The Real Secret Society

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The Real Secret Society BehindThe DaVinci Code From: Atlantis Rising Magazine June 2006 issueAs everyone knows who has read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code the plotrevolves around the clandestine activities of an ancient secret society known as the Prioryof Sion. The actual existence of this society, claims Brown, is one of the few irrefutabletruths woven into his fictional novel. This may have been true when he was writing hismanuscript, but recently the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the non-fiction book thatintroduced Brown to the Priory, publicly stated that the organization appears to be a hoax.They confessed to having been led astray by some “Prieuré documents” they discoveredin Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale, an admission that for awhile deterred most researchersfrom further pursuing the legitimacy of the Priory. Then researchers Lynn Picknett andClive Prince published The Sion Revelation, within which they examined all argumentsfor and against the Priory. Their surprising conclusion was that there has indeed been asecret European organization with an agenda similar to the Priory’s, and that the Priory ofSion may have been invented to act as a cover for this legitimate organization. Picknettand Prince were never able to conclusively identify this elusive order, perhaps becausethe secret society they apprehended is not very secretive anymore. The order they soughtis commonly known as the Rosicrucian Order, although it has also been known by otherrelated titles, including the Order of the Rose or Rosy Cross and the Brotherhood of theRosy and Golden Cross. Although seemingly innocuous today, in the past thisorganization has preserved many secret rites and passed among its members manyheretical secrets that are just as explosive as any information regarding the sacredBloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The Rosicrucian Order, which we can now call the real Priory of Sion, first madeits presence known in the 17 th century through public documents known as the Fama andConfessio. These manifestos claimed that the Order of the Rosy Cross was moving into anew public cycle although it had already been in existence as a secret society forhundreds of years. Then, in 1785, one of the Order’s Paris representatives, Baron deGleichen, spoke at an international conference of Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminatiand Knights Templar claiming that the members of the Order of the Rosy Cross had beenthe “Superiors and Founders of Freemasonry,” while additionally maintaining that itsGrand Masters “were designated by the titles John I, II, III, and so onward,” therebyostensibly aligning them with John the Baptist, John the Apostle, or both. These revealedcharacteristics of the Rosy Cross were later woven into its alter-ego, the Priory of Sion,which was similarly reputed to award its Grand Masters with sequential “John” titles. Perhaps the most conclusive evidence in favor of the Priory of Sion being a covername for the Order of the Rosy Cross is simply that the Priory once called itself theL’Order de la Rose-Croix Veritas, the “The True Order of the Rose Cross.” Supposedlythe Priory once adopted both this epithet and that of “Ormus,” a name that alsoirrefutably ties the Priory to the Rosy Cross because Ormus is the name of the founder ofan early Rosy Cross sect that existed in 1 st Century Alexandria. The information
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regarding Ormus and his sect first originated in the 18 th century with the Rosicrucianhistorian Baron von Westerode, who claimed that Ormus, a disciple of St. Mark and agnostic priest of the Alexandrian deity Serapis, was the founder of an early Rosy Crosssect that he denominated the “Sages of Light.” And finally, conclusive proof of the Priory being but a name for the Rosy Crosscan be found through a study of their mutual lists of Grand Masters, which in manyplaces are identical. Some of the recognizable Grand Masters they share in commoninclude Nicholas Flamel, Robert Fludd, Johann Valentin Andrea, Robert Boyle and IsaacNewton. The Order of the Holy GrailThere is, however, one crucial difference between the Order of the Rosy Crossand the Priory of Sion. The Order of the Rosy Cross never designated itself as theguardian of the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, which was the sole raison d’êtreof the Priory of Sion (this was, however, the raison d’être assigned to the Priory by theauthors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, NOT the “Prieuré documents” that first informedthem of its existence). Closer inspection will, however, reveal that the two orders actuallymirror each other in their fundamental missions, which for both has been the search andprotection of some form(s) of the Holy Grail. The members of the Priory of Sion contendthat the Holy Grail is solely the body of Mary Magdalene, while the Rosicrucians take amuch broader approach. For them the Holy Grail is a subtle power that any human orobject can possess. This power has been known by many names worldwide, including theHoly Spirit, Shekinah, Baraka, and Kundalini. A seeker must simply find the right cup,sword, spear, rock, person, etc., that is endowed with this power and then absorb it intothemselves, thus initiating a process of alchemical transformation that leads toenlightenment and even immortality. Those human Holy Grails who possess the greatestabundance of this power are most commonly fully enlightened masters, and those objectsthat are ascribed the power of Holy Grails, such as the Cup of Christ or Spear ofLonginus, are normally items that have been in close contact with such masters or held apart of them, such as their blood, and then absorbed their power. This sought after HolyGrail power can also be acquired via the head or relics of a deceased saint, such as Johnthe Baptist, whose head was discovered in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade andbecame one of the prized Holy Grails possessed by the Knights Templar. The KnightsTemplar were, by the way, also linked to the Order of the Rosy Cross. According toBaron von Westerode, they are known in Rosicrucian history as the “Disciples of theRose Cross.” Their definitive red cross of eight points was an ancient alchemical symbolof the Rosy Cross Order. And similar to other branches of the Rosy Cross, the Templarsalso entitled their Grand Masters as John I, II, III, etc. Back to the GardenSince the Rosicrucians take a more expansive view on what the Holy Grail is,their service of guarding it is also more inclusive. While the goal of the Priory of Sion hasbeen to guard Mary Magdalene and her descendants, that of the Rosicrucians has been toprotect a lineage of Holy Grail masters and their alchemical teachings that can be tracedall the way back to the Garden of Eden. According to the historian Arthur Edward Waitein The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, it was not unusual for certain early European
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branches of the Order of the Rosy Cross to maintain that their “Rosy Cross” wisdom wasfirst taught by God to Adam in the fabled Garden. This secret wisdom was then passeddown a lineage of enlightened “Sons of Wisdom” that included Moses and Solomon, aswell as the alchemist Hermes Trismegistus. Could the Order of the Rosy Cross have literally originated in the Garden of Edenas Rosicrucian historians maintained? A body of surprising evidence supporting thisnotion can be found in the archives of the Order of the Garter, Britain’s most prestigiousknighted order founded by King Edward III, who synthesized elements of the Templars,the Knights of the Round Table, and the Sufi Order of Al-Khadir to create his 14 th century chivalrous organization. The Order of the Garter and its symbols, which include arose and a rosy cross, was, according to Frances Yates in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,initially linked to the Rosicrucians. St. George, the Garter’s patron saint whose symbol isa rosy cross embedded in an eight-pointed star, also links the Order of the Garter to theRosy Cross, while in addition he also connects both orders to the Garden of Eden. Today,St. George is known as Al-Khadir by the Middle Eastern Sufis who maintain that his truehome is Kataragama on Sri Lanka – the island paradise currently recognized by Moslemsworldwide as the original site of the Garden of Eden. Thus, St. George ties the RosyCross to Eden - but he also does so in a more direct way. According to the Hindus, whoalso venerate St. George at Kataragama albeit as their deity Skanda-Murugan, in veryancient times St. George was physically incarnate as a great spiritual leader who firsttaught the knowledge of alchemy to humanity. He was also full of the alchemical powerof transformation which he passed to his students, thereby founding lineages of adeptsfull of Holy Grail power. One of these lineages was taken west by the Nasurai Mandeans,who eventually merged with the Jewish Essenes to produce the sect of the Nasoreans orNazarenes, the sect that John the Baptist and Jesus were born into. John received theHoly Grail power and wisdom from his Nasorean teachers before passing it to Jesus andother masters who founded gnostic sects, including the founders of the Alexandrian sectthat produced Ormus. Jesus eventually passed the power and wisdom to his successors,John the Apostle and Mary Magdalene, who in turn transmitted it down a line of HolyGrail masters that culminated with the Knights Templar. Thus, in the end, the power andsecret teachings of the Holy Grail came into the possession of many branches of theOrder of the Rosy Cross, the real Priory of Sion.Mark Amaru Pinkham is the North American Grand Prior of the International Order ofGnostic Templars (www.GnosticTemplars.org). Mark is the author of Guardians of theHoly Grail: The Knights Templar, John the Baptist and the Water of Life and he isoften interviewed on national radio and television regarding the Knights TemplarMysteries and Secret Societies. Mark is also a tour leader to sacred sites associated withthe Knights Templar and the Holy Grail around the world.