The Jewel in the Crown

That it was a druidic device can be ascertained by its 6th century associations with the bard Lwarch Hen. One will recall that Melusine was a "mermaid", half fish (or rather Water Serpent) and half woman, and that Mer is the Egyptian Hieroglyph which, shaped like a square spiral maze, denotes water and irrigation.

As an Elf Maiden she would have been the ritual quarry of the Wild Hunt and thus "a fish for the fish trap", a blood offering for the Vere King. It appears therefore that the maze is the Bower of the Virgin and indeed some mazes have been named just that: Maidenbowers. The symbol of Virgo, the M with a fish appended, denoting the virgin vulva and womb, is pertinent here.

As the cubic stone is the Lia Fail, the emerald tablet, the vulva of Venus and the jewel in the crown of Lucifer, then it relates also to the Sumerian Inanna, the Akkadian Ishtar who, like Melusine, was said to consume her lovers, and Hathor who, like Persephone was the vendor of "deadly" otherworldly "food" (which, like its counterpart, fairy food, compelled one to remain in Elphame), and whose sacred emblem was the Ankh from whence was derived the name of the druidic death cult, the Ankhou or Anjou, of which Morgana, and Melusine (the Fountain of Thirst) of the Labyrinth, were high priestesses.

The Ankh was also used by the Albigensian Cathars, thought by scholars to be either the descendants of, or to have been influenced by, the Persian Manicheans, the Arians and the Bogomils, which suggests a further reinforcement of the link between pre-Nicaean and thus gnostic-dualist, or original Christianity and Druidism.

The Maze is associated with the root word from whence we derive the adjective "to amaze". This itself probably has associations with the name Mazda, the principle of light, suggesting that whatever was at the centre of a Maze rendered enlightenment and that ecstatic amazement, or wonder, accompanied it.

As Ormuzd, it might even be associated with the Spiral Serpent of the vortex: The Sumaire. Some dictionaries have suggested in the past that maze was derived from the Saxon word for a whirlpool, mase, and although scholars later insisted that no such word existed, like it or not, the early maze was indeed a figurative vortex; a tornado or whirlpool.

At the centre of the Knossos Maze there dwelt the Minotaur, the bull-man who destroyed all who entered his environs. From previous notes we will recall that the bull, Jehovah, represented the unregenerate man and his world view. Once Mithras or Mazda slew the bull, from its veins poured forth all fertility.

The Bull’s head also represented the female organs, one will recollect. Again a source of fertility on both levels. The Theseus story therefore is a typical rendering of the central mystery of the dualistic cult of Mithras which is repeated in Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and the tale of Holger Dansk. Theseus learns that 14 victims every nine years were sent to Knossos to appease the Minotaur. This has echoes in the popular medieval story of Melusine’s Maze.

The number 14 is, as we have seen, a strong component of the dimensions of the Chartres Maze, which is 42 feet in diameter, being 3 X 14. The radius of the maze is 21 feet which is 3 X 7, representing the three fallow weeks of the menstrual cycle. The week of menstruus would be represented by the point at the centre of the maze, which is, on certain days, illuminated red, as has been recorded in other works.

The fourteen children, 7 virgins and 7 youths, sacrificed at Knossos represent two 1 week periods each. Of these there are, symbolically at least, 21 of each in the terrestrial year, which, as 7+7+7 and 2+1 (3) connects the Labryinth story once more to the triple goddess and Persephone. The total days of the earth year of 42 weeks add up to 294 which, added together, gives the number 15 again, the path of the devil which, added again, gives six and thus the hexagram of the Labrus, the womb and vagina of the virgin priestess.

The Seal of the Temple is 777 and the number of Venus as Netzach on the Kabalistic Tree of Life is also 7. The three component of the Seal represents the three aspects of Venus, Freja, Persephone or the Tantric Kali, which in themselves encode the three stages of the vampire ritual, a component of an entire hidden culture that, resting upon the universal archetypes of common humanity, forms, as Jung would argue, the distinct tribal or racial memory (my note; of a unique and separate sub-species), for whom alone this culture, its icons and rituals is emotionally understandable and psychologically relevant and accessible, as is the case for any given race.

Diana and the Moon symbolize Virgin Blood, Venus-Aphrodite represents divine union with the Maiden priestess (symbolized by Iduina-Arduina-Diana) and the taking of her blood, whilst Hel-Hecate-Kore-Kali as the last aspect of the Earth and death represent both the death of the mundane soul and the fertility of the super consciousness that displaces it.

Less familiar are the numerical values attributed to the earth or terrestrial calendar however, which operates using a 42 week system with extra days dispersed throughout the weeks of the year. In this context, the maze therefore has a link with the horology of the earth and in particular to the myth of Persephone.

Some authorities claim that Persephone spent half the year in the Underworld, whilst others state that her sojourn in Hell was for only a third of the year. In ancient times there were only three seasons in any event and it is likely that her Underworld semester was therefore for one third of an earth year.

The earliest known calendar used to calculate the earth year was dug up at Cluny in France and dates back to the Celtic bronze age. It is therefore Druidic in origin. Persephone is dealt with elsewhere in these notes, however it is worth noting that she is said to emerge at the end of winter, thus representing the return of Spring and youthful fertility to the earth. She is therefore the fertile maiden. (fertility of the blood in the rite of Enthea, not the fertility of bestial or vegetal congress and sexual increase).

Her association with the labyrinth as a swastika is confirmed by Knossian coins which bear her head on one side and the fylfot maze with an eight pointed star in the centre on the obverse. An example may be viewed, with similar maze design variations in the British Museum’s coin collection. Like the Norse Freja and the Aryan Kali, Persephone is a tripartite Goddess whose three aspects themselves have three aspects, pointing to a distinctly Scythian origin and to the Celtic belief in the sanctity of the number Nine, gematrically associated in the Hebrew with ’N’H’Sh; the Serpent or Dragon.

Forbidden Fruits
Persephone herself has three main aspects: Diana the Maiden, Persephone-Venus and Kore as Hecate. The Norse equivalent, Freja, also has three corresponding aspects, Iduina-Freja of the Apples of eternal youth (Gaelic: Arduina-Diana of the Nine Fires and of the Blue Boar), Gamlod-Freja and Freja.

In turn, Freja herself is one third of the team who made up the Witches of Macbeth, these being Freja, Frigg and Hel. At death, the Norse believe, the chosen hero is welcomed at Valhalla by a Valkyrie bearing the Drinking Horn (see below; Horn Gate) that contains the beautifully and suggestively named "Mead of Inspiration", which in Gaelic is the Dergflaith of Sovereignty and in Greek, the wine of Persephone.

It is probably worth taking a quick side-step and looking at the iconography here. Mead is the fermented juice of Apples, (the Graffenberg discharge of the Royal Princess), flavored by honey, which symbolizes the polysaccharines and glucosides which are now thought to be produced during the enzyme reaction, (at a specific point in the menstrual cycle), that creates serotonin from melatonin. The "honeyed sweetness" of the fluid would indicate a high melatonin presence during the hours of the evening and nightime, which are ruled by Ishtar or Venus-Persephone, as the Goddess of "Love".

At 10,000 years old, so it is claimed and probably therefore the earliest manufactured beverage known to man, Mead, is another of the archetypal representations of the essence of the Goddess- Priestess, representing the flow of the priestess, sweetened by the nectar (ambrosia or "food of the Gods") collected by bees who are the sacred animals of Binah, the mother of Understanding.

Nevertheless, if you cut an apple in half across the core the seed chambers form the pentagram that appears on the brow of the Baphomet, symbolizing the cubic stone.

The seeds themselves contain cynanide in a such a quantity as to make 25 grams sufficient an amount to kill a man. The apple was chosen to represent the goddess but, as we can see and as tradition testifies, the goddess and her Grail maidens have a symbolic down side. Again we encounter the love that is death and the concept of death to one form of perception and the reawakening to another.

As Kali, Ishtar, Diana, Hecate and Hel, these Goddesses represent the deadly potential of the sacred elven female. The essence of the Grail maidens and their chemically generated morphic energy can heal much, but there is a price to pay.

One draught stimulates dormant centers in the fairy brain that, in becoming sensitized to, and instinctively acknowledging these chemicals, it develops a dependence on them and the subtle sweet energy they produce, which as a pathological dynamic is much like alcoholism, such is the intensity of the experience. Because of this, though the maidens are indeed the Grail, they are also called the fountain of thirst and, like La Belle Dame Sans Merci; the Grail Maiden, the Leanaan Sidhe can leave her victim like Keats’ palely wandering knight who no longer sees the world in which he once belonged but sees, and consequently inhabits, another world altogether.

His has become a world of infinite wonders but, at her inevitable departure, it has also become a world of unbearable longing, of intense hunger and thirst. Like ’La Belle Dame’ these beautiful living goddesses come as softly and as unawares as spirits, to open the door to the rose garden and initiate their chosen prince.

Having united with him in enthea and "removed" his soul, they inevitably depart from these "chance" encounters as softly and as swiftly as at first they arrived. Like bees they are put on the earth to pollinate the flower of fairy consciousness but invariably like bees, they also suck dry the nectar of the fairy’s soul.

Bees however, are the badge of the Merovingian descendants of King Solomon whose Song, or at least the one attributed to him, is packed to the gunwales with vampiric references to the gathering of the nectar of maidens in an apiarine fashion later eulogized by Shakespeare (Edward de Vere?), who was a descendant of Solomon and a veritable son of the tradition.

Bees live as equal entities in Hives under the rule of one Sovereign who is chosen and created from their number by the administration of "Royal Jelly" (Dergflaith) by and from the body of the previous Queen.

In this respect the clans of the Danaan, the Elven King Tribes of the Western Aryans, once replicated in their social structure the organization of the Hive. Furthermore the hexagonal construction of the bees’ incubation chamber, their place of origin or birth, is repeated in the hexagonal shape of the Kabalistic tree of Life (the Planta Genista, the [family] tree of Origin) which was intended to be identical in its shape and layout with the hexagonal web of relationships on the diagrammatical family tree of the Sumerian/Scythian Dragon Goddess-Queens and God-Kings, from whom the Fairy Danaan and the Merovingians are descended.

Bees suck the nectar from the flowers in the garden and in like fashion the vampiric Fey kings and queens drank the nectar of the lily and the rose from their virgin goddesses, in the maze sanctuary of the sacred groves.

The Bee symbolizes Understanding, and in history so do the Fey, whose legendary power and eternal wisdom, like that of their cousin Solomon, was phenomenal, such was the efficacy of the "Mead of Wisdom" distilled by the elf maidens, the Valkyries or Ladies of the Forest. With the canny dance of the Bee forming the figure eight, which in human terms represents infinity and is the glyph of Isis, we return once more to the subject of the triple goddess.

In the triad of Diana-Persephone-Kore the individuals are represented by the Moon, the planet Venus and Earth respectively and reflect the qualities associated with each. In Dragon terms these aspects represent Potential (the Blood of the Moon), Union (the enthea of Baphomet as Persephone-Venus) and Release (the winning of spiritual sovereignty and fertility) after reaching the centre or Nix, the love that is death, symbolized by Persephone-Kore the fruitful Earth, which is both womb and tomb.

Kore itself means virgin, and the image of Kore as Hel or Hecate as crones, is only valid on an exoteric, popular mystical level which concerns itself with nature worship. However, the symbolism still hidden in non revivalist witchcraft as it has come down to us today continually points to a high magical purpose with strong connections to the death and blood mystery cults of classical and pre-classical times. The symbolism is often interpreted as being concerned with venal fertility because of the rustic allegorical images which were employed to hide the esoteric information being conveyed.

It has been forgotten that doctrines were split into three layers, each corresponding to the needs, interests and capacity for understanding of the intended audience or participants. In the mystery of Diana (Iduna or Arduina) - Persephone-Kore related to Chartres we have seen that we have an example of the maze or labyrinth as both womb and tomb. In the myth of Persephone and the pomegranate, the Dianic Mistletoe bard of Arduina must enter Hel or the Underworld to draw the wine of the fruit of life from her, which in the Gaelic is called dergflaith, the red beer of the queen of sovereignty.

Also reminiscent of this journey to the underworld is the fate of the potential lover of the mermaid who is destined to be drawn into her realm and certain death, but only death of the ego, it must be remembered. According to trial transcripts the Templar’s kept a preserved head in a silver reliquary carved with the figure of Virgoc, the Virgin-and-Icthys or Vulva-fish. This head it is said, they called the Baphomet or head (source) of wisdom or Father Mitras.

The Baphomet or Bafomet of the Templars according to Fr. Eliphas Levi was an androgyne figure which, with a bit of consonant wander no doubt, incorporated the Mithraic element suggested in Vatr Mitr, which has a distinctly Aryan ring to it. Virgo relates to Iduna and Arduina, Diana or Artemis the virgin huntress, as well as Mary and Persephone.

Related to Persephone in the cult of the Elysian Plain which, like the rose at the centre of the Chartres maze, lies at the centre of the otherworld, is Orpheus or Bacchus-Orpheus. Bacchus was also called Liber, which in Latin means:

a)   liberty or release

b)   Tree

c)   Wine

d)   a book, wisdom or secret knowledge, The Hidden Torah

Orpheus in the Underworld
Bacchus-Orpheus, it will be remembered, was crucified, hung on a tree like Odin and Christ; and, with Dionysus, was a god of the blood and death cults of the mediterranean region which correlate with the Elysian mysteries, introduced to the inhabitants of Greece and Crete by the Scythian Danaan of Troy who had settled in Carthage and Egypt following the fall of their city. The Elysian Plain corresponds to the Irish Tir Na n’Og. The Land, or Tree, of Youth which itself has associations with the Ankh.

In recounting the Elysian story of Aeneas and the Trojan rout, Virgil explains that Aeneas travelled to Italy to seek out the Sibyl or shamanka of Cumae, to gain knowledge of how to enter the underworld and obtain an audience with his deceased father.

In order to enter the door of Dis and descend to Averna (cf. Avallon), the shamaness explains, he must first bury a friend and then pluck the Golden Bough, but warned him that although many may enter, few except the children of the gods (my note; The elven race) may leave again (this denotes a ritual involving fairy food). On leaving the shamanka’s cave, the Trojan-Scythian lord buries a fallen comrade and plucks the Mistletoe.

As in the tale of Gilgamesh, the shamanka accompanies him on the journey and both descend into Hades where they meet Orpheus on the Elysian Plain and accomplish the task they set out to do, after which Aeneas, (being the son of Assaracus by Aphrodite and the descendant of Electra the daughter of Atlas the Titan, son of Iapetus or Japhet the Lord and father of the elven race), was permitted to leave.

Next to the doorway to Hades Virgil locates a representation of the labyrinth, as a map of the underworld with, as we discover as the story unfolds, Elysium: Avallon, at its heart. As a teaching the story of the underworld quest incorporating the mistletoe can be found in the epic of Gilgamesh, giving a Babylonian and, no doubt, an early Sumerian, middle eastern origin for the labyrinth concept which, as the spiral vortex, is related to the decorative motifs employed by the Ubaid culture of Scythia and Carpathia, from whence the royal Sumerian culture itself originated.

In support of such a view it is pertinent that in Scandinavia labyrinths were sometimes referred to as "Babylons" and in the Roman Empire, the figure of the labyrinth formed into jewellery was worn exclusively by the emperors, because it was considered to be solely a royal insignia. At such a time the explicit inference would have been to directly connect the labyrinth concept to that of Kingship and thus, in classical memory, to the ancient Dragon cult of Sumerian priest kings.

In the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, by the time Theseus is said to have turned up, the tribute to the Minotaur in youths’ and virgins’ blood had been paid twice in 18 years. Gematrically this gives a total of 28 victims or one lunar cycle of 28 days. The youths’ blood represented the fallow part of the cycle.

The 18 year period represented Isis and Osiris, Keshalyi and Locolico or Nergal and Nin-Kursag. Osiris was the Blue Faced God of the dead who was the counterpart of the Aryan, blue faced Shiva-Vishnu, the blue boar. Osiris’ brother Set first tried incarcerating him and throwing him in the Nile, but Isis and her sister Nephthys found him and revived him sufficiently to father Horus from Isis. The symbol of St. George slaying the dragon is derived from the Roman depiction of the slaying of the crocodile Set-Typhon by the mounted Horus.

Secondly, (Set was not a quitter), Osiris was ripped to bits by his fratricidal brother and his members were scattered. Again, Isis, and Set’s wife Nephthys, went around picking up the bits but couldn’t find his penis, symbol of his creative force or sovereignty and another symbol for the spinal column, as emphasized by the serpent entwined "phallus" of the Baphomet, which is topped off by an orb, representing the brain. In consequence of this Osiris is a candidate for identification as the first Fisher King, crippled "in the thigh", as the proprietous euphemism puts it. Osiris’s "organ" is represented by the figure one or I.

Isis’ figure is infinity or the number 8, which was often drawn as the double axe-head figure found in Knossos or Cnossos, a name derived itself from the Greek root word gno or gno, which also renders gnome, gnomen (judgment) and gnosis or wisdom from whence derives (self) knowledge.

The phallus representation in exoteric Tantra suggests a symbolic link between the rush of ejaculation and the release of energy when the kundalini is aroused. This kundalini serpent is said to course up the spine from the base chakra, like semen rushing up the urethra, inundating the brain in a phenomenon described as a psychic orgasm. An apt analogy.

The phallus symbol here refers to the spinal column that carries the neuronal pathways of the brain and consequently its vital essences, via the third ventricle and the nerve helix, to the Graffenberg gland, the womb, the urethra and the bowel where certain corresponding essences are manufactured and find their way back up to the brain, much in the same manner as the kundalini.

The kundalini differs however in that it is the process whereby a rush of aggressive, sexual, electro-chemical signals are forced up the brain stem to the base of the corticospinal tract. It is suggested that the kundalini effect is similar to that of stimulatory drugs like MDMA and amphetamine, and that the signals incite the brain stem to release substances including dopamine, noradrenaline and acetylcholine in a violent cascade reaction which arouses the sophisticated sensory centers of the higher brain.

These are not the chemicals associated with transcendence but with processes that reinforce the desire for and attachment to material gratification, the very obstacles that stand between the individual and ’spiritual’ release.

Despite constant references in the ancient teachings to the conflict between the different forms of body chemistry, it is often thought by some that playing the beast with two backs is the primrose path to the Kingdom of Heaven.

It can lead so far, inasmuch as it introduces the beginner to altered states of perception - that is undeniable, but biologically, one endocrinal process inevitably dominates the other and it is the subtler process that causes transcendence, not the one driven by the desire to achieve more intense, longer orgasms. Its fun, but its not the real thing.

Consequently ancient Aryan, Draconian "sex magic", unlike the type envisioned by a few modern authors and the western gurus of right hand path Tantra and the eastern mysteries, has little to do with penetrative sexual intercourse.

Therefore Osiris’ One or I represented, not simply the phallus, but both the tongue and the spinal column, and the eight thus represented Isis’ womb and vagina. Under the principle that a king isn’t a king without a queen, Isis and Osiris are shown together as the figure 18, or 666, the mark of the beast, or the Knossos Axe Head: 8 - where the I is horizontal.

Theseus, like Orpheus, must travel through a subterranean realm to find his love and, like the mistletoe bard, at the centre of Hades he will win the Chalice of Persephone’s pomegranate wine. Theseus decides to tackle the Minotaur and armed with a sword given him by Ariadne he enters the labyrinth with a golden thread tied about his waist.

This sword is firstly the straight edged weapon of focus and purity of intent. The symbol is working on two different levels at the same time here. The Golden thread relates to the Golden Fleece and also the Grail, it is the rivulet of womb blood on the biochemical level, whilst on the psychological level it represents the path of logic and truth.

The golden thread is given to Theseus by Ariadne, so it is emphatically a female symbol. Whether the Theseus version of the story was at variance with others, or with the primeval Grail theme itself, by suggesting that the golden thread was not already laid out on the path, is a question that springs immediately to mind. In Rapunzel the golden thread is her hair and the maze is substituted by an equally daunting but related structure, a Tower.

Nine Pieces of Gold
Symbolically, Ariadne is at the centre of the maze, just as Rapunzel is at the top of the Tower and, as Rapunzel lets down her golden hair to assist the knight in getting to her, Ariadne in another sense, assists Theseus.

A tablet at Knossos describes Ariadne as the ’lady of the labyrinthe’ to whom money offerings were made. In developing this theme, Grant (Myths of the Greeks and Romans) says that Ariadne was a goddess of the underworld; which relates her to both Persephone and Melusine and, strangely enough, to St. Nicholas of Dumnonia or Cornwall who, as a mistletoe bard and traveller to the underworld, a horned Merlin and an Odinic priest, is said to have offered three gold coins each to three poor virgin sisters to prevent them from becoming prostitutes.

The three girls in relation to Santa as Theseus, it would seem, also appear themselves to symbolize the tripartite Diana-Persephone-Kore or her priestesses. The nine Byzantine, imperial gold coins that the druid Nicholas or Nicassius gave to the holy virgins became the nine heraldic ’bezants on a field sable’ which variably were the arms of his, the Emrys family, and which eventually became the arms of the duchy of Cornwall.

The apocryphal story of St. Nicholas/Nicassius offering money to the impecunious virgins probably relates to St. Nicholas’ family as the Druidic, Priestly administrators and Keepers of the Sacred Grove, its holy temple and its virgin priestesses who, like Magdalene, came to be thought of, utterly erroneously, as prostitutes. Cassius was the name of one of the Roman rebels but has links also with, and was possibly a re-expanded diminutive or affectionate form of the name Caspar, which is of Persian origin and is said to mean treasurer.

This meaning was probably derivative and like Nicholas, Caspar, probably a temple official, was the Syrian Magus or Druid who was said to have presented gold to the child Jesus. The link between St. Nicholas of Dumnonia and the bezants would suggest therefore that this is the more likely secondary meaning of his name which is itself ultimately related to Nisse or the Nix.

In a way it can be said that the golden thread in Theseus is a rivulet or rtu of Ariadne’s essence, a sutra that leads Theseus to the centre of the mystery and the Grail. One might suggest that symbolically the golden thread was spun by Ariadne from the wool of the Golden Fleece.

This artifact is a classic variation of the grail symbol which, guarded by a Dragon in the heart of Greater Scythia near to where Prometheus was chained, had the same healing properties attributed to the Holy Grail and the blood of the elven goddesses.

In relation to the theme of the Grail as a panacea and physick, is the White Cross of St. John or the gnostic Iao (Jao), related to the sephiroth of Tiphareth and closely linked with Isis and Persephone.

The question must be asked, "How on earth is a thread tied about Theseus’s waist going to help him find the Minotaur?" Quite simply it isn’t, and yet the story doesn’t say he spent six weeks wandering around in circles getting tangled up in wool before he found the monster.

If the Labyrinth were a Maze, the thread would be fine for helping him find his way out, but equally difficult without a golden thread to guide him, would be the task of finding his way to the centre in the first place. However, the structure at Knossos is described as a Labyrinth and labyrinths - unlike Mazes - are single paths which inevitably lead to their goals with no blind alleys or fake turns. This would render Theseus’ need for an actual golden thread redundant whilst on the psychological level the labyrinth would cease to exist once the Minotaur had been slain, thereby rendering the thread pointless anyway.

G.R. Levy explains that the thread (Sanskrit: sutra as in Kama Sutra), or rope, or ’clue’, and the winding path appear as components of European tales of entry into an actual or subjective spiral maze, many of which were found in medieval churchyards or grave/grove-yards, signifying that the ancient groves were places to meet with the dead. Furthermore the word dru (as in druid) in Sanskrit means ’run’, as in run the race or "dance the maze".

The Llans were special geographical locations where the groves were built and these were on the intersection between Dragon Lines (not ley lines) where,

a)  the power was thought to be strongest and

b)  the site occupied a kind of in-between place which, like crossroads were neither one direction or another and thus were said to be in-between the worlds

As such they were doors to Elphame and later, crossroads (invariably with their gallows poles) and graveyards became the meeting places for witches. Gallows were often placed at cross-roads, doorways to the otherworld, in order to facilitate the criminal’s speedy journey to Hell or Elphame - life after death - in order that his or her ghost may be encouraged to leave the mortal realm immediately, thus discouraging him or her in death, from further troubling the living, as they had done in life.

Grant continues by saying that the maze relates to the life after death and gives initiation. The author emphasizes that life after death is more properly life before death or transcendence, being the life of superconsciousness following the death-in-life of mundane perception.

Such a teaching accords with the message of Jesus and most other mystics. Grant relates the thread to the spindle of Sleeping Beauty, making her a Fate or Mori, a goddess figure like the golden-haired Scythian princess Ariadne. In Sleeping Beauty’s story the thread is in the Castle which, surrounded by a thicket representing the labyrinth, is the centre of the maze itself and thus the rose garden and the Elysium.

Sleeping Beauty occupies a tower in the castle in the undergrowth, or a Caer Glas (Verrieres) in the Forez, if you like, in similar fashion to Rapunzel elsewhere mentioned herein, who lets down her golden hair to admit the knight to her tower chamber. In the course of time stories change and become corrupted by various admissions and omissions, this is the process whereby history becomes myth and legend.

It is not so arrogant to suggest therefore that Theseus’ story likewise appears to have undergone changes and suffered the ravages of time. To facilitate a meaningful interpretation of these stories therefore, it is necessary for the student to compare them together by genre and settle for a common sequence of events and a common objective.

For them to make any sense at all, they must relate to human physiology and psychology and to be grounded in empiricism. If the stories are subjected to over mystification by those who are unaware of their inner workings or of the available esoteric knowledge or the intention of the stories’ creators, then confusion sets in.

On the Grail or biochemical level, Theseus must follow the rivulet to attain and drink from its source, having battled with his own common lust in such a situation. If he does he wins Ariadne as the Virgin Grail, intact and appropriately related to him. If he does not and the Minotaur (Arthur’s Klingsor) within him prevails at the source, then Theseus will defile that source for base gratification and the Minotaur, his own sexual lust for Ariadne, will consume him.

Theseus is a wily lad however and unlike Arthur’s druidic saw, which is an adaptation of the story of Theseus and Ariadne, his is a story of success. Theseus attains the source of the golden-red fluid, the heart of the labyrinth and with Galahad-like purity of heart (focus and insight) he sees the Grail, instead of just Ariadne’s sex organs. This act itself is enough to slay his Minotaur and he exits the labyrinth to unite with Ariadne, the virgin source of sovereignty.

However, now he must enter once more and face another Minotaur on a different level of being. In the story, both Minotaurs are one and the same and are slain at the same time, but I am analyzing the story level by level and it is in this sense that Theseus repeats the two-fold exercise.

Having attained and consumed Ariadne’s blood, she has become his Sheba, his Rhiannon, his Guinevere and his Viviane, and armed with the sword of her sovereignty (creative energy, [non-sexual] libido), he now enters once more to trace his path through the avenues and back alleys of human self deceit and confront the very power source, the very foundation of his own delusion.

This he does and in slaying his Minotaur once more, he wins Ariadne, the Sleeping Beauty, his Anima, and her sword of sovereignty is the straight edged blade of his purity of mind, his focus, clarity of vision and singularity of purpose.

Having attained Hierogamy or Enthea and individuation or personal sovereignty, Theseus left Ariadne to Dionysus, the bull headed child of Zeus, the Great World-Bull of delusion. In the French versions of Arthur’s tale, Guinevere decamped from Camelot with Lancelot. In all these tales, the "marriages" were not sexual in the sense that we would understand and they weren’t built to last.

Because narrators don’t know the real reason for these alliances, a social tendency towards post-Victorian morality interprets the separation of the couples as betrayal and marital breakdown. In reality the contract had come to an end with the change in blood chemistry and the females were then ready to leave and pursue other interests.

Axe Lords
The Minotaur has been said to be a version of the Phoenician, bull-headed God Baal Moloch, the son of Enlil, which might be partially right in a ritual context where, it is thought, sacrifices were made to the Phoenician King enacting the ritual role of the god by wearing a bull’s head as a mask.

It is suggested that the Minotaur was Minos himself or some other Cretan king in masquerade, fulfilling some ritual role. Said to represent the virile principle, the bull symbol appears on other Aryan artifacts as far away as Harappa in the Indus in 3000 BC.

If the virile principle is seen in context as the workings of various hormones in the human physiology, it will be understood that those hormones, which initially suppress the production of melatonin and serotonin which themselves play a profound part in the attaining of transcendent states of consciousness, are therefore also the chemicals responsible for many human delusions and anxieties, bringing us back to the symbol of the human mind as the World Bull of Deceit, and to Mithras as Theseus and so on.

Theseus was the Son of Neptune, king of the waters, an otherworld symbol, whilst Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, king of the dead, another otherworld character. As a king of the dead or "Dead King" Minos was ritually associated with the Repha’im, and the axe-head carving in his labyrinth suggests that his people had some association with the Scythian Axe Lords of Idumea and Mittani, from whence came the cult of the Kings of the Dead (Osiris or Orion), the Rephaim or Angels.

The chronology is shot to bits in the original tales and the characters are most likely to have been the lineal descendants of the major deific personages, but removed by relationship to a further degree than the stories allow.

Consequently, Minos was the son of Zeus (Enlil), or of Zeus’ royal-priestly officiate or descendant and Europa, who was the daughter of Phoenix, whom we assume was the historical Phineas Farsaidh, the Scythian King of Phoenicia. Minos’ brother was called Rhadamanthus the red-haired, according to Michael Grant, so we can safely say that this genetic strain was present also in Minos and Ariadne, both of whom therefore were Scythian and thus we have a strong Scythian component in the Labyrinth concept, both in Egypt and Crete. Ariadne was a form therefore of Lilith, who was the daughter of Nergal, whose name suggests Naga’el and the Naga or serpent gods of the deeps who, as the Avatars or Shining Ones - the Anunnagi - form part of the Aryan Hindu pantheon.

The Axe Lord epithet has more to do with the Grail than with the axe as the ’tree’ or ’man hewer’, ( in Hebrew - Nefilim) as the Grail is often drawn in the form of a Labrus or upended, double-headed axe. There are similarities between Theseus and Ariadne and Samael and Lilith. Where Theseus is the son of the king of the sea, Samael is the Lord of the Waters.

Ariadne is the daughter of the King of the Dead and so is Lilith. Lilith eventually became the consort of Enlil-Jehovah and the substitute matronit or Lady Sabbath. She was likened to Sophia, the Shekinah and the Holy Spirit or Wisdom. Likewise Ariadne left Theseus for Dionysus, the son of Zeus. Ariadne was therefore also a source of divine wisdom.

In a sense Dionysus’ attainment of Ariadne from Theseus and Enlil-Jehovah’s Attainment of Lilith from Samael is symbolic of the way in which divine wisdom (Lilith) was purloined by the usurper. This has repeated itself in the claim that Rome has made over Mary and the Chartres Maze.

The Chartres Maze is circular and has a central path leading from the outer circumference to the rose in the middle. On either side of this channel are the turns of the inner paths arranged to look like the ridges of the walls of the vagina, as depicted on the Mycenaean Grail chalice. Again Rome has sequestered this anciently inspired symbol and profaned it by what they consider sublimation.

Today the faithful flock to Chartres from all over the world to walk a Maze inspired by vampirism and laid down in stone by "Satanists". By doing this they think they will get closer to God by an "Act of Faith", repeating the endless theme that the maze itself wished to warn man against, that the Labyrinth can represent the dominion of empty form over substance and that man’s mind is a vast cavern of paths that fold back on themselves endlessly, in mankind’s attempt to hide from man himself the central mystery of his own unjustified misery and terror, that at the centre of his being, cloaked in delusion and fear, lies nothing.

The folding paths of the maze are the paths of deceit and dogma, of ritual and habit that must, like the Gordian Knot, be rent asunder if man is ever to glimpse the real. The habit of walking the Chartres maze merely reinforces the very stupidity that prevents man from ever actually reaching the maze’s true, hidden centre.

That man can reach peace and "salvation" by mindlessly walking round in a circle, just because a priest says he can, is yet another fold of self deceit in the maze itself. Symbolically the Chartres maze is so configured as to invite you to ignore all the folds of the pathways and walk straight up the vaginal channel and into the centre of the symbol. Nevertheless it is characteristic of homo religiosus that none ever does.

The Chartres maze was not created for Roman christian ritual but for a meditation alien to its tenets and foreign to its culture. Like much that is of value, much that has meaning and the potential to transform consciousness, the church has wiped away the dynamic and replaced it with safe, empty party games that ensure that none break free from the grip of tyranny maintained through mindless conformity and mimicry. Such a sad parody is endemic in all religion and religious thought, not just in christianity.

A tradition which repeats the theme of the Sacred Virgin at the centre of the labyrinth is discovered in rural British custom where the vampire symbolism of the original iconography became reduced to rituals for fertility and games of sexual license.

On village common land throughout much of Merrie England it was the custom to lay out a maze and on Sunday afternoons and at other leisure times, the maidens of the parish would gather at the maze and one would elect to stand at its centre. The local village lads would then race each other round the maze to see who could win the virgin first. The winner was awarded a barrel of beer, and the virgin, of course.

This custom also appeared in Finland and Iceland and, as elsewhere, echoes the original pursuit of the Wild hunt. The beer was a folksy, rustic reminder of the wine of Persephone in a ritual involving peasants trying to imitate the mysteries of their ancient superiors, the meanings of which they have absolutely no idea, just like those who adhere to christianity or modern witchcraft and occultism today and all of which are the low versions of the quest for the Grail and Enthea, where such mindless dogma or ritual and bestial copulation have no place.

In many mazes, thought to be the ’Core’ of a ’Llan’ (cf Avallon or Ava-Llan) or sacred site, there were once erected pillars upon which were situated the effigies of Doves. These sites were the Apple Groves where the Mistletoe Bards gathered with the sacred virgins to conduct the secret blood rites of Arduina and sing into being both the Gods and the noble characters of the Kings. Llan also appears as lawn, originally meaning a clearing in a wood. Lunn means a sacrifice and taken as a whole concept, the Llan was a sacred sacrificial grove.
 

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