I sometimes feel like a story archaeologist. I have a mental image of myself, digging and digging and digging underneath all the rotting story mats of the wandering troubadors and tale-tellers of old. Some of those story mats are quite ragged by now; others have gone decidedly mouldy.
However, the deeper I dig, the closer to the original story I get. And then, if I’m lucky, I can find the shamanic themes that ran through what we now call ‘myths’ which show the wisdom of our earliest ancestors – a wisdom that is sadly lacking in much of today’s literary offerings. I then weave these myths into my own stories in a way that I think better reflects their true, multi-dimensional nature.
Most of the ancient myths that have survived and are available to us today were translated either by Christian monks or by PhD students and, as far as I know, none of them were translated by shamans, like me, and that’s why I keep on digging – and sometimes, I hit gold.
The golden treasure that I revealed in my last book, The Bright World of the Gods, and also continue to develop in the next one, The Grail Mysteries, is all around the misunderstanding that came about over how the word ‘virgin’ was meant in ancient metaphorical texts, and so I’m sub-titling that book: “The Virgo Teachings”.
It’s amazing to me to realise that the misinterpretation of just that one word by monks and scholars, who had no understanding about the deep cosmological wisdom of our ancestors, has actually changed history over thousands of years. It has transformed – and not in a good way – how we think about fertility, sex, abundance and fecundity.
More importantly, taken to its furthest extreme along the trajectory that it’s currently following in consensual consciousness, I believe it will lead to the antithesis of all those life-giving qualities. Its destination is a sterile, barren, unforgiving wasteland in our cognitive landscapes – and thus, in our lives – unless we recalibrate.
It seems to me that we’ve lost the alchemical wisdom that was key to how our ancestors viewed the generation and regeneration of life. It was a sacred rite – but as those of you who read my earlier book The Sacred Sex Rites of Ishtar know, it was not merely an empty sacred ritual as so many religious ceremonies are today. It was a real experience of sacred sex that fired up the higher brain centres. This was known to the medieval alchemists as the Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, and so there’s a lot about that in the Virgo Teachings of The Grail Mysteries.
THE GRAIL MYSTERIES is here on Amazon.co.uk and here on Amazon.com
The Grail Mysteries is a sequel to The Bright World of the Gods – although you don’t have to have read that book to enjoy this one!
It follows the continuing adventures, across the Three Worlds, of Arawn, the Lord of the Underworld, Elen, Gwyddion and Arianrhod. We also join Taliesin and Manawydan, who are helping Myrddin (Merlin) in his quest to bury the Thirteen Treasures of Britain, despite the best efforts of Bricrui of the Poison Tongue and Vlak the Dragonslayer who are furiously trying to steal the Sovereignty of the Isles of the Blessed.
You will learn about how the Holy Grail existed as a sacred talismanic symbol long before Christian times, and also gain understanding about its spiritual significance and about how it can still help any genuine questor today. In fact, according to my shamanic soundings, the Holy Grail is not an object that once existed – it has always been with us in the ever-present now.
On top of all that, you will also hear my telling of the original Mabinogion myth about how a huge and bitter gulf came about between Ireland and Britain – a gulf that still hasn’t been properly bridged today – and which led to the head of the giant king Bran being buried in the land, for protection.
Annie Dieu-Le-Veut 