"THERE are persons whose minds would be incapable of appreciating the intellectual grandeur of the ancients, even in physical science, were they to receive the most complete demonstration of their profound learning and achievements. Notwithstanding the lesson of caution which more than one unexpected discovery has taught them, they still pursue their old plan of denying, and, what is still worse, of ridiculing that which they have no means of either proving or disproving. So, for instance, they will pooh-pooh the idea of talismans having any efficacy one way or the other. That the seven spirits of the Apocalypse have direct relation to the seven occult powers in nature, appears incomprehensible and absurd to their feeble intellects; and the bare thought of a magician claiming to work wonders through certain kabalistic rites convulses them with laughter. Perceiving only a geometrical figure traced upon a paper, a bit of metal, or other substance, they cannot imagine how any reasonable being should ascribe to either any occult potency. But those who have taken the pains to inform themselves know that the ancients achieved as great discoveries in psychology as in physics, and that their explorations left few secrets to be discovered." ISIS UNVEILED: HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, published in 1877,

The History of Earth Measurement in France.

And the marking of the Meridian

The powerful picture shown above on the right shows the essence of our priest’s whole enigmatic saga. This is a view down what has become to become known as David Wood’s Sunrise Line and was taken from a hill called Mont St Michael; this hill is 666 metres high. In the foreground the tower of Arques, the village in the centre is Rennes le Chateau, in the distance are the mountains of Soularac and St Bartholémy,

Soularac means Solar Rock in Occitan. It is very important in the Landscape geometry  

If one climbs onto La Tour Magdala as I did on that first day the twin snow capped peaks of St Bartholémy and Pic de Soularac can be clearly seen. These mountains have been sacred for thousands of years as the large numbers of megaliths on their slopes and the number of previously inhabited caves nearby testifies. The official designation for this mountain is St Bartholémy however the locals call this mountain “Montagne de Tabe” Thabor Mount and in a manuscript dated 1350CE it appears as the name “Mountanha die Taba” and this is in the Occitan language. The pronunciation is identical to Tabor and these mountains are a mere 5 miles from the awesome Cathar castle of Montségur. To access these peaks one starts via the La Trou de l’Ours - the Hole of the Bear. A further interesting designation is the other mountain of the twins is Soularac. This is from Soula-rac which is the Occitan language for Rock of the Sun and seems to allude to a pre-Christian and even pre-Roman era frequented by Druidic priests. In Olhagaray (1609) both of these mountains are referred to by the single name Tabor but this particular early mention of the mountain is accompanied by the date which is the night of 23^rd to the 24^th August which is feast day of St Bartholomew. In Fabre (1639) we find the mention of Montem Tabor and also lacus Sancti-Bartholomaei (Sacred Lake Bartholomew) and Eclesia Bartholomeo Sacrata (Sacred Church Bartholomew) in the same manuscript so it can be assumed that the mountain was known by the name Mount Tabor up until the 17^th century with both a church and a lake dedicated to Bartholomew. In the chart of Roussel (1730) speaks of the Mountains of St Berthelmy and Tabe and also of the Etang (pond) of Tabe. Again in 1737 another manuscript speaks of Thabor Mount and S Barthelemi, however the name also referred to the Montagne d’Appy but this may be confusion with a nearby mountain of that name. The mountains are Bartholomew and Soularac initials B and S and the reader is reminded of the phrase on Saunière’s bookplate ‘Trigono Centri Centrum' - The Centre in the triangle of the Centre’. One is also reminded that the initials B.S. are also found above a devil holding some water at the entrance of the church of Saint Marie Madeleine in Rennes le Chateau.

 

Interestingly Soularac is mentioned in a report of a meridian measurement by the well respected astronomer Delambre in 3 volumes of work from 1806 to 1810 that followed ground measurements in 1797 by Méchain[i1]  here it is referred to as Eastern Peak of the Saint-Bartholémy Mount and the “Peak of Estangtost”. Delambre was born in Amiens in 1749 and was an astronomer and mathematician; he was a remarkable man who had a childhood illness which gave him the fear that he would soon go blind. As a result of this he read every book that was available to him and immersed himself in Greek and Latin literature. He also acquired the ability to memorise entire pages and to recite them verbally word for word. He also became fluent in Italian, English and German and even published a book called “Rules and methods to easily learn English.”. However his interest in astronomy is quite relevant to our story and Delambre’s contribution to the science of Astronomy is so great that he has a crater on the moon named after him.

 

In 1790 the French National Constituent Assembly asked the French Academy of Sciences to introduce a new unit of measurement and they decided on the metre. This is defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the equator and Academy of Sciences prepared to measure the length of the meridian between Dunkerque (Dunkirk) and Barcelona and this portion of the meridian also passes through Paris. In April 1791 the task of placing the meridian was given to Jean-Dominique de Cassini, Adrien Legendre and Pierre Méchain. Cassini was chosen to head the northern expedition but as a royalist he refused to serve under the revolutionary government. On February 15^th 1792 Delambre was elected unanimously a member of the French Academy of Sciences and in May 1792, after Cassini’s final refusal Delambre was placed in charge of the Northern expedition, which measured down the meridian from Dunkirk to Rodez. Pierre Méchain headed the southern expedition from Rodez to Barcelona. The measurements were finished by 1798 and the data gathered was presented to an international conference in 1799. Delambre was appointed director of the Paris Observatory after the death of Méchain and he was also appointed a professor of Astronomy at the college de France. Assisted by his wife and his stepson Delambre continued the measurement of baselines and also the latitude survey for the Paris Observatory. In June 1792 it appears that Méchain made a mistake in his calculations to fix the size of the metre and having discovered the mistake his guilt nearly drove him mad and he died in an attempt to correct himself. Delambre discovered the mistake but decided to seal the evidence of the error in a vault at the Paris Observatory and it was only discovered 200 years later.   

 

A clue of the relevance of Delambre to our story besides his mention in his writings of the mountain of Soularac (Solar Rock) can be found in his full name - Jean Baptiste Joseph chevalier Delambre for he was a member of the chivalric Order of Saint Michael (Ordre de Saint-Michel). This Order is the oldest Royal order of chivalry in France founded by Louis XI on August 1^st 1469. The statutes provided that the knights should meet annually on the feast of their patron the Archangel Michael which is of course the 29^th September (Michaelmas)[i2]  at the chapel of the monastery of Saint Michael off Normandy which has the nearest city of Rennes close by.  The British have the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George founded in 1818 and the two orders are not to be confused and have no direct affiliation but do show a common reverence to the same archangel.

Delambre was an exceptional astronomer and mathematician and in 1795 he was admitted to the Bureau des Longitudes, becoming its President in 1800 a year later he was appointed secretary to the Académie des Sciences making him the most powerful figure in science in France. An International Commission for Weights and Measures was set up and Delambre reported his results to it in February 1799. By June of that year, after Méchain had also reported, a definitive platinum bar of length one metre [I A3] was made to become the basis of the metric system. Delambre published details of the whole project in Base du système métrique. The first of the three volumes, containing the history of measurement of the Earth and the project's triangulation data, was published in 1806. When Delambre presented it to Napoleon, the emperor said:

“Conquests will come and go but this work will endure”

In 1809, Napoleon requested that the Académie des Sciences award a prize for the best scientific publication of the decade, the award went to Delambre for his work on the meridian.

The second volume of the work, published in 1807, contained the data for the accurate latitude calculations of Dunkerque and Barcelona. The method of repeated triangulations for calculating the zero meridian is shown here above right and from this work, the length of the metre was fixed as an integer proportion of the earth’s radius. Careful observers will notice however that this line runs through the mountain of Bugarach and through La Cité d’Carcassonne.

 

However, outside of the village of Rennes les Bains, the Abbé Henry Boudet’s former domain, there stands an old Roman Baths in remarkable condition for its age due to its partial restoration after the Aude Valley floods of 1992. Outside of these baths, we have a plaque placed there in the year 2000 marking the meridian perhaps marking the new millennium. A marker that appears remarkably important to some even to this day.

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So why are the French laying out their meridian markers using the Statute Mile not kilometers?

Well consider this:

Remember the parchment phrase

PAX DCLXXXI PAR LA CROIX

We have already heard that PAX 681 PAR LA CROIX translates using Gematria to 681 681 by the Rood.

 

P = Π = 80

A = Α = 1

X = Х = 600

P A X = 80 + 1 + 600 = 681

 

Gematria is a Greek & Hebrew way of interpreting figures using letters and was developed from an older more eastern tradition developed from the 3^rd century BCE. Remembering that there were no Arabic figures to represent 1, 2, 3 etc until much later and so letters had to be used. No suggestion of talking in a secret code here, Gematria sprang from necessity. According to Frederick Bligh Bold, who placed the Vesica Pisces over the Chalice Well at Glastonbury, the words Gematria and Geometry are from the same base and that letters were used to describe geometric patterns in the landscape. The “Lawful Rood” had been fixed in 1531 and was described as sixteen people placing each “foot” end to end, hence 16 feet in a Rood.

It has already been shown that a square of dimensions 681 Rood by 681 Rood (681 Poles squared) has a diagonal of  three miles or One English League with an error of around 0.6% to the modern English statute mile.

 

 The radius of this circle will be half a league or one Domesday League, the measurement used in the Domesday book. There are 2640 yards in one Domesday league and 2640² = 6969600 yards and if we divide this by the number of yards in a mile (1760) we get 3960 statute miles. The mean radius of the earth is 3959 miles; 3964 miles at the equator and 3949 miles at the poles. One must remember that the Abbé Jean Picard had measured the length of a degree of longitude and computed the size of the earth in 1655, the year Poussin painted his first version of the Annuciation and some say Les Bergere d'Arcadie.  

Of course 2640 is quite a unique number; for instance one and a half times 2640 is 3960.

 Half of 396 is 198; the number of inches in a pole.

 198 times PHI Φ (the golden ratio; 1.618) is 320 (to the nearest integer): which is the number of poles in a mile.

 One might be tempted to think that someone found these numbers sacred, but we have to understand that the exercise of making sense of the world around them was indeed a religious concept to person from the Middle Ages. To create order from apparent chaos was a means of chaining the Lord of the Earth – Rex Mundi. If this can be done by use of the Angel of the Lord – Michael – Aldebaran then it will truly be a sacred exercise.

 

Consider the next parts of the text are the words:

ET CE CHEVAL DE DIEU

 And the Horse of God 

The Cheval de Dieu (Horse of God) represents Abraxas, a deity that was significant to the Knights Templar and is the passage of the heavens from East to West on a daily basis. Abraxas is one of the horses taking the golden chariot of Helios to disappear into the golden cup in the West i.e. the sunset.

A theme also covered by Poussin in another of his paintings in the form of Helios, Phaeton and the four seasons. 

In the background are the four horses pulling Helios (The Sun God) across the sky.

One of the Horses is called Abraxas.

Abraxas in Gematria 365 the same as the number of days in the year

AND

Abraxas is Gnostic solar deity associated with Yahweh, Mithras, Yeshu (Jesus) and significantly the Celtic Belenus.  

Belenus is a deity worshipped in Gaul, Britain and Celtic areas of Italy, Austria and northern Spain. He has shrines from Aquileia on the Adriatic to Kirkby Lonsdale in England. His name means "shining one" or "henbane god" and he is associated with healing. He may be the same deity as Belatu-Cadros. However, in the Roman period and Abraxas/Belenus was identified with Apollo, a connection that will became significant later. The name Belenus has been found on around fifty inscriptions, these are mainly concentrated in Aquileia and Cisalpine Gaul, but also extend into Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis, the area that includes Rennes le Chateau. Otto Rahn, likely a Polaire, had surmised in his book Luzifers Hofgesind (1937) that the new Golden Age was to come from Lucifer who he specifically identified as the Cathar Pyrenean Abellio, the Celtic Belenos, the Nordic Balder and the Greek Apollo. Collectively these were adopted later by the Holy Roman church under the title of Saint Bonnet. (Saint-Bonnet-le-Bourg is a commune in the Puy-de-Dôme area of France, an area that sits on the Paris Meridian)

Amulets and seals bearing the figure of Abraxas was used in the seals of the Knights Templar, but by medieval times Abraxas was relegated to the ranks of demons. The word Abraxas was first proposed by the Alexandrian Gnostic scholar Basilides and is created using the first letters of the Greek names for the seven visible planets. Using Gematria the letters add up to 365, the number of days in a solar year and the number of Aeons or divine emanations in Gnostic cosmology. However using Gematria again Mithras also adds up to 365 and significantly so does the Celtic Solar deity Belenus. The Abraxas seal was common in the second century.

Abraxas is invoked in The Gnostic Mass that was written by the occultist Aleister Crowley as is the use of Abramelin Oil, a carefully prepared substance used to anoint initiates. In this same Gnostic Mass Crowley also speaks of a Holy Guardian Angel. Within the system of Thelema founded by Crowley in 1904, the Holy Guardian Angel is the "Silent Self" which is a representative of an individual’s truest divine nature.

The Daemon Guardian

Abraxas Seal

On the side it says

"Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici"

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon

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Measuring the Meter: an Error that Changed the World

 

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