Here's the 1st Rule of Relics: There's always a Copy. There may be, in fact, as many as 5 "Holy" Lance or Spear points which are currently masquerading as the "Spear of Destiny." First: There's the "Crusader Lance," the one discovered by Peter Bartholomew, aka "The Holy Lance of Antioch," which may or may not be the Vatican Lance and/or the Lance of Echmiadzin. Second: the "Geghardavank Monastery Lance" associated with the Apostle Thaddeaus and which also may or may not be the Relic of Echmiadzin. Third: The Frog Lance which was esconced in Paris at Sainte-Chapelle along with the Crown of Thorns, the Virgin's Mantle, and a vial of the True Blood. This Lance may or may not also be the Vatican Lance. Fourth: Emperor Otto 3 had at least 2 copies of the Lance forged, one of which he gave to The King of Poland/Hungary and is in Krakow today. Parts of the "True Lance" were said to have been included with these 2 lances. Fifth: the Artist Kenny La Roche also claims to possess, in his growing stash of "True Relics of the True True", the Truest Relic of "der Heilige Lanze." We keep it with the Head of John the Baptist and the Skull and Long Bones of Baruch de Espinoza. Our Sphragis is our Smile of Authenticity and our near-genuine sincerity. You can trust us. We're not like the Others. We're more like Otto the First the Proto-Führer of the 1st Reich. Deeply pious but with a very Profane story to tell.
The most famous of the Lance Pretenders is the Hofburg Spear which is kept in the Schatzkammer - the Royal Treasury of the Habsburgs in Vienna. This Lance is said to be one of the "Copies" made by Otto 3 described above in number 4. There are endless speculations about which part or parts of this Spear Point are from the Original Lance of Longinus, the Roman Centurion. Recent Metallurgy tests date the spearhead to about the 7th century AD. Another shattered dream. None of these "facts" impresses the faithful. The Shroud of Turin has been conclusively dated at around 1300 AD at least a half-dozen times by several different Universities but that doesn't faze the True Believers. The fact that 5 Cathedrals and 1 Mosque claim to possess the True Head of John the Baptist only reinforces the belief that the Precursor probably actually had 7 heads. Belief Trumps Facts - that's the 2nd Rule of Relics.
Fra Angelico saw the scene comme ça. Notice the 4 Streams of Christ's Blood which rivulet off the Cross and course down the Mount out and into the World? They are the earthly Correspondences to the 4 Rivers Out of and Into Eden. Christian Reality is based on these "Correspondences;" they trump History and Common Sense. So any Object or any Person which "touches" the Christ, or in any way furthers his "Story," bolts the mundane in favor of the sacred and thereby leaves behind all those nasty loose ends of causality, physicality, and reality. Relics are not of this world once they bump into Jesus. And thus they are not bound by History's stingy rules like Provenance and Singularity. Every believer knows that 5 Holy Lances are 5 times better than One. The more Pretenders, the more Real the Narrative becomes. "Credo quia absurdum," said the petulant Tertullian. Or did he? Actually, what he said - in his De Carne Christ - was this: "Natus est Dei Filius, non pudet quia pudendum est; et mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus resurrexit, certum est, quia impossible." Tertullian wrote that when he was defending the True Faith against the Heresy of Docetism. More than half of everything written about Christianity by the Church "Fathers" was Defensive. Against a belief and not for it.
"The Son of God was born; there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died; it is wholly credible, because it is unsound. And, buried, He rose again; it is certain, because impossible." What the Tert meant was that he was rejecting "Fideism" - a "system of philosophy or an attitude of mind, which, denying the power of unaided human reason to reach certitude, affirms that the fundamental act of human knowledge consists in an Act of Faith, and the supreme criterion of certitude is Authority." Tertullian is claiming that the Apostles, "being reasonable people, would not have believed in something as incredible as the resurrection of Jesus Christ had they not seen it firsthand." So the Tert is not saying: "I believe because it is absurd [impossible]." He is saying that he believes because the first Witnesses believed and that he believes that these Witnesses were "reasonable." Freud misquotes this line over and over in his works. As does Jung. As do most who don't bother to question. In the end, that's what Faith is: the Shutting off of Questions.
"Symbols, parallels and patterns of the past assist the consolidation of power, and if religion can be harnessed in the pursuit of empire, so much the better. When a man can present himself as a god, or at least as divinity's chosen servant, and his supporters promote his fantasy, he can wield Authority like no other." - David Hulme
"Behold, I bring you here King Otto, chosen by God, designated by the mighty lord Henry, and elevated to the throne by all the princes. If you are satisfied with this choice show it by raising your right hands to heaven."
From the Coronation ceremony of Otto 1 as Holy Roman Emperor. The Assembled Lords raised their hands and screamed: "Sieg un Heil!" Victory and Salvation! And that's how the "Sieg Heil" was born and how the 1st Reich was formed.
This is the front facade of a Hochschule in Bavarian Germany. Jesuit country. You can see that St. Michael has been enlisted in the local struggle against the Old Dragon and everything the Old Dragon symbolizes. Mike is using his Long Lance and is sticking the Beast in and thru his Mouth which is the most common iconographic convention. The Devil is the Prime Seducer and his words are his Medium. So sticking him thru the mouth is way of reminding the Hochschule Kinder that they live in a world which is stitched together by a web of lies. Jewish lies, mostly. But in Bavaria, the Catholic part of Germany, the lies are also Lutheran. When the Nazis started to clear up all the Lies by kicking the Kikes out of the Bible they changed the origin of the Spear of Destiny story so that it was no longer a Symbol and Scepter of Jewish authority, given to Pilate and then to Longinus as a Warrant for his Authority to Break the Bones of the Nazarene and keep him from fulfilling prophecy. The Supersession of that was easy. In the rewoven Aryan Jesus Myth of the German Christian Movement the Spear of Destiny gained an upgunned Provenance: It was miraculously "Translated" as Odin's Lance, Gungnir, loaned to St. Michael when Odin/Thor became Michael in the Germanic Christian Conversions. It was Michael then who gave it to Gaius Cassius Longinus who then used it to fulfill Prophecy [that god would send a Hero to Crush the Jews] and set the Wheel of the New Testament in motion. The Nazis found out that it was much easier to just change the myth rather than chip all the Christian Icons from the Semiosphere of Europa. The Egyptians used to do that. When the new Pharaoh took power he would erase and obliterate all traces of any old Pharaoh or any old idea that he was against. Egypt is full of maimed marble. It's much easier to simply declare that the only purpose to that early stuff is to "make straight the way of the Lord" and prep the world for your divine coming. It's cheaper to Use and Mold Heresy than to disprove it.
In no country in Europa is the figure of the Knight more Numinous and more Venerable than in Germany. Or I should say: the Germanies. It is useful to remember that up until 1870 the place we call Germany was about 1500 Independent States, Nations, Principalities, Ducal Holdings, and Free Cities. All of them warring against all of them nearly all the time. There was a reason that Germany beat all other nations in the race to perfect Tanks and Armored Formations. It's called Armor. Over time, the Germanic "Nations" placed more men in Armor than any other people. The Frogs may have pioneered it and the Eyeties may have perfected its Styles, but it was the Krauts who turned Armor into an Industry. Which is extremely ironic when you realize that in Western Europe it was the Germans who were sucking hind tit in the triumph of the Industrial Revolution. It turns out that constantly warring folk are myopic when it comes to the alternative uses of Metals. Swords, Pikes, Shields, Arrow Tips, Armor & Mace are the default products of a Wehr Gedanken Mentalité. Meanwhile the rest of the world is building bridges and buildings and factories so that they can build cars & trucks & refrigerators & electric bongs so that they can get stoned and get rich. One Thousand and Ten years ago, in 1000, Otto 3rd gave the Up-Chied Replica of the Lanze to the Polish. Then everybody started elaborating and decorating their "Lanzes" which by 1273 was being used as the Center Piece in Euro-Coronation ceremonies every place where there was a Lance, a Pretender, or a Replica. Kings were sticking gold on them and silver, sticking nails in them until there were around 50 "Authentic" Crucifixion nails when actually only 3 or 4 were needed for the job. In 1424 Sigismund had his stash of Relics moved from his capital in Prague to the Imperial City of Nuremberg, the place of his birth. This stash is called the Reichskleinodien - the Imperial Regalia of the German Kings. When the Frog Revolutionary Army got to Nuremberg in 1796 the Krauts moved the stash - Lanze included - to Vienna for "safe keeping."
Before the Relic Stash and the Lanze could be returned to the Germans the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 and Baron von Hügel, with whom the stash had been entrusted, sold the entire Horde - avec Lance - to the chin-heavy Habsburgs who immediately "Translated" the relics into the Treasury of the Hungarian-Austrian Empire. Lucky took this picture of the German Knight going toe to toe with the Old Dragon in Augsburg where so much of this Heiligeschichte was forged. The 6 story building in back of the statue is the Bavarian Home and Repository of Barber Perfect and the HQ of Kenny La Roche in Zentrum Europa. Barber had the building declared a Euro-Heritage Site which exempts it from the Draconian laws in Germany against any exterior display of the Swastika or any SS Regalia. There is another interesting fact which surrounds the Relic of the Heilige Lanze in Vienna. As Skippy has mentioned, the Spear Point has been dated by Metal experts to the 7th century AD, so it, obviously, is not the "Truest" of the 5 or 6 Pretender Lances. But the Nails that have been set into it and are storied to have come from the feet and hands of Crucified Jesus, they have been dated to the First century AD of Roman origin. When the Nazis Anschlussed Austria in 1938, Hitler is rumored to have snatched the Lance. He had seen it as a Youth and had written: "I stood there quietly gazing upon it for several minutes quite oblivious to the scene around me. It seemed to carry some hidden inner meaning which evaded me, a meaning which I felt I inwardly knew yet could not bring to consciousness. . . . I felt as though I myself had held it before in some earlier century of history. That I myself had once claimed it as my talisman of power and held the destiny of the world in my hands. ..." The problem with the Hitler story is that at war's end the Lance was still in Nuremberg and therefore had not been taken personally by Hitler. But why ruin a good myth? The Image of the Führer, hunkered down in the Berlin Bunker, waiting out the Hordes from the East while clutching the Spear of Destiny as the Reich evaporated around him is too good not to include in Strict History.
Heinrich Himmler is a different story. Most historians, having sobered up from the Postwar Revisionism, now agree that Adolf Hitler was nowhere near as superstitious or as Pagan as Amerikan & Twit Histories have painted him. But Himmler cannot be let off that hook. He was, after all, the reincarnated soul of King Heinrich the First, the father of Otto the First - the founder of the 1st Reich. He saw himself as a Knight. An SS Knight, all Black Robed with Silver Totenkopf - the Mirror Image of the Blackrobed Jesuits with their Silver Crucifixes. Himmler wanted the Spear of Destiny. He wanted ALL the Spears of Destiny. And he wanted the Grail, and the Arc of the fucking Covenant - which he planned to use to help him destroy the Jews. He figured Yahweh and his boy Joshua were in a Jew-Killin' Mood and that the very Symbols of their Special Status as Chosen People could now be turned against them as Selected People. So Himmler and his SS Oberführer Murmur - aka - Hans Marie Widerhaken von Vollendete - aka - Barber Perfect sent the Ahnenerbe out on Plunder missions to all the mythic hotspots of Europe. They were the Sonderkommando Jankuhn charged with returning Power Relics back to the Reich from which history had stolen them. Himmler's expeditions in search of Relics had mixed results. Since there is no such thing as a Precious Chalice of the Last Supper, the Grail missions were a bust. Since the Ethiopians buried the Arc of the Covenant and then forgot where they put it, the Arc missions were also a bust. But since History does attest to SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler personally Knighting SS graduates of the Wewelsburg Castle Academy with his own personal Spear of Destiny then it's a safe bet that his Ahnenerbe diggers found something, somewhere. Albert Speer quotes Hitler as railing against Himmler's obsessions: "What nonsense! Here we have reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants to start all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the Church. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS Saint! I would turn over in my grave."
The Bestest Myth of the Spear of Destiny goes like this: Remember that whoever possesses the Spear can rule the world and to lose the Spear means death and destruction. On April 30th, 1945 at exactly 2:10 PM, Advanced Recon-Units of General George S. Patton's 3rd Army found and took possession of the Spear from a Nuremberg vault. Ten minutes later, in his bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler - the 1st and Last Führer of the 3rd German Reich - killed himself with his pistol. Patton was rumored to have been fascinated with the Spear - and he knew all about its history, both Geschichte and Heiligeschichte. Patton firmly believed that he was the Reincarnated Gaius Cassius Longinus himself. Now he wanted to turn his Army on the Russians. The story goes that he told Eisenhower that with the Spear and his Sherman's he could "Drive to the East" and free Europa of the Jewish-Communist Menace. He was now invincible. Ike freaked! He ordered Patton to round up all the fuckin' relics and give them back to the Austrians in Vienna - where they are today. And shut the fuck up about taking his Panzers Öst. Patton pouted, but he obeyed. A week later, after giving up the Spear of Destiny, Patton was dead. That's Ray in the picture - he's Slag's father. Ricky is his mother. The Pic captures them on the Hang-Mission for Heiligmichael Erzengel. Ray, like Skippy, is Professor Emeritus. And like Skippy and Slag, he spent his life in Communication Sciences - writing Text books on the Social Construction of Reality. When Ray was about the age of the Hippy walking behind him he was in Europa fighting Nazis with Patton's Army. Ray is a part of the "Greatest Generation" - the young Knights who Armored up and went mano-a-mano with the Old Dragon - the Devil himself - over the possession of Western Civilization and its Guidon, its scepter - the Spear of Destiny. Ray won. Possession - that's the Last Rule of Relics.
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