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SOPHIA OF WISDOM III - OUT OF CHALDEA 01
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NOVEMBER 27, 2006
THE LIBRARY OF SOPHIA OF WISDOM III
THE SOPHIA OF ALL SOPHIA OF WISDOMS
AKA
CAROLINE E. KENNEDY___________________
Christ the Chaldean
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountain green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
- William Blake
As these lines from William Blake’s 18th century poem Jerusalem reveal, the tradition that Christ came to England is one that is both widespread and long-standing. Indeed, Roman chroniclers began referring to it as early as the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who died in 37 AD (only four short years after the presumed date of Christ’s own death.) It was in Glastonbury, Cornwall, that the first Christian church was built, purportedly by Christ himself.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it is well-documented that Christ’s uncle, Joseph of Arimathea made frequent trips to England in the course of his travels as a tin merchant. As the story goes, Jesus often accompanied his uncle on these journeys, and ended up spending a good deal of time in Cornwall during his well-known “lost years.” It was here that he conducted the early years of his ministry, and legend records that he constructed a rather large house for the habitation of his mother, Mary. It was this house which, pursuant to the crucifixion, became recognized as the first Christian church in the world. And this first Christian church was known by a number of names, such as “the wattle church”, “the old church”, and perhaps most significantly, “the Culdee church.” In other words, the Chaldean church. In Thomas Campbell’s Reullura, we read:
The pure Culdees
Were Alby’s (1) earliest priests of God
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod.
In E. Raymond Capt’s marvelous book The Traditions of Glastonbury, he states: “The first converts of the Culdees... were the Druids of Britain, who found no difficulty in reconciling the teaching of the Culdees with their own teaching of the resurrection and the inheritance of eternal life.” In addition, the Druids had long believed in the coming of a messiah - a messiah names Jesu. They also shared the Chaldean preoccupation with sacred geometry and astronomy. And too, they had the odd habit of referring to God as “the ancient of days.” Clearly these two groups’ traditions had a shared origin of some sort. Capt continues:
“Culdees are recorded in church documents as officiating at St. Peter, York, until AD 939. According to some church authorities, the Canons of York were called ‘Culdees’ as late as the reign of Henry II (AD 1133-1189.) In Ireland, a whole county was named ‘Culdee.’ The names ‘Culdee’ and ‘Culdish’ cling tenaciously to the Scottish church, and its prelates until a much later date.”
The Culdee phenomenon appears to be little known, little discussed, and even less understood. Nonetheless, over the centuries a fascinating number of theories and legends have become attached to them: theories and legends that are all the more fascinating in that they seem to overlap with much of our own research. What follows are some of the fundamental assumptions held about the Culdees, as collected and preserved by Arthur Edward Waite in his New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry:
‡ The Culdees were identical with the Chaldeans mentioned by the prophet Daniel.
‡ They were priests in Assyria and can also be traced to Babylon.
‡ They were Casideans, Essenes, Therapeutae, and Magi.
‡ Beneath their cloak of Christianity they concealed a secret doctrine.
‡ They were mathematicians and architects at the time of the early Roman emperors.
‡ They were the builders of King Solomon’s Temple.
‡ The Culdees of York were all Masons.
‡ They denied the personality of Jesus - meaning the historical personality - and also the existence of
the Devil.
‡ The Culdee monks were the schoolmasters and architects of their time.
‡ It was thought that the historical allegory of the Round Table, as well as the quest for the Holy
Grail, referred in mystical terms to Culdee rites.
If the foregoing statements are indeed accurate, it would appear that there was the presence of a Templar-like fraternity in England for a full thousand years before the advent of the Knights Templar. And not just in England, but throughout the British Isles. The Culdees had commandaries, schools and churches in Wales, Ireland and Scotland as well. It is said that despite pressure from Rome, the Culdees remained a very strong presence right up to the time of the Norman conquest (2), which began in 1066. The timeframe here seems highly significant, as 1066 is only a few decades before the founding of the Order of Sion by Godfroi de Bouillon in 1090; which in turn is only a few decades before the foundation of the Knights Templar.
Is it purely coincidental that an organization whose history spans over a thousand years should essentially vanish, and in a matter of mere decade a group whose outlook seems nearly identical should emerge in another part of the world? As you’ll recall, most of what the historians assert about the Culdees is incredibly similar to what was said of the Templars. Let’s compare: both groups were said to possess a secret doctrine which they concealed behind the facade of Christianity. Both groups denied Christ. Both groups were architects. And both groups were associated with the Holy Grail, as well as with Solomon’s Temple.
There definitely seems to be a continuity of belief, purpose and action between the two groups. Certainly the mystery surrounding both groups appears to be the same mystery. But if these two groups represent different manifestations of the same esoteric tradition, it is not simply a tradition whose origin came about after the crucifixion of Christ. The tradition of the architect-priest can clearly be traced to the Chaldean King Gudia, and further still to his role model and patron saint, Nimrod/Cain. As previously stated, Nimrod was legendary as a great king and as a great builder of cities. Remarkably, there are traditions within certain rites of British Freemasonry which claim that Nimrod was in fact the first Master Mason. So the notion of the architect-priest goes back to the dawn of recorded history, and to a time in which knowledge of the divine and knowledge of the practical were both different aspects of a very far-reaching gnosis - at least for the elect.
Endnotes:
(1) England was then called “Albion.”
(2) In other locations, such as Ireland, their influence remained strong well into the 14th century.
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