Grateful Dead And Da Vinci Codes

Branding is an important business tool of a musician’s or band’s marketing. A music artist’s logo is as vital an visual asset as a music artist’s stage wear and hair. And if an audience doesn’t remember you or your name, they will remember your logo. Modern music branding as we know it started in the 1960’s, when music artists lived and worked with bands face to face. Some living together in communes.

The Grateful Dead, for those that don’t know, is a USA folk blues jam band with a psychedelic cult following. The Dead, as their fans call them, are famous for originating out of Haight Ashbury San Francisco California. The Greatful Dead symbol is called the Grateful Dead lightning bolt.

“When the group formed in 1965, the Dead provided an American alternative to the overpolished and squeaky-clean Beatlemania still captivating the world. The Beatles, of course, would eventually come around in agreement. But it was the Dead, among other acts, who set the tone for the let-it-all-loose rebellion of the '60s. Could there be a better insignia than a tie-dyed skull to celebrate the revenge of the turned on, tuned in and dropped out? The Dead wove the image of the skull through much of their presentation, from album design to music-festival art. Two skull-based logos that hold up include the red, white and blue lightning bolt and the rose. The first was the creation of sound engineer Owsley Stanley, also known as "the Bear," who says he wanted to put a mark on the band's equipment so he knew who owned what at multiact music festivals. The Rose was the artistic work of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley. The duality of virgin floral beauty and the cult of death was of a piece with the message of a band known for saying, "a friend of the devil is a friend of mine."” Time.com 2010 

Where the Grateful Dead, or "The Dead", hung out was Haight Ashbury San Francisco in the 1960’s.  An obscure piece of pre hippie history about Haight Ashbury is that it is full of old Masonic lodges, Knights Templar churches and abbey. La Belle Epoque houses and apartment blocks with aMasonic symbols often appear in vintage arts and design from 1960s and 1970s Haight Ashbury.  The Haight Ashbury Street Fair founded in the 1970s features a pyramid with an ‘all seeing eye’ on a bed of roses as its logo. The Masonic symbol theme used repeatedly through many artists’s work, including the Dead’s poster artists, as if and in reality relaying a message. The 13 point lightning bolt or Grateful Dead bolt.

As many art historians of symbols or secret society geeks will attest to, the Dead’s skull, rose, circle, and lightening bolt are all Masonic, Catholic, and Knights Templar symbols. But what these symbols originally meant and where theses symbols originally came from is the big mystery to the uninitiated. 

 Knowingly or not what the Grateful Dead’s and other Haight Ashbury artists have done is help keep these mysteries alive in the public psyche in no small way.  And in turn their artist fans keep spreading the symbols in tribute art on anything that an image can be applied to including permanent facial tattoos. But if the Dead and Co were trying to open minds to impart the truth, the minds they opened in the end got smothered in new age cosmic space alien bullshit. 

Get somebody tripping on any kind of psychedelic and tell them something over and over and they will believe whatever that something is you are telling them.  This is how new age cults recruit newly open minded avid followers.  The quickest way to be a guru with a following who follow your every word is host LSD parties.   It is also how the Dead got such a huge cult following that has been multigenerational since the 1960s. Ditto for electronic dance music, EDM.ncient symbols disguised as beaux arts architecture. Today the houses and apartments are called "Painted Ladies."

With the Dead’s skull iconography it was more likely inspired by the Day of the Dead festival. A popular Latin American theme in California, heavily featuring skulls and roses. The lightning bolt is possibly relating to the first time somebody takes LSD or mushrooms and their minds are opened to other realities and ways of thinking. 

In the context of Masonic and Knights Templar iconography, both institutions with clearly visible large ornate buildings in Haight Ashbury, the symbols are history books.  Not the histories taught in school, histories very different to mainstream records.  And at the risk of disappointing all the new age guru and space alien fans there is nothing mystical or extraterrestrial in any of it.  And at the risk of disappointing the Bible believers, there is also a lack of Bible miracles and winged angels and demons with superpowers. Step away from the remote… like now…

In Masonic and Knights Templar lore the skull, 3 point lightning bolt, circle, and roses all relate to both the Bible and the histories of the Holy Grail Bloodline.  A tradition of the Holy Grail Bloodline, or San Graal in French, being to record their histories in symbols.   If Jesus was a King of Kings he was a royal and royals have always recorded their family histories in a form of pictorial hieroglyphs that in the 21st century we call heraldry. 

Heraldry is designed from an event or career in a royal’s life, such as a ship for a navigator; a skull for being beheaded; a tower featured from a land that an ancestor once ruled; a flower from a poem an ancient ancestor wrote in the Bible.   Each symbol is not an isolated abstract. Each symbol is rich with history and back stories and the people those back stories are about.  

When we line symbols up multiples other symbols they form whole libraries of history that are not in mainstream history books of modern day.  Histories of very different versions of what we know as history.  Histories with kickass women rulers, scholars, and priests who didn’t use Bible miracles or extraterrestrial super powers.  

"Whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.” The Words of the Biblical Jesus Christ from the Gospel of Mark 

The rose is one of the symbols of Mary Magdalene. It is from the Bible, Song of Songs II. 

“ I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters…”

Song of Songs II, also called the Song of Solomon, is a love poem written by the historical Mary Magdalene to the historical Jesus.  The historical Mary Magdalene was of Greek descent and a Roman Citizen. Roses in ancient times were associated with Venus who was a goddess of love. The real life mortal Venus was an ancient ancestor of the historical Mary Magdalene, which is how the rose became one of Mary Magdalene’s heraldry symbols and Christian icons.

To confirm that the rose and Mary Magdalene connection is not by chance, there other symbols relating to Mary Magdalene and Holy Grail lore in the Poem Song of Songs. The relating symbols include: apples, deer, windows, foxes, figs, vines, grape vines, turtles, doves, shadows, and trees.  It would be kind of difficult to not make the connection.

In Stanley Mouse and Anton Kelley’s skull and roses design the head wreath and ribbons are connected to the real identity and ancestry of Mary Magdalene of the Bible. Floral and leaf wreaths and wreaths with ribbons are ancient Greek and Roman headwear and syncretistic with Gods and Goddesses. Ancient gods and goddess were syncretistic with deified monarchs. 

The head wreath with ribbons is the headdress of the Goddess Nike, a goddess also syncretic with Mary Magdalene.  Nike is the goddess of victory.  Her Greek name is Bernike, the ancient version of the name Bernice. 

Owsley Stanley’s Grateful Dead skull has a 13 point lightening bolt. The lightning bolt is a big clue to the identity of the historical Jesus of the Bible. 

“Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them.”  Psalm 18:14 King James Bible

The Bible is mostly written in allegory that modern researchers tend to misinterpret. Modern interpretations are often mistranslated, because the translators don’t have enough education or imagination to comprehend that what they are interpreting is allegory.  So in modern interpretations trying to make allegory out of the misinterpretations we get new age garble, such as calling the lightning bolt a Satanic S and it representing supernatural power.  

The truth is that there were no Bible miracles involved.  The Bible is not a book of history and was never to be interpreted as or considered history.  The Bible is a book of morality tales written as paraphrased religious fantasy from many different religions and its characters each loosely based on multiple people who were deified royals of the time. 

The historical person that the literary Biblical character of Jesus was partly based upon first entered Judea as a Roman military commander with a huge army.  The insignia on his army’s shields was a clutch of lightning bolts.  So when his army attacked it was recorded in allegory by scribes as many lightening bolts raining down. He was recorded in allegory as shooting out lighting bolts, meaning he sent out his troops to fight displaying the lightning bolts sigil on their shields. 

People today write modern day fantasies describing the Grateful Dead flying around with wings and super powers and lighting bolts shooting out of their guitars. What they are actually talking about in allegory is the Dead’s music.  Now imagine somebody 1800 years in the future who speaks another language finding those writings and putting them with other like pages to make a book. You can see now how the Bible was created and how 2,000 years in the future the Grateful Dead could be misinterpreted as paranormal space aliens with portable laser rifles flying around in UFO’s. And their followers’ religious chant being “Beam me up Jerry”.

First published by GigsList.info

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