Glastonbury ley lines

Chapter 2
Melkin’s Prophecy and the Grail are interlinked to Ley lines.
How had the misunderstood two cruets ‘cruore’of the Glastonbury monks invention, or the ‘duo fassula’ mentioned by the monk Melkin in the dark ages in his prophecy become synonymous with the Grail. How did the ‘Duo Fassula’ which contained the blood and sweat of Jesus, evolve into a vessel, gradatim or graal, made of gold and studded with rare gems in the unfinished work of Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, or the Conte du Graal around 1180. Where did Kyot or Walter Map source their material but from the book of the Grail and who but Melkin knew of the same material that was to become the source of Glastonbury legend? Melkin is attested to have written about Arthur in books in Britain and as we know he left behind his British prophecy concening Joseph of Arimathea. As the continuations and re-working’s of the French romances proliferated, Melkin’s testimony which provided the substance for the ‘book of the Grail’ met with similar material that existed in Britain.

The genealogy of Joseph of Arimathea, including Arthur’s exploits mixed with material from what became known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, evolved into a fantastic array of medieval romances emanating from France, known as the ‘Matter of Britain’. These ‘Histoires’ centred upon the search for the Grail and and gave account of its arrival in Britain with Joseph of Arimathea. We know that Melkin wrote a book on Arthur and his round table attested to by subsequent British Chroniclers and also Melkin’s prophecy concerning Joseph is found in John of Glastonbury’s Cronica. Both Arthur and Joseph are buried in Avalon or the French ‘Avaron’.

Both British and French traditions seem to have emanated from a common source judging by the commonality of the material i.e Joseph, Arthur, the island of Avalon and the Grail’s connection to Jesus. This persistent theme portrays what was in the most part, historically based material. This becomes apparent later, especially as we discover the links between the Island of Avalon, The Island of Sarras of the French romances and the Island of Ictis of Classical fame. These three islands are all one and the same going under different names, but let us inquire into how this Island is integrally linked with the Ley line system and how it becomes part of the St. Michael network of ‘Church Markers’.

It was Alfred Watkins, who first coined the phrase ‘Ley Line’ when he saw the interconnectedness of certain points upon the landscape and how they aligned with each other. John Michell even more recently made the connection between the names of the sites that had been dedicated to St. Michael that were also aligned. In a flash revelation, standing next to St. Michael's Burrow Mump, he could see a similar hill in the distance and topped with a similar church also dedicated to St. Michael. Melkin’s prophecy had related that Joseph of Arimathea was buried on a ‘bifurcated line’ and without Michell’s modern day re-discovery there could never be a line with which to ‘bifurcate’. The other directions given in Melkin’s prophecy are directional derived from this Line and without knowing of its existence the prophecy of Melkin would remain in history as a discarded jumbled tale or worse, the ruminations of a madman.

Mitchell’s discovery for the first time in the modern era brings to light the evidence that, there must be some kind of design along this line. One design evidenced clearly by such sites as Avebury, Glastonbury tor, Burrow mump and the Hurlers etc demarcated by Neolithic man. Confirmation by dowsing brought to light the existence of this ‘Meridian’( as termed by Melkin), a line harnessed to unseen forces, which could be perceived in certain ways by adepts. This previous design was then built upon by the Templars demarcated by St. Michael Churches. Which of the two designs is responsible for the energy which is dowsable is open to debate.

If the overlay of churches or the previous Neolithic erections provide the source for that which is dowsable is uncertain as Broadhurst and Millers book shows that much of the dowsable energy is flowing through the altars of these more recent churches.
The odd thing about the investigation into the St. Michael Ley line is the fact that many of these sites are ‘stand-alone’ (i.e. somewhat removed, not urbanized, and for the most part situated on a high promontory). Predominantly, these St. Michael dedicated churches which make up part of the line and other “marker” dedicated churches, seem to have been built between 1250-1380.

The St. Michael hilltop church feature exists with some frequency throughout the countryside of southern England and France and on islands with surprising regularity. It is a strange occurrence that a geographical feature should predispose the dedication of a church and we should enquire as to why, suddenly in that era, were so many sites dedicated to an Archangel.

It is peculiar that, in the past, some of these relatively new hilltop St. Michael churches have been purposefully allowed to crumble and it is possible that for some of them, any trace of their existence was removed deliberately. This is evident in three locations; specifically-Montacute atop St. Michael’s hill, Burgh Island in Devon and Chapel Carn Brea at Land’s End.

Figure 3 Showing the St. Michael church Burrow Mump on the St. Michael Ley line.

Figure 4 Showing the Redruth Carn Brea which had a 13th century St. Michael chapel on it, latterly turned into a castle which lies exactly upon the rhumb line of the St. Michael Ley Line.

It might be of interest to note that Drake’s Island in Plymouth was formerly known in 1135 as St Michael’s Island and then subsequently rededicated to St. Nicholas before Drakes heroic defeat of the Armada. This is only noted now as the river Tamar flows into Plymouth and this comes into our enquiry in connection with Tamar, Judah’s twice daughter in law.... yet whobore him twins Perez and Zerah. These events are discussed as the original reason for the arrival of the Zerah line of Jews in the South west.
St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, made famous because of its rumoured links with the island of Ictis and thus its links to Joseph of Arimathea the tin merchant... stands in Mounts Bay opposite Marazion in Cornwall. To the west of it, not far from Sennen, stands, a Neolithic hilltop site called Chapel Carn Brea upon which, there once stood a small chapel dedicated to St. Michael. Alms, in the past would be given by seamen to the hermits who lived there, so that a fire could be lit and be seen by approaching ships. The chapel was eventually demolished in 1816, after having been allowed to crumble into obscurity through the centuries. Considerable early Neolithic labour to create a mound, which incorporates complex barrows and stone lined cists, has been archeologically excavated 657 feet above sea level on its summit.
The great labour intensive efforts of these people to bury their leaders, although less skilful, seems to correlate with the goal of the pyramid builders of Egypt in the same era. Carn Brea is often referred to as the first and last Hill in England but sixty one nautical miles away lies a small island at this present-day known as Burgh Island, next to a small seaside village called Bigbury on Sea in Devon. This tranquil Island stands as a sentinel, while the tides have ebbed and flowed around it for centuries. This once also had a chapel on it dedicated to St. Michael, which has left no trace of its presence through the passage of time and is rumoured to have once been the site of a small monastery.
Since our enquiry involves Neolithic sites, Ley Lines and St. Michael churches let us try to interlink these facets of our enquiry.
If we extend a line from the base of Chapel Carn Brea where a St. Michael Chapel once stood, passing by a Megalithic stone called the Blind Fiddler, through St. Michael’s Mount and then pass it by Burgh Island, it would pass out into what used to be the lowland plain region that was part of Lyonesse (now submerged), into the English Channel. If we were to keep extending our potential Ley Line onwards into the Pas-de- Calais region of France, one arrives at the small town of Roquetoire, another town famed for its St. Michael connections.
The church that stands today in Roquetoire was built in 1868 and is built in the Gothic style but it replaces a much older church that was built in 1315AD and from its origin was dedicated to St Michael. It had a prominent bell tower and could be seen from miles around. St. Michael the Archangel is said by the villagers to have visited the village in person in a period of severe drought and blessed the inhabitants with running spring water. ‘St. Michael's Spring’ as it is known, is said to have never ceased flowing up to the present time.
Before embarking on the geographical design noted within the pages of this book, the reader should be aware that, any distances are quoted hereafter in nautical miles. This unit as most sailors would know correlates with degrees of Arc, both in longitude and latitude. The ancients responsible for the alignment of Ley Lines, were quite aware of this measurement long before the time of Pytheas the Greek explorer, as exemplified in the relative siting’s of Avebury and The Great Pyramid of Cheops. Using this system defines the 360° taken to circumnavigate the globe from one point of longitude to its return at any latitude. One mile equals one second of 1° so each degree is subdivided into seconds, 60 seconds fulfilling 1°. Meridians however, are imaginary longitudinal lines that go to each of the poles for every Arc of rotation through the 360°.

The St. Michael dedicated sites that comprise what we shall call the Lyonesse line seem to have the same validity as the St. Michael Ley Line, if one takes into account the flooding of the channel. There is a possibility that it was marked out within the same system or network of the original Neolithic sites now submerged. The length of this Ley Line, is found to be 308.5 nautical miles, similar to the St. Michael line which was 316.65.

Figure 5 Showing the Lyonesse line from Chapel Carn Brea through St.Michael’s Mount then through Burgh Island to Roquetoire in France.

Most of this proposed Ley Line runs along the sea floor, so coupled with the possibility that it might be linked in with an older system of Leys, let us investigate what alignments there might be in relation to it, from the British landscape and specifically, from the already discovered St. Michael Ley Line that runs from Carn les Boel through Avebury, northwards to the East Anglian coast. In any search for alignments it is always best to look at Avebury, the biggest stone circle in Europe, while remembering sites like Stonehenge and Old Sarum are of equal antiquity.
Exactly halfway along this newly found Lyonesse line, if a line was scribed at right angles to the Lyonesse Ley Line; it forms a tangent to the Avebury circle and Silbury Hill, just south of it. The north-south line also passed in between and tangential to Stonehenge and Bluehenge, passing within a field's breadth of each site. It was evident after finding that it became tangential also to Old Sarum, that it too seemed to be held on course by these nodal points, like a strand of wicker, the Ley Line conceptually appearing to be constrained in place, as if the nodal points on the land were extended upwards as vertical strands in wickerwork.

The skeptic will already be wary with any kind of integration between the culture that constructed Ley's and the later cuture that built churches dedicated to St.Michael. I am just pointing these relationships out so that the reader can either dismiss them or see how hard it is not to see a relationship. By the end of the book the reader can judge whether a line which is defined by an ancient monk named Melkin and also confirmed by a Jesuit priest named Father Good 1527–1586 is the same line we are sent to find by way of a set of instructions given in Melkin's prophecy.
After considering this alignment, a logical progression is to extend the line further up into the North of England, while remembering a piece of information from Melkin, where he speaks of ‘circles of portentous prophecy’ in the same prophecy in which he tells of a bifurcated line, an angle and a meridian that locates a tomb. Melkin, who we shall discuss in detail shortly, wrote his prophecy concerning the Isle of Avalon and Joseph of Arimathea who supposedly brought the Grail to Britain.

It would seem that Melkin is divulging information which is hinting at a location where Joseph of Arimathea might be buried andtherefore, should we be looking for clues on a map. Yet in this same prophecy, Melkin uses the Latin word ‘oratori’, literally meaning a religious hymn or chapel but the same word could be construed as a choir, and so informed, we should embark on the next part of our investigation which somw may account as irrelevant but this is how the connections are made that uncover the Tomb site of Joseph of Arimathaea in Avalon.

Figure 6 Showing the Ley line which runs north at 90° from the Lyonesse line, tangential to Old Sarum, Stonehenge, Silbury hill and Avebury.