The artwork of Christine Rosamond Benton, and her kindred, Philip Boileau, is liken to the art of Mucha, the Bohemian Patriot. When you put these beautiful women side by side, a sleeping kingdom – awakens!
In Grimm’s version of the King in the Mountain, the sleeping king asks;
“Do the eagles still circle the mountaintop?” The herdsman, or a mysterious voice, replies, “Yes, they still circle the mountaintop.” “Then begone! My time has not yet come.”
“Ancient legends are associated with this mountain. The legend says that a huge army of Czech nights led by St. Wenceslas sleeps inside the mountain. The knights will awaken and help the Motherland when she is in great danger. According to legend there will be signs: trees in Blanik wood will get dry, but old dead oak under the mountain will be green again and a small spring by the mountain will become a river. Then during an epic battle between the Czechs and their overwhelming enemy the Blanik knights will come to their aid led by St. Wenceslas on his white horse. The enemy will retreat to Prague where they will finally be defeated.”
Drew Benton’s great, great grandfather, Wensel Anton Braskewitz/Prescowitz, came to America from Bohemia Czechoslovakia. He was named after the Wenceslas Kings of Bohemia.
Drew is kindred to Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen of Bohemia.
Her husband Frederich, was a Rosicrucian Master. The Knight of the Rose Cross are associated with the Freemasons and Knight Templars. The Bentons were famous Freemasons, who possibly married the Rosamond/Rougemont Templars who I have proven owned the shroud of Turin. These are OUR family legends no one in my family wants to embrace, for reasons that are too ugly and stupid to repeat! Enough!
All whom share my blood have one last chance to get behind my efforts to recieve and record the Great Gift that has been handed to us all – on a silver platter! I will not live, forever! I am wanting for an Heir! So far, there are no OVERT takers. Only when I am given a pile of money, will they gather – in my name?
I see a colaberation where Drew and I create a movie together, or, a new cyberspace. There is so much material here. Hollywood is always looking for a good story. We are a story, within a story, within a story!
“Dost hear me, old ancestor?” he cried. “I, thy descendant, Cyprian de Rougemont, call upon thee to point out where thy gold is hidden? I know that thou wert a brother of the Rosy Cross — one of the illuminati — and didst penetrate the mysteries of nature, and enter the region of light. I know also, that thou wert buried in this house with a vast treasure; but though I have made diligent search for it, and others have searched before me, thy grave has never yet been discovered!”
My friend tells me I am like Joseph Campbell, and should be making millions of dollars. I am also like Walt Disney. Our family history is real history, freed from Disney Land, that land of make-believe!
Come ye one and all, to Moy Mell, and White Mountain!
Long live the King!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2012
I found the word egregor at the Intermediate Greek – English Lexicon, founded upon the seventh edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, with reference to egeiro = to be awake, to watch.
As I turned to egeiro (Root EGER) (I am transliterating into English) I found the following definitions:
A:
(1) to awaken, to wake up, to rouse.
(2) to rouse, to stir up (example: stir up the fight)
(3) to raise from the dead (N.T.)
(4) to raise or to erect (example: a building)
B:
(1) to keep watch or vigil (Il)
(2) to be awake (Hom.)
(3) to rouse or stir oneself, be excited by passion (Hes., Thuc.)
Clearly this word had many interpretations. Obviously it was connected to watching and wakefulness. It was obvious that at least some of the references I quoted above knew of its meaning as well as its source (Levi, as will be shown below).
Blaník was finished on 9 March 1879 and premiered on 4 January 1880. It is named for the mountain Blaník inside which a legend says that a huge army of knights led by St. Wenceslas sleep. The knights will awake and help the country in its gravest hour (sometimes described as four hostile armies attacking from all cardinal directions).
Musically, Blaník begins exactly as Tábor ends, “hammering” out the motto which was left unresolved, but now continuing on, as if in the aftermath of the battle. Thus these last two tone poems of the cycle form a cohesive pair, as do the first two; the High Castle’s theme returns as the Vltava’s river journey triumphantly reaches that same destination, and again returns triumphantly at the end of Blaník. Once again, the Hussite hymn used in Tábor is quoted, though this time it is the third line which rings out in the march at the end of the piece. The original lyrics to this line in the hymn are “so that finally with Him you will always be victorious,” a reference to the eventual victorious rise of the Czech state.
King in the mountain stories involve legendary heroes, often accompanied by armed retainers, sleeping in remote dwellings, including caves on high mountaintops, remote islands, or supernatural worlds. The hero is frequently a historical figure of some military consequence in the history of the nation where the mountain is located.
The stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm concerning Frederick Barbarossa and Charlemagne are typical of the stories told, and have been influential on many told variants and subsequent adaptations. The presence of the hero is unsuspected, until some herdsman wanders into the cave, typically looking for a lost animal, and sees the hero. The stories almost always mention the detail that the hero has grown a long beard, indicative of the long time he has slept beneath the mountain.
In the Brothers Grimm version, the hero speaks with the herdsman. Their conversation typically involves the hero asking, “Do the eagles (or ravens) still circle the mountaintop?” The herdsman, or a mysterious voice, replies, “Yes, they still circle the mountaintop.” “Then begone! My time has not yet come.”
The herdsman is usually supernaturally harmed by the experience: he ages rapidly, he emerges with his hair turned white, and often he dies after repeating the tale. The story goes on to say that the king sleeps in the mountain, awaiting a summons to arise with his knights and defend the nation in a time of deadly peril. The omen that presages his rising will be the extinction of the birds that trigger his awakening.[1][2]
Blaník is a mountain in the Czech Republic. Its height is 638 meters above sea level. The surrounding area is a small natural reservation.
Ancient legends are associated with this mountain. The legend says that a huge army of Czech knights led by St. Wenceslas sleeps inside the mountain. The knights will awaken and help the Motherland when she is in great danger. According to legend there will be signs: trees in Blanik wood will get dry, but old dead oak under the mountain will be green again and a small spring by the mountain will become a river. Then during an epic battle between the Czechs and their overwhelming enemy the Blanik knights will come to their aid led by St. Wenceslas on his white horse. The enemy will retreat to Prague where they will finally be defeated.
According to the legend, Good King Wenceslas and his knights will arise from their slumber when the Czechs are attacked by a number of armies equal to or greater than four (from four cardinal directions). In the Jára Cimrman’s play “Blaník”, it was proved that this legend is not true because in 1968 at the end of the Prague Spring Czechoslovakia was attacked by five armies of the Warsaw pact and “in Blanik not a single leg moved”.
In the forest of Zelizy, at the foot of Kokorin Castle, near to the town of Libechov in the Czech Republic, in a hollow among trees, is a man-made cave carved out by a monastery cook who became a national artist. In this retreat the young Vaclav Levy set about his cave, to guard it, monuments in sandstone rock of warriors of an earlier age in Bohemian mythology. The whole was a memorial to Czech identity – a majestic Slavin. The cave dates to 1845 and was a tribute that Levy made for the one-time monk, poet, and philosopher Frantisek Matous Klacel. This sanctuary in the woods became known as the Klacelka and included other sculptural works by Levy assembled there. In that place, among pine trees and brooding shadows, among rocks, Levy authored a national mythology recalling Blanik, with knights of old and soldiers to guard the cave. Here he sculptured these warriors, and others, including Zbynek from Zasmouky, Jan Zizka from Kalich, and Prokop Holy, with dwarfs hammering arms on an anvil for the soldiers – all waiting the day when the nation in peril, would summon them! These outer carvings protect the second part of the memorial, a chamber or room or cave, cut into the rock. This is the true Klacelka. The walls of this cave are festooned with sculpted reliefs from the fairy tales of Bajky Ferina Lisak by Frantisek Klacel.
Prologue (1599): Auriol Darcy is surprised attempting to remove the heads of two traitors from the Southwark Gateway of Old London Bridge. He is injured by the warder, Baldred, and carried to the house of Dr Lamb, an alchemist and Auriol Darcy’s grandfather, who is assisted by his faithful dwarf Flapdragon. Lamb, on the point of discovering the elixir of life, has a seizure and dies as his ungrateful grandson consumes the draught.
Book the first ‘Ebba’ (1830): Two varmints, Tinker and Sandman, waylay a gentleman in a fantastical ruined house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road in London, but they are surprised and he is carried unconscious to the house of Mr Thorneycroft, a scrap-iron dealer. While he convalesces and falls in love with Ebba, the iron-dealer’s daughter, Tinker and Sandman and their associate Ginger (a ‘dog-fancier’ who steals dogs and resells them) discover in the gentleman’s pocket-book the private diary of a man who has lived for over two hundred years, and has committed nameless crimes. Auriol (for it is he) seeks to dissuade Ebba from her love, for he bears an awful doom. A tall sinister stranger has Auriol in his power, and employs a dwarf (who is Flapdragon) to recover the pocket-book. The stranger confronts Auriol and informs his that Ebba must be surrendered to him according to their contract. Auriol refuses, but Ebba is snatched from him, and he is imprisoned, during a nocturnal assignation at a picturesque ruin near Millbank Street. Tinker, Sandman and Ginger offer their services to Mr Thorneycroft to attempt her rescue. Ebba is conveyed to a mysterious darkened chamber where the stranger demands that she sign a scroll surrendering herself body and soul to him. She calls to heaven for protection: in the darkness a tomb is revealed and opened by menacing cowled figures, and Auriol is brought forth. Ebba hurls herself into the tomb to precede him and save him, but then re-emerges silent and cowled to sign the scroll.
Phiz illustration: Mr Thorneycroft, Sandman and Tinker in the enchanted chairs, observed by Ginger.
Intermean (1800): Cyprian Rougemont visits a deserted mansion at Stepney Green, where he finds the portrait of his ancestor (of the same name), a Rosicrucian brother of the 16th century, one of the Illuminati. Satan has appeared to him in a dream and promised him an ancestral treasure, the price for which is his own soul, or that of Auriol Darcy. Cyprian strikes the portrait and a plaque falls away, revealing the access to the ancestral tomb. There in a seven-sided vault lit by the ever-burning lamp and painted with kabbalistic symbols he finds the uncorrupt body with a book of mysteries, a vial of infernal potion, and a series of chests filled with gold, silver and jewels. With use of the potion, he lures Auriol into a compact whereby he is given a magnificent mansion in St James’s Square and £120,000, in exchange for a female victim whenever Rougemont requires one from him. Thus Auriol can win the woman he loves, Elizabeth Talbot; but Rougemont, once the contract is signed, demands Elizabeth Talbot as his first victim, in a week’s time. Auriol seeks to defy him and to marry her within the week, but he is thwarted and Elizabeth is abducted on the seventh night.
Book the Second, ‘Cyprian Rougemont’ (1830): Thorneycroft, Sandman and Tinker (with Ginger) continue their pursuit led by another, who is the brother of Rougemont’s second victim, Clara Paston. They enter a mysterious mansion, and becoming trapped in a chamber and locked into enchanted or mechanically-contrived chairs three of them are muffled by bell-masks which descend from the ceiling, and then plunged through traps in the floor.
Flapdragon appears and attempts to help them find Ebba, while Paston, Ginger and Thorneycroft find Rougemont and confront him with pistols, but Rougemont is impervious to the bullets. Thorneycroft, Tinker and Sandman are trapped in a pit over which an iron roof closes by a giant mechanical contrivance, and Ebba is never found again. Auriol, meanwhile, awakes to find himself in Elizabethan costume, chained in a vaulted dungeon. The voice of Rougemont addresses him, telling him that he has been mad, but that he has given him a potion to heal him, and is his keeper. James I is now the King of England. Old Dr Lamb is still living, and his dwarf Flapdragon, and Auriol is taken to him, where they begin to hope that Auriol’s cure has been effected. He becomes convinced that he has lived centuries in a few nights and has awakened from a delusion… but even in the last sentence, addressing Dr Lamb, the author relates what he says to his supposed grandsire.
http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/auriol1.html
http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/auriol3.html
This chamber, which was large and cased with oak, was wholly unfurnished, like the hall, and in an equally dilapidated condition. The only decoration remaining on its walls was the portrait of a venerable personage in the cap and gown of Henry the Eighth’s time, painted against a panel — a circumstance which had probably saved it from destruction and beneath it, fixed in another panel, a plate of brass, covered with mystical characters and symbols, and inscribed with the name Cyprianus de Rougemont, Fra. R.C. The same name likewise appeared upon a label beneath the portrait, with the date, 1550.
Pausing before the portrait, the young man threw the light of the lantern full upon it, and revealed features somewhat resembling his own in form, but of a severe and philosophic cast. In the eyes alone could be discerned the peculiar and terrible glimmer which distinguished his own glances. After regarding the portrait for some time fixedly, he thus addressed it:
“Dost hear me, old ancestor?” he cried. “I, thy descendant, Cyprian de Rougemont, call upon thee to point out where thy gold is hidden? I know that thou wert a brother of the Rosy Cross — one of the illuminati — and didst penetrate the mysteries of nature, and enter the region of light. I know also, that thou wert buried in this house with a vast treasure; but though I have made diligent search for it, and others have searched before me, thy grave has never yet been discovered! Listen to me! Methought Satan appeared to me in a dream last night, and bade me come hither, and I should find what I sought. The conditions he proposed were, that I should either give him my own soul, or win him that of Auriol Darcy. I assented. I am here. Where is thy treasure?”
After a pause, he struck the portrait with his clenched hand, exclaiming in a loud voice:
“Dost hear me, I say, old ancestor? I call on thee to give me thy treasure. Dost hear, I say?”
And he repeated the blow with greater violence.
Disturbed by the shock, the brass plate beneath the picture started from its place, and fell to the ground.
“What is this?” cried Rougemont, gazing into the aperture left by the plate. “Ha! — my invocation has been heard!”
And, snatching up the lantern, he discovered, at the bottom of a little recess, about two feet deep, a stone, with an iron ring in the centre of it. Uttering a joyful cry, he seized the ring, and drew the stone forward without difficulty, disclosing an open space beyond it.
“This, then,’ is the entrance to my ancestor’s tomb,” cried Rougemont; “there can be no doubt of it. The old Rosicrucian has kept his secret well; but the devil has helped me to wrest it from him. And now to procure the necessary implements, in case, as is not unlikely, I should experience further difficulty.”
Lien, magazine municipal 29/03/04. Link, municipal magazine 29/03/04.
Rosamond Press 