A LESSON IN APPLIED ARCHEOLOGY

Or

SuperSleuths to the Front: How Would You Solve This One…

B.W. Powell ©

First, I found out that Henry the IV was actually a very unpopular king at the time of his reign (which was in the 1280's - exact dates not at hand). History records that Henry is thought to have summoned some of his confidants on one occasion and instructed them to "go forth and find some safe, remote location to which he and the Court might withdraw" if matters should come to a head with his enemies! And there is documentation that these confidants did just that and ultimately reported back to Henry sometime later, that they had found and secured just such a spot and to put his mind at rest… As events transpired in English history, he was never forced to flee to this distant, but unnamed haven…

This is all easily determined by just a little midnight reading of sources. What is intriguing however, is the notion put forth by someone once that it is thought these confidants may have had recourse to the Scots clan, the Sinclairs - the mysterious "seagoing Scots" of the Hebrides and Outer Orkneys - who had long been regarded as having secret knowledge of routes far out over the Western Sea. Routes it was rumored that they in turn had learned of from their often close association with the raiding Northmen several centuries earlier… (Those who have read my earlier Viking episodes here may recall I mentioned all this therein). There is even, in fact, and to this day so far as I know, a much disputed "narrative" - the so-called "Xeno Narrative" - which is said to be kept under lock and key in the Vatican's vaults, and which purports to relate a whole lot of things about very early knowledge of how to reach the New World and all, all as recorded by some (apparently) Greek traveler to these parts or something. (Just why the Vatican would find it necessary to suppress this, if in fact it does, I don't really know, but if you are going to sit on the Mayan Codices, you might as well tuck Xeno in there with them: what you don't know can't hurt you being a tried and true percept of the Faithful…).

Eventually I got in touch with either a mineralogist at the AMNH in NYC or maybe I actually contacted someone in England - I don't recall now. But my purpose here was to see if a sample of the stone (I think it is a gabbro of some kind) could be identified as being English gabbro or not - but the consensus at that time of the specialists was this would not be possible to determine which side of the Atlantic the stone might derive from. I then turned to the maritime aspects. Of course the English by this date had vessels that COULD have sailed to North America, but our traditional history says this is two hundred years earlier than they are SUPPOSED to have done so (that is, Columbus…). But if they had, how might they have gone?

Let us say Henry's couriers induced some "canny Scots" to lead them over the Western Sea in search of a safe haven for their king. The Scots may have been more than just able to put them off the North American coast. They may have raised it anywhere from Newfoundland south - where many investigators now suspect Europeans had been sort of "furtively" fishing anyhow. They might have coasted southwards say till they entered the sheltered waters of Long Island Sound (Again, this was suggested also for the much earlier Viking exploring party out of Vinland the summer of 1003, as some of you may recall my mentioning). Traversing the Sound say for about two-thirds of its length, they would have come upon the mouth of the Housatonic River (near modern day) Milford, CT. This could have easily accommodated their upriver passage to the first shoals or rapids, which as I recall lay then within about five miles of the find site! (It is deeper now due to a modern dam). Let us suppose, according to this scenario, that they had aboard their small but ocean-going vessel, a tabular stone Land Grant Marker made by the King's artisan's….

Arrived off the first shoals, which would have stopped their deeper draft vessel, they may then have launched their ship's smallboat and rowers, and slung the heavy stone up out of the hold and deposited it therein. An easy row on normally calm waters would at last bring them and the so-far totally boat-transported heavy rock to the very base of the long slope where it stops at the bank of the Housatonic on its west side only about a mile and half below the spot where it was found!

Did a party of seagoing Scots and English Officers of the Court, once lug a 400-pound slab of English gabbro, incised with the "formula" that proclaims the land wherever this marker is found to be the sole property of a distant English King, up a long, wooded slope of a Novus Mundi none of them really knew, to its very top one hot summer day of the year 1284 AD? Did they then erect it there and scout out the land a bit and make a map or two perhaps, and then retrace their long weary route back over the "Western Sea," never to return again, and to report to their King what they had done? COULD this have actually happened? DID it actually happen?

What do you think most probable, taking into consideration all of the foregoing?

Epilogue

Now the following in many ways has "nothing to do" with the events I have just related above. In fact, I almost omitted it. But in some ways it does "have something to do" with these events - and in a most curious fashion, so I will relate it here. All of this happened long afterwards. In fact, within the past two years or so. "X" is a friend of mine still in CT. The real "tie" in this "epilogue" here lies in the presentation method and how anyone may pick and choose among selected inferences and facts, so called, of history and record. And in the perennial sparring between Christianity and Science and Reason and so on - which will be most reminiscent perhaps to those of you who follow our Skeptics Board discussions and importantly perhaps, methods of discussion, for you will recognize many old issues and stances as they assume new roles and presentations. At the very least I hope you get a laugh or two and even some "long thoughts" to ponder…

My friend, X, in CT a few years ago, sent me a book he had just read and which he was anxious that I should discuss with him and what did I think of it. The title of the book was something like "Holy Grail, Holy Blood" or something like that, and its authors as I recall were a team of French "researchers". The book hit all the best-seller lists back about 1995 or so. It was reviewed and commented upon very widely. I am sorry I do not remember the exact title and authors, but I am sure at least some of you will recognize it when I begin to describe it.

This book purports to report on the peregrinations of the Holy Grail - the chalice in which the blood of Christ's wounds was collected when He was crucified. However, that is only what it ostensibly sets out to do. Along the way it spans novel reinterpretations of all manner of historic events and records, and reaches over half the known world nearly, to involve thousands of people of all different cultures and times and places in a sort of vast "conspiracy" and the Mother of All Cover-Ups. But the book maintains that its central thesis is sound and defensible, and it is this aspect that X had wanted my views on. I did this in a way that I thought might entertain him and certainly get his attention in any event! (My original report to him I think was far more entertaining than this account, but it was lost in a computer crash some time back, and X did not keep his copy…)

I cannot actually recall a tenth of the detail in this book. Nor would it be appropriate to present it all here in any event. Just off the top of my head though, I will try to sketch in a very few of the highlights, which the authors often go into in great and tedious detail (however, the book is rarely boring!). For one, they present this thesis that Christ did not die on the Cross at all. There is some line of reasoning and "evidence" (to Believers) which supports the theory that he escaped and made his way to France (Gaul) of all places. In France he married and settled down and became a family man. This "secret" was well-known to several (hundred?) followers, whatever - and eventually his lineage merged with or became that of the Merovingian Kings of France. All manner of "secret" symbology and whatnot attest to this in names for successors, events of their lives, details of architecture and on and on. There is then the additional matter of "treasures" amassed by the robber Crusader Knights and of their knowledge somehow of earlier "treasures" in the Holy Land (I really can't remember all this detail off the top of my head) from the Jews and Solomon and so on and all this came to be buried beneath a horse stable or somesuch in the ruins of Solomon's temple (?) The Crusaders themselves dug here for this…

Then there is the matter of the Holy Grail… I see now in retrospect I do not remember this critical detail, for if Christ skipped out to La Belle France and settled into domesticity there, why is there, or who is there to provide the Blood… a detail I cannot resolve. (Actually I think the authors worked out some fantastic notion that the "grail" is a metaphor for Christ's wife or descendants… you will have to read the book to judge for yourself). But the Grail seems to be the more valid aspect anyhow (than Christ's' removal to France) and it is this search for the Holy Grail that has determined Western history in all its more important aspects down through time, and put its stamp on cultures and norms etc. etc. This is what the Crusaders were after in fact.

Now it seems this Grail also found its way to France somehow and was for years in the keeping of some group of religious fanatics (Alberengians or something like that) who were later all massacred, but whose hero escaped out of a castle window one night with a pillowcase full of the company's spoons, etc. - and yes, you guessed it! - The Grail! Somewhere along the line the Teutonic Knights enter the picture. (Century upon century is rolling away here you must understand). Intrigues and hugger-mugger without end and Popes are in on this and monks and priests and kings and Italians and "all the usual suspects". It is somehow a shared understanding across time and all these groups that this is heady stuff not to be shared with just anyone so there is sort of a shadowy "brotherhood of the Grail" thing here. Eventually FreeMasonry arises and it is very much a part of all this. These various groups exchange info with one another and secrets about Christ and the whereabouts of his blood and the chalice and all. The book actually makes it seem much less fantastic (well, so to speak that is…) than this crash course here, as there is endless documentation and alternate presentations.

Eventually, this ever-widening "knowledge" reaches England - and I think it is via the Teutonic Knights or Knights Templars (originally the Hanseatic League bunch of the North German City States). This group had offended somehow the sensibilities of our very own Henry IV we were just reading about! They may in fact, have been the very group with whom he wrangled and the wrangle may have been about the Grail and its safekeeping!

At this point, in reading "X"'s book, I was reminded of the Land Grant Marker thing up in CT so many years ago! (Recall I am now resident down here in Florida). In fact, long years after the events I related to you all about the Land Grant Marker, I once took "X" to see if we could relocate the stone and we drove around till we found the road and thus to the schoolteacher's house itself! I pulled into the drive and out she came - a bit grayer perhaps but I recognized her. She had a warm smile on her face to greet these two unannounced strangers in her drive, but when she saw my face a cloud came over hers of confusion and doubt… and then she recalled me! The "scientist" who had ruined her and her husband's hopes for a better life. Both retired now and living on small pensions in their run-down house "in the woods". This was maybe eight or nine years ago. We chatted briefly - the whereabouts of Boland have long been unknown to me and there didn't seem a great deal to say. I asked if she still had the stone and she said yes and I asked if she would mind showing the stone to X? She did so, but more out of fear that my unknown negativism might reach out after all these years and yet do her and her loved ones further harm I fear… It was in her garage (still) under a workbench. We examined it. Someone had painted the letters white (they always do this, laymen, when they find these things…). There seemed little more to say…

Resuming with our book report, now. Thus, there is actually documented evidence accepted by at least some historians to the effect that the Holy Grail over many centuries and through many hands and vicissitudes may once have been involved with the enigmatic Henry the IVth. To this point in the book I had offered X a running commentary on non-sequiturs and innuendoes and false logic and reasoning etc. so that it was sometimes possible to refute and sometimes possible to support the convoluted happenings and the whole thing was fantastic beyond telling. X, it might be said here, is an extremely bright chap and a lawyer's trained mind into the bargain. He is nevertheless sort of a "believer" of the metaphysical type rather than organized religion. He is a confirmed believer in "soul" however, and we have drunk many a night away batting this one about.. This in a happy time long before the Skeptics Board was ever a gleam in the Webmaster's Eye!

And so in my earlier report on this book written up for just his eyes, I had led X through the maze of analysis of the works and all and both proving and disproving its authors right (and wrong). But with the tie to Henry the IVth it seemed to me I had been presented with a (Godsent? Lol) opportunity to nail down and expose the whereabouts of the Holy Grail today! And so I took off at this juncture with an interpretation of my own - which ran something like this: the Chalice actually WAS obtained by Henry and THAT is what his couriers were secretly conniving with the seagoing Scots over! And that they DID in fact come out to the New World, and they had not only a land grant marker in the hold with them - but the actual Holy Grail itself!

This Grail in fact they carried up the slope with them the day they implanted the Land Grant Marker on the spot where the schoolteacher's house would one day stand. AND the tumulus (I had shown X the now brush overgrown spot where we had dug) was no accident, but HAD actually been dug/built by them and the (gasp!) Holy Grail placed therein for safekeeping. And there matters rested till Bernie Powell once innocently showed this place to X and then Bernie not long after moved away from his beloved CT and retired to ignominy, sun and the pagan delights and continuous insults of the Skeptics Board in distant, sunny Florida..

But one night, when all was quiet in the deep CT "woods", X slipped out of the house and drove one of his sport cars (he collects Sprites) up to Newtown and parked silently on a side road. He then tiptoed quietly through "the woods" till he came to the spot where Bernie had shown him the suspect tumulus once lay. Using great caution and a slotted lantern for light, he took a small shovel and dug gingerly down in the center of where Bernie had said a fox's lair had once been uncovered. After only a few shovelfuls, he struck something! Kneeling he brushed away the soil and there gleaming in the light from his hooded lantern was a marvelous golden chalice! After all these centuries and all the turmoil and all the many false starts and stops, he, "X," had finally figured out the last link in the longsought Grail's whereabouts. And he, X, was now the sole and proud owner!

And thus I was able to answer X's question he put to me as his Doubting Thomas friend when he asked after my reading this mass of convoluted quasi-religious documentary for the "proof" to the Chalice's existence and all - and so in the end where did I think it really was?

And I could answer him honestly - for I had shown impeccably that the HOLY GRAIL IS HIDDEN UNDER THE CANVAS BOOTTOP OF YOUR SPRITE IN YOUR VERY OWN GARAGE AT THIS MOMENT! And I have proven it you rascal, and my logic is impeccable and only a logical extension of the maunderings of the two French researchers! My further threat to have the authorities upon him, shocked him back to reality and he gave a few feeble laughs. But we have not discussed souls or grails or much else since on his occasional trips down here, and when we write we write of other matters now…

Lol. I must add yet one further item: the Raiders' of the Lost Ark bit. The director was actually drawing on Grail lore when he made his Indiana Jones epic! I forget just how they come into the picture, but German archeologists in the Holy Land long ago are supposed to have found some "marvelous" and not further described religious horde or treasure (was this what the Crusaders sought under the horse stalls?). In the Lost Ark, this is garbled around a bit and the mean Nazis get their comeuppance and all (who can ever forget the Nazi whose eyeballs melt and whose face follows suit after one forbidden peek? ) But it is a matter of real world fact that some kind of unparalleled "find" was made by German scientists once and whatever they brought back has blended in with the whole Grail legend…