Holy Blood, Holy Grail on Superphysics

Village of Mystery

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Enigma Begins

At the start of our search we did not know precisely what we were looking for or, for that matter, looking at. We had no theories and no hypotheses, we had set out to prove nothing. On the contrary, we were simply trying to find an explanation for a curious little enigma of the late nineteenth century. The conclusions we eventually reached were not postulated in advance. We were led to them, step by step, as if the evidence we accumulated had a mind of its own, was directing us of its own accord.

The Cathars and the Great Heresy

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We began our investigation at a point with which we already had a certain familiarity—the Cathar or Albigensian heresy and the crusade it provoked in the thirteenth century. We were already aware that the Cathars figured somehow in the mystery surrounding Sauniere and Rennes-le-Chateau. In the first place the medieval heretics had been numerous in the village and its environs, which suffered brutally during the course of the Albigensian Crusade. Indeed, the whole history of the region is soaked in Cathar blood, and the residues of that blood, along with much bitterness, persist to the present day. Many peasants in the area now, with no inquisitors to fall upon them, openly proclaim Cathar sympathies. There is even a Cathar church and a so-called “Cathar pope” who, until his death in 1978, lived in the village of Arques.

The Warrior Monks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

There was a lot of written material devoted to the subject of the Knights Templar.

On one level the Cathars were familiar enough to us—the fanatically fierce warrior-monks, knight-mystics clad in white mantle with splayed red cross, who played so crucial a role in the Crusades.

Secret Documents

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Confirmation of a third order—an order behind both the Templars and the Cistercians—thrust itself upon us. At first, however, we could not take it seriously. It seemed to issue from too unreliable, too vague and nebulous a source. Until we could authenticate the veracity of this source, we could not believe its claims.

The Order Behind the Scenes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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 “Prieure documents”. It was with this claim, therefore, that we started our examination.

The Grand Masters and the Underground Stream

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In the Dossiers secrets, the following individuals are listed as successive Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion or, to use the official term, “Nautonnier”, an old French word which means ’navigator’ or ‘helmsman’:

Conspiracy through the Centuries

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How were we to synthesise the evidence we had accumulated? Much of it was impressive and seemed to bear witness to something—some pattern, some coherent design. The list of Sion’s alleged Grand Masters, however improbable it had originally appeared, now displayed some intriguing consistencies. Most of the figures on the list, for example, were connected, either by blood or personal association, with the families whose genealogies figured in the “Prieure documents” and particularly with the house of Lorraine. Most of the figures on the list were involved with orders of one kind or another, or with secret societies. Virtually all the figures on the list, even when nominally Catholic, held unorthodox religious beliefs. Virtually all of them were immersed in esoteric thought and tradition. And in almost every case there had been some species of close contact between an alleged Grand Master, his predecessor and his successor.

The Secret Society Today

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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 Officiel for the week of July 20th, 1956 (Issue Number 167), there is the following entry:

The Long-haired Monarchs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

By this time, of course, we had already researched the Merovingian dynasty. As far as we could we had groped our way through a mist of fantasy and obscurity even more opaque than that surrounding the Cathars and the Knights Templar. We had spent some months endeavouring to disentangle complex strands of intertwined history and fable. Despite our efforts, however, the Merovingians remained for the most part shrouded in mystery.

The Exiled Tribe

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Could there be something special about the Merovingian bloodline—something more than an academic, technical legitimacy? Could there really be something which, in some way, might genuinely matter to people today? Could there be something that might affect, perhaps even alter, existing social, political or religious institutions? These questions continued to nag at us. As yet, however, there appeared to be no answer to them.

The Holy Grail

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What might we have been overlooking? Or, alternatively, what might we have been seeking in the wrong place? Was there perhaps some fragment that had been before our eyes all along which, for one reason or another, we had failed to notice? As far as we could determine, we had overlooked no item, no data of accepted historical scholarship. But might there be something else—something that lay “beyond the pale” of documented history, the concrete facts to which we had endeavoured to confine ourselves?

The Priest-King Who Never Ruled

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Most people today speak of “Christianity” as if it were a single specific thing—a coherent, homogeneous and unified entity. Needless to say, “Christianity” is nothing of the sort. As everyone knows, there are numerous forms of “Christianity”: Roman Catholicism, for example, or the Church of England initiated by Henry VIII. There are the various other denominations of Protestantism—from the original Lutheranism and Calvinism of the sixteenth century to such relatively recent developments as Unitarianism. There are multitudinous ‘fringe’ or “evangelical” congregations, such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. And there are assorted contemporary sects and cults, like the Children of God and the Unification Church of the Reverend Moon. If one surveys this bewildering spectrum of beliefs—from the rigidly dogmatic and conservative to the radical and ecstatic—it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes “Christianity”.

The Secret the Church Forbade

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We were well aware, of course, that our scenario did not concur with established Christian teachings. But the more we researched the more apparent it became that those teachings, as they have been passed down through the centuries, represent only a highly selective compilation of fragments, subjected to stringent expurgation and revision. The New Testament, in other words, offers a portrait of Jesus and his age that conforms to the needs of certain vested interests—of certain groups and individuals who had, and to a significant degree still have, an important stake in the matter. And anything that might compromise or embarrass these interests—like the “secret” Gospel of Mark, for example—has been duly excised. So much has been excised, as a matter of fact, that a sort of vacuum has been created. In this vacuum speculation becomes both justified and necessary.

Conclusion and Portents for the Future

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

But if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian’s hope of immortality is invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity mankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?