From the sword of Anwen 
Was cast a stone.
What is the stone?
It is the Key.
What is this Key?
It unlocks the Soul.
What is the Soul?
It is the Holy Graal
What is the Graal?
It is a stone that magnifies the light
A light that is a
Seal upon your heart.
And this seal?
It opens the Book of Love
Which speaks of the cross with seven roses
What is in the book?
The word.

What is the word?

A memory of Atlantia -
For love is stronger than death.

​

Sword, Stone, Key, Grail, Seal, Word, Book.

 

Never have I met one so wise they did not desire to know the mystery.

Many have died to own it, many have killed to know it.

But those who preserve it

Hold the cross with seven roses in their hearts.

And what of you my kind listener? 
Are you one of those called to service? 
Is your name inscribed upon that cup? 
Is the stone found in your heart, where it magnifies
the Light with which the angels write 
Inside the substance of your soul?
Does it remain therein sealed, like an unopened book
To be read by the dead? 
If so, then sooth indeed are these words said:
Here begins the song of thy descent,
Here begins the terror,
Here begins the mystery
That few know but many tell. 
Let him who has ears, hear it, 
For what God doeth, he doeth well.

 

Chronicles of Atlantia,

 

 

 

 

 

the KEEPER of the SEVEN SEALS

 

 

It was the Sun Manu who, with his flaming sword walked over the Sea of Glass to face the hordes of the Dark Faced Lord. Aye, I hear the sound of the stone falling on the snow while the sword sunk deep into that cold sea. That stone that was of the greatest beauty and purity preserved from the fall, and it shone – like an angel! But not those angels who sought to ensnare men in Lemuria, but the angel of Adam, our ancestor, who took the path from the heights to the depths. He shaped a vessel of flesh by whose power, it is said, that the phoenix burns to ashes, but the ashes give him life again.

 

I sing this song for I am a Bardda, daughter of Ceresdwan, the great mother in Lemuria who first formed me before she left the Earth and became the Moon. For in her womb every Bardda is conceived. 

 

I sing of having seen the orb of the sun through the earth and having known behind which cairn it would rise. At my command the seed grew and the rain fell, for I was the ear into which Ceresdwan spoke nature’s wonders, and from my mouth came the salve given to heal human kind. And so, old woman that I am, it has been my destiny to enter into all forms of existence, into the primary causes, the first principles…to crawl into the kernel of being where I have found all knowledge, all wisdom, all power, and all justice, without restraint, without measure, without cessation, without end. 

 

Now in a house of glass with seven windows and seven doors I guard the seals to this tale, knowing like others before me, that the end is near. And yet, nothing shall disturb my song.

 

O sun! O wind! O rain! O ice! Hear my words! 

 

I was born into the lineage of Name Givers in the times of the true men, the Rmoahal. They sang of the power removed from men when the Sun left the Earth to shine from above, taking with it the High Ones or Elds, and leaving us to ourselves. That was a time before time, when our memory lasted centuries and our bodies were as pliable as clay and our vision was deeper than the surface of things. A Time when movement was not measured by so many feet in a line, but by the rotation of the planets. A time of the wisdom of the stars and of the dream song of the women - the Old Ones - who inspired the Dreamtime and expired an echo of the great universal harmony, which resounds in the instrument of their bodies. 

 

We women of the land knew nothing more than what we took from the Gods and for this reason we could bring to life, only what was fruitful and good in songs we sang to the people, songs that kept the long memory of the Gods alive in their souls. 

 

Some chroniclers say that our souls were like books written by the High Elds or Aesir, as they are called by the Akkadians, where they inscribed the knowledge that they wished our people to know. But after the Leaving of the High Elds, the last trace of the sun left with them and behind it came darkness. At that time for a soul to enter Ceugant, or the Sun Circle, it had first to enter Gwynfyd or the region of liberty, to conquer all folly, injustice, and uncharitableness, all evil and ungodliness – for only such a soul can move from Anwen, the world of men, through Abred, the world of elements, to rise up to the Sun and there to meet Hu. And if such a soul was victorious (and so few were) it would then be given a new name  - Hu-man. 

​

Such were the teachings of the great half gods who came to us from the moon led by the great Manu, and such was the aim of every Barddas, before our calling was perverted by puny minstrels whose mortal ditties and whose praise of undeserving kings cast a shadow over the greatness of our kind. 

​

In the ages before the birth of the Druida, before the Rising of the Mountains and the coming of the seven Ages of Ice that followed, and even before the first Melting of the Sea of Glass which took with it the great Sword of Anwn and caused the deluge that drowned Atlantia, even before that, we Rmoahals lived in the Sudenlands, a lush oasis called Godwanna which some call The Land of the Old Gods. Ours was the lineage of the Name Givers, who became the first Bardas in that dreamtime before the first Age of Atlantia; in the days when we were ruled by the Image of the Lion, because our words were like a roar in the ears of men. 

​

That was long after the first Godly Manu left us and his empty Sepulchre was dug on the Island of the Dead. Long after we were guided by the Manus who had their spiritual abode on the moon. Those men who were half human and half divine and entered into the oracles to give men inspiration. In those days every planetary oracle had it’s Manu and every Manu had his servant, a Taliesin, who was the head of all the Barddas. 

 

The Sun Oracle was the first and foremost and was guided by the highest and greatest Manu, whom they called, The Enlightened One of Hu. The Vulcan Oracle was the last, since it was the darkest and most dangerous of the oracles and will have no planet to call its own until the far future when the Sun will unite once more with the Earth. The Vulcan Oracle was guided by a Manu whom they called The Veiled One of Bran, or Scythio and the knowledge he imparted to his circle was of fire, which was the fire that lives both in the seed and in the body which was only made visible and physical after the first war.

​

There were no priests until the rise of the Tlavatli. They called them Druidda. 

Barddas were superior to the Druidda. The Druidda were knowledgeable about earthly matters because they had developed the faculty of vision and so they did the everyday bidding of the Manus, but we women Barddas had a knowledge that was purely spiritual, since our wombs birthed the songs of the first men of Hu who became Humans. 

 

The Druidda were prideful of their images and created seals. They celebrated what was visually great, the physical body that made men strong, and they ignored the greatness of the Rmoal women who were spiritually wise. The Druidda brought to life not only an image of the outside world, but they also developed a memory of the physical accomplishments of their own small-folk and the feats of honour and skill that belonged to them. Thus began the cult of images, and the veneration of forefathers who were superior in strength, against those who were superior in knowledge.

​

The Tlavatli carried the sigil of the Bull on their banners and on their seals, the bull called Tavros Trigeranus, because it had three cranes on its back denoting the three names of God.

​

The age of the Toltecs belonged to those who lived in the Medes or what became known as Middle Earth with its Desolate Plains. The Toltec Druida took those who were superior in strength, to their temples, wherein they bestowed upon them the Golden Torc of Hu. These men they called Kings and the Druida were known as the King Makers. 

​

Some call the age of the Toltecs the golden age, I call it the Age of Sorrow. Aye, it is true that the Toltecs built the great City of Seven Gates and began the worship of the seven Eloah and the sacred Tao, but a decadence had entered into their temples. For the Toltecs could speak the names of the lower gods into the smoke and see their shape and learned thereby to command the nature gods and the evil spirits. Some developed a particular fondness and desire to worship the Fallen Gods, whom they called Nephillim and others called the Sons of Seth. They created the Keys and Signs for every living thing, be it Evil or Good. Signs, which aeons later, the Solomon of the Jews remembered and from whose memory all grimoires have come and from which the book of Edris or Enoch was created. For this reason their banner depicted the double-headed Eagle holding a key in its claw. 

 

Thusly from the Toltecs came the rise of the Turanians with its kings and its decadence. 

 

Initially the kings ruled well, fearing the gods. There were seven, and they built great temples for their oracles and formed communities around them. But in their hands lay a tremendous power, and they ruled their people with an iron fist, exacting from them a reverence that came from fear and this created something new - pride. Aye, the more power they took the more their power grew and the greater their pride in it and it was pride that came before their fall. 

​

Legends tell how they took to them wives who were fair to look upon but who were mindless and narrow headed - this only means they united themselves with the fallen gods. These kings became necromancers who raised the dead and made them walk as sleepers, they bred monsters, wicked demons, male and female giants, which they used as sex slaves and warriors. Soon their temples were not built to worship the divine Gods of the Planets, the seven Eloah, but to worship the lower fallen Gods they called the Gods of Darkness, or the Gods of the dark eye - Asuras.

​

Ambition, the gift of the Tlavatli, was transformed to selfishness, and when magic or Draíocht Dhu is used for selfish aims it turns blacker than the Sea of Stones. 

 

This was the fourth age and the beginning of the Times of Desolation when Atlantia’s seven kingdoms were ruled by decadent kings who broke oaths and bonds and warred against one another splitting the land into that which was dark and that which was light and that which was righteous and that which was unrighteous.

​

And so it was that war and chaos led to the shedding of blood, and in such wars who burns the bodies of the nameless and who wipes the tears of their kin when the graves of the First Manu lies empty on the Island of the Dead? 

​

Aye! 

​

But there was a righteous king among them – the king of Aryania, and his name was Themis. But Themis and his people, the Aryani, were the first to give birth to a dangerous power, owing to the rebellion of their Manu. A power more useful than song memory or vision magic. The Aryani Manu developed this power by sealing the memory of his people with the Draught of Forgetfulness.

 

In the old times if a person wanted to perform an action, all he had to do was to remember how a thing was done. This meant that those with the longest memories of the teachings of the gods were revered as wise ones. There was nothing the old Barddas and the Druidda could not remember. But by taking the draft of forgetfulness the power of song and vision receded and in its place something new arose, the ability to create inner songs and pictures that were purely human – the Aryiani called it Reswn, what you, in your time know as reason. 

​

The first creations of reswn were new laws. Aye, before that laws were eternal, the new laws were temporal, these were not the laws of the gods but the laws of men and they caused unending pain to those of us who remembered the old way. And when the good King Themis formed The thrones of the Judges upon a mount called Atlas, which they believed sustained heaven and earth, we sorrowed. To sit on the throne as a judge, a candidate one had to enter into the Caves of Terror or Taur. Many virginal souls perished. Only those who could use the thread of the spider Ariadne Reswn, survived.

They became the judges of the good King Themis and in time he elected three of these ‘good’ men and crowned them and gave them their own regions so that now in Atlantia there were ten kings and ten crowns and a contest began for the seven kingdoms. 

​

In great wars the four good kings were victorious and banished the six evil Turanian Kings to the Dead Lands. But the Lord of the Dark Eye who was their leader and his shadow brothers were not to be thwarted, they planned to take all of Atlantia and in a monstrous ritual with the priests of the decadent Saturn Oracle, they caused great earthquakes and the rising of mountains and an ages of ice to befall the continent.  

 

When word reached the kings that The Shadow Lords were thundering on their great war Equus over the icy backs of the Mountains of Lament flying the banner of their combined houses - a Scorpion - the four good Kings raised their armies and rode north to meet them. 

 

That great war lasted five winters and came to its end upon a narrow valley, which stood between The Twin Horns of Satanas, two terrible sentinels of ice guarding a valley in which a crack is said to open into an abyss, a gateway to the shadow moon, which men call Helas or Helas. It is a spawn-hole of fiends created from the evil thoughts of demons and when the Moon separated itself from the earth it created a counterpoint for it on the other side of the earth. 

​

The war extracted many dead and when it seemed that the Good King Themis and his four fellow kings would succumb to the demons of the Dark Eyed Lord, the Great Manu of the Aryani who led the Solar Oracle stepped forth brandishing the Sword of Anwen created aeons ago by the most venerated of all Blacksmiths Tubal Cain. 

And just as hell was held spell bound by the moon and wild beasts are sometimes held by the words of the Rmoahls, the gestures of the hands of the Tlavatli and the Signs of the Toltecs, the six Kings were bound by the spiritual fire of the Sun magnified by the Oculus, which sat inside a crown of stones on the pommel of that great sword. 

The oculus was a white stone, which could find the sun’s orb through the mists and it was said that it was brought to the earth before the first age by the high Archangel of the Sun, Mikhaal. 

 

My memory hears the song of how Manu brought to bear that sword to melt the great sheet of ice which later they would call Sea of Glass causing the water to take Five kings and their warriors and creatures and Equus and that great Sun Manu himself into its icy depths. I recall it as if it were yesterday how the Sword of Anwen was drowned in those icy waters, but not before the nymph Evelyn fell from the bosom of Ceresdwn and took the sword into her hand and sacrificed her Godliness to guard it. By some miracle the Oculus itself was not drowned for it was flung from its pommel and landed on the shores of that sea before it’s waters.

​

One king and his men escaped into the lands of the Turanians and threatened one day to return. 

 

With that great thaw came the floods that drowned the lowest parts of the continent of Atlantia, leaving only islands with a long spine of mountains to connect them. They called the floods, Poseidon, a God who divided up the continent because of Atlantian iniquity and a statue in his honour was raised in Aryania overlooking the Straits of Gadis.

 

Regions developed. Rmoahlia, that great southern land of my ancestors was transformed into a land of marshes and bogs wedded to Tlivatlia by a tongue of land passable only at low tide. It was mostly inhabitable. Many Rmoahls who survived the floods had to migrate to Tlivatlia, which was higher and had good grazing lands and whose hills were covered with lush vegetation and a variety of animals. 

Toltecia became a mountainous land with great desolate plains in the south-west. Its shores were battered by storms. Aryania in the North East grew beautiful, some called it the land of Eyrienia, the Goddess of plenty, since there were great plains and long rolling hills of fine vegetation. The only mountain was to the north, facing the Straits of Gadis, which meant Calm. The most northerly realm was Akkadia – a land mostly cold and inhospitable to farming but high above the waters with great mountains that were always covered in ice and were called Albion – meaning white, while the more fertile valleys were called Iberius. Akkadia had large calm bays and the men of that land were good fishermen. We called them Nordenmen or Nieflung, and they were those who, along with the Temple Guards, had taken the Yoke of the Oculus, to protect that long and narrow Sea of Ice. These Temple Guards were called Wachten for they observed the ice for any thaw and were trained in recognising the signs of the return of the Brothers of the Shadow, the servants of the Dark Eyed Lord, who, having dwelt in helas, would be now be wraiths, spectres all powerful.

​

So cold was Akkadia that many lived in the more temperate bays to the south. This sea, since the great rains, had become more dense and its waters were navigable. This spawned the making of schiffs or ships and the Akkadians became travellers and great traders. They were called by our people, sea rovers or Marwyr, but they called themselves Vik-Ings or men who came from the fjords, or the ‘Vik’ of Akkadia, that is, in their own language, the small bays of that Island. Their King was Othin who hung from the Yew Tree for nine nights and grew blind in two eyes but fashioned one eye of discernment. He was a half God far famed for his wisdom. 

 

When the Akkadians grew in power, the Sun Oracle took its abode on the promontory that guarded the Sea of Glass, for the Sun Oracle lived always among the ruling people of a particular age. 

 

I incarnated again in the age of Tribulations, which was the age of the Mongolians. The Mongolians were a small people of dark skin who migrated to the Eastlands during the first two floods. The men of that land were wild and wanton and warred with one another and made incursions into the islands of Atlantia. Some grew clever enough to learn to shape-change animals into humans and humans into animals, which they could use as beasts of burdens or as sex slaves like the Turanian kings before them. Their witches dwelt to the east of the Main Land which Akkadians call Middle Guard, in a forest called Ironwood. They were troll-women, who bore many giants for sons and wolves from whose race we are told will come the one named Moon-Hound Fenrir, upon whose back will sit the shadow lord who had escaped and which lore tells us will be born again from a witch called Lilith. The Moon Hound’s belly will be filled with the flesh of all those men that die, and he shall open his mouth and swallow the moon, and sprinkle with blood the heavens and cause endless summers that will melt the sea of glass.

 

Later the Vikings of later times will recall it thus:

Eastward dwells the Old One in Ironwood,
And there gives birth to Fenrir's brethren;
There shall spring of them all a certain one,
The moon's taker in troll's likeness.

He is filled with flesh of fey men.
Reddens the gods' seats with ruddy blood-gouts;
Swart becomes sunshine in summers after.

So it was, that from the Oracle of the Akkadians I observed the Parting of Mists and the coming of the rains and storms. I watched this as a sign of a time of blindness, knowing that our old brotherhood, in which each had once perceived the same wisdom of the past and in which each soul lived in the soul of the other, was dying. For I had witnessed the spectacle of the woman giving birth to a sun with the stars over her head and the moon at her feet and observed how the dragon was preparing to rise to kill the child she carried.

 

And so it was.

​

A number of decadent Mongols led by Taur their King travelled to Turania in the West and with the help of their decadent Druida enacted a terrible ritual with the Fallen Gods to create Lilith, who would give birth to the old Turanian King, the Dark Eyed Lord, leader of the wraiths, who were imprisoned in Helas and whom all call the Brothers of the Shadows. I saw it in the dawn sky how the kings would rise from the sea of ice and from Hel’s pit with the power of the Demon of the Sun, which is Soorat, that old serpent to unite with their brother who came from the earth, the Dark Eyed Lord. Both would be known as Draig, or Dragon. With his newborn dragon power the Dark Faced Lord would ride the Moon Hound, conjuring to life, not the half giants of Ironwood but the Nephillim, those monsters, which we called Saurians, and other misshapen creatures.

​

When the days grew warmer the Fraternity of Temple Guards yoked to the Oculus as Wachten, warned of the return of the Brothers of the Shadows.

In the fourth age a great fortification had been built upon the shores of the Sea of Glass which they called Tente d’ agel, which some mistakenly call Tente de’ zazael or Castle of the Devil – but which really means the Castle of the angels and which in your time will be called Tintagel. 

​

It lay on a promontory accessed by way of a chain bridge over the Sea of Glass. 

A cave beneath this promontory was the initiation place of the Akkadians. A contestant had to remain six hours in that cave without a light, listening to the sounds of the ice under which lived the beasts Charybdis and Scylla, guardians of the gates of Helas. If he withstood the test of the Syren song of the ice and the images they brought they could join the Wachten and take the yoke. 

​

On this promontory at Taint Angel there stood a tree the Akkadians called Yggdrasil, an evergreen Yew, the first that grew since the birth of the First Men called Yimir and the new Gods. While it was green, life and peace, love and labour filled the days of men. Around it was built a temple and the Sun tree itself was fashioned into a Caer or throne upon which sat the Manu of the Sun Oracle – they called this throne Caer Sidi or Asgard. 

​

The night the Mongols made their rituals, a tremor shook the Twin Horns of Satanas hurtling great stones over the cliffs on which the fortifications of Tint-angel were built. I was standing on the tower called the Sentinel just before dawn and saw the great light with a double tail move across the firmament like a read slash that made the sky turn to blood. 

​

I knew the Dragon Soorat that old snake, was using it to pull up the wild forces of the shadow moon into the souls of men just as the true moon pulled up the waters of the tides. I was a woman Bardas of the Akkadian line in that far-flung life and on that windswept balcony of the Sentinel of my people I watched the shadows change over the frozen sea and the mists part and I understood that the rains were coming even before the Yoke Guards came to warn of it. 

​

The ice was melting and the floods would soon come.

 

Not long after that the Yew began to lose its leaves and the Godly Manu, the Manu of the Great Sun Oracle, grew sickly and had to be moved to Aryania where it was left to our greatest Taliesen to gather a Gorsedd or council to discuss what manner of plans must be made to abandon the Isles. However, one night the Manu of the Sun Oracle had a waking dream, in it he was told the land could not be abandoned before the sword of Anwen was retrieved from the melted sea and united once more with the oculus. One man had to be found to fetch it and seven to guard it. They would  have developed the power of reswn, for Evelyn, the Goddess of Sun Wisdom would relinquish her care of the sword only to them. Without them the evolution of the world would end. 

​

But how to find the one and the seven? 

 

That was the task, that was the labour.

In the meantime the whole of Atlantia was stirred by news which arrived by way of the Sun Oracle. The royal messengers went forth from Akkadia in every direction to assemble an army of princes to forestall a thaw and a rise of the Shadow Kings. This would be a gathering of warriors, speaking different languages and wearing an assortment of accruement, a coloured throng! But the princes were by no means united. Inner conflicts had begun in the Fourth age and the Casting down of The Shadow Kings had grown a deep division among the four. They were not of the one heart regarding the old Gods of memory, worshipped by the Sons of God, and the New Gods of reason, worshipped by the Sons of Man. 

 

In truth the Druida were foremost in the battle against the new heresy called Reswn and sought to extinguish it with brutality.

​

To bring the princes together against a common foe was therefore the difficult task of the far seeing Themistos, son of Themis of Aryania. Unlike his father he was not a conqueror, but a philosopher whose desire was to foster Reswn, or Reason.

 

Fear of the Shadow Brothers drove many to leave for unnamed lands to the East, to the west and south. Since the first three floods, Akkadia and Aryania had borne the brunt of incursions made by the unruly Mongolians who, in their crude ships attacked the coastlines of the islands to take with them what they desired. Some islands began to pay tribute to Taur, the king of the Mongolians, who sought young maids to use as sex slaves. He was called Taur after the monster of Minos, who lived in the cave of the Tlavalitans and was said to be half man-half bull.  He was the one who joined forces with the Evil gods to bring back the Dark Eyed Lord. 

 

War was coming, a war of reason against memory, of white magic against black. Aye! Now a Bard I sing of those times and of those who would come forward to take the sword from the Sea of Glass, those who would become the ancestors of the new world and form a new brotherhood forged by fire…hear my words oh Saturn, oh Sun, oh Moon as I begin…