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Overview
This is a book for those who want more: those who go against the grain of "accepted" history, who dare to doubt the truth of the truth makers. For hundreds of years, human lore's legacy has been passed down without question. But there are missing connections, giant question marks, and links that cannot be ignored. What if Columbus didn't discover America? What if Egyptians visited the Grand Canyon? What if Jesus and Horus were one and the same? What if history was much more colorful than the accepted black and white? There are those who would shun such questions or choose to be colorblind in a potentially more colorful world. But for those in search of missing connections, we offer this collection of 33 essays by the most educated critical thinkers of our time.
Missing Connections promotes awareness of the many hues that fill the world, some of which may be hard to see unless they are properly pointed out. Editor J. Douglas Kenyon has culled from the pages of Atlantis Rising® magazine this compilation of concise and well-illustrated articles by world-class researchers and theoreticians like Frank Joseph, Steven Sora, Philip Coppens, Robert M. Schoch, William Stoecker, John Kettler, and many others, who offer thought-provoking insights into a world that is much more colorful than we ever imagined.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780990690429 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atlantis Rising |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2016 |
| Series: | Atlantis Rising Anthology Library |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Missing Connections
Challenging the Consensus the Search for Hidden Truths, Obscured Patterns, and Unseen Realities
By J. Douglas Kenyon
Atlantis Rising
Copyright © 2016 J. Douglas KenyonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9906904-2-9
CHAPTER 1
The Murder of John Cabot
How Did the Great Genoese Explorer Really Meet His End? And How Did America Really Get Its Name?
BY STEVEN SORA
Homicide detectives know that after 48 hours the trail to the perpetrator starts getting cold. After five hundred years the odds of solving a murder are small, making the violent murder of John Cabot a true cold case. It involves a Genoese merchant, a Spanish soldier, and an English sheriff whose name came to grace the North and South American continents.
John Cabot, born Giovanni Caboto, was a Genoese navigator sailing for the British. He was a businessman who had accumulated enough money to settle anywhere, and for a brief time lived in Venice where he received citizenship. At heart he remained an adventurer. He was sailing for cod and a route to China and became the first European to get credit for reaching North America.
Alonso de Hojeda was the epitome of the brutal conquistador of the Americas and was sailing for the king and queen of Spain. He had a reputation as a brute and a cutthroat, but in the eyes of Isabella and Ferdinand, this added up to the efficient sergeant that they needed to control Columbus.
By the time Columbus had set sail for America, he had been a map-maker fortunate enough to marry into the wealthy Perestrello family. Just after his wedding he was given a gift of the maps and charts of the Knights of Christ, the reincarnated Portuguese Knights Templar. He had sailed to Bristol in England where the citizens regularly sent out ships to find cod in the remote waters of the western Atlantic. And he sailed possibly as far as Iceland where the Norse had also known of the rich fishing grounds we know as the Grand Banks.
When Columbus returned from the New World, John Cabot was in Spain, and made the decision to find employment elsewhere. He headed to Bristol in England. Already wealthy he had to conceal his affluence as Bristol and Venice (Cabot's adopted city) were often at odds in trade suits. To further his connections to the powers-that-be, Cabot quickly made the right friends.
One of his new friends was Richard Ameryk. Ameryk was a merchant who wore many hats, including that of sheriff and customs agent for the port. He regularly invested in ships sailing south to Spain and Portugal and west toward the rich fishing grounds. He also exercised a certain amount of control on local trade and benevolently looked out for his fellow merchants.
As a newcomer, Cabot quickly realized one was either with this Bristol "mafia" or one might as well find another port. Cabot and Ameryk became quick friends.
Bristol had been sending out ships for cod for decades, but the Hanseatic league, an alliance of traders, claimed the sea around Iceland as their own and regularly warred against interlopers. Bristol's merchants devised a plot to throw up a smoke screen around their fishing trade. They claimed each year to be sending ships to search for an island known as Hy-Brasil. This oddly named island may have been one of those isles that had once sunk into the Atlantic. Or it could have been a subterfuge. The outgoing ships were always packed with salt, a necessary ingredient in drying cod.
In 1497, Cabot made a real voyage of exploration for the English king and left from Bristol. Sheriff Ameryk was one of his investors. Instead of discovering China, Cabot cruised the waters of what would become Canada's Maritime Provinces. He brought home a map that has not survived the centuries in good condition, but most likely he coasted Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and possibly even Maine. The place names he left on his first map of the New World can barely be read and others did not survive the effects of age on the chart.
Around the same time Cabot reached the New World, the king and queen of Spain were getting impatient with their explorer Columbus. He may have found a New World, but he didn't find Cathay or Cipangu, China or Japan, nor did he bring home gold and silver. To make the voyage pay, the Spanish did kidnap a handful of Arawak natives, but they proved unsuitable for labor as slaves, inconveniently dying.
The Spanish royals decided to send a more efficient agent. They picked Alonso de Hojeda. The Spaniard was more a pirate than an explorer. With little time to waste on moral issues or legal niceties, he actually attacked other ships on the way to the Americas. Next he stopped at the island of Lanzarote in the Canary chain where he plundered the house of the daughter of Columbus, Dona Beatriz! One of the men who would regret taking passage on Hojeda's ship was Amerigo Vespucci. He was one of the bankers who worked for the Medici family and as a merchant outfitted the expedition. Along for the journey was another man who would play an important role, Juan de la Cosa.
John Cabot's first expedition was to be followed by a much longer voyage of exploration. He was a given a charter by King Henry to explore the New World, although it specifically dictated that Cabot not travel into the land claimed by Spain. There is reason to believe that the king knew exactly where he would be traveling but didn't want to risk alienating the Spanish. Cabot left England in 1498 and never returned. There is evidence that he may have started from his southernmost point of his first voyage and headed further south. He would have coasted the still "undiscovered" Virginias and Florida and finally reached the coast of what would become South America.
There, in South America, the first country name that would remain on the map of the America's was Venezuela. Meaning "Little Venice," it had reminded European travelers of the Italian Venice because of houses built out into the coastal waters. Was it John Cabot who named it after his adopted city of Venice? Or was it the brute Hojeda or someone who had appreciated the beauty of the South American coastal villages?
The year was now 1499. Hojeda, who was a favorite of the crown because of his ruthlessness and daring, took his more controversial orders through an intermediary. This man was the Bishop Juan de Fonseca who advised him to kill any Englishmen he came across. Fonseca was a capable administrator whose spy network had tentacles that reached as far as London and Bristol. A letter from the Spanish envoy stationed in London, Pedro de Ayala, claimed that Cabot had already sailed into waters claimed by Columbus. It also declared he was going to be heading again toward Spanish waters.
Through the de Ayala communication, and through information by John Day of Bristol, the Spanish understood that not only was Cabot looking for Cipangu — the outermost island of Asia — but that he was provisioned for a full year. This was much unlike the quick first voyage. To the Spanish it was a threat. The orders to kill were unfortunately typical as other English and French colonists would later find out. The cruelty of the Spaniards did not end with the Native Americans.
Cabot's expedition had set out with a "king's ship," that is, a ship provided by the English king, and four merchant-owned ships. One had problems and quickly returned to England; the other four headed west.
Hojeda's ship sailed from Cadiz in May of 1499. They reached South America around modern-day Surinam and then coasted to the island of Curaçao. Their next landfall was at Coquibacoa in August of that year. Here Hojeda killed a handful of natives and raided their village in search of gold. He reported in his journal that they had indeed come across "certain Englishmen." He didn't state that he had killed them, but his orders had been explicit. Since there were no other English expeditions to the Americas at this point, it is highly likely that the Englishmen he encountered were none other than Cabot and his crew.
The reason for keeping a low profile in reporting his actions is that England and Spain were not at war. It was an act of piracy. It would actually be an offense that not only deserved hanging but could be the catalyst for a declaration of war. No other witness among the Spanish produced any written record that detailed his encounter with the English. And none of the English survived to tell their side of the encounter.
Most likely, he first attacked Cabot's ships, then killed his men, and finally looted and sunk his ships. Immediately after this encounter at Coquibacoa, Hojeda's ships were in need of substantial repairs, so it is possible that Cabot's crew put up some resistance. After repairs in Hispaniola, Hojeda returned home as a hero and was rewarded with the title of governor of the Province of Coquibacoa. The document granting him the title specifically mentions the discovery of English exploration that he thwarted.
Did the English king find out? There is no record of it, yet Cabot's pension stopped being paid in September of 1499. Neither the Spanish royalty nor the English king wanted war, so if this brutal act of piracy did take place, it might have been best left behind. What happened in Venezuela stayed in Venezuela.
But one man was clearly upset with whatever crimes were committed when he was part of the expedition. The Italian Vespucci decided not to return with Hojeda. In fact, Vespucci would write two or more letters regarding the voyage with Hojeda but never mention his name. He most likely refused to be a part of the atrocities, which included wantonly murdering Europeans and Native Americans alike. He refused to go on slaving expeditions that Hojeda planned in the Bahamas. And finally upon landing in Hispaniola, he took another ship to Europe. Was it a moral issue for Vespucci or did he fear being hung as a pirate along with the Spanish marauder? He even refused to remain an agent to the Spanish after this voyage and switched to the competition, Portugal.
Juan de la Cosa did stay loyal to Hojeda. Cosa would put together a map that not only showed the coastline of Guyana and Venezuela; it also showed the coast from at least Maine on down to Florida as well as islands of the Caribbean. Since there were no Spanish ships that far north, and it was still fifteen years before Ponce de Leon would map Florida, where was the source for Cosa's map? Hojeda's ship is accounted for day by day and had not departed from the southern Caribbean Sea.
Letters and certain charts of the expedition fell into the hands of Martin Waldsemuller, a cartographer in the employ of Rene II, the Duke of Lorraine. On the first Waldsemuller map was depicted the name Amerigo Vespucci, in letters twice as large as other names. Did he intend to name the New World after the banker? He knew Columbus was the discoverer of the new lands. If he had intended to name it after Vespucci, possibly because of a relationship between the Vespucci family and Rene II, why would the land be named America?
Why not call the New Land "Vespucci"? One reason might be that the word was derived from the Italian word for "wasp" (Vespa), not an appealing name for a country, yet there are few place names named for a first name outside of those named for royalty.
There is evidence to bear that Vespucci was not considered as a name for the new lands. When Waldsemuller revised the maps, the next two additions did not mention Vespucci by first name or last.
Then how did the New World become America? Consider the possibility that it was John Cabot's map that became the basis for the Cosa map and the other charts sent back to Europe. Historians, including James Williamson, point out that the coast of Venezuela on the Cosa map is highly accurate and that it was not explored fully by the Spanish in the year 1500. Cosa himself has five flags that are noted as places explored by the English, again in 1500, when no English (outside of Cabot) sailed that far south. In fact, no part of Cosa's map is more accurately drawn than the coast between Trinidad and Maracaibo. Cabot, like many Italian explorers, would have bestowed upon the new lands names of his sponsors, his partners, and possibly his own family. The name America could have come from his good friend and occasional partner Richard Ameryk.
While spelling in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not an exact art, the incorrect spelling of a name is not enough to disqualify it. A letter to Henry spells Cabot's name as "Kabotto." The surname Ameryk is actually derived from the Welsh surname Ap Meryke. The sheriff's family had additional alternative spellings including Amyreke. Last, the Sheriff's merchant seal is the most telling, spelling his name in a circular form, A-M-E-R-I-C and finally returning to the A.
The map drawn by Cabot may have extended from the point of his first voyage south to Venezuela. It may have included the names he left as acknowledgments of his partners and sponsors. It may have then been part of the booty taken by Hojeda who mentions his encounter with the English, but leaves out the details. Cosa, an inferior in terms of cartography, was then able to give details even on lands far away from those navigated by the Spanish. Charts and letters from Cosa, Vespucci, and others were sorted out by the mapmakers of St. Die, and somehow a name Cabot left on his map became the name for the New World.
CHAPTER 2Shakespeare and the Bermuda Triangle
Following the Strange and Tragic Saga of the Good Ship "Sea Venture"
BY STEVEN SORA
The survivors of a wrecked craft find themselves on an impossibly remote island. They salvage what they can from the craft and make camp on the beach. On this island, compasses don't work, strange lights appear and disappear, boars crush through the forest. At least one man would find the new island the clean slate he so badly needed. Most would later regret leaving the island. Sound familiar?
Actually, this is not the crash of Oceanic 815 (from the popular ABC series Lost). It is the story of a shipwreck that occurred nearly four hundred years earlier at the eastern edge of the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. On this island, then known as the Isle of Devils, the strange phenomenon of St. Elmo's fire was recorded, as were bizarre compass bearings.
The story of the wreck of the Sea Venture also became pivotal in the debate of just who wrote the works of Shakespeare.
On July 24, 1609, a storm brewed in the Atlantic. Before the seas would calm, the Bermuda Triangle claimed one of its many victims. The Sea Venture was part of a small fleet heading for the Jamestown colony in Virginia. Supplies and reinforcements were badly needed and the Virginia Company had sent 800 people aboard a flotilla to the desperate colony. Two of the fleet did not survive the passage thanks to the Tainos God of Destruction, Huracan. One disappeared, most likely to the bottom of the sea; the other broke up on the deadly reef that surrounded the island of Bermuda.
The Sea Venture survived just long enough for the 150 passengers to launch a life boat and get everyone as well as a great deal of supplies to safety. Among the survivors were Sir Thomas Gates, destined to be the governor of Virginia, Sir George Somers, the admiral of the fleet who would have served with Sir Francis Drake, and Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, and a failed civil servant, William Strachey, so deeply in debt that the New World was the only refuge from his creditors.
The survivors quickly found their island to be both a hell and a heaven. Most of them had never been laborers, nor had any experience living in the wild. The cries of large birds, the crashing of wild boars in the brush, and the noise of the sea crushing their ship into splinters all served to send fear into the hearts of the castaways.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Missing Connections by J. Douglas Kenyon. Copyright © 2016 J. Douglas Kenyon. Excerpted by permission of Atlantis Rising.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Help for the Color-Blind J. Douglas Kenyon 1
Part 1 Unsolved Crimes
1 The Murder of John Cabot Steven Sora 7
2 Shakespeare and the Burmuda Triangle Steven Sora 14
3 Bacon, Shakespeare & the Spear of Athena Steven Sora 21
Part 2 America's Secret Origins
4 Ancient Egyptians in the Grand Canyon David H. Childress 29
5 Avalon in America? Steven Sora 37
6 The Heretics who Lit the Way for America Steven Sora 44
7 Return to Oak Island Steven Sora 52
8 Living Up to the American Contract Cynthia Logan 58
Part 3 Secret Societies, Lost Religions
9 The Templar Engravings at Domme William Henry 67
10 The Fall of the Royal Society Peter Bros 77
11 The Other Sun of God Steven Sora 85
12 From Saint to Sun God Steven Sora 92
13 Templars in Mexico Steven Sora 99
14 Mystery of the Black Madonna Mark Amaru Pinkham 106
15 EL Wright vs. G. I. Gurdjieff Herbert Bangs 114
Part 4 The Unknown Jesus
16 The Mythical Jesus Robert M. Schoch 125
17 Did Jesus Visit India Len Kasten 134
18 Jesus & Arthur Ralph Ellis 142
19 The Other Shroud Philip Coppens 149
Part 5 Nazis and ETs
20 Mussolini's Roswell? Frank Joseph 159
21 Hitler's Nuclear Threat John Kettler 166
22 The True Confessions of Lt. Haul John Kettler 174
23 The Roswell Miracle Metal Len Kasten 180
Part 6 Mystic Travel
24 Quest for the Grail: The Sri Lanha Connection Mark Amaru Pinkham 191
25 The Pyramids of Scotland: Revisited Jeff Nisbet 199
26 The Vinland Map Is for Real Frank Joseph 207
27 Ancient Europeans in North America Frank Joseph 214
28 The Discovery of the Old World by Native Americans Steven Sora 221
29 Ancient Cities in the Forest William B. Stoecker 228
30 The Secret Search for the Missing Map of Columbus Rand Rose Flem-Ath 234
Contributing Authors 245
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