high in Ictis’.
supradictis : Normally translates as ‘aforementioned’. Melkin is clever here with the word ‘supradictis’ to make it look like he is relating to the ‘sperulatis’, as if ‘supradictis’ is referring to the ‘aforementioned sperulis’ in the early part of the prophecy. ‘supradictis’ translates as ‘spoken of, said before, mentioned above or aforesaid’, as most translators have it, and could even be word play on supra-dictis and could be rendered as  “foretold from above”.  As the reader will be aware, Melkin is not only naming the fabled island of Ictis, the very same island the prophecy is about; but ‘supra-ad-ictis’; informing us that Joseph and Jesus are ‘high up in Ictis’. ‘Supra’ rendering,above ,aloft or on high. This may be an indicator of Melkin’s confidence at having entangled the enquirer sufficiently or could even be a creeping anxiety that the intended purport of his message may never reach posterity with all its subtlety. However he was cognisant of the fact that Ictis was Avalon and is responsible for changing the name as well as obscuring both. We will investigate further in relation to Leonardo Da Vinci, the subliminal effects and the way that words are used to allude to concealed meanings. The most striking revelation about this obvious reference to Ictis is; how does Melkin know it was called Ictis? Had Melkin indeed read the Greek and Roman accounts of Ictis and deduced himself, that the place is synonymous with Joseph’s burial place or was the history explained in a manuscript that expressly gave an account of Joseph’s connection with Ictis. The latter seems most probable as even in Melkin’s era Ictis’ whereabouts was lost to classical chroniclers.  Even if Melkin did witness Arthur’s burial and saw Jesus’s remains, there would have to be some form of writing that related the islands historical name six hundred years after Joseph’s burial. It is this body of writing that would appear to be part of the source for Melkin’s Book of the Grail. It would also seem that the Templars that built the St. Michael church design returned the Book of the Grail to the sarcophagus; otherwise this information would have come to light. Melkin’s Book of the Grail was deposited in the sepulchre when the Turin Shroud was removed and shortly thereafter made public. The treasure and the Ark were also deposited at the same time which we will understand shortly.
However now we get precise instructions as to the entrance of the old tin vault if we take the meaning of ‘cratibus praeparatis’ having a dual meaning in that it applies to the external crater dug by the original operators of Ictis so that they could get their cart to the tunnel entrance leading to the storage vault: ‘cratibus praeparatis, super potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis’  meaning’ in a prepared crater at reaching the verge toward where one prays up high in Ictis.   
sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim:
·         sperulatis:  Most translators have rendered this word string ‘where the aforesaid 13 spheres rest’ but with the word ‘sperulatis’, Melkin has set out to baffle the reader. If the enquirer is unable to resolve this last clause of the directional part of the riddle, one is not going to obtain the direction of 13 degrees from the St. Michael Ley line through Montacute to Burgh Island along the Joseph line. Melkin plays on the original use of the word ‘sperulis’, from which we derived sphere, which at the beginning of the prophecy related to the stone circle of Avebury.  Melkin then refers back to ‘sperulis’ by using the word “aforementioned” trying to convince the reader that the two words ‘sperulis’ and ‘sperulatis’ have one and the same meaning. However his use of the word for the second time has not the same sense as in circle or sphere, but rather in its composition, being comprised of degrees. Melkin surely meant ‘sperulatis’ as a diminutive form and of the symbol for degrees i.e. 13°; the symbol being a small circle. By the association with a sphere or circle being comprised of degrees and the fact we are dealing with geometric instructions, it is possible Melkin imagined that one would associate the word with its composition or definition and derive from it the enumerated angle. It might appear that Melkin has used a play on words assuming that the reader would know that ‘speraulus’ means ‘to be looked for’.
·         The word locum is rendered as ‘where’ by most commentators but this same word also translates as ‘tomb or sepulchre’ in Ainsworth.  Locum generally understood by translators as locus, refers to a place such as the location or place being discussed.
·         The word habitantibus rendering to ‘dwell’ or ‘abide’, seems very out of place in this sentence and it would be no surprise if ‘habit’ and ‘antibus’ were split to give the sense of ‘dwelling opposite’ at 13 degrees or some such contortion. We could arrive at ‘antiboreus’ which translates as ‘looking towards the north’ or from ‘anticus’ translating as the fore part or southward.  It is only because habitantibus is unusual especially in this section of the directional part of the prophecy that it would seem that the word needs to be split; so we could have the ‘locum’ as a sepulchre abiding in the fore part or southward of the 13 degrees, or those that dwell in the tomb are looking toward the north to the 13 degree angle. The reader can see how accurate Melkin has been by carrying out a simple trigonometric example by drawing a line at right angles down from the point at which the Ley lines cross each side of Glastonbury tor and this gives the precise angle of 12.838568 degrees, which is only 9 ‘seconds’ out and considering the fact that Melkin is trying to conceal that he is referring to degrees, can be accounted as a rounded up 13 degrees.

·         Tredecim: translating as thirteen. Sperulatis may give the translation ‘degree’ by its relationship with a sphere. A sphere is made up of 360°, so Melkin is giving a visual  pun of the small circle that is the degree symbol because ‘Sperulatis’ is the diminutive form of Sperula. This is a novel yet apt description that the word conveys as long as the sense is understood, i.e. a tiny sphere or circle as the symbol used for degrees.  However the angle of 13° between the Joseph and St. Michael Ley Line is so precise that it could have no other meaning, but the 13 degrees as shown in figure 25. Without Google Earth this investigation into Melkin’s directions would be difficult in the extreme but it is oddly quaint that a crop circle nestles comfortably in the opposite angle to that indicating the 13 degrees just to the right of the Avebury circle as shown in figure 25.

Figure 25 Showing the 13° formed between the St. Michael Ley line and the Joseph line that ‘Bifurcate’ at Avebury.

Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta:
·         Habet enim secum, literally translates as ‘for he has with him’, ‘secus’ giving ‘nigh to’ or ‘with’. This sentence usually translates asJoseph has with him in the sarcophagus two vessels, white and silver, filled with the blood and sweat of the Prophet Jesus’. Melkin in this second-half of the prophecy seems to get less obtuse but his use of words indicates he is still supplying occult information. One assumes these days that the ‘duo fassula’ is synonymous with the Holy Grail, as indicated on the heraldic shield of Glastonbury.  But what was rendered as a singular ‘graal’ originally in the Grail stories was corrupted into two beer jug like vessels on the Glastonbury Arms.
·         Ioseph in sarcophago: in the sarcophagus or sepulchre or tomb, Joseph…. has with him.
·         Duo Fassula: two ‘fassula’, before the Grail stories were written, must have confused the monks when the singular Grail appeared around 1150AD. At least this might have prevented a falsified find of Joseph’s remains, being totally unable to produce something so sacred as the blood and sweat of their Lord.  It is not clear if there is an exact translation of ‘fassula’ and it seems a direct obfuscation. Commentators have assumed that the Grail is a receptacle and it would seem that even Helinand is trying to rationalise three threads; 1) two vessels that he must have heard about. 2) The degrees, steps or grades that the word Graal suggested with his Latin derivatives. 3) The processional taking place in the Grail story while sitting at meat. Thus he came up with the etymology of a platter as a serving dish for meat.
In the Glastonbury case, we are led to believe that it holds two liquids, blood and sweat. So from the Latin ‘vas’, a vase, commentators have assumed ‘vassula. This sounds like ‘vascula’ which, as the reader will know is a vessel and therefore would seem the obvious deduction.  As Melkin has proved to be accurate up to this point in the information that he is providing us, probably from a much older text, it would seem that the duality of the Grail as an object within the sarcophagus is more likely than the singularity of the Grail in the romances as the sense of Graal.  In the Romances as we have covered, it has been largely misunderstood.  As we have discussed, Melkin was the consolidator of that tradition in the Book of the Grail and, as a religious rite will have referred to it in the singular.  This will be elucidated later, when we will see that the Graal from Gradatim are the degrees or stages of spiritual enlightenment in ‘Biblical Time’, rather than the physical object or receptacles containing the blood and sweat. A ‘fasciola’ however, is a bandage and a ‘fasceola’ is a swaddling cloth or a cloth swathe.
·         alba translates as the word  ‘Pearl’ in Latin but also has its translation as the word ‘white’ by most translators. In fact it directly refers to a ‘white garment’. This of course would confirm the assumption of the white grave cloth otherwise known as the Turin Shroud.
·         argentea from ‘argenteus’ meaning ‘of silver’ also translating as ‘clear or bright’ but usually to do with silver, a mass of bullion, coin or money. It also has another meaning of plated or ‘overlaid’. ‘Argentatus’ giving silvered, over plated or again ‘overlaid’. Is this the heart of Melkin’s message that really shows who it is that Joseph brought to England and the proof?
·         cruore from ‘Cruor’, translating as blood from a wound or gore. ‘Cruentatus’  giving made bloody or died with blood. The Glastonbury cruets as vessels or as Father Good referred to them as golden ampullae, are purely derived from word association from that Latin word for blood, ‘cruore’  then led to ‘cruet’ and from blood to vessel. Many researchers have chosen to translate as ‘two cruets’, leaving out ‘fassula’ as the vessel and converting the blood supposedly contained in the vessel into the vessel itself, holding the blood. Thus we have the vessel holding the blood turning into a vessel that sounds like what the vessel is purported to contain.
·         Sudore, ‘sudor’ giving sweat, labour, travail or pains. Melkin has given us here the answer to this problem of the ‘duo fassula’ in that ‘fascla’ a swathe or breast cloth and ‘fasciola’ swathing cloth, is meant  as a ‘doubled’  white cloth covered in sweat and blood from Jesus, (overlaid, from ‘argentea’, as one would overlay an image with silver  i.e. following the outline of the image) . If Geoffrey de Charney who was the first to exhibit the Turin Shroud, had removed it from the tomb it would explain its sudden appearance in the 1350’s.
Perimpleta; has always provided the word for ‘full’, in the context of ‘filled with the blood and sweat’ by nearly every commentator on the prophecy. Perimpleta is not a word in its own right that has meaning
 but this is common with Melkin. It can be made up from ‘per – impleta’, coming from the verb 'impleo' which means 'I fill up/satiate'. The 'per-' on the front is a common latin prefix for emphasis i.e. 'completely full/satiated'.
'pleta' comes from 'pleo' which simply means 'I fill'. In the form 'pleta' it is acting as an adjective meaning 'filled'. This is obviously Melkin’s misdirectional intention.
However there is no evidence of the word existing as written here so one can conclude it must be part of the riddle to be solved. 'peri' is a Greek word meaning 'around' and is usual as a prefix meaning "about, enclosing," as in the word ‘perimeter’ -- a "line or outline around a figure or surface”.  ‘Pleta’, literally giving, ‘I plait’ in English, meaning to fold or as the definition gives, "to bend cloth back over itself”.  This seems to show that Melkin has a message to convey that Jesus is in an ‘enclosed fold’ or ‘enclosed in a fold’.  It appears to confirm and describe the Turin Shroud as the article that Melkin is describing; that is the white cloth that covered Jesus while he was in Joseph’s tomb in Jerusalem. The different accounts regarding the cloth after the tomb was found empty, can largely be regarded as stuffing for justification of a first-hand account, also adding credibility to the gospel account of the resurrection. There is no doubt that Melkin is letting the world know that a ‘doubled grave cloth, covered with blood (from wounds) and sweat from the prophet Jesus, who was enclosed in this folded cloth just as it is shown on the Turin Shroud. The explanation of how the outline was formed and when the shroud left the sepulcher will be elucidated shortly.
·         The prophete Jhesu is a poignant appellation, many researchers linking this expression with an eastern origin, as the Koran refers to Jesus in this way. Melkin as we shall see is fully aware that not only did the Prophets predict Jesus’s coming forth but also that he was the fulfilment on one level of understanding, of what they had predicted and thus, was one of their Genre and part of the Divine plan. We now have Melkin’s intended meaning of;  ‘Joseph has with him in the tomb a doubled white folded grave cloth that was laid over the prophet Jesus and outlined by his sweat and blood’.

Cum reperietur eius sarchofagum integrum illibatum, in futuris videbitur et erit apertum toto orbi terranum:
·         Cum reperietur eius sarchofagu; translates as ‘with the discovery of his sarcophagus’ .
·         Integrum; from  ‘integrates’ translating as ‘entire or whole’. This is in reference to the body of Jesus being preserved by cedar oil in the Grail Ark.
·         Illibatum; giving ‘untouched,  pure or undefiled’, from libatum ‘defiled’ as in ‘virginitas libata’
·         in futuris videbitur;  translating As ‘in the future, it will be seen’.
·         et erit apertum toto orbi terranum; gives ‘and will be opened to all, around the world’.
The translations of this sentence appear for the most part as; ‘once his sarcophagus is discovered, it will be seen whole and untouched and then open to the whole world’ or similarly, ‘with the discovery of his tomb, which will be whole and undefiled, from thenceforth it will be viewed and open to the entire world’.  As in the beginning part of the prophecy, where Melkin speaks of the future referring to a period when Joseph's body is uncovered, as a time when pilgrims would give praise to God at the island; so is this sentence referring to that same point in the future.  This does infer a religious change at the discovery of the tomb and Melkin twice, in this short prophecy, mentions the ‘whole world’ or ‘all around the world’, indicating that it will be a change in the religious system with global ramifications.  ‘Open to the whole world’; indicating, not a Christian world, but an all-inclusive world of Muslims and Jews of the Abrahamic traditions, but also including all faiths that are understanding the proofs of Divine intervention by prediction, convinced by that which is revealed, upon the opening of the tomb.
Melkin starts the sentence with ‘cum’ and with its various forms of transliteration, by inference, is indicating a point in time i.e. ‘with the unveiling of the sarcophagus’.  This is the commencement of a 1000 year period spoken of in Revelation 26:6 ‘Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years’.  Melkin’s understanding of ‘Time’ is what most qualifies him as a prophet and why such great importance should be attached to this prophecy because he is speaking in ‘The Times’ i.e. from the birth of Jesus to the uncovering of the tomb and speaking about the commencement of a new age, the 1000 years which are to follow . A fuller explanation of ‘time, times and half of time’ will come shortly.

Ex tunc nec aqua nec ros celi insulam nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere.
Ex tunc;  gives, ‘from thenceforth’. This whole sentence is most commonly translated as, ‘from then on, those who dwell in that noble island will lack neither water nor the dew of heaven’.  Melkin starts the sentence ‘ex tunc’ or literally ‘from that time’, indicating again the expectation of change at the point of time when the tomb is unveiled.What Melkin understands is that religion in general with its multitudinous dead practices across the world (starting in Britain) will now accept the God of Israel as the only truth, in amongst the myriad of other gods by which men contrive their ‘modus operandi’
nec aqua nec ros celi; this is again confirming God-given blessings from that time forward.  Rain and dew are metaphorical for spiritual blessings sent from heaven and from thenceforth, never failing those who are converted in that island.  However, Melkin is imparting occult information here on one level, in that, he is using the word ‘nekros’ from the Greek, which gives us ‘dead, dead body, corpse’ or ‘nekrosis’ "a becoming dead, state of death. This is, Melkin’s reference to the ‘spiritually dead’ and shows that he is fully aware of the ‘degrees’ of spiritual progress of Man set within the finite parameters of ‘Biblical Time’. This expression ‘Spiritually dead’ is encapsulated throughout the prophets as those who come out of ‘spiritual Egypt’ and do not obey the Law engraved within them i.e. the denial of the testimony of Jesus. Those that do this are accounted ‘spiritually dead’ but those that accept his testimony are accounted as alive-or living. This is overcoming the first death spoken of in Revelation. However those that accept the testimony of Jesus by coming out of Egypt yet afterward with the pressures of life, and the innate qualities of corruptness that are the lot of the human condition, fall away into ‘non-compliance with conscience’ or disobedience to that engraved upon their heart.  These then undergo and experience the likened Fall of Jerusalem. This is referred to throughout the prophets and of course is followed by the seven years of compliance  (known spiritually as ‘the captivity’), a period to put away sin and of purification and acknowledgement that there is a God (The whole point of the divine plan to self-realisation or Gnosis).  After the acknowledgement and compliance, spiritual peace is found, and this is the overcoming of the second death also mentioned in Revelation. Failure to comply in the ‘spiritual captivity’ period, results in the second death i.e. spiritual death.  The three periods or degrees of Gnosis;  firstly the coming out of Egypt, secondly the return from the Captivity (in the Spiritual sense) and thirdly the heavenly state of spiritual peace, are synonymous with the three days that Jesus speaks of, when he refers to the rebuilding of the Temple. These three days are also synonymous as, the three periods of time i.e. Time, the Times and Half Time. ‘And when he cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as are for death to death; and such as are for captivity to captivity; and such as are for the sword to the sword’.  Jeremiah 43:10.
What Melkin is referring to here are those persons that in the seven years of captivity after the fall of spiritual Jerusalem, who do not acknowledge that there is a God; from that time forward there will be no more water from heaven. ‘Seven times will pass by for you, until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.’ Daniel 4:32.  Daniel 4:25.
The evidences for Melkin’s double meaning here rely on elucidation in a later chapter as a digression here is not opportune and the explanation involves the issue of ‘Biblical Time’.
It is here however that it becomes evident that one scribal change has been made for reasons to accord or marry with the word ‘insula’ the first word of the prophecy and the Island of Avalon we have been trying to locate.  This scribal alteration was most probably innocently changed before or by John of Glastonbury when transcribing Melkin’s prophecy. Melkin wrote originally the word ‘insalem’ as a pun because with this word the purport of his occult meaning is passed to the initiated but also the mundane sense is conveyed.  Melkin’s original would have read;  Ex tunc nec aqua nec ros celi insalem nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere. If one were to split ’insalem’ as intended by Melkin to, ‘in salem’, then the sentence reads ‘from that time there is no water for the dead but those that live in (heavenly) peace, will not lack drink’. This is the peace of which comes to those who have come out of Egypt initially and then subsequently purified themselves during the seven year Captivity after the spiritual fall of Jerusalem. ‘In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people. Isaiah 11:11.
insulam nobilissimam;  ostensibly translating as ‘noble Island’ in the one sense as Melkin intended but as we have seen,  this originally would have been written as the non existant Latin word ‘insalem’, which when split gives ‘in peace’ the very objective of Gnosis and the understanding behind the essence of the Grail. ‘Mental rest’ in the landscape of the mind,  which allegorically has its similitude in the Holy land, is the key to the understanding of the vast body of knowledge incorporated in the prophets. A difficult concept to allow but the ‘rest and peace’, that the prophets speak of is spiritual and not historical. However like so many words in Melkin’s prophecy, the outward word suggests a mis-spelt meaning, yet when uncovered, the occult sense is revealed just as in Usher’s version giving Judioialem instead of the modern corrected or assumed  form of ‘Judicialem’ to conform with Saphat. ‘Judioialem’ was probably a corruption or conscious scribal correction and almost certainly the original word that Melkin would have written was ‘Judiosalem’. The reason that this assumption can be posited is because it is a certainty that Melkin understood the message of the Biblical prophets. This can be assumed by his understanding of Biblical time which can only be gleaned from the prophets of Israel.

habitantibus poterit deficere
·         habitantibus from a root of ‘habitatio’ ,  ‘habitator’ , ‘habitatus’ or ‘habito’   giving ‘to dwell, live in, or abide. Melkin’s choice of words is exact and precise to convey the sense of a spiritual place where one lives at peace, much as today the modern expression of describing someone as being ‘in a good place’ in reference to their state of mind or mental wellbeing. This concept of a spiritual location is vital to the understanding of the prophets, as what was essentially a landscape in historical time (set in Biblical time) by mental transformation, as Melkin comprehends, is a mental landscape of peace within which one can potentially live. This essentially is the Kingdom of Heaven that is referred to by Jesus as an earthly attainable state; of which he proclaimed to be at hand or attainable.  Unfortunately the opposite state being equally attainable. The subject requires an elucidation that is grounded in the prophets and the subject analysis is too broad to be dealt with within these pages excepting the subject of Biblical Time which we will cover only to show that Melkin was certain that what he prophesied would take place at a point in that time.
·         Poterit; from a root describing ‘drink or drinking’ which again has biblical connotations.  Drinking is synonymous with acceptance of the divine plan or God’s word and of what is revealed by the prophets of Israel. The real sense of spiritual drinking can by association be equated with the satiation of spiritual thirst as in Jeremiah 49:12 ‘This is what the LORD says: "If those who do not deserve to drink the cup;  must drink it, why should you go unpunished? ... You must drink this cup of judgment!’.  Or again in Obadiah 4:16 ‘Just as you drank on my holy hill, so all the nations will drink continually; they will drink and drink and be as if they had never been!’  Here again in Mark 10:38 ‘Can you drink the cup? But Jesus said to them, "You don't know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink from.
·         Deficere from ‘deficio’ meaning, to leave or fail one’ giving the word ‘lack’ as most translators have it.


Per multum tempus ante diem Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata: Most translations of this passage differ only slightly; ‘for a long time before the day of judgement in Josaphat, these things will be openly declared to the living’.
·         Per multum tempus ante; translates as ‘a long time before’ and relates as we have already seen to  the 1000 year period from the time the tomb is unveiled before the day of Judgement i.e  from the time that Joseph’s and Jesus’ tomb is unveiled. This is the last period of the seven day period of 7,000 years that constitute the framework of ‘Biblical Time’.
·         diem Judioialem from Usher’s text, rather than the assumed or corrupted ‘diem Judicialem’ of the later transcriptions.  The scribal change and word association has come from the original which would have been ‘Judiosalem’ through Judioalem to the assumed ‘diem Judicialem’  which is purely conforming to the notion of its connection to judgement day. This has been due to its connection with Jehosaphat which the Abrahamic faiths believe refers to judgement day. Melkin again can only be understood with a grasp of the Prophets prophesying in time, as biblical spans of time are often misunderstood being dependant upon how the prophet is referencing the subject, this determining the unit time measure expressed.
Melkin here wrote ‘Judiosalem’ which obviously is word play on Jerusalem as well as being a subliminal joining of Judah and Salem, rendering exactly what Melkin intented; ‘The day of Judah’s peace’ or ‘peace of the Jews’ referring to the spiritual peace of those coming out of spiritual Babylon which takes place on the day of Jehosaphat,  as long as the thousand year period is understood as a day being the seventh day of the one week of Biblical time.  Melkin is using the word ‘Salem’ from which Jerusalem is derived from Urušalimum , ‘Foundation of Shalem’; Salem coming from the word shalem, shalom, shalim or salam meaning peace; the city of Jerusalem which dates back to the early bronze age, where Abraham and Melchizedek met.  ‘Judah’s peace’ is the goal of the Divine plan if one accepts that a ‘Jew’ is a spiritual Jew i.e. a person having come out of Egypt and returned from the Babylonian captivity, (Babylon the Great in the spiritual sense) and then found peace through adherence to the Law and acknowledgement of the existence of God. This view of the prophets being not only historical seems newly contrived but is the essential perception although not intellectually or theologically comprehended,that unites and is perceived by the Abrahamic faiths.  Not to complicate matters but just to show how many ways one can interpret Melkin, ‘salum’ also translates as near a coast or to the sea so if we take judiosalum as a word we get the sense  ‘along time before those days when the Jews near the coast (in the period of Iosahat) are opened up and declared to the living.
·         in iosaphat: Melkin has steered the reader into assuming a place, by prefixing ’Josaphat’ with ‘in’, when he is quite aware of Jehosaphat’s meaning as a period of biblical time (which is the 1000 years of ‘The Times’ halved) and accounted as a degree of spiritual awakening being the third day of the three time periods, time times, and halftime as these were referred to by Jesus as days. The reader will remember that ‘saphat’ was rendered as judgement in the earlier part of the prophecy.  ‘Judiosalem’,  became  Judioalem  and was then changed to ‘Judicialem’ because of its association with Jehosaphat being commonly associated with the last Judgement. The rendering of ‘Saphat’ as ‘judgement’ in the previous passage is incorrect, when ‘potens in Saphat’, should be understood as ‘he who’s might is in spiritual awakening’ in direct reference to spiritual Jews.
The Valley of Josaphat or Valley of Jehoshaphat is mentioned in only one passage of the Bible, in Joel 3.2 : "I will gather together all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat: and I will plead with them there for my people, and for my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations".  It is from this passage that Christians derive Jehosaphat as the ‘last judgement’, which is exactly what Melkin is alluding to. Due to its attachment to a valley, theologians have assumed it has a geographical location, but like ‘mountain’ in biblical texts; it rarely, especially in prophetical literature, has the sense of geographical location. When the reader of prophetical literature becomes aware of the concept of a historical location( i.e the Holy land and its tribes) set in ‘Biblical Time’ that has become a blueprint for a spiritual landscape, this transliterable approach to the comprehension of the Prophets words becomes clearer. The prophets speak of the nations and their attributes dualistically applying to real time historical prophecy but also understandable within an individual mental landscape.   Josaphat incidentally is the name given to the forth king of Judah.  The essence of Jehosaphat’s meaning is captured with the passage in Matthew. 25, and bears witness that the voice of Jesus can be heard by everyone that spiritually came out of Egypt i.e. heard the Law; but then subsequently most of those who were initially blessed with this miraculous correcting toward gnosis, chose to ignore their conscience, eventually being sent to captivity in Spiritual Babylon at the destruction of Spiritual Jerusalem.  This does sound oversimplified and contrived but we will come to this when discussing ‘Biblical time’ but the point is that Jesus did not only come for the Gentiles but all the children of Israel.  Evidence of the Divine plan can be witnessed in Mathew 25 showing the relationship of choice with deed which as we have stated, takes place within the seven year period which is the defining time of purification through compliance or as it is Biblically known ‘the troublous times’ :  31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me’. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, ‘when did we see you hungry, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?’ 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not .  44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?  45 Then shall he answer them, saying, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me’. 46  And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata; usually translated as ’openly shall these things be declared to the living’ but another interpretation could be that ‘these things will be openly accepted or made apparent by those having reached spiritual awareness’.  ‘Viventibus’, the living or alive, has the same connotation as in prophetical literature, as those not spiritually dead. Throughout the prophets this notion is held that man can be alive, not in the sense that humans are either dead or alive but spiritually alive, as opposed to those in whom their conscience no longer councils to do good but instead, acts conversely as a ‘fearful looking for of judgement’. It is from this understanding that we might grasp God not being a ‘respector of persons’ but only of those who are spiritually alive.

Melkin specifically points to a period in time and this point in time is the uncovering of Jesus’ body. The reason for this is obvious in the proofs it will provide for the future not only of the veracity of his prophecy but substantiating the words of the Prophets of Israel and these confirmations and the realisation of a Divine plan will cause a paradigm shift in consciousness. Jesus and the Archangel Michael  mentioned in Revelation and Daniel seem to be both part of the raising of Human consciousness and are accounted as witnesses to the Divine Plan.

In Fragments of the Prince Melchizedek document found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Melchizedek and the Archangel Michael are one and the same and there is undoubtedly an understanding of Michael being inextricably linked to the Grail, since all these churches that have led us to this Island of Avallon, have been named after him specifically. It is through the Archangel that the Dragon is killed and the Archangel being inextricably linked to accounts in Revelation and the Prophets, showing Biblical inter-relation with the spiritual quest of the Grail romances, all integrally linked to Jesus the Archetypal son of the God of Israel. It is ‘HE’ who spoke through the Prophets, who mankind calls God, whose plan it is, to elevate the Consciousness of Man, and this ascension of the steps by degrees to the Temple.
It is God that carries out his Divine Plan in Time but the Archangel Michael who seems to have lived throughout time is inescapably linked to all aspects of our investigation. His name is linked with the Island, with the Grail and as the protector of God’s people as seen here in the The Apocolypse of Paul or Visio Pauli
Hear What Michael says! I am he who stands in the sight of God every hour. As the lord lives, in whose sight I stand, I do not stop one day or night praying incessantly for the human race, and I indeed pray for those who are on the Earth, but they do not cease committing iniquity and fornications; and they do not do any good while they are placed on earth and you have consumed in vanity the time in which you ought to have repented.

Figure 25b Showing the St. Michael Ley line the Joseph line relative to Ictis and the Wreck sites better known as the Island of Avalon.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/And-Did-Those-Feet-ebook/dp/B00864NTWI





In 1191 the fraudulent uncovering of the bones of King Arthur were displayed at Glastonbury Abbey.  A fraudulently fabricated cross was found with him which convieniently stated that King Arthur, (i.e the bones just unearthed), were found in Avalon confirming to those that needed to be persuaded, that Avalon was in fact Glastonbury.

 An inscribed lead cross was said to have been found in Arthur’s uncovered grave, with the words Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia; ‘Here lies interred King Arthur in the island of Avalon’.  Clearly, by finding King Arthur’s body which was reputed to be buried in the Isle of Avalon would confirm the location of Avalon as Glastonbury if the body were found at Glastonbury. Combining that with a corpse with an inscription stating ‘here lies King Arthur’, would seem to eliminate all doubt.

The reason the monks at Glastonbury committed fraud such as this was because of the Grail legends that emanated from France which associated King Arthur with Joseph of Arimathea. Before this time King Arthur had little association specifically with Glastonbury. The Grail romances were now prevalent and Glastonbury needed an association with a saint to pull in the Pilgrims.  Because of Melkin’s prophecy, Joseph had always been associated with Glastonbury and because of Melkin's prophecy the church there had since Saxon times had a tradition associating it with the uncle of Jesus as William of Malmesbury attests to.



Nobody was too sure where the island of Avalon was, but everybody knew that King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea, were buried in Avalon. Neither William of Malmesbury nor Geoffrey of Monmouth associated Glastonbury with the Island of Avalon at the time they wrote. This was a later corruption by monks and the sole purpose of producing the fraudulent cross was to establish Glastonbury as Avalon. If Glastonbury could only be established as Avalon by the unearthing of King Arthur, then it must follow the Joseph of Arimathea was also buried within the Abbey grounds if all were convinced that Glastonbury was Avalon. To unearth Joseph of Arimathea, however, would prove difficult as it was known that he was buried with the holy Grail. Since the monks were not apprised of what the holy Grail consisted of, it was easier to fabricate the unearthing of King Arthur with a cross attesting to the fact that where he was unearthed was indeed Glastonbury and therefore it must be the island of Avalon. The reason Joseph of Arimathea needed to be associated with Glastonbury is because the monks needed funding to rebuild their Abbey after the fire.



Prior to the fire of 1184, there existed a prophecy written by a monk called Melkin. In this prophecy, (once it is decoded), Melkin supplies very pertinent information in geometric instructions, that gives precise directions to an island in Devon. This island is Burgh island in Devon. Melkin states that the body of Joseph of Arimathea lies in the southern angle of a bifurcated line. Once Melkin's code is deciphered, it clearly portrays that Avebury is the point on the St. Michael’s ley line, which in his puzzle, he refers to as a ‘sperula’or sphere, meaning a stone circle. This is the point within the Avebury stone circle complex which, at 13°, if one scribe's a line through Montacute to Burgh island (which Melkin calls the island of Avalon), it is exactly one hundred and Four nautical miles, the exact number that Melkin gives. We should not forget that Father William good deposited this clue in the English college at Rome. Someone or some organisation had tried to eliminate this information from Maihew's Trophea to prevent the Joseph line being found but luckily this clue was preseved in Stillingfleets private collection and thus acts as a confirmation that the line is Genuine. It also seems that several marker churches that identified the genuine Avalon were also destroyed to prevent this information coming into the public arena.



The location of Avalon has always been thought to exist at Glastonbury but with a recent study of some of the oldest text and the uncovering of the fraud concerning King Arthur carried out by the monks at Glastonbury, it is evident that Avalon is in Devon . The references that Melkin gives are part of a geometric riddle that once solved, points straight to the island in Devon which is obviously fits Diodorus’s description as Ictis.




This is in fact named in the Grail stories as the island of Sarras named after Judah’s eldest son Zarah, who broke the womb first. His name has the same pronunciation as Sarra in French and his descendants came to the south-west and were the primordial miners of tin on southern Dartmoor who brought their tin to this island to be sold. This is the reason that in the Grail stories, the island is called Sarras and to which the holy Grail was brought. It is to this island that after the crucifixion of Jesus, when his body was taken down from the cross by his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, it was then conveyed to a box filled with Cedar oil so that it might preserve his corpse. This box or coffin known as the Grail Ark was then conveyed with Joseph and several others from Jerusalem to the island of Sarras, which Joseph knew well, having visited many times previously on his mercantile trips with Jesus. This island had been known about in the Greek chronicles because Pytheas a Greek explorer had visited the island on his expedition to find amber which they did not realise was the sometime by product of tin and copper smelting. The island was kept secret over many years since Pytheas’ visit, until Joseph of Arimathea visited the island with Jesus on one of his trips abroad gathering metals.



It was to this island previously known as Ictis that Joseph of Arimathea chose to convey the Grail ark and place Jesus in an old tin vault that had been shut down or made redundant due to the Roman invasion. For about 1000 years, the island called Burgh island had been the place on the coast where all the tin miners up on southern Dartmoor had brought their tin to be stored in the vault. This transpired so that visiting traders could take away tin at any time and the island acted as a trading post. It is for this reason that Diodorous refers to it as an ‘emporium’. It becomes clear now the reason that Joseph of Arimathea knew the island very well. Strabo even relates the story behind the cache of tin ingots found at the head of the Erm.



The gospels relate that Jesus was laid to rest in a hewed out tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea and the rumours still persisted as eyewitnesses had seen the doubled over white shroud that covered his body as he lay in the Grail ark. One wonders if the Gospel accounts of the burial of Jesus are just the echoes of the misconstrued eyewitness accounts that existed in Jerusalem just after the resurrection. This set of events aslo explains why the flower imprints were found on the Turin shroud. This is fully explained in detail in a book called ‘And did those feet’, written by Michael Goldsworthy as new theory as to how the Grail stories, the Arthurian legend at Glastonbury and the gospels interlink and provide evidence of the whereabouts of the body of Jesus.



Melkin, who actually wrote the original book of the Grail, which ended up over in France and gave rise to the many Arthurian Grail romances now is understood to be the same person who provided the rumours of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. So now we have a tomb containing King Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus that was last shut when Melkin moved to France in around 600AD, sometime after the Saxon invasion. However the Templars, once they have been disbanded in the Middle Ages, were also privy to this island location and they knew what was buried within. It was here on Christmas Day in 1307 that they decided, (after King Philip and the Pope had disbanded their organisation), to relocate their treasure that they had managed to recuperate and ammased it into three treasure ships that left La Rochelle on 13Tth October 1307.



While depositing their treasure in the tomb they removed the Shroud of Jesus that had been submerged in the Cedar oil for 600 years while covering his body. It is inside this vault that the image of Jesus on the Turin Shroud was formed while draped over the body of Jesus in Cedar oil. The evaporated Cedar oil has left a caramel like substance all over the Turin Shroud, but the image itself was formed by the detritus left behind by anaerobic bacteria.



Only 50 years later, one of the Templars that died with Jack de Molay near Notre Dame in Paris, had a granddaughter that produced the Turin Shroud. This is not coincidence and answers the many questions of why there is no provenance for the Shroud of Turin prior to 1354. The Shroud had existed within the tin vault until the Templars arrive and remove it. The song which became a Christmas Carol; ‘I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning’ is really the echo of the Templars bringing their treasure to the island of Avalon in Devon. However, this song had always been associated in Cornish tradition to the visit of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea. It was the Templars, however, that marked out all the churches dedicated to St. Michael that lie along the St. Michael Ley line. Oddly enough, it is the other St. Michael churches that we used as markers, that confirm that the island of Avalon is indeed Burgh island in Devon



It is this line that Melkin refers to, which, when bifurcated within the Avebury stones at 13° and a line is scribed for 104 nautical miles it lands on this same island. Unequivocably Melkin understands the connection between the island of Ictis used by Joseph of Arimathea and clearly calls it the island of Avalon. Firstly, it is known by the Greeks as Ictis, secondly, as the island of Sarras by the French Grail writers and thirdly, as the island of Avalon named as such by Melkin originally and made to appear as pertaining to Glastonbury tor by some devious medieval monks . It is even referred to as the island of Avaron by some of the Grail writers.

The unofficial anthem written by William Blake called Jerusalem starts with the line ‘And did those feet’. This is the title of the book written by Michael Goldsworthy , which conveys the same story that Jesus visited England while accompanying his father, Joseph of Arimathea to Britain. The book called ‘And did those feet’clearly deciphers Melkin’s prophecy, so that it becomes apparent that Melkin knew where the island of Avalon was and what existed within it. To fully understand this extraordinary set of events, go to the link provided below and buy the ebook










No comments:

Post a Comment