Tag: Holy Blood Holy Grail

Those ubiquitous Templars

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic

I’m re-reading for the second or third time Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln because the subject matter is fascinating. I’ve lost track of all the Templar-related books I’ve read, not counting Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

When I was twelve, I joined the DeMolay  Club affiliated with my school because I liked its values which are related to the values of the Masons. Unfortunately, I had to leave when their chosen meeting day conflicted with the meeting day of my Scout group. Jacques de Molay was the last grandmaster of the Knights Templar before the group was virtually destroyed by the French king and the Pope in 1307.

Prior to that, when visiting my grandparents in Illinois, I first heard those values from my grandfather who was the commander of the local Masons which were affiliated with The Knights Templar of North America. The commandery, the building of the local Ilinois chapter, was a wonderous place and I was tempted to become a Mason after hearing about the values of the group. I chose instead to join the Rosicrucian Order because of its strong commitment to esoteric teachings. I did not think I should also become a Mason, though they have my support.

History Channel Photo

Now as I watch the ongoing coverage of the treasure hunters on Oak Island, I find it interesting that the team doing the work there is excited about the possible Templar connection to the treasure that might have been hidden there. I have zero interest in treasure, but I’m drawn to this show because I’m curious about the potential connection between the Knights Templar and what, if anything, is ultimately found on this privately-owned island off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Re-reading this book brings back many memories of the research I did in the past into such subjects as the work of artist Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), especially his two paintings labelled Et in Arcadia ego which are also mentioned in the books of the Francis Bacon Research Trust. Arcadia represents, is it said, heaven on earth and yet the coffin in the painting suggests the presence of a darker side. The prospective bloood line of Christ, notably in the French Merovingan dynasty and the Plantard family is also interesting.

How many of these mysteries are real and how many are pure fiction. I may never know. But I like delving into real or imagined secrets.

–Malcolm

Did the past really happen?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn reality2 Comments

If you read deeply into the libraries of esoteric books, sooner or later you’ll discover the theory that the past, present, and future are all happening at once. Being mischievous, I gave this belief to the cat (Lena) in my novel Conjure Woman’s Cat who believes this theory is true. I think Lena might be right.

If you watch enough episodes of Laurence Fishburne’s “Histories Greatest Mysteries” on the History Channel, it’s easy to start wondering if anything was what it seemed. Okay, so maybe John Wilkes Booth wasn’t shot in the barn when federal troops arrived. There’s a persistent amount of lore that he was sighted in numerous places in subsequent years.

For years, eyewitness testimony that the Titanic broke into two sections before it sank was discounted until 1985 when Robert Ballard found the wreck and proved that the eyewitness accounts were correct. I wonder if we will ever see the end of the various theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Heck, we can’t even be sure what’s true and what’s not true when it comes to the machinations of the federal government.

I’m thinking of all this because–with no fresh reading material in the house–I’m re-reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the nonfiction book from which Dan Brown drew information he used in The Da Vinci Code. One thing you notice in Holy Blood, Holy Grail is that a lot of important information has been suppressed or destroyed over the years by powerful people and institutions.

I’m not an aficionado of conspiracy theories. I tend to see them as misdirection away from the actual truth. On the other hand, over time, many of those theories were finally discounted by people who said they made it all up; it was a hoax from the beginning. When I see that, I tend to think the recantation is the real hoax.

Maybe yesterday is a computer simulation. Maybe the past is controlled by the powerful, similar to the idea that after a war the victors write the history. Maybe we’re all too busy earning a living and looking after our families to see the signs and portents that would help us tell the difference between what we think we know and what actually happened.

As an author, I love this chaos. It provides so many loopholes in reality that we can write alternative histories in which readers think, “Hmm, what if that’s what really happened?” If your intuition is above average, you might have a sense of what is real history vs. what is sanitized history.

Speculation about “the real story” seems to be a national pastime that’s bigger than baseball. We love hearing “the straight skinny” and the gossip behind the headlines. Everyone wants to be “in the know” even if they are, in reality, quite clueless. Ah, this situation is a trickster’s paradise.

—Malcolm

When writing novels, I believe the author’s first duty is to conceal rather than reveal. You’ll see how this plays out in such books as Fate’s Arrows and “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”