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Loading ...ROSSLYN CHAPEL, SCOTLAND FOR A UNIQUE HOLIDAY EXPERIENCE
For everyone who read the Da Vinci Code the name of Rosslyn Chapel will be quite familiar. We think it would be an intriguing place to visit. Of course the surrounding area is quite beautiful too and there are many places of interest to visit, especially for those interested in history or the Knights Templar.
Rosslyn Chapel is used as a church but includes a Museum and is a focus for both, tourists and people interested in the Freemasons, Knights Templar, the St Clair/Sinclair clan and various mythologies.
Just to the south of Rosslyn Chapel can be found a wonderful castle jutting into the river gorge. Walk along the lane (near car park) until you reach an old stone bridge high above the Esk valley: the private Rosslyn Castle will stand before you. A few miles further south of Rosslyn Chapel lies Temple, a village with an interesting old church, the former site of Balantrodoch, the Templars’ headquarters in Scotland.
The Freemason connection is explained in Rosslyn’s Museum. In the 17th century Oliver Cromwell - a Grand Master Mason - refused to allow Rosslyn Chapel to be destroyed. The Sinclairs were enemies (Royalists as opposed to Roundheads), but though Cromwell’s troops destroyed Rosslyn Castle, on his instructions they left the Chapel. In 1962, an Edinburgh schoolmaster claimed that the Holy Grail was hidden in Rosslyn Chapel’s Apprentice Pillar. He believed it contained a lead casket, containing the legendary cup used by Christ at the Last Supper and later used to collect His blood. The Hiram Key, a book published in 1996, and its sequel The Second Messiah discusses the Apprentice Pillar and the Holy Grail. Its authors said there were credible grounds for suggesting Rosslyn Church was built as a shrine for the holy scrolls. In 1998 anthropologist Dr Keith Laidler wrote a book in which he claimed that Christ’s mummified head was buried in Rosslyn’s vault; he claimed that an inscription on the Apprentice Pillar reads ‘Here beneath this pillar lies the head of God.’ Knights Templar apparently lie in full battle armour in Rosslyn’s sealed vault below the chapel. Sir Walter Scott wrote in ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ “that chapel proud, where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie”.
Rosslyn Chapel Trust - responsible for the chapel’s conservation - has reportedly considered allowing archaeologists the opportunity to probe its sealed vaults. Some of the greatest artifacts in archaeological folklore are said to exist under Rosslyn Chapel.
The greatest and most original carving of all at Rosslyn is the extraordinary knotted Apprentice Pillar (around 2.5m high), symbolising the ‘Tree of Life’, at the south-eastern corner of the Lady Chapel. According to local legend, the pillar was made by an apprentice during the absence of the master mason, who killed him in a fit of jealousy on seeing the finished work. A tiny head of a man with a slashed forehead, set at the apex of Rosslyn Chapel ceiling at the far northwestern corner of the building, is popularly supposed to represent the apprentice, his murderer the corresponding head at the opposite site. The entwined dragons at the foot - eight winged serpents which have eaten evil’s forbidden fruit - are symbols of Satan, and were probably inspired by Norse mythology. The spirals which coil around the ‘Tree of Life’ form a double helix, reminiscent of DNA - the basis of life - but intriguingly when the pillar was carved the meaning of the double helix wasn’t to be discovered for another 500 years. Just left of the Altar of the Blessed Virgin, with at the right of the pillar a particularly important carving: Lucifer, the fallen angel, bound and upside down.
All in all a very intriguing and mysterious place which is well worth a visit while you are in Scotland.
The above information was obtained from the Edinburgh Architecture/ Rosslyn Chapel web page .
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