My current part time arts gig is art history researcher specializing in symbols for CodedHistory.com
This photo is from my visit to the Achenbach works paper archive at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco. The artwork is centuries old and is talking about Mary Magdalene letting out her secrets from her jar. It means when you see the image of a jar in art or architecture, Mary Magdalene is there. (Memory glitch on the artist, sorry.)
I've found Mary Magdalene holding a child, via her jar, in many images that are titled The Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. The virgin birth story actually came from more ancient folklore, such as Isis and Baby Horus from Egypt. The iconography is exactly the same.
It was a rare honor to be able to see the works in person privately at the Achenbach. I had to make an appointment in advance and wear gloves and use a special tool to handle the works, while two museum experts sat with me. That is how precious to the world these artworks are.
Alma Spreckels gathered the collections and raised the funding for the Legion of Honor Museum of Art. Alma started as an artist model and her statue as Nike stands atop the column in Union Square in downtown San Francisco.
Another place to find Mary Magdalene's jar is classical and neoclassical architecture. Such as the Victorian houses called the Painted Ladies all over Haight Ashbury, San Francisco. Haight Ashbury has been a hub fro artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, actors, and celebrities for over 100 years.
The Spreckels built a Victorian mansion, their Summer House, by Buena Vista Park in Haight Ashbury. 100 years ago the Haight had a water park and many theatres and nightclubs all with live music and performers. Alma brought famous bohemian artists and writers, and world changing dancers such as Loi Fuller, directly from Paris France during La Belle Epoque to stay at the Spreckels Summer House in Haight Ashbury.
Magdalene's jar can be found on Alma's house and other Victorian mansions and houses around the Haight and San Francisco. Plus there are a lot more symbols with more lost historical secrets around SF. San Francisco has over a century long history with the Knights Templar and Masons, particularly in Haight Ashbury. There are streets named after Knights Templar Grand Masters, such as Cole St.
The real Knights Templar never died out, they just got more creative. Knights Templar, Masons, were originally a military order to protect royals and are thousands of years older than the history books, Hollywood, and popular "experts" say. The Templars also have a long history of fine arts, artisans of superb skills, and sponsoring creative projects, such as Gothic cathedrals. In more modern times preserving art in museums, such as the Legion of Honor and Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
The Templars, Masons, are not a male only order, they also have women, such as Alma Spreckels and Queen Elizabeth II of the UK and members of many royal families. Alma Spreckels was a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte of France, who was also a secret Templar. Alma cracked the Da Vinci Code 100 years before the Movie and raised funding for multiple museums with large collections of art and artifacts specializing it in. Yet the public don't see the amazing real history written in these creative works, because the public are brainwashed by the Hollywood version.
A more recent and more famous celebrity who cracked the Da Vinci Code and made famous movies with the story coded into them was Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a Gnostic Rosicrucian and Mason, probably a Knights Templar too. The Rosicrucians studied symbols and lost histories of the Holy Grail bloodline and belief systems of royals from ancient times.
Walt Disney's original films, animations, cartoons, and fun parks are full of coded symbolism about the secret history of the Holy Grail bloodline Disney funded the building and collections of the Rosicrucian Museum, in San Jose, Silicone Valley, California. Now a pilgrimage site for not only new agers, but for real Knights Templars, symbologists, art historians, and grandmasters of secret societies.
Proof of concept for the Da Vinci Code's basic theory is in the name Rosicrucian, which means Rosy Cross or Rose Cross. The rose is another symbol for Mary Magdalene and the cross is one of the symbols for Jesus, though not for the crucifixion. The two names Rose and Cross "joined together as one" as Rosicrucian is telling us that the historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, at least in secret. There is noting mystical or new age about it.
It also tells us that the historical Mary Magdalene and Jesus were both very important and wealthy royals to have books and religions and temples and churches created about them for 2000 years. Wealthy folks didn't worship nobodies, then or now. Which I think brings me to an important point and world mission for modern arts, entertainment, and media. To un-brainwash the world from fake Hollywood histories and fake news. There is so much new research out there.
If you do your research ,without bias or belief in miracles, and connect the dots, you can uncover lost histories to inspire your creative works. Lost histories where civilization is much much older and women played a much more powerful role in world politics and world religions than we've been taught by college professors.
Another notable Knights Templar artist of course is Leonardo Da Vinci. I've decoded the full version of his Last Supper Fresco, we usually only see the popular part. But the research findings are too long for this blog. At the moment it is the size now of a small book and still finding more to write about. But other creatives that from the symbolism in their works I suspect are Templars or Masons, or at least advanced Grail geeks, include: Shakespeare, William Blake, Ivan Turgenev, Omar Khayyam, Jean Cocteau, and many others throughout the millennia.
Women Knights Templar or grail geek artists are harder to find and require another line of dedicated research. I do know some modern women Grail Geeks who are artists. Myself included. Though many do the art just for themselves. I have books and books of drawings and designs and books of unpublished art history research. Also unpublished documentaries, that I produced, shot, and edited myself. My grail geek friends say it's time to write another book. This blog piece will be notes for that.
Another form of art history is archeology, which finds the lost art that tells the lost history. One of my favorite long time youtube channels is New Earth by megaliths.org a Russian woman researcher. Amazing super ancient megaliths from lost civilizations. Many we don't know about, because they are in Siberia and other places not in USA school books. Take a look and imagine writing a story or game or theatrical play or opera about them and shooting or staging it such amazing settings. (Image: Arctic Henge, Raufarhöfn, Iceland, being restored.)
By uniting art history with art and content creation and distribution we can expand the work of the Knights Templar. Two of the most famous Knights Templar sayings are "For those that have eyes to see" and "The truth shall set you free." We all now have the power of the digital screen, light is a form of fire which ancients worshipped.
Concentrated light is the strongest form of hypnotic medium on the planet according to medical data. Concentrated light in the forms of Hollywood movies and television and now computer games have brainwashed the world according to the producers' imaginations and belief systems for the past 100 years. This has influenced school history books with libraries of fake news.
As creatives with digital light information transmission tools we can research the truth and create beautiful ways to unbrainwash the world. We have laptops and smart phones with search engines cameras and editing all in one. I did my initial research on the symbols and shot and edited experimental mini docs, after my laptop was broken at the time, all from the palm of my hand.
With professional production of lost history and what is really out there, palm of the hand productions can be redeveloped into epics tales of adventure and real heroes both men and women. Some of the longest running and most watched videos are about real history and alt history, because there are so many geeks of all ages and organizations about those subjects. Your films and docs inspire them.
Your work as creators sparks in people all over the world a glimmer of light of the truth that they are mystically or unexplainably called on the journey to seek and find. To set themselves free from the prison of fake news. But you must do your research, like the rest of us seekers of truth. Connect the dots until they make sense. True stories don't have dead ends and there are no ancient aliens.
The ancients and the Knights Templar have left us the stories and evidences in plain sight all over the world. I've found Holy Grail coded architecture in the most unexpected places, from Haight Ashbury San Francisco to Outback Australia. In Australia there are beautiful coded buildings and churches, some of their details have become famous photos. Also in Outback Australia some of the old hotels used to have brothels that had lookout towers to watch for police coming to bust the place. Local legend has it that the towers were called Magdalene towers.
A tower was a symbol of the historical Mary Magdalene, but it has nothing to do with prostitution. Old Jerusalem before it was leveled by Titus had several towers that were called the towers of the Marys, Queens of Jerusalem. It tells us that Mary Magdalene was not a poor nobody prostitute at all, but a high queen of a famous ancient line, incidentally which included Cleopatra in her ancestry.
The symbols that tell lost histories are not just in old art and buildings, but in new art and buildings and media as well. More recently when the artist doesn't know what the symbol is, or even that it is a symbol, let alone its meaning. The same goes for new age workshops.
While a lot of gurus started off with good intentions, but when they get the taste of and need for cold hard cash, they become actors and actresses, fictional religion writers, and performance artists for hire. Just ask their booking agents. I know people personally who teach this rubbish, I try to explain nicely, but it's their bread and butter, so I give up.
There are thousands of lost histories of the ages that we can now research and find for ourselves. They are not fables nor folklore nor mythical Biblical or Druid or any kind of magic or miracles. They are true stories to inspire people to go above and beyond. Epic adventures and love stories and conspiracies that lead up to today. Enough stories for TV and Youtube ad book series to go on for years.
No more writer's block. Open the door to a wealth of ideas with old fashioned research. Creators no longer have to imagine fictional new stories or mystical hogwash to be original. Now we have the real life stories and the settings where the stories originally happened. Look no further than the truth for inspiration, storylines, and great scenery and costume designs.
A blog about some more of my strange art history research is at https://decodedhistory.blogspot.com I've also written and published a couple of books, documentary shorts, and a beta augmented reality game series on the subject. Art and its history is a lot more interesting and inspiring than school books and Hollywood tell us.
