Holy Blood, Holy Grail (67 page)

And he is known to have been connected with a so-call8d “Rose-Croix’ order, which also included Eliphas Levi and the young Maurice Barres.

Hugo’s political attitudes have always been a source of perplexity to critics and historians, and are too complex, too inconsistent, too contingent on other factors, to be discussed here. We found it significant, however, that, despite his personal admiration for Napoleon, Hugo was a staunch royalist, who welcomed the restoration of the old Bourbon dynasty.

Yet at the same time he seems to have regarded the Bourbons as desirable only in a provisional way a kind of stop-gap measure. On the whole, he appears to have despised them, and was particularly fierce in his condemnation of Louis XIV. The ruler whom Hugo most

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enthusiastically endorsed indeed, the two were close personal friends was Louis-Philippe, the “Citizen King’ elected to preside over a popular monarchy. And Louis-Philippe was allied by marriage to the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. His wife, in fact, was

Maximilian de Lorraine’s niece.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY. Debussy was born in 1862; and though his family was poor, he quickly established wealthy and influential contacts. While still in his teens, he was performing as pianist in the chateau of the French president’s mistress, and seems to have become acquainted with the head of state as well. In 1880 he was adopted by the Russian noblewoman who had patronised

Tchaikovsky, and travelled with her to Switzerland, Italy and Russia. In 1884, after winning a coveted musical prize, he studied for a time in Rome.

Between 1887 and 1906, he lived mostly in Paris, but the years preceding and following this period were devoted to extensive travelling. These travels are known to have brought him into contact with a number of eminent people.

We endeavoured to determine whether any of them were connected with the families whose genealogies figure in the “Prieure documents’, but our efforts, for the most part, proved futile. Debussy, it transpired, was curiously secretive about his aristocratic and political associates. Many of his letters have been suppressed; and in those that have been published important names and often whole sentences have been scrupulously excised.

Debussy seems to have made Hugo’s acquaintance through the symbolist poet,

Paul Verlaine. He later set a number of Hugo’s works to music. During his time in Paris he became an integral member of the symbolist circles, who dominated the cultural life of the French capital. These circles were sometimes illustrious, sometimes odd, sometimes both.

They included the young cleric, Emile Hoffet through whom Debussy came to meet Berenger

Sauniere; Emma Calve, the esoteric ally oriented diva; the enigmatic magus of French symbolist poetry, Stephane Mallarme one of whose masterpieces,

L’Apres-Midi dun Faun, Debussy set to music the symbolist playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, whose drama, Pelleas et Melisande, Debussy turned into a world-famous opera; and the flamboyant Comte Philippe Auguste

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Villiers de 1”Isle Adam who wrote the “Rosicrucian’ play, Axel.Although his death in 1918

prevented its completion, Debussy began to compose a libretto for Villiers’s occult drama, intending to turn it, too, into an opera. Among his other associates were the luminaries who attended Mallarme’s famous Tuesday night soirees Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Paul Valery, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust.

In themselves, Debussy’s and Mallarme’s circles were steeped in esoterica.

At the same time, they overlapped other circles that were more esoteric still. Thus Debussy consorted with virtually all the most prominent names in the so-called “French occult revival’.

JEAN COCTEAU. Born in 1889, Cocteau seemed to us a most unlikely candidate for the Grand Mastership of an influential secret society.

But so, too, did some of the other names when we first encountered them. For nearly all those other names certain relevant connections gradually became apparent. In

Cocteau’s case few such connections did.

It is worth noting, however, that Cocteau was raised in a milieu close to the corridors of power his family was politically prominent and his uncle was an important diplomat.

Despite his subsequent bohemian existence, he never completely divorced himself from these influential spheres.

Outrageous though his behaviour sometimes was, he retained close contact with individuals highly placed in aristocratic and political circles. Like many of Sion’s alleged Grand Masters Boyle, Newton, Debussy, for instance he appeared to remain sublimely aloof from politics. During the German

Occupation he took no active part in the Resistance, but made apparent his antipathy to the Petain regime. And after the war he seems to have enjoyed considerable currency with de Gaulle, whose brother

commissioned him to deliver an important lecture on the state of France. For us, the most convincing testimony of Cocteau’s affiliation with the Prieure de Sion resides in his work in the film Orphee, for instance, in such plays as

The Eagle has Two Heads (based on the Habsburg Empress Elisabeth of Austria) and in the decoration of such churches as Notre Dame de France in

London. Most convincing of all, however, is his signature appended to

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the statutes of the Prieure de Sion. Bibliography

1 The Prieure Documents

ANTOINE L’ERMITE, Un Tresor merovingien d Rennes-leCh&teau (Anvers, 1961).

BEACICEAN, Nicolas, Au Pays de la Reine Blanche (Paris, 1967).

BLANCASALL, Madeleine, Les Descendants merovingiens ou 1’enigme du Razes

Wisigoth (Geneva, 1965). BOUDET, Henri, La Vraie Longue celtique (Carcassonne, 1886). BOUDET, Henri, La Vraie Longue celtique, facsimile edition with preface by

Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair (Paris, 1978). CIItRISEY, Philippe de, Circuit (Liege, 1968).

CHtRISEY, Philippe de, L’Enigme de Rennes (Paris, 1978). CHERISEY, Philippe de, L’Or de Rennes pour un Napoleon (Liege, 1975). DE LAUDE Jean, Le Cercle d’Ulysse (Toulouse, 1977). FEUGERE, Pierre, SAINT-MAXENT Louis and KOKER, Gaston de, Le Serpent rouge (Pontoise. 1967). HISLER, Anne Lea, Tresor au pays de la Reine Blanche (1969). HISLER, Anne Lea, Rois et gouvernants de la France (Paris, 1964). LOBINEAU, Henri, Genealogie des rois merovingiens et origine des diver ses families frangaises et etrangeres de souche merovingienne (Geneva, 1956). LOBINEAU, Henri, Dossiers secrets d’Henri Lobinenu (Paris, 1967). MYRIAM, D.” “Les Bergers d’Arcadie’, Le Charivari, no. 18 (Paris, 1973). Roux, S.” L’Affaire de Rennes-leChateau (LevalloisPerret, 1966).

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STUBLEIIV, Eugene, Pierres gravees du Languedoc (Limoux, 1884).Reproduction of plates xvI to xxIII by Abbe Joseph Courtauly (Villarzel-du-Razes, 1962).

2 General References

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BARBER, R.” The Knight and Chivalry, 2nd edn (Ipswich, 1974).

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