Danielle Gorree
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posted 12-11-2005 02:56 AM
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The rest of this essay is thematic, dealing with certain themes that recur in the various "prieure documents".
January 17th: This seems to be a "red-letter" day for the PoS. The reason why seems to be that it is the saints' day for three "PoS" saints: Sulpicius of Bourges, Anthony the Hermit, and Roseline de Villeneuve. Sulpicius, who Saint-Sulpice is named after, was the hagiogapher of St. Martin of Tours, a saint who one guidebook says "is frequently associated with places of sacred toponymical significance," as well as pagan tree-cults. St. Anthony is invoked to help heal people suffering from St. Anthony's Fire, a syndrome caused by consuming ergot (which contains LSD); in the Middle Ages, Crusaders brought his body back to the Dauphin region of France. Roseline de Villeneuve was a Carthusian nun, associated with a "rose miracle," who was so saintly that her body remained incorrupt after her death. King Louis is said to have checked if she was still alive, by putting a needle through her eye.
Marie de Negre (d'Ables, d'Hautpoul) is also said to have died on January 17th, 1781, the date on her tombstone. Nicholas Flamel was said to have achieved the Great Work of alchemy on Jan 17th, 1381. It is also claimed that Sigisbert "IV", the son of Dagobert II, arrived in RlC on January 17th, 681 CE. The "priory documents" claim that a new class of "Brethren," the "Children of St. Vincent" or "Free Brothers", were created on January 17th, 1681, in Blois. As you will also see, this group has a fascination with 81s and reversals. Pierre Plantard claims he became grand master in 1981, and in 1891 Sauniere wrote in his diary "excavated a tomb. It rained." Later he would carve 'MISSION 1891" on a pillar.
Another "red letter" day for the PoS seems to be December 23rd... the day that Dagobert II was killed near Stenay in the Ardennes, and also the day that Henri, duc de Guise, was killed in Blois. The PoS apparently has its "convents" in Blois, according to Ean Begg.
Mary Magdalene: The PoS seems to have a great interest in the "Notre-Dame de Lumiere", claiming she is Mary Magdalene. Indeed, they hint that the earliest Notre-Dame churches in France are dedicated to Magdalene, not the Virgin Mary. According to some PoS texts, "Our Lady of France" is the Magdalene, not the Virgin. They also seem to identify her with the Meridian. For some reason, many also seem to think she may have been the progenitor of a 'bloodline' from her 'husband' Jesus - this is the hypothesis proposed at the end of HBHG. Her significance may be something else, however... the Priory clearly seems to associate her with the Black Virgins of France, many of which have been mysteriously disappearing over the last decade. Legends from the 11th century onward claim that the Magdalene came to France, landing at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer or Marseilles after fleeing Palestine. She appears to have been a wealthy Jewish woman from Migdol in the Galilee, and not a prostitute as many people have claimed.
Merovingians: The "prieure docs" seem to hint obliquely that Merovech, the progenitor of the Merovingians, was a special monarch. The hypothesis in HBHG is that Merovech was descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. However, all the "prieure documents" claim is that he was descended from the Benjaminites, the Trojans, and a "Quinotaur" (only deSede and Elizabeth van Buren seem to think this was a being from Sirius.) The "prieure documents" note that the Church betrayed the Merovingians by turning power over to the Carolingians, thus breaking the pact with Clovis. The Merovingians were long-haired kings supposedly born with a special birthmark (a red cross between the shoulderblades), and were known for mixing paganism and occultism with Christianity. They were also "sacred kings" who "reigned but did not rule," leaving the messy business of governing to the mayors of the palace (it was from these Pippinid Mayors that the Carolingians arose). The "dossiers secretes" attempt to present a number of families today - including the Plantards, the Montesquious, and the Hapsburgs - as being descended from the Merovingians. They also implicitly argue that every dynasty since then has, implicitly, been usurpers due to the pact between Clovis and the Church.
The Merovingian dynasty was thought to be wiped out (in reality, a few minor branches survived), but the "prieure documents" claim a line from Dagobert II has survived up until the present. The narrative presented in the "prieure documents" has little or no corroboration in historical sources, but it suggests that Dagobert II's son Sigisbert IV survived his father's assassination by Pepin the Short in the Forest of Woivres in 679, and came to Rennes-les-Chateau in 681. Sigisbert was supposedly the ancestor of Guillem de Gellone, the Jewish exilarch of Septimania, a royal pretender named "Ursus", and Godfroi de Bouillion. "Orthodox" geneaology does not support these claims.
Sirius: In 1973, Gerard de Sede claimed in La Race Fabuleuse that the Merovingians were descended from beings from Sirius, thus irrevocably linking the PoS mysteries to the "Sirius Mystery". Sirius is a complex subject in the world of esoterica. Antonin Artaud wrote a play about the "Dog Star" in the 1920s, called "The Broken Firmament", suggesting it was of interest to the Surrealists. Since the 1970s, a number of people have claimed contact by the Sirians - Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, Philip K. Dick, etc., shortly after the publication of Robert K. Temple's Sirius Mystery, claiming that the Dogon tribe of Mali had been given knowledge of this binary star by "Nommos" from that solar system. Crowleyans like Kenneth Grant claim that "Lam," the being that communicated the Liber AL, was from Sirius. And Sirius, in the form of the "Ennead of Heliopolis," also talked to Andrija Puharich, Uri Geller, and a group of channelers organized by Puharich. However, to find the weird links between this group and what the authors term "The Stargate Conspiracy", a fascist plot to make the planet believe that the gods of ancient Egypt were extraterrestrials who created our civilization, you should read the book by the same name by authors Pincknett and Prince. The Order of the Solar Temple also expected to be reborn near Sirius...
The Golden Fleece: Many PoS texts refer to the voyage of the Argonauts, in search of the fabled Golden Fleece. As is well known, the Argonauts sailed to Colchis in Asia Minor, or Anatolia. Anatolia is home of one of the earliest human civilizations (Catal Huyuk), Mount Ararat (said to be the mountain of Noah, but it is also the home of the Urartian or Armenian people), the Taurus Mountains, and the land of Galatia or Galatea. This was a part of Asia Minor conquered by the Gaul or Gaelic peoples in the 3rd century BCE, after they went and sacked the oracles of Greece. One of Plantard's orders was known as "Alpha Galates," the origin from the land of the Galates. In alchemy, the Golden Fleece sometimes symbolizes the Philosopher's Stone.
The Cross of Lorraine: In the 1940s, Charles de Gaulle made the Cross of Lorraine the official symbol of the Maquis or French Resistance. It's not clear why, since this symbol was previously associated with the Alsace-Lorraine region, which had only become part of France in the last 200 years, and it was also associated with the Guise-Lorraine families who made a failed "bid" for the monarchy in the 17th century. The double-armed Cross of Lorraine appears to incorporate phi, the Golden Ratio, in its structure. The PoS also seems to consider it "their " symbol. Interestingly, it also seems to resemble the "Jacob's staff" of medieval Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson, used to determine longitude through observation of the moon.
Et in Arcadia Ego: "Even in Arcadia, I amÖ" According to art historian Panofsky, this is an elegiac motto, proclaiming that even in the paradisial realm of Arcadia death still exists. Hence, the shock of Poussin's shepherds discovering the tomb of a shepherdess in the midst of their pastoral paradise. However, he was not the first to use the motto in his art: it appears in a 1502 poem by Jacopo Sannzaro, and in an earlier painting by Guercino. Poussin's first version of Shepherds dates from 1620, and the second from 1650: both have the inscription "Et in Arcadia Ego" on the tomb.
There is a monument known as The Shepherds' Monument near Shugborough Hall which contains a version of the 2nd Poussin painting, but reversed, with an inscription underneath that appears to be an acrostic for a line of poetry from poetess Anna Seward of Lichfield. Shugborough Hall was the work of Lord Admiral Anson, a "corsair" and James "the Athenian" Stuart, but the artist who specifically created this monument was a Dutchman known as Scheemakers. When Anson died, a eulogy was read for him in Parliament which mentions "reason's finger pointing at the tomb." Henry Lincoln claims that Shugborough Hall had a copy of both the Poussin painting, and St. Anthony and St. Paul in the Desert by Teniers, mislabeled as Elijah and Elisha Fed by Ravens near Mount Carmel. (This is the only painting by Teniers which does not show St. Anthony being tempted.)
Arcadia, the place in Greece thought to be the home of the oldest antideluvian races, was also associated in medieval iconography and symbolism with the "underground stream" Alphaeus, which was said to flow all the way to Sicily. According to the "prieure documents," the Benjaminites, who were ancestors of the Merovingians, fled to the Arcadia region of Greece, and later migrated to Europe, becoming one of the ancestral origins of the Salian Franks. Rene D'Anjou did a great deal to promote the romantic idea of Arcadia and it turns up in much of his work, as well as Renaissance poems and songs.
The original name of Nova Scotia was Arcadia, but the r was dropped to shorten it to "Acadie". It is from Acadie that the "Cajuns" of Louisiana are from, who sing the old folk song "Good King Dagobert". Some authors claim that Prince Henry Sinclair sailed to A(r)cadia in the 14th century, and may have even brought the Grail with him, leaving it in Oak Island. The blue lotus or waterlily, the stargate of the Egyptians, also grows in Arcadia National Forest.
The Meridian: Many of the PoS texts deal with the Paris Meridian, and hint that the line created by Colbert, Cassini, and Arago, passing through the Paris Observatory, is really an "impostor" - France already had a "hermetic" or hidden meridian, possibly dating back thousands of years. It seems that the very PoSish site of Saint-Sulpice is on the line of the old meridian or "roseline", as hinted at by Le Serpent Rouge, subtiled Notes on Saint Sulpice and Saint Germain de Pres. By moving the line, Cassini and company threw an ancient system out of whack.
One strange discovery I have found is that a similar episode appears to have occurred in the American capitol of Washington, DC. Apparently, DC was originally designed so that 16th street would be its original north-south meridian -- and this meridian was going to be the "zero meridian" of the United States. After Greenwich was made the international meridian, DC and Paris both renounced their claims. Today, DC uses Capitol Street as its N-S axis, but certain monuments, especially those in Meridian Hill Park, point to the older axis. On 16th street, one also finds the home of the Scottish Rite Temple and several esoteric churches and monuments.
The Rose: Rosicrucianism, the Rosy Cross, and rose-line symbolism is all over the place in this mystery. In Sauniere's church, St. Germaine de Pribrac releases a bevy of roses from her apron. The "Fleury Mural" seems to show a rose-filled flowery landscape, associated with the Fleury family. Go to Rodez, and you will find a rose-colored cathedral with rose windows emblazoned with the Star of David. In the Middle Ages, the rose was a symbol of esotericism - sub rosa means to do something in secret. The Templars' cross pattee was a red or rose cross.
How interesting, then, to discover, as I have recently, that the name of several places in France - Rhedae/Rennes, Rouen/Rhodom, Rodez/Rhodes, are derived from the Greek Island of Rhodes, whose name itself comes from the rose-goddess Rhoda. Contemporary texts say that the red-haired Celtic "Redones" or "rose people" (Rutheni/Rhodanim) setlled both Rennes in the Midi and Rennes in Brittany - the name derives from the ethnic group. It is said that the resident goddess of Mount Sion-Vaudemont, the "other Sion" of the "priory of Sion" in Switzerland, is Rosemertha - the Rose mother. Interestingly, one interpretation of the King Arthur legends is that "Arthur" or "Ursus" was really Riothamus, a Dark Age Celt ruler of a "thalassocracy" that spanned Brittany in France and Cornwall in England. Many of the places near Breton Rennes are associated with Arthur and the Grail legends, and many of the Breton kings had Judaic names. And some derive Riothamus' name from... Joseph of Arimathea, the supposed bearer of the Grail to Glastonbury.
Rosslyn Chapel: As with many other aspects of this mystery, the importance of Rosslyn Chapel is unclear and seems to have been obfuscated, unfortunately. Its owners, the Sinclairs, claim to be the hereditary patrons of Scottish Freemasonry, to have explored the New World (particularly Nova Scotia and Oak Island) a century before Colombus, and to be connected to the Templars through marriage and descent. Some of this appears to be in doubt, because it's based on the work of Jacobite historian Father Hay, who used documents that were lost in a fire... in any case, we do know William Sinclair did build Rosslyn in the 1400s, it does contain very unusual carvings (particularly people who look like Templars engaging in things that seem like Masonic rituals), and it does incorporate unusual geometry. (SOME say that this geometry replicates the Temple of Solomon.) Pierre Plantard seems to have changed his name to "de St-Clair" in order to claim affiliation with the Sinclairs of Scotland.
Rosslyn, Gisors, Rennes-les-Chateau, Rennes-les-Bains, and Mont St. Michel are some places mentioned in the documents by name. Stenay (Satanicum) was Dagobert II's capitol, and the current home of Le Cercle Dagobert. Guidebooks suggest it is infamous for falling frogs. Mont St. Michel, according to the "prieure documents," was where "Et in Arcadia Ego" was first uttered, by Abbot Robert de Torigny in 1210. Author John Michell claims a "St. Michael Ley" runs between Mont St. Michel and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. St. Michael's Mount is surrounded by the sea but the "Atlantis" legends of Ys and Lyonesse claim that it is sitting in a place where there was once dry land, which has now become submerged.
The Sacred Heart: Thanks to Mary-Margaret Alacoque, the Sacred Heart of Jesus seems to have become a curiously nationalistic symbol in France (like that of the Chevalier Bayard), connected with the church and the monarchy. It also became a central symbol for esotericists like Guenon. Guy Patton argues that the Sacred Heart cultus in France is deeply associated with the PoS, which he sees as a largely Catholic Traditionalist society, opposed (as many Sacred Heart believers were) to modernism and liberal democracy. Paul Smith, another researcher, thinks that Sauniere was primarily involved in covert efforts to turn the Sacre-Coeur Basilica of Paris into a rallying point for a restored Catholic monarchy. However, the Sacred Heart is a multi-valent symbol, and there are those that argue that for the PoS, the Sacred Heart they venerate is that of Mary Magdalene, not Jesus.
The Prieure Documents: In order to pierce the veil surrounding the mysteries of this group, it is necessary to pore over some of the esoteric texts they have hidden away in the Biblioteque Nationnale. Some of these documents are central to the mystery:
Henri Boudet, Le Vraie Langue Celtique et le Cromlech de Rennes-les-Baines
Philippe de Cherisey, Circuit. (a 1968 fictional novel).
"Henri Lobineau," Les Dossiers Secretes.
Eugene Stublein, "Pierres gravees du Languedoc" (it is thought that Stublein never wrote this in 1884 - it contains the Marie de Negre tomb inscription)
Gaston de Koker, Pierre Feugere, and Louis Saint-Maxent, Le Serpent Rouge
Jean DeLaude, Le Cercle D'Ulysee
Antoine L'Ermite, Un Tresor Merovingian a Rennes-les-Chateau
Pierre Jarnac, Melanges Sulfureux
Three authors who appear to have been "prieure spokesmen" were Gerard de Sede, Jean-Luc Chaumeil, and Louis Vazart. The journalist duo of Jean-Pierre Deloux and Louis Bretigny have also written "PoS" articles. Unfortunately, much of this material has not been translated from the French. Chaumeil was a UFO writer and now presents himself as an "expert" on the Order of the Solar Temple. De Sede appears to have been a Surrealist poet. Vazart is one of the leaders of the Cercle Dagobert, a Stenay-based organization that commemorates Dagobert II and his "progeny". Deloux is a writer on detective fiction, having written several essays on Raymond Chandler for POLAR magazine. Philippe De Cherisey was a Belgian TV-actor who appeared in several TV series and made-for-TV films. No one knows who "Lobineau" was although some think he was either Jewish antiquarian Leo Schidlof or the Count Henri de Lenoncourt. Koker, Feugere, and Saint-Maxent probably did NOT write the Red Serpent; it seems like their names were fished out of the obituaries because they had the misfortune to all die on the same day.
Sion: It's not clear which Sion the Priory of Sion takes its name from: Mt. Sion in Jerusalem, or Mt. Sion in Switzerland. In 1956, the PoS registered itself at Annemasse, not too far from Sion, Switzerland. Many of the first "prieure documents" seem to have been released through the Swiss Grand Loge Alpina (GLA). The full name of the group, according to its statutes, is the Priory of Our Lady of Zion, or "Sionis Prioratus", with the subtitle CIRCUIT, which is said to stand for Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union. In the 19th century, Sion-Vaudemont was the site of an unusual series of events: a restoration effort of the Catholic shrines on the mountain by the Brothers Baillard was "derailed" by the Church, only to be resumed by a Norman Johannite mystic named Michel "Elias the Prophet" Vintras whose Church of Carmel preached the Joachmite dispensation and said the Magdalene would be the Mediatrix of the New Age.
The Angelic Society: Three recent French books, Jules Verne: Initiate and Initiator by Michael Lamy, Arsene Lupin: Unknown Master by Patrick Ferte, and Fulcanelli and the Black Cat by Richard Khaitzine, seem to suggest that the PoS came into being as a sort of artistic society, uniting the Bohemian avant-garde artists of Montmartre (the Symbolists, the Surrealists, and the Romantics). Apparently, these musicians, writer-poets, dramatists, and painters were interested in common themes, and in the Rabelaisian technique of using Grasset D'Orcet's "language of the birds"... creating puns, rebuses, and riddles for the purposes of satire, social criticism, and concealing knowledge. In the works of disparate creative people such as Honore de Balzac, Maurice Leblanc, Jules Verne, Raymond Roussel, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, Max Jacob, Valentine Gross Hugo, Marc Chagall, Gerard de Nerval, Maurice Barres, Josephin Peladan, Claude Debussy and "Les Six," Comte Robert de Montesquiou, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau, Charles Nodier, Stephane Mallarme, Maurice Maeterlinck, Jean-Julian Champagne (Fulcanelli), and perhaps even Pataphysician Alfred Jarry, can be found the techniques and interests we today associate with the "Priory of Sion". Lamy says that many of these people belonged to a group he calls The Brouillards (The Clouds) or the Angelic Society, of which the PoS is a modern manifestation. They are descended from the Gouliards, or medieval clerks and print-makers, whose mystical and heretical Cathar watermarks so fascinated Harold Bayley. Robert Anton Wilson also feels that a number of these people may have also belonged to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.
Some interesting facts: Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece is about a secret known to only two painters, Poussin and Pourbus; and appears to have been the inspiration for an occult masterpiece by Picasso. "Croise" Andre Malraux appears to have been part of an aerial expedition to discover the palace of the Queen of Sheba in Yemen, a feat which he was congratulated for by Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; as Minister of Cultural Affairs, he helped organize an archaeological expedition to Gisors in 1964. Leblanc's work The Triangle of Gold has the same name as a "prieure document" created by Jean-Luc Chaumeil in 1979. Satie left a strange note behind saying he was part of a society descended from the Knights Templar and the Protectors of the Holy Sepulchre. Barres' most famous work is La Colline Inspiree, about Sion-Vaudemont and the Baillard Brothers. In one of de Nerval's works, he said that he saw a star rising from the sea, and written on it was the name "Merovee".
Surrealism and the Oulipo
Increasingly, I am finding more evidence of Surrealists at work in this mystery. Henry Lincoln first pointed out that Cocteau's Mural in Notre Dame de France seems to have a pentagram centered on Cocteau's forehead. My research suggests that this pentagram is a reference to Cocteau's surrealist colleagues, Guillaume Apollinaire, who had a star-shaped wound on his head, and Raymond Roussel, who wrote a play, The Star in the Forehead. The Mural also contains a Blue Rose, which is an apparent allusion to a Russian Symbolist art group that influenced Marc Chagall and other painters. According to Simon Miles, the Surrealist poem Le Serpent Rouge contains symbolism from Jung's _Mysterium Coniunctionis_, which was of key interest to Surrealists. Most importantly, Gerard de Sede in the 1940s belonged to two Surrealist groups, Les Reverberes and La Main a Plume. Members of these groups would go on later to form the Workshop for Potential Literature (Oulipo) in the 1960s. Oulipo was interested in cryptograms, ciphers, textual reversals and inversions, geometric figures in paintings (Oupeinpo), and one key Oulipo text even used the Knight's Tour of the Chessboard as a organizing device. Jean-Pierre Deloux seems to be connected to Oupolipo, the offshoot of Oulipo devoted to creating detective police fictions. And Philippe de Cherisey seems to have written several articles on Alfred Jarry, the founder of the Surrealist College de Pataphysique.
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