May 11, 2014
nobabies.net
Spokes person for Laurence Gardner
Dash House Publishing
PO BOX 394
Brockenhurst
Hampshire
United Kingdom
SO41 1BP
enquiries@dashhousepublishing.co.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 7725611710
SIR:
I am much saddened at learning belatedly of the passing of Laurence Gardner. I wrote him many years ago, shortly after the publication of Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Fair Winds Press, Gloucester, 2001 – actually I think I read it in an earlier version. He was kind enough to reply, succinctly addressing the question I had raised. In the years since then I have come more and more to appreciate that courtesy and to realize how rare it is.
I recently had occasion to return to look at the book again, puzzled that somebody had not seen in it something I had seen and Gardner had verified. Sure enough, it’s still there, right as rain. But on glancing over the book a second time I realized that an argument can be made that Gardner and I were thinking about he same thing from different perspectives. It reminded me of a man I spoke with once who owned a quartz crystal mine. He had been digging in a hole while his brother dug in one a few yards away. They began to boast, each to the other, that each had found the biggest crystal anybody had ever seen. Finally they both climbed out and looked in each others excavations. It was the same crystal.
I did my college honors thesis decades ago on the Holy Grail, and have been drawn to the idea since age three or four. On current reflection I realize that the Holy Grail may be defined thus: there is a curse that can depopulate a land; the Holy Grail is the cure.
I suppose everybody who reads knows that the developed world does not make enough babies for long term survival. That is a matter of demography, but that is just another way of raising the same issue.
And the cure, as it turns out, is genealogical. It’s all posted on my web site:
http://www.nobabies.net/A%20January%20summary.html
So I thought “Won’t Laurence Garder be thrilled. He is right on the spoor. And among the other authorities I have begged for an opinion, he is almost alone in caring enough to answer. And he certainly, as I am, is willing to step into the intellectual unknown.”
So I looked at Wikipedia and found that, as is usual, I had been thinking too slowly by years.
If you know anybody who remembers him fondly as I do, please pass the word that I miss him, too.
Oh, yes. The Grail itself. It turns out that long term survival of any population depends on marrying suitable cousins, like third or fourth. Not everybody has to do it, but a high proportion need to. And doom does not come within the first three or four generations. But it comes. So it comes down to genealogies.
If there is anybody else who is taking an interest in the Holy Grail and bloodlines, I would be most grateful if you would give them my contact information.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD.
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