Gypsy Fire

This is LJ Oltean’s latest book about the struggle of a young immigrant who is trying to start a new life in Germany right after the end of WWII.
Interesting enough the story is not only about how to succeed in an adverse society, but it also brings to our attention the forgotten story of the holocaust of Gypsies.

Read more at www.ljoltean.com

Dracula’s Tomb

Unlike most of the Basarab rulers who were buried at the Arges monastery, both Vlad Dracula and Vlad II were buried somewhere else.
Based on information found in a 17th century chronicle, most historians believe that Dracula and his father were buried at the Snagov monastery, which is located on a small island on lake Snagov, some twenty five miles north of Bucharest. The fact that they both died on the battlefield killed by rivals to the throne seems to be the explanation why their bodies do not lay next to their ancestors, but rather in a monastery close to the place where they died. Since it was also customary for Wallachian noblemen to be buried in churches they have built or sponsored, it makes sense for both of them to be buried at Snagov, which was a monastery re-built and fortified by them.
For many years it was believed that Dracula’s relics lay under an unmarked stone located in the center of the church, while his father was buried close to the eastern wall of the old church, under a decayed tombstone with undecipherable inscription.
Some believe the writing on Dracula’s stone was chiseled-off in 1792 by order of metropolitan Filaret as a sign of eternal damnation for his cruelties, while others believe it was the act of the Greek monks who were in charge of the monastery two centuries ago, as a punishment for his conversion to Catholicism.

However, after a team of archeologists opened the tombs in 1933, and did not find any relics under Dracula’s stone, but found decayed bones along with purple garments and a golden ring in the other tomb, new theories were issued.

Today, the controversy is hotter than ever, with part of historians still believing that Dracula was buried at Snagov, but his tomb has been looted or emptied by hard-line clerics. Their opponents believe that Dracula was actually killed south of Bucharest and therefore buried at the nearby Comana monastery, that was built during his reign and to which he made generous donations.

The problem with the latest theory is that it relies on a Russian chronicle that vaguely states that “Dracula was killed on a hill”, but sure enough some historians concluded the Snagov area is too flat for that and therefore the hilly area close to Comana must be the place of his death. However, this second monastery has been restored and rebuilt many times since Dracula’s time and nobody can tell where his tomb might be located, if indeed he was buried there.

Why Dracula

 

Like I said before, I was surprised when I learned about prince Vlad Dracula being brought into this story, since in my mind there wasn’t any connection between the cruel Wallachian ruler and the main subject of the novel, which is the dualist bible and its prophecies.

However, now I see clearly the connection, especially after understanding the influence of the heretical Bogomil movement on the so called oral bible. The issue over which the historians have been fighting for many years is the surname Dracula, and while many argue that this only has to do with Vlad’s father being a knight of the Dragon Order, others see it different.

 

Vlad Dracula is also known as Vlad III, and belongs to the Bassarab dynasty. His father was Vlad II, the son of the great ruler Mircea the Elder and it is well documented that he was a member of the Dragon Order and therefore a dragon might have been his coat of arms. Since the Latin word for Dragon is Draco, which in the early Romanian language became Dracul, that might be the origin of his surname. However the same word Dracul means also “the devil”, which made many people wonder if he was called Dracul because of the dragon on his coat of arms, or maybe this was a derogatory nickname, due to his cruelty.

While there is ambiguity on Vlad Dracul’s surname, there is total agreement on the origin of his son’s surname: Dracula, since in old Romanian Dracula (or Draculia) means “the son of Dracul”.

 

Ancient Order of the Dragon badge.

Son of the dragon or Son of the devil?

In my mind though, there is little doubt why Vlad III is called Dracula, no matter what some historians say, and this is based on these two facts:

 

1. To this day there is no physical evidence that Vlad II had indeed a dragon on his coat of arms. There is though a coin minted by him that has on one side an eagle with a cross (like most Wallachian coins) and a dragon on the reverse side, but that dragon is very similar to the lions/dragons depicted on the coat of arms of Matthias, the king of Hungary, and with Vlad II being his vassal, that makes total sense.
2. Vlad II never signed a document using his surname, while his son did that consistently and to this day there are many chancellery documents he signed as Vlad Dracula, or Vladislaus Draculia. This tells me that unlike his father who wanted to be known as Vlad II, Dracula took pride in his surname and wanted to be known as Vlad Dracula, or in plain English: Vlad the Son of the Devil.

book review: The Cozia Manuscript

 

On an island in the south of Romania under an unmarked stone in the centre aisle of an ancient monastery, lie the remains of Vlad Dracula. Or if they are not actually there now, perhaps they once were and it makes a good story. But then, there are many stories about Dracula. The young monk guiding the small group of American tourists is earnest in his defense of the fifteenth century prince who was Romania’s great hero and defender. Other historians stress the incredible cruelty, even by medieval standards. Does Dracul stand for dragon, or for devil?

 

A retired American pastor and a Romanian expat businessman who’s long since got used to life in the West have both made pilgrimages to the Orthodox church on Lake Snagov. One is interested in solving the biblical question of where the anti-Christ will rise. The other finds that his own history is entangled with politics both current and centuries-deep. Revisiting his wife’s apartment which has been returned to the family after confiscation by the State, Mitch (born Mircea) retrieves the manuscript of an old research project. Other materials are in the hands of Corina, once Mitch’s girlfriend and now married to an opportunist chemical magnate. Also once the student of Professor Ioan who died soon after his research project was killed by the government.

 

In a quest that ranges across centuries and spans the Atlantic, Mitch and the pastor join forces to unravel the secrets of the Bogomil movement, Romanian folklore and the threads of history. In dualist lore, God and the Devil are Brother and un-Brother. Corina’s boss was on the trail of un-Brother through Romanian mountain villages. Now, in an Orthodox monastic community in Wisconsin Brother Alexie has taken a vow of silence. Just when the puzzle could have been solved.

 

While this is a work of fiction, the Romanian dualist bible and Moses Gaster’s collection of popular myths and prophecies are entirely authentic and here they are for the first time brought to the attention of Western readers.

 

 

how it all started

 

 

It was two years ago when I first heard from my friend L.J. about the dualist biblical stories that are part of the Romanian folklore and I have to admit they caught my interest immediately. These stories are very little known in the Western world and only a few were translated in English more than one hundred years ago by a Judaeo-Christian scholar named Moses Gaster, who was also a lector at the Oxford University.

The one thing that got me really excited is the fact that in some of those stories I found elements reminding of Rapture, which is a Christian theory that became popular only in the last ten years.

Since I knew L.J. literary activity, I asked him why he wouldn’t write about these Romanian myths and make them available to a larger audience. His answer at that time was he only writes Christian fiction and he does that in Romanian, which is his mother tongue, although he has been living in the US for about twenty years. I would have to say that it took me almost one year to persuade him to start writing on that subject and I was very happy when he decided to that, although it was in a different way that I was expecting: he chose to create a fictional plot in which he blended a few of those biblical stories.

The book he just published, the Cozia Manuscript is only part one of a trilogy he is planning to write and only a small number of the dualist myths are present in it. For reasons that I could not understand immediately, he decided to bring into the story a few historical elements about prince Vlad Dracula of Wallachia and the Bogomil heresy that was actually born in that part of the world.

My goal now is to review L.J.’s book and as I do that, I would like to dig more into the dualist biblical stories that I’ve been studying assiduously for almost two years and I find to be extremely attractive to those interested in the history of Christianity but also to those studying Rapture.