Comments on: Earliest battle site rediscovered—part two

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:15:48 +0000

We are preparing an ebook version for release at the end of 2013. Meanwhile, if you're in SA, please see our online offers at Exclusives and Red Pepper Books.

By: Fiona Anne

Fiona Anne — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:08:09 +0000

Hi again – I see from your reply that you are au fait with Helene’s book and will certainly keep track of your website and try to source your book. I look forward to reading it.

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:20:51 +0000

Thank you for sharing this information, Fiona, as it outlines an obscure tradition (usually transmitted orally) behind both Helene's Grailstone in Africa and my Knot of Stone. As the authors of these books (mine is a novel) we each draw our information from conversations that took place in South Africa during the 1960s. These conversations were held by a select group of Dutch Antroposophists who, inspired by the early Portuguese mission in Africa, focused on the significance of Almeida’s death at the Cape. Among those involved were Helene de Villiers, Zelia Campbell, Max Stibbe, Hymen and Eva Piccard (see her citation under Reviews) and, of course, Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven (see my response to Frans Lutters on March 3 above). According to Helene and Eva, Stibbe identified the site where Almeida was killed; though no one seems to remember exactly where it is today. Most of this group have since passed away and so, hoping to reconstruct events, I interviewed Claartje Wijnbergh-Berend for my book. As a Waldorf school teacher Claartje had worked with Zelia and Stibbe in Pretoria, staying for fifteen years, before her return in 1999 when Mandela retired. “His task was done and so was mine,” she said, “of course I had a far smaller role to play.” (see KoS pp.336-338) While Helene and I use Walter Johannes Stein's private notes as our primary source, Knot of Stone goes on to include both Stein’s retrospective visions and the clairaudient messages of Laurence Oliver. My reconstruction of events that fateful Friday five hundred years ago is thus based on two corroborating sources: what Dr Stein saw in 1924 and eighty years later, in 2004, what Dr Oliver heard. If you wish to read more about these two gifted men and their insights, please go to Book Review or see under Chapter 6. Or, better still, read the Preface to Knot of Stone. I hope this background is of added value.

By: Fiona Anne

Fiona Anne — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:02:48 +0000

Helene de Villiers wrote a book called Grailstone in Africa and suggests that Francisco d’Almeida had a rare book and pearl given to him by an Arab prince at the Battle of Granada. This was meant to be passed on to the Knights of Christ, an Order to which he belonged, but he kept it for himself. The suggestion is that he was assassinated by his own people for this reason.

By: Bruce Eitzen

Bruce Eitzen — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:52:14 +0000

Okay; I loved the map!

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:37:27 +0000

Bruce, the two swords mark the spot along the Liesbeeck-Salt River Canal where the N1 and M5 intersect (view an enlarged map here). The numbers themselves reveal a sequence rather than the precise position of each phase of the encounter.

By: Bruce Eitzen

Bruce Eitzen — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:27:08 +0000

Position No.3 is quite different to what you photographed in Paarden Eiland; this site is somewhere in Salt River.

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Thanks for the comparisons, Frans, they are both poetic and iconic. As you know, Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven described Table Mountain as an altar upon which rests the foot of the "World Cross" with its axis intersecting at Jerusalem. (read more KoS pp.241, 336) Today, fifty years after Zeylmans himself died in Cape Town, geologists describe the North-South chain of highland mountain ranges, rift valleys and lakes as the Wall of Africa.

By: Frans Lutters

Frans Lutters — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:48:30 +0000

How good to see the spot where the body of Almeida rests, with Table Mountain in the background. The mountain top appears like an African headrest, shaped by bedrock for those sleeping in its shadow; or formed like an anvil to forge a new East-West history? Others say it is like an altar on which the South is united with the rest of the World?