Found another one from the hidden treasures, ‘The Book of Driuidry,’ by Ross Nichols, fwd. Philip Carr-Gomm (Thorsons, London; Aquarius, San Francisco, 1990), in which he brings up a thread I've found a bit puzzling, too--Nichols, the founder of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (he died in 1975), wrote that while the ‘Wicca stresses polarity,’ Druids emphasize the *completion* of dialectics and, perhaps not coincidentally, are much more closely connected with Christianity.

Mine own contribution is the figure of Kundrie, an oval-faced, unnaturally-smooth-and-rounded-cheeked, ‘bovinely, not divinely, swaying her over-sized rump from side-to-side like a Bull of Lesbos in a china shop,’ as one female acquaintance of mine likes to refer to the ‘femmes sans grace’ or ‘nouveaux arrive\s’ re: true human rights that claim to have been ‘born enlightened’ so ‘they's don't need to suffer like the out-of-synch Western mind types thinking too much’ ( said with the yes-minions going, ‘Yup’ or ‘nope’ or ‘thas righ’). Kundrie was the crone of legend around the time of our much-disputed Arthur (found the final word on his name in Nichols' book, too: noting the Roman nobility connection to his grandfather, Auriellus Ambrosius, as well as Uther the Pendragon, his father--Arthur, reportedly secretly trained as a combination consul/tanaiste/filead by Roman military governmentals in Gaul, is the latinized version of the Cymric, ‘Aradr,’ meaning ‘strength’(p.132)...); anyway, this Kundrie wreaked much havoc with her protegee, Morgan Le Fay (NOT Arthur's sister, one of her ‘delusions of grandeur’ nor related in anyway to him nor the mother of any of his children, especially not Gawain, whom she kidnapped at any early age...); the basic Modus Operandi was something like, ‘Adam and Eve had it all wrong you see, men are from Mars and women from Mercury...’ In other words, they specialized in the ‘double, double, boil and trouble’ type of materialist alchemy real Druids, much like a Lakota shaman or one of mine own Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoches, find ‘morally repugnant.’

To further fuel controversy, I'll add some reflections on this bannering oneself as *pagan*, as this Kundrie and her Kult of Hecate fit the ancient meaning of pagan quite well, in the way the Romans meant a ‘hick’ or ‘rube’ or ‘country bumpkin,’ whether, to modernize the matter, one of them/there ‘generations of inbreeding from the hills of Tennessee’ or, ala the Stevie Wonder song, ‘Just Enough for The City,’ the dupe fresh off the bus, ‘Hey slick, here hold this bag, I'll be right back,’ police sirens approaching while he muses, ‘New Yawk City, jus like I pick-sured it, sky-scrapers and everyting’...In other words, religion did not enter into the equation at all, nor did culture, but ignorance and superstition did manage...

The matter becomes important because of all the damage and guilt (on others or self, one and the same) inflicted in the ‘name of religion,’ a matter meant to offer refuge to the weary, sanctuary to those of faith, refreshment for those in service of others--not battle-axes of every variety, ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing...’

Our Celtic Grail Legend is a most perfect example. To return to Matthews' ‘The Elements of the Grail Tradition,’ I cited previously, one matter right on target is his use of the film, ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’as a good example of the misuse of *mythos* causing ‘death to the evil seeker after eternal life,’ the one seeking power not grace, the film Nazi like the real Nazi's, bringing forth not blessings, as ‘moshe’ or Moses, the Hebrew tribal ‘lightening rod’ did from Heaven (not ‘shaking a stick lookin for water’ or other ‘country aphorisms’ 'splainin how ain't nuttin new under the sun, as the U.S.of A. is currently plagued with in the gross forms of fundamentalists of every jihading ‘X’ (Nero's cruel joke, teaching the Christians to ‘worship the agent(s) of one's own persecution,’ the X-shaped crosses littering the roads into Rome during his ‘set the fires and point da pinkies at another’ rule-by-immolation) and stripe--one big schtinkin brown morass of fecal matter, descending, according to the materialist First and Only Law of Plumbing, down, baby, down, in W.B. Yeats' ‘ever widening gyre’... the ‘beast’ indeed having ‘come again...’).

The Joseph of Arimathea that Matthews cites as the founder of the Grail Legend is another good example. Joseph was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for ‘body-snatching’ (he was discovered wrapping a ‘hundred pounds of balsam and aloe’ along with other *pharmaka* from Tyre, sorcerer's powders from the land of that fake ‘Queen,’ Sheeba the transvestite; Mary the Magdeliene had discovered the Christ missing from the cave into which he'd somehow disappeared, sealing it with a boulder behind him, after being pierced with not just the Lance of Longinus, cut loose from the cross and left for dead, finally; what Joseph told his cronies he was going to do was ‘bind the rabbi's[Christ's] soul in Eternal Bondage to our bidding,’ in service of what might be considered ‘pagan’ dieties--the type of ‘soul exchange’ once practiced among our Tibetans before Padmasambhava, Guru Je Rinpoche, circa 747 A.D., banished the superstitious and spiritually dangerous practice by beating the Bon-po sorcerers in a contest of rhetoric--before the bout the sorcerer's told, ‘Not to worry’ as their demons would psychically supply any answer to any question by misuse of ‘mind readings’--not being able to supply ‘wisdom,’ however, as when Padmasambhava anwered what that word meant with, ‘That which furthers,’ winning the debate with ‘aha!’s all around...)

This Joseph, upon his release from prison in 70 A.D., during a time still plagued by birth defects, sterility (no ‘goddess’ responsible) outbreaks of disease, etc, following the assassination of the Christ, set about designing Chalices of Blood (perhaps your clan goldsmith, Eileen, could assist as sovereignty goddess as well and research the dizzying array of ‘the chalice, the chalice’ designed with the same ‘bellows of Hades’ used to project cultural failings, scapegoat and exterminate those ‘others’ unluckily enough to be so identified, ala ‘the Irish Problem.’ The idea being, ‘if I can just find the right shape...’

My Tibetan Buddhist ‘elders’ indeed shake one's head in disbelief when told how the state-propaganda version of Christianity, spin-doctored by this ‘Saint’ Joseph, Bishop Iraneus, et al, formed a bizarre cult more akin to those of Count Dracula or that Teutonic Nazi-precurser, Count Gobineau and his icy-cold ‘social and racial eugenic engineering theories’ of Napolean III's ‘Carnival Empire’...

‘You mean they honor their teacher by drinking his blood and eating his flesh?’

This materialist obsession known today as ‘transubstantiation’ (say it like ‘Transylvania’ to see what we mean) indeed has a counterpoint--buried, if you will--right in our Celtic Grail Legend. As Matthews relates in Merlin's establishing the Third Round Table of the Grail, upon a Holy Day for the Druids, the ancient, bejewelled golden Chalice of Inspiration ‘shape-shifting’ appeared shimmering forth from billowing clouds, in the Spotlight of Heaven, generating strong faith among the Knights...

My Tibetan Buddhist tradition calls this spiritual process ‘transmutation,’ and I'll impart a sutra (thread) to further the matter: