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 title ‘famosus ille fabulator,’ but he was only accounted as the originator of the Grail because people thought Monseigneur Blois wrote the original. However ,he was just the consolidator of Melkin material and as we now know, Melkin was the writer of the original book of the Grail. It was however the coincidence of his being privy to knowledge from British and French sources that led to his reputation and 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. 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 definitely would have profited if he could persuade others that Glastonbury was Avalon.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 find out became the main guardians of the truths behind the Grail.

It would seem therefore that Henry can be accredited for having written one of the first compilations of Grail Romances called the Perlesvaus or latterly known as ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’.

 It appears to have been collated sourcing from Chrétien de Troye’s work(or common material) and from sources which Eleanor’s family owned, because of his family connections and the likelihood of Henry and Chrétien’s paths crossing. Henry is however very faithful in describing the Geography of the surrounding Vales around Avalon but has no idea, (at least 400 years after Melkin would have written the original Grail book), where Avalon was. 

 King Arthur is alive in the story, so how is it we know where he is buried especially when we see Lancelot’s visit to the Isle of Avalon were he sees Guinevere’s grave. The person who told this story had seen Guinevere's Grave and knew it was on Avalon and the only person who could have known this is Melkin. Henry was just a consolidator of the original book of the Grail, but all seem to think Henry wrote it. 

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 appears to be single handedly responsible for coalescing the Joseph tradition in Britain and the Grail literature that emanated from France. However it is Henry's  Perlesvaus that expresses that this historical information about Joseph's arrival in Britain is actually derived from Joseph of Arimathea himself, but the story itself intones that he is just a narrator called Josephus, just as Henry  has invented a cameo partfor himself asthe first man conquered by the knight known as Gauwain, was named Blihos Bliheris. 

 'Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable'. (R. Wace)

 Melkin, through the construction of his riddle, kept alive a tradition from great antiquity through conjoining the Quest of the Grail (from French literature) with a search for Joseph and what was with him in his tomb. It would seem also that Henry de Blois (as a later propagator) was the ‘famous fabulator’ named ‘Master Blihis’ in theprologue 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 to provide pleasure for its listeners. 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), and the various tales up to king Arthur were all derived from 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.

We should not forget that Melkin was probably the hermit (pious monk) referred to by Helinand and that Melkin had 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 for reasons regarding his ecclesiastical position,  would not wish to be associated with the more romanticised and plainly embellished Grail material proliferating at the time. Henry understood the Grail’s sanctity in that it was a relic of Jesus in some form and may have been aware of its more arcane meaning as an expression of God’s work in man as he clearly sets out his three Grail heroes in Branches as were the Grades set in the Divine plan. He knew that it was a subject (although not fully comprehended by him) that should not be treated irreverently and so  the Perlesvaus and  then ‘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 at 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 or Blesiness as a storyteller in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Through his family connections Henry 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.  Was it Eleanor who had provided him with a source containing arcane geomatria supplied by Melkin’s book. It could have 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 King 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.

As we mentioned John Leland, in the 16th century, claimed to have seen manuscript material by Melkin from his Historia in Glastonbury Abbey’s library and Leland seems to think that Melkin believes Joseph of Arimathea was buried at Glastonbury. This is obviously incorrect as Melkin's instructions within his puzzle lead us to the real Island of Avalon. So again we see gradual misinterpretation as Leland can be putting words into Melkin's mouth and can be seen to be making an assumption based upon words such as 'oratori' only being synonymous with Glastonbury. However, wierdly enough, Leland ....... even though he thinks Melkin believes Joseph is buried at Glastonbury, does not believe it himself. Yet on page.126 of his Assertio Arturii, he names Glastonbury as Arthur's burial site. 

 John Bale, writing in 1548, says that Melkin was a geometer and an astronomer specialising in Comets which infers a grasp of Time, as those comets that recur, do so infrequently. He describes him: astorum peritus ac geometer, non solum arcana somniorum et cometarum eventus discutere atque planetarum dispsitiones demonstrare solebat.  'Not only skillful in astronomy and a geometrician, but discusses the secrets of dreams, the events of comets and demonstrates the disposition of the  planets'. 

 Melkin anyway was a geometer, which was not only borne out by the geometrical precision (once the prophesy is decoded), but also if we take into account information regarding Montacute as a marker.  This information may have been derived from the Grail book originally and passed on by Henry of Blois through the Glastonbury chain to Father Willian Good. Henry could however have gleaned this from another work of Geomatria by Melkin found at Glastonbury and possibly this is the reason for Bale's description of Melkin.

 Henry was probably 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. 

 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. Henry had come across this Montacute information regarding the burial site of Joseph……. material from a source that Melkin must have written, since the line that he is sending us to find (the 104 nautical mile line from Avebury to Burgh Island), runs right through St. Michael’s hill Montacute. Since no-one at the time knew it was a ‘confirmation clue’ or knew where the Island of Avalon was, it obviously did not help Henry. Since this piece of material evidence was not spoken of or referenced in the Grail literature that emanated from France, one would assume that this information was found in a Melkin manuscript that existed in Britain before the fire. The only reason for not thinking this is that…… why at such a young age had Henry come straight from France to Montacute? This indeed would be an extraordinary coincidence if he had not come across this clue while 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 king’s 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 dated to 450AD, we do not know how he arrived at that date. The passage from Helinand’s chronicle relates the angels appearance to Melkin occured in 717,(and we will cover later how this date is probably accurate)……… so somewhere in-between both Arthur and Melkin lived. 


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-Saint-Michel discussed in a later chapter. Because Melkin states in his Prophecy precisely what was in the vault on Burgh Island and gives a description of the Turin Shroud long before it was supposedly first shown in public……. it seems more probable that he visited the vault or cave given the precise directions to the entrance.


Who imparted the knowledge for the original arcane source material, if it was not an angel that indeed gave Melkin his insight? Is this not a rationalisation of others that tried to answer how it was that someone living in the sixth century could have Knowledge of Joseph's arrival in Britain. The proposition that Melkin found documentation to this effect in the tomb is borne out by the fact that the Perlesvaus, (in an indirect way) attests that it was Joseph who supplied the early detail of his historical arrival.


   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 700AD then where was this source and in what language, before Melkin transcribed all its information into the Latin book of the Grail?  It seems likely that this source material and the Grail book (the consolidation of the history of the Grail Keepers) will be found at the unveiling of the tomb……… the Grail book being returned when the Templars hid their treasure there.


The arcane source material will have remained in the tomb, but it is probable the Grail book was returned to the tomb by the Templars..... as by now it would have surfaced. From the testimony of Helinand regarding the possession of the French book (only existing incomplete)……… makes one think that the original was only translated piecemeal and the parts translated and woven into a story were those parts that inspired individually the original transcribers.  There must be a  an arcane source book for Melkin to have transcribed from Hebrew to render 'Shirei ha Ma'a lot’, because to understand and relate in the Grail book about the Grades of Enlightenement would indicate some exterior source or divine 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 even from French tradition and alluded to by Melkin (in the misunderstood British prophecy).... 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. 

 This is the point where I am sure that I will loose many readers as the duality of the Grail is on one side derived from arcane understanding. Is this not a misunderstanding of the transcribers and the original purport of the processional alluded to the spiritually rich as opposed to the waste-land or dearth which is cured on attainment of the Grail in the romances. This is a complex subject as the consciousness of man is refered to in Biblical expression through the prophets as ‘land’. The waste-land is an allusion to a spiritual state.

 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 physical 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. Melkin  alludes to the Grail as either the body of Jesus in Grail ark or the shroud that was formed in it, but he also is recounting in the Book of the Grail about Grades or Degrees to enlightenment, which is the whole essence of the other half of understanding what the Grail is……… an objective description of the ‘Divine Plan’.  The romances, even though they have muddled the duality of the Grail...... 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? The reason for considering this is that ‘Mons Acute’ or Montacute was the place Henry of Blois went to long before the Templars built the marker St. Michael churches. So was Mons Acutus the mount that marked out the thirteen degrees from the ley line from the 'sperula' (sphere) of Avebury and got named as such…… long before the Templars built their St. Michael edifice to mark their treasure hoard.


 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 Templars possessed knowledge of this Ley line system (which will become apparent), then the French Book of the Grail may also have contained this geometry. 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.....If this was the reason for his arrival in Montacute. 


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.  Is the pyramid geometry purely co-incidental and has no relevance to Melkin's instructions. 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 defined it as such by dedicating a string of sites to St. Michael. Certainly the prevalence of sites is less to the east of Avebury but it in no way diminishes the existence of the line to the East of Avebury as corroborated by Miller and Broahurst in the 'Sun and the Serpent'. 

If the extract that gives account of the Grail noted by  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 (given his connections to the noble family), howHenry of Blois might have made the Montacute connection that was passed to Father Good.  If it was not picked up to feature in any of the French transcripts by the French writers, maybe Henry had gleaned it from the original. But then one has to question whether Henry actually saw the French original translation of the Grail book (if there ever was one) or the original Latin from Melkin. It seems that if there ever was a complete transcription of the whole 'Grail Book', the various varients would concur more in their subject matter. As Helinand bears witness there probably was no complete French volume, but the French material existed as seperate extracts or exerpts compiled by the original writers allowed to see the latin text or material from an oral Troubadour tradition.

 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 the French translations of excerpts and the French volume that Helinand  presumes exists, never did.  Because Eleanor’s Father and Grandfather were captivated by these stories and the fact that Chretien is working off another’s work…… what we think all became a tradition at one time probably had much earlier strains as well. 

 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 may only have been assumed that it could only have been delivered by an angel 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 template for the Arms of Glastonbury, that had probably inspired Father Good’s investigation 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 posseses 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. Now here is the quirk. If the sword of Solomon was brought by Joseph then If he left Jerusalem with it, would he not know where the Arc is,presuming they were cached in the same place beneath the temple. Is this why these Knights originally wound up at the Temple Mount rather than the ruse of protecting the way of pilgrims?


Thomas Malory's ‘Morte D’Arthur’ has very much the same elements within his 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 millenia before him while 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 some of it derived from understanding the Prophets of Israel, 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 or anachronistic chronology 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 the righteousness of 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.

Chapter 10

The Montacute connection to the Glastonbury Pyramids and the Ley line, that Melkin has shown us leads to Avalon.

Father William Good, died at Naples in 1586, and was buried in the college of the Jesuits in that city. Father Good wishing to pass on the small nugget of information said that Joseph of Arimathea is “hidden carefully in Montacute”.  It is possible that another such young protégé was confided in and entrusted with pertinent information about Brent Knoll as a marker also being on a line that intersects at Harnhill as does the St. Michael’s Rock through Glastonbury line. This intersection point on the pyramid axis, is  the only point defining the size of the pyramid, with a circumference that is tangential to all three sides.  However, had it not been for what was inscribed on one of the pyramids and the supposition that Arthur was reportedly buried between them, we would never have found the St Michael's Mount through Brent Knoll,  to Harnhill Ley Line, as this information would have disappeared with the pyramids, without anybody remarking upon what was inscribed upon them. Let us look however at the connection with Montacute and the actions taken by previous unknown people that must have heard of this same information that Father Good had been trusted to pass on.

It becomes clear that before Father Good’s time, an attempt had been made to establish Montacute as the most holy site by the finding of a holy relic.  This seems to be a completely arbitrary act unless an Abbot or monk had prior information about the sanctity of who was purportedly laid there.  The only certain information passed down to us, was that Joseph of Arimathea was buried, ‘very carefully in Montacute’.  It becomes apparent that the inclusion of Hamdon Hill being named after Montacute as the precise location was probably a later interpolation following the discovery of the Black Rood of Scotland, otherwise known as the Holy cross of Waltham.  The coincidence of this find having great similarities to the discovery of the leaden cross that was fabricated to establish King Arthur's Avalon as Glastonbury.

Holyrood Abbey, founded in 1128 by King David I of Scotland, once possessed a fragment of the original holy cross from Calvary brought by St. Margaret to Scotland from Waltham Abbey and known thereafter as the Black Rood of Scotland. Supposedly the right hand man of King Canute 1016-1035, a man called Tofig had a vision and found a large black flint crucifix -The Holy Cross, on a Hill at Montacute, he then took it to Waltham.The story goes that he put the cross on an ox-cart, but the oxen would only go in one direction and would not stop until they reached Waltham and there it was housed in the Abbey. It was then re-appropriated back from the Scottish by the English in 1346 to Durham Cathedral as one of its holy relics. The Black Rood of Scotland disappeared at the Reformation, while at the same time, the same fate befalling Waltham Abbey's Holy Cross.

The reason for relating these points is, firstly, the Holy Cross of Waltham, originally found buried at Montacute, seems to have been transformed on its journey to Scotland from a flint object into the actual Cross from Calvary, and secondly, that coincidentally becoming intertwined, Scotland's Holy Rood and the cross which was dug up at Montacute were both black, thereafter leaving for posterity a complete muddle of fake relics. 

 Montacute priory appears to have been founded c.1078 but William of Malmesbury refers to the Montacute as logworesbeorh and the nameLogwor appears on the pyramid at Glastonbury. Henry of Blois, who as we progress with our investigation is probably ultimately responsible for the initial impetus to establish Glastonbury as Avalon…… held the Deanery of Waltham in 1144 and is said to have tried to buy a gem from the cross unearthed at Montacute for 100 marks. This I believe is an extraneous detail added to add credibility to the find. It seems likely that it was Henry Blois, coming from France…… had heard from a French source about the connection between Montacute and Joseph of Arimathea. This might have been supplied by Melkin’s book of the Grail as it is Melkin’s geometry which runs through St. Michael’s hill Montacute which marks out the Island of Avalon.

The account which gives details of this story was not written until after 1177,  but the event supposedly happened in 1035 and yet occurred with so many similarities to the uncovering of the grave of Arthur. In Montacute, they have to dig deep also and they find a ‘Mirae magnitudinis’ while the Glastonbury accounts give the monks uncovering Arthur and finding a ‘sarcophagum ligneum mirae magnatudinis’. Both disinterment’s were tented which seems as if the Montacute find was a template for the Arthur unveiling. This just so happens to be only 14 years or less…… than when the account was written about the Montacute unveiling.

 However, to have located such a holy relic in Montacute in the first place would have certainly added credibility to the possibility that Joseph of Arimathea also was buried there.  Probably what really transpired was that one of Father Good’s predecessors from Glastonbury, (Montacute being a possession of the Glastonbury Monastery), while in possession of the same secret information as William Good, tried to find Joseph of Arimathea in Montacute, and not wanting to turn up empty-handed, enacted very much the same deception as his other brothers of Glastonbury were about to do by fabricating a lead cross for King Arthur. Somebody within the Glastonbury institution at some stage knew of the connection, with Joseph of Arimathea and Montacute…… a deception of a discovery was organised, but it did not have the desired effect of finding Joseph.  The deception did not materialise as intended and instead, a cross was found, with stories of miraculous circumstances and then an early date apportioned to the find, so that Pilgrims could be persuaded of Montacute’s sanctity.  In fact it would not be going too far to postulate that it was the same Abbot responsible for both deceptions.  This was most probably Henry de Sully, Richard I’s nephew, Abbot of Glastonbury, who was the perpetrator of the Arthur fiasco. This in the context of not forgetting Richard was Eleanor’s of Aquitaine’s son who appointed Henry de Sully not so many years after Henry Blois’ death. It was probably Henry of Blois, as we have covered, who originally obtained this nugget of information however, from Melkin’s geometry contained in Eleanor’s Grail book and it was passed on to Henry de Sully. There is a small possibility that this clue was given in extant Melkin manuscripts at Glastonbury and kept quiet so as not to detract from Glastonbury’s monopolisation of Joseph. There is though, partial evidence for the Grail book having contained geomatria that has come down in the form of the Grail tables, these of course found in the geomatria of Chartres Cathedral and the three table’s connection in relation to Arthur obviously been woven in to the Grail romances. These shapes of the tables are round, square and rectangular possibly reflecting or acting as icons for the different approaches toward Gnosis or full consciousness and are expressed in a dimensional form.

The one fact that we can draw from this Geomatric clue of  Montacute is that the Montacute connection to Joseph of Arimathea was prior to the time that there was a proliferation of St. Michael dedicated churches. This seems to indicate that the present day St. Michael's Hill at Montacute on which a St. Michael church was built has only had that appellation since the early 1400’s and hence the reference to Hamden hill or confusion with Ham hill.

Archbishop Usher in his Antiquitates, who quotes from Maihew’s Trophea ;’Quod autem ad montem illum Hamdenhil nuncupatum,in quo aliqui S.Josephum ab Arimathea sepultum perhibent spectat habebatur sane olim sacellum in illo monte constructum inter sacra et veranda angliae loca.’

'As for the mountain called Hamden hill, in which some claim Joseph of Arimathea is buried, clearly from the looks a chapel was once located here, built on that mountain, among the sacred and revered places of England',

……..shows that the Hamden Hill, mentioned in this text, is referring to the one we have already established that is called St Michael's Hill today, which, as the quote reports had a Chapel on it. However, this is clear for two reasons, the first being that the proliferation which makes up the design of St. Michael churches that we have previously established, did not appear until the very late 13^th, and early 14th century and was not mentioned at the time when the holy cross of Waltham was fabricated.  St. Michael's Hill was not named, and was thus called Hamden Hill at the time.  Hamdon Hill today is an Iron Age hill fort and nowhere near as outstanding in conical prominence as the present-day St. Michael's Hill, nor could it be termed revered.  The line we have been sent to find by Melkin tangentially touches St.Michael’s hill at its base, 200 yards from where the chapel stood as we can see in figure 24. The Ley lines length of 104 miles, runs from Avebury to Burgh Island as seen in figure 23.  It now becomes obvious that the intended meaning of ‘hidden carefully’, relates only to St. Michael's Hill as part of the Ley system acting as a marker on the ley line, for the long awaited discovery of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb on the Island of Avalon in Devon.

   Figure 22a  Showing the folly tower, built in 1760 which now occupies the hill-top, known as St. Michael's tower.  It stands on Mons Acutus which first had a wooden clamshell fort with motte & bailey later replaced by a stone castle. A church or chapel dedicated to St. Michael later replaced the castle of which all evidence has disappeared although the stone in figure 56 was found at the site.

There are other observations worth noting from the passage left by Father Good from his manuscript in the English College at Rome.  The original Latin for the brief passage quoted above was printed by Archbishop Usher in his 1687 edition of ‘Antiquitates’ quoting as his source Edward Maihew’s ‘Congregat Anglican ordinis Benedict’. Maihew, while he was a student in the English College in Rome after Father Good's death copied this following text from the signed manuscript which Father Good had left for posterity.  It is unclear which copy of Maihew, Archbishop Usher used as his source, but there appears to have been an attempt to cover up this following passage from being widely made public, since the copies of Maihew's Trophea in the British Museum, in the Bodleian library and in the library of Trinity College, Dublin are all missing this specific passage.  The passage quoted here actually comes from Stillingfleet’s private collection that was sold to Archbishop Marsh’s library in 1704.  It is interesting to note that there remains no trace of the St. Michael church at Montacute and it also seems as if an attempt with the same aim, has been made to cover-up the clue to Joseph's whereabouts left by Father William Good. Maihew writes:

For this man (Father Good) was situated until now in the same monastery (Glastonbury) in a flourishing position, a boy brought up as a priest to devote himself to sacrifice for the mass, after the overturning of the rule of the Catholic Queen Mary; however, while Queen Elizabeth was persecuting the Catholics, he was made a member of the clergy of the Fellowship of Jesus. And when the church of the Anglican college was decorated with pictures, he was the first to assemble in that place an enumeration of the distinguished holy men of England, with him as leader, to ensure that the appearances and deeds of those very men in that place were portrayed with a faithful likeness to the truth. However, concerning the convent of Glastonbury and Saint Joseph of Arimathea, he leaves behind the following, written in his own hand and signed in that place with his own name:

‘at Glastonbury there were bronze plates as a perpetual memorial, chapels, crypts, crosses, arms, the keeping of the feast(of St Joseph) on July 27, as long as the monks enjoyed the protection of Kings by their charters.  Now all these things have perished in the ruins.  The monks never knew for certain the place of this Saints burial, or pointed it out. They said the body was hidden most carefully, either there (Glastonbury), or on a Hill near Montacute called Hamden Hill, and that when his body should be found, the whole world should wend their way thither on account of the number and wondrous nature of the miracles worked there.  Among other things, I remember to have seen, at Glastonbury, a stone cross, thrown down during this Queens reign, a bronze plate, on the which was carved an inscription relating that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain 30 years after Christ's Passion, with eleven or twelve companions: that he was allowed by Arviragus the King to dwell at Glastonbury, which was then an island called Avalon, in a simple and solitary life: and that he had brought with him two small silver vessels in which was some of the most holy blood and water which had flowed from the side of the dead Christ.  This cross, moreover, had been set up many years before to mark the length of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, made by Saint Joseph with wattle.  The length was measured by a straight line from the centre of the cross to the side of the chancel afterwards built of hewn stone, under which also there was of old, in a subterranean crypt the Chapel of St Joseph.  Outside, in the wall of this Chapel of the blessed virgin, there was a stone with the words ‘Jesus, Maria’, carved in very ancient letters.  The old arms of the monastery of Glastonbury confirm (the traditions).  These arms are a white shield on which is placed vertically the stem of the green cross, and from side to side the arms of a cross in like manner.  Drops of blood are scattered over the field of the shield; on both sides of the upper right and under the arms of the cross are set golden ampullae.  These were always called St Joseph's insignia for he was piously believed to have abided there; and even perhaps to have been buried there.  There was in that same place (at Glastonbury) a long underground sanctuary where a very famous pilgrimage was established to the stone statue of that saint there; and there were many miracles done there, even while I was a boy, who was born there (in Glastonbury), and I served mass in the sanctuary as an eight-year old, and I saw it destroyed by the impious man, William Goals, under Henry VIII.’

Thus far go the words of that man (Father Good); as I said, he signs his name in his own hand under these things: I copied them down from the manuscript itself when I was a pupil of the same Anglican college in Rome, and always I kept them safe with me, across sea and land, amid the most savage persecutions of heretics. Nevertheless, it points towards that mount named Hamden Hill, on which some claim the tomb of St. Joseph of Arimathea to be, the sanctuary on that mount was kept safe for some time, built among the sacred and revered places of England. In fact I remember when sometimes I myself would traverse that mount, a certain old man who lived not far from that place would receive me through trust in my worthiness, often, during the reign of Elizabeth the heretic, to visit that place, and there, in a particular place he was accustomed to pray on his knees.

It is interesting to note that the quotes ‘The monks never knew for certain the place of this Saints burial, or pointed it out’, and ‘even perhaps to have been buried there’  tend to denote a certain acquiescence in Father Good’s day that previous generations of monks had fabricated the whole legend.  It would seem that the subterranean chapel in Glastonbury might have been an attempt at establishing a place of worship where Joseph was supposed to be buried. However, as we posited earlier, without the discovery of the Grail for all to see, this would lack credibility with pilgrims.  As Father Good bears witness, the miracles which were prophesied by Melkin and which were supposed to happen at the unveiling of the grave, were already taking place at this underground chapel, but not even Glastonbury would have the effrontery to fabricate the Grail.  Father Good, although he attests that Glastonbury is Avalon as we have seen previously, is unconvinced that Joseph is actually buried there, thus his investigation into the Arms of Glastonbury. The fact that Maihew went to Montacute circa 1620 and witnessed a man on his knees praying indicates that maybe the chapel was still standing then and his reference ‘in a particular place’ is meaning  St.Michael’s hill as opposed to Hamden hill also known as Ham hill.

 Possibly subsequent searchers being newly appraised of this hitherto un-published clue, dismantled the chapel to search beneath for the Grail. This does seem likely as all the copies of Maihew’s Trophea were meddled with, to avoid this information being spread abroad. The very fact that the monks did not point out the site in Glastonbury and that there was equivocation as to whether Joseph's remains were in Montacute or Glastonbury (even by the possessors of the Montacute clue), leads one to deduce that there could have been a general suspicion of fabrication even by the monks. It would surely seem as if an attempt had been made, prior to Father Good’s days, to establish an underground Chapel to bring pilgrims into close proximity with Joseph believed to lie within the grounds.

John of Glastonbury relates in his Cronica about the two pyramids; ’There are also two pyramids there which, placed some feet away from the old church, border the monks Cemetery.  The one taller and closer to the church has five levels and is 26 feet high.  Although it threatens to fall because of its great age, it still presents several wonders of antiquity, plainly legible though not wholly intelligible’. He then goes on to mention the various names of people mentioned on the different levels of that pyramid.  Afterwards he relates that the other pyramid is 18 feet tall and has four levels on which, as we mentioned before, the names Montacute and Brent Knoll are inscribed.  It then goes on to assert that he assumes that the bones of those mentioned on the outside are probably buried within.  He then says ‘these men built no whited sepulchre, nor constructed lavish monuments, but gloried rather that they could be buried in the humble turf of this holy land.  And although their places of burial are not visible, nevertheless, they appear worthy of internal memory in this site of the Lord.’

How old were these pyramids and who was originally buried in them, and why were the markings on them, plainly legible though not wholly intelligible?  John of Glastonbury, always ready to promote the Abbey and its holiness then goes on to relate a story of Rainaldus who, to escape persecution in the Holy Land by a Sultan, has to return to Glastonbury and collect a glove full of earth to give to the Sultan, to relinquish him from his debt and punishment.  So John has the Sultan say ‘those who live there do not know what virtue there is in that earth, anyone, however great a sinner among 1000 men, if he is buried there, will hardly suffer pains of hell’.  This continual self-promotion has continued to the present day with apocryphal, untrue claims. Here again, is an instance of England's connection with the East and it makes one wonder if there is a prior knowledge or acceptance of Glastonbury anciently being hallowed ground with an eastern connection. What were two pyramids doing in Glastonbury and what was written upon the largest that was so unintelligible yet clearly written. Was it hieroglyphics or Hebrew?  Before we delve into the relationship between England of the present-day, and that of Neolithic man with the East, we should look at the very prophecy and the man that wrote it, that has become a large part of our investigation.

Figure 23 Showing the Joseph line running through Montacute from Avebury to Burgh Island which is precisely 104 Nautical miles.

Melkin, Melkinus Melchinus or Maelgwyn, for those wishing to associate him with the Welsh bardic tradition, we are told by Capgrave, lived just before the time of Merlin and King Arthur circa 550AD. Pits  in his ‘De illustribus Britanniae scriptoribus’ circa 1620, describes him as an 'Avalonian', and calls him a British bard, historian, and astronomer. He dates him with assurance to 560 AD.  Leland calls Melkin’s prophecy a ’fragment of history written by Melchinus an Avalonian’.  Melki or Melchi having a biblical derivative ‘Melkizedek’ which means priest King while Melki, meaning King, and the sons of Zadok being those charged with serving in the inner sanctum of the Temple.  There is so little known about Melkin that it is quite possible that Melkin and Merlin may be one and the same, or that Melkin himself was descended from the royal line of Kings that existed in Southern Britain from the time of Belerion.  Melkin as we have mentioned was held in such high regard by chroniclers from mediaeval times, through to Elizabethan times and was referred to by some as an erudite scholar. Since most of his works are lost and the trail of his life seems to have been covered over, it seems highly likely that he was the last of the noble line descended from, Joseph of Arimathea and therefore expunged from popular cult status as a relative of Arthur's in the Saxon era.

The power of prophecy or the ability to prophesy, especially that of the biblical prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah was not an attribute that was sought after, but often conferred on persons close to the royal line.  Certainly biblical prophets endured much hardship speaking God’s words as if emanating from themselves and when they prefixed their words ‘Thus saith the Lord’, their peers were sceptical. They incurred the ire of their contemporaries who had contrary opinions or views to those which were being foretold that which would come to pass. The most important question in this exposé which only the reader will be able to decide at the finish of these pages is whether there is such an ability as prophecy. Obviously, most people have had the experience of Déjà vu and would conclude that time is not really understood, if one could glimpse events before they happened. Biblical Prophets, on the other hand are divinely inspired and rely upon divine intervention that can see across time. A divine voice speaks through those Prophets, so it is not actually the Prophets faculties that are capable of future prediction, but God speaking through them, as the force behind the prognostications.

In the case of Melkin we are told by Helinand that he was informed in a vision by an angel concerning the Grail and through this method he was able to pass on the Grail information. If one was to exclude this avenue as being an unacceptable explanation of his possession of arcane knowledge of Ley lines, surveying techniques and the ability to write a book on the ‘degrees’ toward enlightenment………  then the reader must conclude that a body of knowledge existed which contained this information. If this is the case, are we to look on Melkin as a mere collator passing on ancient history and occult knowledge? The answer would seem to be that Melkin understood profound knowledge, the essence of which, the Grail was a reality. A divine plan existed for Melkin and he understood it. The Grail writers alas, only picked up certain facets of the truth to which the Grail related and thus we are left with a fractured mess of processionals, quests, strivings and searching’s, all of which empathise with the lot of man, yet do not convey the original truths that the account was meant to convey.

Prophecy is one of the most misunderstood concepts of the modern generation and certainly most theologians have not paid much attention to what the essence of prophecy is, but have tried to rationalise the words that the biblical prophets spoke only in a historical context.  Plainly the whole of Christendom is based upon the biblical prophets, as Jesus concurred by coming to fulfil much of what they had prophesied and thereby his Messianic position was confirmed.  Many view the biblical prophets as purely relating to that which is now historical but it is the understanding of Biblical Time that will put prophecy in perspective.  However, we will come across this later in our enquiry, but for the moment we need to establish if Melkin was of this same prophetic tradition.  Did he actually have prior academic knowledge of the whereabouts of a ‘bifurcated line’ before he wrote his Prophecy related by John of Glastonbury?  Was it entirely prophetical without any conscious knowledge of the directions contained within his prophecy?

 The second half of Melkin's prophecy is assuredly prophetical, in that it speaks of the future unveiling of Joseph’s sepulchre and the events that will accompany the discovery.  It deals with the consequences of unveiling Joseph's tomb and infers a global reaction, the veracity of which, will only been known when it is unveiled at an appointed time and a set date.  However Melkin’s prophecy might be partially divinely inspired and partly instructional.  If Melkin had been present at Arthur’s burial he would certainly know the lay of the land around the grave site of Avalon. This is described in his puzzle, but does not explain how he was able to survey 104 miles across the landscape and take an angle from an invisible Ley line. So is his riddle less prophetical than instructive……… as if relating facts from a source? We can only conclude that it is both for he knows the outcome of the discovery and yet describes not only its geographical location but also physical features of the island.

 If we assume that the passage giving the genealogies in John of Glastonbury’s Cronica is also from Melkin and from an ancient source, then this same source relating the Ley line information could be very ancient. Is it that Melkin had available three bodies of Knowledge? One British, from Neolithic man regarding Ley lines possibly derived from Zerah’s offspring, another involving Jesus and Joseph which included information relating to the Jewish heritage from the Temple and an account of Joseph’s arrival in Britain with the Grail ark ........and lastly an account covering the period from Joseph to Arthur.

We can assume that the second-half of the prophecy is prophetical.  Prophetical in the sense that it is foretelling of the global reaction, but maybe not divinely inspired as it could be asserted that anyone could predict a stir at the unearthing of Jesus's bones……… as ‘Abbadare’ in Melkin’s Prophecy is a pseudonym for Jesus. It is Melkin’s references to biblical time which should convince us that he understood the purport of the material that Joseph brought with him concerning the Divine plan and later laid out, in his Book of the Grail.

Apart from his now famous prophesy, which, shortly we shall discuss and dissect at length, it is worth looking at what other references are made to his lost books. John Leyland says he saw fragments of Melkin’s work, even a volume of great antiquity while Bale, Capgrave, Hardyng and Pits either give the titles of the books, supposedly written by him or incidental added information. The three books which John Pits sites, ‘De antiquitatibus Britannicis’, ‘De gestis Britannorum’ and  ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’, could have been written by Melkin and within one of these three the prophecy probably existed and Bale confirms that it was Melkin who wrote the ‘Arthurii mensa rotunda’ which surely could be just an abbreviation of Pits’ title.  It is unclear how much of the historical information that we have today regarding Arthur and Joseph was derived from the works of Melkin but these titles seem to concur that Melkin wrote a manuscript about King Arthur and the Round Table and also of British history to his time.  None of these later chroniclers mention the more important ‘Book of the Graal’. So it would seem our assumption that the Book of the Gradali was the source for the French Grail stories which left Britain in the Saxon era. The source for the Arthurian material that supplied Geoffrey and the Welsh tradition we should assume stayed in Britain, but both originate from Melkin. Melkin then was the common source to both and hence the overlap of material. This would explain the Welsh corruption of Arthurian material until the advent of the French material. It would also explain another piece of evidence that appeared at the time of the Grail material in Britain.  The ‘Acts of Pilate’ are different from the ‘Gospel of Nicodemus’ for they had been around since at least the fourth century and were originally written in Greek.  The Gospel of Nicodemus seemed to surface around the time that Henry of Blois came from France; so was the Nicodemus material gleaned from Melkin’s Grail book? If so it would add to the evidence of the Graal material (that which explains the Divine Plan) originally having come from the Holy land with Joseph.

The passage below, quoted in John's Cronica giving an extract on the genealogy from Joseph of Arimathea through to Arthur is most probably derived from Melkin, as this passage is next to that of Melkin’s prophecy in John's work and others relate it is from him.  It also testifies to the proximity in relationship between the Grail stories and the material found in Melkin’s prophecy, and should go a long way to convincing the reader that, Melkin’s manuscripts and the Grail romances had a common source.

‘Hae seriptura testatur, quod rex Arthunts de itirpe Joseph descendit’, This passage bears witness that King Arthur descended from the stock of Joseph.

‘Helaius, nepos Joseph, genuit losue. losue genuit Aminadab. Aminadab genuit Castellors. Castellors genuit Manael. Manael genuit Lambord & Urlard. Lambord genuit filium, qui genuit Tgemam, de qua rex Uterpendragun genuit nobilem & famosum regem Arthurum; per quod patet, quod rex Arthurus de stirpe Joseph descendit. Item de eodem, Petrus, consanguineus Joseph ab Armathia, Rex Oiganise, genuit Krlan. Erlan genuit Melianum. Melianus genuit Arguth. Arguth genuit Edor. Edor genuit Loth, qui duxit in uxorem sororem regis Arthuri, de qua genuit quatuor filios, scilicet Walwanum, Agraneyns, Gwerehes & Geheries.'

Helians, Joseph's nephew, begat Josue.  Josue begat Aminadab.  Aminadab begat Castellors.  Castellors begat Manael. Manael begat Lambord and Urlard.  Lambord begat a son, who begat Igerna,  of whom King Utherpendragon begat the noble and famous King Arthur,  by which it is evident that King Arthur descended from the stock of Joseph.  Again on the same subject; Peter, cousin of Joseph of Arimathea and King of Organiana begat Erlan. Erlan begat Melian begat Arguth begat Edor. Edor begat Loth, who took to wife King Arthur's sister, of whom he begat four sons, namely Gawain, Agravains, Guerrehes, and Gaheriet.

The first thing to notice is that the genealogy starts with Joseph’s Nephew and this raises the question of what relation was Helians to Jesus? We might find the answer when we look at Leonardo da Vinci’s connection to Avalon in a later chapter. Helians would indeed be Jesus’s cousin, being Joseph’s Nephew also. Joseph already had a son Josephes so why start the genealogy with Joseph’s Nephew? Now here is the twist that most scholars are unsure about and that is, if there ever was a Josephes as Joseph’s son or is this a corruption of Joseph and the source was talking about his son.  Jesus’ brothers were in Jerusalem with James, so what if this genealogy starts with Helians because he is Joseph’s son from Mary but Joseph was in fact a very rich Merchant from England. Helian’s son Josue, gives his offspring a decidedly Hebraic name because  Amminadab was the father of Nahshon in the Davidic geneology. This is all speculation but if it was true, it would be the thread that joins the Pharez to the Zerah line genetically after a long period of separation in Elaine’s (Magd’elaine) marriage to Jesus as Elaine was the King of Sarras’ daughter.

The subject matter and proximity of this text to that of the prophecy itself in John’s Cronica, tends to evidence that John was quoting directly from one of Melkin’s manuscripts. However, this genealogy is found also in the ‘Estoire’ from the French source, but what seems likely is, that because the two extracts are so close together , it might indicate as if they both came from a book that contained Melkin’s prophecy in Britain and the geneology and could be the evidence of such crossover material mentioned earlier.

John of Glastonbury ends his quotation from Melkin with the words ‘thus far Melkin’.  He then continues on to say that ‘also in this island of Avalon, which is called the tomb of saints, rest, Coel, King of the Britons, father of St Helen, mother of the great emperor Constantine, and Caradoc Duke of Cornwall.’  He then follows on to say ‘King Arthur rests there with his Queen Guinevere; in the year of the Lord's incarnation 542, Arthur was fatally wounded by Mordred in Cornwall near the river Camlann, was brought to the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds, died there in summer, around Pentecost, and was buried in the monks Cemetery.

We are able to see here in this last caption how John had ended, quoting directly from Melkin but continuing with most of Melkin’s material except for ‘and was buried in the monks Cemetery’,and ‘King Arthur rests there with his Queen Guinevere’, which evidences clearly another example of his polemicism. The information about the tomb being occupied by Arthur’s forebears from Cornwall fits with the account that all the Kings were anointed from the Grail Ark which is also in the Tomb.  It is interesting about John’s inclusion of ‘St Helen, mother of the great emperor Constantine’, because it was Constantine who developed the ’Edict of Milan’ which stated that Christians should be allowed to follow the faith of their choosing  which of course is what Augustine had complained about the ‘Britains’, as we covered earlier.

This passage however, does highlight that there was essentially an early southern tradition built upon later by the Welsh. Caradoc, who seems to feature more prevalently in the Silurian tales of knight’s, has his roots and those of King Arthur firmly fixed in Cornwall according tom genuine Melkin material.  After all, Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine.  Igraine was wife to Duke Gorlois of Cornwall, at the time she conceived Arthur and therefore Arthur was illegitimate, but Cornish.

How much John of Glastonbury has interpolated this additional information as is seen in reference to Guinevere, the time of year, the date for king Arthur and his ‘burial in the Monks cemetery’ after having thus confirmed ‘here ended Melkin’ we shall not know.

Almost all of Christendom laid claim to St. Helen’s relics and her inclusion by John, could be his own interpolation mixed with Melkin's factual account. The St. Helen legend, made popular byGeoffrey of Monmouth, claims that Helena was a daughter of the King of Britain, Coel ofCamulodunum.  She gave birth to Constantine, but as history spells out, Constantine did not spend much time in Britain.  However, Caradoc seems to have been supplied by the Melkin source, the same source that would have left Arthur with the southern and Cornish tradition, and Caradoc as Duke of Cornwall. 

Just to reiterate, when William of Malmesbury wrote his ‘De Antiquitate’ Joseph of Arimathea was not included in the text, except that some annotations in the margin by a later hand, related that he and twelve of the disciples had been sent from Gaul by St Philip.  This annotation had been made sometime in the middle 13th century and tells how Joseph built the wattle church at Glastonbury and that the church was dedicated to St Mary, (vital points to make by the polemicist). The Church then fell into disrepair and was then renovated by two Roman missionaries called Phagan and Deruvian, the same tale of events being told in St. Patrick's charter much later, with barely a mention of Joseph of Arimathea before that time.

John of Glastonbury writing later included these annotations from a later hand interpolated into William’s work quoting from it as if it were all from his hand. John’s intention here is to have us believe that his source is entirely William’s work only and not that of interpolators to add credence and historical weight to Glastonbury propaganda. In fact John is swaying our opinion by saying this is the William of Malmesbury who wrote an account of the Abbey ‘from the coming of St. Joseph down to the time of Henry of Blois’. Had it not been for the annotations, Joseph of Arimathea, leader of the band of 12 would have barely received a mention.  There is another later marginal annotation that states that ‘Joseph of Arimathea, the noble councillor, with his son Joseph and many others, came to greater Britain and there ended his life and is attested to by the book of the deeds of the famous King Arthur’, and then again, another reference referring the reader to the fourth and fifth books of Geoffrey of Monmouth. This is quite strange since William of Malmesbury did not know the location of the Isle of Avalon and chose not to include any part of the Joseph story.

John of Glastonbury is primarily responsible for putting the whole legend together as we know it today, conglomerating the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Acts of Pilate, Joseph's connection with St. Philip, being extracted from the charter of St. Patrick, Joseph’s arrival in Glastonbury, and the building of the wattle church.  The wattle church substantiated and overstated in its method of construction purely based upon rationalising it with Melkin’s ‘cratibus’.

 William of Malmesbury's book ’On the antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury’  has not reached us in its original form, suffering many interpolations at the hands of the scribal polemicists at Glastonbury, the forged book which must necessarily and manifestly have been composed fifty years after his death.  Luckily we can see this by William of Malmesbury's third edition of his Gesta Regnum which he released circa 1140 in which he repeated verbatim much of which was in his ‘Antiquitates’, related by Adam of Domerham, and through this, we can detect later interpolations.

William of Malmesbury tells us that the Bishop of Rochester after fleeing from York covered the wattle church in wooden boarding as a repair. This quite possibly was how William of Malmesbury viewed the repaired church when he visited Glastonbury, after having been repaired once by Phagan and Deruvian and then again by St. David, so was it ever wattle and is this the fixing point that allows no further indecision. ‘Cratibus’, ‘oratori’ and ‘adorandam virginem’ are the glue that ties the prophecy to Glastonbury. The Rhygyfarch a Welsh text, relates that Glastonbury was one the churches St. David founded; this contradicting the Joseph tradition, but William aware of this assertion and being able to peruse many of the ancient manuscripts at Glastonbury was aware that it had a history prior to 500 AD. William wrote that David only visited Glastonbury intending just to ‘rededicate’ the abbey, as well as to donate a travelling altar as well as the Great Sapphire while en route and passing through……  and while there, he fortuitously had a vision of Jesus, who said that"the church had been dedicated long ago by himself (Jesus) in honour of His Mother, and it was not seemly that it should be re-dedicated by human hands". So instead, St. David, we hear, commissioned an extension to be built to the Abbey, east of the Old Church and he was probably not responsible for any rebuilding of the old church. The Glastonbury community, claimed that St. David had presented this Sapphire to them and it was later hidden during the unsettled early Saxon times. In Welsh tradition it was recounted that St. David had received a wonderful altar stone, commonly called 'the sapphire', from the Patriarch of Jerusalem and that he brought it back to Wales with him.  In the twelfth century,  Abbot Henry of Blois had apparently re-discovered this gift,  during the course of renovations. 

In the fourteenth century Abbot Walter de Monington had the stone richly decorated and it was then hung aloft in the church where it remained until the dissolution: 'Item, delivered more unto his majestie ... a super altare, garnished with silver and gilte and parte golde, called, the greate Saphire of Glasconberye.'

 The old church, with its wooden boarding is probably the state in which William witnessed it, even though in the ‘Antiquitates’ there is an account that it was covered from top to bottom with lead, but this could have been referring to the roof only or a protection of the wattle which like Cob crumbles when soaked.   Whatever light the construction of the church may be viewed in, it seems likely that even before William of Malmesbury wrote, which was before the fire; the church’s construction became a focal point to concur with Melkin’s ‘cratibus’ in the time even prior to finding Arthur’s bones as this was physical evidence of the wattled church dedicated to (Our Lady to concur with the Perlesvaus and the adorable Virgin from Melkin's puzzle) and hence the very place of which Melkin prophesied that Joseph would be found. The only slightly concerning detail is that Joseph would then be buried three quarters of a mile away from the supposed Isle in which he was supposed to be buried.

Certainly the church’s construction had already been overtly publicised, but afterward through John of Glastonbury’s repeated confirmation of its construction being made from wattle, it seemed like overcompensation to marry ‘cratibus’ to wattle.

It was the ‘Magna Tabula’ that Archbishop Usher refers to, that would have publicly associated Joseph's name with the chapel at Glastonbury other than the fabricated St. Patrick’s charter.  The Magna tabula was a folding wooden frame containing two wooden leaves like the pages of a book and all six interior faces were covered in parchment manuscript that used to hang in Glastonbury Abbey, which for the most part, quotes John of Glastonbury. It was put there for pilgrims to view and to confirm to public awareness, the heritage of Glastonbury.

 In the last section of this Tabula, after following John of Glastonbury's work,  there is new material added and is headed, ’of the Chapel of Saints Michael and Joseph, and all Saints, who rest in the cemetery’,followed on by a commentary that Abbot John Chinnock in 1382 had repaired this Chapel that stood in the midst of the cemetery.  This Magna Tabula related the tales of King Arthur, St Patrick’s charter, Joseph of Arimathea and the translation of the body of St. Dunstan, among many other things, bringing into the public domain and to all pilgrims, the association with Joseph of Arimathea.  Not only were the pilgrims now made aware of the original church that Joseph had built, by the mystical instructions on the ‘bronze plaque’ but the placing of the Tabula within the abbey, publicised its propaganda to every visiting pilgrim.

The fact that Melkin’s line became a focal point in providing directions is obvious to the Glastonbury establishment…… and for this reason, it is more astounding that modern commentators have diverted from this obvious connection and started inventing scenarios that it is somehow relevant and relates to linen cloth.

It was surely understood by the writer of the late liturgical piece prefixed by Hearne to John of Glastonbury's History. After relating information about the line from the pillar (with the bronze plate affixed) outside on the North through the point up to which the eastern end of the old church originally came, he states: ‘near this line, according to certain ancient writers lies St. Joseph with a great multitude of Saints’. It is fairly obvious that John of Glastonbury as we have mentioned already, had taken the position that the ‘Linea’ was a directional instruction as he writes, ‘amongst whom, Joseph also was buried, and placed (et positus) in linea bifurcate over against the aforesaid oratory’

To the North of the Lady Chapel stood a column (Father Good relating that it was a Cross), close to the site where the pyramids used to be, the column foundations being uncovered in 1921.  The function of the bronze plaque placed on the column was duly following the Glastonbury tradition of self-promotion and propaganda.  The column ostensibly being built to indicate the exact site of Joseph's church. The existence of the column still standing with the bronze plate in place can be traced back to the second quarter of the 17th century, and relates the story of the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea, the dedication of the original church by our Lord in person, and how the church was built to honour his Virgin mother.

It also related the vision of St. David, the positioning of the Chapel added by him, and a gift from him, of the sapphire.  The plaque then goes on to relate;  ‘and lest the site or size of the earliest church should come to be forgotten by reason of such additions, this pillar is erected on a line extended southward  through the two Eastern Angles of the same church, and cutting off from it the chancel of the aforesaid.  And its length was sixty feet westward from that line; its width twenty six feet; the distance of the centre of this pillar from the middle point between the said angles, forty eight feet’.

The plaque seems to have carried out its intended function……… J.Blome on 10th June 1345, having obtained his royal permit, set out to search for Joseph within the Glastonbury grounds, most probably making full use of the information provided by the plaque, thinking this is relevant to Melkin’s instructions of a Bifurcated line, to find Joseph. 

The royal writ is printed from the patent role in Rymer’s  Foedera.

 The King to all of whom these presents shall come, Greeting! John Blome of London has petitioned us that since (as he asserts) a divine injunction has been laid on him as concerning the venerable body of the noble decurion Joseph of Arimathea, which rests in Christ buried within the bounds of the monastery of Glastonbury, and is to be revealed in these days to the honour of God and the edification of many; to wit, that he should seek it diligently until he find it; because it is said to be contained in certain ancient writings that his body was there buried: We therefore, (if so it be) desiring to pay, devout honour to this sepulchre, and to the relics of him who performed such offices of religion and humanity to our Redeemer in His death, taking down His body from the cross and laying it in his own new sepulchre; and hoping for ourselves and all our realm a wealth of grace from the revelation aforesaid; have conceded and licence given, so far as rests with us, to the said John that he should have power to dig within the precinct of the said monastery and seek for those precious relics according to the injunction and the revelation made to him in the places where he shall see it to be most suitable: provided, however, that this can be done without hurt to our beloved leader in Christ the Abbot and convent of the said monastery and without destruction of their church and houses there; and that for this purpose he have the license and assent of the Abbot and convent themselves.

 In testimony whereof and witness the King at Westminster on the 10th day of June. By the King himself.

It would seem that John Blome had insisted that such a search was by divine instruction, but unfortunately it must have  become apparent that the whole search was instigated by the will of John himself as no body was found. If Joseph had been found we certainly would have heard of it.  Once the Avalon connection to Glastonbury had been established by the early polemicists and such inventions of fictional instructions that pretended to relate to Melkin's bifurcated line found relevance at Glastonbury by the later polemicists..... it was only inevitable that an indepth search should be cattied out. 

 So it was after the fire of 1184 that the stories of Joseph blossomed and a presumption that he would be buried close by his own church was generally assumed. Everyone tended to forget that the Island of Avalon which located Joseph was nearly three quaters of a mile away.
 The Isle of Avalon having found its geographical position at Glastonbury, was all part of Glastonbury re-inventing itself. When we add these facts with the leaden triangles and squares on the church floor, the circles of portentous prophecy, bifurcated lines, a southern angle and a meridian from Melkin, together with, lines extending southwards through two Eastern Angles indicated on the plaque………… it all leads one to believe that these are purposeful directions, intended to lead the quester to Joseph's burial site, which of course held the Holy Grail. The placing of the plaque, not only confirming for pilgrims in posterity, the longevity and the veracity of Glastonbury's long-standing association with Joseph, but also for evermore, keeping the quester’s gaze firmly fixed within the confines of the Glastonbury Abbey grounds. However Melkin's instructions are blatently clear.... Joseph is on an Island by the sea and when his body is found, not only will it create a stir by reason of what is found with him (i.e the holy Grail) but it will also have global ramifications.
Continued on:

 http://templartreasure.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Showing the Island described in the Perlesvaus.

http://jesusinavalon.blogspot.co.uk #1

http://templartreasure.blogspot.co.uk #2

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

Copyright © 2011 Michael Goldsworthy

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