Arcadia Discussion Zone

"Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;"

Alfred Lord Tennyson




Mont Saint Michel (The many towered Camelot)
and in the foreground

TOMBELAINE
The sleeping dragon

or


The Island of Shalot

Roscoe is off to Brittany again soon in search of the Redones and will climb the sleeping dragon.

http://books.google.fr/books?id=Ts0BAAA ... ne&f=false



i remember discussing this with you years ago...read the last link and see what you can find when you get there.

http://books.google.fr/books?id=wgLuNGN ... ne&f=false

http://books.google.fr/books?id=cmcDAAA ... ne&f=false

starts getting interesting from bottom of page 132

http://books.google.fr/books?id=l1MKAAA ... &q&f=false

The story of the princess called Hélène who was the niece of Hoël - King of Brittany (who in reality might have been the Comte de Dol which is only 5 leagues from Tombelaine) has a lot in common with the legend of Ariane, the daughter of Minos , King of Crete who was abandoned by Théséus on a rock in the isle of Naxos

http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Ariadne.html

i she your lady of Shalott had been cursed, and so she must constantly weave a magic web ....very similar to Ariadne......there's a lot of weaving going on.
Don't see how any of this comes under the topic heading though.

According to legend the Bay was born following a tidal wave in 709 AD. The sea covered the Forest of Scissy(Sessiacum) and drowned its villages. Only granite peaks such as Mont-Dol tombelaine and Mont Saint Michel were spared.

Quote:

Selon la légende, l’épaisse forêt de Scissy aurait été un lieu de culte païen. et un raz de marée de mars 709 l’aurait englouti pour purifier la contrée.

La forêt de Scissy (Sessiacum) est une forêt mythique qui aurait existé dans la baie du mont Saint-Michel et aurait englobé les régions de :

Saint-Pair-sur-Mer avec l’abbaye de Scissy.
Les trois monts:

Tombelaine
Le Mont Saint-Michel
Le Mont Dol


Ces légendes sont reprises dans le Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis, rédigée au début du IXe siècle, le Mont Saint-Michel aurait été un mont entouré d’une forêt à l’époque où les premiers moines ermites s’y sont installés. c'es sur cette source que s'appuie l'Abbé Manet pour élaborer sa thèse de la "fatale marée de mars 709" qu iauarit englouit en une nuit la baie du Mont saint michel.

http://www.guernsey-society.org.uk/donk ... rom_France

fascinating article in English...with maps

And a merry old soul was he, with his pipe, bowl, and fiddlers three...

TCP

Bear with me on this Sheila. My French is not as good as yours. But what I see so far is interesting and yes I knew about the 709CE deluge/tsunami.

Nobody picked up on my Saint Michael and sleeping dead Dragon link.

I have to admit that Tombelaine does look like a dead dragon from this angle.



And the Archangel Michael of coarse is always depicted standing over the dead Dragon.


Staff at 23.5 degrees from the vertical
The tilt angle of the earth.

'Vu Curé de Névian, Chez Gélis, Chez Carrière, Vu Cros et SECRET'

Entry in Sauniere's diary on Michaelmas.

Aligned with Skellig Michael

Tombelaine was once owned by Nicolas Fouquet.

aye but it's not as easy as that...you have to go further back to make any sense of the christianised Saint Michael....



The Argonauts built a sanctuary dedicated to Zeus Sosthenios or to a benevolent winged demon that had helped them overcome the hostile indigenous people. In the 5th or 6th century the famous monastery of Saint Michael in Sosthenion was built over this ancient sanctuary. The Archangel and Commander of the angelic hosts replaced worship of the ancient winged and benevolent power...this is his principal sanctuary where he is considered as the great heavenly physician.

....the Michaelion that was built by the Emperor Constantine at Chalcedon was on the site of this earlier temple known as Sosthenion. The site has a rich pagan history which is obviously relevant to Constantine's appropriation of the site. According to the story told by John Malalas in the sixth century, the Argonauts were attacked at the Bosphorus by a force under the command of a local chieftain named Amycus while they were navigating their way to the Black Sea in search of the Golden Fleece. The Argonauts sought refuge in a secluded cove, where they had a vision of a man with wings like an eagle....i think i called him the entity known as "Mothman" last time i mentioned this, but that is just how i see it. The figure prophesied their victory over Amycus, and the grateful Argonauts built a temple in which they set up a statue of the apparition. They called the site "Sosthenion" because they had been saved there.... i think the place is called Steni and it's about fifty miles south of Constantinople. The legend continues that when Constantine visited the temple he recognised the statue as "an angel in the habit of a monk." The identity of the angel was revealed to him in a dream (presumably by Michael ...or Eusebius who's hand has to have been in there somewhere), and Constantine built the Michaelion in honor of the archangel. The site became famous for miraculous healings and even apparitions of the archangel.



And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond; and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water, was made whole, of whatsoever infirmity he lay under. --John 5:4

Okay, this is just scratching the surface of a fascinating subject and although there is no indication that the angel who agitated the water of the pool of Bethesda was the Archangel Michael, the story does suggest an early recognition of angelic agency in healing waters.
In Phrygia, the place where he was first venerated, he was known more as the angelic healer rather than a military intercessor.
and in Normandy, which is where i was until i got sidetracked, he is the patron Saint of fishermen/pêcheurs.

getting back to Tombelaine...which in my mind is from "Tumulus Belenis/Belenos" the forerunner to Saint Michael.

but there's lot's of interesting legends and stories...if you've managed to make an inroad into translating what i posted up yesterday...(sorry i can't find any stuff in english)
... anyways, basically in 1048 two monks moved on the isle and built the first houses and a chapelle with cellules all around it on a pilgrimage cult site already dedicated to the god of Light and Psychopomp supreme.. and then to "saint Apollinaire" ( who is obviously a churchified Apollo/Belenos) in 1135 when a wee monastery was founded there by Bernard the Venerable, then the english fortified it during the Hundred Years’ War/1337-1453 by encircling it with walls and building a fortress, the stones of which can still be found if you search long and hard as well as the remains of the circular towers.
This fortress stood on the monticule called La Folie and in 1450 after the battle of Formigny which put paid to the english once and for all in the area .... it passed into royal hands in 1592.
..so here it is in all it's glory with it's fortifications before they were destroyed by the order of a certain Louis XIV in 1669 either because he was jealous of his finance minister Nicolas Fouquet or because he wanted to get rid of the pirate base that was being used in the upcoming civil war that was being plotted or whatever...i can't remember



on a more tantalising note there are apparently three souterrains that lead out from under the château of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas (which is now on the mainland due to the tsunami that engulfed the land)...one reputedly comes up on the isle of Tombelaine itself and is still talked about today, so get looking Roscoe, we need a field report ..and another comes out in a secret location near the church of St Jean..these passageways were for the use of Count Montgomery the evil seigneur of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas who was at the head of the Huguenots, he used Tombelaine as his arsenal and it's where he fabricated these armes and made his gold and hid his treasure and locked up his poor lover who pined away and died and if anyone cares to read the legends of the these underground passages and the real story of poor Hélène...here it is....and no, not a whiff of old King Cole anywhere.

http://www.france-pittoresque.com/spip.php?article1992

He is the weigher of souls.



The Cathars thought that Saint Michael was Anubis the jackal headed weigher of souls



See Egyptian Book of the Dead

He most certainly is Roscoe..absolutely.
hang on till i post this before i forget and i'll be right with you.


i get confused as to whether the college of Druidesses and their oracle was on the larger Mont or the smaller Tombelaine (even though it's actually longer and wider than Mont Saint Michel)...the Druids on the larger Mont where there until the Romans pulled down their sanctuaries and put up their altar to Jupiter and the isle became Mont-Jou/Mont-Jovis
but when christianity took a hold in Gaul and especially after Contantine in 315 the Mont became known as Tumba and the first apostles like Saints Paterne and Pair put some Hermits there and built a monastery Monasterium ad duas Tumbas and you can see where the confusion arises with the two Mounts...i need a proper historian to wade in here and sort things out for me before i get myself into deeper water.

http://books.google.fr/books?id=_HAAAAA ... is&f=false

here it seems to say it was the larger...this is in english btw...so the druidesses on the smaller tumba might be an 18th century gloss?

Sheila do you have any ideas re the origin and meaning of Belenus and/or Tumba Beleni?

Tumba I presume is tomb?

Who was Belenus?

Edit: OK I see your later post and have googled Belenus - celtic sun god. So is this the tomb of the celtic sun god?

Tumba can be a Tumulus, which means an elevation....or as you point out it can also mean a tomb..a sepulture.

But if we take Tombelaine to mean Tum-Belenos then this signifies a tumulus or a tertre as in a raised sanctuary area dedicated to the solar cult of Belenos/Apollo Grannos.

actually..maybe we should be looking into the ancient history of neighbouring Mont Dol that dominates the bay, it's now no longer an island due to the same shifting of water levels that stranded the two Monts we've been discussing, it has a fountain that never runs dry apparently and used to have a "Jupiter" column on its summit...sacred rock, fountain, column, temple....Le Mont-Dol était considéré par nos ancêtres comme une des sept collines sacrées de l'Armorique. Les autres collines étant le Mont Saint Michel, le Menez Bel Air, le Méné-Bré, le Mané-Gwen, le Menez Hom et le Mont Saint Michel de Brasparts.

not forgetting the legend attached to dear old Gargantua who is a crux to the whole matter...« Un jour où il se promenait dans la région, une douleur soudaine lui fit retirer sa chaussure qu'il secoua : il en tomba trois cailloux qui sont aujourd'hui le Mont-Dol, le Mont Saint-Michel et le rocher de Tombelaine. Le même géant passait de Normandie en Bretagne en trois pas colossaux, jalonnés par la roche de Carolles, Mont-Dol, le Mont Saint-Michel et Tombelaine. »

anyway,to my mind...Dol as in table and Men as in stone.
But tolmen in Cornish meant 'pole of stone.' ...and t and d are usually interchangeable, but hey!

However just read that Dol in Gallois means "plain" Dol vient d’un mot gallois qui veut dire « plaine ». and that this in turn became the Mont Douloureux in the 13th century thank to the love of word play by the romantic writers...or did it, because..
okay now i'm getting seriously sidertracked but since no one else is here..i might as well. I didn't know that he menhir of Champ Dolent is the largest menhir erected in Brittany or maybe even in the whole of France?...located in the city of Dol-de-Bretagne, it measures nearly 10 m high which probably means there's at least half again buried in the earth...and Champdolent meants field of pain/field of woe/field of sorrow...there's a place called that on the west coast in the Charente-Maritime...both of these champs dolent/douloureux are near the what is now the coastline...but not necessarily near the what was then before coastline...i need to find some old maps.

so there's a Champ-Dolent in the Eure, Champdolent in the Charent maritime, a Champs Dolent in Bourgogne, one in Valempoulières in the Jura and a Champdolent at Morey........i smell a nécropole tumulaire underfoot.

and for those like Roscoe who understand this sort of stuff...here's something extremely interesting which ties in exactly with what Boudet was trying to explain in LVLC...the english googlewassname translation is there for you as well.

http://www.web-astrologie.com/megalithique.html

http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... ml&act=url



i realise that this is all way off-piste and certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with ladies of Shallot and even less to do with Grails.

Well Roscoe
I love the Michael tilt of his lance or spear ...yes the dragon ...the World

the rock does look like a sleeping or dead dragon
Great observation

I'll bring up the close connection between Ariel/Uriel and Michael
similiar to Anubis and Thoth

Anubis guardian of the underworld was
One of the roles of Anubis was "Guardian of the Scales".[9] Deciding the weight of "truth" by weighing the Heart against Ma'at, who was often depicted as an ostrich feather, Anubis dictated the fate of souls. In this manner, he was a Lord of the Underworld, only usurped by Osiris.

Thoth is also there for the Judgement of the Dead

If you go by the Celts ...Michael would be Lugh

Lugh was sometimes depicted riding dragons, elementals of Earth Energy. In Christian times, his sacred sites were later re-dedicated to Saint Michael, who is pictured as slaying dragons. St. Michael's Day is September 29th.

Now Uriel would be the Celt god Nuada the silver hand
Dé Danann king Nuada, the Celtic god of divine justice and truth. The sword is called the Sword of Light or the Sword of Truth Nuada's sword is the embodiment of justice, from which no one, not even a king or a god, can escape.

Yes the dragon rocks and dragon themes permeates western Europe. The earth serpent.

Gaul was of course a Celtic domain and this cannot be ignored. But particularly Brttany and the Languedoc it seems to have a link to The Grail.

But when you start looking at the occult and medieval mystics you notice that the Archangel Michael is star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus.

Al debaran means The Follower in Arabic. Question is what does it follow. Well it follows the Pleiades, the place where the Watchtower Society (Jehovahs witnesses) once said God lives.

The interesting thing comes when you start looking at Mont Saint Michel, Mont Dol and the city of Rennes with respect to Aldebaran and the 29th September.

Aldebaran is of course one of the four Royal stars just as Saint Michael is one of the four Archangels.

Luke 2 (KJV)

The astrological birth of Jesus. Angel of the Lord is one of the four archangels but is probably Michael.

Nice one Sheila.

Alignments only make some sense if they tie in to astronomical observations. It's no use simply looking at a map or your GPS and drawing lines you've got to go there and measure the Line of Sight.


Mont saint Michel from Mont Dol.

The Line of sight in this case involves Aldebaran.

My Avatar is the sigil of Aldebaran.

Archaeo-astronomy

Yes I'll be out to Tombelaine soon. Problem is this bay has the second highest tide in the world. Got to be quick.

When I was at Mont St Michael last year I noticed a party of school children being taken across the sand to Tombelaine. That would just about do me if I got there only to find NOISE. This happened to me whilst I was in the Broceliande Forest. French school children seem to have this ability to all talk at once, but nevertheless utterly charming little B.......

Meanwhile back to Elaine as in the Tomb of Elaine. (maybe)

The Lady Elaine is the Lady of Shallot

No other individual has been such as popular subject by Pre-Rafealite painters including John William Waterhouse:


The Lady of Shalot by John William Waterhouse.
I really love this painting. It influences almost everything I do in my own attempt at art.
Notice Jesus on the cross at the prow of the boat.

The story of Elaine is romantic as well as tragic.

The meaning of Elaine is "Lily Maid"(cue Sheila). She was thought to be the daughter of one of the three listed below:

She was the daughter of Bernard of Astolat.

She was the daughter of Lady Igraine and Duke Gorlois of Tintagel, sister to the Ladies Morgan and Mawguese and half sister to King Arthur.

She was the daughter of King Pelles.

As with the Lady Igraine, the general story behind Elaine remains consistant. Elaine was the wife (or Lady) of Sir Lancelot du Lac. In some accounts, she is the mother of Sir Galahad who was Lancelot reborn as the "son", and some say the mother of King Ban (also Lancelot's son).

Regardless of who she mothered, the tragedy of Elaine is the same. Elaine loved Lancelot with all of her heart and soul. A pure love that some say Lancelot did not deserve. When Elaine was made aware of the affair between Guenivere and Lancelot, she died of a broken heart.

Hearing this, King Arthur had her body brought to Camelot by way of the River Thames on a boat. It is from this that the image of the Lady of Shallot is taken. The last stanza of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shallot summerizes the tragedy of Elaine.


Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of Royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
And all the knights at Camelot.
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said "She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy loved her grace,
The Lady of Shallott.

Mythologically, Elaine was one of the Celtic Virgin Moon Goddess. She was associated with Greece's Helen of Troy. She was said to have given Lancelot her sexual charm (and in more tame stories a piece of her sleeve) to make him undefeatable in battle. Within her castle, the womb symbol of the Holy Grail was displayed.

mornin' Roscoe...i'll stay with the changing coastlines, the upheavals of the earth, magnetic & stone alignements, souterrains, the fields of sorrows and the nécropoles thank you all the same ...i'm not the romantic type and tend to get filed under 'lugubrious' ...but each to his own and there's always more than one side to a legend.

and i agree completely about groups of small schoolchildren on field trips..most off-putting, but at least they're getting out of the classroom.

Fair enough. But it's these kinds of CELTIC legends that pins me to all this stuff.

Sheila whilst looking through that link you gave I noticed this.



The night before the Celtic New Years day is the Celtic festival of Samhain you know it best as Halloween.

In the haut vallee d'Aude the sun rises on the Celtic New Years Day over La Soulane (sunline in Occitan) when viewed from La Tour d'Alchemie at Rennes le Chateau. This path forms part of Lincoln's Pentacle of Mountains.

The fact that this all occurs near two places called Rennes makes me curious.

The bit about the 10 metre dolmen at Champ Dolent guarding the sacred fountain of Saint Samson also caught my eye. Bit too far away though.

I knew you'd like that Roscoe.....and i never even mentioned the ancient cité d'Aleth once

You just did mention it once.

Ah St Malo now there's a place. You could write a whole thread about this place.

The City of Pirates.

The Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) is named after St Malo.

And look at the connection between Saint Malo and Saint Brendan, the great navigator.

AND

Viscount de Chateaubriand, was born at St Malo, he who made the tomb for Nicolas Poussin in Rome featuring Les Bergers d'Arcadie.

Some cracking fish restaurants in St Malo.

must admit i don't know the area at all, but it looks wonderful...and let's not forget l'isles de Chausey that used to be part of the greater landmass until 709.

however a word of caution...i would be wary of any fish caught locally in this region due to the radioactive waste routinely dumped from COGEMA's Cap de la Hague site, the largest light water reactor nuclear waste reprocessing plant on earth (over half of the world's capacity) and which is probably one of the world's dirties and dangerous nuclear polluters, who consistently fly in the face of tidying up their act.

anyway rant over check out the isles of Chausey below.

http://www.ileschausey.com/textes/larch ... chipel.htm

A map published by Deschamps-Vadeville in France in 1714 purports to show Alderney connected to the Cherbourg end of the Cotentin peninsular by a strip of land, Guernsey linked to Sark and forming a single island several times its present-day size, Jersey linked to France, and surrounded by coastal plains on its north, west and south sides, the Minquiers forming an island about three times that of Jersey today, and the Chausey Islands also linked to France. This map is said to be based on an earlier chart of AD1404, found at Mont St Michel, which was in turn based on a 9th century manuscript....so one would assume it's older than October 709.



and a Map of Jersey if the sea was 60ft lower than it is now.

it might even have been more like this at one point...and not as far back in history as we are led to believe.

and here's the Dogger bank...we've discussed this somewhere before recently.