Jack and the Beanstalk, Exposed

(Conspiracy Nation, 11/25/07) – Under “Mr. Bayley's microscopic and eloquent interpretation,” wrote the New York Times in 1909, water marks in medieval paper put the Renaissance “under new light.” (“The Renaissance Under New Light,” New York Times, May 22, 1909. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9900EFD71738E033A25751C2A9639C946897D6CF)

What Harold Bayley “would like to show is that the civilization of Provence, in the Dark Ages, far ahead of that of the rest of Europe, was the real precursor of the Renaissance; that the Albigenses and Waldenses, objects of Papal persecution from the thirteenth century and originally dwellers in Provence, where they were the first papermakers, were the heralds of a new and liberal thought and aspiration opposed to ecclesiastical corruption; that these were destined to have their fruition in the Renaissance and the Reformation, and that they and other thinkers of like sort circulated and spread their beliefs by the water marks in the paper of which they were the makers...” (Ibid.)

Harold Bayley begins a book subsequent to “A New Light On The Renaissance” by repeating his earlier claims. In his 1912 book, “The Lost Language Of Symbolism” (republished by Dover in 2006), he reiterates:

Hitherto uninterpreted printers' marks and paper marks were found to be hieroglyphics, belonging to a “lost language of symbolism.” For example, the symbol of a shepherd's crook is the origin of the letter “P”. Various combined letters became linguistic roots, found throughout the world and in different times. One such root, “ak”, apparently originally signified “great” or “mighty”. Cairns, heaps of stones piled up as memorials or landmarks, resolve to “Great Cairn” in place names such as Carnac (Carn-ak) in Brittany and Karnak (Karn-Ak) in Egypt. A multitude of eytmological clues such as this evince a former civilization, global in scope, but now vanished from history, as shown by Bayley.

But the former mighty civilization is not entirely vanished, as it turns out. For example, England's Stonehenge remains an unsolved mystery. Stonehenge was known as Caer Sidi, the Seat or Fort of Sidi. Sidi was Saturn, related to Kronos or Time. Bayley dissects Kronos into ak ur on os, the Great Fire, the One Light. Stonehenge served as a gigantic Timekeeper. A circular stone temple (from tempus (Latin), meaning “time”) similar to Stonehenge can also be found, according to Bayley, at Kaseem, in Arabia.

Even more “ak” (mighty) than Stonehenge was a “serpent shrine” which once stood at Avebury in England. The date of Stonehenge is unknown, but “it is believed to be only one half the age of Avebury,” according to a footnote. Whoever built Avebury must have done so between 10,000 BC and 2,000 BC. “Ave”, the root of “Avebury”, is also “the root of Avalon or Avillion, the mysterious Isle of Rest to which King Arthur was withdrawn...” Close to Avebury lies Morgan's Hill, and Morgan le Fay was the half-sister of King Arthur. (Bayley, The Lost Language Of Symbolism)

Language has been called “a dictionary of faded metaphors.” (“The Truth About Cinderella”, http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Cinderella.html). The “creation of every word,” writes Bayley, “was originally a poem embodying a bold metaphor or a bright conception...” His book abounds with examples, for instance Orm, Teutonic for serpent, connects with the Afghan word for serpent, Kirm, i.e. ak irm, the “Great Worm”.

More than one vanished civilization, or stage of mankind, is described by the Swedish seer Emanuel Swedenborg. His visions corroborate an earlier stage of language where symbols (hieroglyphics) embraced a widely understood meaning. Depictions of serpents signified the sensuous faculty, but also much more. “The ancients who had a knowledge of correspondences made for themselves images corresponding to heavenly things, and they took delight in them because they signified things of heaven and the Church.” (“Church,” in the Swedenborgian sense, has a different meaning than of a building or specific congregation. A man or woman “enters heaven and becomes a Church, when he is good, because the Lord flows in into the good in man, and by means of good into his truth... A man in whom is the Church, equally with an angel, is a heaven...”) (Stanley, Michael (ed.) “Emmanuel Swedenborg: Essential Readings”. ISBN: 1-55643-467-7)

“Fairy tales”, in many cases, are mythology, and what is often supposed to be mere Fairy-tale proves in many instances to be unsuspected Theology. Gnosticism, “supposedly crushed out of existence” by the end of the sixth century, “simply dived underground and continued to flourish sub rosa.” (Bayley). After “heretics” seemed to have been completely exterminated by the later Albigensian Crusade, “Gnostic Remains” continued to circulate, transmitted by a lost language of symbolism hidden in paper marks. The “Gnostic Remains” also continued under the disguise of folklore, i.e., “Fairy tales.”

Welsh chroniclers relate of Britain that “the first of the three chieftains who established the colony was Hu the Mighty, who came with the original settlers. Hu the Mighty equates with the Irish Lug or Lugh and with the Welsh Lleu or Llew. (Llew is, in other words, “El Hu”.) Lug's sling was the Rainbow, and the Milky Way was called “Lug's Chain.” Lug's Chain “may also be met with under different imagery in the fairy-tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.” Lug's Chain evokes the “chain of good luck” (lug) experienced by Jack.

“Lug is reputed to have put an end to the rule of the giants [see also “Giants In Those Days”, http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Giants.html] by blinding their terrible leader with a carefully prepared slingstone.” (His sling was the Rainbow.) In the battle between David and Goliath, David chose “five smooth stones” with which to kill the giant. (1 Samuel 17: 40). This compares with the five beans from which Jack's magic beanstalk grew. (Bayley) Jack also killed “the giant.”

Jacob put a stone (magic bean) under his head and went to sleep. He dreamed of a giant ladder (beanstalk) going from earth to heaven. (Genesis 28: 11-12) The Milky Way was Lug's Chain. The celestial grouping was conceived by the Greeks to be the track to the palaces of the gods. Zeus tied a chain to the foot of the Olympian Throne by which he drew men up to Heaven. Jack's beanstalk was “of an immense thickness, and had so entwined that they formed a ladder nearly like a chain in appearance.” (“English Folk-lore and Legends”, qtd. in Bayley, “The Lost Language Of Symbolism”)

Echoes of the “lost language of symbolism” are also found in C.W. King's “Gnostics and Their Remains” (1887) in which dozens of ancient and medieval symbolical drawings are reproduced. Again therein are found hints of the Cinderella story, previously examined by Conspiracy Nation. For instance, there is the gnostic “fairy tale” of Sophia, who employed for agent her own emanation, Achamoth. Achamoth (Cinderella) “descended into Chaos, lost her way there” and became “so hopelessly entangled in Matter as to be unable to extricate herself from its trammels.” After a great deal of suffering (torment by Cinderella's step-sisters), Achamoth at last escaped the muddy (ashen) chaos. “Although unacquainted with the pleroma, the region of her mother, she reached the middle space [married the prince] and succeeded in shaking off the material parts [changed out of her rags] which have stuck to her spiritual nature; after which she immediately built a strong barrier between the world of intelligences (spirits) and the world of matter.” (“Christos and Sophia Achamoth”, http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/christianity/ChristosSophiaAchamoth.html)

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