Dynasty of the Holy Grail: Mormonism's Sacred Bloodline - Hardcover

Swanson, Vern G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555178235 ISBN 13: 9781555178239

Publisher: Cedar Fort, 2006

Synopsis

Dr. Vern G. Swanson has produced a thought-provoking book on the topic of the Holy Grail and the bloodline of Jesus. His perspective on the subject has grown after reading nearly 300 books on the Holy Grail, and his 28 years of research on the topic. Going far beyond the mortally flawed best sellers, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code, his epic book will be applicable to both Mormon and non-Mormon audiences. It is certainly the most significant scholarly tome on the Holy Grail and the bloodline yet. While it is a heavy book, in terms of weight, size, and willingness to probe deeper and broader than his contemporaries, it is easy to understand.  There is a message for Christians and non-believers alike that will surprise the most skeptical and soften the most cynical.  Though thorough-going the book is remarkably 'readably'

About this title

From the Author

Since 1977 I have written fifthteen books on various topics, most on art history, since that was my Ph.D. major at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.  It surprised everybody but my friends, when after 27 years of research and writing, the first edition of The Dynasty of the Holy Grail (2006) came out.  The question why I spent so much time, effort, political capital, and money doing something so far outside my scholarly field behooved many.  Unlike so many others who were inspired by Lincoln, Baignent, and Leigh's Holy Blood Holy Grail book, my interest had began a decade before their effort.

As a deeply believing Christian and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), I had access to information that non-believing spiritualists and secularists just didn't have.  In the mid-nineteenth century Mormon Prophets taught that Jesus Christ came to perform all the necessary ordinances given by God to man.  These included baptism, communion, and marriage. Yes, he was married and had children! Now my bias is know. By 1970 information from LDS and inklings from non-LDS sources began to be published on the hieros gamos of our Lord with Mary Magdalene.  For LDS the implications of this sacred marriage were clear and had been published in various typescript formats, until Ogden Kraut wrote his book, Jesus Was Married.

I began collecting information and documents beyond what Kraut had and to look for implications in the broader intellectual community.  I was surprised that before 1940 there was almost nothing in Western literature on the topic and what there was, was tepid.  The Mormons in farflung Utah had it seemed cornered the treasures on this incredibly significant truth!  Once Holy Blood Holy Grail came out the theme exploded with hundreds of sensational books on Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, Renne-le-Chateau in south-west France, and Glastonbury in Sommerset, England.  Hundreds of places, relics, and avenues of thought were pursued, each one with more hidden secrets, more devastating discoveries to Christianity, and with more new and exciting 'truths' than previous authors had revealed.

Yes, those were "heady" times between 1984 and 2009; a quarter of a century of disingenuousness.  I too, like the miner with "gold fever" trudged off to visit each new location.  Mind you, the trudging wasn't altogether a waste of time nor was it without its rewards. I visited places I would have never seen, each with their particular 'magic.'  With friends and family we traveled throughout Europe--- often to remote and forelorn locations.  The most exciting place was Seborga, a ultra-tiny principality on a hill-top  in the Flower Reviere of Italy.  The secrets I discovered there are fully discussed in my book and will have future apocalyptic meanings.

One thing happened to me because I took so long to publish; the enthusiasms that I took from each of the hundreds of books I read begain to marianate in my mind and soul.  I began to see the circular reasons, downright lies, and mutual impossibilities being forwarded. The word Hoax comes to play here, for falsehoods abounded all around the Holy Grail theory and marriage of Christ as perpetrated by the unscholarly upon the guilable. 

Einstein once said, "Its not that I am so intelligent, its just that I stay with the problem longer."  That aphorism fit me to a tee, I spent nearly 28 years sifting through mounds of material from a broad spectrum of writers.  Then I reread and revisited (Glastonbury seven times, Rosslyn six, etc.) what I thought I knew.  Then came the inevitabe "backlash" of other writers who like-wise began to see faults of logic, research and partisanship in the numerous authors concerned with the topic of a married Christ.

My first effort, Dynasty of the Holy Grail was published in 2006 near the tail-end of the "Grail frenzy."  You can be sure that the newly revised and expanded edition of 2013 is even better.

Thank you for your interest.

Vern G. Swanson

About this edition

• Publisher: Cedar Fort
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1555178235
• ISBN 13: 9781555178239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 537