prince William insignia

[tenworld]

I figure someone here might know this:  Can someone decipher the insignia and uniform worn by PW during his wedding?  why is his coat red (like his grandfather) while his brother's is blue.  Does the blue sash denote royalty etc.  Just curious

[AnnieUK]

Not that I watched it, but Harry was wearing the uniform of the Blues & Royals, which is his regiment. 

William wore the uniform of the Irish Guards, which raised a few eyebrows, since he is in the RAF, but he is Colonel of the Irish Guards and wanted to honour their service in Afghanistan, apparently.  The blue sash is the Order of the Garter, and he had his RAF wings sewn onto that.  The medal is the Queen's Golden Jubilee medal (you'll notice Harry also wearing it), and I think the big one below it is the Garter medal.

I guess partly they wanted a visual contrast between William and Harry.

[AnnieUK]

Chapter and verse on who was wearing what uniform

http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/royal-wedding-ceremony-uniform-clothes/

[Evie]

LOL!  Maybe it's just because I'm an SCA knight's wife, but I noticed their spurs right off.  "Ooh, spurs!  Shiny!"   

[Rahere]

What you folks missed is the real esoteric bit fully worthy of the Dernyii, the way they danced around the edges of the Cosmati pavement. I still don't know who those elderly nuns were next to the married couple.

The Cosmati pavement? The area in front of them during the wedding service was built in the 1260s as a Cosmos, a Christian mandala, invoking the eschatological apocalypse in the figures of the day. It was based on the Rose Window at Lausanne, commissioned by Boniface Clutinckx, a local Saint of Brussels, who I believe completed the job of securing the Ark for the Cistercians after the Templars laid their paws on it in the 1160s. Not fiction, fact supported by ample documentation and a thesis in about five years' time.

The pavement had been badly repaired in the seventeenth century and had started to crumble. I first became aware of its power investigating why there was a gap in the 1953 Coronation coverage: apparently it was the Queen's investiture as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, something deemed too sensitive for the common people. It involved some form of Labyrinth passage, I did not at that time know of the pavement which had been kept studiously covered for many years, but now the pattern is published one can see what it entailed. Having kept one of my many half-an-eyes on it since the restoration started in the 1990s, it became clear it was being prepared for a wedding of the Heir Ostensible (the Heir Apparent now being of an age where most men retire) as the pace picked up from 2005 onwards - it is noticeable that nobody, but nobody, crossed it from front to rear or side to side. I can't wait to see it in the stones! In practical terms, this is why Kate had the Abbey virtually forced upon her, St Pauls' never had a real look in. My next task is to discover how it was re-keyed and who did it.

[Evie]

....and off I went to Google "Cosmati pavement"....   

OMG, what a gorgeous--and highly intriguing--floor pattern, not to mention its history!  Just the description of it at the Westminster Abbey website is enough to get my mental gears spinning.   (Description here, for those of you who can't be bothered to hunt and peck around the internet just now: http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/art/cosmati-pavement )  Hm, I'm wondering if something similar might be found in various churches and/or cathedrals around Rhemuth....   (Off to do more research and see if I can possibly fit something of the sort into my Schola story or if it might have to wait for another one.....)

[Jerusha]

Thanks for the link, Evie.  Very fascinating.

[Evie]

East would be indicated by that red circle at the top of the quincunx, or at least I am assuming so given that's the one closest to the altar, and as far as I know Westminster Abbey follows the standard orientation of the altar being on the east end of the building.

[Rahere]

The key reading is Richard Grant's work listed on the Abbey site - the connection to Clutinckx is my own research, but thoroughly corroborated academically. He goes into some depth about the symbology of the pavement, and the Lausanne connection suggests there's meat on them thar' bones.

There is also some indication in the wider use of pavements that Canterbury might also have been involved. At the moment in the real world I'm running a developing thread on the mediaeval use of labyrinths, it's wider spread than one suspects, and not at all the New Agony some are trying to hijack it into. Part of it is to be found in Yale's Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, and it links to rondelli, the codified form of music initially developed by the monks in their maze dances. Yup, folks, holy hopping was of the order of the night on certain feast-days. You can just see an early CC doing a line-dance! An angle on it is that Boniface' mentor Konrad von Urach now seems to have been the protector of Hildegard of Bingen in her early days.

As far as the Ninja Nun's concerned, it turns out they're chaplains to the Abbey staff, of the Community of Sisters of the Church - looking at their website they are, however, more than habitually Michaeline, their poetry and music go unusually far in the respect shown to that ArchAngel.

[Shiral]

 St. George's in Rhemuth has the circle with the Seals of the Saints set in the floor  near the transept by the High Altar.  I've always envisioned that as being big and intricate in its' workmanship.   

Wouldn't surprise me if the Michealines or the Gabrilites had such mystical workings in THEIR churches, as well.

That pavement IS gorgeous. I could spend a LOT of time studying it...

Melissa

[Rahere]

The core to the real-world - and I'll keep coming back to this, as I doubt if anybody really expected something thoroughly concrete to be discovered and I want to be clear about avoiding cross-contamination from WKK - seems to start in about 1100, with the arrival in the Paris School of the Cathedral of Notre Dame of a young Breton, Pierre "le Pallet", whose perceptivity soon earned him the nickname of "Sting int' tail", Abelard. He soon outgrew his mentor William of Champeaux, defeating him in 1108 in a formal philosophical debate about the scope of knowledge. Because the Church had to exclude the knowledge of sin in its various forms of heresy and malice from its teachings, it could not teach a top-down form of universal taxonomy, but had to restrain itself to a bottom-up study of orthodoxy, straight teaching of only those subjects which fell within the gamut of the doctrinal areas of ecclesiastical worship.
The result was a split in the School. Most of the pupils eventually followed Abelard, the remainder stayed with de Champeaux who was in turn forced to decamp to the left-bank Abbey of the Victorine Order when Abelard was eventually persuaded to return. There, they became more monastically purist in their observance of a particular constraint, that their mysticism had to keep a foot on the ground of reality, and in particular I found a common logic in certain studies which crystallised the doctrines of the relationship of man and God. The first work published was by Hugh of St Victor, a study of the Old Testament Covenant of Noah typified in the rainbow, in French the Ark in the Sky. The second was by Richard of St Victor, a study of the second covenant, that of Moses in Judaic Law, typified in the Ark of the Covenant. The third took nearly two hundred years more to appear, and this time not directly from Paris, but from a Priory just south of Brussels, known as Groenendael, Greendale, or in Latin Vallis Verdis, where an elderly cleric, Jan van Ruusbroec, who had dedicated the priory some fifty years previously, published a study, the Spiritual Tabernacle, of the Christian Covenant, figured on the Ark of the Covenant, but pre-figuring constantly the Ark's final role in Revelation, that of the Judgement Seat. This would then inspire a Dutch Canon, Gerard Groot, to reform the Canons Regular in the adoption of the Augustinian Rule and the establishment of a formal seat at Windesheim. Amongst the founders was John, the brother of Thomas à Kempis, Thomas from the Kempen, the area east of Antwerp. The Order rapidly grew, greatly encouraged by the former Chancellor of the University of Paris, Pierre d'Ailly, and his pupil and doctrinal heir, Nicholas of Kues. Its great luminaries were Erasmus, Luther, and Thomas à Kempis, and it may be seen as the great theological light of the Reformation, replacing the existing Orders which fell into the every form of financial irregularity which drove the Protestants into rebellion.
Ruusbroec's work in particular raises a serious question, that he expounds on details of the Ark and Tabernacle which are nowhere else recorded. However, I have found records which suggest he was working from hard reality, the thing itself, and closely associated with it is the higher metaphysical study of alchemy and cosmology. Kues was Kepler's chief inspiration, and d'Ailly Columbus', and the pair of them were the chief transmission of the Arabic knowledge of Astronomy after Alfonso the Wise of Castile brought it to Western attention. Much of what is attributed to the Kepler-Newton school was in fact already known to them, indeed I'm openly challenging the idea that science as a whole was an Enlightenment creation by showing how the ideas of Leibnitz and Newton were entirely conditioned by earlier knowledge.
A stylistic aberrance which WKK tends to fall into is the adoption of rationalism in early study. Comforting though it is to think that it was always thus, in truth the academic norm prior to 1500, and surviving until about 1650, was that of the quadrivium, the creation of a case capped in theology, driven by music, arithmetic, cosmology and geometry, and using the primitive tools of grammar, rhetoric and logic. The Enlightenment, by comparison, appears to be almost the opposite of its claim, in that it only uses logic and a certain degree of rhetoric, and has let the rest go hang - it is lazy thinking of a form which is causing great concern in Europe, at least, about the lack of education of the young generation. This too might be an interesting sub-tone to works in the WKK, as it is quite certain that Puteanus' work in Brussels, inspired by this, working with Vincenzo Galileo in the completion of musical theory, was the chief inspiration of Vincenzo's son and also of Newton in his completion of the proof of the elliptical orbits of planets, a suspicion first raised by d'Ailly in the early 1400s.

[Elkhound]

I can't wait to see it in the stones! In practical terms, this is why Kate had the Abbey virtually forced upon her, St Pauls' never had a real look in. My next task is to discover how it was re-keyed and who did it.

Prince Charles, Princess Anne, and Prince Andrew were all married at St. Paul's because St. Paul's has better sight-lines for TV; notice how all those marriages ended?  One is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy (or perhaps Enemy) action; there is clear evidence of a curse.   

[tenworld]

where was EII married?  I dont think hers was much more than a convienience, Philip hasnt been around for a long time.

At least C&D produced what seems like two very classy princes, altho time will tell.

[Alkari]

Queen Elizabeth - or rather, just plain Princess Elizabeth as she was then - was married at Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.  When they became engaged, Philip gave up his Greek citizenship and title and took on the surname Mountbatten.

I dont think hers was much more than a convienience, Philip hasnt been around for a long time.

I don't know what you mean by this - it doesn't make sense.  Do you mean to suggest it was an arranged marraige or marriage of convenience?  If so, that is not the case: it was a love match, and Elizabeth was perfectly happy being a naval officer's wife and enjoying that whole atmosphere and society.  Just as Kate is doing with William. 

And if by 'not being around' you mean that Philip hasn't often been seen in public lately, then yes, that's undoubtedly true.  But the man DID turn ninety in June, so I guess that might explain why he now has a reduced workload of official royal duties!   

[tenworld]

maybe I am being unfair, but I was under the impression he hasnt been around for a long time.  He supposedly refused to let Charles marry the woman of his love, in other words C&D was at least partly arranged (by default) and I thought Philip's was more of the same.

Maybe they need a miniseries on EII.