Based on an exclusive presentation delivered by Andrew Collins

to The Crop Circle Symposium in Glastonbury on Sunday, 24 July 2005

Many mysteries of our age, such the Holy Grail, crop circles, the Great Pyramid, Rennes-le-Chateau and the Glastonbury zodiac, just should not exist. Evidence for their reality is ripped apart by scholars, and in some instances hoaxers and gullible individuals are behind them. Despite this problem they continue to thrive, and by their very existence they are helping us to expand our knowledge of the past and effect our future together. Is it possible that there exist super-intelligences that steps in when such mysteries are created, and back tracks in time to ensure their reality before even their conception? If so, is this because these mysteries are important to human destiny, and thus must be nurtured towards whatever their ultimate outcome might be? Can we go on to identity these super-intelligences? Much of what follows is drawn from the author's own experiences in communications with perceived non-human agencies.

1. THE HOLY GRAIL

The Holy Grail is a very fickle subject to pin down. Created as a literary device in France during the late twelfth century, it was meant to be a cup in which the Blood of Christ, or some liquefied relic of Christ, was kept. Subsequently it became a vessel of the Last Supper, due to a Catholic influence on existing Grail romances, which verged on the heretical. Yet evidence points towards a strong Languedoc influence in the roots of the Grail legend. Here the term grasal, or gral, meant a pot in which to put liquid. The vessel's popular association with a figure named Joseph of Arimathea, a lesser disciple of Christ said to have borne the Grail to Europe, was a fiction based on a misreading of a story concerning a Wandering Jew named Joseph found in early Christian legend. Glastonbury Abbey's claim that Joseph ended his days here, bringing with him the Grail, was also completely false, as was their claim in the fifteenth century to have his remains interred in a tomb, alongside those of King Arthur and his queen Guinevere.

The search for a physical Grail is fruitless, since there already so many. Among the claimants is the Santo Caliz of Valencia, Spain; the Sacro Cantino in Florence, Italy; and another, a wooden vessel known as the Nanteos cup, which is currently in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. I was the guardian for two years of what I consider to be Britain's most authentic Grail - the Hawkstone Grail, known also as the Marian Chalice. It is a Roman scent jar in green alabaster of Near Eastern manufacture that would once have contained an expensive oil. It has been linked by my colleague Graham Phillips with the vessel from which Mary Magdalene produced spikenard oil to anoint Jesus prior to his martyrdom on the Cross. There is little question about it being a very special holy relic, although it is not the Holy Grail, simply a 'grail', a holy vessel in which to place liquid.

The search for the true Grail is something quite different. It is a metaphysical quest to obtain oneness with God, away from the constraints of the Catholic Church, which keeps its control by offering to intercede with God and Jesus on behalf of its followers. The Grail mysteries are embodied heavily in the doctrines of the Cathars, the heretical Gnostic religion of the Languedoc, exterminated almost entirely during the Church-led Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century. Cathar ideologies revolved around receiving revelation through experiencing the light of God. They if anyone were responsible for catalysing the medieval Grail mysteries, which also dealt with the whole concept of how only the purest knight was able to attain the Grail, itself a metaphor for enlightenment.

The Holy Grail appears in vision to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

The key to the Grail was never so much hunting down a Grail, but more about understanding what it contained. The First Christians of Jerusalem, along with the various Gnostic sects that thrived in Egypt and the Near East in the first three centuries of the Christian era, used cups that almost certainly contained some kind of intoxicant that enabled the devotee to experience direct communication with godhead.

A major symbol associated with this dark liquid drunk from the Grail vessel was often the snake, an emblem both of St John the Divine, the writer of the Fourth Gospel, and the pharmacy trade. Two young authors, Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn in their new book THE SERPENT GRAIL (Wakins Books, 2005) argue that the active ingredient of the Grail's contents was serpent venom, which is toned by the inclusion of animal blood, generally that of a horse. Medical trials using snake venom have shown that it is useful in the reproduction of stem cells, which aid the body to avoid serious illness.

2. CULT OF THE HEAD

Also of interest is that the authors of THE SERPENT GRAIL have found that snake venom was occasionally consumed from human skulls fashioned into cups. This is an interesting observation since there is an overriding connection between Grails and skulls. One has only to think of porcelain Toby jugs to visualise the idea of drinking liquid from a head, or skull.

Yet the connection between Grails and human heads goes beyond this, for since Neolithic times heads have been seen not only as the seat of the soul, but also as a medium for communication with otherworldly intelligences, most usually ancestral spirits.

Oracular heads, like that of Orpheus, the Greek god of the underworld, act as spouters of divine wisdom and knowledge, and the cult of the head survived into Christianity with the veneration of saints' relics, and the worship by the Knights Templar of a mysterious head called 'Baphomet', a name probably taken from the Greek bapho metis, 'baptiser of wisdom'. Yet in similar with the quest for the Grail, it is not so much the possession of a head that is important, but understanding what comes from its mouth. To some it would be the Logos, the Word of God, divine communication, expressed in terms of the serpent of knowledge and wisdom emerging from the mouth, a symbol linked also with the Gnostic Grail.

Direct communication with godhead, or otherworldly spirits, is a process that has always involved gifted individuals entering altered states of consciousness in which they can experience prophetic dreams, visions and otherworldly journeys. Originally the role of the shaman, today in western society it is the domain of the psychic, the medium and the channeler. They communicate with unseen intelligences that we can express in whatever manner our minds allow.

Regardless of this very real conundrum, communications with unseen forces have arguably been essential to human growth and evolution since we first began to communicate with each other through language and art at least 40,000 years ago. We need to believe in direct communication with God, or whomsoever we choose, in order to retain some kind of sense of connection to a greater plan, especially at times of need in this very scary world we now find ourselves living within. Indeed, it is important to believe in something, period. Yet who do we really communicate with, and what are their agendas? Before answering this question, we need first to examine further mysteries of our time.

3. CROP CIRCLES

Crop circles began appearing in southern England in the 1980s, first in fields of wheat and barley, and later in other forms of crop such as oil-seed rape. They were a direct development of the so-called 'saucer nests' that received considerable attention in UFO books and journals following their appearance among the swamps of North Island, New Zealand, in the mid 1960s, often following UFO activity.

Thus from the early days, crop circles in Britain were seen as expressions of an alien intelligence, a theory confirmed with their gradual increase in complexity from single circles to quincunx groups, ringed circles and the emergence of crop formations by 1990. The more complex the crop flattening became, the more it was assumed to be evidence of intelligent design. Often these opinions were further enhanced by strange effects reported in connection with crop circles. Crops were said to have been changed, people reported unusual physiological and psychological effects, ball of lights mysteriously appeared and electrical apparatus became faulty all within their immediate vicinity. Not unnaturally, this created an environment in which the concept of direct communication with outside intelligences became easy, leading to vigils in the fields or on hilltops at night. Many accounts speak of individuals making contact with alleged alien intelligences, who claimed responsibility for the crop formations, and then went on to impress their agenda and ideologies.

Yet most significant of all was the fact that the crop formations were and still are seen as embodying important symbolism, containing not just ancient and contemporary cosmological values, but also scientific based art drawn from such subjects as astronomy, mathematics, computer fractals and quantum physics.

Crop circles are seen as part of an evolutionary learning curve. They convey important, quirky and mysterious messages that enable us to look towards the next level of evolution.

As to the origin of these messages, opinions are varied. Gaia, God, the Goddess, and extra-terrestrials have all been seen as potential intelligences behind the crop circle phenomenon.

Barbary Castle crop formation from 1991.

All this comes despite the over-whelming evidence that the majority, if not ninety-nine percent, of crop circles and crop formations worldwide are considered to be human creations. To the croppies the makers of crop circles are known by the derogatory term 'hoaxers', while those who create them like to refer to themselves as 'crop artists', 'landscape artists' and 'the circlemakers', this last term being used by croppies to describe the unseen forces responsible for crop circle creation.

The crop artists make it known that all crop circles are man-made, and that they know who among their community has created what, including early classic formations from before their time. They laugh at and deride those who believe crop circles to be 'real'. This attitude comes from seeing 'gullible' individuals claim publicly that their handiwork is a 'genuine' formation, as well as from their own, often cynical, views of the paranormal.

Yet it is a fact that most, if not all, of the crop artists have themselves experienced strange incidents in connection with making crop formations, often under pressure at the dead of night. They witness mysterious lights and flashes, experience inexplicable presences or sensations, and can feel guided to create, or place formations in a certain location at a certain time (even though some are reluctant to talk about their experiences).

I do not believe that the crop artists know exactly what is going on with crop circle formation, even if they believe they are all man-made. There is much, I feel, they have no control over whatsoever. Even if ninety-nine percent of crop circles or formations are human creations, the subtle messages they convey remain just as clear, suggesting that it does not matter who or what made them, the purpose remains the same - to stimulate new ideas in the minds of those who behold them.

I call for a review of the manner in which we perceive the construction of crop circles. They should be taken purely for what they are, messages in the crop, and beacons for communication with the unseen. On the other hand the crop-circle makers, whether human or otherwise, should equally be seen as part of a much greater plan to which everyone would seem to be players on the cosmic chessboard of life.

One is reminded of Tibetan Buddhism whereby monks are occasionally inspired by communication with spirit entities to go in search of lost written teachings called termas, said to have been left on earth by the religion's founder Padmasambhava during his lifetime in the eighth century AD. When found these either take the form of actual written texts, or they are received as 'mind termas' - sacred writing which simply appears in the minds of the terton, 'treasure finder', and is then recorded down.

For Tibetan Buddhists there is no difference between transmitted texts given as mind termas and those discovered as written tracts. Their purpose is always the same, enlightenment, education and attainment of oneness with the divine. In other words, the man-made crop formation is as important as any other, while the crop artist is to be seen as one inspired, in the same way as a writer of automatic writing is seen to be influenced by otherworldly intelligences.

Yet this said, might we go on to identify the all-important force that lies behind every facet of the crop circle mystery, the same one that might well be behind all other great mysteries of our time?

4. THE GREAT PYRAMID

To answer this question, we must move on to another baffling enigma of our generation - the mystery of the Great Pyramid. According to hundreds of books, read by countless believers, this wonder of the ancient world was constructed not as the almighty tomb of a king, but as a repository of lost knowledge encapsulating divine principles in stone. It preserves within its structure the value of Pi, Pythagorean geometry and keynotes on the musical scale. In size and proportions it is a miniature of the Northern Hemisphere, and is aligned perfectly true north in a manner unequalled in our own age.

The Great Pyramid is thought to have been built using a lost technology more advanced than anything available to us now. Beyond this it is a symbol of ancient wisdom, greatness and perfection among Freemasons worldwide, echoed by scale representations of the Great Pyramid in glass, metal and stone found everywhere from Paris to Las Vegas, London to Memphis, Tennessee.

As such, the Great Pyramid has also become a symbol of the Illuminati, the great Masonic conspiracy, that goes to the heart of world politics, and involves the most influential industrialists and world leaders, who are all motivated by the evil powers of Satan.

Christian Pyramidologists, on the other hand, see the Great Pyramid as a divine revelation in stone, containing a record of human history from Creation down to the modern day. Encoded within it is a message, a prophecy, important to the destiny of humanity. For them, it was inspired by God himself, who worked through his prophets on earth to create an expression of the divine in stone.


The Great Pyramid, right, and the Second Pyramid.

All of this comes despite the frustrations of Egyptologists who are pains to point out that the Great Pyramid is simply a royal tomb built for the pharaoh Khufu in around 2500 BC. To them, it is merely the culmination of gradually evolving tomb-building techniqies stretching back to the construction of the first rectangular mastabas some 500 years beforehand. Not only do they not accept any of the more extravagant claims regarding the Great Pyramid, but they point out that other similar pyramids built in the same epoch, such as the Red Pyramid at nearby Dashur, and even the Second and Third Pyramids on the Giza plateau, are consistently ignored by the pyramidologists, even though they are just as magnificent. Why should the Great Pyramid be singled out for attention, and these ones ignored?

Despite what they say, the Great Pyramid is a truly remarkable structure, unequalled anywhere in the world. It has inspired generations of free thinkers to re-evaluate the way we perceive the achievements of our ancestors. We look towards it for answers to greater mysteries of the universe, such as the ascension of the soul, and the origins of civilisation. It acts on the same wavelength as the crop circles, which are likewise dismissed as insignificant and without a higher purpose by their detractors.

And just like the crop circle phenomenon, logic says that there should be no mystery of the Great Pyramid, and yet it exists and is unlikely ever to go away. Whatever its original purpose, it is set to inspire humanity for as long as it remains standing, which could be hundreds if not thousands of years to come.

5. RENNES-LE-CHATEAU

Another mystery that just should not exist is that surrounding the former quiet, sleepy hilltop village of Rennes-le-Chateau, situated at the foot of the Pyrenees in the Languedoc region of Southern France. In the 1960s, a French journalist and Surrealist poet named Gerard de Sede produced a series of books highlighting the life of its priest, the Abbé Berenger Sauniere. According to the story, in 1891 he discovered parchments in an old church pillar, and soon afterwards began acting oddly - digging in the graveyard at night, visiting Paris to procure certain paintings, receiving foreign visitors above his standing as a simple parish priest, and seeing his bank balance swell dramatically in just a few short years. He became extremely weathly, and funded various local building projects. He also restored the church and builds for himself a new villa and a strange hilltop tower.

English broadcaster Henry Lincoln picked up on the story during the 1970s, and created a sensation with three television documentaries showing that Sauniere had stumbled on a great secret in his little church, which either led him to real treasure, or put him on a payroll in order that he keep his mouth shut.

It is a mystery involving a holy bloodline, stretching back to Jesus Christ himself, along with the secrets of the Knights Templar, and a shadowy organisation that has existed for over 900 years to support the divine bloodline, which flowed through the Merovingian royal house of France before being forced underground. Their Grand Masters have included some of the most illustrious names in history and include Leonardo da Vinci, Nostradamus, Nicholas Flamel, Rene de Anjou, Robert Fludd, Sir Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy and Jean Cocteau.

A book on the subject by Lincoln, co-written with Templar expert Richard Leigh and historian Michael Baigent, entitled THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1982) sold millions, and the whole mystery went on to become the basis for Dan Brown's super-seller THE DA VINCI CODE, which is now being made into a major movie.

Aside from this, Rennes-le-Chateau has become a thriving tourist industry, with tens of thousands of people arriving there yearly in order to see for themselves the foundation point of one of the greatest mysteries of the last hundred years. Many hundreds of these visitors have gone away and written their own versions of the story, some of them creating new, and quite mysterious, dimensions to the existing mythos.

The problem is that the whole plot is a hoax, and Gerard de Sede knew this from the beginning. Moreover, the Priory of Sion turns out to have been created as recently as 1956 as a kind of surrealist joke by four individuals, led by one Pierre Plantard. He and his friends decided to base their story of bloodlines, mystery and intrigue around a simple parish church and its priest, who went from rags to riches not by being on the Priory's payroll, but by charging wealthy clients for illegal masses. All of the illustrious figures said to have been Grand Masters of the Priory were plucked out of thin air, and have no direct connection with each other.

In the minds of rational thinkers, sceptics and historians alike there is no mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau. It does not, and should never, have existed. Yet this is clearly not the case as even with knowledge of the 'surrealist joke' freely available, each year the number of visitors to the village grows, and the mystery widens. Moreover, research into the lives of the illustrious individuals cited as Grand Masters of the Priory is becoming more and more intriguing, with researchers finding baffling connections which are only now coming to light for the first time. So much so, that even the most objective researcher in this field has to admit that something weird is going on.

The mystery of the lost treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau featured in a French newspaper from 1967.

Whatever way you view the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, it has dramatically increased popular awareness and historical research into everything from the roots of Christianity, to the life of Jesus, John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary and the Mary Magdalene. It has also thrown more light on the mysteries of the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail, the Gnostics and the Cathars, and how these influenced the renaissance, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and secret societies in general. Many great books have been inspired by the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau, even a few of my own.

Here too psychic communication has played a role in unravelling new aspects of the mystery. In 2001-2 my colleagues and I found ourselves in mental communication with a mysterious group of cowled and masked individuals whom we refer to as the Faceless Ones. They gave the impression that they were connected with the enigma of Rennes-le-Chateau, influencing the main players over the past 2,000 years. They said that a key to understanding the mystery was a Templar holy relic known as the 'Head of God', used for oracular purposes and supposedly containing a piece of the skull of John the Baptist. It had apparently been taken from Britain to a location close to Rennes-le-Chateau, where it was finally concealed by a rebel Templar-linked cabal in the mid fourteenth century

The Faceless Ones spoke also about a strange group who inherited secrets concerning the whereabouts of the Head of God. They were a masked organisation attached to the monastery church at the former Cathar-linked town Arles-sur-tech, which we found was located on the France-Spain border. They themselves were involved in a macabre head cult, whereby relics of saints were paraded through the streets during eerie Easter processions. This information made no real sense to us, although it all checked out, and prompted us to visit Arles-sur-Tech during a field trip to Rennes-le-Chateau in June 2003.

At the time no one had ever publicily linked Arles-sur-Tech to the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery. Then in 2005, quite independent to our own research, it was announced online that a mysterious masked society known as La Sanch, based in Arles-sur-Tech, had sought out and made contact with Berenger Sauniere by 1897 at the latest. Why? Research carried out by Rennes-le-Chateau writer Philip Coppens and his colleagues has ascertained that La Sanch was founded originally in the late fourteenth century. Moreover, La Sanch are indeed connected with the cult of the head, through the presence of two peculiar head relics kept in the monastery church at Arles-sur-Tech. All now feel that the 'talking head' cult promises to provide real answers to the true mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau.

6. GLASTONBURY ZODIAC

Our last example of a mystery that should not exist but does is the so-called Glastonbury Zodiac, clearly a topical subject for debate here today.

In the late 1920s a London-born graphic artist and sculptress named Katherine Maltwood (1878-1961) was asked by the publisher J M Dent to submit black and white illustrations for a new edition of an Arthurian romance entitled Perlesvaus, better known as 'The High History of the Graal', written in c. 1210 and translated from Old French into English by Sebastian Evans. With an interest already in folklore, myth and legend she accepted the challenge whole-heartedly, knowing that on the last page of the medieval text was a statement claiming (quite probably falsely) that the whole thing was recorded down in Glastonbury Abbey.

From her home at Chilbolton Priory, on the Taunton to Glastonbury road, Mrs Maltwood compared mythical scenes in the 'High History' with the Glastonbury landscape in the hope of determining the paths taken by the questing knights. It was whilst in this frame of mind that the outline of a lion jumped out at her from the map. Topographical features, such as hills, rivers and contours, as well as artificial features, such as roads, ditches and field boundaries, brought it alive. Located in and around nearby Somerton, she recorded the feline's whereabouts before noticing another landscape figure a little to the west. This time it was a giant child traceable around the village of Compton Dundon.

Mrs Maltwood began to consider that she was bringing alive the geo-mythical reality that inspired the 'High History'. However, she also came to believe that these landscape effigies formed part of a larger design, and very possibly a terrestrial zodiac. The lion obviously represented Leo, while the giant child she took to be Gemini, which she also identified with Lohot, a knight and son of King Arthur beheaded whilst lying asleep by a giant that then laid down upon him. She thus looked closer and discerned on the mape a circular arrangement of twelve key figures, all as they were positioned in the night sky. For her, these features were not chance designs - they were purposely engineered by a Sumerian priesthood who sailed to Britain from ancient Iraq and laid the foundations for this divine ground-plan on a spring equinox around 2700 BC.

Having determined the twelve signs, she attempted to substantiate her discoveries by linking the astrological influence of each 'sign' with the Celtic-Arthurian imagery of the 'High History'. This was in turn backed up with local folklore, topography and place-names.

Katherine Maltwood's conception of Somerset's Tenmple of the Stars, otherwise known as the Glastonbury zodiac.

Convinced now that she had something special, she decided that the twelve signs were the key to achieving the Holy Grail, the ultimate expression of divine illumination and wisdom. Medieval Grail knights and, in ages past, Celtic warriors would have navigated the paths tackling the psychic constructs of the terrestrial zodiac, before experiencing the zodiac's ultimate mysteries at its centre point, marked on the map as a triangular enclosure next to the site of an ancient cross just outside of the medieval village of Butleigh.

Katherine Maltwood approached Watkins of London to publish a book on the subject, and this appeared anonymously in 1935 under the title GLASTONBURY'S TEMPLE OF THE STARS. By 1961, when she died, the book had gone through new editions, this time under her name, although there is very little evidence of it making any lasting impact. It was left to writer and artist Mary Caine to take the subject on to a new level with the publication of her book GLASTONBURY'S GIANTS in 1978. With her enthusiasm and the interest given to the subject of terrestrial zodiacs by ley hunters and earth mysteries enthusiasts, Glastonbury's 'Temple of the Stars' continued to attract attention, even though it simply should not have existed.

In fact, when looked at more thoroughly, the whole theory can be ripped apart by anyone with even a basic knowledge of British topography, for the reasons given here:

1. The effigies are constructed in the most part from roads, field boundaries, canals, and other water channels that did not exist prior to 1875.

2. If a star map is placed over the Glastonbury zodiac, many crucial stars fall nowhere near their corresponding landscape effigies.

3. The stars of Aquarius have never been represented by a Phoenix, as they are in Mrs Maltwood's zodiac, just as Libra has never been a dove holding a holy wafer in its beak, and Cancer has never been a ship.

4. There is no evidence that Sumerians ever came to Britain, or that the Babylonian zodiac, from which the Glastonbury example is formulated, was known in this country prior to Roman times.

5. It is a simple exercise to find and draw landscape effigies on a large-scale map, and many of these would look a lot more convincing than those offered by Mrs Maltwood.

Other criticisms might easily be brought against the Glastonbury giants, but those cited are reason enough for any serious researcher or earth mysteries enthusiast to avoid the subject like the plague.

All this might be so, but the Glastonbury zodiac exists today, and this anyone will find difficult to deny.

In January 1981, I knew nothing about Mrs Maltwood's discoveries, and yet as my friend and colleague Graham Phillips and I approached Glastonbury in a car on a psychic quest he unexpectedly glimpsed in his mind's eye a phoenix rising from the ashes. We saw it as linked somehow with the Tor's genius loci, or 'spirit of the place', and so asked around as soon as we entered the town. Eventually, we were put in touch with Tony and Janet Roberts, earth mysteries writers who lived locally. They informed us that Mrs Maltwood believed Glastonbury Tor and the surrounding landscape to be sculpted into the form of a Phoenix, signifying Aquarius in her zodiac. Only interested in the Phoenix imagery, and not its sculpted presence all around us, we climbed the Tor and went about our business.

Two years later in January 1983, new psychic imagery led me to explore 'Kingweston', a place-name that simply popped into my mind during a meditation one evening. I saw it connected with golden solar imagery, divine kingship and a lion of sovereignty. On learning that a place of this name existed a few miles outside of Glastonbury, I wondered whether it formed part of the Leo figure in Mrs Maltwood's zodiac. It did, and on exploring there I felt drawn to another location where a giant knight lay sleeping on the landscape and a hill would be found known locally as 'Golgotha', the Place of the Skull. This is the name given in the Gospels to the site where Christ was crucified. It was information that led me to Dundon Beacon, which along with nearby Lollover Hill constituted the giant child identified by Mrs Maltwood as Gemini and Lohot, the beheaded knight and son of Arthur. An occultist and modern-day Templar who lived in a house beneath the Beacon confirmed that it was indeed known as Golgotha. Furthermore, each Good Friday a Calvary Cross is carried to the summit of Lollover Hill, where it is left standing until Easter Sunday. An early aerial photograph of the place, seen covered for the most part in trees, bears a striking resemblance to traditional images of Christ's bearded face, a simulacra worthy of FORTEAN TIMES.

It was only then that I realised I was mimicking the manner in which Mrs Maltwood discovered her own landscape effigies - Leo first and then Gemini, almost as if these were to be seen as steps one and two on an ascending ladder that would one day lead to the achievement of the Grail.

The following year, 1984, I employed the services of a psychic friend named Bernard to see if we could determine the exact route of Glastonbury's psychic assault course. After he led me from Leo to Gemini with no prior knowledge of my own experiences, we ended up covering exactly one half of the zodiac, and finding an artefact along the way. This came in the form of an ebony and silver 'happy death' crucifix, as worn by monks and nuns, retrieved from the edge of an Iron Age tumulus named Wimble Toot, located in the third figure - Virgo. We were directed to find it by a holy woman in medieval dress, whom we saw in terms of the sentient personification of this particular sign. The rest of the signs had similar guiding influences which you needed to communicate with on a subtle, sympathetic level if you wanted any chance at all of completing the course. They included a fierce black knight, who answered to the name Modred, and wore the arms of Satan as they appeared in apocalyptic art from around the year 1280-5. He guarded the domain of Scorpio in a churchyard at a place called Hornblotten.

I resumed the zodiac quest over the midsummer period 1985, navigating the final six signs on my own in just 36 hours (Bernard declined to take part, saying it was for me alone to complete). At the centre point, in the middle of a cold, wet field at dawn, I experienced a profound vision of the Holy Grail, which culminated with a fleeting glimpse of cosmic creation.

For me, the Glastonbury zodiac is no longer a figment of Mrs Maltwood's fertile imagination. It exists out there for all to experience and encounter, and there seems little point in assuming that the whole thing simply came into being following the publication of her first book on the subject in 1935. A much better explanation is needed to try and fully explain what is going on.

8. SUPER-INTELLIGENCES

What do we need to understand the nature of modern-day mysteries that in the mind of all sane individuals simply should not exist? The Holy Grail, Head of God, crop circles, the Great Pyramid, Rennes-le-Chateau and the Glastonbury zodiac are all totally dismissible in historical terms. Let's examine the facts:

" The Holy Grail was created by medieval writers in France towards the end of the late twelfth century to express the attainment of perfection and grace. It had no prior existence in the world, and is thus a figment of the reader's imagination.

" The crop circle phenomenon is a modern-day hoax perpetuated by a few cunning cynics who enjoy fooling gullible believers. All the formations are man-made, and have no meaning other than in what people read into them.

" The Great Pyramid is nothing more than a Fourth Dynasty royal tomb, the culmination of 500 years of trial and error. There is no mystery surrounding the technology involved in its construction, or the people who designed and built it.

" The enigma of Rennes-le-Chateau is a surrealist hoax created in the 1950s by Pierre Plantard and his friends in order to generate an interest in their non-existent, conceptualist secret society with its false pedigree.

" The Glastonbury zodiac is no more than the creation of a female artist with a fertile imagination, who wrongly assumed that many roads, field boundaries and waterways are extremely ancient.

These are sobering realisations, I know. Yet each mystery continues to exist in its own right, almost as if it has a life of its own. Moreover, they have all become vehicles for direct communication with higher forces that supposedly exist beyond the mystery itself.

Is it possible that the manifestation of popular mysteries of the sort examined here attract to them non-terrestrial intelligences that somehow utilise their popularity as platforms to evolve human life?

If the mysteries have no sound historical basis at their inception, and then we find that they are grounded in some kind of pre-existing reality, then something has to be wrong. Do such intelligences manipulate these mysteries, and those responsible for them, to give them more credence?

Are there intelligences involved in these mind games that can latch on to the collective belief in a certain topic, and then back track in time to update its prior existence? In other words, the more you look for it, the more you'll find it existed all along?

Quantum theory suggests that time exists only in the minds of its creators, who use it to regulate scientific reality. Coordinated paranormal experiments have shown that the human mind can affect the results of blind tests carried out in the past. Thus the brain can simply think about a certain subject and influence its outcome. If the past can truly be influenced, it means that in some form or another a linear projection of our own future also exists, and that in scientific terms the past, present and future co-exist.

This means that an infinite amount of nexus points that have come to bear on the world we live in continue to exist out there somewhere, whether important or not. Obviously, if they were tampered with then we might wake up tomorrow and find that the Nazis won the Second World War. In reality, however, such alternations in the course of history can only take place in split or parallel dimensions, and do not affect our world.

There do exist cases of individuals who would seem to have crossed temporarily over from their own reality into a parallel existence (often after experiencing a bright flash), where the world is slightly different - a building no longer exists, an extra road has been built, etc - but more major changes are usually not encountered.

Yet quantum theory concerning the existence of the so-called multi-verse speculates that simple decisions can, in theory, alter what has been. Not in a big way, only in a very subtle manner that from the perspective of your own singular world is unknowable at the time. What this means is that you can't affect anything that you know has happened in the past, only things you don't know about.

This is our reality, and there seems little question that subtly at least we can change the past, present and future by thought processes alone. We are probably doing it all the time to a more or lesser degree. It is arguably part of the greater fabric of the universe, with everything being held together in a stable flow that provides us with a comfortable, working reality.

Now think of a race in the cosmos somewhere that evolved from a carbon based existence to one that exists only in non-physical form - as an energy construct, away from the confines of space, time or even life itself. It could easily happen to us in a few million years, so don't knock it.

What would these super-intelligences, as we might call them, do with themselves afterwards? Remember, they would now be beyond space and time, and so would exist everywhere, and know the whole history of the universe from inception to destruction.

One answer would be that they ensure that everything that should happen in the universe does happen. Nothing is allowed to be misdirected, or knocked off course, by alternative decisions made at crucial nexus points. This would include watching over the evolution of those sentient beings that play some role in these events, whether now or in the future.

This might just include us, the human race. One day we might do something important in the universe (arguably we already have), and so we could easily be on the books of these super-intelligences. If so, then they would ensure that we evolved in the manner we were meant to do over the next few million years, and do not make any major mistakes, or at least ones that could not be corrected at a later opportunity (otherwise the timeline would go irreparably off kilter).

Accepting such a possibility naturally leads to the idea of whether they might be influencing our evolution already, and have been since we evolved into homo sapien sapiens some 150,000 years ago.

Once again, if this is so, then perhaps we are aware of them already under a multitude of guises, such God, aliens, angels, demons, Gaia, nature spirits, and ancestral spirits. In fact, they can take on whatever form they require in order to get through to us on a meaningful level.

Perhaps they make contact with us through a variety of means, starting even before our birth with DNA manipulation across countless generations. Then afterwards they use more conventional means of contact such as dreams, visions, and other forms of interactive paranormal experience.

Perhaps they are behind universal human concepts such as communication with godhead, seeing the light and attaining enlightenment, in the manner of the Grail quest.

Perhaps our ancestors came to know of their existence, and strived for tens of thousands of years to seek their knowledge and inspiration, using powerful symbolism to express the guidance of these super-intelligences.

Perhaps they are symbolised by the serpent of knowledge and wisdom emerging from the mouth of the Head of God, that mimics our own likeness, and in fact is us.

Perhaps individuals are used by them as agents of fate to unknowingly carry out acts that are meaningful and part of the great scheme of things.

Perhaps they are the aliens, or at least the most alien concept ever of trans-dimensional contact with human life.

Perhaps we need to wake up to the fact that there are super-intelligences involved in our lives, and acknowledge their existence.

If any of this makes sense, then who are these super-intelligences, and what do they mean to us?

9. MORPHIANS

I must go back to the ideas of the pyramidologists who believe that those responsible for the construction of the Great Pyramid were divinely inspired prophets of God. What if our super-intelligences are aware of just how much the Great Pyramid will become a symbol of human civilisation - one that inspires us into achieving a greater understanding of our destinies through its sheer existence. Are they able to ensure this takes place by inspiring the pharaoh Khufu and his architect (arguably his cousin Hemiunu, also spelled Hemon). Might they have appeared to them as an Egyptian god (like Khnum, for instance, Khufu's personal deity), telling them exactly how his tomb of immortality, his place of ascension, should be built, and what specifications should be used? If so, then Khufu and his architect unwittingly ensured that thousands of years later people would interpret his monument's design as divinely inspired. Maybe it was, although not by God or Khnum, but by something else altogether. Moreover, since the past continues to co-exist with the present and the future, Khufu and his architect's mind can still be influenced, allowing the significance of the Great Pyramid to evolve in accordance with the impact of any new theory appertaining to its design and purpose.

What if it were the same for crop circles? What if those who design the better examples, or indeed those that mean something to someone, are inspired by our super-intelligences? What if they, as they admit, receive dreams or experience gut feelings about what design to make, and where to put it. They might think they are in control, but just perhaps they aren't. What they create in the fields is so important to the development of human consciousness, that in order for this to happen properly the crop artist is inspired in his or her creations.

In a similar vein, were the instigators of the Rennes-le-Chateau 'surrealist joke' also inspired by our super-intelligences to focus their attention on this sleepy village and decide on the Grand Masters they did, without realising just how important to human history these links would one day become? Just remember how important their work has been. It has re-awakened the world to such mysteries as Mary Magdalene, the Knights Templar, Gnosticism, Cathars, and much more. Maybe the whole thing just had to be, and so they were guided to create the hoax in the first place.

Ditto the writers of the first Grail romances back in the late twelfth century. Were they inspired by the same powers for similar purposes? Was it important that they allow us to understand the concept of divine illumination, direct communication with godhead, through an understanding of the Grail quest?

What about those who belonged to the 'talking head' cult? Was concentrating their focus on such human constructs allow them so kind of direct connection with the super-intelligences, going back tens of thousands of years?

And lastly we come to Katherine Maltwood and her Glastonbury zodiac. Was she motivated to 'discover' the terrestrial zodiac because of the role it now plays in creating a means of attaining enlightenment through the Grail quest?

When I completed my own Grail quest back in 1985, I went off to the guesthouse and slept, having done little else but intensive creative visualizations. I then got up, ate breakfast, and went back to sleep again. Finally, when I did rise properly, I just sat at a table and scribbled down wild thoughts that were now flowing through my mind. Among them were the following statements:

"The Grail is but a superficial image created in a modern age. The true Grail is a multi-dimensional crystalline complex that forms the blueprint to cosmic order and form, from the centre of the universe, the moment of the big bang. It includes all life in this universe, it's influence setting the standards of life for a cycle of time.

"It is the co-ordinator of the cosmic pulse of life and exists on many levels, the heartbeat of the world, it is a cosmic computer, controller of the destinies of Time.

"These heart/brain/minds of the Earth are not natural. They are representative of the central creative source of the universe and were placed here by beings who attained the stage of light millions of years ago. Cultures are co-ordinated to perpetuate the influence of their particular spheres, continually updating the existing imagery and archetypes, thus ensuring the quest can still be taken. This also serves the secondary purpose of a symbolic representation in imagery, stories and traditions of the cycles of the seasons, the cosmos and man himself, thus providing a place of learning."

They are crazy statements, which fascinate me to this day. Yet the beings referred to who attained the 'stage of light millions of years ago' I named there and then as 'Morphians', a term that meant nothing to me, and was forgotten until the fourth anniversary of my Glastonbury zodiac quest in 1989. I was sitting in a pub called The Griffin in Danbury, Essex, with Bernard, when he happened to pick up and read the inspired notes I made back in June 1985.

When he saw the reference to 'Morphians' shaping earth's destiny, he immediately went silent and scribbled down some thoughts, which, when finished, he rather uncharacteristically announced was all he was going to say about the matter, ever! What he wrote that night began as follows:

"Morphinom. Shape/Changers. Reality/Adjusters in a subtle sense. Controllers of earthly destiny, which includes man/Governments/State/s, Rise and Fall of civilisations. The rivers of knowledge on earthly plane."

Bernard's apparent knowledge of Morphians, or 'Morphinom', as he wrote the name, prompted me to investigate the meaning behind the word. The Greek root morph, or morphe, relates to 'shape', 'form', 'face', 'look', and the shifting of shape. Yet it can also mean to 'train', 'teach', 'instruct', 'educate' and 'learn'.

Morpheus, god of dreams, affects the dreams of mortals by appearing as a departed loved one in order to convey his message.

In Greek myth, winged Morpheus is the god of dreams, who is sent to mortals in their slumber to convey to them their fate, or the fate of their loved ones, through dreams and visions. He mimics their very thoughts, in that he appears before them in whatever form they might expect to see under such circumstances.

From that night on I came to view Morphians as super-intelligences that exist beyond time and space, influencing the affairs of human kind through dreams and visions, ensuring that we meet nexus points, fulfil our destinies and carry out their actions as agents of fate. For me and my friends and colleagues, Morphians ensure that our future destiny remains on course, engineering us gently towards our final fate, which will one day include us shedding our physical bodies and becoming like them - being of light, energy constructs, beyond the understanding of all but those with ears to listen.

At face value, no one will ever know they are there. As in the myth of Morpheus, they appear before us in whatever guise they deem acceptable to our minds, for they have no form of their own.

If there is a force manipulating the reality of all the great mysteries of our time, and there are many more than those cited here, then it is Morphians, for they alone know what one day we will achieve.

© Andrew Collins, 2005.

Paul Weston's book The Glastonbury Zodiac and Earth Mysteries UFOlogy (2015) contains a chapter entitled "Andrew Collins' journey from Glastonbury to a Giza cave discovery and the Morphian mystery." It features my entire Glastonbury zodiac quest with Bernard in 1984 complete with its culmination around midsummer 1985, this being the moment that knowledge of the Morphians was first made known to me. It was visionary glimpses of Egypt's Giza plateau at the moment of achievement of the Holy Grail at the very centre of the Glastonbury zodiac that helped inspire Bernard and I to explore the concept of what was popularly known as a lost Hall of Records. We called them the Crystal Chambers. This led finally to the rediscovery, some 23 years later, of Giza's lost cave world. For this story see my book Beneath the Pyramids, and this news report on the site.

"Gods, Grails and Morphian Contact" was written in July 2005 following my appearance that year at the Glastonbury Symposium. Paul's book was published exactly ten years later following his appearance at the 2015 Glastonbury Symposium.

NB. The Morphians are not forgotten. By strange coincidence, Richard Ward and I were discussing Morphians, their possible relationship to the Fifth Dimension, and how they might interact with us following an indepth meditation session on Saturday, 25 July 2015, just prior to knowledge of Paul's book being published. The session ended with the recording on my voice recorder of a very curious example of an EVP (electronic voice phenomena). The Morphians are still around, affecting humanity where necessary in order to preserve the timeline of the universe and make sure that important nexus points are met (see the film "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011) starring Matt Damon for a Hollywood take on the subject).

To buy a copy of Paul's book click here