heritage.scotsman.com...

Scribbles in the stonework of Rosslyn

"What is down there is an example of a lost system for measuring time and distance involving both latitude and longitude. It's a priceless mapping treasure."

This navigational teaching board - if that's what it is - forms the basis of Cowie's new book, The Rosslyn Matrix, which presents his case for Rosslyn Chapel having a cartographic explanation.

-snip-

The pylon-shaped grid is a longitudinal slice of 15 degrees (1/24th of the 360 degree globe) and its vertical central line is an ancient meridian. The cup shape isn't a cup, or grail chalice. It's an astronomical drawing of the orbits traced by the morning and evening star, Venus.

rosslynmatrix.com...

This factual story details a fascinating quest into Rosslyn Chapels overlooked architectural plans, revealing hitherto unobserved measurements and design themes which underpin the myths. The builders created very provocative carvings and installed layers of symbolic patterns within their structure, but this book balances spiritual interpretations with functional and practical reasoning.

The later chapters present a modern scientific investigation conducted on a special carving on the crypt wall. This enigmatic carving was created using elements from various land, sea, space and time measuring systems. Medieval astronomical and navigational methods are explored in order to understand its meaning and purpose. The results of this investigation reveal the carving is both a treasure map and a mapping treasure.

www.answers.com...

Books
1982: "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh)
1987: "The Messianic Legacy" (with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh)
1991: "The Holy Place: Discovering the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World" (or "The Holy Place: Decoding the Mystery of Rennes-Le-Château" or "The Holy Place: Saunière and the Decoding of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château")
2002: "Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château"
2002: "The Templars' Secret Island: The Knights, The Priest and The Treasure" (with Erling Haagensen)

from The Holy Place by Henry Lincoln (Corgi Books):

It is my suspicion that the builders of Rennes-le-Chateau will indeed prove to be part of a culture which produced Stonehenge and Carnac, and to date from approximately the same period, i.e. CI 1500 BC; far enough into the past for their activities to be, if not completely forgotten, then only dim folk memories by the time the Romans came to this part of the world.
(pg. 155)

from Key to the Sacred Patterns by Henry Lincoln (St Martins Press)

Three decades of work have enabled me to glimpse the trace of gold buried beneath the thick dross of imagination and fantasy. The truth of Rennes-le-Chateau is no longer hidden behind a curtain of obscurity. But the truth is not the only truth of this story, though is is, I believe, the most important and most profound. Certainly it is the most solid - resting, as it does, upon solid and irrefutable facts. Nevertheless, that truth remains a Mystery. And yet other, if lesser mysteries also remain.

-snip-

At Rennes-le-Chateau, the ancient surveyors, measurers and mappers have left us the imperical reality of their amazing labours. they have left us the evidence of their skills and knowledge which, through many long centuries has been lost and forgotten. they speak to us across the years in the language of number and measure. No written words survive, yet their call to us is clear and confident and proud. It is time for us to listen - and to learn.
pg. 218

from The Templars' Secred Island by Henry Lincold and Erling Haagensen (cassell & Co)

A treasure house of wealth untold would have been satisfyingly exciting. A treasure house of knowledge will seem, to some people, to be a bitter disappointment.

Most of us find geometry and mathematics stupendously boring. we were glad to leave them behind us when we ended our enforced childhood studies. we are unaware how vital a part these dull little numbers and proportions play, not merely in upholding our civilization, but in controlling the very structure of the universe which we inhabit. It is therefore difficult for us to accept that the answer to this extraordinary riddle should be 'no more than' a geometric layout accomplished hundreds of years in the past. To many of us, this seems an anticlimax - 'a fuss about nothing'. we'd rather have a chest filled with gold and jewels.

Nevertheless, the 'treasure' has proved to be a body of knowledge - protected, preserved and passed on, century after century. the puzzle with which we are now confronted seems rather to be: 'Why the secrecy?' At the dawn of the third millenium, this does, indeed, seem an enigma which may speak more of our ignorance than our knowledge. What have we yet to learn - we, who consider ourselves to be so 'advanced' - so clever? What has our civilization forgotten - or suppressed?
pg 129-130

Tracy Twyman interviews co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Henry Lincoln

in:
www.paranoiamagazine.com...

TT: Well, I'm just saying that if the same sort of geometry is laid out in all these different places...

HL: They're using the same measurement system, and they're separating the churches by the same distances. Therefore we are talking about a body of hidden knowledge. This moves into a contentious area in which people like to get into mumbo jumbo, and I don't. It would unquestionably have been considered dangerous knowledge over a thousand years ago. You'll have to remember that Galileo was shown torture instruments when he insisted that the Earth went around the Sun. It was dangerous knowledge. And consequently, this knowledge, which has been handed down over the generations, was always kept as privileged information, solis sacerdotibus - only for the initiated.

They were perfectly capable of laying out the geometry a thousand years ago, and I can demonstrate how. They would have laid out the Bornholm geometry in a matter of a few years, though it's been a sacred placed since megalithic times. There are over a thousand standing stones on the island, and the churches incorporate many of them into their actual structure. So churches, as is the case in general, have been superimposed on previously sacred sites. In the sixth century a bishop was saying to his flock, "Will you please cease performing pagan practices at sacred groves, rocks, and places where three track ways meet?" And these we find in the geometry. The churches now use the original pagan sacred sites, so the church has preserved what it was attempting to obliterate.

• The geometrical method of 'map making' precedes, but was used by, the Church of Rome to built many of the chapels over the landscape of Europe, suggesting that they knew of this secret 'Sacred Geometry' and how it could aid a traveller by knowing the preset distances and directions from one place to another.
  
• The Templars were also 'in on' the secret as they obviously also used the same method in their building locations
  
• If we apply the system (once we have the 'over-all' key), we should be able to then find previously undiscovered material and structures by extrapolating from the 'known' locations.
  
• There are tantalizing clues that there are Templar structures in the Americas. Oak Island is a possibility, the Newport Tower another, and also many clues in a book I recently purchased; The Templars' Legacy in Montreal, the New Jerusalem by Francine Bernier. Could it be that we may soon be able to 'overlay' the emerging pattern and discover new Templar sites in the 'New World' as well?
  
• As Lincoln says in the above interview, this knowledge was (and is) considered dangerous...and my question is "Why?" Lincoln's last co-authored book was published 6 years ago. What I'm suspecting is that he has been effectively silenced somehow. Again, if true..."Why?"
  
• Baigent and Leigh have gone on to butt heads with Dan Brown in a legal battle over plagiarism in the case of his book 'The DaVinci Code' (which created an international frenzy). What has Lincoln to say on this, even though he was the original discoverer of the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, co-authored the famous 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and 'The Messianic Legacy'(?)...bupkiss...nothing at all...just a resounding silence. Again..."Why?"
  

www.maknap.com...

Do the ancient monuments and medieval castles and chapels of northern Scotland form a vast network of alignments and geometric figures? That is the claim of researcher David Bews from Caithness, the most northerly county of the British mainland. What is more, his work suggests that this secret was known by the great aristocratic families of Caithness, who were still building their castles, homes and burial grounds in accordance with this ground plan as late as the 18th century.

and, from another page;

The Sinclairs are more popularly associated with Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, although their major holdings have long been in Caithness. The lands in Caithness were first granted to the St Clairs by David I in the 12th century. A prominent member of the family was Prince Henry St Clair, 'the Navigator', who became the Earl of Orkney in 1379.

The Holy Place by Henry Lincoln

Mars is aligned four times and forms an irregular four-sided figure. Each planet makes a different number of alignments and each forms its own irregular pattern. Only one planet describes a precise and regular pattern in the sky - and that planet is Venus, the heavenly counterpart of the earthly Mary Magdalene - and the pattern that she draws as regularly as clockwork every eight years is a pentangle.

pg. 69

www.andrewgough.com...

6. Can I ask why the pentagonal geometry was not included in the Holy Blood and Holy Grail? Was it not fully developed at that time?

[reply] Oh no, it was well developed!

I would have thought so.

[reply] Yes, it was well developed. It has been in my films. But the Holy Blood and Holy Grail, after all was the exploration of a hypothesis that there may have been a continuing blood descent from Jesus. It is a different approach to the story altogether. We were looking for a historical background, and so the geometry and in fact, anything in particularly relevant to Rennes-Le-Château as such, was not really relevant to that book. In fact my two co-writers really are more concerned with historical fact than they are with Rennes-Le-Château. They know not very much about Rennes-Le-Château at all. It’s that historical background which is more of their interest, I think.



14. Do you believe that the pentagonal geometry extends over a greater expanse, possibly across the globe? Is it a uniformed pattern?

[reply] Yes! Yes, I think we are bound to find more. This because, when they built the 12 century churches on Bornholm, 4 of them specifically were constructed as observatories. They were using a science for very precise measurements of the earth, and so I am fairly sure we are going to find it in other places and that its historical background will go much further back than we expect. It is not a 12th century phenomena, it goes back to megalithic times and probably even before that.

16. Can I ask you to comment on the international sensation that the Da Vinci Code has caused, not dissimilar to the sensation that you caused with some of your books? How has the study of Rennes-Le-Château changed since that phenomena?

[reply] Oh, well of course people are coming now and asking where is Mary Magdalene buried. Some maniacs have written a book saying that Jesus is buried near here. This is rubbish. This is absolutely…There is not the tiniest fragment of evidence for any of this. But yes, back to the Da Vinci Code phenomena, what had happened, because again, as we did 20 years ago – 25 years ago – touched a nerve, part of the zeitgeist, and of course now with the growth of feminism everybody gets very excited about Mary Magdalene and the suppression of the feminine by the church and so on and so on. But, when we wrote Holy Blood and Holy Grail 20 odd years ago, the reaction to it was just as strong as though it has never been heard of before. But in fact it was nothing new at all. The only thing original in our book was that the blood descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene continued. 20 years pass and a new generation grows up, especially those who were too young to have read the Holy Blood and Holy Grail or who were not even born, and so a new story hits them as if it has never been said before. And every 20 years it comes back again as if it has never been said before. And it is nonsense to react in the way that is presently going on. Brown’s book is noting more than a sort of not very good thriller draped around just the simple idea about the blood descent from Jesus.