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Part 6: Arcadia

Author's Note:

The following paintings in the section were first featured in the book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, (1982) and at the time and for a long time afterwards, these paintings were considered to contain a cipher or code associated with the Holy Grail and the Rennes le Chateau mystery.

  These paintings have never been deciphered until now, and again I would say they are really associated with this ancient code relating to the earth's axis and also an ancient shamanic cosmology that extends back to Egypt, Giza and beyond. 

There are two versions of the Arcadian Shepherds by Poussin. The first entitled Les Bergers d’Arcadie, painted between 1626 and 1629 is not in the Louvre but in Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England.

  Poussin’s first version shows two male shepherds and a shepherdess examining a decoratively designed tomb with the inscription “ET IN ARCADIA EGO” on the side - an enigmatic phrase - which has had many of us perplexed.

We will come back to this later (see bottom of page).

  Although the second version painted c. 1640 is more popular, this first version is very interesting as it holds several significant clues that many researchers have overlooked.

First of all, the three individuals who are inspecting the tomb are wearing Red, White and ‘dark blue’. Sometimes the blue is substituted for Black. This is a familiar theme, which I have already mentioned and first brought attention to in the book I co-authored with Philip Gardiner, The Serpent Grail (2005).

  Again, these three colours relate to the Triad – i.e., the male and female opposites and neutral (black) where the positive and negative opposites become fused together as one and neutralised . . . cancelled out - hence "black".

  On top of the tomb rests a skull – likely to be the head of the one who rests inside the tomb.

  As said, a skull also makes it way into Shakespeare’s Play of Hamlet – which is based on an ancient myth about the “Mill”, a metaphor for the earth’s axis and the cycle of precession – as well as the myth of Osiris and his avenger Horus, on whom Hamlet is originally based.

  Hamlet avenges the murder of his father by his uncle. In the Play, Hamlet examines a skull, and wonders whom it might have belonged to. It is said that it was Sir Francis Bacon who really wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. This is interesting as Bacon was associated with the ‘secret academy’ that understood this cosmology of knowledge concerning what appears to have been a belief in the ‘golden age’ of the upright axis and encoded it in various sources - as we have seen.

  The male shepherd in red holds a shepherd’s crook which is bent slightly and angled at 72 from the vertical (72 is a precession number) and the other shepherd (and it could be the shepherdess) is holding a wooden staff, which is angled at 60 from the vertical. This is possibly a ‘flail’ and if correct then Poussin was careful not to make this obvious.

  For some reason Poussin found it necessary to use the esoteric method of conveying important information while at the same time ‘veiling’ it – in the belief that those who overlook this information actually prove themselves “unworthy” in not noticing it.

(Note that staffs, spears, lances and skulls are a recurring motif in many of the paintings from this period – especially those associated with the Rennes le Chateau mystery).

  Now what is interesting, is that in ancient Egypt the crook and flail were symbols of power and rulership held by the god Osiris as well as pharaohs and high officials. Like Osiris the king was considered the “shepherd of his own people” and it’s a fact that many ancient peoples (especially in Mesopotamia) referred to their kings as ‘Shepherd Kings’ – as if in respect of those ‘Shepherds of men’ – the Shining Ones. The Sumerians named the constellation of Orion ‘the Shepherd’ and as said, Orion was seen to contain the soul of the ‘resurrection god’ Osiris and represented both Osiris and Horus in its image.

  Osiris is usually depicted holding the crook and flail (his emblems) in each hand and with his arms folded across his chest – the same regal position that Tutankhamun and other pharaohs were depicted; and in these later depictions these two power symbols were held is such a way that they made a diagonal cross.

  Is it a mere coincidence that the crook and staff held by the shepherds in Poussin’s painting are in the same slanted positions as the crook and flail held by Osiris, as depicted in ancient Egyptian art?

  The colours of Red, White and Black belonging to the Triad, and which we see in the garb worn by the three shepherds looking at the tomb, could also apply, and respectively, to the Egyptian Triad: Osiris, (masculine principle) Isis (feminine principle) and Horus (the child) who represents the neutral ‘third force’.

And again, directly behind the tomb, and directly behind the two staffs that seem to represent the crook and flail held by Osiris, is a large tree, which is leaning to the left – its angle measures 23.5 degrees – again, a direct reference to the present incline of the earth’s axis.

  I also like the fact that if we were to turn this painting to the right so that the 60 and 30 degree cross becomes perfectly square, we find that the 23.5-degree angle of the tree then reads as 6.5 degrees. 23.5 + 6.5 = 30.

  Due to the writings of the Greek author, Plutarch (1st century AD), the myth of the Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis was well known amongst the intellectuals of Europe, and from the 16th century many artefacts found their way into Europe from Egypt.

  One would argue that there is no proof that Poussin had seen an ancient depiction of Osiris like the one below taken from the Papyrus of Ani, (fig 64) which was only discovered in the 19th century. However, there are many depictions of Osiris in Egypt, and though hundreds had visited Egypt before Poussin’s time, only the explorations of a handful of adventurers had written their own accounts or had their visits recorded and documented, so it’s possible that Poussin, may have seen, or had been passed on information regarding the detailed imagery of Osiris from others “in the know”. It’s a fact that we are often only taught or given the official version of history when there is always a ‘hidden version’ which is perhaps closer to the truth – and there is now reason to believe that Poussin was a member of the ‘Underground Stream’ that had both preserved and encoded esoteric knowledge in many different sources throughout history. This first version of The Arcadian Shepherds was completed some years after Poussin settled in Rome and after he had been initiated into the mysteries. (Information supllied by Claude Courvosier).

  In any case, it’s clear that Poussin is bringing attention to the archetypal ‘Shining One’ as represented by the ancient Egyptian god Osiris. There will more about this painting later, but for the moment we have to ask ourselves, why would a reference to the ancient Egyptian god-king Osiris be in a painting that also includes the name 'Arcadia' – a place believed to be associated with Greece and the god Pan? More on this later.

On page 125 of The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall writes: "Frank C Higgins, a well-known Masonic symbolist, has astutely noted that the ornate headgears of certain gods and Pharaohs are inclined backwards at the same angle as the earth's axis."   Indeed before my co-author Philip Gardiner sent me this quote, I had already noticed that depictions of Osiris showed the Atef crown was angled at 23 to 23.5 degrees

  If we compare the image of Osiris – i.e., the positions and angles of his crook, flail and Atef crown with the positions and angles of the staff, crook and tree, we have an almost perfect match.

There is more symbology in the Crook and Flail of which Poussin must have been aware. His decision to have them placed next to a leaning tree gives more support to the belief that with the tilt of the earth’s axis man fell into the cycles of opposites.

  For instance, the Flail was used to whip and beat animals (or indeed people) into submission and shows authority like the rod or scepter – hence their interchangeable nature. The shepherd’s crook was used to pull stray animals by the neck without hurting them. Here we have an image of ‘push and pull' - again opposites.

  So we see in these two symbols the opposites again – as in the flail, which would relate to the masculine principle and the crook, which would be related to the feminine principle.

  The Crook and Flail also represent the opposites of Summer and Winter. The flail, a kind of whip, or ‘fly whip’, is associated with Summer. The flail is also used to reap the corn harvest as shown in Poussin’s painting of Summer from his set of four paintings, The Four Seasons.

  The crook is associated with the shepherding of the flock during winter and images of shepherds holding crooks are often displayed on Christmas greeting cards. Summer is related to the Sun and the colour red, and therefore the male principle, and Winter is related to the Moon and the colour white, and therefore the feminine principle. So symbolically, these two items also symbolise the opposites of Summer and Winter – the cycle of opposites caused by the tilted axis represented by the leaning tree. This tree, like the earth’s axis, symbolised the backbone of Osiris. More evidence for this interpretation can be seen in the ancient Egyptian rituals that surrounded the ‘Djed column’ or Djed pillar’ which we have already looked at.

All the above leads us to another painting on the theme of Arcadia which also makes a reference to the opposites of summer and winter.

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