BLACK MARY & THE SACRED BLOOD

Frater Ashtan

The Holy Blood and the Priory

In 1982 Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh published their megabestseller
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and eighteen years later it is still in print. The publication of this
book followed several lectures they had held in London and a series of documentaries by Lincoln on
BBC television. The lectures and films investigated the mysteries surrounding the French village of
Rennes-le-Chateau. These mysteries centred on the alleged discovery of a great treasure by its
parish priest in the 19th century and his alleged association with occult secret societies. The main
theme of the book was that the Holy Grail known to us from Arthurian legend was in fact a coded
reference to the sang rael or ‘royal blood’ of the European descendants of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene. These descendants allegedly gave rise to the early Merovingian dynasty of so-called
‘long haired sorcerer kings’ in medieval France. Until their conversion to Christianity in the late 5th
century, this royal dynasty worshipped a bear goddess identified with Diana-Artemis.

Since 1982 other authors have attempted to trace this ancient and mystical bloodline
through the characters in the mythical Arthurian story (the so-called ‘Grail family), to the Tudors and
the Franco-Scottish Stuarts or Stewarts who ruled Britain in the 17 th century. The concept of the
sang rael in the book was largely based on documents originating with a French secret society
called the Priory of Sion. This group offered an impressive historical pedigree and was allegedly
connected to the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and other occult secret
societies. Politically it supported a pan-European monarchy and a United States of Europe.

It has recently been claimed that this ‘false story originated in reams of fraudulent
documents created by an extreme right wing French sect’. (Richardson 1999). This same source
says that the Priory was a hoax created in the 1950s as the brainchild of a Frenchman with extreme
right views called Pierre Plantard. Before he founded the Priory he had run an anti-Semitic and anti-
Masonic group in wartime Vichy France. It was only in 1956 that Plantard began to circulate forged
documents relating to Rennes-le-Chateau and its hidden treasure. However, it is said, Plantard had
obtained this material from pre-war occult societies whose records had been seized by the Vichy
secret police.

Jesus and Mary

Whether any of the above is true or not, the idea of a marriage between Jesus of Nazareth
and Mary of Magdalene and their bloodline descending through the royal houses and aristocracy of
Europe was not totally Plantard’s invention. The concept of divine kingship and a sacred bloodline is
an ancient esoteric teaching. As we saw in the last issue, the Grail romances of Wolfram von
Eschenbach had mentioned the so-called ‘Grail family’. One of the reasons the Roman Church
launched its crusade of genocide against the Cathar heretics in 13th century France was because
they believed that Mary Magdalene, who was one of their saints, was the lover and wife of Jesus.
Also King Louis XI of France (1461-83) had insisted that the French royal house was descended
from Mary Magdalene. Before the Second World War occult initiates such as Julius Evola in Italy
and Dr Walter Stein in Germany wrote about such matters from different perspectives. Evola was
pro-fascist while Dr Stein was anti-Nazi. In a book published in 1928 Dr Stein wrote about a ‘Grail

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bloodline’ involving the Templars and the French royal house. The members of this ancient family
were, he claimed, highly evolved old souls possessing psychic powers which set them apart from
ordinary mortals.

Anointing the Sacred King

Mary of Magdalene is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures in the New
Testament and her unique relationship to Jesus has never been adequately explained. In the
gospels she was also known as Mary of Bethany and was (mis)represented in non-Biblical clerical
sources as a prostitute and adulterer. In John 11:2 she is the sister of Lazarus who Jesus ‘raised
from the dead’. Some writers believe this particular ‘miracle’ was a coded reference to a death and
rebirth initiation into the Christian mysteries. Mark 14:3 describes how Jesus visited Bethany and he
was anointed by a woman. She used an ointment made from a plant called spikenard contained in
an alabaster jar. This ‘woman with the alabaster jar’ has been identified as Mary Magdalene. By this
symbolic act she was recognising Jesus as the messiah or Christos ‘the anointed one’. He was the
sacred king, the scapegoat, who must die for his people that their sins are cleansed. Jesus himself
acknowledged this fact when he remarked that by her action the woman had prepared him for
burial. In the pagan rituals of Sumeria, Babylonia and Canaan the ritual anointing of the sacred king
with oil was carried out by the priestess or royal bride. She was the representative of the goddess
and this ritual act was a prelude to the ‘sacred marriage’ of the God and Goddess.

Spikenard was an expensive perfume extracted from a plant that grows in India and it must
have been transported to Palestine via the spice route from the East. Because of its price it was
usually only used by wealthy women. This was underlined by the murmurs of disapproval among
those present, including Judas, who regarded its use to anoint Jesus as a waste of money. Others
who were present saw beyond the purely material consideration. They fully understood the
significance of the ritual act which they had witnessed. For it was the Jewish custom for the
surviving partner to anoint the body of their deceased husband or wife with this perfume before
burial. Mary was therefore not only anointing the sacred king in preparation for his ritual death, as
the priestesses of the Goddess did, but she was indicating to all present that she was the bride and
wife of Jesus in the physical sense as well.

In the ancient Song of Songs, popularly credited to King Solomon, containing elements of
goddess worship and allegedly dedicated to the Queen of Sheba, spikenard is mentioned as a
fragrance used at the king’s banquet. This is a reference to the ‘sacred marriage’ between the
divine priest-king and his bride/priestess representing the God and Goddess. In the 12 th century CE
St Bernard identified the bride in this erotic poem with Mary of Bethany. Bernard was the patron of
the Knight Templars and a supporter of the medieval cultus of the Black Madonna who some have
identified with Mary Magdalene.

The Watchtower of God

Who was Mary Magdalene? A clue is provided by her second name or title that translates
as ‘watchtower’ or ‘tower of the flock’. On the mundane level and in common usage it referred to a
high place used by shepherds to watch their flocks. On another level it is a code for the ‘shepherd
kings’ of Watcher descent who ruled the sacred bloodline. It is no coincidence that Jesus was
described as ‘the Good Shepherd’ as were the pagan saviour gods such as Adonis, Tammuz and
Dionysus. From their watchtowers at the four corners of the universe the Watchers, as their name
suggests, were the guardian angels who watched over creation. This also refers to the four
watchtowers of the magickal circle, the four compass points, the Tower of Babel, ‘The Tower Struck
By Lightning ‘ in the Tarot, the spinning castle of Arianrhod, the Castle of Roses beyond the grave,
and the fairytale castles and towers in which the sleeping princess is imprisoned by faery
godmothers and goblins and rescued by a prince or a knight in shining armour. The symbolism
behind all these images warrants a separate article in itself. The Hebrew prophet Micah also used

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the phrase ‘watchtower of the flock’ to allude to the future restoration of Jerusalem as the holy city
of ‘the daughter of Sion’.

There is speculation that Mary Magdalene came from the tribe of Benjamin and was a
princess of the royal blood. In the 8 th century CE the Archbishop of Mayence wrote a biography of
Mary in which he claims her mother was related to the Hasmonean royal house of Israel. Although
the Church, for its own evil ends denounced her as a prostitute, only a wealthy and high-ranking
lady could have obtained supplies of spikenard to make an anointing unguent. It is absolutely logical
that if Jesus, a prince of the royal house of David, was to marry he would seek out as a bride
someone like himself who was of royal blood. A union between the House of Bethany and the
House of David would have provided a double claim to the rulership of Israel. It has been suggested
that Micah’s prophecy does not refer to Jerusalem at all. Instead it may allude to the enforced exile
of a princess of the royal blood, ‘the daughter of Sion’, after the execution of her husband, the
rightfully anointed king of Israel.

Writing in the 13th century CE, the Archbishop of Genoa, James de Voragine, claimed quite
openly, and heretically, that Mary of Magdalene had been a wealthy woman with a royal
background. Far from being the ‘fallen woman’ and social outcast falsely depicted by the Church,
the archbishop claimed she had been the daughter of a Syrian noble and a woman called Euchania
one of the titles given to the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. In the Middle East this goddess was
known as Astarte and it has been claimed that Solomon originally dedicated his temple in
Jerusalem to her orgiastic worship. Some writers have linked the Church’s slander that Mary was a
prostitute with the so-called ‘temple prostitutes’ who served Aphrodite and Astarte. They were
probably the women described as sitting outside the gates of Solomon’s temple ‘weeping for
Tammuz’. Mary, her sister Martha and brother Lazarus allegedly owned seven castles or fortified
houses, the village of Bethany and other land within the precincts of Jerusalem itself. The
Magdalene lived in her own house or tower on the shores of the Sea of Galilee which features so
strongly in the gospels.

Black Mary and the Risen Christ

Mary Magdalene’s role in the crucifixion and the events that followed is very unusual. In
three of the gospels Matthew, Mark and John she is described as standing at the foot of the cross
with other members of his family. All four of the gospels say that she, and other female disciples or
relatives of Jesus went to his tomb on the third day. This was to prepare his body for embalming
and again this was the allotted task of a dead man’s wife or his closest female relatives. The gospel
of John says that Mary went to the tomb alone, which is significant in itself, and found it empty.
Symbolically, and again very significantly, Mary was the first person to encounter the apparition of
the Risen Christ. This took place in the garden outside the empty tomb and, strangely, Mary does
not at first recognise Jesus. She thinks that he is one of the gardeners. This is a puzzling event, but
one that does have an esoteric explanation. It symbolically relates Jesus to the first gardener,
Adam, in the mythical Garden of Eden and to the first murderer, Cain. Adam and Eve are driven
from the Garden and Cain is sent into exile to wander the Earth, but here Jesus, the Risen Christos,
is seen ‘walking in the garden’ after his death and rebirth.

Jesus further relates to Cain, who was the offspring of Samael (Lucifer/Azrael) and Eve.
Cain’s offering of the ‘first fruits’ was rejected by Yahweh who preferred the blood sacrifice offered
by his brother Abel. Symbolically, the ultimate act of sacrifice made by the lightbearer on the cross
made redundant the blood sacrifices practised by Jew and pagan alike. This also links Jesus with
the pagan vegetation gods who died and were reborn to fertilise the earth. Both Cain and Jesus
represent the Green Man, the ever-youthful spirit of regenerating life in the natural world.

Following her close encounter, Mary is then responsible for taking the good news of Jesus’
rebirth to the other disciples. She tells them what she has seen and experienced and that the
Master has "risen from the grave". This role shows her importance among the disciples, as she is

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the first to have the privilege of seeing the Risen Christos. This is underlined when some of the
sceptical disciples refuse to accept her account. It is previously recorded that when Jesus was alive
she had complained to him about the anti-female attitudes among the male disciples. Peter was
especially singled out for criticism in this respect and it was he who was to later betray Jesus by
denying him three times.

A journey to a strange land far away

In the confused period immediately following the execution of Jesus the early Nazarene
sect in Jerusalem, led by Jesus’ brother James, became involved in conflict with both the Jewish
authorities and rival Christian groups. These rivals were eager to extend the message of Jesus to
the pagan gentiles while the followers of James wanted to confine their teaching to their fellow
Jews. The Nazarenes regarded James as a legitimate rabbi and they still followed many Jewish
customs, but the orthodox Jewish priesthood denounced him as a heretic. He was eventually
executed and leadership of the early Christian Church was hijacked by Paul who wanted to spread
the Christian message to the pagan gentile world. Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus’ uncle and his
guardian after the death of his father, was imprisoned because of his crypto-Christian beliefs.

After his release or escape from prison Joseph is said to have fled the country with Mary
Magdalene, Martha and Lazarus. Allegedly, like the holy family before them, they sought asylum in
Egypt and from there it is said they set sail for southern France. Mary and her brother and sister
allegedly stayed there while Joseph went on to Britain where he had contacts from his days as a tin
trader. There is the famous West Country legend that Jesus visited Britain as a young boy with his
uncle and was even initiated into the druidic mysteries. It is also said his maternal grandmother,
Anne, had been a princess of the Silure tribe in South Wales.

The Daughter of Jesus?

French legends say that when Mary arrived in the south of France, a teenage servant girl
accompanied her called Sara . In Hebrew this name means ‘princess’ and today the gypsies at Les
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue still celebrate the festival of St Sara, 'the Black Queen’.
This involves the procession of a statue of the Black Madonna through the streets. It is said this
image does not represent the Virgin Mary, but ‘Black Sara’. Sara is said to have been Egyptian, but
an alternative story says she was really the daughter of Mary of Magdalene and Jesus. It is through
the descendants of Sara that it is possible that the sang rael or royal blood of the Watchers entered
the royal houses of Europe. An alternative version has a son of Jesus and Mary called James being
taken by his uncle Judas Thomas, another of Jesus’ brothers, to Spain and then to the British Isles.

The Black Virgin

Earlier we touched upon the possible relationship between Mary and the Black Madonna or
Black Virgin. Her images are said by the orthodox to represent the Blessed Virgin Mary and Child,
but a more heretical idea is that they are images of Mary Magdalene and Sara. St Bernard wrote
the rule of the Templars, which was based on obedience to ‘Bethany, the castle of Mary and
Martha’. He also as we saw earlier, compared Mary to the ‘black and comely bride’ invoked in The
Song of Songs. In a revealing letter from Bernard to the king of Jerusalem the saint compares
Jesus to Solomon and he also mentions the Queen of Sheba. Jesus himself, curiously, told the
Pharisees that the ‘Queen of the South’ would return from the dead to judge them. This was another
title for Sheba. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to realise there is some odd stuff going on
here.

Summarising his comments on the cult of the Black Virgin, St Bernard and the Templars
Begg (1985) makes some interesting points which help to illuminate the significance of Mary
Magdalene as an important figure in the Luciferian tradition. Some of these relevant points are as

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follows: The Templars were said to be guardians of the Holy Grail; their heretical beliefs were said
to have been inspired by the Egyptian Mysteries and the gnostic-hermetic views of Alexandria; a
number of images of the Black Madonna were allegedly brought back from the crusades by the
Order; and there are strong links between the troubadour movement in southern France, with its
idealised courtly love of the feminine principle, and the Templars and the Grail mythos. Added to this
list is the view by some writers that the Templars may have been worshippers of the Egyptian
goddesses Isis and Bast and also their alleged influence on the medieval witch cult. Again there is
much food for thought here for further investigation by the open-minded.

The Secret Tradition

The Black Madonna has variously been described as the Black Isis, Ishtar, Astarte and
Lilith. At least two of these goddesses are named in the esoteric tradition as consorts to the Lord of
the Morning Star, Lucifer-Lumiel. In whatever cultural form she adopts on the outer in the secret
tradition the Black Virgin represents Sophia the embodiment of ‘Divine Wisdom’. In the Cabbala she
is the Shekinah or ‘Bride of God’ who is also said to be Lilith despite the fact that orthodox Judaism
represents this originally Sumerian owl goddess of the dark moon as a vampiric she-demon and
baby murderer. She also symbolises the underground stream of occult knowledge and gnostic
wisdom preserved from the ancient pagan mysteries that flowered in 12 th century Europe and again
in the Renaissance.

Even if the Priory of Sion is a modern hoax and the legend of a physical bloodline from
Jesus surviving into the Middle Ages is too far-fetched to consider, we are still left with the traces in
history of a powerful spiritual heritage from ancient times. This heritage of symbols, images, ideas
and beliefs can be found concealed in alchemy, Hermiticism, Tantra, the Grail mysteries and the
Arthurian mythos, the Robin Hood legend, Templarism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Tarot, the
Luciferian-Cainite mysteries of the Watchers or fallen angels and some forms of traditional
witchcraft. Ultimately the existence of the sang rael in the form it is being popularly presented today
may be a chimera or a historical red herring. It obscures the spiritual reality which has been the
mythic theme of this series of articles i.e. the concept of the ‘witch blood’ from the Watchers who
descended from the stars, the eternal myth of the divine king and his sacred marriage to the
goddess of the land, the quest of the hero for the Grail within, the underworld initiation of the
Cauldron of Inspiration and Transformation, the recurring incarnation of the Lord of Light on Earth
and the cosmic redemption of the human race.

Illustration of Sophia-Divine Wisdom by Nigel Aldcroft Jackson.

Bibliography and further reading: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar Margaret Starbird
(Bear & Co USA 1993), The Cult of the Black Virgin Ean Begg (Arkana 1985), The Messianic
Legacy M. Baigent, R.Leigh and H. Lincoln (Jonathan Cape 1986), The Ninth Century and the Grail
Dr Walter Stein (Temple Lodge Press 1988), Bloodline of the Grail and Genesis of the Grail Kings
Laurence Gardner (Element 1996 and Bantam 1999), ‘The Priory of Sion Hoax’ Robert Richardson
in Gnosis # 51 (Spring 1999), The Hebrew Goddess Dr Raphael Patai (Wayne University Press
USA 1990), The Templar Revelation Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince (Bantam 1997) and Rex Deus:
The True Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the dynasty of Jesus Marilyn Hopkins, Graham
Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy (Element 2000).

In our next issue Ashtan reveals the real identity of the mysterious Queen of Sheba. Don’t
miss it! This series of twelve articles by Frater Ashtan will be included in expanded versions in The
Pillars of Tubal Cain by Nigel Aldcroft Jackson and Michael Howard. Published by Capall Bann in
December 2000. It is the reference book of the Luciferian tradition.