this book is a mix of things. it begins as an investigation of curious transactions of a monk in the boonies of france from the perspective of a bbc documentary filmmaker. as the investigation progresses, leigh and lincoln come aboard and begin analyzing from a historian's perspective the way back from the hidden society the monk belonged to all the way to sion (jerusalem) at the turn of the millennia and to centuries earlier following the twelve tribes of israel. they uncover a lot of grail symbolism and traditions paralleling the traditions of king arthur and the round table. the reader, if so inclined, may easily draw many assumptions about the context in which arthur figured into this history and easily see how even into the close of this millennia, secret societies still carry on the traditions and quests of the knights of the round table. last but not least, at the close of this book there are more questions than answers given by the authors. they published two sequels over the eight years following this book : the messianic legacy, and the temple and the lodge. these two books supply many answers to questions regarding the history of christianity, and later - the knights templar, scottish rite freemasons, knights of malta, et al. because i have read both these books, and i recommend them, i will at times give information that they do not actually become certain of until their later work. in other words, i may give answers where they only ask questions in this book.

the following summary of chapter one is tainted with my interpretations and opinions. believe nothing, trust no one - do your own research.

i read this book, its two sequels, the quran, talmud, new oxford translations of the bible with apocrypha in the space of three weeks in september 95. i also read mallory, eschenbach, and fife in this time and i cross-reference perhaps too much.

to receive the grail all you need do is ask.

part one : the mystery

chapter one-village of mystery : they begin to recount the life of berenger sauniere, who in june 1885 became the new parish priest of rennes-le-chateau. until 1891 he earned about six pounds sterling a year and lived quietly hunting and fishing. in 1891, he set to some restoration work and found inside hollow altar pulpit columns four scrolls. two of them were genealogies of some kind. the other two were written by abbe antoine bigou in 1780, who happened to be part of the blanchefort family who remained wealthy landowners throughout and after the french revolution (weird, huh?).

the other two parchments were dated to the 1500s and seemed to be pious latin transcriptions of elements of the new testament but arranged oddly and containing extra cryptic headings which have since been ciphered to read:

shepherdess no temptation that poussin teniers hold the key; peace 681 by the cross and this horse of god i complete [or destroy] this daemon of the guardian at noon blue apples.

and:

to dagobert ii king and to sion belongs this treasure and he is there dead.

i know i just lost some of you, but these scrolls do exist and are in national museums in england. i have read other reference to them.

sauniere reported to the bishop of carcassonne and was sent immediately to paris to be presented to abbe bieil and his nephew emile hoffet. hoffet was in training for the priesthood but had a reputation as a master of linguistics, cryptography and paleography. this brought sauniere into the circle of esoteric, cult, sect and secret societal groups flourishing in france at the time. from this point on to his death, sauniere kept the company of stephane mallarme, maurice maeterlinck, claude debussy, emma calve. it is reported that he took emma calve, a diva of some fame, as his lover.

p.35 it is also known that sauniere spent a lot of time at the louvre studying paintings and commissioned reproductions of paintings by david teniers, and of nicolas poussin "the shepherds of arcadia."

sauniere returned to rennes-le chateau and resumed "restoration" of the church although in fact he spent most of his time destroying inscriptions on the masonry of the church and on the tombstones in the surrounding graveyard. there is record of him disposing of a giant flagstone that most have covered some kind of sepulchre, or tomb.

sauniere incised above the entry to the church : terribilis est locus iste. (this place is terrible). he also erected a statue of the demon asmodeus, the builder of king solomon's temple, next to the door.

sauniere initiated plans to build a giant tower of babel lined with books from whence he would preach, but his stroke on jan 17, 1917 cut short his ambitions.

perhaps most strangely of all occurrences are the documented visits of the archduke johann von hapsburg, cousin to the emperor of austria, franz josef. for you x-files fans in the know, this is the same hapsburg dynasty of ufo conspiracy fame through the lorraine hapsburg masons and the bilderburg group - trilateral commission.

there is record of sauniere spending since 1891, millions and millions of francs accumulating rare china, books, statues, and adding to an elaborate garden outside the church. he was accused of simony by the bishop of carcassonne but was later exonerated and reinstated by the vatican. he transferred all his wealth to marie denarnaud, his companion for twenty years. she lived comfortably until after the second world war when the new french government changed to a new system of francs. rather than turn them in and account for her wealth she burned all her old francs (p 38)

possible treasures the authors investigate the money.

prehistorically rennes-le-chateau was inhabited by celts and was named in fact after the rhedae, the tribe who lived there. during roman times the area eventually came under their grasp, but they treated it as a sacred place and left many shrines in the area. in the sixth century, the visigoth empire swept down and turned rennes-le-chateau into their capital. the teutonic people, visigoths, held this land for five hundred years. in the 1300s, northern knights came in to stamp out the albigensian heresy and rennes-le-chateau was overtaken and transferred from hand-to-hand as a fief. in 1360 catalan bandits razed rennes-le-chateau to the ground.

of this area are legends of the treasures of the cathar heretics who were reputed to have the holy grail. richard wagner himself spent time in rennes-le chateau before composing his opera parsifal. nazi soldiers during their occupation in the forties are reported as having conducted a number of fruitless excavations.

between the fifth and eighth centuries, france was ruled by the merovingian dynasty. dagobert ii had married a visigoth princess.....

also there was the legendary lost treasure of betrand de blanchefort, grand master of the knights templar who had conducted numerous excavations in the area.

there is also the possibility that there was treasure form the visigoth's sack of the roman empire.

any of these could have funded berenger sauniere's lifestyle.

the films baigent and company produced three documentaries on this material for the bbc in the 70s. the most comprehensive was the lost treasure of jerusalem. they received a deluge of mail, much from biblical scholars and some truly cryptic warnings from clergy.

in the poussin painting, "bergers d'arcadie" is a tombstone with the inscription "et in arcadia ego." later in rennes -le -chateau and elsewhere they would find existing tombstones with the inscription :

"et in arcadia ego..."

i call emphasis to this because the three dots at the end were corrected in a sequel to the book by pierre plantard de saint clair, the grand master of the priory de sion in the 1970-80s. one of the correspondents to the films by baigent suggested that the letters were scrambled and could be re-arranged to read:

i tego arcana dei

which translates as " begone! i conceal the secrets of god."

chapter two the cathars and the great heresy

berenger sauniere had signed all his documents with rex mundi ( a cathar deity) at the end and so the authors examine the cathar, or albigensian heresy. the cathars were to have been wiped out in the 1300s yet it is evident that they exist today after a jules doinel, librarian at carcassonne, in 1890 started a public neo-cathar church. it may be assumed that the cathars survived all along. actually from my research i found mention of many cathar ideas in scottish rite freemasonry.

the albigensian crusade began in 1209 and lasted until 1249. invading vatican funded armies swept the languedoc and committed genocide upon rennes-le chateau, toulouse, perpignan, narbonne, carcassonne all fell. pope innocent iii decreed "kill them all. god will recognize his own."

sounds like a t-shirt for the marines doesn't it? well, that's the real source of this quote. butchery at the hands of the roman orthodox pauline christians continues. i would like to remind the readers that pauline christianity has a higher body count than any other religion ever and that if i hear one more church of convenience christian talk about the violence of muslim extremists i think i might follow them home and kill them.

i would say most christians are poorly educated in their own canonized testament, and are dogmatic and foolish. belonging to a non-denominational church that preaches from the council of nicea new testament is no excuse either.

cathars held "rex mundi" (king of the world) to be their creator. they practiced birth-control and abortion when necessary. they were vegetarians except for fish on a weekly basis (much like judaic law). they took their inspiration from "gnosis" which was a revelation from communion with nature. offshoots of cathar thought include the: waldensians; the hussites; the adamites; the brethren of the free spirit; the anabaptists; and the camisards.

of note is the leader of the albigensian crusade, dominic guzman, who started the dominicans. the dominicans of course launched the spanish inquisition in 1233.

i'm skipping a lot.

p.62. wolfram von eschenbach, whose grail romances are seen to hold a lot of cathar thought situated his grail castle in the pyrenees. eschenbach called the castle munsalvaesche, a german-ized version of montsegur, a castle that the cathars held against the crusade for years in true masada style. in one of the wve's poems the lord of the castle is perilla and in fact the lord of montsegur castle was raimon depereille. note: rennes-le-chateau is half a day's ride on horseback from montsegur. (grail smuggled away from crusaders- sauniere finds it?)

p64-108 chapters 3 & 4 the warrior monks & secret documents

it is very frustrating that the book exactly follows the progress of baigent's research and that in turn it goes chronologically backwards. in fact, at this point, circa 1981-2, baigent knew a lot less than he did in 1988 when he published the temple and the lodge. so, to some extent i want to skip a lot of the stuff in these two chapters. they correct a lot of it too.

in 1104, ursus and a group of calambrian monks took up residence in jerusalem.

in 1118, hughes de payen, a nobleman from champagne, presented himself with eight comrades at the palace of badouin i, king of jerusalem - whose older brother godfroi debouillon had captured the holy city nineteen years earlier. de payen founded the order of the poor knights of christ and the temple (hence "templar") of solomon. he declared their objective to" keep the pilgrimage route safe." for nine years the order accepted no new members and fulfilled the function so well that in 1128, bernard , abbott of clairvaux published a tract, "in praise of the new knighthood" which created a new fame for the knights templar. st. bernard, founder of the cistercians also, drew up the rules of the knights templar. they were obliged to cut their hair, but not allowed to trim their beards. none were allowed to wear a white mantle until this time when it became their uniform. upon entrance to the order, one had to give over all their belongings - and as the order was forbidden to surrender in battle or to surrender any belongings they quickly accumulated massive land holdings throughout england, scotland, italy, portugal, spain, austria, germany, and hungary.

the knights templar created banking and pawn shops.

in 1130, there were over 300 members.

in 1146, they adopted the splayed red cross on their tunics.

the pope had declared that the order were to answer to none but the pope himself and thus the order was cut from the ties of kingship, etc. and became a shadowy power turned to by kings. king henry i took solace in their company. thomas a becket was allied by the templar. the templar oversaw the signing of the magna carta.

the templar allegiance with the saracens and their technology helped make the order the foremost authority on map-making, architecture, engineers, leather workers, masons, construction work etc....they pioneered treatment of epilepsy.

in may 1291 acre fell to the muslims and the holy land was lost forever. the templar set up new headquarters in cyprus. they founded the teutonic knights, who in the later 13th century established an independent principality for themselves the ordenstaat.

the templars wanted to do the same, and they wanted their homeland to be the languedoc. they had always been cathar oriented- three of the nine founders of the templar were cathars. betrand de blanchefort, fourth grand master of the order was a cathar.

during the albigensian crusade the templars struggled to remain neutral. however more of the templars were cathar than catholic. in fact the templars had begun to assimilate a lot of different ideas, many of them spoke arabic from their time in the holy land. they were often fluent in french, greek, latin and hebrew as well. they were students of the judaic cabala (i'll get back to this).

by 1306, the vile phillipe iv of france- phillipe le bel- was plotting against the knights templar. he had no control over them- he owed them money. he was nervous about them creating their own state in his backyard. through a decade of intrigue and assassinations on the papacy, phillipe had installed clement v on the vatican throne. they plotted the destruction of the order.

at dawn on friday october 13th 1307, viscious raids occurred all over france and europe. the grand master of the time jacques demolay had apparently seen it coming and had in the preceding months dispatched many convoys to the french -unfriendly scotland and portugal.

phillipe circulated the rumor that the templar worshipped a devil named baphomet to drum up sympathy. we do worship baphomet but through the atbash cipher it is read "sophia," which means 'wisdom' in greek. phillipe created other lies about the order which continue to harangue the freemasons today in america at the hands of various "christian" watchdog groups.

in 1314, after a long trial with no conclusive charges declared or verdict reached jacques demolay was murdered by phillipe iv over a slow roasting fire.

scotland was at war with england during this time, so the papal bulls dissolving the knights templar never happened there. robert the bruce had rescued the order from europe. this is the same bruce who was william wallace's bud in the mel gibson movie braveheart .there were hundreds of templar who fought at br4uce's side in the battle of bannockburn in 1314. the templar survived as such for four centuries until they officially became the scottish rite freemasons in the 1700s.

my ancestor james ii, was deposed in 1688-91 by william of orange. supporters of the stuart monarch revolted and amongst the bodies were many templar insignia. \

portugal let the knights templar change their name in the 1300s rather than take them on - so they became the "knights of christ." vasco de gama was a member, as was christopher columbus and the sails of his three ships were emblazoned with the familiar red splayed cross. in later centuries ther name would change to the knights of malta. all but two american presidents have been at least honorary knights of malta

in germany the knights were also assimilated under name changes initially but they eventually gravitated to either scotland or portugal. the teutonic knights of course, remained in power and after secularizing themselves and declaring allegiance to rome threw support behind martin luther.

there are tons of organizations who claim descent from these original orders - be very skeptical of their claims.

(my least favorite are the californian rosicrucians and rudolf steiner's anthroposophites - but their books are all easily available at border's if you must read them.)

p.84 : there is an interesting discussion of the similarities of the magical properties of the severed head thru: orpheus, bran, baphomet, john the baptist, et al.

note: it turns out a lot of my family (both sides) are masons and to tasia's credit (in our class) she really got me started with that huge tome of albert pike's rules and dogma . the freemasons are the most successful assimilators of religion. they take away little pieces of every religion they have ever run across. expect symbolism of a pre-pauline christian, muslim, judaic, buddhist, hindu, zoroastrian, egyptian variety. and don't be afraid of atlantean imagery - i know one must laugh at mention of atlantis- i know i did.

part two - secret societies

chapter five: the order behind the scenes

oh, ursus and the calambrian monks who preceded the templar in jerusalem- one of them was peter the hermit, one of the instigators of the crusades. it is also reasoned that they were of the merovingian bloodline. i think i'll just xerox the charts and give them out rather than summarize the next hundred pages of their search to find out these genealogies. but it is through this that they arrive at the question as to whether jesus had a wife and kids and therefore a bloodline that may or may not have had bled into the merovingian. i think king arthur obviously fits into this (bear with me, ha ha) because in the 5th century following the council of nicea canonization of the gospels the roman orthodox was not set to become the dominant christian practice.

clovis had made a pact with the roman orthodox that gave it its foothold and two centuries later the vatican brutally reneged on this pact and deposed the merovee. so the merovee went into hiding inside secret societies- i think arthur might be a metaphor created out of real bits of history

ormus - in 1188, as the knights templar rose in power they splintered, which we have addressed. one of the splinters was the prieure de sion (the french contingent). keep in mind that the precipatory in paris was the originator of the "cheque." anyway through baigent's research of the curious subtitle "ormus" in the priory of sion was discovered a long history of this symbol's usage. ours means "bear" in french. ursus in latin as an echo of the merovee dagobert ii. etc....

anyway the masons still teach that ormus was a gnostic sage from alexandria who in 46 a.d. was converted to christianity by saint mark.

ok- this is from messianic legacy but you gotta know now- james and lazarus were the first "practitioners" of jesus' rebellion against the romans. jesus was a rabbi- therefore by judaic law, married, probably to mary magdalen (lazarus her brother was jesus' brother-in-law)--blah, blah. anyway james kept the fight up until along came paul. paul was a dork - he invented evangelism. he recruited all these people (he had been sent out by james) with fabricated miracles and the divinity of jesus. james hated paul and they fought bitterly. however, people liked believing in jesus as a deity more than as the king of the jews. actually there is a long talk we could have about the judaic expectations of a royal messiah and a divine messiah that is to come from the line of david. jesus meets both these and some jews still believe this. the muslims and the nestorians, et al in their gospels claim jesus survived the cross. the quran says jesus survived the crucifixion. anyway- james' people fled to alexandria which was a lot more liberal than the roman empire and did well there. pauline xtianity took over the roman empire because as paul had rigged it, it coincided smartly with the cult of sol invictus. constantine on his deathbed was baptized xtian and natalis invictus became christmas. follow? sorry. later the council of nicea would trim out the apocrypha - rewrite the gospels to transfer blame from the romans to the jews and call it all "the synoptic gospels" since they all agreed with each other - even though it is obvious that they do not. the dead sea scrolls found near the ruin of masada agree to all of this as do the nag hammadi scrolls found near the ruins of alexandria.

back to ormus- 46 ad alexandria - ormus lived in a city teeming with judaic, mithraic, zoroastrian, pythagorean, neo-platonic, hermetic and gnostic(cathar) teachings. to this end his writings are peppered with much of this multiplicitous encryption. he invented the red cross or rose cross. french- rose-croix hence, "rosicrucians." the templar wore their red cross as passed from ormus.

chapter 6 grand masters-

baigent cautions that the california rosicrucians, among others claim every important figure in western history to have been a rosicrucian like they carried cards or something. then he gives a neat list of the grand masters of the priory de sion from the dossiers secrets leaked to the public in the fifties.(p.151)

although some famous people like boticelli and davinci are in there, there are many seemingly anonymous members. the last listed jean cocteau is the one who mandated that the priory make their membership public record as per agreements with the french government. blah, blah.

anyway, a lot of the guys hated this and there has been fighting and assassinations since. the masons do not mess around - and no, i'm not a conspiracy theorist (i don't even care who shot jfk).

there are limits to how much i want to know

chapter six is full of info i have checked out otherwise - it is true - however i do not want to do this to my head.

chapter seven - conspiracy through the centuries

baigent explores the political struggle and intrigue of the order against the french government from 1700 through the 1900s. interesting stuff - all true. in temple and the lodge it is clearer why-

the goal of the knights templar / priory de sion / knights of malta / scottish rite freemasons has always been to create their own state. they did this by creating the united masonic states of america (just look at your dollar bill and remember that everyone who signed the constitution was a mason.)

` i just deleted a paragraph - the point was that the masons celebrate hiram abiff the architect of king solomon's temple. he was cool.

struggles in the french order led to some esoteric emissaries preceding rasputin at the court of nicolas and alexandra in russia. these guys published a tract called the protocols of the elders of zion. this work was part of a smear campaign and very anti-semitic. this same work would later fuel hitler and nazi germany's fervor to destroy the "jewish conspiracy."

oh yeah, the knights templar made catholicism an exoteric prerequiste, which they then transcended within the order.

chapter nine the long-haired monarchs

the merovingians were descended from the sicambrians, collectively called the franks.

b a c k to the i n d e x