Part 4: Britain Key to World History...The Romance of Glastonbury...Avalon, Garden of Eden

Britain Key to World History

by Comyns Beaumont

V. 

THE ROMANCE OF GLASTONBURY 

As a better realisation is perceived that Celtic folklore preserves the vestiges of a former great civilisation in Britain, Glastonbury has aroused a new and growing interest among students of antiquity. Beyond the fact that it was traditionally regarded with deep veneration in the prehistoric period of King Arthur and his Knights, it is closely associated in a mysterious manner with the Celtic Underworld faith recognised by students of the subject, like Mr. Lewis Spence, and Mr. Foster Forbes as something difficult to define but remarkably persistent. 

In the ages when Christianity first budded, Avalon, its Celtic name, played a very vital part therein. It was furthermore regarded as the Celtic Paradise and, in the words of a modern writer. 

Ages before the foundation of its monastery, Glastonbury was famed throughout Europe as the Celtic Paradise, the Happy Island of the Blest. Ancient man came to believe that the soul of the dead were borne westward towards the setting sun to an island of the western sea, to the abode of Glast and Avallae being ferried across the hazy sea by rowers whom a secret impulse impelled.[100] 

The writer is referring here to the weird story of the Roman historian Procopius who describes how the Breton fishermen found their boats sunk to the gunwale by invisible spirits of the dead whom they felt impelled to carry across to Britain's shores, and where, on arrival, they saw their boats rise in the water as the souls landed, and they heard their names and status being checked by the voices of other invisible beings. Fantastic as it seems, yet apparently the superstition was accepted by the Romans, who, it is said, for this reason absolved the Bretons from payment of the Imperial tax. The Bretons, blood relations of the Western Highland Celts, like them were, and are, psychic and prone to what is termed second sight. The Egyptians, whose fervent belief in an Amenta in the West, to which their dead proceeded by devious tunnels and queer boats, according to the Book of the Dead, were supposed to make their way to Amenta iri the Hebrides, Staffa and Iona being their "Tuat" to be judged by Osiris.[101] 

If found "justified" they were again embarked and taken to the "Island of the Blest," where they dwelt in peace and happiness forever with Osiris. This island was none other than Avalon. Hence the fame it enjoyed. The inquiring mind will desire to probe this mysterious belief, and get to the why and wherefore of it if possible, for we may be sure there was a strong occult reason behind it. Pious beliefs and fervent faiths were not held by the ancients without some definite reason such as that which caused Avalon to be regarded as the Celtic Paradise. 

Avalon stretches back into the dim ages as a city with a most remarkable past, illustrious long before the period of the Great Catastrophe, ages before its connection with King Arthur, fabulous even though he be. It was the venerable heart of Paradise, the region destroyed, according to the Book of Genesis, because of the Apple with which Eve tempted Adam to partake, which Apple opened their eyes to pursuits the Deity had forbidden them, and for which reason they were expelled from the Garden of Eden where Cherubim and a flaming sword turned every way, and prevented them from returning. 

Yet---and this is a point of importance which it is essential should be understood--in spite of the apparent primordial aspect given to this event, the mythological version of the Great Catastrophe, it occurred comparatively late in the true chronology of the O.T., so deceptive for reasons I will later explain. As an event it deserves to be placed in the same category as the war between the Gods and the Giants, or the destruction of the Giants or Rephaim who were buried beneath rocks and stones at Tartessus in that same war. They were all described hyperbolically in order to explain to those who could understand the inner meaning that at a certain period, while a great war was raging, the participants and many cities were destroyed by the hand of the Deity and that for long this territory was uninhabitable. 

Investigations into the past of Avalon give it certain early Scriptural names. It was Ai or Aijalon or Aija, where Ab'Ram dwelt in Mizraim and made his stronghold when he occupied the west country to procure its precious and necessary ores. It was also the same as Bethel, as I shall show. In addition it bore another most famous name in Egyptian annals—for it was originally Egyptian or Philistinish—namely Memphis, so-called by the Greeks, though it was probably Mende or Mende or Meni. It is never known as Memphis in the Bible. In Numbers we are told that Hebron was built seven years before "Zoan in Egypt,"[102] but Josephus, obviously uncertain as to the identity of "Zoan," in one passage proclaims it as Tanis and in another as Memphis.[103] According to tradition, Osiris was buried at Memphis and other of the Ramses kings, for it was regarded as Egypt's sacred city. Isis was also said to have been buried there. Plutarch alludes to it as the "Haven of the Good," where was the tomb of "the good man Osiris."[104] 

We should not overlook the testimony of Manetho when he says that Salatis "also lived at Memphis and made both the upper and lower regions pay tribute," and then adds that Salatis visited Abaris (as shown previously, Hebron) annually for military and administrative reasons, implying therefore that Memphis was regarded by him as the more important. For if Salatis and Ab'Ram were one and the same, as I have demonstrated, then we may discover that what the Greeks or Greek writers termed Memphis was really the same as Ai or Aijalon, both being situated in the heart of the metal region, and both conveniently placed for the transport of ores. Perhaps I should explain this a little more fully. 

When the Bronze Age came into being after the discovery that copper and tin enabled weapons of bronze to be made which far transcended brass for spears or swords or other arms, the situation of Avalon on an island site, whence ores and other requirements could be transported easily by barge, canoe, of raft, made it a natural centre of great importance to the patriarch or prince who had the wit to see that here he was able to produce the goods and dominate all others. Moreover,) in a defended island city it offered exceptional attraction with the upstanding Tor which provided not only a powerful citadel but towered over the surrounding flat and marshy country. 

To pursue the subject farther, we have the tradition as narrated by Herodotus, that Memphis owed its origin to a legendary king named Men or Menes, in whose time Egypt was a marsh—as also contended the Ethiopians or Cushites—and that Menes raised a dyke to protect large tracts of low-lying land against the incursions of the "Nile," built Memphis and excavated a lake to its north and west.[105] A successor to Menes given the name of Mœris, excavated more of the lake and gave it his name, Moeris, which Herodotus describes as having had a circumference of 450 miles, being replenished by a canal from the Nile. The land where this lake was built, he says, was excessively dry, for he was shown it in Egypt, a peculiar state of things if (as he said earlier) it had been a swamp and was drained. One wonders how much of the information Herodotus gleaned from the Egyptians was authentic or merely hearsay, for he confesses elsewhere that the priests deceived him in, regard to other subjects, and whether the priests of the later Egypt, like the Greeks, attributed to local sites their former history elsewhere. 

At all events the details he obtained, albeit vague, so far as they go, bear an astonishing resemblance to the early history of Avalon. It was also an inland site, situated on a lake, the Uxella, and this marshland was banked up along the coast with a dyke wall by some unknown authority in a prehistoric age. Of olden time the River Brue flowed round the town, the only rising ground in this area with its dominating Tor, and enters the Bristol Channel south of the Mendips, and may, indeed, be compared with the supposed Mendes mouth of the Nile, although the latter in the present Egypt has no relation to Memphis, whose ruins (or supposed ruins) are some thirty miles distant from even the beginning of the Mendes mouth. Until a century ago Glastonbury was surrounded by the same swampy region, a large body of water with reeds, named Meare Lake, a name uncommonly like Lake Moeris. The Uxella swamp area, as it is named by Ptolemy, had a circumference about equivalent to that cited by Herodotus. 

This area of Somerset, now drained, lies below sea level, but there was a time when the tides swept up the river estuaries, mingled with the four river streams, and resulted in a brackish inland sea satisfactory maybe as the breeding ground of eels and for the growth of sedge or reeds, whence the name Sedge-moor given to large stretches of it. Where the land rose to higher levels stood isles in early Christian times owned by monastical fraternities, not improbably on the site of former pagan institutions. "In later times," says Mr. Webb, "we read of the Seven Islands and Seven Churches in the marshes of Somerset."[106] 

In the north the lagoon skirted the Mendip Hills, embraced Glastonbury, Somerton—the legendary settlement of Hu Gadarn---Langport, went south-east towards Hamdon Hill, then turned west along the Parrett Valley to the sea. Along the west where there is no real coastline for over most of the area the heavy Atlantic waves are held in check solely by sand dunes and tough marram grass, the sea defences originated by an ancient and unknown race.[107] Whoever first thus harnessed the ocean here must have undertaken the work before the Glastonbury pile villages came into existence, so important a feature of its antiquities, for otherwise these artificial sites could never have withstood the heavy tides and incursions of the sea. Was it the work of the fabulous Men or Menes? 

Apart from its defensive strength, Avalon yields evidence of having been an important centre of industry in a former age. The Rev. Mr. Marston claims that it was a capital, enjoyed a large manufacturing trade, and was a port for ages before it acquired its reputation for sanctity.[108] Sir W. Boyd-Dawkins, in his work Early Man in Britain, thought its inhabitants were a busy sea-faring people in contact with Gaul and the Mediterranean and that the arts and crafts included weaving, spinning, pottery smelting and carpentry. It possessed, said he, a high technique in the manufacture of iron work, bronze, and glass. The bronze Glastonbury Bowl of unknown date exhibits the highest degree of artistic skill and craftsmanship.  

Avalon's craft in smelting and metal-work takes us to the pile-villages where certain communities erected huts on piles with a protective palisade to conceal their activities from prying eyes. Godney Village, discovered in 1891, occupies a triangular space of from three to four acres, and like that of Meare, three miles from Glastonbury, consists of a number of low, artificial mounds formerly surrounded by a broad sheet of water known as Old Rhyne. Within the palisade of Godney was a massive superstructure with round huts of wattle erected on a foundation of heavy logs, brushwood, peat and clay resting on the piles. The huts were almost invariably raised in clusters, intercommunicating with each other, were thatched, and all with a hearthstone in the centre bearing signs of considerable usage. An oak door was found which seemed to have been one-half of a double door. This settlement was reached by a causeway having a breakwater.[109] 

What was the purpose of these segregated pile-built huts so diligently hidden away from the rest of the community? It has been suggested by some that they were constructed as a defence against savage beasts whose remains have been found in the. Mendip caves, but such is begging the question. What was the purpose of these intercommunications and why has every hut a hearthstone with evidence of considerable use but none of domestic occupation? Were they for industrial purposes? If the dwellers had lived on a communal plan one might have expected a few large hearthstones, but not necessarily one in the centre of every hut. What relics have been found are crucibles for smelting ores and at Meare dome-shaped clay ovens for baking metal work. Generally the workmanship of the remains approximates to the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Ages, like those discovered in the hill-top villages of Wiltshire. Do not the indications point to the fact that these were foundries instituted for the manufacture of bronze and iron ware? That the intercommunicating huts propose that all were engaged in the like pursuit? That the double door indicates a busy workshop with people coming and going rather than a modest dwelling? 

Why were these workers hidden away out of touch with the world on artificial islands unless it were that they were engaged in tasks not intended for the eyes of the rabble? In other words, is it not also a reasonable implication that they were those mysterious Cabiri workers, or Cyclops, who laboured traditionally in the manufacture of "magic" works, under the lame blacksmith deity Hephæstus—called Ptah in Memphis, his great city—whose helpers were the "fabricators of thunder" according to Hesiod and who wielded "superior power," as Homer says, plying their secret trade in islands and inaccessible places? The pile-dwellings of Avalon need not deceive any student of ancient "magic" for they yield every sign of having been designed for that specific purpose. 

How secretively and effectually did the ancients preserve their secrets of what they termed "magic" and how few, even yet, have penetrated behind the symbolism of it all! The very myth of the Tree of Knowledge in this Garden of Eden relates to this "magic," where the Serpent (lightning or celestial flames) tempted Eve (Mother Earth) to eat of the "Apple" (the concomitants of a prehistoric bomb or grenade), of which the ingredients were contained in her womb, and that Adam (antediluvian man) was tempted to eat of the Apple (that is, utilise the knowledge) and as a result they were expelled from this same Garden of Eden where Avalon stands. Does not "magic" perhaps explain the ancient name of Avalon, the "Isle of Apples," a name derived, it is said, from the Welsh äfal, an apple, hence Afalon, in the Cymric tongue, Avalon in the British? Apple—or a bomb resembling an apple? In fact, may it not have stressed Avalon's secret activity in the realms of that very science for which reason the ancients believed the Almighty destroyed these lands for a long while? For there are suggestions of Avalon's activities in the realms of "magic," as, for example, King Arthur's famous magical sword "Caliban," traditionally forged in that city, and in the Bardic stories of how, when he was wounded at Camlan and carried to Avalon, he confided his sword to one of his knights with injunctions to cast it into the lake. He did so, and immediately an immense arm arose from the water, seized it, waved it three times in the air and disappeared.[110] At all events we are confronted with these mysterious hut-clusters erected on artificial islets containing evidence of former activity in the shape of crucibles, bronze wire, dross, slag, and other like refuse, with every indication of extreme secrecy and mystification. ( Page 72 ) I will leave these traces of Avalon provisionally to turn to Scripture records bearing, it is suggested, on the same ancient city, from Avalon, Avallach, or Avalah, to those of Havilah, Ai, Aija, Aijalon, or Ajalon. 

First of all study this name Havilah or Avilah, the original name accorded to the Garden of Eden. Genesis says, "And a river ran out of Eden to water the Garden, and from thence it was parted and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah where there is gold; there is bdellium and the onyx stone."[111] We cannot but observe that the river with four heads (or mouths) which compassed Havilah very closely resembles that of Avienus with the, four rivers of which the river Tartessus was outstanding, the latter corresponding in the text with Pishon. In effect it appears to intimate that the Garden of Eden was watered by four rivers in the land of Havilah, where gold was found. 

Leaving aside this aspect for the moment let us examine the name Havilah. He is given as a son of Cush, as brother to Raamah, Sheba, and Dedan.[112] Surely the interpretation of this geographical genealogy in the west is that Havilah, like the others, was a region founded by the Cushites or Chaldeans, or Gadites, and was the "brother" of other important sites similarly founded. Sheba will be shown to have indicated Beersheba, now the city of Wells; Dedan, the city of Dan, now Taunton (or near that ancient city); Raamah was another rendering of Ramah or Hebron; and; finally, Havilah becomes none other than Avalah or Avalon. 

See how this develops. In this area of Havilah, Ab'Ra early pitched his tent on a "mountain on the east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west and Hai (or Ai or Aija) on its east," which he reached marching southward from Mizraim, and from this mountain site he advanced yet farther south to Gerar, but his headquarters remained "from where his tent had been in the beginning, between Bethel and Hai."[113] For awhile he sojourned in Gerar, a Philistine city, lying "between Kadesh and Shur." In my interpretation Shur or Asher was the country where is now Dorset, and Kadesh was Bristol or Portishead, and Gerar answers to Somerton (where we are told in the Triads repaired Hu Gadarn), just about halfway between the two, lying seven miles south of Avalon. Another resort of Ab'Ram was Beersheba, or "Seven Wells," often abbreviated into Sheba ("Seven," wells understood), or its plural Shebarim. Here it was that, in order to allay the jealousy of Sarah, the patriarch dismissed his Egyptian concubine Hagar and her infant son Ishmael. 

In the neighbourhood of Beersheba was Chedor or Gedor, where the Simeonites in these parts along the west coast, found fat pasture for their flocks.[114] Nearby also was the gorge of Michmash where Philistines and Israelites fought bitterly more than once. We need seek no farther afield for the city of Seven Wells than to the ancient episcopal city itself, yet named Wells, which lies only six miles from Glastonbury, and possesses its seven wells to this day. Nor should there be difficulty in identifying Chedor as Cheddar, to this day a fat pastoral district owing to its volcanic soil, or the Gorge of Michmash, with its "sharp rocks," as Cheddar Gorge. This region was originally peopled by the Philistines, and thus it was the scene of many of the savage fights between the two peoples over many centuries. 

Although it may seem a digression I will follow for a short while the adventures of Hagar, who, after being driven away from Beersheba, carried her baby son to the wilderness of Beersheba, which would describe the rugged, rocky, barren Mendip country immediately rising towards 900 ft. beyond Wells. If she were forced to carry her infant into this sterile and rocky region in that long-distant day when the climate of Britain was subtropical, little wonder that the gourd of water was soon consumed and the child dying of thirst, when—so the story goes—as she sat despairing on a rock, turning her back to the infant to be spared seeing his death-agonies, the angel appeared and opened her eyes to a well in the vicinity. Such a well might be the famous Wookey Hole, in whose deep caverns rises the Somerset Axe, but more likely perhaps the event relates to Ebbor Rocks, about a mile beyond, which may have acquired their name from Ab'Ram, the Hebrew.

If we were to follow the wanderings of the Ishmaelites or Hagarites, as they were also called, after Hagar, their Matriarch, in any detail it would compel a long digression, but we are told, that they went to the land of Edom—Cornwall and Devon—and then dwelt for some centuries between Havilah (or Avalon) and Shur (or Asher, Dorset) until in the days of Saul they were dispossessed by the sons of Reuben, in the land of Gilead. "And in the days of Saul they (the Reubenites) made war with the Hagarites, who fell by their hands."[115] Thus they became nomads, and were classified as Egyptians, the first Gypsies, or wanderers The Hagarite settlement from whence the sons of Reuben expelled them may answer to the region between Heytesbury and Warminster, where lie the great prehistoric camps of Scratchbury and Knook Castle in the Chalk country. The old name of Heytesbury was Hegeredsbyri, the byre or dwelling-place of the Hegereds or, we may allege, Hagarites. In Edom they possibly worked the tin on Dartmoor. 

Reverting to the region of Havilah compassed by the River Pishon with four heads, in the Book of Judges (a record much more ancient in origin than Genesis, a later compilation, a post-captivity summary of the Israelite history which was written in Babylon), the same River Pishon is named Kishon, immortalised; by Deborah, the Israelite prophetess, as "that ancient river" on the occasion when it suddenly swelled, flooded the land, and swept away the invading host of Sisera. The River Kishon was related to a swampy locality called Merom or Meroz, probably the same; as Meribah or Eribah, whose neighbours Deborah fiercely, upbraided in these words: "Curse ye, Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty." 

In other words, after praising those who fought and defeated Sisera, captain of the host of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who ruled in Hazor, she admonished the three adjoining tribes who gave no help. These were Dan, Asher, and Reuben. "Why did Dan remain in ships?" demanded Deborah bitterly, or as "Asher continued on the sea-shore," or as Reuben remained "in his sheepfolds."[116] In this battle Sisera had 900 chariots of iron, and Barak of Kedesh-Naphtali gathered 10,000 men from Kedesh and from Mount Tabor—which appears to have been the Tor of Glastonbury—and utterly defeated Sisera with the aid of the River Kishon. 

Can we more or less assess the locations of these tribes? Asher, on the seashore, adjoined "great Zidon" or Sidon.[117] This famous port and ancient manufacturing city of all kinds of metals lay in the heart of the Southern ore region, with gold, tin, copper, and iron all within easy reach. It was destroyed largely by earthquake as Strabo records, but no trace of it remains in Palestine. It must be placed at the mouth of the River Axe, where lies Seaton, once a port of account, but nowhere on the south coast has the sea committed worse ravages than from Seaton to Sidmouth, which has swallowed up miles of former shorelands. The River Sid is silted up, but it was also a port, the harbour destroyed by falls of rock, and the old town was long ago buried beneath the shingle. Among its antiquities was the head of a standard washed up by the sea representing the Centaur Chiron, carrying baby Achilles. At Axmouth the remains of very old vessels and anchors have been recovered from under the soil. Phelps says that ironware was recorded to have been once manufactured in the locality.[118] 

The former great importance of Seaton—a probable corruption of Sidon, as Sid-mouth, again, suggests the name—is amply proved by the fact that the great Fosse Way, stretching down from the Humber, entering Somerset at the Three Shire Stones made its way to the mouth of the Axe, where the Romans gave it, or Axmouth the name of Isca, or Isca Dumnuniorum.[119] Another proof of the former great importance of this area is that it was in a prehistoric time--in so far as Britain's recognised history is concerned—one of the most strongly fortified in the country. Two outstanding defences are the forts of Musbery and Membury in the vicinity of Axminster. "These entrenchments," says Phelps, "form part of what has been termed a chain of forts extending from the sea a considerable distance inland, on the borders of Devon, Dorset, and Somerset."[120] These fortifications stretched towards Hamdon Hill in one direction and north-westwards, to the source of the little stream Yarty near Neroche Castle, near Taunton. 

The River Axe separates Dorset from East Devon, and on its left bank was Asher or Shur, the original Syria, the tribe which was not included for good reasons among the tribes of Israel in David's reign, and who dwelt between Tyre [Portland] and Sidon. They stretched northward to Camel Hill, near Cadbury, probably the latter great prehistoric camp being the Kadesh-inNaphtali of Barak. They included in their domain Eshcol, the later Roman Ischalis, the present Ilchester on the Fosse Way. Their northern neighbors was Reuben, which tribe, after throwing out the Hagarites, stretched to Warminster and Heytesbury as previously described. Westward of these was the tribe of Dan, or part of it. 

We have the account of how men of this tribe of Dan at some early time, seeking new territory, and with the help of Micah's Levite, made a murderous descent on Laish, apparently reaching their objective by means of boats or canoes. They massacred the inhabitants and settled there, calling it the city of Dan, because Laish had no deliverer, "for it was far from Sidon."[121] The strange reference to Sidon infers that Laish was under it protection, but too far distant for the Sidonians to be able to come to the rescue of the inhabitants against this piratical adventure. If as I have claimed, the former Sidon stood where we now find Seaton, Sidmouth, and Axminster, about forty miles distant, the otherwise invidious Bible reference is comprehensible. 

Taunton or Tan Town, capital of Somerset, stands just south of the Quantock Hills where formerly copper and silver-lead were mined, and within easy distance of the ore regions of Devon Cornwall. The original city of Dan may have been at Norton Fitzwarren, less than two miles from the present city, and where are the remains of an ancient camp of size. With this maritime city on the borders of the Uxella and the wide estuary of the Parrett—which flooded the surrounding country in 1607, like, in Sisera's time—and agrees in all respects with the Kishon of Deborah and the Pishon of Havilah, we may understand the anger of the Prophetess and the other tribes who took part in the war when they were deserted by the three tribes who should have been mostly concerned in defeating the tyrant Canaanite king. It is only by a true grasp of topography that such history can be properly assimilated. Otherwise it becomes obscure and meaningless like so much of the Old Testament. 

The situation of the city of Dan is supported by Ezekiel's reference to the trade of Tyre: 

The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many of the Isles were the merchandise of thy hand---Dan also, and Javan, going to and fro occupied in thy fairs; bright iron (copper), cassia (tin), and calamus (reeds) were in thy market,[122] 

Many isles lay scattered about in the Uxella near Taunton, and others off North Devon and Cornwall of which only Lundy survives, although many others have probably been swallowed by the insatiable waves. Of the products named by Ezekiel, if iron were intended, this ore was mined from early days in the Brendon Hills, not far from Taunton; copper came from the adjoining Quantocks; tin was procurable from Cornwall and Devon; and calamus or reeds were prodigal in the swampy Uxella and in great demand for thatching, flooring, and for the manufacture of papyrus. Thus, as Ezekiel states, from Dan in the south of this important region to the Avon in its north, such commodities were valuable cargo. Another indication of the situation of Dedan or Dan is given by Jeremiah, whose words imply that it lay in close proximity to Edom or Cornwall: 

Concerning Edom---is wisdom no more in Teman (Tamar?). Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhabitants of Dedan for I will bring calamity upon him.[123] 

The governing word is "him," which must be taken as signifying Edom to suffer from some celestial calamity. Dedan, in proximity to it, is therefore told in prophetical words to beware, to flee, to turn back from the sea, to seek refuge. The tribe of Dan, some of whom went north to the Hebrides, the Danai of the Greeks, and the De Danaan of the Erse traditions, are well known to British folklore as the Heracleids whom many later princes of Scotland claimed as their ancestors. 

The Isles mentioned by Ezekiel require a further mention. Strabo says the Tin Islands were ten in number, inhabited by men clad in dark garments reaching to the foot, and bound round the waist by a cord or girdle. They carried a staff in the hand and resembled the Furies in a tragedy—meaning they looked unkempt—and lived chiefly by their flocks, but that they had mines of tin and lead.[124] They describe a monastic order or fraternity many of whom existed in the Celtic faith long before Theodosius imposed Christianity on the West. Strabo says the Isles were called the Cassiterides, and they may be accepted as the Isles of the Cassi or the Isles of Chittim. The foregoing, therefore, explains the general position in the West of many outstanding cities and sites in the early days of the Bible lands. 

*******************************************

Plate V. A Seventeenth-Century view of the Island of Avalon, or Glastonbury, looking from Wirrall Hill towards the Tor. It is contended that Avalon, Ai or Aijalon, was with Bethel, the fortress of Abraham.

Now I return to the topography relating to Havilah and of that famous city of Avalon itself. Ai, Aija, or Aijalon, with the Hill of Bethel, was properly one community of which Ai represented the fortress on the height, otherwise the Tor. Bethel to the west stood on a "not very high hill," where was the "house of God," first sanctified by Jacob, for here it was he slept with his head resting on a stone and dreamt of Paradise, whereby he declared, "Surely the Lord is in this place---this is the Gate of Heaven." Thus it became recognised as a most sacred spot and was named Paradise, signifying "near unto God" (παρϰ near, Δις God), and here Jacob erected an altar. He slept at Bethel coming from Beersheba.[125] 

Originating from Avalon, as seems to have been the case the history of Jacob's Stone throws a more direct light upon its past rather than had it been brought all the way from the Near East as generally supposed. As all know it now reposes in Westminster Abbey, on which is superimposed the Coronation Chair used for the ceremony of the crowning of all the monarchs of England since Edward I captured it from the king of the Picts, and who carried it triumphantly to London—all except Queen Mary Tudor, who refused to be crowned on it. This ancient stone, taken traditionally from Bethel to Hebron, thence to Jerusalem, on the fall of that city according to Jeremiah, was carried away by him firstly to Mizpah and finally concealed in Pharaoh's palace  at Taphnes (the Daphne of Herodotus), in all likelihood the present Llandaff, near Cardiff, a very ancient and religious centre.[126] From Taphnes, as the Irish traditions record, Jeremiah removed the Stone and took it, together with other sacred relics, to Tara, and later it was removed to Dunstaffnage Castle, Oban, and subsequently to Scone, upon which the Scottish kings had been crowned, until Edward removed it to London, affording thus a very complete itinerary of its history and one also very different from the accepted account of a journey from the Near East which has caused many to be sceptical of the claims made for its past. 

The Irish have definite records of Jeremiah dwelling in their island, of his burial place, and of the two princesses, one named Scota, who played a large part in the genealogy of the Milesian kings of Ireland, and who is described as a daughter of Pharaoh, as she was, for he adopted them both. 

To Bethel and Ai did the aged prophet Samuel send Saul after he had privily anointed him captain of the host of Israel, and told him to go forward until "thou shalt come to the plain of Tabor, and there shall meet thee three men going up to God in Bethel---after that thou shalt come to the hill of God where is the garrison of the Philistines: and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place . . . and thou shalt prophesy with them."[127] Thus the surprised citizens, seeing the tough giant of a warrior intermingled with the prophets descending from the high place, asked incredulously, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

Plate VI: Celtic “Chess-Board” fields at Windmill Hill, Wilts, as laid out on hill-tops in the early Iron Age, by some ruling authority (see pp.149-151)

The interpretation of the passage is as follows: Saul, coming from the direction of the north, reaches the plain of Tabor, where is Avalon, meets three men on their way to the house of God in Bethel, otherwise Wirrall Hill, Glastonbury, near where stand the ruins of the ancient abbey. He proceeds onward to reach this hill of God (Mt. Tabor), where is stationed a Philistine garrison, and is accordingly the citadel or fortress; still onward he passes the city of Ai or Aijalon, and then encounters the seminary or school of prophets coming down from the "high place" of Bethel, that is the temple or altar of the Deity, on Wirrall Hill. The "hill of God" held by the Philistines is the present Tor. Observe that Samuel spoke of the plain of Tabor, in conjunction with Bethel, for the only Tabor we know of in the O.T. is Mount Tabor, which mountain is represented as standing stark in a fiat plain exactly as Glastonbury Tor rises abruptly like a huge sugar-loaf and dominates the flat country of Somerset, being an outstanding landmark for miles around. Mount Tabor, the same mountain where Ab'Ram dwelt, and where he parted company with Lot, is, and can be, none other than Glastonbury Tor. 

The Tor has, indeed, been compared by writers with Mount Tabor by those who saw a resemblance, but little conceived that they could be one and the same. It became subsequently regarded with extreme veneration as the traditional scene of Christ's Transfiguration. The Rev. Mr. Lawson thus describes it: 

The supposed scene of our Blessed Saviour transfiguration, and the alleged "holy mount" of St. Peter---Mount Tabor was doubtless the hill of "globular form" on which Polybius placed the town of Atabyrium. It was at one time so well fortified that Antiochus took it only by a stratagem similar to that which Joshua employed when he captured Ai.[128]

The reverend writer was seemingly unaware that Ai or Aijalon was identical with Mount Tabor, although the quotation from Genesis and that from I Samuel should have told him so. Joshua's stratagem to which he alludes, in order to capture this strongly fortified height, regarded then as invulnerable, was to send an indifferent force to make a feint frontal attack upon it, whereupon the garrison opened their gates and chased the foe as far as Shebarim—the city of Wells. Next day, Joshua again sent a small attacking force who once more drew away the defenders, but on this occasion he had concealed a strong army by Bethel—on the further side of the mountain—who, once the gates were opened and the garrison were pursuing his small force, entered it and put the people to the sword.[129] It was an ancient elementary trick of strategy. Mount Tabor, Ai and Bethel were all one and the same city. 

Doubtlessly Mount Tabor—Ab'Ram's "mountain"—was fortified from an early date, when Ab'Ram first occupied the site.[130] In the time of Samuel the citadel was held by the Philistines, as it was more than once, although evidently peaceable Israelites were permitted to go to the town when there was no war between the two peoples. Even in Samuel's day Mount Tabor was known as the "hill of God," although the sacred place, sanctified by Jacob's dream, was on the hill of Bethel. We hear little of Tabor from the time of David onwards, perhaps understandable in the circumstances. There is a considerable hiatus. Yet Mount Tabor shone with great glory as the traditional scene of the Transfiguration of Christ, bearing on which is the extraordinary legend that the Holy Grail of the Lord's Last Supper was take to Glastonbury by St. Joseph of Arimathea, which sacred vessel he was said to have buried at the foot of the Tor and from the place of its sepulchre there gushed forth the Blood Spring which may be inspected to this day. If this tradition be true—and it is not my function to question it—why should St. Joseph of Arimathea have crossed the seas and made his way to Avalon, where he built his church, and expressly have selected the Tor for the concealing place of so precious a relic unless the Chalice was associated with the most sacred moments of the life of the Saviour and because it was peculiarly related to the Tor? As the Mount of the Transfiguration there was every ostensible reason for such a pious act on the part of St. Joseph.[131] 

Nevertheless, in Glastonbury, the most sacred Christian site as it was evidently in the time of Samuel, is Wirrall Hill, or Weary-All-Hill, less than a mile west of the Tor. For here did St. Joseph land weary and tired, and when he had climbed the hill leant on his staff, which took root and produced a thorn-tree and was said to have miraculously blossomed annually on day of the Nativity. That is a pious tradition of course, but undoubtedly the Saint did settle in Avalon, built his church, was buried there, and the thorn-tree flourished until some three centuries ago. His church, built of wattle, with the famous Abbey and Monastery, were all destroyed in a disastrous fire in 1184. The restoration of the Abbey was ordered by Henry II who visited the site, and who partly restored it, as did Edward but this splendid edifice was never fully completed. A terrible earthquake caused great destruction in 1276, but for all that was worthy of its origin, the most important abbey in the British Isles, only to be finally ruined by Henry VIII, its revenues sequestered, and the beautiful edifice, on which so much loving labour had been lavished, with its roof stripped and its treasures stolen, together with its Monastery, remains a ruined reminder of the destructiveness of man on the site where nearly four thousand years before Jacob had erected his "House of God." 

Following the coming of St. Joseph and the building of his wattle church, Avalon became the Sancta Sanctorum of the Christian faith in England and here were deposited the Saint's bones in the churchyard on the south of St. Mary's Chapel. His tomb was said to have borne the simple epitaph, "Ad Britannos veni post Christum sepellevi: Docui: Quievi." (I came to the Britons after I buried Christ: I taught: I rest.) Other early saints were buried there, including St. Benignus, St, Dunstan, St. Gildas, the Venerable Bede, and many others. William of Malmesbury says that St. Gildas died there and was buried in the Old Church before the Altar. Also he says that St. Patrick was sent to Ireland by Pope Celestine and returned to Cornwall, thence to Glastonbury where he became Abbot.[132] Whether the leaders of the early Church which rose to so great eminence at Avalon possessed knowledge of its link with Mount Tabor and back to Ab'Ram and Jacob, who can say? but its importance is fully demonstrated by the names of the famous churchmen who were its devoted sons, St. Patrick is said to have become its first Abbot in 449, succeeded by St. Benignus, who was born at Meath, became Bishop of Armagh and followed St. Patrick to Glastonbury. Many Irish saints also visited and worked there, including St. Columba. 

It was claimed that the worship of Christ was first instituted at Avalon, and St. Augustine actually reported the fact to Pope Gregory in the year 600.[133] As Augustine was specially sent from Rome to convert the Britons and yet wrote in such a vein there is strong testimony to its truth. In 704, the pious King Ine of the West Saxons granted a special charter to the Church and Monastery in which he said, "He acts thus in his desire to strengthen the first church in Britain, and the foundation and origin of all religion," and, indeed, he felt so strongly on the subject that he visited Rome and there besought the Pope to take Glastonbury under his special protection because of its sanctity. 

The question of the claims of this ancient city to have been the fops et origo of the Christian religion has of itself no part or parcel in my general investigations here except in so far as that St. Joseph of Arimathea may justly be regarded as having been specifically drawn to it for some definite motive when he selected it as the site for his church. We are well aware that the early Christian teachers regarded it as a pious duty to erect churches on the site of some former pagan fane, like St. Columba settlement in Iona, the idea being to expel the Devil from such lairs, and the same belief may have inspired St. Joseph. Moreover, there still remains the strange question of Mount Tabor and the Transfiguration of Christ as witnessed by many according to Christian doctrine. If Mount Tabor were the scene of that sacred phenomenon, and if St. Joseph actually concealed the Holy Chalice in the Tor---still called Chalice Hill—or even, if such were believed to have been the case at the dawn of Christianity, we find a most significant link between Avalon and the Biblical Ai or Aijalon, which I have traced down from Havilah throughout the earliest times from Ab'Ram himself. 

It would rather seem as though the island capital lay fallow or in ruins over a period, perhaps even for a long period, from its palmy days before it became so famed a Christian site. We find no mention of it in Roman records, such as Ptolemy's Geographia the Antonine Iter, Ravennas, or the Notitia. It may have remained for a long while derelict or drowned except its Tor and Wirrall Hill. Like the pile villages it may have largely lain under an accretion of soil. The Rev. Mr. Marston, whom I have previously cited, asserts that the Uxella was the "key to Western Britain," and the meeting-place of many civilisations, as is no doubt true. He claims that the Cymry built the great camps and roads uniting the chief centres, and states that Glastonbury's chief exports were corn, cattle, fabrics, gold, silver, lead, and lapis, calaminaris, or carbonate of zinc. He also claims that Hu Gadarn led the Cymry into Somerset at least a thousand years B.C. If we identify him with Ab'Ram or Salatis, as is unavoidable, the date of his coming would have been nearer 2160 B.C. than 1000 B.C. 

Hu Gadarn is supposed to have first settled at Somerton, and to have given that name to the county, which lies only seven miles south of Glastonbury and bears traces of great antiquity, with remains of a Roman road to Ilchester. It lay on the boundary of the marsh Uxella, and nearby is a small hamlet named Paradise. This name is found again near Burnham, and more notably at Glastonbury in the vicinity of Wirrall Hill. Local folklore declares that Jesus when a boy was taken to Avalon by his uncle Joseph, and that they lodged in Paradise.[134] How comes it that this name Paradise is to be found in three places in Somerset but nowhere else? 

In this world of boasted progress in culture and civilisation which those words portend, it may formulate a solemn thought in the minds of some when we survey the romantic history of this most ancient city, at a period of some four thousand years ago, that a pious patriarch set up an altar, on whose site a lowly but ineffably precious fane was subsequently erected, because he associated his vision of the angels and the ladder to heaven as a sign that he was near to God, which is the meaning of Paradise; that through the ages this same city became sacred in the eyes of men for reasons yet to be shown but indelibly associated with King Arthur; that in due course it became the first seat of Christianity where a splendid fane was reared through the goodwill and piety of the worshippers of Christ inspired in the first place by the example of St. Joseph of Arimathea, and yet that all should have been brought to utter ruin through the avarice, malice, and hypocrisy of Henry VIII, who never failed to prate of his Christianity; and that finally in a materialistic world where the tyranny of a Tudor King wreaked great wrong to Christian ethics, nevertheless Glastonbury Abbey and the vestiges of its monastery stand yet a ruin on the site of the venerable past as a lasting memory of something infinitely greater than worldly aims. 

In the foregoing I have endeavoured to produce factors to explain that Ai or Aijalon and Bethel became the Avalon of Somerset, and as Avalon was the Havilah of Genesis, the Garden of Eden, Paradise, so that in turn became according to the Scriptures the scene from whence "Adam and Eve" were expelled; that it was the true land of Sodom; that it was for a while a region of flaming fire: "The Lord God sent man forth from the Garden of Eden; and he placed at the east of the Garden, Cherubim and a Flaming Sword which turned every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life." 

But nothing really dies. The Garden of Eden, Havilah, Paradise, all was restored, and the heart of the pagan Underworld or Annwn was destined to give birth to the first Church of Christ. Only then did the Infernal Deities pass into the limbo of the forgotten past.

VI. 

AVALON, GARDEN OF EDEN 

In my previous chapter close resemblances were shown to' have existed between Avalon and Memphis, their strange physical resemblances being an outstanding feature. Not only, were both built amid or adjoining a great marsh, in both cases, the encroaching waters from the sea or "Nile" held back by a bank or dyke, but both were in proximity to a lake specially excavated, called Moeris in the Greek account and Meare, the name of the lake where is now Meare Pool, and through which flows the canalised river Brue, once far more widely spread; and, further, Avalon vied with Memphis as the sacred city of the illustrious dead, a curious likeness between the two. Then we have the account of Manetho that Salatis, who answers in every way to Ab'Ram, dwelt mostly in Memphis, in the same way that Ab'Ram affected Ai, or Aijalon. There was a garrison of Philistines in the time of Samuel and Saul, and we have a further statement of how Jonathan smote the Philistines from Michmash to Aijalon, the inference being that it was their stronghold where they sought refuge on that occasion.[135] It stood in the Philistine country especially, near Gath and Gerar, with Ascalon (also Eshkalon and Eshcol), identifiable with Ischalis, now Ilchester, and with Gaza, or Azzah, which probably stood on the site of Exeter, another prehistoric Philistine settlement. 

It should be recognised that the Old Testament is not consecutive history, but rather a series of episodes sometimes loosely strung together in the times of the Israelites, and accordingly we are unable to compute how often they managed to seize Aijalon from the Philistines or how they lost it, or even how Ab'Ram captured it in the first place. But we may realise that the Philistines acquired finally the upper hand in those parts with the defeat and withdrawal of David, and that the Ramses kings made it at some time their most important city in which it seems to have even superseded Rabbath-Ammon in their affections. 

This was especially the case with the later Ramses, who paid great attention to the embellishment of the city of Memphis, and most especially to its famous temple of the sorcerer deity, Ptah. Manetho says that Ramses-Miammun carried out large works, and his successor Amenophis used Babylonian prisoners to drag huge stones for an extension of the god's temple. To comprehend what lay behind this cultivation of Ptah and what his temple signified it is important to realise what Ptah represented. This Underworld deity par excellence was the god of armaments, the Egyptian counterpart of Hephaestus, and like him was depicted sometimes as a blacksmith with his hammer and leather cap, at others symbolically as the living black bull Apis with the special markings required of the animal to be selected for the honour of divinity. This bull had to be black, with a white triangle on its forehead and a scarab mark on its tongue, which may have signified to the initiated black for gunpowder, white triangle the flash of lightning, and the scarab ideology the missile. Such would accord with the divine birth of the god, when Zeus descended on to, the White Cow, as a flash of lightning. 

Gerald Massey says of Ptah: 

There is hieroglyphic evidence that the Egyptian creation of the earth by Ptah was not cosmical but a mode of hollowing out Amenta in the lower earth and of tunnelling the mount to make a passage through----With Kheper-Ptah, the beetle was the burrower through the hidden earth. Ptah was the worker with that element (fire) and his associate gods became the blacksmiths and metallurgists, who blazed their way through Tanen, termed the Earth of Ptah.[136] 

All this sounds very occult, as indeed it was intended to be. "He is depicted," continues Mr. Massey, "in one of the representations at Philae, sitting at the potter's wheel in the act of giving shape to an egg."[137] Some might allege that it signified the mundane egg, but there was a more usual type of egg called the "serpent's egg," and such "eggs" were believed to be created by the Druids in the depths of their dark caves, the Druidic "Serpent's Egg," the ovum anguinum of Pliny, being described by Aneurin, a Welsh bard, as "that involved ball which casts its rays to a distance, the splendid product of the adder, shot forth by serpents."[138] In all this we have the association of blacksmiths, metallurgists, and deep caverns of the earth, where the associates of  Ptah blazed their way through the Lower Earth, for purposes related to these mysterious "serpents' eggs." Was it so occult after all? 

Ptah spelt Power, and little wonder that the Ramses kings in their zenith lavished unending care and attention on his temple in Memphis, which we are told consisted of a vast series of edifices surrounded by a wall and gates, and which commanded the city like a grim fortress. It may be said that no vestiges of such a temple have survived in the present Egypt, not even its foundations, although much money has been lavished in search and excavations made for it. 

Another site near Memphis that seems to have borne some relation to the temple of Ptah was the Labyrinth, an edifice of immense size visited by Herodotus, he states. It lay a little above Lake Moeris—another missing site in Egypt—and consisted of twelve roofed courts with six gates both north and south, surrounded also by a wall. It had 1,500 chambers or storage rooms above ground and a like number underground, perhaps some of the "tunnels"—but what they contained is a puzzle. Herodotus says he inspected the upper chambers, but he could only have been conducted to a few, and all he vouchsafed on the subject was that he passed with admiration from courts into chambers and from them into corridors, but what aroused his admiration other than their size he leaves unsaid. He does confess that the keepers refused to allow him to inspect those underground.[139] As this vast edifice was used for utilitarian purposes, and much of it was secret, we may draw our own conclusions, but like the temple of Ptah not a trace of this great building has ever been discovered on or near the site of the ruined mounds to which the name of Memphis has been given. 

On occasions the god Osiris assumed the functions of Ptah, and became the Apis Bull. There is a strange saying in the Book of the Dead in which Osiris declaims, "The Tunnels of the earth have given me birth," and this occult utterance is followed by a another, namely, "Osiris enters the tail of a great serpent, is drawn through its body, comes out of its mouth, and is born anew."' These cryptic words signified actually nothing more or less than an allusion to a missile which is loaded into the breach of a mortar, is drawn through its body, is ejected from its mouth, and by repetition may be described as born anew.[140] The analysis of this, like other supposedly intensely mystic sayings, discloses merely the disguise of "black magic," practised for essential motives. 

In these circumstances it is not in the least surprising that the judicious Diodorus identifies Osiris with Dionysus, the Serpent God, a "Serpent" also born mythologically in a cave, as also with Serapis (cp. seraph), another symbol of the same science. He says, 

To Osiris they gave the invention of ivy which was also consecrated to him by the Egyptians, as by the Greeks to Dionysus. In the ceremonies and their sacrifices ivy was preferred before the vine because the same loses its leaves and the other abides continually green. Osiris is sometimes named Serapis, at other times Dionysus, Pluto, Ammon, Jupiter, and by others, Pan; and many think that Serapis is the same whom the Greeks term Pluto.[141] 

Diodorus' words amount to this, namely that the secret practice of the Infernal deities and all they portended was utilized long ago on a great scale. Diodorus did not apparently realise what this ancient devotion signified, for the secret had been lost or was concealed long before the beginning of the first Century A.D. 

The writer of the Book of Enoch comprehended, however, when he reported the words of the Angel of Peace as he conducted Enoch to that very region of the west which he describes as Paradise and the Garden of Eden, to the very region, in fact, of Avalon, where the patriarch was shown the "Satanites" manufacturing weapons on a gigantic scale: "All these things which thou hast seen shall serve the dominion of His Anointed that he may be potent and mighty on the earth." In the original Egypt, nay in this same region as we have seen, with Ptah providing the key, may we identify the true heart or core of this occult industry whose real practices were  obscured from the vulgar by arcane rites and severe ceremonies. It was held to be a sacred quest and Memphis was the city where, according to Plutarch, stood the tomb of "the good man Osiris" and also that of Isis. He had been a mortal king, as Isis had been a queen, but the murder of Osiris by Set was reputed to have occurred near Memphis, and there was a legend that on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which flowed into the deep near Tanis—otherwise the city of Dan, our town of Taunton or near by—the body of Set or Typhon floated out to the sea. In this, the Tanitic mouth answers to the River Parrett of so many names in the past. 

I suggest that in the foregoing the fate of Osiris and his murder by Set, the celestial serpent, is an etherealised version of the fate of the traditional King Arthur, who was slain by his rival Mordred, on the banks of Camlan, believed to have been the River Camel, whence he was taken to Avalon, died there and was buried, although his spirit survived. If I am not mistaken Arthur's period was that immediately preceding the Great Catastrophe.

In the mystical career of Arthur, which comes down from very, early times in veiled allusions, we find a strangely similar aspect comparable to that ascribed to Osiris, in respect of which I am indebted to the researches of Mr. Lewis Spence. Significant in this aspect is the bardic poem known as "The Spoils of Annwn," the Cymric name for Hades, which relates to a visit paid to the nether regions by Arthur and his company ostensibly to rescue Gwair ap Geircin, who had attempted the journey and had been, imprisoned there, but was actually a pretext to visit the Underworld in the region of Avalon. Spence says it is similar to another poem entitled "The Harrowing of Hell," which describes a descent into the "abyss" to carry away its secrets and treasures. Prof. Rhys says that the principal treasure carried away by Arthur was the Cauldron of the Head of Hades or Pwyll.[142] 

The explanation of these mysterious visits to the Underworld plainly relates to Masonic initiations—Freemasonry is of extreme antiquity and was practised on both sides of the Atlantic long before the Flood—behind which mystifications the true purpose was evidently the initiation of King Arthur himself into the innermost secrets (or developments) of the Cabiri gods after he had undergone certain rites and ceremonies in some underground crypt, for the mention of the Cauldron contains the clue to the intention. Furthermore, behind it all the true motive was by means of "Magic" to acquire POWER and DOMINATION.

Annwn or Hades, says Spence, was sometimes a horrible abyss, at others a germinating place for life, and yet again, as a dim region not unlike this world and bearing resemblance to Avalon. 'The goddess Ceredwyn (or Ceres), Queen of Hades, the, British Isis, prepared a Cauldron in Annwn round which and below flames played. Closely involved in this test was an arcane Druidic fraternity called the Pheryllt, who were associated with the rites of the Cauldron.[143] The word pheryll (cp. Lat. ferro) means iron, so they were sorcerers in the uses of iron for certain purposes, and the Cauldron will signify the smelting of it in some form. In the Forest of Dean, many centuries ago, miners worked deep subterranean passages called scowles in order to extract the iron ore, and to this day yew-tree hedges still mask the entrances to prehistoric workings suggestive of Cabiri secrecy. It was originally known as "Feryllog," the Place of Iron. It is not: difficult to assess the object of the Pheryllt or Feryllt brotherhood in this Underworld traffic, who, Spence says, were a branch of Druidism, teachers and scientists skilled in all that necessitated the agency of fire, whence the name has been equivalent to alchemists or metallurgists, their handiwork being known as the "arts of the Pheryllt." He believes that their headquarters were in the mystic city of Emrys, in the district of Mount Snowdon, known as Dinas Affaraon, or the "Higher Powers," but which might be translated also as the "City of Pharaoh." This cast employed the Cauldron of Ceredwyn, of which the elusive bard Taliesin remarks significantly, "It would not boil food for coward." I fervently wish that such "occult" references were appreciated at their true value. 

Doubtless, seeing the significance of the foregoing, it would not! Behind all the mysticism lies, as I suggest, certain Masonic initiations into Black Magic, conducted in "tunnels" or caverns into which King Arthur was introduced, like Osiris. The same system, showing the initiation of a king or chief to the magic of a "serpent rod" comes from Palenque, Mexico, a former great city. The Popol-Vuh is full of such magical indications. 

Pwyll is another mystic figure in the Celtic Underworld, who in one of the legends of the Mabinogion, is Prince of Dyved (or Pembroke), and changes places with the Devil himself for a year. Pwyll, indeed, rejoices in various names and is able to assume many forms, while among his possessions is the Castle of the Grail or Cauldron. In an ancient bardic poem entitled "Cadair Ceredwyn," or the Chair of Ceredwyn, the hero Peridwr visits his mystic underworld castle. In another, entitled the "Conte de Graal," Peridwr is expected to put a certain vital question to the. "Fisher King," who is lame, this being, "Unto whom serveth of the Grail?" Peridwr fails to ask this question which would have released the "Fisher King" from his "mystical dumbness" and would have permitted him to pass on the translation of the "Secret Words" and thus have dispelled the "Enchantment of Britain." I venture to think that this also may be explained by an understanding of the true nature of "Black Magic," and perhaps has an historical meaning. The "Fisher King" is more obvious. Prof. Rhys, citing from the story of this mysterious personage, remarks, "Much knew he of the black art, more than an hundred times changed he his semblance." Spence reveals his identity: 

In the first place the ruler of Hades is frequently lame, and Hephaestus, Weyland Smith, and even the mediæval Satan show this deformity. Pwyll, the Fisher King, is, indeed, the grand black magician of the Underworld, who still has the means of fertility, inspiration, and regeneration in his mystical cauldron.[144] 

For my part I cannot allot to Pwyll so altruistic a plan as Mr. Spence accords to him. Hephæstus, Weyland Smith, Satan, and Ptah, all represent a purely materialistic creation or symbolic phase of divinity of an infernal character with possible slight deviations to suit the genius of the different peoples. The Græco-Phoenician Hephaestus, for instance, was traditionally thrown down from Olympus by Zeus, and was accordingly lamed, but having reached the earth he burrowed in tunnels and under burning mountains on islands, like Lemnos, where his satellites manufactured metal work and arms. Ptah differed only slightly, but the principle was the same in all these instances, the intention being to individualise him as the dominating genius of the Underworld, using lightning or fire as his medium of creation and destruction. If, as I opine, the bardic legends relate to Masonic initiations in what Prof. Rhys terms "the black art," the "Fisher King," or Ptah or Pwyll was represented by the Hierophant or Master of Ceremonies at inner initiation rites, masquerading as Ptah, and held that position probably for a year. 

Consider with these very secret assignations in the bowels of the earth, those deep crypts mysteriously used by certain Druids, the fraternity of the Pheryllt, the magicians working in iron, a Cauldron which boils something most obscure but "not food for a coward," surely therefore the implication lies at hand. If the product were not for cowards it infers contrariwise that the result required brave men—heroes, warriors! And who were these alchemists other than the Cabiri gods or Cyclops, and what was the "abyss" or subterranean place of Hades but one of those underground Cabiri temples which Herodotus describes as built underground? Surely the "art" was producing explosives! 

The heart of this activity or science appears to have been centred in Avalon, although we may believe that there were many actual scenes of Cabiri workshops, as in the Forest of Dean, in Dinas Affaraon, in the Cassiterides Isles, and elsewhere too. As to Avalon we have the evidence of the pile villages and it is possible extensive excavations at or under the base of the Tor might produce results. At all events we find in another direction close resemblances between King Arthur and Osiris, both of whom were subsequently deified, and both made periodical visits to the Underworld or Hades for obscure but most important reasons. Spence makes the following comparison between the two god-kings: 

When Arthur is slain by his treacherous nephew Mordred, he is carried off in a barque by his sister to the mysterious isle of Avallach or Avalon. There he remains, neither alive nor dead awaiting the fateful day when Britain shall require his sword. 

The history of Osiris has many points of resemblance with that of Arthur. When slain by his treacherous brother Set, the body of the Egyptian god was ferried in the sacred barque across the Nile to the regions of Aalu in the West.[145] 

By Permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. Crown Copyright Reserved. 

PLATE VII. Celtic "chess-board" fields, near st. Anne's farm, in the highest part of Wiltshire. The people were removed from the valleys to new hill-top villages before the flood of atlantis or noah.

The older traditions of King Arthur bear many characteristics like those attributed to the Pharaohs and especially of those relating to Sesostris, who, it would seem, was actually the same king as Amenophis, the last king of the nineteenth Ramses Dynasty, according to Manetho. In the Mabinogi of Pwyll, Pendevig Dyved, we find Arthur lauded as "Adorable Potentate,' Sovereign Ruler, who hast extended thy dominion over the boundaries of the earth," and "whose sword stretched from Scandinavia to Spain."[146] Sir John Mallory, in his Morte d'Arthur, describes him as "King of Dacia, Gaul, and Britain." These' are proud boasts to make, and we have to consider whether they were rhetorical and exaggerated claims or whether they were based on reality. They did not certainly relate to some King, Arthur who is said to have lived in the sixth century A.D. and who fought bravely but vainly against the invading Saxons. In the Mabinogion collection of legends and mythological tales, very ancient and mystical in character, Arthur was suzerain prince among others of King Lot of the Orkneys, whose sons, Sir Gareth and Sir Gawain, attended his court. That may throw a considerable clue to the age of the real Arthur for it is scarcely a name thrown carelessly into the legends and such being the case, it infers, if no more, that the sway of Arthur spread afar and included the Orkney Isles, if not the Shetlands. 

PLATE VIII. "Black magic": a Cabiri initiation found on a sculptured stone at Palenque, Mexico — a unique representation of prehistoric knowledge of firearms. 

A chief, in Celtic dress, with kilt and sporran, being initiated into the mystery of the "Brazen Serpent" or "Serpent Rod" by a High Priest (See p. 142) 

Lot's name is preserved in the name of the Lothian Hills near Edinburgh, and we have additional evidence of the Scottish sovereignty of Arthur in such place-names as Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh, as Arthur's Stone near Angus, and Arthur's O'en (Oven) near Falkirk, the latter town formerly named Camelon, an Arthurian name, the Oven itself destroyed by an ignorant and grasping laird only some two centuries back, a most curious round building of great strength where the Knights of the Round Table were reputed to have met. 

In the Arthurian cycle of his adventures the hero king led the Britons across the seas to make war on the Roman Emperor in Cisalpine Gaul, but this is manifestly a later invention, for the original Arthur lived centuries before Rome was even dreamt of. I have said that he bears many characteristics in common with the great Pharaoh, Sesostris, who left his country on oversea adventures, and made his relative Armais act as his regent during his absence—as also did Arthur—which Armais seduced his queen as Mordred seduced Guinevere, and both Armais and Mordred attempted to usurp the throne. Sesostris, informed of the grave state of affairs when fighting against the Scythians, hastened home, leaving his conquests incomplete, and avenged himself against Armais. 

Arthur also was engaged in foreign conquests, returned home, his conquests uncompleted, and fought battles against Mordred, the crucial battle being at Camlan, generally identified with Cadbury Castle, the ancient prehistoric fortress about twelve miles south-east of Glastonbury, with a trackway between the two called "King Arthur's Ride." Leland describes it as "sometime a famous town or castle," and says much gold, silver, and copper coins were found there in the sixteenth century with other antique relics. Unhappily such invaluable clues to the past were doubtless sold and melted down. Traditionally, Arthur was carried to the Isle of Avalon and was  transported across the water by the mysterious Vivienne, "Lady of the Lake," and other goddesses, to that sacred city. 

Sesostris, says Manetho, as cited by Josephus, was most famed for his foreign conquests by land and sea, vanquishing Phoenicia, the Assyrians and Medes, "some by his arms, some without fighting, and some by the terror of his great army ; and being puffed up by the great successes he had, he went on still the more boldly and overthrew the cities and countries that lay in the eastern parts."[147] Herodotus says that Sesostris first proceeded in a fleet of ships by the Erythrean Sea, subduing nations until eventually he reached a sea non-navigable by reason of shoals. He returned to Egypt and the following year collected a vast army and made himself master of Thrace and Scythia.[148] Thrace and Dacia were one and the same and I indicated in my previous work that the Thracians were of the same origin as the Caledonians, and that Scythia was represented by Northern Russia, east of the Vistula, signifying that Sesostris went to the Baltic on this war of conquest. So did traditionally Arthur. 

In this expedition (continues Herodotus), Sesostris erected pillars of stone—called Osirei Pillars—in the subjected lands—using upright stones where the nations had been subdued only by the might of his arms; and of another kind, representing the feminine sex, where they tamely submitted without fighting.[149] They were apparently phallic symbols, like the Tinge and lingam of the Hindus, and were probably erected as religious emblems. Herodotus adds that he engraved his name and country on these monoliths. It is interesting to note that the Elgees, in their archæology of Yorkshire, describe certain stone monuments of the Bronze Age in Yorkshire of very similar character to those attributed to Sesostris: 

Many upright stones were of phallic significance----Belief in these symbols was widespread and so strong that it yet survives even to this day in remote places such as the Eastern Moorlands. But life is twofold. "Male and female created He them." Our stone triangles were probably erected as symbols of the Triune mother goddess.[150] 

Such is the one type. There is also the upright—the phallus—of which the Rudstone Monolith is an upstanding example, "the tallest monolith in the county if not in England," say the Elgees; "it stands in Rudstone churchyard, five miles west of Bridlington, is 25½ feet high, 3½ feet wide, and 2½ feet thick at the base. It has been shaped out of a block of grit, the nearest crop of which occurs over ten miles away.[151] The churchyard is itself circular, was apparently long ago a pagan site, and the ancients who evidently carted this immense stone, like those conveyed in a prehistoric age to Stonehenge, must have had some very definite purpose in so doing. It may be that the Rudstone Monolith, like the other relics mentioned by the Elgees, was related to the conquests of Sesostris, bearing in mind that the Britain of antediluvian days was divided into several states some hostile to one another. 

On his return home (continues Herodotus), Sesostris, bringing with him a host of prisoners, was met on the borders of Egypt at Pelusium by his treacherous brother, who gave a banquet in his honour at Daphne where he attempted to murder the king by incendiarism.[152] The prisoners the Pharaoh had brought were forced to drag huge masses of stone for the temple of Ptah at Memphis and also to dig canals in connection with his great system of division of the land. He was the only king of Egypt who also reigned over Ethiopia—or Cush, or Chaldea. Diodorus, in his account of the Deucalion Flood, which he places on the borders of Oceanus, says that Osiris at this time was marching into Ethiopia and adds that he was also named Egyptus.[153] The inference we may draw from these traces is that Sesostris, Arthur, and Osiris were considered to have been one and the same. 

Additional light on the personality of Sosostris seems to be thrown by the ecclesiastical historian Orosius, whose work Alfred the Great translated from Latin into the Saxon tongue. Calling him Vesoges, King of Egypt, he states that he conquered "Asia" (originally the name for the European  continent), marched his army into the northern parts of Scythia, and was pursued in turn by the Scythians who laid Egypt waste.[154] 

This sequel, in which the Scythians paid back the invading King of Egypt in his own coin, is that spoken of by Jordanis, the historian of the Goths, in his work, De Rebus Geticis. He speaks of the enforced emigration at a certain undefined but very early period of a great body of Goths from "Scandza" (Scandinavia), their primordial home, led by the prophet Zalmoxis, and that on the River Tanais (Tana Fiord and River on the borders of Scandinavia and Lapland), the Goths waged desperate war against the husbands of the Amazons and met the Egyptians in battle, whom they afterwards pursued into Egypt. This account tallies with the invasion of these same Scythian lands by Sesostris, and, moreover, the mention of Zalmoxis, who appears to have been the classic version of Moses, gives a consistent line on this period and on the after events in the reign of Sesostris.[155] 

On these oversea adventures Sesostris may be believed to have led his fleet and army by sea from Somerset and the Severn along the English Channel (the Erythrean Sea), to have conquered the countries where Holland and Hanover now exist, then to have passed up the eastern shores of Britain by Yorkshire and Scotland, and on his second expedition to have crossed into the Baltic Sea, defeating the various peoples or accepting homage, until he reached the Gulf of Bothnia where he encountered the Scythians, or emigrant Goths, who were frequently claimed as identical. Jordanis himself says that the Goths who emigrated under Zalmoxis became Scythians. 

We learn further from Herodotus that some of the soldiers of Sesostris, possibly those left behind in his hurried retreat from the northernmost parts, formed a colony at Colchis (later placed in Russian Iberia), famed as the goal of the Argonauts in their epic search for the Golden Fleece, the site of which may be placed conjecturally in the vicinity of Kolko in Latvia. In all these matters, to reach an understanding we must look to the north and not in the direction of the Black Sea, as the history of the Goths indicates and finds confirmation in other directions including the O.T. itself.[156] In these same Scythian or Russian lands dwelt the Parthians, descendants of the Medes, both of whom were classed indifferently as Scythians by later writers; but Parthian meant "exile," were the original Goths, and we may probably trace their settlement in Perthshire, also according to Waddell, to other parts of Britain as well. The Scythians, who entered and remained in Scotland, were the Skutai, Scotti, or Scots, hence what had been Cimmeria became Scythia, as Herodotus says. 

The Scots possess, indeed, a curious reference to the Egyptian Pharaoh's activities in the north in the ancient Scot's Chronicle, which says, "Ye Pechtis war chasyt out of yir awin Landis callit Sichia be ane prince of Egypt callit Agenore." The only Pharaoh to whom these words could apply is Sesostris. It seems also to fit in with the statement of Jordanis that the Goths arose originally in "Scandza," he says, "in the north." The Parthians or Exiles probably settled in the region of the present Riga, and all these with others at a period of about the twelfth century B.C. onwards, as Baxter claims in his Glossary of British Antiquities, spread over northern Europe and the British Isles speaking Gothic, Frisic, and Belgic. 

By his conquests Sesostris, for a brief period, acquired the hegemony of the ancient world, subduing the fierce peoples to the limits of the Baltic, perhaps for motives which have thus far been obscure, but it is as certain as most matters of antiquity that as he sowed the wind so did he reap the whirlwind. 

One important phase of his domestic policy must be stressed, namely his astonishing agrarian movement by which he transferred the population in the low-lying valleys to hill-top villages of which Diodorus gives us the best account. He says that "Sethoosis" divided the country into thirty-six provinces called Nomes, over which he placed Nomarchs, who had charge of the royal revenues and ruled over the Nomes. Probably his father (Ramses Miammun?) had inaugurated this policy, but Sethoosis raised "many new mounds" and transplanted to them the inhabitants  of towns situated in valleys, building new hill-top villages and many new canals. In this drastic transfer of population the soil was portioned out, every man having an equal division, the land being divided up into square or chessboard-plots of equal area for all, for which they paid rent in kind, surely a democratic peasant-ownership transaction, whereby the hills were cultivated for the first time in many parts. The land belonged entirely to the king, who allotted one-third of the revenues to the priests, one-third to the soldiers, and retained one-third for his own uses.[157] This great work may have been started by his father. 

We have the biblical reference to this policy as operated by Joseph, the account stating that the reason was because of famine, that Pharaoh provided the seeds and took one-fifth of their gains (or, say, income tax!) to himself.[158] It would appear that this revolutionary undertaking was not completed when Sesostris returned from his conquests, for Diodorus states that the hard taskwork in the cartage of stones for the temple of Ptah at Memphis and the building of canals, caused the "Babylonian prisoners" to rebel against the king.[159]

There exists not a vestige of any such operation in the land we know as Egypt in the south, nor could the arid granite mountains of that country have afforded opportunities of cultivation and that he was a pious and chivalrous monarch, the last great ruler or god-king of the nineteenth Ramses Dynasty, and who was, in fact, killed at the time of the Great Catastrophe, to be subsequently, with a revision of the religious cult, deified as the Judge of the Underworld, where it is probable he really met with his end, and became the god Osiris. There is evidence contained in the work of Manetho which appears to indicate that he was forewarned of a coming catastrophe, and it is possible, to say the least of it, that his policy of moving his people to heights was influenced and hastened by this foreknowledge. It is also not unlikely that this premonition caused him to raise the phallic symbols, being an extremely pious man, to remind mankind of the dangers that lay ahead, for the phallus was a representation of the destructive Deity, because a comet or a meteor approaching the earth and striking bears such a giant resemblance to the male organ, while the ashera in effect represented Mother Earth.[160] 

Borrow relates a very curious tradition held by the Spanish Gypsies of Esdramadura which gives a garbled version of the conquests of the Pharaoh in question, although he is not mentioned by name. It is worth relating because it throws a strong light upon the circumstances of the period under discussion: 

There was a king of Egypt and his name was Pharaoh. He made numerous armies with which he made war on all countries and conquered them all. And when he had conquered the whole world he became sad and sorrowful, for as he delighted in war he no longer knew on what to employ himself. At last he bethought him to make war on God. So he sent a defiance to God, daring him to descend from the sky and contend with Pharaoh and his armies. 

God was incensed against Pharaoh and resolved to punish him; he opened a hole in the side of a mountain and raised a raging wind, and drove before it Pharaoh and his armies; and the abyss received him and the mountain closed on them; but whoever goes to that mountain on the night of St. John's Day can hear Pharaoh and his armies singing and yelling. [I call bs on the Creator was incensed against pharaoh, someone might have been pissed, but it was not the true Creator. DC]

And it came to pass that when Pharaoh and his armies had disappeared, all the kings of the nations who had become subject to Pharaoh revolted, and having lost her king and her armies she was left utterly without defence. And they made war against her, and took her people, and drove them forth dispersing them all over the world.[161] 

There is a great deal of truth in this narrative despite the hyperbole, such being an essential to be remembered and preserved when tradition was oral. The "defiance" to God is a variation of ( Page 89 ) the Greek legend of the Giants who challenged the Gods and piled Pelion on Ossa and Ossa on Olympus in order to reach Zeus, a fable I suggest derived from the hill-top villages, and the artificial mounds used by Sesostris in his policy. The account gives us a sidelight on the Great Catastrophe, including the death of Pharaoh himself, and it describes the aftermath of the eclipse of the Atlantcan Egypt. 

There is yet another aspect of this really wonderful period of the world—and especially British—prehistory. The "new cultivation system," as Crawford describes the hill-top village policy, was one of the virtues ascribed to Osiris, "that good man," who was reputed to have taught the Egyptians the uses of agriculture.[162] I have no record to show of King Arthur's reputation in that respect except we have the indelible traces of the upland system in the parts over which he must have ruled. But Sesostris' passion for raising monoliths or great stones was shared by Arthur and also the fabulous Memnon. Who was the mysterious Memnon? 

Herodotus goes out of his way to state that Memnon was not an Egyptian, which suggests that others held an opposite view. At all events, Memnon was King of Ethiopia, and so was Sesostris, as well as of Egypt, and like the latter, he erected upright, sacred stones called "memnonia" after him, a word corresponding to the Gaelic menhir, and he was said to have raised them in various countries and also in Egypt. We know of the famous, statue of Memnon in the temple of Luxor, which, when struck by the first rays of the rising sun, was said to have emitted a note like the snapping of a chord. Does not our own Byron allude to "The Ethiopian King, whose statue turns a harper once a day"? That statue is still pointed out at Luxor, one of two Colossi, with numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions scrawled upon it, in the belief that it was Memnon's statue. It is said never to snap in modern times, but if that statue had been erected to Memnon, why was he represented merely as one of two Colossi? 

The setting-up of sacred stones by Sesostris, Memnon, and also King Arthur, of which many traditionally survive in Wales and Ireland, relating, it would seem, to the period shortly before the Great Catastrophe, may have been an invocation to that important meteor-sender, the Egyptian Hercules or Tyrian Melqarth. Was it not Hercules who was enlisted by the gods to destroy the invading giants? Arthur's name was peculiarly associated with great menhirs, as with cromlechs, in Wales, Wessex, and Scotland. Such were not only believed to be living stones, but to be able to speak on occasions and to possess a mystical and even medicinal value, as the seer Merlin was said by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have told Aurelius, King of Britain, when Merlin proposed that he should send to Mount Killeraus (Giant's Causeway), for the Giants' Dance Stones of Stonehenge. "They are mystical stones and of a medicinal value," he declared. "There is not a stone there which has not some healing virtue." In Irish legendry are several instances of such stones, like the Stones of Speculation, from which fire could be kindled, and a similar idea inspired the veneration for the Pillars of Hercules, as also for the monoliths of Avebury, attributed to the Hero-God. Is Whatmore too bold when he associates Arthur himself with the name of Melqarth? To wit, 

It can hardly be doubted that the bardic poetry of later times associated Arthur with the god Hercules, whose twelve tasks are perverted to the story of the Twelve Battles of Arthur. Hercules' original Melqarth may even have furnished the name of the British hero. (Melq, king, Arth). Arthur's Stone on Cefn Bryn, Gower, is a cromlech of eight perpendicular stones terminating in small points, on which rests a ninth stone weighing about twenty tons. Under it there is a spring called Lady's Well.[163] 

If Hercules represented divine fire it is well to recall that the Druids knew of two kinds of fire, one Dis-Lanach, God's Lightning, and Drui-Lanach, Druids' Lightning. Can we be certain that the Druids did not find it convenient to pass off the one as the other when it suited them, seeing that their strength rested mainly on their claim to possess supernatural powers?

In the foregoing I have shown how closely the figures of Sesostris, the great Egyptian monarch, the origin of Osiris, and King Arthur are interwoven whether we call the sacred city of their main activities in the Underworld cult by the name of Memphis or Avalon. Indeed, as already shown, they conjoin in the city situated on an island placed in a region of swamps; they are both great national leaders whose lives were dramatic and spectacular, both conquerors, whose end was tragic; both were buried in the city where they were believed to have died or else risen from the dead; and, to cap the foregoing, both were irrevocably mixed up with the use or development of magic power in the land subsequently devastated by a great catastrophe. In symbolism, they may be said to agree in many ways, for King Arthur, like Osiris, became deified in the opinion of many Celtic scholars. Spence contends on evidence he adduces that Arthur became "Hu," and that he was hailed as the "supreme proprietor of the Isle of Britain, symbolised by the ox, much as the Apis Bull represented Osiris."[164] 

SOUTH STAR MAP OF THE 

ZODIACAL GIANTS OF SOMERSET 

Nor let us lose sight of the fact that this sacred city was deemed to have lain in the heart of Paradise. It was termed the Isle of the Blessed. Its sanctity was based on a high state of civilisation, of an intimacy with the Deity apart from material power. If it were the veritable "Gate of Heaven" as Jacob pronounced Bethel to be, the "Very Seat of the Lord," and as successive generations believed unquestionably it to be, was it contingent only on that patriarch's dream? Was there any other reason? 

Not long ago a remarkable theory was published in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada by Mrs. K. E. Maltwood, her contention being that in some long-distant time certain astronomers laid out a gigantic zodiac among the little hills surrounding Glastonbury, which answers to the first "Mighty Labour of the Isle of Britain," of which the Welsh bards sang. She says, "It has rested prone on the heights for thousands of years, concealed with King Arthur's fabled 'Mantle of Invisibility,' though seeing everyone."[165]  

The sophistication of this design of the "Round Table" of the stars, explains the writer, proves that it was planned by experts who cleverly adapted the configuration of the surrounding terrain, and she continues in these words: 

During thousands of years the zodiac was so much revered that every figure there portrayed was a sacred emblem; for instance, the four evangelistic symbols of the Bull, Lion, Man, and Bird are found here in Somerset in their proper places at the four cardinal points, i.e. Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius, and Aquarius, whereas on modern maps there is no bird amongst the zodiacal constellations---Temples, as we understand them, were not great enough to contain the constellations; so Mother Nature was chosen to sustain them, and the thirty-mile circumference of this sacred area was looked upon in its beginning as the "Cauldron of unfailing supply."---We are told by the Welsh bards, the descendants of the Cymry, that it was stolen from the "Divine Land" for it was Annwn itself. Taliesin, who knew most about it, sings of "The Spoils of Annwn" of the recovery by Arthur of the magic Cauldron of Inspiration and that it was found at Caer Sidi, the zodiac. [166] 

The terrain of this immense zodiac is surrounded on three sides by hills rising up to 1,000 feet and crowned in many cases by prehistoric forts. On its west flows the Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, and within this great natural enclosure the low-lying hills give the outline of the figures which are governed to a great extent by the course of two small rivers penned in by the hills from most ancient times. 

In examining this plan the figures of the zodiac are seen to be so arranged that they converge towards Avalon not far from the centre of the circle, an amazing achievement seeing that some of them exceed an area of three miles in length. Mrs. Maltwood claims that at the time this territorial zodiac was devised, Leo and Scorpio were double the size in proportion than as now represented in star maps, so that Leo occupies the position of Cancer as well as his own and Scorpio that of Libra, which suggest a very ancient design, yet one which apparently continued for many long moons.[167] North of the circle are the winter months, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces, as well as Cetus, the Whale or Amphibious Monster. In the southern half are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Leo and Virgo. Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, is represented by the Phcenix, holding the water in his beak and fanning the burning nest with outstretched wings. 

The writer contends that the famous Isle of Avalon, towering 600 feet, out of the marsh, forms this fabulous bird, and the Urn it carries contains the "life-giving 'blood spring,' known far and wide as Chalice Well. Its waters are radio-active and stain the stones over which it flows blood red."[168] 

In the same writer's opinion this immense zodiac should solve the problem of when, where, and how the constellations were first designed, which she attributes to Hu Gadarn. Whether or no it is evident to all students of astronomical symbology that when the wise men divided up the signs of the zodiac from selected groups of stars in the universe, groups through which the sun passed in his annual passage, they selected arbitrary figures to suit some especial and particular purpose. In other words, the stars that denote Taurus bear no real resemblance to a bull, or those of Leo to a lion, and so on, yet there was some evident motive for such a decision. It may have been that the contours of the terrain around Avalon naturally accorded them the shapes which seemed to invite immortality in a star map. The selection of the Phoenix with Urn to represent Avalon may lend itself to a suggestion that it was here the astronomers first discovered the Sothic Cycle of 1461 years, or, as I contended in my previous work, originally of 1440 years before the Great Catastrophe or Flood altered the orbit of the earth by lengthening it to 365 1/4 days from a previous year of 360 days. We are told from ancient records that, after the Flood, Hermes— representing the Druidic genius—revised the zodiac and calendar, and assuming the fact of this ( Page 92 ) vast zodiac, we appear to look on a solar design laid out long before the period of the Great Catastrophe, and that Avalon, the heart of it, originally gave us the zodiacal signs.[169] 

********************* 

In concluding this investigation into the remote past in relation to events immediately preceding the Flood or Great Catastrophe, an inquest whereby many famous biblical cities and sites in Wessex have been identified, as I contend, especially noting Somerset and in that ancient seat of mankind the Isle of Avalon, the reason why this should have been the focus of activity in prehistoric times is, I suggest, apparent. It lay in the heart of the ancient ore-mining region, particularly of copper and tin, hence bronze, when the ancient world was narrow and circumscribed, in addition to being an ideal maritime centre with its Severn, Avon, and inland sea, the Uxella. It was the scene of the first settlement of the Atlanteans at Gades, later Tarshish, now identified with the region of Bristol port; it brought Cadmus and Cilix in search of "Europe," the West, as it attracted Ab'Ram or Hu Gadarn like a magnet, in search of those invaluable metals which granted the owner POWER. It is no answer to aver that copper, tin, iron, and other ores could be and were discovered elsewhere because in the earlier times they remained unknown to the northern Aryans, and in any case were far overseas when sailing in uncharted seas which must necessarily have been a hazardous undertaking. Speaking of bronze itself, the contiguity of both copper and tin strongly presupposes that here the value of that alloy was first of all discovered in the local foundries. 

Somerset accordingly was the prehistoric El Dorado of those who wished to procure and manufacture arms. I have said comparatively little in regard to the prehistoric science in weapons, including firearms, although it is manifest that they played the most vital part in ancient "power politics," as we term it in modern days, and the possession of the knowledge of metallurgy must have been one of the most urgent yet secret objects on the part those who desired to rule the ancient world. Somerset became, in consequence, the centre of invasion and later of wars by others who desired to acquire the hegemony of the ancient world, notably the Assyrians. Avalonia, as the first scientific centre of the power of Ab'Ram, and later of the Ramses kings, was the arena of the final battles before the Great Catastrophe destroyed the main part of its high civilisation as described in the Book of Enoch and by the prophet Ezekiel who says that Egypt shall be utterly waste and desolate and uninhabitable for forty years, never to recover her former power.[170] Here took place, by all accounts, the climax of the thirteen years' war between the Gods and the Giants, the region where "His Anointed" in the Book of Enoch, the last of the great Egyptian or British kings, frenziedly prepared weapons to defeat the oncoming threat. 

To that aspect I shall now turn in the next part of this research. I conclude this portion with the sad reflection that wars have apparently been always based—whatever the pretext—on the ambitions of rulers to acquire domination and wealth by accumulating weapons which give them predominance over all others and the neglect or inability of others to defend themselves. It is essentially true of our own times and, I fear, likely to exist to the end of time. The world never, alas, learns from the past, and recognises the menace of tyrants too late.