Holy Blood, Holy Grail (14 page)

DAME DES CROSS.”

The implications of this paragraph are extremely interesting. Isis, of course, is the Egyptian Mother Goddess, patroness of mysteries the

“White

Queen’ in her benevolent aspects, the “Black Queen’ in her malevolent ones.

Numerous writers, on mythology, anthropology, psychology, theology, have traced the cult of the Mother Goddess from pagan times to the Christian epoch. And according to these writers she is said to have survived under

Christianity in the guise of the Virgin Mary the “Queen of Heaven’, as

Saint Bernard called her, a designation applied in the Old Testament to the

Mother Goddess Astarte, the Phoenician equivalent of Isis. But according to the text in Le Serpent rouge, the Mother Goddess of Christianity would not appear to be the Virgin. On the contrary, she would appear to be the

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Magdalene to whom the church at Rennes-leChateau is dedicated and to whom Sauniere consecrated his tower. Moreover, the text would seem to imply that “Notre

Dame’ does not apply to the Virgin either. That resonant title conferred on all the great cathedrals of France would also seem to refer to the

Magdalene. But why should the Magdalene be revered as “Our Lady’ and, still more, as a Mother Goddess? Maternity is the last thing generally associated with the Magdalene. In popular Christian tradition she is a prostitute who finds redemption by apprenticing herself to Jesus. And she figures most noticeably in the Fourth Gospel, where she is the first person to behold Jesus after the Resurrection. In consequence she is extolled as a saint, especially in France where, according to medieval legends, she is said to have brought the Holy Grail. And indeed the ‘vase filled with healing balm’ might well be intended to suggest the Grail. But to enshrine the Magdalene in the place usually reserved for the Virgin would seem, at very least, to be heretical.

Whatever their point, the authors of Le Serpent rouge -or, rather, the alleged authors met with a fate as gruesome as that of Fakhar ul Islam.

On March 6th, 1967, Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston de Koker were found hanged. And the following day, March 7th, Pierre Feugere was found hanged as well.

One might immediately assume, of course, that these deaths were in some way connected with the composition and public release of Le Serpent rouge. As in the case of Fakhar ul Islam, however, we could not discount an alternative explanation. If one wished to engender an aura of sinister mystery, it would be easy enough to do. One need only comb the newspapers until one found a suspicious death or, in this instance, three suspicious deaths. After the fact, one might then append the names of the deceased to a pamphlet of one’s own concoction and deposit that pamphlet in the

Bibliotheque Nationale with an earlier date (January 17th) on the title page. It would be virtually impossible to expose such a hoax, which would certainly produce the desired intimation of foul play. But why perpetrate such a hoax at all? Why should someone want to invoke an aura of violence, murder and intrigue? Such a ploy would hardly deter

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investigators. On the contrary, it would only further attract them.

If, on the other hand, we were not dealing with a hoax, there were still a number of baffling questions. Were we to believe, for example, that the three hanged men were suicides or victims of murder? Suicide, in the circumstances, would seem to make little sense And murder would not seem to make much more. One could understand three people being dispatched lest they divulge certain explosive information. But in this case the information had already been divulged, already deposited in the

Bibliotheque Nationale. Could the murders if that was what they were have been a form of punishment, of retribution? Or perhaps a means of precluding any subsequent indiscretions? Neither of these explanations is satisfactory. If one is angered by the disclosure of certain information, or if one wishes to forestall additional disclosures, one does not attract attention to the matter by committing a trio of lurid and sensational murders unless one is reasonably confident that there will be no very assiduous inquiry.

Our own adventures in the course of our investigation were mercifully less dramatic, but equally mystifying. In our research, for example, we had encountered repeated references to a work by one Antoine 1”Ermite entitled

Un Tresor merovingien a Rennes-leChateau (“A Merovingian Treasure at Rennes-leChateau’). We endeavoured to locate this work and quickly found it listed in the Bibliotheque Nationale catalogue; but it proved inordinately difficult to obtain. Every day, for a week, we went to the library and filled out the requisite fiche requesting the work. On each occasion the fiche was returned marked “communique’ indicating that the work was being used by someone else. In itself this was not necessarily unusual.

After a fortnight, however, it began to become so and exasperating as well, for we could not remain in Paris much longer. We sought the assistance of a librarian. He told us the book would be ‘communique’ for three months -an extremely unusual situation and that we could not order it in advance of its return.

In England not long afterwards a friend of ours announced that she was going to Paris for a holiday. We accordingly asked her to try to obtain the elusive work of Antoine 1”Ermite and at least make a note of

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what it contained. At the Bibliotheque Nationale, she requested the book. Her fiche was not even returned. The next day she tried again, and with the same result.

When we were next in Paris, some four months later, we made another attempt. Our fiche was again returned marked “communique’. At this point, we began to feel the game had been somewhat overplayed and began to play one of our own. We made our way down the catalogue room, adjacent to the ‘stacks’ which are, of course, inaccessible to the public. Finding an elderly and kindly looking library assistant, we assumed the role of bumbling English tourists with Neanderthal command of French. Asking his help, we explained that we were seeking a particular work but were unable to obtain it, no doubt because of our imperfect understanding of the library’s procedures.

The genial old gentleman agreed to help. We gave him the work’s catalogue number and he disappeared into the “stacks’. When he emerged, he apologised, saying there was nothing he could do the book had been stolen. What was more, he added, a compatriot of ours was apparently responsible for the theft an Englishwoman. After some badgering, he consented to give us her name. It was that of our friend!

On returning to England again, we sought the assistance of the library service in London, and they agreed to look into the bizarre affair. On our behalf, the National Central Library wrote to the Bibliotheque Nationale requesting an explanation for what appeared to be deliberate obstruction of legitimate research. No explanation was forthcoming. Shortly thereafter, however, a Xerox copy of Antoine 1”Ermite’s work was at last dispatched to us

-along with emphatic instructions that it be returned immediately. This in itself was extremely singular, for libraries do not generally request return of Xerox copies. Such copies are usually deemed mere waste paper and disposed of accordingly.

The work, when it was finally in our hands, proved distinctly disappointing hardly worth the complicated business of obtaining; it.

Like Madeleine

Blancassal’s work, it bore the imprint of the Swiss Grande Loge Alpina.

But it said nothing in any way new. Very briefly, it recapitulated the history of the Comte of Razes, of RennesleChateau and Berenger

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Sauniere. In short, it rehashed all the details with which we had long been familiar. There seemed to be no imaginable reason why anyone should have been using it, and keeping it “communique’, for a solid week. Nor did there seem any imaginable reason for withholding it from us. But most puzzling of all, the work itself was not original. With the exception of a few words altered here and there, it was a verbatim text, reset and reprinted, of a chapter in a popular paperback a facile best-seller, available at news-stands for a few francs, on lost treasures throughout the world. Either Antoine 1”Ermite had shamelessly plagiarised the published book, or the published book had plagiarised

Antoine 1”Ermite.

Such occurrences are typical of the mystification that has attended the material which, since 1956, has been appearing fragment by fragment in

France. Other researchers have encountered similar enigmas. Ostensibly plausible names have proved to be pseudonyms. Addresses, including addresses of publishing houses and organisations, have proved not to exist. References have been cited to books which no one, to our knowledge, has ever seen.

Documents have disappeared, been altered, or inexplicably mis catalogued in the Bibilotheque Nationale. At times one is tempted to suspect a practical joke. If so, however, it is a practical joke on an enormous scale, involving an impressive array of resources financial and otherwise. And whoever might be perpetrating such a joke would seem to be taking it very seriously indeed.

In the meantime new material has continued to appear, with the familiar themes recurring like leitmotifs -Sauni6re, Rennes-leChateau, Poussin,

“Les Bergers d’Arcadie’, the Knights Templar, Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty. Allusions to viticulture the grafting of vines figure prominently, presumably in some allegorical sense. At the same time, more and more information has been added. The identification of Henri

Lobineau as the count of Lenoncourt is one example. Another is an increasing but unexplained insistence on the significance of the Magdalene.

And two other locations have been stressed repeatedly, assuming a status now apparently commensurate with Rennes-leChateau. One of these

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is Gisors, a fortress in Normandy which was of vital strategic and political importance at the peak of the

Crusades. The other is Stenay, once called Satanicum, on the fringe of the

Ardennes the old capital of the Merovingian dynasty, near which Dagobert

II was assassinated in 679.

The corpus of material now available cannot be adequately reviewed or discussed in these pages. It is too dense, too confusing, too disconnected, most of all too copious. But from this ever-proliferating welter of information, certain key points emerge which constitute a foundation for further research. They are presented as indisputable historical fact, and can be summarised as follows: 1)

There was a secret order behind the Knights Templar, which created the

Templars as its military and administrative arm. This order, which has functioned under a variety of names, is most frequently known as the Prieure de Sion (“Priory of Sion’). 2) The Prieure de Sion has been directed by a sequence of Grand Masters whose names are among the most illustrious in Western history and culture. 3) Although the Knights Templar were destroyed and dissolved between 1307 and 1314, the Prieure de Sion remained unscathed. Although itself periodically torn by internecine and factional strife, it has continued to function through the centuries. Acting in the shadows, behind the scenes, it has orchestrated certain of the critical events in Western history. 4) The Prieure de Sion exists today and is still operative. It is influential and plays a role in high-level international affairs, as well as in the domestic affairs of certain European countries. To some significant extent it is responsible for the body of information disseminated since 1956. 5) The avowed and declared objective of the Prieure de Sion is the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty and bloodline to the throne not only of France, but to the thrones of other European nations as well. 6) The restoration of the Merovingian dynasty is sanctioned and justifiable, both legally and morally. Although deposed in the eighth century, the Merovingian bloodline did not become extinct. On the contrary it perpetuated itself in a direct line from Dagobert II and his son,

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Sigisbert IV. By dint of dynastic alliances and intermarriages, this line came to include Godfroi de Bouillon, who captured Jerusalem in 1099, and various other noble and royal families, past and present Blanchefort, Gisors,

Saint Clair (Sinclair in England), Montesquieu, Montpezat, Poher, Luisignan,

Plantard and Habsburg-Lorraine. At present, the Merovingian bloodline enjoys a legitimate claim to its rightful heritage.

Here, in the so-called Prieure de Sion, was a possible explanation for the reference to

“Sion’ in the parchments found by Berenger Sauniere. Here, too, was an explanation for the curious signature, “P.S.” which appeared on one of those parchments, and on the tombstone of Marie de Blanchefort.

Nevertheless, we were extremely sceptical, like most people, about ‘conspiracy theories of history’; and most of the above assertions struck us as irrelevant, improbable and/or absurd. But the fact remained that certain people were promulgating them, and doing so quite seriously; quite seriously and, there was reason to believe, from positions of considerable power. And whatever the truth of the assertions, they were clearly connected in some way with the mystery surrounding Sauniere and Rennes-le Chateau.

We, therefore, embarked on a systematic examination of what we had begun to call, ironically, the “Prieure documents’, and of the assertions they contained. We endeavoured to subject these assertions to careful critical scrutiny and determine whether they could be in any way substantiated. We did so with a cynical, almost derisory scepticism, fully convinced the outlandish claims would wither under even cursory investigation. Although we could not know it at the time, we were to be greatly surprised.

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Two The Secret Society

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5 The Order Behind the Scenes

We had already suspected the existence of a group of individuals, if not a coherent

“order’, behind the Knights Templar. The claim that the Temple was created by the Prieure de Sion thus seemed slightly more plausible than the other assertions in the