THE JOURNEY TO DISCOVER the Ark of the Covenant has been taken by a great many people over time. It is a quest that does not differ from the search for the Holy Grail or the lost city state of Atlantis. The reason for this is apparent in that nobody has yet discovered any real archaeological artefacts to prove its existence. But this was about to change ... please keep in mind that I cannot explain the full extent of the research in the book in this short article, but here is a taster.

My own journey began some time ago now ...

I had been writing a book and making the DVD called Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed and I suppose the intricacies of the esoteric wisdom literature, linked with the fables of the Bible and other texts must have been quite prominent in my mind.

On this particular sunny but slightly cool Spring day I was out and about looking for images for the DVD. In fact I was in Winchester, England and I was taking in the wonderful medieval cathedral before then having to go and give a speech. I had my new digital camera clutched firmly in my grasp and was walking around like some kind of zombie, staring at the floors, walls, windows, ceiling and trying desperately not to miss anything.

I noticed a beautiful stone image of Prudence with the face of a woman on the front and a bearded male head on the back. I silently smiled and told myself that this was down to the wisdom of the union of opposites - whereby our Gnostic ancestors believed that true understanding could only be found in uniting the two elements of our psyche. Then, nearby I noticed another beautiful carving, this time with Moses leading his people out of Egypt. In the centre the people of Israel were carrying the Ark of the Covenant on large poles, in the background were the pyramids at Giza. The Ark looked almost like a small reliquary box I had previously photographed at Kykkos Monastery in Cyprus - even though hundreds of miles and years separated the two. On the other side of this beautifully carved mausoleum was another wonderful image. This time Jesus is emerging from a coffer - again looking exactly like the Ark itself. He held the cross and was flanked by two praying angels as the Vesica Piscis or almond shape radiated light from behind him.

It struck me that the whole design was interrelated and was telling a story of the New Covenant or Testimony. The Ark was the old Covenant, now lost and Jesus was emerging from the Ark as the resurrection of the Testament. At that point, that singular moment in time I suddenly realised the truth of the Ark, the Shroud and indeed Mary. The rush to my head made me feel nauseous and it was all I could do to take a few photographs before making for the exit to get some air.

It is moments like this that make the role of the author and researcher worthwhile. It is like uncovering ancient and sacred treasure that has been lost for centuries. Ok, there are no fires, rats, rolling balls or guardians with guns trying to take a shot at you, but during the research for this book and DVD I was to uncover truths which brought me closer to secret societies like never before. There were moments when I feared for my life and others of pure elation; moments when I became unnerved by power and others when I thought I was at a dead end. In each case, something would happen to alter my course and always around the corner I was to be completely surprised, whether pleasantly or not.

I also had a shock when I read the various books on the subject. You see I scoured the book shops, the internet and even had "my man" from a little old book store in the medieval streets of Lincoln pass the word around. Eventually I had gathered around me every book ever written on the Ark and most of those on the Shroud and Mary. As I sat in my little office I looked like some crazy ancient wizard surrounded by piles of fusty old books. Where to begin? Which book to read first? I closed my eyes placed out my hand and came back with an old book about sacred geometry that my book shop friend had recommended. And so, I settled back with a cup of tea and a cigar - my journey was about to begin.

Throughout the whole time I have never once tried to get the facts to fit the theory. I have allowed the story to come out. I have written the evidence or lack of it, as I have found it. And I have kept my silence all these years whilst researching and writing this book. Out of all the books I have written, this has been the most draining through its complexity and intrigue. All the time I have been coming up against dogma, doctrine, bigotry and religious intolerance. Everybody, it seems, has a theory on the Ark - whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Christian or even Freemason. To add on to this burden I then needed to investigate the Shroud and found I was inviting the world of science down on my head. And then, to make matters even worse, Dan Brown released his now infamous novel The Da Vinci Code, which altered just about everybody's perception of who or what Mary was - and all the time this new growing popular perception was at direct tangents to the truth I knew I was uncovering.

The facts were so startling, so at odds with the base, cultural and current popular beliefs. I would often scream inside my mind at the lack of understanding shown by the one level perceptions of almost everybody I spoke to. Even many authors seemed to want to view the world according to how many books they could sell, regardless of the truth, which once shown stared them in the face. Sadly, I could not tell the whole story to any one person short of my own wife for fear of giving too much away myself. The torment of the tale of the Ark is one I am sure I share with a great many researchers, authors and thinkers out there in the wide world - but I can now rest my soul and say, I am happy with what I have discovered.

The Ark
To almost the whole world the Ark of the Covenant is the sacred relic discovered by Indiana Jones in the infamous movie. It is a relic that has found links with the Knights Templar, the Cathars and Graham Hancock [1] claims exists in Axum in Ethiopia.

I searched through all these theories and found some truth in most. I trailed through Ethiopian lore, Egyptian b'arques and Templar intrigue and found the Ark in the mystical interpretations, rather than the physical form. In Ethiopia the tabot held sacred by the priesthood were copies of the tablets of the Law brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses and placed in the Ark. These tabot are then wrapped in shrouds, mimicking a mystical Ark. In these sacred relics I found links with the ancient cabiri - the worship of stones fallen from heaven. But they were not the Ark of the Covenant and so I moved on and into India where my research led me on a trail into the heart of the cult of the Jagganath (Juggernaut) and the massive Ark that is processed through the streets still to this day. At last, this was a true physical form that mirrored the ancient Egyptian and Judaic concepts of God being carried in procession.

It seemed by sideways thinking I was coming up with insights seldom met elsewhere and as I moved on I found more and more evidence for actual Arks, let alone the re-produced versions made real by the Freemasons. In the book and DVD I show how these are all linked by a sacred thread and all are very real.

Mary
The contents of the Ark whether New or Old Testament are divine power, energy, food, all of which equate to life. They are the food of the Otherworld, the nectar of the gods, sustaining us both physically and spiritually - like the ba and ka of the ancient Egyptians. It was the very essence of life. But there was a New Testament Ark and she was known as Mary, the mother of Christ. And Christ himself was seen as the food of God presenting us with the new body and blood offering.

Mary as the "Theotokos" was the God-bearer. She was the sacred vessel of the Son of God. In the Litany of Loretto from the sixteenth century she was known as the "spiritual vessel" or the "vessel of honour". More importantly she was seen as arca foederis - the Ark of the Covenant.

At Abu Gosh in Israel there is a beautiful statue of Mary, Jesus and even the Shroud.

Abu Gosh or Kiriath-jearim was the biblical city where Abinadab held the Ark from the time of Samuel to the time of the Messiah-King David - making the location a power place on earth. The present church stands on top of a Byzantine 5th century church discovered in 1905 by a farmer. He discovered mosaics, columns and a semi-circular wall. In around 1911 to 1924 Sister Josephine Rumebe of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition organised the building of the present edifice, with a statue of Mary and child visible throughout the area. And so I got on a plane and went to see it for myself.

Getting into Israel is not the easiest of things these days. I was searched and searched again on every occasion. I spent hours sat around in dusty airports waiting for confirmation of who I really was.

After a painful journey in a bus that must have been made before Noah lifted a saw upon the first log, I arrived. The site is Roman Catholic and the statue of Mary holding the Christ child at the pinnacle is paramount for all to see. It is not the most beautiful of places but it does 'feel' special. From the front Jesus is obviously a child, however I walked around and when viewed from behind the image transforms and the child grows into a man - Mary and Christ standing tall and equal. They both stand on top of a shroud covered Ark, with Christ holding the contents - the manna and the tablets.

Basically what we have here is the overlaying of Mary on one of the very locations that the Ark resided. We also have a distinct correlation between Mary as the Christ carrier and the Ark as the carrier of God via the pamphlet Sister Josephine and the Ark of the Covenant (Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition and sold on site):

... the Church looks to Mary, Ark of the New Covenant... she like the Ark, was the repository of God's presence ... Mary ... became the repository not simply of the tablets of the Law, but of the Law-giver Himself; not simply of the desert manna, but of the Living Bread from heaven ... Hence they called her by such titles as Abode of the King, Tabernacle of the Lord, Ark of Holiness, and Ark of the Covenant ... as the David danced before the Ark, so the child in Elizabeth's womb leapt for joy ... She is the Inmost shrine, the Holy of Holies ...

What we have here clearly laid out and unopposed by the Catholic authorities is the statement that Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant - in that she represents the exact same thing - the connection to and gateway to God.

So the Ark and now Mary are God-carriers. They are the method of accessing the Divine. But the Shroud itself was also shown on the statue and of course, this too was a device to carry the slain god - it too was an Ark.

The Shroud
The Shroud of Turin is a pale yellow linen cloth that has been fought over both physically and textually for centuries. It is claimed by the ardent believers that the image, almost photographically imprinted on it, is that of Jesus Christ. To others it is a Medieval forgery carried out by Leonardo da Vinci [2]. In the 1980's carbon 14 dating launched the Shroud once again onto the world headlines with so-called evidence that it was of a medieval date. However, ever since that fateful day there has been even more arguing and the latest ideas throw the dating backwards in time and refute the carbon 14 dating, which has been shown by several researchers to be highly flawed.

With this history and with the knowledge of the meaning behind the Shroud I marched headlong into a world of dispute. What I found was that the Shroud is highly likely from the first century; that it was the image of a high-adept or enlightened one, probably later known as Jesus, and that it was formed via an amazing science of sub-atomic radiation. It was in fact the result of a profound and sacred human physical reaction brought on by the mind.

I then discovered that this had been known for a very long time and then I made contact with an ancient Brotherhood who claimed to know who was behind the whole thing ...

Notes
1 Hancock, Graham, The Sign and the Seal, Arrow, 2001
2 Picknett, Lynn, Prince, Clive, Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? The Truth Behind the Centuries-Long Conspiracy of Silence, Harpercollins, 1994

© 2007, Philip Gardiner, All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Gardiner is the best selling author of Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple, Secrets of the Serpent and various other books. He has several DVD documentaries, speaks around the world on radio and television. His website is www.gardinersworld.com.