Was Anthony Woodville the real Sir Lancelot?

The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.


Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
Lusignan-Rivers of
the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:

I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
Wight, Earl
of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
Buckingham at
the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
Princes in
the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
Richard III at
Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
was secretly
declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
1476, was
ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
them
elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
house of
Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
marriage to
Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
was to reign
in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
Jerusalem. In
that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
plans were
never made public. Anthony was not only going
to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
attempted an
interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
the True
Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
as "Saul of
Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
at Tarsus.
These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
mother,
Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
Aquitaine, and from
Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
Albigens at
Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
brought
back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
to Judaea
those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
Josiah six
centuries earlier.
In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
Anthony had
been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
could
ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
conferred
upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
of
Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
of
Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
armoured
and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
Melusine,
identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
Luciferian
Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
and
Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
Temple under
the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
centuries before
the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
Trefoil god, a
sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
TreEochairr the
god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
vision of the
Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
spared
initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
Henry Tudor
had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
Edward
Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
Richard III
had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
Parliament in
1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
Rivers) and
her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
Henry Tudor who
had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
remainder of the
Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
life, had
secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
of Melusine
of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
died, named
Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
off as the
child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
of
Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
Woodville).
Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
inherited
the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
Rivers

II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
of the
Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
the child
of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
Rivers family
(the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
Elizabeth
Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
Place,
Penshurst.

III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
married
Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
Lord Mayor of
London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
reign of
Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.

IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
Grocer of
London.

V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
Studied at
Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
claim the
Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
was a
jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
of Arms by
an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
could be
granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
granted the
Baronetcy of Chafford.

VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
8 June
1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley

VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
Barth,
London to Anne Hewett

VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
married
1718 Mary Holbrooke

IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe

X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
elder
brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
where their
father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
Baronet of
Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
became a
powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
months apart
in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
remaining elder
brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
succeed to the
Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
Rivers arrived
with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
1808. Married
25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.

XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
Bancroft.
Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
Virginia.
Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
Pike,
responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
vonBismarck and
Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
College
(later University of South Carolina) and later President of
Washington College
in Chestertown, Maryland.

XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
Graduate of
University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
collection
of University of South Carolina.

"Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
not to the
isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
Lord
Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
Dragon lord to
the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
new as
prince of Jerusalem.
This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
still
older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
Lake in her,
"The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
religion
of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
Goddess was
feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
accretions in the
Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
Bacchus on
the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
Canis, where
Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
an
artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
engineers had
drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
merely
Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
built upon
former lake-bed.
Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
to the
male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
Druids, the
isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.

The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
the Goddess
on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
to her
grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
region) just
south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
Rome.
Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
Prince John,
Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
John had
invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
townsfolk
alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
surrounded
Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
kidnapping
and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
around the
countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
it was like
the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
Josiannic
Purges of 621 BC.
Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
a
war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
his brother
John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
Jacquetta's own
brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
ravished by an
English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
the castle,
herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
the castle
courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
Thomas Malory,
who became her devotee.
Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
birth to
the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
death of
St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
of Valois in
London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
Jacquetta
openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
newly-made
baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
the English
nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
Luxembourgs were
cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
new
husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
of-Arms,
she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
of argent a
fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
a golden
griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
Rivers),
she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
Earls of
Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
( a red
canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
red fess.
This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
Throne of
Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.

Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
Rouen
during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
approximately of an
age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
approximately
nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
the castle
courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
her
lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
feudal
connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
have ignored
evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
not comanded
by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
religious movements
sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
movements
and societies were no exception.
For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
the
Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
Woodville
or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
of Anthony
Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
word and blow
by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
Burgundy. The
incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
rose onto his
thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
despite the
fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
Newgate to Caxton
Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
Lord Scales,
their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
Elizabeth
Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
the
deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
permanent
mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
(headdress)
to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
for his
Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
and the
queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
slavishly
in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
Scales, who
actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
it was
Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
heir) who
was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
the aging
author.
It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
continued to
visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
practical
succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
that Malory
was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
necessary
in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
children
on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
sense. Genealogy
because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
Crusade of
1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
the
Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
players
themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
Bouillon and his
brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
descended from
their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
Bohemond
of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
Jerusalem
and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
of
Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
the crusade
and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
the French
royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
lover-uncle
Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
Payen,
Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
anyone in
history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
members of
the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
also the
hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
of the
Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
immediately south of
Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
princess was
also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
Isis
Mysteries.
Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
(Germanic)
Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
emperour
whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
Directly
descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
as through
Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
also from the
"uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
Comminges who
built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
many times
over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
Salvasche) when
it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
Montfort!) in
1244.
Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
three
centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
crowded with the
men who ran Christendom:
things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
female
power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
traces the
duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
mediaeval
legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
(sometimes a
dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
the house
of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
served that
royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
her
descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
Angeou
(Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
swan) and
fled into the sky!
For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
by divine,
shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
the French
fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
incarnate
"Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
monumental
work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
her biplane
and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
which she
herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
interpretted in
terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
one thing:
the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
parallels
mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
knowledge of
Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
Here, in
the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
an
artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
symbol of
the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
than the
Melusine of Avalon herself?
Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
the "Holy
Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
Embriacci
boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
it in the
Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
known to
Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
there. This is
not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
that, the
Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
was the
descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
kinsman Eticho
or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
reference to the
descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
Grail Castle
(himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
from Jesus
Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
appertaining
heritage.
Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
interpretted, what
is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
Semiramis or
Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
earthly man. That
is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
image, so
often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
it has
been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
an upright
line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
horizontal line
(the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
representing
light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
Arthur's
paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
Avalon and
the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
empowered religion
before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
Arthur.
(Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
Cornwall,
that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
on one of
the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
artificial lake!)
Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
reference to the
tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
of Arc and
Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
a lady
riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
Religion
and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
interpretted as the
"new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
cult, is
the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
Green Man or
god of vegetation.
There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
stars on the
ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
High History.
Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
throne which
is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
fall from the
sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
be torn by
the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
like Giant
Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
There is a
sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
female
member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
it was
almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
witchcraft
during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
with the
Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
a now
little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
Elizabeth
Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
Luxembourg
(betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
Luxembourg
kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
queen as the
melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
of "witchcraft" among the
congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
accusation.)
Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
the entire
Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
Ship's Green
where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
unhorsed each
Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
painted
shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
witchcraft by
combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
Witch-cult of
Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.

James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
Princess
Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
performed by
proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
England
was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
kingdom of
Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
unprecedented
in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
continental
principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
logic for this
was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
kinsmen, who
had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
her
coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
was
conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
battle" and
had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
depicting
Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
some of the
precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
in claiming
France through maternal descents. But, really it was
a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
of
Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
granting him
these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
more
significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
grant his
wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
century later for
Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
flattery or
heraldic decoration.
The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
people all
over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
Jerusalem might
be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
Cyprus--as
strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
militarily--could
not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
exile in
different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
claims to
Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
elsewhere until
after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
a Bastard
and was then vacant!
The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
public but
one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
Cyprus
and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
secretly had a
child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
anonymously into
the Scottish nobility.
The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
having
waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
(there were
still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
of the
reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
arrangements of
his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
heir, Richard
last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
ceded their
rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..

Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
Light known
variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
Mere Lucine--
of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
manifestation of
Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
counts or
princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
birth to
the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
castle, and her
children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
could even
pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
unacceptable
monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
are two
things very important to understand: first, that this line of
children were
otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
prince in
"Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
refering as
it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
clearly in Jean
Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
second
important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
Melusine's
children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
goddess
Hera. The first, as the most important, was
the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
claws and
golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
Goddess
and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
G. Walker
ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
One Great
Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
shatter and
to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
Christ and
not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
epithets and
calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
aspects of
the same thing.
When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
of Hera,
this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
Hera, in the
new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
housewife
with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
philanderer. Thus
different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
treated as
her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
Goddess. Hercules
himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
a child of
Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
who actually
bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
passing of the
belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
slayer of Her
children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
Her
religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
Melusine and, in
Poitou, gave birth to them all...
When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
was a
serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
come with the
mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
had built,
and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
footprint near a
window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
becoming a
mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
becoming a swan
who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
exorcism, but
then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
would fly
as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
death of her
descendants...
In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
her. Here,
happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
straightforwardly dove
through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
in the form
of a mermaid...all very tidy.
The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
gave birth
to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
eucharist)
in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
then...remember, this
sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
magicks...whereupon she
transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
most places
and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
Woman or
"that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
very Devil.
Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
window into
the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
had very
potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
millions
of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
souls"
...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
Times":
consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
at face
value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
type of
alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
(Noah) in the
Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
(Semiramis)
makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
the
central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
the Nomo of
the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
or
fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
to a
fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
goddess of
Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
of
eponymous goddesses of Holland!
The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
opposed to
what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
sharp
seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
prerogative,
generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
birth-givers as
their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
Mother
Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
to a great
deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
rather
than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
whose
labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
Goddess's temples
were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
child be
conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
the men
ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
as "property".
The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
names
"Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
Goddess from
the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
holy
bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
the
Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
house of
Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
decendants(?)
was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
her.
Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
to the
altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
wedding guests
succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
over the
punch bowl at the reception!
Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
more like
an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
(ship?) that
is invisible from the outside!
Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
at Rome
being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
by
crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
sword of
kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
candidate (King
Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
of a
stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
Christian "ichthys"
version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
pagan
sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
Irish
churches.
Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
holding a
cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
of what is
truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
Lake in
Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
as three
miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
island
known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
herself...the
mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
Goddess...whereas
Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
where
Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
misprint in the
German "Lanzelet"!
Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
and
another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
international:
even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
all the
way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
VII you
know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
a part of
the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
slaughter
of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
empire, same
Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
Greek "Koina" was not
employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
What of
"the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
age thirteen
where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
coming back at
age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
Jewish Talmud
says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
lands" and
the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
empire
with travel and communication never so
easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
or the
remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
cult;and
that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
and not a
"common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
Talmud his
mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
seems
definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
else...you should
not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
were
mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
how this
would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
patriarchal priests.
To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
possibility of
the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
Patriarchy wants
you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
those
societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
international and
was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
purges! The
priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
because
Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
of Isis were
still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
Magdalene...and in
Avalon as well.


Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers

Several posts from the same source showed up on the Wars of the Roses
forum yesterday. I traced one of these posts back to the 'Rivers' forum
from genealogy.com. Again, it certainly needs a healthy dose of
verification. Interesting nonetheless. Looks like we have our own da
Vinci code. Jacquetta of Luxembourg's mother was high priestess of Isis?
Rivers' shield contained an inset of the Glyph of Isis? Out-Hughesing
Hughes...perhaps?
http://genforum.genealogy.com/rivers/messages/1091.html

theblackprussian wrote:
>
> The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
>
> Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> Lusignan-Rivers of
> the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
>
> I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> Wight, Earl
> of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> Buckingham at
> the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> Princes in
> the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> Richard III at
> Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> was secretly
> declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> 1476, was
> ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> them
> elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> house of
> Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> marriage to
> Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> was to reign
> in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> Jerusalem. In
> that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> plans were
> never made public. Anthony was not only going
> to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> attempted an
> interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> the True
> Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> as "Saul of
> Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> at Tarsus.
> These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> mother,
> Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> Aquitaine, and from
> Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> Albigens at
> Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> brought
> back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> to Judaea
> those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> Josiah six
> centuries earlier.
> In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> Anthony had
> been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> could
> ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> conferred
> upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> of
> Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> of
> Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> armoured
> and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> Melusine,
> identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> Luciferian
> Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> and
> Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> Temple under
> the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> centuries before
> the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> Trefoil god, a
> sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> TreEochairr the
> god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> vision of the
> Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> spared
> initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> Henry Tudor
> had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> Edward
> Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> Richard III
> had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> Parliament in
> 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> Rivers) and
> her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> Henry Tudor who
> had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> remainder of the
> Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> life, had
> secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> of Melusine
> of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> died, named
> Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> off as the
> child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> of
> Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> Woodville).
> Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> inherited
> the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> Rivers
>
> II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> of the
> Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> the child
> of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> Rivers family
> (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> Place,
> Penshurst.
>
> III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> married
> Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> Lord Mayor of
> London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> reign of
> Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
>
> IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> Grocer of
> London.
>
> V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> Studied at
> Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> claim the
> Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> was a
> jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> of Arms by
> an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> could be
> granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> granted the
> Baronetcy of Chafford.
>
> VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> 8 June
> 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
>
> VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> Barth,
> London to Anne Hewett
>
> VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> married
> 1718 Mary Holbrooke
>
> IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
>
> X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> elder
> brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> where their
> father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> Baronet of
> Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> became a
> powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> months apart
> in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> remaining elder
> brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> succeed to the
> Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> Rivers arrived
> with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> 1808. Married
> 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
>
> XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> Bancroft.
> Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> Virginia.
> Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> Pike,
> responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> vonBismarck and
> Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> College
> (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> Washington College
> in Chestertown, Maryland.
>
> XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> Graduate of
> University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> collection
> of University of South Carolina.
>
> "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> not to the
> isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> Lord
> Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> Dragon lord to
> the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> new as
> prince of Jerusalem.
> This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> still
> older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> Lake in her,
> "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> religion
> of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> Goddess was
> feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> accretions in the
> Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> Bacchus on
> the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> Canis, where
> Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> an
> artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> engineers had
> drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> merely
> Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> built upon
> former lake-bed.
> Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> to the
> male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> Druids, the
> isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
>
> The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> the Goddess
> on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> to her
> grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> region) just
> south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> Rome.
> Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> Prince John,
> Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> John had
> invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> townsfolk
> alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> surrounded
> Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> kidnapping
> and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> around the
> countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> it was like
> the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> Josiannic
> Purges of 621 BC.
> Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> a
> war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> his brother
> John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> Jacquetta's own
> brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> ravished by an
> English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> the castle,
> herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> the castle
> courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> Thomas Malory,
> who became her devotee.
> Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> birth to
> the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> death of
> St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> of Valois in
> London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> Jacquetta
> openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> newly-made
> baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> the English
> nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> Luxembourgs were
> cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> new
> husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> of-Arms,
> she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> of argent a
> fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> a golden
> griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> Rivers),
> she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> Earls of
> Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> ( a red
> canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> red fess.
> This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> Throne of
> Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
>
> Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> Rouen
> during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> approximately of an
> age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> approximately
> nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> the castle
> courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> her
> lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> feudal
> connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> have ignored
> evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> not comanded
> by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> religious movements
> sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> movements
> and societies were no exception.
> For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> the
> Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> Woodville
> or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> of Anthony
> Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> word and blow
> by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> Burgundy. The
> incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> rose onto his
> thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> despite the
> fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> Newgate to Caxton
> Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> Lord Scales,
> their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> the
> deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> permanent
> mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> (headdress)
> to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> for his
> Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> and the
> queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> slavishly
> in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> Scales, who
> actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> it was
> Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> heir) who
> was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> the aging
> author.
> It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> continued to
> visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> practical
> succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> that Malory
> was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> necessary
> in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> children
> on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> sense. Genealogy
> because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> Crusade of
> 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> the
> Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> players
> themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> Bouillon and his
> brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> descended from
> their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> Bohemond
> of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> Jerusalem
> and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> of
> Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> the crusade
> and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> the French
> royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> lover-uncle
> Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> Payen,
> Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> anyone in
> history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> members of
> the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> also the
> hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> of the
> Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> immediately south of
> Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> princess was
> also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> Isis
> Mysteries.
> Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> (Germanic)
> Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> emperour
> whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> Directly
> descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> as through
> Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> also from the
> "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> Comminges who
> built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> many times
> over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> Salvasche) when
> it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> Montfort!) in
> 1244.
> Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> three
> centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> crowded with the
> men who ran Christendom:
> things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> female
> power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> traces the
> duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> mediaeval
> legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> (sometimes a
> dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> the house
> of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> served that
> royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> her
> descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> Angeou
> (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> swan) and
> fled into the sky!
> For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> by divine,
> shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> the French
> fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> incarnate
> "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> monumental
> work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> her biplane
> and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> which she
> herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> interpretted in
> terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> one thing:
> the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> parallels
> mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> knowledge of
> Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> Here, in
> the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> an
> artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> symbol of
> the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> than the
> Melusine of Avalon herself?
> Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> the "Holy
> Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> Embriacci
> boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> it in the
> Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> known to
> Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> there. This is
> not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> that, the
> Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> was the
> descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> kinsman Eticho
> or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> reference to the
> descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> Grail Castle
> (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> from Jesus
> Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> appertaining
> heritage.
> Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> interpretted, what
> is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> Semiramis or
> Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> earthly man. That
> is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> image, so
> often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> it has
> been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> an upright
> line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> horizontal line
> (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> representing
> light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> Arthur's
> paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> Avalon and
> the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> empowered religion
> before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> Arthur.
> (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> Cornwall,
> that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> on one of
> the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> artificial lake!)
> Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> reference to the
> tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> of Arc and
> Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> a lady
> riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> Religion
> and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> interpretted as the
> "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> cult, is
> the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> Green Man or
> god of vegetation.
> There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> stars on the
> ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> High History.
> Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> throne which
> is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> fall from the
> sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> be torn by
> the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> like Giant
> Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> There is a
> sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> female
> member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> it was
> almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> witchcraft
> during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> with the
> Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> a now
> little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> Luxembourg
> (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> Luxembourg
> kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> queen as the
> melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> of "witchcraft" among the
> congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> accusation.)
> Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> the entire
> Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> Ship's Green
> where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> unhorsed each
> Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> painted
> shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> witchcraft by
> combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> Witch-cult of
> Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
>
> James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> Princess
> Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> performed by
> proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> England
> was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> kingdom of
> Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> unprecedented
> in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> continental
> principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> logic for this
> was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> kinsmen, who
> had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> her
> coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> was
> conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> battle" and
> had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> depicting
> Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> some of the
> precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> in claiming
> France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> of
> Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> granting him
> these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> more
> significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> grant his
> wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> century later for
> Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> flattery or
> heraldic decoration.
> The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> people all
> over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> Jerusalem might
> be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> Cyprus--as
> strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> militarily--could
> not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> exile in
> different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> claims to
> Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> elsewhere until
> after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> a Bastard
> and was then vacant!
> The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> public but
> one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> Cyprus
> and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> secretly had a
> child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> anonymously into
> the Scottish nobility.
> The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> having
> waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> (there were
> still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> of the
> reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> arrangements of
> his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> heir, Richard
> last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> ceded their
> rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
>
> Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> Light known
> variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> Mere Lucine--
> of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> manifestation of
> Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> counts or
> princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> birth to
> the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> castle, and her
> children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> could even
> pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> unacceptable
> monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> are two
> things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> children were
> otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> prince in
> "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> refering as
> it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> clearly in Jean
> Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> second
> important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> Melusine's
> children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> goddess
> Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> claws and
> golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> Goddess
> and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> G. Walker
> ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> One Great
> Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> shatter and
> to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> Christ and
> not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> epithets and
> calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> aspects of
> the same thing.
> When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> of Hera,
> this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> Hera, in the
> new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> housewife
> with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> philanderer. Thus
> different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> treated as
> her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> Goddess. Hercules
> himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> a child of
> Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> who actually
> bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> passing of the
> belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> slayer of Her
> children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> Her
> religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> Melusine and, in
> Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> was a
> serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> come with the
> mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> had built,
> and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> footprint near a
> window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> becoming a
> mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> becoming a swan
> who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> exorcism, but
> then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> would fly
> as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> death of her
> descendants...
> In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> her. Here,
> happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> straightforwardly dove
> through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> in the form
> of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> gave birth
> to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> eucharist)
> in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> then...remember, this
> sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> magicks...whereupon she
> transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> most places
> and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> Woman or
> "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> very Devil.
> Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> window into
> the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> had very
> potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> millions
> of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> souls"
> ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> Times":
> consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> at face
> value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> type of
> alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> (Noah) in the
> Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> (Semiramis)
> makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> the
> central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> the Nomo of
> the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> or
> fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> to a
> fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> goddess of
> Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> of
> eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> opposed to
> what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> sharp
> seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> prerogative,
> generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> birth-givers as
> their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> Mother
> Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> to a great
> deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> rather
> than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> whose
> labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> Goddess's temples
> were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> child be
> conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> the men
> ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> as "property".
> The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> names
> "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> Goddess from
> the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> holy
> bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> the
> Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> house of
> Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> decendants(?)
> was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> her.
> Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> to the
> altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> wedding guests
> succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> over the
> punch bowl at the reception!
> Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> more like
> an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> (ship?) that
> is invisible from the outside!
> Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> at Rome
> being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> by
> crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> sword of
> kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> candidate (King
> Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> of a
> stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> Christian "ichthys"
> version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> pagan
> sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> Irish
> churches.
> Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> holding a
> cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> of what is
> truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> Lake in
> Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> as three
> miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> island
> known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> herself...the
> mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> Goddess...whereas
> Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> where
> Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> misprint in the
> German "Lanzelet"!
> Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> and
> another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> international:
> even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> all the
> way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> VII you
> know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> a part of
> the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> slaughter
> of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> empire, same
> Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> Greek "Koina" was not
> employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> What of
> "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> age thirteen
> where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> coming back at
> age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> Jewish Talmud
> says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> lands" and
> the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> empire
> with travel and communication never so
> easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> or the
> remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> cult;and
> that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> and not a
> "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> Talmud his
> mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> seems
> definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> else...you should
> not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> were
> mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> how this
> would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> patriarchal priests.
> To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> possibility of
> the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> Patriarchy wants
> you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> those
> societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> international and
> was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> purges! The
> priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> because
> Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> of Isis were
> still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> Magdalene...and in
> Avalon as well.
>
> Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
>
>

My apologies. The last two posts I sent were actually re-submissions of
what you already sent out. It's confusing as they turned up as separate
postings on the Wars of the Roses Forum. I've tried to 'drill down' to
obtain information behind the materials in the postings, but generally
end up at abstracts of articles for which I have to pay. Much of the
material strikes me as similar in style to books written by the
nineteenth century spiritualists, as well as early twentieht century
'anthropoligists' such as James G. Fraser, Jessie Weston, Robert Graves,
et al. These people wanted to marry history and folklore into a coherent
whole. They influenced many of our best early twentieth century poets
and writers, and continue to drive the works of 'new agers'. Another
series of works that do the same thing are James Churchward's books on
the lost continent of Mu. These materials are written in a most
convincing manner. They provide wonderful 'Aha!' experiences, but, for a
great part, they don't bear real scrutiny.

I can buy the idea that Malory was influenced by contemporary people and
events, but I'm not sure just what specifics can be read into /Le Morte
D'arthur. /I also accept that Jacquetta of Bedford was rumoured to be
immersed in the occult, but I'm sure many were involved in such pursuits
in a 'dilletanteish' way.

theblackprussian wrote:
>
> The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
>
> Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> Lusignan-Rivers of
> the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
>
> I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> Wight, Earl
> of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> Buckingham at
> the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> Princes in
> the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> Richard III at
> Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> was secretly
> declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> 1476, was
> ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> them
> elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> house of
> Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> marriage to
> Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> was to reign
> in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> Jerusalem. In
> that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> plans were
> never made public. Anthony was not only going
> to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> attempted an
> interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> the True
> Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> as "Saul of
> Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> at Tarsus.
> These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> mother,
> Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> Aquitaine, and from
> Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> Albigens at
> Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> brought
> back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> to Judaea
> those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> Josiah six
> centuries earlier.
> In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> Anthony had
> been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> could
> ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> conferred
> upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> of
> Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> of
> Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> armoured
> and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> Melusine,
> identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> Luciferian
> Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> and
> Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> Temple under
> the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> centuries before
> the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> Trefoil god, a
> sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> TreEochairr the
> god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> vision of the
> Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> spared
> initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> Henry Tudor
> had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> Edward
> Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> Richard III
> had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> Parliament in
> 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> Rivers) and
> her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> Henry Tudor who
> had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> remainder of the
> Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> life, had
> secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> of Melusine
> of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> died, named
> Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> off as the
> child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> of
> Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> Woodville).
> Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> inherited
> the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> Rivers
>
> II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> of the
> Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> the child
> of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> Rivers family
> (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> Place,
> Penshurst.
>
> III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> married
> Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> Lord Mayor of
> London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> reign of
> Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
>
> IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> Grocer of
> London.
>
> V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> Studied at
> Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> claim the
> Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> was a
> jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> of Arms by
> an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> could be
> granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> granted the
> Baronetcy of Chafford.
>
> VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> 8 June
> 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
>
> VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> Barth,
> London to Anne Hewett
>
> VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> married
> 1718 Mary Holbrooke
>
> IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
>
> X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> elder
> brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> where their
> father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> Baronet of
> Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> became a
> powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> months apart
> in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> remaining elder
> brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> succeed to the
> Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> Rivers arrived
> with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> 1808. Married
> 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
>
> XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> Bancroft.
> Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> Virginia.
> Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> Pike,
> responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> vonBismarck and
> Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> College
> (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> Washington College
> in Chestertown, Maryland.
>
> XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> Graduate of
> University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> collection
> of University of South Carolina.
>
> "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> not to the
> isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> Lord
> Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> Dragon lord to
> the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> new as
> prince of Jerusalem.
> This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> still
> older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> Lake in her,
> "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> religion
> of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> Goddess was
> feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> accretions in the
> Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> Bacchus on
> the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> Canis, where
> Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> an
> artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> engineers had
> drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> merely
> Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> built upon
> former lake-bed.
> Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> to the
> male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> Druids, the
> isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
>
> The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> the Goddess
> on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> to her
> grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> region) just
> south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> Rome.
> Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> Prince John,
> Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> John had
> invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> townsfolk
> alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> surrounded
> Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> kidnapping
> and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> around the
> countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> it was like
> the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> Josiannic
> Purges of 621 BC.
> Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> a
> war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> his brother
> John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> Jacquetta's own
> brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> ravished by an
> English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> the castle,
> herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> the castle
> courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> Thomas Malory,
> who became her devotee.
> Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> birth to
> the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> death of
> St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> of Valois in
> London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> Jacquetta
> openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> newly-made
> baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> the English
> nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> Luxembourgs were
> cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> new
> husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> of-Arms,
> she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> of argent a
> fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> a golden
> griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> Rivers),
> she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> Earls of
> Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> ( a red
> canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> red fess.
> This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> Throne of
> Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
>
> Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> Rouen
> during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> approximately of an
> age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> approximately
> nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> the castle
> courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> her
> lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> feudal
> connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> have ignored
> evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> not comanded
> by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> religious movements
> sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> movements
> and societies were no exception.
> For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> the
> Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> Woodville
> or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> of Anthony
> Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> word and blow
> by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> Burgundy. The
> incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> rose onto his
> thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> despite the
> fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> Newgate to Caxton
> Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> Lord Scales,
> their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> the
> deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> permanent
> mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> (headdress)
> to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> for his
> Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> and the
> queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> slavishly
> in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> Scales, who
> actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> it was
> Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> heir) who
> was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> the aging
> author.
> It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> continued to
> visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> practical
> succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> that Malory
> was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> necessary
> in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> children
> on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> sense. Genealogy
> because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> Crusade of
> 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> the
> Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> players
> themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> Bouillon and his
> brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> descended from
> their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> Bohemond
> of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> Jerusalem
> and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> of
> Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> the crusade
> and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> the French
> royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> lover-uncle
> Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> Payen,
> Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> anyone in
> history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> members of
> the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> also the
> hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> of the
> Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> immediately south of
> Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> princess was
> also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> Isis
> Mysteries.
> Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> (Germanic)
> Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> emperour
> whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> Directly
> descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> as through
> Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> also from the
> "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> Comminges who
> built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> many times
> over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> Salvasche) when
> it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> Montfort!) in
> 1244.
> Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> three
> centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> crowded with the
> men who ran Christendom:
> things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> female
> power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> traces the
> duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> mediaeval
> legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> (sometimes a
> dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> the house
> of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> served that
> royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> her
> descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> Angeou
> (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> swan) and
> fled into the sky!
> For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> by divine,
> shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> the French
> fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> incarnate
> "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> monumental
> work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> her biplane
> and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> which she
> herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> interpretted in
> terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> one thing:
> the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> parallels
> mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> knowledge of
> Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> Here, in
> the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> an
> artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> symbol of
> the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> than the
> Melusine of Avalon herself?
> Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> the "Holy
> Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> Embriacci
> boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> it in the
> Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> known to
> Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> there. This is
> not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> that, the
> Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> was the
> descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> kinsman Eticho
> or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> reference to the
> descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> Grail Castle
> (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> from Jesus
> Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> appertaining
> heritage.
> Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> interpretted, what
> is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> Semiramis or
> Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> earthly man. That
> is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> image, so
> often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> it has
> been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> an upright
> line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> horizontal line
> (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> representing
> light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> Arthur's
> paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> Avalon and
> the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> empowered religion
> before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> Arthur.
> (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> Cornwall,
> that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> on one of
> the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> artificial lake!)
> Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> reference to the
> tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> of Arc and
> Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> a lady
> riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> Religion
> and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> interpretted as the
> "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> cult, is
> the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> Green Man or
> god of vegetation.
> There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> stars on the
> ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> High History.
> Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> throne which
> is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> fall from the
> sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> be torn by
> the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> like Giant
> Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> There is a
> sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> female
> member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> it was
> almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> witchcraft
> during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> with the
> Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> a now
> little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> Luxembourg
> (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> Luxembourg
> kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> queen as the
> melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> of "witchcraft" among the
> congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> accusation.)
> Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> the entire
> Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> Ship's Green
> where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> unhorsed each
> Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> painted
> shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> witchcraft by
> combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> Witch-cult of
> Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
>
> James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> Princess
> Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> performed by
> proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> England
> was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> kingdom of
> Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> unprecedented
> in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> continental
> principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> logic for this
> was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> kinsmen, who
> had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> her
> coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> was
> conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> battle" and
> had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> depicting
> Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> some of the
> precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> in claiming
> France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> of
> Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> granting him
> these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> more
> significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> grant his
> wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> century later for
> Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> flattery or
> heraldic decoration.
> The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> people all
> over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> Jerusalem might
> be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> Cyprus--as
> strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> militarily--could
> not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> exile in
> different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> claims to
> Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> elsewhere until
> after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> a Bastard
> and was then vacant!
> The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> public but
> one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> Cyprus
> and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> secretly had a
> child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> anonymously into
> the Scottish nobility.
> The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> having
> waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> (there were
> still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> of the
> reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> arrangements of
> his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> heir, Richard
> last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> ceded their
> rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
>
> Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> Light known
> variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> Mere Lucine--
> of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> manifestation of
> Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> counts or
> princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> birth to
> the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> castle, and her
> children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> could even
> pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> unacceptable
> monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> are two
> things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> children were
> otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> prince in
> "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> refering as
> it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> clearly in Jean
> Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> second
> important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> Melusine's
> children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> goddess
> Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> claws and
> golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> Goddess
> and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> G. Walker
> ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> One Great
> Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> shatter and
> to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> Christ and
> not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> epithets and
> calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> aspects of
> the same thing.
> When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> of Hera,
> this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> Hera, in the
> new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> housewife
> with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> philanderer. Thus
> different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> treated as
> her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> Goddess. Hercules
> himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> a child of
> Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> who actually
> bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> passing of the
> belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> slayer of Her
> children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> Her
> religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> Melusine and, in
> Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> was a
> serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> come with the
> mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> had built,
> and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> footprint near a
> window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> becoming a
> mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> becoming a swan
> who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> exorcism, but
> then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> would fly
> as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> death of her
> descendants...
> In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> her. Here,
> happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> straightforwardly dove
> through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> in the form
> of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> gave birth
> to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> eucharist)
> in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> then...remember, this
> sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> magicks...whereupon she
> transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> most places
> and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> Woman or
> "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> very Devil.
> Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> window into
> the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> had very
> potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> millions
> of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> souls"
> ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> Times":
> consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> at face
> value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> type of
> alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> (Noah) in the
> Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> (Semiramis)
> makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> the
> central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> the Nomo of
> the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> or
> fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> to a
> fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> goddess of
> Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> of
> eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> opposed to
> what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> sharp
> seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> prerogative,
> generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> birth-givers as
> their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> Mother
> Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> to a great
> deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> rather
> than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> whose
> labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> Goddess's temples
> were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> child be
> conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> the men
> ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> as "property".
> The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> names
> "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> Goddess from
> the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> holy
> bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> the
> Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> house of
> Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> decendants(?)
> was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> her.
> Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> to the
> altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> wedding guests
> succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> over the
> punch bowl at the reception!
> Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> more like
> an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> (ship?) that
> is invisible from the outside!
> Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> at Rome
> being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> by
> crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> sword of
> kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> candidate (King
> Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> of a
> stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> Christian "ichthys"
> version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> pagan
> sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> Irish
> churches.
> Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> holding a
> cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> of what is
> truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> Lake in
> Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> as three
> miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> island
> known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> herself...the
> mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> Goddess...whereas
> Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> where
> Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> misprint in the
> German "Lanzelet"!
> Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> and
> another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> international:
> even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> all the
> way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> VII you
> know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> a part of
> the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> slaughter
> of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> empire, same
> Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> Greek "Koina" was not
> employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> What of
> "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> age thirteen
> where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> coming back at
> age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> Jewish Talmud
> says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> lands" and
> the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> empire
> with travel and communication never so
> easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> or the
> remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> cult;and
> that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> and not a
> "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> Talmud his
> mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> seems
> definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> else...you should
> not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> were
> mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> how this
> would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> patriarchal priests.
> To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> possibility of
> the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> Patriarchy wants
> you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> those
> societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> international and
> was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> purges! The
> priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> because
> Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> of Isis were
> still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> Magdalene...and in
> Avalon as well.
>
> Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
>
>

sorry, i have to disagree with you bill with regards to the nobility dabbling in the occult in a dilletanteish way.

my research is revealing these people were into the mantic arts in a big way. most were searching for the philosopher's stone and how to turn lead into gold. the philosopher's stone is said to grant longevity/immortality.

the nobility either personally actively pursued it, or hired alchemists/magicians/sorcerers.

the "witch's hat" was worn by men and women. it symbolises a pyramid, a place of power. look at pictures of women and their headdresses, the cones and double cones often featured in illuminated manuscripts.

margaret d'anjou wife of h6, her father was rene d'anjou. his court sorcerer was the maternal grandfather of nostradamus.

the church and the state have "taught" us to deny our "feelings/knowings". this was done via the inquistion which began in france to route out the cathars. of which the author of the "strange" postings alludes eleanor d'aquitaine was involved with. quite frankly, i've long believed eleanor was a cathar, simply because of her actions. she believed women were equal to men. she went on a crusade. she wielded power big time, until her english husband henry locked her up for more than a decade. this same henry is accused of being responsible for the death of thomas a beckett. i do know that after eleanor died, the persecution of the cathars began in earnest. eleanor's son, bad king john also had his run in with a pope. hence the magna charta.

the inquistion after the destruction of the templars went into somewhat of a lull, but it was picked up with a vengence by queen isabella of spain, mother of catherine of aragon. this is also when the borgia popes and medici also began to rise in power.

our people of interest were in the renaisance era, followed by the elizabethan era which by then the witch trials/hunts were getting under way.. by the jacobean age they were in full tilt.

the spanish inquistion did not end until the mid 1800's. which is also about the time of the re-emergence of the new age philosophies. and yes, definitely there were charalatans and fakes..but there are also some truely gifted people out there. not all of us have musical talent. i couldn't carry a tune if it were put in a bucket, however, people like mozart and john lennon are gifted.

psychic ability is of the same level of talent, if you know what i mean. however, we've been taught to deny it.

my research is also indicating that charges of witchcraft were brought against those who used black magic (bad/destructive) vs white magic (good/healing). magic being derived from the word magi. magi being a word for wise/wisdom.

nostradamus was a "hidden" jew because of the inquistion. he was b. 1503. jewish mystics used kabbalah. nostradamus was raised and tutored by his maternal grandfather because at an early age it became apparent he had the "gift". he then became a doctor, and was protected and sponsored by catherine medici, spouse of the french king. nostradamous was not of peasant stock. he also predicted his demise.

england also has a famous seer, mother shipton. she was b. 1488 she also wrote in verse. while it is believed she was of peasant stock, my research is indicating she to, was born of nobility, and was considered extremely accurate in her prophecies, with many nobles visiting her cave for readings. nobles didn't consult or consort with peasants. mother shipton was burned as a witch in 1561 and said to have predicted her own demise.

in my own research i've had some unsettling co-incidences come to light, per se. in the last decade, i've learned to "use" these incidences as a barometer as to how close to the truth i'm getting...and there are times when i doubt my sanity regarding these findings/incidents because of my upbringing. however, some of these incidents have been witnessed, and others are documented. they are truely bizarre, and unexpected twists related to my research.

currently, i'm trying to find time to verify something. it is: that church officals, i.e. canons and rectors could marry prior to the 1730 council of trent. we do know that many, many church officals had "illegitimate" children. but were all these children illegit, or is it the rewriting of history by the "victors" that causes us to believe *all* children of the church fathers were illegit.

by researching the assorted "church councils" and what they decreed etc. we may find more truth than what is wanted to be divulged by the "powers that be." aka the lords spiritual and lords temporal.

and here is an interesting quote i recently found. i don't know who wrote it.

The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an
untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true.

something to think about..
roslyn

Bill Barber <bbarber@...> wrote:
My apologies. The last two posts I sent were actually re-submissions of
what you already sent out. It's confusing as they turned up as separate
postings on the Wars of the Roses Forum. I've tried to 'drill down' to
obtain information behind the materials in the postings, but generally
end up at abstracts of articles for which I have to pay. Much of the
material strikes me as similar in style to books written by the
nineteenth century spiritualists, as well as early twentieht century
'anthropoligists' such as James G. Fraser, Jessie Weston, Robert Graves,
et al. These people wanted to marry history and folklore into a coherent
whole. They influenced many of our best early twentieth century poets
and writers, and continue to drive the works of 'new agers'. Another
series of works that do the same thing are James Churchward's books on
the lost continent of Mu. These materials are written in a most
convincing manner. They provide wonderful 'Aha!' experiences, but, for a
great part, they don't bear real scrutiny.

I can buy the idea that Malory was influenced by contemporary people and
events, but I'm not sure just what specifics can be read into /Le Morte
D'arthur. /I also accept that Jacquetta of Bedford was rumoured to be
immersed in the occult, but I'm sure many were involved in such pursuits
in a 'dilletanteish' way.

theblackprussian wrote:
>
> The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
>
> Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> Lusignan-Rivers of
> the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
>
> I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> Wight, Earl
> of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> Buckingham at
> the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> Princes in
> the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> Richard III at
> Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> was secretly
> declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> 1476, was
> ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> them
> elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> house of
> Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> marriage to
> Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> was to reign
> in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> Jerusalem. In
> that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> plans were
> never made public. Anthony was not only going
> to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> attempted an
> interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> the True
> Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> as "Saul of
> Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> at Tarsus.
> These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> mother,
> Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> Aquitaine, and from
> Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> Albigens at
> Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> brought
> back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> to Judaea
> those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> Josiah six
> centuries earlier.
> In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> Anthony had
> been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> could
> ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> conferred
> upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> of
> Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> of
> Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> armoured
> and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> Melusine,
> identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> Luciferian
> Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> and
> Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> Temple under
> the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> centuries before
> the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> Trefoil god, a
> sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> TreEochairr the
> god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> vision of the
> Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> spared
> initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> Henry Tudor
> had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> Edward
> Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> Richard III
> had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> Parliament in
> 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> Rivers) and
> her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> Henry Tudor who
> had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> remainder of the
> Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> life, had
> secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> of Melusine
> of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> died, named
> Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> off as the
> child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> of
> Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> Woodville).
> Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> inherited
> the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> Rivers
>
> II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> of the
> Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> the child
> of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> Rivers family
> (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> Place,
> Penshurst.
>
> III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> married
> Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> Lord Mayor of
> London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> reign of
> Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
>
> IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> Grocer of
> London.
>
> V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> Studied at
> Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> claim the
> Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> was a
> jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> of Arms by
> an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> could be
> granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> granted the
> Baronetcy of Chafford.
>
> VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> 8 June
> 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
>
> VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> Barth,
> London to Anne Hewett
>
> VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> married
> 1718 Mary Holbrooke
>
> IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
>
> X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> elder
> brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> where their
> father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> Baronet of
> Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> became a
> powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> months apart
> in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> remaining elder
> brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> succeed to the
> Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> Rivers arrived
> with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> 1808. Married
> 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
>
> XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> Bancroft.
> Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> Virginia.
> Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> Pike,
> responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> vonBismarck and
> Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> College
> (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> Washington College
> in Chestertown, Maryland.
>
> XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> Graduate of
> University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> collection
> of University of South Carolina.
>
> "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> not to the
> isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> Lord
> Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> Dragon lord to
> the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> new as
> prince of Jerusalem.
> This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> still
> older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> Lake in her,
> "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> religion
> of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> Goddess was
> feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> accretions in the
> Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> Bacchus on
> the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> Canis, where
> Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> an
> artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> engineers had
> drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> merely
> Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> built upon
> former lake-bed.
> Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> to the
> male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> Druids, the
> isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
>
> The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> the Goddess
> on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> to her
> grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> region) just
> south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> Rome.
> Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> Prince John,
> Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> John had
> invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> townsfolk
> alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> surrounded
> Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> kidnapping
> and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> around the
> countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> it was like
> the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> Josiannic
> Purges of 621 BC.
> Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> a
> war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> his brother
> John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> Jacquetta's own
> brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> ravished by an
> English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> the castle,
> herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> the castle
> courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> Thomas Malory,
> who became her devotee.
> Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> birth to
> the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> death of
> St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> of Valois in
> London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> Jacquetta
> openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> newly-made
> baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> the English
> nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> Luxembourgs were
> cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> new
> husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> of-Arms,
> she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> of argent a
> fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> a golden
> griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> Rivers),
> she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> Earls of
> Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> ( a red
> canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> red fess.
> This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> Throne of
> Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
>
> Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> Rouen
> during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> approximately of an
> age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> approximately
> nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> the castle
> courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> her
> lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> feudal
> connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> have ignored
> evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> not comanded
> by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> religious movements
> sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> movements
> and societies were no exception.
> For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> the
> Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> Woodville
> or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> of Anthony
> Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> word and blow
> by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> Burgundy. The
> incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> rose onto his
> thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> despite the
> fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> Newgate to Caxton
> Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> Lord Scales,
> their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> the
> deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> permanent
> mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> (headdress)
> to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> for his
> Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> and the
> queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> slavishly
> in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> Scales, who
> actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> it was
> Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> heir) who
> was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> the aging
> author.
> It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> continued to
> visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> practical
> succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> that Malory
> was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> necessary
> in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> children
> on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> sense. Genealogy
> because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> Crusade of
> 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> the
> Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> players
> themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> Bouillon and his
> brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> descended from
> their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> Bohemond
> of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> Jerusalem
> and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> of
> Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> the crusade
> and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> the French
> royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> lover-uncle
> Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> Payen,
> Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> anyone in
> history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> members of
> the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> also the
> hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> of the
> Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> immediately south of
> Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> princess was
> also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> Isis
> Mysteries.
> Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> (Germanic)
> Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> emperour
> whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> Directly
> descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> as through
> Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> also from the
> "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> Comminges who
> built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> many times
> over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> Salvasche) when
> it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> Montfort!) in
> 1244.
> Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> three
> centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> crowded with the
> men who ran Christendom:
> things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> female
> power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> traces the
> duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> mediaeval
> legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> (sometimes a
> dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> the house
> of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> served that
> royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> her
> descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> Angeou
> (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> swan) and
> fled into the sky!
> For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> by divine,
> shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> the French
> fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> incarnate
> "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> monumental
> work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> her biplane
> and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> which she
> herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> interpretted in
> terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> one thing:
> the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> parallels
> mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> knowledge of
> Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> Here, in
> the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> an
> artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> symbol of
> the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> than the
> Melusine of Avalon herself?
> Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> the "Holy
> Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> Embriacci
> boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> it in the
> Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> known to
> Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> there. This is
> not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> that, the
> Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> was the
> descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> kinsman Eticho
> or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> reference to the
> descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> Grail Castle
> (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> from Jesus
> Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> appertaining
> heritage.
> Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> interpretted, what
> is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> Semiramis or
> Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> earthly man. That
> is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> image, so
> often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> it has
> been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> an upright
> line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> horizontal line
> (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> representing
> light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> Arthur's
> paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> Avalon and
> the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> empowered religion
> before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> Arthur.
> (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> Cornwall,
> that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> on one of
> the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> artificial lake!)
> Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> reference to the
> tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> of Arc and
> Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> a lady
> riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> Religion
> and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> interpretted as the
> "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> cult, is
> the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> Green Man or
> god of vegetation.
> There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> stars on the
> ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> High History.
> Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> throne which
> is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> fall from the
> sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> be torn by
> the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> like Giant
> Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> There is a
> sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> female
> member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> it was
> almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> witchcraft
> during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> with the
> Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> a now
> little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> Elizabeth
> Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> Luxembourg
> (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> Luxembourg
> kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> queen as the
> melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> of "witchcraft" among the
> congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> accusation.)
> Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> the entire
> Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> Ship's Green
> where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> unhorsed each
> Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> painted
> shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> witchcraft by
> combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> Witch-cult of
> Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
>
> James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> Princess
> Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> performed by
> proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> England
> was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> kingdom of
> Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> unprecedented
> in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> continental
> principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> logic for this
> was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> kinsmen, who
> had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> her
> coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> was
> conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> battle" and
> had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> depicting
> Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> some of the
> precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> in claiming
> France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> of
> Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> granting him
> these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> more
> significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> grant his
> wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> century later for
> Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> flattery or
> heraldic decoration.
> The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> people all
> over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> Jerusalem might
> be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> Cyprus--as
> strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> militarily--could
> not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> exile in
> different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> claims to
> Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> elsewhere until
> after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> a Bastard
> and was then vacant!
> The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> public but
> one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> Cyprus
> and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> secretly had a
> child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> anonymously into
> the Scottish nobility.
> The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> having
> waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> (there were
> still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> of the
> reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> arrangements of
> his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> heir, Richard
> last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> ceded their
> rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
>
> Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> Light known
> variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> Mere Lucine--
> of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> manifestation of
> Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> counts or
> princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> birth to
> the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> castle, and her
> children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> could even
> pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> unacceptable
> monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> are two
> things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> children were
> otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> prince in
> "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> refering as
> it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> clearly in Jean
> Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> second
> important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> Melusine's
> children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> goddess
> Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> claws and
> golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> Goddess
> and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> G. Walker
> ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> One Great
> Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> shatter and
> to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> Christ and
> not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> epithets and
> calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> aspects of
> the same thing.
> When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> of Hera,
> this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> Hera, in the
> new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> housewife
> with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> philanderer. Thus
> different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> treated as
> her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> Goddess. Hercules
> himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> a child of
> Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> who actually
> bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> passing of the
> belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> slayer of Her
> children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> Her
> religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> Melusine and, in
> Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> was a
> serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> come with the
> mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> had built,
> and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> footprint near a
> window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> becoming a
> mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> becoming a swan
> who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> exorcism, but
> then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> would fly
> as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> death of her
> descendants...
> In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> her. Here,
> happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> straightforwardly dove
> through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> in the form
> of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> gave birth
> to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> eucharist)
> in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> then...remember, this
> sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> magicks...whereupon she
> transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> most places
> and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> Woman or
> "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> very Devil.
> Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> window into
> the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> had very
> potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> millions
> of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> souls"
> ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> Times":
> consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> at face
> value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> type of
> alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> (Noah) in the
> Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> (Semiramis)
> makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> the
> central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> the Nomo of
> the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> or
> fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> to a
> fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> goddess of
> Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> of
> eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> opposed to
> what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> sharp
> seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> prerogative,
> generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> birth-givers as
> their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> Mother
> Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> to a great
> deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> rather
> than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> whose
> labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> Goddess's temples
> were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> child be
> conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> the men
> ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> as "property".
> The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> names
> "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> Goddess from
> the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> holy
> bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> the
> Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> house of
> Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> decendants(?)
> was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> her.
> Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> to the
> altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> wedding guests
> succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> over the
> punch bowl at the reception!
> Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> more like
> an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> (ship?) that
> is invisible from the outside!
> Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> at Rome
> being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> by
> crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> sword of
> kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> candidate (King
> Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> of a
> stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> Christian "ichthys"
> version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> pagan
> sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> Irish
> churches.
> Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> holding a
> cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> of what is
> truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> Lake in
> Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> as three
> miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> island
> known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> herself...the
> mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> Goddess...whereas
> Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> where
> Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> misprint in the
> German "Lanzelet"!
> Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> and
> another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> international:
> even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> all the
> way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> VII you
> know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> a part of
> the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> slaughter
> of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> empire, same
> Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> Greek "Koina" was not
> employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> What of
> "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> age thirteen
> where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> coming back at
> age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> Jewish Talmud
> says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> lands" and
> the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> empire
> with travel and communication never so
> easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> or the
> remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> cult;and
> that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> and not a
> "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> Talmud his
> mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> seems
> definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> else...you should
> not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> were
> mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> how this
> would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> patriarchal priests.
> To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> possibility of
> the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> Patriarchy wants
> you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> those
> societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> international and
> was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> purges! The
> priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> because
> Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> of Isis were
> still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> Magdalene...and in
> Avalon as well.
>
> Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
>
>








---------------------------------
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I've had a day to think about what I said, and you're right. There is
probably a fair bit to what Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers stated. I should
have separated medieval occultism from its nineteenth and early
twentieth century counterparts which could be a bit dilletanteish at
times. Also, early anthropologists were sometimes a little too loose in
their juxtaposition of fact and conjecture. Perhaps many medieval people
were closer to their cultural heritage than are we. I'm just not sure
where the original sources for the contributor's statements lie. I think
that much of the grail stuff comes from Laurence Gardner's works.
Another contributor to the esoteric aspects of Arthurian/Celtic studies
is Jean Markale. Both men are controversial, but they are certainly
interesting.
Laurence Gardner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Gardner
http://graal.co.uk/index.html
Jean Markale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Markale

Also found this bibliography of works (mainly nineteenth century) on the
subject.
http://www.well.com/~mareev/goddess/goddess_bibliography.html

Other contributors to arcane knowledge are Robert Graves (*/The White
Goddess/*) and Alwyn and Brinley Rees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Goddess
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alwyn%20and%20Brinley%20Rees&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&as_qdr=all&oi=scholart

Can't say where the Malory/Woodville stuff comes from. I typed 'Malory
Woodville' into Google, and pulled up teaser paragraphs and abstracts
for articles I'd have to pay for. Maybe I will some look at them some
day. Many of these articles will be available to those with access to
reasonably good library facilities. Again, the problem is, where does
one draw the line? Here's the Google search that I pulled up.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=

During my search, I re-discovered a work I previously pulled up and
posted. Here it is again.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=

I've also had some interesting experiences over the past sixty years, so
I need no convincing re the validity of so-called 'psychic' experiences.
I'm a believer, Roslyn.

fayre rose wrote:
>
> sorry, i have to disagree with you bill with regards to the nobility
> dabbling in the occult in a dilletanteish way.
>
> my research is revealing these people were into the mantic arts in a
> big way. most were searching for the philosopher's stone and how to
> turn lead into gold. the philosopher's stone is said to grant
> longevity/immortality.
>
> the nobility either personally actively pursued it, or hired
> alchemists/magicians/sorcerers.
>
> the "witch's hat" was worn by men and women. it symbolises a pyramid,
> a place of power. look at pictures of women and their headdresses, the
> cones and double cones often featured in illuminated manuscripts.
>
> margaret d'anjou wife of h6, her father was rene d'anjou. his court
> sorcerer was the maternal grandfather of nostradamus.
>
> the church and the state have "taught" us to deny our
> "feelings/knowings". this was done via the inquistion which began in
> france to route out the cathars. of which the author of the "strange"
> postings alludes eleanor d'aquitaine was involved with. quite frankly,
> i've long believed eleanor was a cathar, simply because of her
> actions. she believed women were equal to men. she went on a crusade.
> she wielded power big time, until her english husband henry locked her
> up for more than a decade. this same henry is accused of being
> responsible for the death of thomas a beckett. i do know that after
> eleanor died, the persecution of the cathars began in earnest.
> eleanor's son, bad king john also had his run in with a pope. hence
> the magna charta.
>
> the inquistion after the destruction of the templars went into
> somewhat of a lull, but it was picked up with a vengence by queen
> isabella of spain, mother of catherine of aragon. this is also when
> the borgia popes and medici also began to rise in power.
>
> our people of interest were in the renaisance era, followed by the
> elizabethan era which by then the witch trials/hunts were getting
> under way.. by the jacobean age they were in full tilt.
>
> the spanish inquistion did not end until the mid 1800's. which is also
> about the time of the re-emergence of the new age philosophies. and
> yes, definitely there were charalatans and fakes..but there are also
> some truely gifted people out there. not all of us have musical
> talent. i couldn't carry a tune if it were put in a bucket, however,
> people like mozart and john lennon are gifted.
>
> psychic ability is of the same level of talent, if you know what i
> mean. however, we've been taught to deny it.
>
> my research is also indicating that charges of witchcraft were brought
> against those who used black magic (bad/destructive) vs white magic
> (good/healing). magic being derived from the word magi. magi being a
> word for wise/wisdom.
>
> nostradamus was a "hidden" jew because of the inquistion. he was b.
> 1503. jewish mystics used kabbalah. nostradamus was raised and tutored
> by his maternal grandfather because at an early age it became apparent
> he had the "gift". he then became a doctor, and was protected and
> sponsored by catherine medici, spouse of the french king. nostradamous
> was not of peasant stock. he also predicted his demise.
>
> england also has a famous seer, mother shipton. she was b. 1488 she
> also wrote in verse. while it is believed she was of peasant stock, my
> research is indicating she to, was born of nobility, and was
> considered extremely accurate in her prophecies, with many nobles
> visiting her cave for readings. nobles didn't consult or consort with
> peasants. mother shipton was burned as a witch in 1561 and said to
> have predicted her own demise.
>
> in my own research i've had some unsettling co-incidences come to
> light, per se. in the last decade, i've learned to "use" these
> incidences as a barometer as to how close to the truth i'm
> getting...and there are times when i doubt my sanity regarding these
> findings/incidents because of my upbringing. however, some of these
> incidents have been witnessed, and others are documented. they are
> truely bizarre, and unexpected twists related to my research.
>
> currently, i'm trying to find time to verify something. it is: that
> church officals, i.e. canons and rectors could marry prior to the 1730
> council of trent. we do know that many, many church officals had
> "illegitimate" children. but were all these children illegit, or is it
> the rewriting of history by the "victors" that causes us to believe
> *all* children of the church fathers were illegit.
>
> by researching the assorted "church councils" and what they decreed
> etc. we may find more truth than what is wanted to be divulged by the
> "powers that be." aka the lords spiritual and lords temporal.
>
> and here is an interesting quote i recently found. i don't know who
> wrote it.
>
> The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an
> untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true.
>
> something to think about..
> roslyn
>
> Bill Barber <bbarber@... <mailto:bbarber%40eol.ca>> wrote:
> My apologies. The last two posts I sent were actually re-submissions of
> what you already sent out. It's confusing as they turned up as separate
> postings on the Wars of the Roses Forum. I've tried to 'drill down' to
> obtain information behind the materials in the postings, but generally
> end up at abstracts of articles for which I have to pay. Much of the
> material strikes me as similar in style to books written by the
> nineteenth century spiritualists, as well as early twentieht century
> 'anthropoligists' such as James G. Fraser, Jessie Weston, Robert Graves,
> et al. These people wanted to marry history and folklore into a coherent
> whole. They influenced many of our best early twentieth century poets
> and writers, and continue to drive the works of 'new agers'. Another
> series of works that do the same thing are James Churchward's books on
> the lost continent of Mu. These materials are written in a most
> convincing manner. They provide wonderful 'Aha!' experiences, but, for a
> great part, they don't bear real scrutiny.
>
> I can buy the idea that Malory was influenced by contemporary people and
> events, but I'm not sure just what specifics can be read into /Le Morte
> D'arthur. /I also accept that Jacquetta of Bedford was rumoured to be
> immersed in the occult, but I'm sure many were involved in such pursuits
> in a 'dilletanteish' way.
>
> theblackprussian wrote:
> >
> > The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> > Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> > The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> > are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
> >
> > Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> > Lusignan-Rivers of
> > the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
> >
> > I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> > Wight, Earl
> > of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> > Buckingham at
> > the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> > Princes in
> > the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> > Richard III at
> > Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> > was secretly
> > declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> > 1476, was
> > ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> > them
> > elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> > house of
> > Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> > marriage to
> > Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> > was to reign
> > in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> > Jerusalem. In
> > that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> > plans were
> > never made public. Anthony was not only going
> > to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> > attempted an
> > interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> > the True
> > Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> > as "Saul of
> > Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> > at Tarsus.
> > These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> > mother,
> > Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> > Aquitaine, and from
> > Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> > Albigens at
> > Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> > brought
> > back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> > to Judaea
> > those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> > Josiah six
> > centuries earlier.
> > In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> > Anthony had
> > been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> > could
> > ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> > conferred
> > upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> > of
> > Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> > of
> > Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> > armoured
> > and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> > Melusine,
> > identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> > Luciferian
> > Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> > and
> > Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> > Temple under
> > the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> > centuries before
> > the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> > Trefoil god, a
> > sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> > the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> > TreEochairr the
> > god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> > vision of the
> > Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> > Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> > spared
> > initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> > Henry Tudor
> > had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> > Edward
> > Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> > Richard III
> > had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> > Parliament in
> > 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> > Rivers) and
> > her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> > Henry Tudor who
> > had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> > remainder of the
> > Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> > Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> > Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> > life, had
> > secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> > of Melusine
> > of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> > died, named
> > Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> > off as the
> > child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> > of
> > Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> > Woodville).
> > Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> > inherited
> > the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> > Rivers
> >
> > II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> > of the
> > Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> > the child
> > of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> > Rivers family
> > (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> > Place,
> > Penshurst.
> >
> > III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> > married
> > Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> > Lord Mayor of
> > London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> > reign of
> > Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
> >
> > IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> > Grocer of
> > London.
> >
> > V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> > Studied at
> > Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> > claim the
> > Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> > was a
> > jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> > of Arms by
> > an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> > could be
> > granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> > granted the
> > Baronetcy of Chafford.
> >
> > VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> > 8 June
> > 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
> >
> > VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> > Barth,
> > London to Anne Hewett
> >
> > VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> > married
> > 1718 Mary Holbrooke
> >
> > IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
> >
> > X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> > elder
> > brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> > where their
> > father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> > Baronet of
> > Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> > became a
> > powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> > months apart
> > in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> > remaining elder
> > brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> > succeed to the
> > Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> > Rivers arrived
> > with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> > 1808. Married
> > 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
> >
> > XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> > Bancroft.
> > Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> > Virginia.
> > Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> > Pike,
> > responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> > vonBismarck and
> > Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> > College
> > (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> > Washington College
> > in Chestertown, Maryland.
> >
> > XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> > Graduate of
> > University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> > collection
> > of University of South Carolina.
> >
> > "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> > not to the
> > isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> > Lord
> > Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> > Dragon lord to
> > the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> > new as
> > prince of Jerusalem.
> > This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> > still
> > older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> > Lake in her,
> > "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> > religion
> > of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> > Goddess was
> > feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> > accretions in the
> > Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> > Bacchus on
> > the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> > Canis, where
> > Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> > an
> > artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> > engineers had
> > drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> > merely
> > Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> > built upon
> > former lake-bed.
> > Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> > to the
> > male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> > Druids, the
> > isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
> >
> > The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> > the Goddess
> > on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> > to her
> > grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> > region) just
> > south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> > Rome.
> > Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> > Prince John,
> > Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> > John had
> > invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> > townsfolk
> > alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> > surrounded
> > Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> > kidnapping
> > and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> > around the
> > countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> > it was like
> > the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> > Josiannic
> > Purges of 621 BC.
> > Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> > a
> > war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> > his brother
> > John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> > Jacquetta's own
> > brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> > brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> > ravished by an
> > English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> > the castle,
> > herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> > the castle
> > courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> > Thomas Malory,
> > who became her devotee.
> > Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> > birth to
> > the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> > death of
> > St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> > of Valois in
> > London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> > Jacquetta
> > openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> > newly-made
> > baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> > the English
> > nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> > Luxembourgs were
> > cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> > Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> > new
> > husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> > of-Arms,
> > she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> > of argent a
> > fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> > a golden
> > griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> > Rivers),
> > she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> > Earls of
> > Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> > centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> > ( a red
> > canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> > red fess.
> > This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> > Throne of
> > Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
> >
> > Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> > Rouen
> > during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> > approximately of an
> > age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> > approximately
> > nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> > the castle
> > courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> > her
> > lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> > feudal
> > connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> > have ignored
> > evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> > not comanded
> > by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> > religious movements
> > sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> > movements
> > and societies were no exception.
> > For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> > the
> > Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> > nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> > Woodville
> > or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> > of Anthony
> > Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> > word and blow
> > by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> > Burgundy. The
> > incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> > rose onto his
> > thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> > despite the
> > fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> > Newgate to Caxton
> > Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> > Lord Scales,
> > their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> > the
> > deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> > mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> > permanent
> > mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> > (headdress)
> > to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> > for his
> > Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> > and the
> > queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> > slavishly
> > in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> > Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> > Scales, who
> > actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> > it was
> > Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> > heir) who
> > was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> > the aging
> > author.
> > It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> > continued to
> > visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> > practical
> > succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> > that Malory
> > was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> > What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> > necessary
> > in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> > children
> > on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> > sense. Genealogy
> > because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> > Crusade of
> > 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> > the
> > Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> > players
> > themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> > Bouillon and his
> > brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> > descended from
> > their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> > Bohemond
> > of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> > Jerusalem
> > and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> > of
> > Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> > the crusade
> > and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> > and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> > the French
> > royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> > lover-uncle
> > Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> > Payen,
> > Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> > anyone in
> > history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> > members of
> > the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> > also the
> > hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> > of the
> > Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> > immediately south of
> > Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> > princess was
> > also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> > Isis
> > Mysteries.
> > Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> > (Germanic)
> > Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> > emperour
> > whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> > Directly
> > descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> > as through
> > Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> > also from the
> > "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> > Comminges who
> > built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> > many times
> > over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> > Salvasche) when
> > it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> > Montfort!) in
> > 1244.
> > Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> > three
> > centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> > crowded with the
> > men who ran Christendom:
> > things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> > female
> > power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> > genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> > manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> > traces the
> > duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> > mediaeval
> > legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> > (sometimes a
> > dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> > the house
> > of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> > served that
> > royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> > her
> > descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> > Angeou
> > (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> > swan) and
> > fled into the sky!
> > For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> > by divine,
> > shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> > the French
> > fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> > incarnate
> > "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> > monumental
> > work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> > her biplane
> > and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> > which she
> > herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> > interpretted in
> > terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> > one thing:
> > the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> > parallels
> > mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> > knowledge of
> > Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> > Here, in
> > the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> > an
> > artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> > termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> > symbol of
> > the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> > than the
> > Melusine of Avalon herself?
> > Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> > the "Holy
> > Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> > Embriacci
> > boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> > it in the
> > Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> > known to
> > Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> > there. This is
> > not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> > that, the
> > Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> > was the
> > descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> > kinsman Eticho
> > or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> > reference to the
> > descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> > Grail Castle
> > (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> > from Jesus
> > Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> > appertaining
> > heritage.
> > Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> > the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> > interpretted, what
> > is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> > Semiramis or
> > Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> > earthly man. That
> > is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> > image, so
> > often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> > it has
> > been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> > an upright
> > line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> > horizontal line
> > (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> > representing
> > light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> > The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> > Arthur's
> > paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> > Avalon and
> > the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> > empowered religion
> > before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> > Arthur.
> > (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> > Cornwall,
> > that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> > on one of
> > the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> > artificial lake!)
> > Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> > reference to the
> > tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> > of Arc and
> > Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> > a lady
> > riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> > Religion
> > and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> > interpretted as the
> > "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> > of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> > cult, is
> > the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> > Green Man or
> > god of vegetation.
> > There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> > stars on the
> > ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> > High History.
> > Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> > throne which
> > is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> > fall from the
> > sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> > be torn by
> > the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> > like Giant
> > Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> > There is a
> > sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> > female
> > member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> > it was
> > almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> > Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> > witchcraft
> > during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> > with the
> > Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> > a now
> > little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> > Luxembourg
> > (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> > Luxembourg
> > kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> > queen as the
> > melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> > of "witchcraft" among the
> > congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> > accusation.)
> > Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> > the entire
> > Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> > Ship's Green
> > where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> > unhorsed each
> > Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> > single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> > painted
> > shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> > witchcraft by
> > combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> > Witch-cult of
> > Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
> >
> > James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> > Princess
> > Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> > performed by
> > proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> > King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> > England
> > was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> > kingdom of
> > Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> > unprecedented
> > in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> > continental
> > principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> > logic for this
> > was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> > kinsmen, who
> > had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> > her
> > coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> > was
> > conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> > battle" and
> > had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> > depicting
> > Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> > some of the
> > precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> > in claiming
> > France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> > a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> > of
> > Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> > continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> > granting him
> > these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> > more
> > significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> > grant his
> > wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> > century later for
> > Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> > flattery or
> > heraldic decoration.
> > The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> > people all
> > over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> > Jerusalem might
> > be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> > Cyprus--as
> > strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> > militarily--could
> > not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> > exile in
> > different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> > claims to
> > Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> > elsewhere until
> > after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> > a Bastard
> > and was then vacant!
> > The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> > Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> > public but
> > one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> > Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> > Cyprus
> > and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> > secretly had a
> > child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> > afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> > anonymously into
> > the Scottish nobility.
> > The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> > having
> > waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> > (there were
> > still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> > of the
> > reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> > arrangements of
> > his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> > heir, Richard
> > last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> > ceded their
> > rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
> >
> > Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> > Light known
> > variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> > Mere Lucine--
> > of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> > manifestation of
> > Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> > counts or
> > princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> > Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> > birth to
> > the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> > castle, and her
> > children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> > could even
> > pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> > unacceptable
> > monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> > are two
> > things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> > children were
> > otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> > prince in
> > "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> > refering as
> > it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> > clearly in Jean
> > Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> > second
> > important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> > Melusine's
> > children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> > goddess
> > Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> > the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> > claws and
> > golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> > Goddess
> > and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> > G. Walker
> > ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> > One Great
> > Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> > shatter and
> > to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> > Christ and
> > not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> > epithets and
> > calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> > aspects of
> > the same thing.
> > When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> > of Hera,
> > this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> > Hera, in the
> > new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> > housewife
> > with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> > philanderer. Thus
> > different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> > treated as
> > her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> > Goddess. Hercules
> > himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> > a child of
> > Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> > who actually
> > bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> > Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> > passing of the
> > belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> > slayer of Her
> > children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> > Her
> > religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> > slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> > Melusine and, in
> > Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> > When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> > was a
> > serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> > come with the
> > mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> > had built,
> > and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> > footprint near a
> > window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> > becoming a
> > mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> > becoming a swan
> > who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> > exorcism, but
> > then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> > would fly
> > as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> > death of her
> > descendants...
> > In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> > Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> > her. Here,
> > happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> > straightforwardly dove
> > through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> > in the form
> > of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> > The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> > gave birth
> > to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> > hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> > eucharist)
> > in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> > then...remember, this
> > sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> > magicks...whereupon she
> > transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> > most places
> > and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> > Woman or
> > "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> > very Devil.
> > Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> > window into
> > the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> > had very
> > potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> > It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> > millions
> > of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> > souls"
> > ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> > Times":
> > consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> > at face
> > value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> > type of
> > alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> > (Noah) in the
> > Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> > (Semiramis)
> > makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> > the
> > central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> > the Nomo of
> > the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> > or
> > fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> > to a
> > fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> > goddess of
> > Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> > there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> > of
> > eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> > The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> > compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> > opposed to
> > what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> > sharp
> > seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> > prerogative,
> > generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> > birth-givers as
> > their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> > Mother
> > Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> > to a great
> > deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> > As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> > rather
> > than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> > whose
> > labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> > Goddess's temples
> > were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> > child be
> > conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> > the men
> > ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> > as "property".
> > The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> > names
> > "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> > Goddess from
> > the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> > holy
> > bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> > interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> > the
> > Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> > house of
> > Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> > decendants(?)
> > was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> > her.
> > Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> > to the
> > altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> > wedding guests
> > succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> > over the
> > punch bowl at the reception!
> > Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> > more like
> > an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> > (ship?) that
> > is invisible from the outside!
> > Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> > at Rome
> > being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> > by
> > crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> > sword of
> > kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> > candidate (King
> > Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> > of a
> > stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> > Christian "ichthys"
> > version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> > pagan
> > sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> > Irish
> > churches.
> > Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> > holding a
> > cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> > of what is
> > truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> > The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> > Lake in
> > Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> > Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> > as three
> > miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> > island
> > known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> > herself...the
> > mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> > Goddess...whereas
> > Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> > where
> > Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> > misprint in the
> > German "Lanzelet"!
> > Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> > and
> > another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> > international:
> > even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> > all the
> > way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> > VII you
> > know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> > a part of
> > the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> > slaughter
> > of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> > empire, same
> > Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> > Greek "Koina" was not
> > employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> > What of
> > "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> > age thirteen
> > where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> > coming back at
> > age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> > Jewish Talmud
> > says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> > lands" and
> > the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> > empire
> > with travel and communication never so
> > easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> > or the
> > remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> > There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> > cult;and
> > that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> > and not a
> > "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> > Talmud his
> > mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> > seems
> > definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> > else...you should
> > not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> > were
> > mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> > how this
> > would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> > patriarchal priests.
> > To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> > possibility of
> > the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> > Patriarchy wants
> > you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> > those
> > societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> > international and
> > was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> > purges! The
> > priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> > because
> > Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> > of Isis were
> > still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> > Magdalene...and in
> > Avalon as well.
> >
> > Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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>

try googling wydeville malory. i've just turned up some interesting hits, even one discussing who was he real malory..including a malory descendent marries a river in the usa...and one hit led to here
http://www.illinoismedieval.org/indexems.html

oh..grrrr..i'm getting sidetracked again..lol..sometimes i wish i was reallllly rich so i could hire a team to do this research, and at other times..boy do i wish i had the philosopher's stone, because most people don't want to take the time to pick through the staw to find the wee gems.... i really think i need several life times to really tear at it and to do justice to finding the truth...which also involves learning the ancient/medieval languages and writing styles...oh well, trudge, trudge onwards and backwards, sideways etc.
sigh.
roslyn

Bill Barber <bbarber@...> wrote:
I've had a day to think about what I said, and you're right. There is
probably a fair bit to what Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers stated. I should
have separated medieval occultism from its nineteenth and early
twentieth century counterparts which could be a bit dilletanteish at
times. Also, early anthropologists were sometimes a little too loose in
their juxtaposition of fact and conjecture. Perhaps many medieval people
were closer to their cultural heritage than are we. I'm just not sure
where the original sources for the contributor's statements lie. I think
that much of the grail stuff comes from Laurence Gardner's works.
Another contributor to the esoteric aspects of Arthurian/Celtic studies
is Jean Markale. Both men are controversial, but they are certainly
interesting.
Laurence Gardner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Gardner
http://graal.co.uk/index.html
Jean Markale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Markale

Also found this bibliography of works (mainly nineteenth century) on the
subject.
http://www.well.com/~mareev/goddess/goddess_bibliography.html

Other contributors to arcane knowledge are Robert Graves (*/The White
Goddess/*) and Alwyn and Brinley Rees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Goddess
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alwyn%20and%20Brinley%20Rees&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&as_qdr=all&oi=scholart

Can't say where the Malory/Woodville stuff comes from. I typed 'Malory
Woodville' into Google, and pulled up teaser paragraphs and abstracts
for articles I'd have to pay for. Maybe I will some look at them some
day. Many of these articles will be available to those with access to
reasonably good library facilities. Again, the problem is, where does
one draw the line? Here's the Google search that I pulled up.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=

During my search, I re-discovered a work I previously pulled up and
posted. Here it is again.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=

I've also had some interesting experiences over the past sixty years, so
I need no convincing re the validity of so-called 'psychic' experiences.
I'm a believer, Roslyn.

fayre rose wrote:
>
> sorry, i have to disagree with you bill with regards to the nobility
> dabbling in the occult in a dilletanteish way.
>
> my research is revealing these people were into the mantic arts in a
> big way. most were searching for the philosopher's stone and how to
> turn lead into gold. the philosopher's stone is said to grant
> longevity/immortality.
>
> the nobility either personally actively pursued it, or hired
> alchemists/magicians/sorcerers.
>
> the "witch's hat" was worn by men and women. it symbolises a pyramid,
> a place of power. look at pictures of women and their headdresses, the
> cones and double cones often featured in illuminated manuscripts.
>
> margaret d'anjou wife of h6, her father was rene d'anjou. his court
> sorcerer was the maternal grandfather of nostradamus.
>
> the church and the state have "taught" us to deny our
> "feelings/knowings". this was done via the inquistion which began in
> france to route out the cathars. of which the author of the "strange"
> postings alludes eleanor d'aquitaine was involved with. quite frankly,
> i've long believed eleanor was a cathar, simply because of her
> actions. she believed women were equal to men. she went on a crusade.
> she wielded power big time, until her english husband henry locked her
> up for more than a decade. this same henry is accused of being
> responsible for the death of thomas a beckett. i do know that after
> eleanor died, the persecution of the cathars began in earnest.
> eleanor's son, bad king john also had his run in with a pope. hence
> the magna charta.
>
> the inquistion after the destruction of the templars went into
> somewhat of a lull, but it was picked up with a vengence by queen
> isabella of spain, mother of catherine of aragon. this is also when
> the borgia popes and medici also began to rise in power.
>
> our people of interest were in the renaisance era, followed by the
> elizabethan era which by then the witch trials/hunts were getting
> under way.. by the jacobean age they were in full tilt.
>
> the spanish inquistion did not end until the mid 1800's. which is also
> about the time of the re-emergence of the new age philosophies. and
> yes, definitely there were charalatans and fakes..but there are also
> some truely gifted people out there. not all of us have musical
> talent. i couldn't carry a tune if it were put in a bucket, however,
> people like mozart and john lennon are gifted.
>
> psychic ability is of the same level of talent, if you know what i
> mean. however, we've been taught to deny it.
>
> my research is also indicating that charges of witchcraft were brought
> against those who used black magic (bad/destructive) vs white magic
> (good/healing). magic being derived from the word magi. magi being a
> word for wise/wisdom.
>
> nostradamus was a "hidden" jew because of the inquistion. he was b.
> 1503. jewish mystics used kabbalah. nostradamus was raised and tutored
> by his maternal grandfather because at an early age it became apparent
> he had the "gift". he then became a doctor, and was protected and
> sponsored by catherine medici, spouse of the french king. nostradamous
> was not of peasant stock. he also predicted his demise.
>
> england also has a famous seer, mother shipton. she was b. 1488 she
> also wrote in verse. while it is believed she was of peasant stock, my
> research is indicating she to, was born of nobility, and was
> considered extremely accurate in her prophecies, with many nobles
> visiting her cave for readings. nobles didn't consult or consort with
> peasants. mother shipton was burned as a witch in 1561 and said to
> have predicted her own demise.
>
> in my own research i've had some unsettling co-incidences come to
> light, per se. in the last decade, i've learned to "use" these
> incidences as a barometer as to how close to the truth i'm
> getting...and there are times when i doubt my sanity regarding these
> findings/incidents because of my upbringing. however, some of these
> incidents have been witnessed, and others are documented. they are
> truely bizarre, and unexpected twists related to my research.
>
> currently, i'm trying to find time to verify something. it is: that
> church officals, i.e. canons and rectors could marry prior to the 1730
> council of trent. we do know that many, many church officals had
> "illegitimate" children. but were all these children illegit, or is it
> the rewriting of history by the "victors" that causes us to believe
> *all* children of the church fathers were illegit.
>
> by researching the assorted "church councils" and what they decreed
> etc. we may find more truth than what is wanted to be divulged by the
> "powers that be." aka the lords spiritual and lords temporal.
>
> and here is an interesting quote i recently found. i don't know who
> wrote it.
>
> The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an
> untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true.
>
> something to think about..
> roslyn
>
> Bill Barber <bbarber@... <mailto:bbarber%40eol.ca>> wrote:
> My apologies. The last two posts I sent were actually re-submissions of
> what you already sent out. It's confusing as they turned up as separate
> postings on the Wars of the Roses Forum. I've tried to 'drill down' to
> obtain information behind the materials in the postings, but generally
> end up at abstracts of articles for which I have to pay. Much of the
> material strikes me as similar in style to books written by the
> nineteenth century spiritualists, as well as early twentieht century
> 'anthropoligists' such as James G. Fraser, Jessie Weston, Robert Graves,
> et al. These people wanted to marry history and folklore into a coherent
> whole. They influenced many of our best early twentieth century poets
> and writers, and continue to drive the works of 'new agers'. Another
> series of works that do the same thing are James Churchward's books on
> the lost continent of Mu. These materials are written in a most
> convincing manner. They provide wonderful 'Aha!' experiences, but, for a
> great part, they don't bear real scrutiny.
>
> I can buy the idea that Malory was influenced by contemporary people and
> events, but I'm not sure just what specifics can be read into /Le Morte
> D'arthur. /I also accept that Jacquetta of Bedford was rumoured to be
> immersed in the occult, but I'm sure many were involved in such pursuits
> in a 'dilletanteish' way.
>
> theblackprussian wrote:
> >
> > The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> > Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> > The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> > are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
> >
> > Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> > Lusignan-Rivers of
> > the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
> >
> > I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> > Wight, Earl
> > of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> > Buckingham at
> > the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> > Princes in
> > the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> > Richard III at
> > Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> > was secretly
> > declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> > 1476, was
> > ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> > them
> > elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> > house of
> > Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> > marriage to
> > Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> > was to reign
> > in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> > Jerusalem. In
> > that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> > plans were
> > never made public. Anthony was not only going
> > to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> > attempted an
> > interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> > the True
> > Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> > as "Saul of
> > Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> > at Tarsus.
> > These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> > mother,
> > Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> > Aquitaine, and from
> > Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> > Albigens at
> > Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> > brought
> > back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> > to Judaea
> > those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> > Josiah six
> > centuries earlier.
> > In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> > Anthony had
> > been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> > could
> > ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> > conferred
> > upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> > of
> > Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> > of
> > Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> > armoured
> > and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> > Melusine,
> > identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> > Luciferian
> > Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> > and
> > Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> > Temple under
> > the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> > centuries before
> > the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> > Trefoil god, a
> > sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> > the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> > TreEochairr the
> > god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> > vision of the
> > Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> > Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> > spared
> > initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> > Henry Tudor
> > had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> > Edward
> > Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> > Richard III
> > had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> > Parliament in
> > 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> > Rivers) and
> > her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> > Henry Tudor who
> > had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> > remainder of the
> > Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> > Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> > Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> > life, had
> > secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> > of Melusine
> > of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> > died, named
> > Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> > off as the
> > child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> > of
> > Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> > Woodville).
> > Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> > inherited
> > the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> > Rivers
> >
> > II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> > of the
> > Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> > the child
> > of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> > Rivers family
> > (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> > Place,
> > Penshurst.
> >
> > III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> > married
> > Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> > Lord Mayor of
> > London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> > reign of
> > Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
> >
> > IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> > Grocer of
> > London.
> >
> > V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> > Studied at
> > Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> > claim the
> > Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> > was a
> > jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> > of Arms by
> > an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> > could be
> > granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> > granted the
> > Baronetcy of Chafford.
> >
> > VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> > 8 June
> > 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
> >
> > VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> > Barth,
> > London to Anne Hewett
> >
> > VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> > married
> > 1718 Mary Holbrooke
> >
> > IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
> >
> > X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> > elder
> > brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> > where their
> > father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> > Baronet of
> > Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> > became a
> > powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> > months apart
> > in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> > remaining elder
> > brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> > succeed to the
> > Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> > Rivers arrived
> > with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> > 1808. Married
> > 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
> >
> > XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> > Bancroft.
> > Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> > Virginia.
> > Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> > Pike,
> > responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> > vonBismarck and
> > Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> > College
> > (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> > Washington College
> > in Chestertown, Maryland.
> >
> > XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> > Graduate of
> > University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> > collection
> > of University of South Carolina.
> >
> > "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> > not to the
> > isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> > Lord
> > Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> > Dragon lord to
> > the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> > new as
> > prince of Jerusalem.
> > This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> > still
> > older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> > Lake in her,
> > "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> > religion
> > of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> > Goddess was
> > feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> > accretions in the
> > Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> > Bacchus on
> > the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> > Canis, where
> > Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> > an
> > artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> > engineers had
> > drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> > merely
> > Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> > built upon
> > former lake-bed.
> > Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> > to the
> > male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> > Druids, the
> > isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
> >
> > The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> > the Goddess
> > on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> > to her
> > grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> > region) just
> > south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> > Rome.
> > Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> > Prince John,
> > Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> > John had
> > invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> > townsfolk
> > alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> > surrounded
> > Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> > kidnapping
> > and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> > around the
> > countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> > it was like
> > the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> > Josiannic
> > Purges of 621 BC.
> > Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> > a
> > war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> > his brother
> > John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> > Jacquetta's own
> > brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> > brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> > ravished by an
> > English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> > the castle,
> > herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> > the castle
> > courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> > Thomas Malory,
> > who became her devotee.
> > Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> > birth to
> > the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> > death of
> > St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> > of Valois in
> > London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> > Jacquetta
> > openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> > newly-made
> > baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> > the English
> > nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> > Luxembourgs were
> > cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> > Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> > new
> > husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> > of-Arms,
> > she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> > of argent a
> > fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> > a golden
> > griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> > Rivers),
> > she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> > Earls of
> > Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> > centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> > ( a red
> > canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> > red fess.
> > This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> > Throne of
> > Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
> >
> > Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> > Rouen
> > during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> > approximately of an
> > age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> > approximately
> > nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> > the castle
> > courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> > her
> > lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> > feudal
> > connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> > have ignored
> > evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> > not comanded
> > by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> > religious movements
> > sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> > movements
> > and societies were no exception.
> > For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> > the
> > Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> > nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> > Woodville
> > or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> > of Anthony
> > Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> > word and blow
> > by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> > Burgundy. The
> > incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> > rose onto his
> > thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> > despite the
> > fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> > Newgate to Caxton
> > Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> > Lord Scales,
> > their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> > the
> > deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> > mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> > permanent
> > mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> > (headdress)
> > to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> > for his
> > Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> > and the
> > queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> > slavishly
> > in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> > Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> > Scales, who
> > actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> > it was
> > Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> > heir) who
> > was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> > the aging
> > author.
> > It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> > continued to
> > visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> > practical
> > succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> > that Malory
> > was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> > What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> > necessary
> > in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> > children
> > on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> > sense. Genealogy
> > because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> > Crusade of
> > 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> > the
> > Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> > players
> > themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> > Bouillon and his
> > brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> > descended from
> > their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> > Bohemond
> > of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> > Jerusalem
> > and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> > of
> > Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> > the crusade
> > and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> > and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> > the French
> > royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> > lover-uncle
> > Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> > Payen,
> > Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> > anyone in
> > history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> > members of
> > the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> > also the
> > hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> > of the
> > Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> > immediately south of
> > Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> > princess was
> > also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> > Isis
> > Mysteries.
> > Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> > (Germanic)
> > Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> > emperour
> > whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> > Directly
> > descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> > as through
> > Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> > also from the
> > "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> > Comminges who
> > built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> > many times
> > over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> > Salvasche) when
> > it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> > Montfort!) in
> > 1244.
> > Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> > three
> > centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> > crowded with the
> > men who ran Christendom:
> > things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> > female
> > power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> > genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> > manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> > traces the
> > duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> > mediaeval
> > legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> > (sometimes a
> > dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> > the house
> > of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> > served that
> > royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> > her
> > descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> > Angeou
> > (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> > swan) and
> > fled into the sky!
> > For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> > by divine,
> > shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> > the French
> > fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> > incarnate
> > "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> > monumental
> > work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> > her biplane
> > and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> > which she
> > herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> > interpretted in
> > terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> > one thing:
> > the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> > parallels
> > mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> > knowledge of
> > Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> > Here, in
> > the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> > an
> > artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> > termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> > symbol of
> > the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> > than the
> > Melusine of Avalon herself?
> > Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> > the "Holy
> > Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> > Embriacci
> > boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> > it in the
> > Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> > known to
> > Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> > there. This is
> > not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> > that, the
> > Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> > was the
> > descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> > kinsman Eticho
> > or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> > reference to the
> > descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> > Grail Castle
> > (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> > from Jesus
> > Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> > appertaining
> > heritage.
> > Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> > the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> > interpretted, what
> > is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> > Semiramis or
> > Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> > earthly man. That
> > is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> > image, so
> > often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> > it has
> > been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> > an upright
> > line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> > horizontal line
> > (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> > representing
> > light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> > The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> > Arthur's
> > paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> > Avalon and
> > the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> > empowered religion
> > before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> > Arthur.
> > (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> > Cornwall,
> > that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> > on one of
> > the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> > artificial lake!)
> > Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> > reference to the
> > tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> > of Arc and
> > Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> > a lady
> > riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> > Religion
> > and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> > interpretted as the
> > "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> > of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> > cult, is
> > the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> > Green Man or
> > god of vegetation.
> > There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> > stars on the
> > ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> > High History.
> > Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> > throne which
> > is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> > fall from the
> > sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> > be torn by
> > the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> > like Giant
> > Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> > There is a
> > sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> > female
> > member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> > it was
> > almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> > Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> > witchcraft
> > during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> > with the
> > Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> > a now
> > little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> > Elizabeth
> > Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> > Luxembourg
> > (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> > Luxembourg
> > kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> > queen as the
> > melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> > of "witchcraft" among the
> > congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> > accusation.)
> > Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> > the entire
> > Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> > Ship's Green
> > where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> > unhorsed each
> > Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> > single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> > painted
> > shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> > witchcraft by
> > combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> > Witch-cult of
> > Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
> >
> > James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> > Princess
> > Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> > performed by
> > proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> > King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> > England
> > was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> > kingdom of
> > Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> > unprecedented
> > in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> > continental
> > principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> > logic for this
> > was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> > kinsmen, who
> > had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> > her
> > coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> > was
> > conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> > battle" and
> > had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> > depicting
> > Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> > some of the
> > precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> > in claiming
> > France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> > a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> > of
> > Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> > continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> > granting him
> > these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> > more
> > significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> > grant his
> > wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> > century later for
> > Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> > flattery or
> > heraldic decoration.
> > The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> > people all
> > over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> > Jerusalem might
> > be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> > Cyprus--as
> > strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> > militarily--could
> > not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> > exile in
> > different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> > claims to
> > Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> > elsewhere until
> > after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> > a Bastard
> > and was then vacant!
> > The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> > Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> > public but
> > one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> > Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> > Cyprus
> > and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> > secretly had a
> > child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> > afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> > anonymously into
> > the Scottish nobility.
> > The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> > having
> > waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> > (there were
> > still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> > of the
> > reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> > arrangements of
> > his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> > heir, Richard
> > last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> > ceded their
> > rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
> >
> > Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> > Light known
> > variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> > Mere Lucine--
> > of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> > manifestation of
> > Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> > counts or
> > princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> > Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> > birth to
> > the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> > castle, and her
> > children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> > could even
> > pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> > unacceptable
> > monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> > are two
> > things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> > children were
> > otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> > prince in
> > "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> > refering as
> > it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> > clearly in Jean
> > Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> > second
> > important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> > Melusine's
> > children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> > goddess
> > Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> > the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> > claws and
> > golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> > Goddess
> > and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> > G. Walker
> > ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> > One Great
> > Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> > shatter and
> > to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> > Christ and
> > not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> > epithets and
> > calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> > aspects of
> > the same thing.
> > When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> > of Hera,
> > this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> > Hera, in the
> > new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> > housewife
> > with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> > philanderer. Thus
> > different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> > treated as
> > her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> > Goddess. Hercules
> > himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> > a child of
> > Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> > who actually
> > bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> > Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> > passing of the
> > belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> > slayer of Her
> > children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> > Her
> > religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> > slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> > Melusine and, in
> > Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> > When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> > was a
> > serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> > come with the
> > mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> > had built,
> > and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> > footprint near a
> > window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> > becoming a
> > mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> > becoming a swan
> > who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> > exorcism, but
> > then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> > would fly
> > as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> > death of her
> > descendants...
> > In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> > Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> > her. Here,
> > happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> > straightforwardly dove
> > through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> > in the form
> > of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> > The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> > gave birth
> > to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> > hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> > eucharist)
> > in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> > then...remember, this
> > sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> > magicks...whereupon she
> > transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> > most places
> > and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> > Woman or
> > "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> > very Devil.
> > Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> > window into
> > the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> > had very
> > potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> > It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> > millions
> > of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> > souls"
> > ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> > Times":
> > consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> > at face
> > value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> > type of
> > alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> > (Noah) in the
> > Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> > (Semiramis)
> > makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> > the
> > central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> > the Nomo of
> > the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> > or
> > fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> > to a
> > fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> > goddess of
> > Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> > there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> > of
> > eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> > The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> > compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> > opposed to
> > what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> > sharp
> > seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> > prerogative,
> > generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> > birth-givers as
> > their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> > Mother
> > Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> > to a great
> > deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> > As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> > rather
> > than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> > whose
> > labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> > Goddess's temples
> > were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> > child be
> > conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> > the men
> > ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> > as "property".
> > The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> > names
> > "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> > Goddess from
> > the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> > holy
> > bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> > interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> > the
> > Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> > house of
> > Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> > decendants(?)
> > was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> > her.
> > Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> > to the
> > altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> > wedding guests
> > succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> > over the
> > punch bowl at the reception!
> > Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> > more like
> > an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> > (ship?) that
> > is invisible from the outside!
> > Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> > at Rome
> > being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> > by
> > crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> > sword of
> > kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> > candidate (King
> > Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> > of a
> > stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> > Christian "ichthys"
> > version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> > pagan
> > sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> > Irish
> > churches.
> > Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> > holding a
> > cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> > of what is
> > truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> > The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> > Lake in
> > Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> > Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> > as three
> > miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> > island
> > known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> > herself...the
> > mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> > Goddess...whereas
> > Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> > where
> > Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> > misprint in the
> > German "Lanzelet"!
> > Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> > and
> > another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> > international:
> > even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> > all the
> > way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> > VII you
> > know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> > a part of
> > the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> > slaughter
> > of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> > empire, same
> > Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> > Greek "Koina" was not
> > employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> > What of
> > "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> > age thirteen
> > where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> > coming back at
> > age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> > Jewish Talmud
> > says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> > lands" and
> > the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> > empire
> > with travel and communication never so
> > easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> > or the
> > remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> > There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> > cult;and
> > that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> > and not a
> > "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> > Talmud his
> > mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> > seems
> > definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> > else...you should
> > not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> > were
> > mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> > how this
> > would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> > patriarchal priests.
> > To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> > possibility of
> > the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> > Patriarchy wants
> > you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> > those
> > societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> > international and
> > was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> > purges! The
> > priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> > because
> > Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> > of Isis were
> > still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> > Magdalene...and in
> > Avalon as well.
> >
> > Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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I know what you're saying. I have at least a thousand books in my
library that I'm 'going to read someday'. Problem is I'm sixty. Rather
sobering, that.

I've always been interested in this 'forbidden' stuff. Ironically, after
I sent my last post, I turned on TV to see what was on. Turns out
'Vision' was running the third program in the series entitled, '/The
Secrets of the Inquisition/', narrated by Colm Feore. The Church really
did have a lot to fear.

fayre rose wrote:
>
> try googling wydeville malory. i've just turned up some interesting
> hits, even one discussing who was he real malory..including a malory
> descendent marries a river in the usa...and one hit led to here
> http://www.illinoismedieval.org/indexems.html
> <http://www.illinoismedieval.org/indexems.html>
>
> oh..grrrr..i'm getting sidetracked again..lol..sometimes i wish i was
> reallllly rich so i could hire a team to do this research, and at
> other times..boy do i wish i had the philosopher's stone, because most
> people don't want to take the time to pick through the staw to find
> the wee gems.... i really think i need several life times to really
> tear at it and to do justice to finding the truth...which also
> involves learning the ancient/medieval languages and writing
> styles...oh well, trudge, trudge onwards and backwards, sideways etc.
> sigh.
> roslyn
>
> Bill Barber <bbarber@... <mailto:bbarber%40eol.ca>> wrote:
> I've had a day to think about what I said, and you're right. There is
> probably a fair bit to what Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers stated. I should
> have separated medieval occultism from its nineteenth and early
> twentieth century counterparts which could be a bit dilletanteish at
> times. Also, early anthropologists were sometimes a little too loose in
> their juxtaposition of fact and conjecture. Perhaps many medieval people
> were closer to their cultural heritage than are we. I'm just not sure
> where the original sources for the contributor's statements lie. I think
> that much of the grail stuff comes from Laurence Gardner's works.
> Another contributor to the esoteric aspects of Arthurian/Celtic studies
> is Jean Markale. Both men are controversial, but they are certainly
> interesting.
> Laurence Gardner
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Gardner
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Gardner>
> http://graal.co.uk/index.html <http://graal.co.uk/index.html>
> Jean Markale
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Markale
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Markale>
>
> Also found this bibliography of works (mainly nineteenth century) on the
> subject.
> http://www.well.com/~mareev/goddess/goddess_bibliography.html
> <http://www.well.com/%7Emareev/goddess/goddess_bibliography.html>
>
> Other contributors to arcane knowledge are Robert Graves (*/The White
> Goddess/*) and Alwyn and Brinley Rees.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Goddess
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Goddess>
> http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alwyn%20and%20Brinley%20Rees&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&as_qdr=all&oi=scholart
> <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alwyn%20and%20Brinley%20Rees&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&as_qdr=all&oi=scholart>
>
> Can't say where the Malory/Woodville stuff comes from. I typed 'Malory
> Woodville' into Google, and pulled up teaser paragraphs and abstracts
> for articles I'd have to pay for. Maybe I will some look at them some
> day. Many of these articles will be available to those with access to
> reasonably good library facilities. Again, the problem is, where does
> one draw the line? Here's the Google search that I pulled up.
> http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=
> <http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=>
>
> During my search, I re-discovered a work I previously pulled up and
> posted. Here it is again.
> http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=
> <http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&as_qdr=all&q=Malory+Woodville&btnG=Search&meta=>
>
> I've also had some interesting experiences over the past sixty years, so
> I need no convincing re the validity of so-called 'psychic' experiences.
> I'm a believer, Roslyn.
>
> fayre rose wrote:
> >
> > sorry, i have to disagree with you bill with regards to the nobility
> > dabbling in the occult in a dilletanteish way.
> >
> > my research is revealing these people were into the mantic arts in a
> > big way. most were searching for the philosopher's stone and how to
> > turn lead into gold. the philosopher's stone is said to grant
> > longevity/immortality.
> >
> > the nobility either personally actively pursued it, or hired
> > alchemists/magicians/sorcerers.
> >
> > the "witch's hat" was worn by men and women. it symbolises a pyramid,
> > a place of power. look at pictures of women and their headdresses, the
> > cones and double cones often featured in illuminated manuscripts.
> >
> > margaret d'anjou wife of h6, her father was rene d'anjou. his court
> > sorcerer was the maternal grandfather of nostradamus.
> >
> > the church and the state have "taught" us to deny our
> > "feelings/knowings". this was done via the inquistion which began in
> > france to route out the cathars. of which the author of the "strange"
> > postings alludes eleanor d'aquitaine was involved with. quite frankly,
> > i've long believed eleanor was a cathar, simply because of her
> > actions. she believed women were equal to men. she went on a crusade.
> > she wielded power big time, until her english husband henry locked her
> > up for more than a decade. this same henry is accused of being
> > responsible for the death of thomas a beckett. i do know that after
> > eleanor died, the persecution of the cathars began in earnest.
> > eleanor's son, bad king john also had his run in with a pope. hence
> > the magna charta.
> >
> > the inquistion after the destruction of the templars went into
> > somewhat of a lull, but it was picked up with a vengence by queen
> > isabella of spain, mother of catherine of aragon. this is also when
> > the borgia popes and medici also began to rise in power.
> >
> > our people of interest were in the renaisance era, followed by the
> > elizabethan era which by then the witch trials/hunts were getting
> > under way.. by the jacobean age they were in full tilt.
> >
> > the spanish inquistion did not end until the mid 1800's. which is also
> > about the time of the re-emergence of the new age philosophies. and
> > yes, definitely there were charalatans and fakes..but there are also
> > some truely gifted people out there. not all of us have musical
> > talent. i couldn't carry a tune if it were put in a bucket, however,
> > people like mozart and john lennon are gifted.
> >
> > psychic ability is of the same level of talent, if you know what i
> > mean. however, we've been taught to deny it.
> >
> > my research is also indicating that charges of witchcraft were brought
> > against those who used black magic (bad/destructive) vs white magic
> > (good/healing). magic being derived from the word magi. magi being a
> > word for wise/wisdom.
> >
> > nostradamus was a "hidden" jew because of the inquistion. he was b.
> > 1503. jewish mystics used kabbalah. nostradamus was raised and tutored
> > by his maternal grandfather because at an early age it became apparent
> > he had the "gift". he then became a doctor, and was protected and
> > sponsored by catherine medici, spouse of the french king. nostradamous
> > was not of peasant stock. he also predicted his demise.
> >
> > england also has a famous seer, mother shipton. she was b. 1488 she
> > also wrote in verse. while it is believed she was of peasant stock, my
> > research is indicating she to, was born of nobility, and was
> > considered extremely accurate in her prophecies, with many nobles
> > visiting her cave for readings. nobles didn't consult or consort with
> > peasants. mother shipton was burned as a witch in 1561 and said to
> > have predicted her own demise.
> >
> > in my own research i've had some unsettling co-incidences come to
> > light, per se. in the last decade, i've learned to "use" these
> > incidences as a barometer as to how close to the truth i'm
> > getting...and there are times when i doubt my sanity regarding these
> > findings/incidents because of my upbringing. however, some of these
> > incidents have been witnessed, and others are documented. they are
> > truely bizarre, and unexpected twists related to my research.
> >
> > currently, i'm trying to find time to verify something. it is: that
> > church officals, i.e. canons and rectors could marry prior to the 1730
> > council of trent. we do know that many, many church officals had
> > "illegitimate" children. but were all these children illegit, or is it
> > the rewriting of history by the "victors" that causes us to believe
> > *all* children of the church fathers were illegit.
> >
> > by researching the assorted "church councils" and what they decreed
> > etc. we may find more truth than what is wanted to be divulged by the
> > "powers that be." aka the lords spiritual and lords temporal.
> >
> > and here is an interesting quote i recently found. i don't know who
> > wrote it.
> >
> > The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an
> > untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true.
> >
> > something to think about..
> > roslyn
> >
> > Bill Barber <bbarber@... <mailto:bbarber%40eol.ca>
> <mailto:bbarber%40eol.ca>> wrote:
> > My apologies. The last two posts I sent were actually re-submissions of
> > what you already sent out. It's confusing as they turned up as separate
> > postings on the Wars of the Roses Forum. I've tried to 'drill down' to
> > obtain information behind the materials in the postings, but generally
> > end up at abstracts of articles for which I have to pay. Much of the
> > material strikes me as similar in style to books written by the
> > nineteenth century spiritualists, as well as early twentieht century
> > 'anthropoligists' such as James G. Fraser, Jessie Weston, Robert Graves,
> > et al. These people wanted to marry history and folklore into a coherent
> > whole. They influenced many of our best early twentieth century poets
> > and writers, and continue to drive the works of 'new agers'. Another
> > series of works that do the same thing are James Churchward's books on
> > the lost continent of Mu. These materials are written in a most
> > convincing manner. They provide wonderful 'Aha!' experiences, but, for a
> > great part, they don't bear real scrutiny.
> >
> > I can buy the idea that Malory was influenced by contemporary people and
> > events, but I'm not sure just what specifics can be read into /Le Morte
> > D'arthur. /I also accept that Jacquetta of Bedford was rumoured to be
> > immersed in the occult, but I'm sure many were involved in such pursuits
> > in a 'dilletanteish' way.
> >
> > theblackprussian wrote:
> > >
> > > The following curious correspondence was recently posted on the
> > > Kingmaker forum, and I pass it on here for your perusal.
> > > The whole thing should be taken with a large sack of salt, but there
> > > are grains of truth scattered amongst the flapdoodle.
> > >
> > > Twelve generational chart of the Dynasty and House of Antioch-
> > > Lusignan-Rivers of
> > > the Principality of Jerusalem-Cyprus:
> > >
> > > I. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, hereditary Lord of the Isle of
> > > Wight, Earl
> > > of Rivers and Knight of the Garter murdered in 1483 by the Duke of
> > > Buckingham at
> > > the command of Henry Tudor who also ordered the murders of the Two
> > > Princes in
> > > the Tower of London and two years later, in 1485, murdered King
> > > Richard III at
> > > Bosworth Field and usurped the throne of England from him. Anthony
> > > was secretly
> > > declared Prince of Jerusalem-Cyprus as "Anthony Arnite" in Venice in
> > > 1476, was
> > > ceded the rights of the three former queens of Cyprus (who all ceded
> > > them
> > > elsewhere, publicly, only after his death), and had the arms of the
> > > house of
> > > Lusignan bestowed upon him by King Edward IV of England. His secret
> > > marriage to
> > > Princess Cecilia Stewart had been sealed by proxies in 1483 and he
> > > was to reign
> > > in Cyprus whence a new Crusade was to be launched to recapture
> > > Jerusalem. In
> > > that very year both he and King Edward IV were murdered and these
> > > plans were
> > > never made public. Anthony was not only going
> > > to restore the pre-Schism Church (his Lusignan ancestors had
> > > attempted an
> > > interfaith communion between Orthodox and Latin Rite on Cyprus) but
> > > the True
> > > Gnostic Mysteries of the Original Church, from before St. Paul
> > > as "Saul of
> > > Tarsus" had put to death the original disciples in the Jewish Court
> > > at Tarsus.
> > > These included the tradition of the Melusine as received through his
> > > mother,
> > > Jacqueline of Luxembourg, through her ancestress, Eleanor of
> > > Aquitaine, and from
> > > Eleanor's cousin Esclarmonde de Foix who was high-priestess of the
> > > Albigens at
> > > Montsegur (Mont Salvasche) as well as the Mysteries which the Christ
> > > brought
> > > back from Avalon (identified with Glastonbury in Somerset) to restore
> > > to Judaea
> > > those Mysteries which had been destroyed by the anti-Gnostic King
> > > Josiah six
> > > centuries earlier.
> > > In preparation for this restoration of the true Gnostic Church,
> > > Anthony had
> > > been hailed as "Conde de Escueles" in Spain where the word "Escuele"
> > > could
> > > ambiguously mean either "Cauldron" or "Grail". The arms of Lusignan
> > > conferred
> > > upon him in England as a Knight of the Garter together with the arms
> > > of
> > > Luxembourg were to represent the continuity of the line of the house
> > > of
> > > Antioch-Lusignan of Cyprus. He was granted as a supporter a Melusino
> > > armoured
> > > and armed as a token that Jerusalem would be recaptured for the
> > > Melusine,
> > > identical with the goddess of Light, Lusinia or Juno-Lucina of the
> > > Luciferian
> > > Enlightenment, who is also Venus-Aphrodite (Aphroditessa in Cyprus)
> > > and
> > > Auset-Isis. She whose image was put up as a mermaid or siren in the
> > > Temple under
> > > the Romans and whose image was in the Temple as the Asherah six
> > > centuries before
> > > the Christ attempted Her restoration. As a crest, Anthony had the
> > > Trefoil god, a
> > > sylvan aspect of Shiva, representing the Green Knight (Green Man),
> > > the embodiment of the god of vegetation but also Trefuilngid
> > > TreEochairr the
> > > god of the Christ's friend, Fintan Ard-Ri at Tara, who was shown a
> > > vision of the
> > > Christ's murder at the hands of the anti-Gnostics in a Druid Grove.
> > > Anthony was succeeded by his brother, Richard Lord Rivers, who was
> > > spared
> > > initially under Henry VII because the Woodvilles, not knowing that
> > > Henry Tudor
> > > had ordered the murders of Anthony and the Two Princes, had sent
> > > Edward
> > > Woodville to France for him and helped finance his campaign, because
> > > Richard III
> > > had declared them illegitimate and attainted them as witches in
> > > Parliament in
> > > 1483. But in 1492, both the former queen, Elizabeth Woodville (or
> > > Rivers) and
> > > her brother, Richard, Earl of Rivers were murdered by command of
> > > Henry Tudor who
> > > had made himself King Henry VII and who wished to inherit the
> > > remainder of the
> > > Woodville monies and lands that he had not already confiscated.
> > > Richard Rivers, last Earl of Rivers and secret Prince of
> > > Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers of Jerusalem-Cyprus, in the last years of his
> > > life, had
> > > secretly married a devotee of the Gnosis, a priestess of the Mystery
> > > of Melusine
> > > of Avalon named Elizabeth, who managed to bear him one son before he
> > > died, named
> > > Richard Rivers after his father. This child was saved by being passed
> > > off as the
> > > child of another Richard Rivers, Steward in the household of the Duke
> > > of
> > > Buckingham(the son of the man who had murdered his uncle, Anthony
> > > Woodville).
> > > Raised as a servant, the child posed no threat to King Henry VII who
> > > inherited
> > > the remaining Woodville lands and money from his father, last Earl
> > > Rivers
> > >
> > > II. The child, Richard Rivers. Raised as a servant in the household
> > > of the
> > > Duke of Buckingham. Born in 1490 at Penshurst, Kent and passed off as
> > > the child
> > > of Richard Rivers, Steward of the Buckinghams and a devotee of the
> > > Rivers family
> > > (the dowager Duchess of Buckingham had been a sister of Queen
> > > Elizabeth
> > > Woodville and of her brother Anthony Woodville). Died at Chafford
> > > Place,
> > > Penshurst.
> > >
> > > III. Sir John Rivers born 1510 Penshurst, Kent died 1583 Hadlow, Kent
> > > married
> > > Elizabeth Barnes, suceeded her father (of the Muscovite trade) as
> > > Lord Mayor of
> > > London. Attempted to prove that he was Earl of Rivers during the
> > > reign of
> > > Elizabeth the Great but was thwarted.
> > >
> > > IV. George Rivers born 1553 died 5 June 1630 married Frances Bowyer.
> > > Grocer of
> > > London.
> > >
> > > V. Sir John Rivers born 1579 died 1651 married 1602 Dorothy Potter.
> > > Studied at
> > > Oxford and became a Barrister of the Inner Temple in an attempt to
> > > claim the
> > > Earldom of Rivers as his grandfather had but the only physical proof
> > > was a
> > > jewell-encrusted book in the last Earl's hand stolen from the College
> > > of Arms by
> > > an agent of Lord Savage, Viscount Colchester, in order that Savage
> > > could be
> > > granted the title Earl of Rivers. As a compensation, John Rivers was
> > > granted the
> > > Baronetcy of Chafford.
> > >
> > > VI. James Rivers christened 15 December 1603 at Westerham, Kent died
> > > 8 June
> > > 1641 London, Middlesex County married 1628 Charity Shurley
> > >
> > > VII. John Rivers born 1630 died 1679 married 26 February 1662/3 St
> > > Barth,
> > > London to Anne Hewett
> > >
> > > VIII. Thomas Rivers born 1668 Easton, Hampshire died 8 September 1731
> > > married
> > > 1718 Mary Holbrooke
> > >
> > > IX. Peter Rivers born 1721 died 20 July 1790 married 1768 Martha Coxe
> > >
> > > X. John David Rivers born 30 September 1777 and christened as his two
> > > elder
> > > brothers and one younger brother were also at Winchester Cathedral
> > > where their
> > > father was an Anglican priest before he succeeded to the title
> > > Baronet of
> > > Chafford;however, he fled to Prussia. His younger brother Henry
> > > became a
> > > powerful Anglican minister, murdered his two eldest brothers some
> > > months apart
> > > in 1805, and expunged the birth and christening records of his
> > > remaining elder
> > > brother, John David Rivers, who had fled, in order that he could
> > > succeed to the
> > > Rivers family money and the title Baronet of Chafford. John David
> > > Rivers arrived
> > > with a Prussian passport in Charleston, South Carolina 5 September
> > > 1808. Married
> > > 25 September 1816 Eliza Frances Ridgewood. Died 29 December 1831.
> > >
> > > XI. William James Rivers born 1822 died 1909 married to Maria
> > > Bancroft.
> > > Declined the post of Treasurer of the Confederate States at Richmond,
> > > Virginia.
> > > Author of "Eldred", an occult initiatory document. Friend of Albert
> > > Pike,
> > > responsible for some of the material used in the circles of
> > > vonBismarck and
> > > Mazzini. Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages at South Carolina
> > > College
> > > (later University of South Carolina) and later President of
> > > Washington College
> > > in Chestertown, Maryland.
> > >
> > > XII. Wilfred Jeanerette Rivers, MD of Eastover, South Carolina.
> > > Graduate of
> > > University of Maryland Medical College, Johns Hopkins. Manuscripts in
> > > collection
> > > of University of South Carolina.
> > >
> > > "Le Comte del Yle" or "Lord of the Isle" refers to the Isle of Wight,
> > > not to the
> > > isle of Avalon;and yet, it was "the Dragon Isle" to the Druids, hence
> > > Lord
> > > Anthony as hereditary lord of the isle of Wight was the also the
> > > Dragon lord to
> > > the old religion, as well as representing the gnostic version of the
> > > new as
> > > prince of Jerusalem.
> > > This is an important distinction for the religion of the Goddess was
> > > still
> > > older than that of the Druids. Katherine Maltwood's analysis of the
> > > Lake in her,
> > > "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" really only went as deep as the
> > > religion
> > > of the Druids, her "Dawn Religion"; whereas, the religion of the
> > > Goddess was
> > > feminist and far older. Actually, you had several layers of
> > > accretions in the
> > > Lake of Semiramis, exempli gratia the mosaic floor depicting Dionysus
> > > Bacchus on
> > > the floor of the ruined Roman villa on the artificial island of
> > > Canis, where
> > > Bradley spring is located. Although an island technically, Avalon was
> > > an
> > > artificial island and actually ceased to be one when King Arthur's
> > > engineers had
> > > drained the holy lake and the "holy isle" of the Great Goddess became
> > > merely
> > > Wearyall Hill or the Tor above the Christian town of Glastonbury,
> > > built upon
> > > former lake-bed.
> > > Therefore, when one speaks of "the lord of the isle" one is referring
> > > to the
> > > male representative of the (largely) male-dominated religion of the
> > > Druids, the
> > > isle being the Dragon Island off the coast: the Isle of Wight.
> > >
> > > The Throne Glyph of Isis was depicted as floating above the head of
> > > the Goddess
> > > on many pictures available to Princess Jacqueline of Luxembourg and
> > > to her
> > > grandmother, the Italian Duchess of Andria in Apulia (Pugliese
> > > region) just
> > > south of Rome, who was high-priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in
> > > Rome.
> > > Jacqueline was the war-bride (called "Jacquetta of Bedford") of
> > > Prince John,
> > > Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V. Henry V and his brother
> > > John had
> > > invaded her native France and despoiled the land violently, burning
> > > townsfolk
> > > alive in their church, starving two-year-olds in the great ditch that
> > > surrounded
> > > Rouen during Christmas, uprooting and burning ancient grape-vines,
> > > kidnapping
> > > and torturing innocent peasants, and, with Irish coursers galloping
> > > around the
> > > countryside with dead French babies dangling from their saddle-bows,
> > > it was like
> > > the Trump of Doom, an echo of the Albigensian Crusade of 1244 or the
> > > Josiannic
> > > Purges of 621 BC.
> > > Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, was taken as
> > > a
> > > war-bride by King Henry V and Jacqueline princesse de Luxembourg by
> > > his brother
> > > John duke of Bedford. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was betrayed by
> > > Jacquetta's own
> > > brother, Jean de Luxembourg, and brought in chains to his English
> > > brother-in-law, John, at Rouen Castle. There, Joan was gaoled,
> > > ravished by an
> > > English lord (and, afterwards, examined by Jacquetta, the duchess of
> > > the castle,
> > > herself), put on trial for two years, and ultimately burned alive in
> > > the castle
> > > courtyard. Jacquetta witnessed that with a young English knight,
> > > Thomas Malory,
> > > who became her devotee.
> > > Catherine of Valois managed to widow herself soon after having given
> > > birth to
> > > the infant Henry VI and Jacquetta managed to widow herself after the
> > > death of
> > > St. Joan of Arc. Catherine managed to become Queen Regent Katherine
> > > of Valois in
> > > London (secretly marrying a Welsh knight, Sir Owen Tudor) whilst
> > > Jacquetta
> > > openly married the English knight Sir Richard Woodville, who was a
> > > newly-made
> > > baron, Lord Rivers. That Henry V had raised him to baron had enraged
> > > the English
> > > nobility but Rivers's marriage to an imperial princess (the
> > > Luxembourgs were
> > > cousins of the Holy Roman Emperour) further enraged them.
> > > Jacquetta was to increase their outrage by managing a coup with her
> > > new
> > > husband's heraldry. In order to achieve the Glyph of Isis as her Coat-
> > > of-Arms,
> > > she persuaded her husband to add a centre-shield to his simple coat
> > > of argent a
> > > fess gueules (white, a red fess) of a red centre-shield charged with
> > > a golden
> > > griffin. An allusion to the ancient Earls of Devon (named Reviers or
> > > Rivers),
> > > she knew this was calculated to enrage the Courtenays, who were then
> > > Earls of
> > > Devon. It did and, as a compromise, she had her husband withdraw the
> > > centre-shield, replacing it (as an apostrophe) with a canton gueules
> > > ( a red
> > > canton) combined unperfled (i.e., without any seam) with his original
> > > red fess.
> > > This produced a unique charge in heraldry, closer to the Glyph of the
> > > Throne of
> > > Isis than any other charge in mediaeval heraldry.
> > >
> > > Thomas Malory was a young English knight garrisoned at the Castle of
> > > Rouen
> > > during the Occupation known as "Lancastrian France". He was
> > > approximately of an
> > > age with both Joan of Arc and Jacquetta duchess of Bedford, or,
> > > approximately
> > > nineteen. He had to watch the execution by burning of Joan of Arc in
> > > the castle
> > > courtyard at Rouen together with the young French duchess and became
> > > her
> > > lifelong devotee. Some historians and writers have made much of his
> > > feudal
> > > connexions to the Nevilles ( he held his land in fee from them) but
> > > have ignored
> > > evidence of his other loyalties. Loyalties in the Middle Ages were
> > > not comanded
> > > by feudal overlords alone. Loyalty to royal dynasties and to
> > > religious movements
> > > sometimes superceded those born of feudal tenure and secret religious
> > > movements
> > > and societies were no exception.
> > > For all that some have sought to prove parallels between members of
> > > the
> > > Neville family and characters in Malory's book, "Le Morte D'Arthur",
> > > nevertheless the true models for his characters were members of the
> > > Woodville
> > > or, Rivers family. His Sir Launcelot was drawn largely from the life
> > > of Anthony
> > > Woodville. The joust before King Arthur nearly replicated word for
> > > word and blow
> > > by blow Anthony's joust before Edward IV against the Bastard of
> > > Burgundy. The
> > > incident where ladies accosted Laucelot after church once, tying a
> > > rose onto his
> > > thigh with a ribbon, was an actual event in Anthony's life. Also,
> > > despite the
> > > fabrication that two monks delivered Malory's ManuScripts from
> > > Newgate to Caxton
> > > Press, in fact the publisher issued receipts for the MSs to Anthony
> > > Lord Scales,
> > > their actual deliverer. Besides these, there exist notes from Queen
> > > Elizabeth
> > > Woodville (Rivers) to Malory editting his original MS and suggesting
> > > the
> > > deletion of multiple negation, which was done and made a
> > > mark on the development of English grammar, just as she made a less
> > > permanent
> > > mark on fashion when she changed the traditional two-horned hennen
> > > (headdress)
> > > to a single horn. Elizabeth was undoubtedly Malory's true inspiration
> > > for his
> > > Quenevere, as the imitation of the founding of the Order of the Bath
> > > and the
> > > queen's role in that procession, down to her blue dress, was followed
> > > slavishly
> > > in the book for the founding of the Order of the Round Table.
> > > Add to this that it was Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers and Lord
> > > Scales, who
> > > actually gave the order of knighthood to Sir Thomas Malory ;and that,
> > > it was
> > > Richard Rivers (Anthony's younger brother and eventual successor and
> > > heir) who
> > > was Malory's drinking buddy and frequently gaoled in London Gaol with
> > > the aging
> > > author.
> > > It was Jacquetta's children alone (and not the Nevilles) who
> > > continued to
> > > visit the old man in prison to the end of his days and who provided
> > > practical
> > > succour and help to him while there, and so it is unlikely indeed
> > > that Malory
> > > was trying to immortalise the Nevilles by his writing.
> > > What is more, some knowledge of both genealogy and arcane lore are
> > > necessary
> > > in order to appreciate the more subtle influence of Jacquetta and her
> > > children
> > > on the author, who was indeed their devotee in a very religious
> > > sense. Genealogy
> > > because, Jacquetta, born about three hundred years after the First
> > > Crusade of
> > > 1099-1100, was the direct descendant of all of the major players in
> > > the
> > > Crusades. Not only representing the family lines but, of the major
> > > players
> > > themselves. She was as near a direct descendant of Godfroi de
> > > Bouillon and his
> > > brother Baudouin I as one could hope to find, being directly
> > > descended from
> > > their adoptive heir, Baudouin II. Also a direct, lineal descendant of
> > > Bohemond
> > > of Antioch, Conrad, Fulk and Montferrat, the various queens of both
> > > Jerusalem
> > > and Cyprus (sometimes by more than one line), the Comnenid princesses
> > > of
> > > Byzantium including Anna Comnena credited with the first treatise on
> > > the crusade
> > > and heraldry, Richard the Lion-Hearted (more than once)
> > > and indeed every one of Eleanor of Aquitaine's sons as well as from
> > > the French
> > > royal line, having Saint-King Louis, Eleanor's first husband and her
> > > lover-uncle
> > > Raymond of Toulouse to boot. She also descended directly from Hugh de
> > > Payen,
> > > Grand Master of the Templar Order. In short, you could not find
> > > anyone in
> > > history with more direct genealogical connexions to the major male
> > > members of
> > > the patriarchal establishment in Christian Europe. But, there was
> > > also the
> > > hidden, invisible female hierarchy and the occult Gnostic tradition
> > > of the
> > > Goddess. Her grandmother was the Italian Duchess of Apulia
> > > immediately south of
> > > Rome, and high priestess of the Mysteries of Isis in Rome. This
> > > princess was
> > > also a close relative of the Orsini popes who probably attended the
> > > Isis
> > > Mysteries.
> > > Jacquetta was herself a Luxembourg, a cousin of the Holy Roman
> > > (Germanic)
> > > Emperour Sigismundo and, as such, also a relative of the Luxembourg
> > > emperour
> > > whom Dante exhorted to re-establish a Gnostic Church in the West!
> > > Directly
> > > descended through Eleanor of Aquitaine--several times over--as well
> > > as through
> > > Eleanor's uncle Raymond, from the Counts of Toulouse, she was thus
> > > also from the
> > > "uncrowned kings" of the Albigens movement, as well as the Counts
> > > Comminges who
> > > built the Gnostic abbey in southern France, and thus a close cousin
> > > many times
> > > over of Esclarmonde de Foix, high priestess at Montsegur (Mont
> > > Salvasche) when
> > > it fell to papal troops (led by yet another ancestor, Simon de
> > > Montfort!) in
> > > 1244.
> > > Things less easily established are there to be looked for in those
> > > three
> > > centuries of Jacqueline de Luxembourg's antecedents, already so
> > > crowded with the
> > > men who ran Christendom:
> > > things relating only to the Goddess cult and with survival of pagan
> > > female
> > > power in the royal families of Europe, which are never salient in any
> > > genealogical text, are her multiple descents from all of the various
> > > manifestations of the Melusine. The official history of Luxembourg
> > > traces the
> > > duchy to 963 AD and the Count of the Ardennes, but there was a strong
> > > mediaeval
> > > legend of its foundation by the shapeshifting mermaid or siren
> > > (sometimes a
> > > dragon!) Melusine, a late Mediaeval manifestation of Aphrodite. Ditto
> > > the house
> > > of Lusignan in Poitou, where the Mere Lucine or "Mother of Light"
> > > served that
> > > royal house as a banshee famously heralding the approaching death of
> > > her
> > > descendants for many centuries. And also the origin of the house of
> > > Angeou
> > > (Angevins) where she turned into a dragon (in Poitou it was usually a
> > > swan) and
> > > fled into the sky!
> > > For those who doubt a literal interpretation of such manifestations
> > > by divine,
> > > shapeshifting aliens, the only explanation can be residual traces of
> > > the French
> > > fairy cult, of which Joan of Arc was considered the last head or,
> > > incarnate
> > > "Maid" (Maiden Goddess). And, for those, we have had since 1935 the
> > > monumental
> > > work of Katherine Maltwood who flew over Glastonbury in Somerset in
> > > her biplane
> > > and gathered photographic evidence of an ancient system of earthworks
> > > which she
> > > herself termed, "The Glastonbury Temple of the Stars" but which,
> > > interpretted in
> > > terms of the Rivers tradition and Malory's 'Le Morte', can only be
> > > one thing:
> > > the holy lake of the "Lady of the Lake". Maltwood herself drew her
> > > parallels
> > > mainly from 'The High History of the Holy Grail' but, an intimate
> > > knowledge of
> > > Malory and of his patroness Jacquetta's genealogy can draw many more.
> > > Here, in
> > > the centre of what was once an artificial lake ten miles across, was
> > > an
> > > artificial island which Kate Maltwood herself
> > > termed a Giant Effigy, shaped like a Dove and acknowledged to be a
> > > symbol of
> > > the Sumerian goddess Semiramis or Shamuramat. Who else was this other
> > > than the
> > > Melusine of Avalon herself?
> > > Among those things to be looked for in Malory is the thread of
> > > the "Holy
> > > Grail" or Sangreal. Jacquetta was (again) a direct descendant of the
> > > Embriacci
> > > boys from Genoa who captured the holy grail at Caesarea and deposited
> > > it in the
> > > Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Still famous today, it was extremely well-
> > > known to
> > > Christian Europe within the first three centuries of its display
> > > there. This is
> > > not a connexion to be ignored any more than the other interpretation:
> > > that, the
> > > Sangreal was a code word for "sang real" or royal blood. Whether this
> > > was the
> > > descent from St. Odelia of the Heiligeburg at Niedersheim and her
> > > kinsman Eticho
> > > or Adelrich of Arles (which Jacquetta had, and directly too) or
> > > reference to the
> > > descent through the Bouillons from Lohengrin the Swan-Knight of the
> > > Grail Castle
> > > (himself a descendant of Sir Launcelot of Avalon, ninth generation
> > > from Jesus
> > > Christ) she could lay claim to any of the relevant descents and
> > > appertaining
> > > heritage.
> > > Also not to be missed are things subtly implicit in Malory:
> > > the hand holding the sword above the water. Too often over-
> > > interpretted, what
> > > is salient is that this was the hand of an acquatic being--such as
> > > Semiramis or
> > > Melusine--with the authority to bestow mortal kingship upon an
> > > earthly man. That
> > > is so obvious and, too often ignored . She was the Goddess. And this
> > > image, so
> > > often seen on covers of the Morte during the past five centuries that
> > > it has
> > > been in print, is an enactment of the glyph of Juno Lucina: to wit,
> > > an upright
> > > line (representing the sword) crossed at its base by a shorter
> > > horizontal line
> > > (the hand or wrist of the goddess) and at the top by crossed rays
> > > representing
> > > light gleaming from off the sword (symbolising the goddess of light).
> > > The dragon imagery too, is often associated only with Uther and
> > > Arthur's
> > > paternal descent, but, it has everything to do with the Goddess of
> > > Avalon and
> > > the line of the Ladies of the Lake as well as pagan, feminine-
> > > empowered religion
> > > before the christianisation of Britain that was being finalised under
> > > Arthur.
> > > (Compare too, contemporary survivals of local legend in the region of
> > > Cornwall,
> > > that has it a mermaid came every Easter to a church Arthur attended
> > > on one of
> > > the last remaining channels, to protest the draining of the
> > > artificial lake!)
> > > Arthur's half-sister Morgainne le Fay (being "fairy", as much a
> > > reference to the
> > > tradition in Britain as it was to the cult of Diana at Domremy, Joan
> > > of Arc and
> > > Gilles de Rais). There is the significant passage in the book wherein
> > > a lady
> > > riding a serpent comes and is interpretted as the "old church" or Old
> > > Religion
> > > and contrasted to the lady who comes riding a lion who is
> > > interpretted as the
> > > "new church" or New Religion riding the Lion
> > > of Judah. And the "Pentangle" shield, also associated with the older
> > > cult, is
> > > the pagan pentacle, every bit as much as the Green Knight was the
> > > Green Man or
> > > god of vegetation.
> > > There is more knowledge of the tradition of the Lake and of "the
> > > stars on the
> > > ground" than can be easily explained away by familiarity with The
> > > High History.
> > > Malory includes Arthur's last dream, in which, he is seated upon a
> > > throne which
> > > is mounted upon a wheel, and, it is turned over causing Arthur to
> > > fall from the
> > > sky into the Lake (whose Goddess and whose cult he has betrayed) to
> > > be torn by
> > > the creatures of the Lake--i.e., the islands which are shaped like
> > > like Giant
> > > Effigies of various creatures from ancient religious traditions.
> > > There is a
> > > sensitivity to this matter that could only have probably come from a
> > > female
> > > member of the Goddess cult, very high placed in European royalty, and
> > > it was
> > > almost certainly not the pious Cecily Neville!
> > > Jacquetta was thrice-accused and thrice-acquitted of charges of
> > > witchcraft
> > > during her lifetime, and finally attainted after her death together
> > > with the
> > > Woodville children, by a Parliament of Richard III in 1483. There is
> > > a now
> > > little-remembered story of her daughter's coronation as Queen
> > > Elizabeth
> > > Woodville in Westminster Abbey, at which Jacquetta's brother Jean de
> > > Luxembourg
> > > (betrayer of Joan of Arc) arrived at the abbey en masse with her
> > > Luxembourg
> > > kindred: they had re-painted their shields to represent the young
> > > queen as the
> > > melusine and there were immediately thereupon whispers
> > > of "witchcraft" among the
> > > congregation of English present. (This was tantamount to a visual
> > > accusation.)
> > > Wherefore Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales drew his sword and charged
> > > the entire
> > > Luxembourg host, driving them back single-handedly all the way to
> > > Ship's Green
> > > where, before he would allow them to re-embark, he jousted and
> > > unhorsed each
> > > Luxemburg knight, afterwards challenging each man to
> > > single-combat upon the ground until he had bescratched every Melusine-
> > > painted
> > > shield! Thus he cleared his sisters and mother of a charge of
> > > witchcraft by
> > > combat. But, the Rivers family connexions to the Gnosis and to the
> > > Witch-cult of
> > > Western Europe were too strong to hold off forever revelation.
> > >
> > > James II King of Scots was the father of James III and his sister,
> > > Princess
> > > Cecilia Stewart. By secret treaty of 1483, a secret marriage was
> > > performed by
> > > proxies between Anthony Woodville and Cecilia Stewart.
> > > King James III of Scots was brother to Cecilia and King Edward IV of
> > > England
> > > was brother-in-law to Anthony, and they had already the rights to the
> > > kingdom of
> > > Cyprus ceded to Anthony in secrecy. Edward IV had done something
> > > unprecedented
> > > in reviving claims on his brother-in-law Anthony's behalf, to
> > > continental
> > > principalities through maternal lines of his descent. Some of the
> > > logic for this
> > > was that Anthony had single-handedly defeated all of his Luxemburg
> > > kinsmen, who
> > > had entered Westminster Abbey insulting Edward's queen by disrupting
> > > her
> > > coronation, by bescratching their Melusine shields on Ships Green. It
> > > was
> > > conceivable that they had forfeited some sort of right to him "in
> > > battle" and
> > > had disgraced themselves anyway by bearing false arms (i.e., shields
> > > depicting
> > > Edward's wife as the mermaid) to the queen's coronation. Frankly,
> > > some of the
> > > precedent for this move was that Henry V had bypassed the Salic Law
> > > in claiming
> > > France through maternal descents. But, really it was
> > > a practical one: by granting his brother-in-law the arms of the house
> > > of
> > > Luxemburg as well as those of Lusignan and del Balzo, Orsini and other
> > > continental lines Anthony had inherited through his mother, and by
> > > granting him
> > > these arms within England's jurisdiction, he had done something far
> > > more
> > > significant at the time than merely "cook the books" in order to
> > > grant his
> > > wife's brother a fancy coat-of-arms, as Henry VIII was to do a
> > > century later for
> > > Anne Boleyn. No, the situation in 1483 was far more than mere
> > > flattery or
> > > heraldic decoration.
> > > The concept of "Crusade" was not yet dead in 1483. There were still
> > > people all
> > > over Europe, all over Christendom, who thought that recapture of
> > > Jerusalem might
> > > be viable. The timing for somebody grabbing the strategic Island of
> > > Cyprus--as
> > > strategic politically and dynastically as geographically and
> > > militarily--could
> > > not have been better. There were three former queens of Cyprus in
> > > exile in
> > > different countries, each of whom had secretly agreed to cede her
> > > claims to
> > > Anthony for various considerations (and none of them ceded them
> > > elsewhere until
> > > after Anthony's death) and the Cypriot kingship had last been held by
> > > a Bastard
> > > and was then vacant!
> > > The murders in 1483 of both King Edward of England and Anthony
> > > Woodville(Rivers) ended these secret plans and they were never made
> > > public but
> > > one can read much in the history of Anthony's disappointed queen:
> > > Princess Cecilia, who had been destined to reign as Queen Cecilia of
> > > Cyprus
> > > and of Jerusalem, premier queen of all queens in Christendom,
> > > secretly had a
> > > child out of wedlock in the following years, with a Scots nobleman who
> > > afterwards married her, and her bloodline thus did enter almost
> > > anonymously into
> > > the Scottish nobility.
> > > The other queens, the three exiled former queens of Cyprus, after
> > > having
> > > waited a decent length of time for the regime change in England
> > > (there were
> > > still the brief reign of Richard III to get through and the beginning
> > > of the
> > > reign of Henry Tudor who, as Henry VII, might have honoured the
> > > arrangements of
> > > his bride's father for her maternal uncle) and to see if Anthony's
> > > heir, Richard
> > > last Earl Rivers, would pursue his brother's plans, went ahead and
> > > ceded their
> > > rights to the House of Savoy, to the Venetian Republic, et c..
> > >
> > > Approximately one thousand years into Christianity, the Goddess of
> > > Light known
> > > variously as Lusinia, (Juno) Lucina, and Melusinia/Melusine --even
> > > Mere Lucine--
> > > of Avalon...who, is correctly also termed "a late mediaeval
> > > manifestation of
> > > Aphrodite" by Walker, incarnated three times...and married Christian
> > > counts or
> > > princes, mothering three royal "Christian" houses!
> > > Lusignan is the most famous of these three. Where La Melusine gave
> > > birth to
> > > the children of Raymond count of Poitou, miraculously building a
> > > castle, and her
> > > children were all marked by very unusual birthmarks: the eldest who
> > > could even
> > > pass for human, for her first try or two was to give birth to an
> > > unacceptable
> > > monster...was marked by having a lion's paw in his face! Now, there
> > > are two
> > > things very important to understand: first, that this line of
> > > children were
> > > otherwise extremely golden and beautiful, looking sort of like the
> > > prince in
> > > "Beauty and the Beast"--a not entirely unrelated legend, by the way,
> > > refering as
> > > it does to Diana goddess of the Ardennes(Artemis) and, that most
> > > clearly in Jean
> > > Cocteau's version, of course--except for these "deformities". And the
> > > second
> > > important thing to know: is that, these unusual birthmarks all showed
> > > Melusine's
> > > children to be reincarnations of one or another of the beasts of the
> > > goddess
> > > Hera. The first, as the most important, was
> > > the Nemeian Lion: hence, the lion's paw in his cheek, which, grew
> > > claws and
> > > golden fur as he reached puberty. Because, the Melusine was The Great
> > > Goddess
> > > and not a different being from Hera or Aphrodite or Isis...as Barbara
> > > G. Walker
> > > ably points out, the "goddesses" were originally only "aspects" of
> > > One Great
> > > Goddess who was splintered apart by male patriarchists in order to
> > > shatter and
> > > to undermine Her. It would be like us saying today that Jesus was not
> > > Christ and
> > > not Yahweh who was not Adonai, et cetera...taking various names and
> > > epithets and
> > > calling them "seperate" that are now recognised as different names or
> > > aspects of
> > > the same thing.
> > > When Heracles/Hercules slew the Nemeian lion and other sacred beasts
> > > of Hera,
> > > this represented the destruction of the Children of the Goddess.
> > > Hera, in the
> > > new patriarchal version of the myth, was misrepresented as a crabby
> > > housewife
> > > with the rolling pin...nose out of joint because Zeus was a
> > > philanderer. Thus
> > > different aspects of her: such as Io/Europa, Selene, and so on were
> > > treated as
> > > her rivals, rather than as different manifestations of the One
> > > Goddess. Hercules
> > > himself, was a great blow to the Goddess religion: misrepresented as
> > > a child of
> > > Zeus by Hera's rival, they thus stole from Her, Her own dear child
> > > who actually
> > > bore her name! Hera: Hera/cles...Hera/clius?
> > > Somewhere...and Somehow, myth becomes "reality"...and, with the
> > > passing of the
> > > belief that Hercules was Hera's own dear boy, he did become the
> > > slayer of Her
> > > children...and, somehow and somewhere, with the death of the power of
> > > Her
> > > religion in this plane of existence, Her sacred creatures were indeed
> > > slain;however, She did manifest around one thousand AD as the
> > > Melusine and, in
> > > Poitou, gave birth to them all...
> > > When her husband spied on her through the keyhole, he saw that she
> > > was a
> > > serpent from the waist down and he told...causing the Churchmen to
> > > come with the
> > > mastiffs (big dogs that eat bears) to chase her out of the castle she
> > > had built,
> > > and she shapeshifted like mad...at one point leaving a human
> > > footprint near a
> > > window outside of which a casting was preserved...at another point
> > > becoming a
> > > mermaid and diving into the water...and, at yet another point
> > > becoming a swan
> > > who fled shrieking for her children who were inside. (Not a happy
> > > exorcism, but
> > > then, they never are.) In later centuries, like a family banshee she
> > > would fly
> > > as either swan or dragon around the ramparts to herald the coming
> > > death of her
> > > descendants...
> > > In Luxembourg, she was bathing in her cavern far below Luxemburg
> > > Castle--watershed year 963 AD--where her Christian husband came upon
> > > her. Here,
> > > happily, she was better prepared for escape and, very
> > > straightforwardly dove
> > > through a hidden aperture or window directly into the river Alzette
> > > in the form
> > > of a mermaid...all very tidy.
> > > The third successful manifestation was in Angeou (Anjou) where she
> > > gave birth
> > > to several children and was in the chapel with the youngest two by the
> > > hand...when the priests decided to confront her with the Host (i.e.,
> > > eucharist)
> > > in a manner that she had somehow managed to avoid up until
> > > then...remember, this
> > > sort of thing is tricky and, we are dealing with rival
> > > magicks...whereupon she
> > > transformed into a Dragon for, in Anjou they were more frank than in
> > > most places
> > > and echoed the Acts of the Apostles(3:21) in likening the Scarlett
> > > Woman or
> > > "that Great Goddess whom Asia and all the world worshippeth" to the
> > > very Devil.
> > > Grabbing her youngest two by the hand, she fled shrieking out of the
> > > window into
> > > the sky in the form of a dragon...we may consider that the churchmen
> > > had very
> > > potent magic indeed or, perhaps she was just tired of that gig...
> > > It is possible to interpret these tales as the passing of a cult, as
> > > millions
> > > of people were being put to death in Europe "to save their immortal
> > > souls"
> > > ...and it did start far earlier than the usual dating of the "Burning
> > > Times":
> > > consider how many Charlemagne made war upon... or it could be treated
> > > at face
> > > value, as literal, physical manifestations of a really big "X- File"
> > > type of
> > > alien...after all, you have snake-bottomed Enki saving Utnapishtim
> > > (Noah) in the
> > > Sitchin version of the deluge and Ninhursag equatable with Shamuramat
> > > (Semiramis)
> > > makes a very good shapeshifting acquatic alien/goddess...and you have
> > > the
> > > central African legend of the Matu among the pygmies, equatable with
> > > the Nomo of
> > > the Dogon...and continuing in a tradition of either serpent-bottomed
> > > or
> > > fish-tailed goddesses ffrom Auset/Isis as "the serpent of the Nile"
> > > to a
> > > fishtailed Aphrodite on Cyprus, fishtailed Venus the eponymous
> > > goddess of
> > > Venice, and Melusina the patroness of Naples...but don't stop
> > > there: continuing north, you find Holle was three mermaids, a trinity
> > > of
> > > eponymous goddesses of Holland!
> > > The Goddess was international and the modern reader must shed little
> > > compartmental ideas about what is "European" or what is "Jewish" as
> > > opposed to
> > > what "Egyptian" and so on...the modern nation-states and even the
> > > sharp
> > > seperation of races seems to be a male-generated, patriarchal
> > > prerogative,
> > > generated from men jealous about their Y-DNA strands and keeping
> > > birth-givers as
> > > their "chattel" and biological slaves...the old religion of the Great
> > > Mother
> > > Goddess, wherein women were free to choose their sexual partners, led
> > > to a great
> > > deal more genetic as well as cultural diversity in "the old days"...
> > > As human beings spread out across the planet, they went back to visit
> > > rather
> > > than "discovered" primitive savages whose lands they could claim and
> > > whose
> > > labour they could exploit (all that came much later) and the
> > > Goddess's temples
> > > were actually places where a "foreigner" might be embraced and a
> > > child be
> > > conceived...as opposed to a foreigner of a later era visiting where
> > > the men
> > > ruled and the womenfolk were all claimed and locked up in hareems
> > > as "property".
> > > The two-tails of the Melusine as at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine--itself
> > > names
> > > "Elsass-Lothringen" after Lohengrin the Swan-Knight, a son of the
> > > Goddess from
> > > the Grail Castle or Avalon--probably represent a bifurcation of Her
> > > holy
> > > bloodline...interpretted as a symbol. But, also consider a literal
> > > interpretation: as in the case of the unsuccessful manifestation on
> > > the
> > > Stauffenberg: why Melusine did not become the mother of the royal
> > > house of
> > > Hohenstauffen (perhaps their trouble in later centuries with her
> > > decendants(?)
> > > was that she manifested to a mortal named Peter Dimringer who, jilted
> > > her.
> > > Having promised his lovely speckled dragon her day in church, he went
> > > to the
> > > altar with another woman! At the wedding feast, she got even: as
> > > wedding guests
> > > succumbed to poison, they looked up to see a snake's tail dripping
> > > over the
> > > punch bowl at the reception!
> > > Actually, though, the Stauffenberg version of the legend reads much
> > > more like
> > > an 'X-file': when he encounters her, she takes him into a "castle"
> > > (ship?) that
> > > is invisible from the outside!
> > > Consider Her symbology: the sign of Juno Lucina, the "lady of light"
> > > at Rome
> > > being an upright line crossed at base by a short horizontal line and
> > > by
> > > crisscrossing rays at the top: enacted when the Melusine holds up the
> > > sword of
> > > kingship from below the waters of Her holy lake to the mortal
> > > candidate (King
> > > Arthur)...and the Vesica Piscis, the roughly "almond shaped" symbol
> > > of a
> > > stylised fish...not horizontal as in the well-known
> > > Christian "ichthys"
> > > version...but vertical...a symbol of the yoni...and compare different
> > > pagan
> > > sculptures of the Melusine and of the sheila-na-gig on some very old
> > > Irish
> > > churches.
> > > Consider the page of Cups in Tarot decks: the card showing a page
> > > holding a
> > > cup in which a fish disports! Literal...or, a very excellent symbol
> > > of what is
> > > truly sacred in the holy grail? The source of generation: of life...
> > > The (artificial) islands in the artificial Lake of the Ladies of the
> > > Lake in
> > > Somerset...of which, the Dove was the centre of the Giant Wheel of the
> > > Zodiac...were shaped like ancient signs of the Zodiac, some as large
> > > as three
> > > miles across? The sign and island of Pisces, significantly, was that
> > > island
> > > known as "Avalon" and was the place where the Lady of the Lake
> > > herself...the
> > > mortal one...ruled over the priestesshood of the Great
> > > Goddess...whereas
> > > Semiramis's ship(?) would probably be the cavern "beneath the lake"
> > > where
> > > Lancelot was reared by "mermen"--not something I ever thought a
> > > misprint in the
> > > German "Lanzelet"!
> > > Thus, you should not think of one body of legend or myth as "Jewish"
> > > and
> > > another "British" or "Egyptain" but look instead for what was
> > > international:
> > > even the Roman empire stretched, you know from the island of Britain
> > > all the
> > > way to Egypt. Caesar of the Gallic wars was also Caesar to Cleopatra
> > > VII you
> > > know...she even had his kid! Look at the evidence: Judaea was so much
> > > a part of
> > > the same Roman empire that the infant Jesus was rescued from Herod's
> > > slaughter
> > > of the infants to the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. Same
> > > empire, same
> > > Roman law, same coinage, same Latin used where the common
> > > Greek "Koina" was not
> > > employed--itself a legacy of Alexander some three centuries earlier.
> > > What of
> > > "the missing years" when Jesus had been taken back to the Temple at
> > > age thirteen
> > > where he argued for three days(!) with the Jewish priests, before
> > > coming back at
> > > age thirty for the last three years?? Where was he??? Well, the
> > > Jewish Talmud
> > > says he was in cahoots with "heathens" in Egypt "and other foreign
> > > lands" and
> > > the folks at Avalon DO claim him...and Somerset WAS in the same Roman
> > > empire
> > > with travel and communication never so
> > > easy, so why not collate the evidence? There is a house in Somerset--
> > > or the
> > > remains of one--he is supposed to have built for Mary his mother.
> > > There is abundant evidence that Mary was a priestess of a Gnostic
> > > cult;and
> > > that, his bride the other Mary, the Magdalene, was a pagan priestess
> > > and not a
> > > "common prostitute"--which it never even says in the Bible. In the
> > > Talmud his
> > > mother is described as a "hairdresser" and the Magdalene, his wife,
> > > seems
> > > definitely to be more like a priestess of Avalon than anything
> > > else...you should
> > > not forget how reviled they were in King Arthur's time, nor how they
> > > were
> > > mistreated in Josiah's purges much earlier...circa 621 BC...to see
> > > how this
> > > would have been enough to have caused Mary Magdalene trouble with the
> > > patriarchal priests.
> > > To think of either Mary as "Jewish" and therefore beyond the
> > > possibility of
> > > the Avalonian priestesshood, is to see women precisely as the
> > > Patriarchy wants
> > > you to see them: as the "property" or chattel of the men who ruled
> > > those
> > > societies and "owned" them. The religion of the Goddess was
> > > international and
> > > was still QUITE active outside of Judah well after the Josiannic
> > > purges! The
> > > priestesses did not just shrivel up and blow away as dust overnight
> > > because
> > > Josiah had burned their sisters in Judah, you know. Her priestesses
> > > of Isis were
> > > still going strong in Egypt during the youth of Jesus and the
> > > Magdalene...and in
> > > Avalon as well.
> > >
> > > Dynasty and House of Antioch-Lusignan-Rivers
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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