King Arthur and the Holy Grail

[Ray]

The legend of King Arthur and his connection with Cornwall goes back more than 1,500 years. Was Tintagel Castle the legendary home of Camelot? Did Arthur really exist? Did he find and hold the treasured Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper? So many questions, but very few answers – until recently.
Maurice Cotterell investigates the origins of the legend in his book ‘The Celtic Chronicles — the trues story of the Holy Grail’. The journey is both interesting and fascinating and the forensic examination of the evidence remarkable.

The book investigates two ancient religious relics, the Ardagh Chalice, an ornate silver chalice engraved with the names of the 12 Disciples, and the Tara broach, a beautiful jewel-encrusted ostensible ‘cloak fastener’. Modern-day archaeologists believe that these two treasures, now kept in the Dublin Museum, were made by the same hand, in the same old-Celtic style, by Irish Artisans in around the 7th century.

But Cotterell’s view is that Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Pharisee metal merchant and a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin Council of Church Ministers, visited Cornwall with his nephew Jesus, to purchase tin and silver that were later shipped to Israel. The metals were then used in the manufacture of the Ardagh Chalice, which the Author ‘proves’ must be the Holy Grail, and its sister artefact the Tara Brooch — both of which were found together in a sack buried in a field near the village of Ardagh, in West Ireland, in 1868, by two men picking potatoes.

The Author shows that the 12-inch Tara brooch contains complex astronomical and Biblical information as well as the story of Excalibur; when the 12-inch pin (which looks like a sword) is pulled away from one of the glass stones, set into the brooch, it is able to swivel only 144 degrees, exactly. Moreover, the head of the pin is cast with three circles (three zeros). Together these produce the number 144,000, which in the Book of Revelation refers to ‘the number of those who will go to Heaven’. Cotterell believes that the algorithm must have been intentionally encoded into the Tara Brooch by the designer, Jesus, in around AD30. He who removes the pin (the sword) from the stone (the glass stone set into the metal) AND swivels the pin to measure the angle of 144 degrees, AND realises the meaning of the allegory, will be a King in Heaven. This is the source of the legends of King Arthur; ‘he who pulls the sword from the stone will become King on Earth’ and ‘whoever carries the sword will be a King in Heaven’.

This, moreover, associates Arthur, and the Arthurian legend, with the sister-artefact the Ardagh Chalice, that was clearly made by the same hand and found in the same place. The Author points-out that the names of the Disciples on the Ardagh chalice are clearly carved by an unskilled person with a crude nail-like object, out-of- keeping with the rest of the high-quality workmanship found in the Chalice and the brooch.

The story goes like this:

Following the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea took the Grail to England and buried it on what would become the site of the first Christian Church in Glastonbury, together with the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus.

Arthur appears in England following the exit of the Romans from Britain in around AD406 and instructs his 9 Knights to find the Holy Grail, which is said to have magical powers. Sir Galahad finds the cup, together with the Tara Brooch, and delivers them both to Arthur. Arthur ‘removed the sword from the stone’ in the Tara Brooch and realised that the accompanying cup must be the Holy Grail. Cotterell points-out that it was Arthur who crudely carved the names of the Disciples onto the cup, using the ‘insular majuscule’ script of the day (later found in the illuminated manuscripts of the Lindesfarne monks in the 7th-century) and that only someone like Arthur, in his day, would have made the mistake of including the name of St Paul (a favourite of the Romans) as the name of one of the Disciples onto the chalice — instead of, more correctly, the name of Malthus, who replaced Judas after the Crucifixion. 7th-century educated monks (who, archaeologists claim, made the artefacts) would never have made such a mistake.

Arthur, following his retirement to Tintagel, in Cornwall, handed-over the treasures to monks, for safe-keeping, in around AD450. The monks carried them to Lindesfarne island off the northeast coast of England where, in AD698, they compiled the Lindesfarne Gospels, using inks and vellum of the day, and the same revered insular majuscule script used in the carving of the names of the Disciples on the chalice.

In AD793, Lindesfarne monks, fleeing from Viking raids, took their precious manuscripts, the Tara Brooch and the Holy Grail to a monastery on the island of Iona, off the coast of southwest Scotland, for safekeeping. It was there that they compiled the ‘Book of Kells’, along the lines of the ‘Lindesfarne Gospels’, again using the same insular majuscule font used on the chalice. Two years later the monastery at Iona was itself pillaged by Vikings forcing the monks to flee to a new monastery at Kells in Ireland; leading some historians to mistakenly believe that the origin of the ‘Book of Kells’ (found in Kells) was Kells, in Ireland, and not Lindesfarne.

But the refuge survived only until AD840, when Vikings mounted assaults on Irish monasteries forcing the monks to flee westwards, as far as they could go, to Ardagh, where they buried their treasured hoard that included the Ardagh Chalice (the Holy Grail) and the Tara Brooch, that contained the Arthurian legends.

Irish archaeologists mistakenly believe that the Ardagh Chalice and the Tara Brooch were both made in Ireland in around AD700 by Irish monks because the style resembles that of the early Celts which appears in the illuminated manuscripts of the same period.. They believe this because they wish the beauty and craftsmanship contained in the treasures to be associated with the Irish and Ireland; without realising that the Holy Grail, the cup of Christ, and the sword of Excalibur are both kept-safe, today, in the Dublin museum in Ireland.

Find out more @ http://mauricecotterell.com/

[Ray]

Coming shortly on Capricorn Radio.

You can listen to Maurice Cotterell, discussing his book. Celtic Chronicles, on Capricorn Radio.

www.capricornradio.com.