Holy Blood, Holy Grail (29 page)

A more recent and, if anything, more apparently authoritative “Prieure’

publication elaborates further on Sauniere’s story and would seem to confirm, at least in part, the account summarised above. According to this publication, Sauniere himself was little more than a pawn and his role in the mystery of Rennes-leChateau has been much exaggerated. The real force behind the events at the mountain village is said to have been Sauniere’s friend, the Abbe Henri Boudet, cure of the adjacent village of

Rennes-le-Bains.”

Boudet is said to have provided Sauniere with all his money a total of thirteen million francs between 1887 and 1915. And Boudet is said to have guided Sauniere on his various projects the public works, the construction of the Villa Bethania and the Tour Magdala. He is also said to have supervised the restoration of the church at RennesleChateau, and to have designed Sauniere’s perplexing Stations of the Cross as a kind of illustrated version, or visual equivalent, of a cryptic book of his own.

According to this recent “Prieure’ publication, Sauniere remained essentially ignorant of the real secret for which he acted as custodian until Boudet, in the throes of approaching death, confided it to him in

March 1915. According to the same publication, Marie Denarnaud, Sauniere’s housekeeper, was in fact Boudet’s agent. It was through her that Boudet supposedly transmitted instructions to Sauniere. And it was to her that all money was made payable.

Or, rather, most money.

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For Boudet, between 1885 and 1901, is said to have paid 7,655,250

francs to the bishop of Carcassonne the man who, at his own expense, dispatched Sauniere to

Paris with the parchments. The bishop, too, would seem then to have been essentially in Boudet’s employ. It is certainly an incongruous situation an important regional bishop being the paid servit or of a humble, backwater parish priest. And the parish priest himself? For. whom was Boudet working?

What interests did he represent? What can have given him the power to enlist the services, and the silence, of his ecclesiastical superior? And who can have furnished him with such vast financial resources to be dispensed so prodigally? These questions are not answered explicitly. But the answer is constantly implicit the Prieure de Sion.

Further light on the matter was shed by another recent work which, like its predecessors, seemed to draw on ‘privileged sources’ of information.

The work in question is Le Tresor du triangle d’or (“The Treasure of the

Golden Triangle’) by jean-Luc Chaumeil, published in 1979. According to M. Chaumeil, a number of clerics involved in the enigma of Rennes-leChateau - Sauniere, Boudet, quite probably others like Hoffet, Hoffet’s uncle at

Saint Sulpice and the bishop of Carcassonne were affiliated with a form of “Scottish Rite’

Freemasonry. This Freemasonry, M. Chaumeil declares, differed from most other forms in that it was “Christian, Hermetic and aristocratic’. In short, it did not, like many rites of Freemasonry, consist primarily of free-thinkers and atheists. On the contrary, it seems to have been deeply religious and magically oriented emphasising a sacred social and political hierarchy, a divine order, an underlying cosmic plan.

And the upper grades or degrees of this Freemasonry, according to M.

Chaumeil, were the lower grades or degrees of the Prieure de Sion.”

In our own researches we had already encountered a Freemasonary of the sort M. Chaumeil describes. Indeed M. Chaumeil’s description could readily be applied to the original “Scottish Rite’ introduced by Charles Radclyffe and his associates. Both Radclyffe’s Masonry and the Masonry M. Chaumeil describes would have been acceptable, despite papal condemnation, to devout

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Catholics whether eighteenth-century Jacobites or nineteenth-century French priests. In both cases Rome certainly disapproved and quite vehemently.

Nevertheless the individuals involved seem not only to have persisted in regarding themselves as Christians and Catholics. They also seem, on the basis of available evidence, to have received a major and exhilarating transfusion of faith a transfusion that enabled them to see themselves as, if anything, more truly Christian than the papacy.

Although M. Chaumeil is both vague and evasive, he strongly implies that in the years prior to 1914 the Freemasonry of which Boudet and Sauniere were members became amalgamated with another esoteric institution -an institution that might well explain some of the curious references to a monarch in the Protocols of the Elders of Sion, especially if, as M. Chaumeil further intimates, the real power behind this other institution was also the Prieure de Sion.

The institution in question was called the Hieron du Val d’Or which would seem to be a verbal transposition of that recurring site, Orva1.4’ The

Hieron du Val d’Or was a species of secret political society founded, it would appear, around 1873. It seems to have shared much with other esoteric organisations of the period. There was, for example, a characteristic emphasis on sacred geometry and various sacred sites. There was an insistence on a mystical or Gnostic truth underlying mythological motifs.

There was a preoccupation with the origins of men, races, languages and symbols, such as occurs in Theosophy. And like many other sects and societies of the time, the Hieron du Val d’Or was simultaneously Christian and trans Christian It stressed the importance of the Sacred Heart, for instance, yet linked the Sacred Heart with other, pre-Christian symbols. It sought to reconcile as the legendary Ormus was said to have reconciled Christian and pagan mysteries. And it ascribed special significance to

Druidic thought which, like many modern experts, it regarded as partially

Pythagorean. All of these themes are adumbrated in the published work of

Sauniere’s friend, the Abbe Henri Boudet.

For the purposes of our inquiry, the Hieron du Val d’Or proved relevant by virtue of its formulation of what M. Chaumeil calls an “esoteric

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geopolitics’ and an “ethnarchical world order’. Translated into more mundane terms this entailed, in effect, the establishment of a new Holy Roman Empire in nineteenth-century Europe -a revitalised and reconstituted Holy Roman

Empire, a secular state that unified all peoples and rested ultimately on spiritual, rather than social, political or economic foundations. Unlike its predecessor, this new Holy Roman Empire would have been genuinely “holy’ genuinely “Roman’ and genuinely

“imperial’ although the specific meaning of these terms would have differed crucially from the meaning accepted by tradition and convention. Such a state would have realised the centuries-old dream of a “heavenly kingdom’ on earth, a terrestrial replica or mirror-image of the order, harmony and hierarchy of the cosmos. It would have actualised the ancient Hermetic premise, “As above, so below’. And it was not altogether Utopian or naive. On the contrary, it was at least remotely feasible in the context of late nineteenth-century Europe.

According to M. Chaumeil, the objectives of the Hieron du Val d’Or were: a theocracy wherein nations would be no more than provinces, their leaders but proconsuls in the service of a world occult government consisting of an elite. For Europe, this regime of the Great King implied a double hegemony of the Papacy and the Empire, of the Vatican and of the Habsburgs, who would have been the Vatican’s right arm.”

By the nineteenth century, of course, the Habsburgs were synonymous with the house of Lorraine. The concept of a “Great King’ would thus have constituted a fulfilment of Nostradamus’s prophecies. And it would also have actualised, at least in some sense, the monarchist blueprint outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. At the same time the realisation of so grandiose a design would clearly have entailed a number of changes in existing institutions. The Vatican, for example, would presumably have been a very different Vatican from the one then situated in Rome. And the Habsburgs would have been more than imperial heads of state. They would have become, in effect, a dynasty of priest-kings, like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Or like

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the Messiah anticipated by the Jews at the dawn of the Christian era.M. Chaumeil does not clarify the extent, if any, to which the Habsburgs themselves were actively involved in these ambitious clandestine designs.

There is a quantity of evidence, however including the visit of a Habsburg archduke to Rennes-leChateau which seemingly attests to at least some implication. But whatever plans were afoot, they would have been thwarted by the First World War, which, among other things, toppled the

Habsburgs from power.

As M. Chaumeil explained them, the objectives of the Hieron du Val d’Or or of the Prieure de Sion made a certain logical sense in the context of what we had discovered. They shed new light on the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. They concurred with the stated objectives of various secret societies, including those of Charles Radclyffe and Charles Nodier. Most important of all, they conformed to the political aspirations which, through the centuries, we had traced in the house of Lorraine.

But if the Hieron du Val d’Or’s objectives made logical sense, they did not make practical political sense. On what basis, we wondered, would the

Habsburgs have asserted their right to function as a dynasty of priest-kings? Unless it commanded overwhelming popular support, such a right could not possibly have been asserted against the republican government of France not to mention the imperial dynasties then presiding over Russia, Germany and Britain. And how could the necessary popular support have been obtained?

In the context of nineteenth-century political realities such a scheme, while logically consistent, seemed to us effectively absurd. Perhaps, we concluded, we had misconstrued the Hieron du Val d’Or. Or perhaps the members of the Hieron du Val d’Or were quite simply potty.

Until we obtained further information, we had no choice but to shelve the matter. In the meantime, we turned our attention to the present to determine whether the Prieure de Sion existed today. As we quickly discovered, it did. Its members were not at all potty, and they were pursuing, in the post-war twentieth century, a programme essentially

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similar to that pursued in the nineteenth by the Hieron du Val d’Or.

8 The Secret Society Today

The French journal Officiel is a weekly government publication in which all groups, societies and organisations in the country must declare themselves. In the Journal Of ficiel for the week of July 20th, 1956 (Issue Number 167), there is the following entry: 25 juin 1956. Declaration a la sous-prefecture de Saint Julien-en-Genevois. Prieure de Sion. But: etudes et entr’aide des membres. Siege social: Sous-Cassan, Annemasse (Haute Savoie).

(June 25th, 1956. Declaration to the Sub-Prefecture of

Saint-Julien-en-Genevois. Prieure de Sion. Objectives: studies and mutual aid to members. Head office: SousCassan, Annemasse, Haute Savoie.) The Prieure de Sion was officially registered with the police. Here, at any rate, appeared to be definitive proof of its existence in our own age even though we found it somewhat odd that a supposedly secret society should thus broadcast itself. But perhaps it was not so odd after all. There was no listing for the Prieure de Sion in any French telephone directory. The address proved too vague to allow us to identify a specific office, house, building or even street. And the Sub-Prefecture, when we rang them, were of little help.

There had been numerous inquiries, they said, with weary, long-suffering resignation. But they could provide no further information. As far as they knew, the address was untraceable. If nothing else, this gave us pause.

Among other things, it made us wonder how certain individuals had contrived to register a fictitious or nonexistent address with the police and then, apparently, escape all subsequent consequences and prosecution of the matter. Were the police really as insouciant and indifferent as they sounded? Or had Sion somehow enlisted their

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cooperation and discretion? The Sub-Prefecture, at our request, provided us with a copy of what purported to be the Prieure de Sion’s statutes. This document, which consisted of twenty-one articles, was neither controversial nor particularly illuminating. It did not, for example, clarify the Order’s objectives. It gave no indication of Sion’s possible influence, membership or resources. On the whole, it was rather bland while at the same time compounding our perplexity. At one point, for instance, the statutes declared that admission to the Order was not to be restricted on the basis of language, social origin, class or political ideology. At another point, they stipulated that all Catholics over the age of twenty-one were eligible for candidature.

Indeed the statutes in general appeared to have issued from a piously, even fervently Catholic institution. And yet Sion’s alleged Grand Masters and past history, in so far as we had been able to trace them, hardly attested to any orthodox Catholicism. For that matter, even the modern “Prieure documents’, many of them published at the same time as the statutes, were less Catholic in orientation than Hermetic, even heretically Gnostic. The contradiction seemed to make no sense

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Sion, like the Knights Templar and the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, demanded Catholicism as an exoteric prerequisite, which might then be transcended within the Order. At any rate Siou, like the Temple and the

Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, apparently demanded an obedience which, in its absolute nature, subsumed all other commitments, secular or spiritual.

According to Article vii of the statutes, “The candidate must renounce his personality in order to devote himself to the service of a high moral apostolate’.

The statutes further declare that Sion functions under the subtitle of

Chevalerie d’Institutions et Regles Catholiques, d’Union Independante et

Traditionaliste (“Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union’). This abbreviates to CIRCUIT,” the name of a magazine which, according to the statutes, is published internally by the Order and circulated within its ranks.