COMMUNICATION - CONSULTANCY - PERSONAL GROWTH - WISDOM TRADITION

AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113

"Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge."

(Psalm 19:2)

• "Rose Thorne Lives!" Surviving fragments of a Sacred Erotic Novel written to stimulate theologically fruitful Meditation and discussion by Her Most Unworthy Slave Jason Crisp, with an Introductory Letter and Supplementary Notes by 'The Jackdaw of Reams': His Benevolence The Extra-Reverend The Preliminary LibrArian I+N The Neith Network Doctor Colin James Hamer, DCH, MRP, STL, PhD, AFPhys (ITEC), DSc ( Shivananda )
• Original text: copyright © JASON CRISP 1996. Cited quotations copyright © the copyright-owners. Editorial matter, photographs and other illustrations: copyright © THE NEITH NETWORK 1998.

• THE PROLOGUE - “Out of the voiceless mystery of the past In a present ignorant of forgotten bonds These spirits met upon the roads of Time. Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves At once aware grew of each other warned By the first call of a delightful voice And a first vision of the destined face. As when being cries to being from its depths Behind the screen of the external sense And strives to find the heart-disclosing word, The passionate speech revealing the soul's need, But the mind's ignorance veils the inner sight, Only a little breaks through our earth-made bounds, So now they met in that momentous hour, So utter the recognition in the deeps, The remembrance lost, the oneness felt and missed. Thus Satyavan spoke first to Savitri: ‘O thou who com'st to me out of Time's silences, Yet thy voice has wakened my heart to an unknown bliss, Immortal or mortal only in thy frame, For more than earth speaks to me from thy soul And more than earth surrounds me in thy gaze, How art thou named among the sons of men? Whence hast thou dawned filling my spirit's days, Brighter than summer, brighter than my flowers, Into the lonedly borders of my life, O sunlight moulded like a golden maid? I know that mighty gods are friends of earth. Amid the pageantries of day and dusk, Long have I travelled with my pilgrim soul Moved by the marvel of familiar things. Earth could not hide from me the power she veils: Even though moving mid an earthly scene And the common surfaces of terrestrial things, My vision saw unblinded by her forms; The Godhead looked at me from familiar scenes. I witnessed the virgin bridals of the dawn Behind the glowing curtains of the sky Or vying in joy with the bright morning's steps I paced along the slumbrous coasts of noon, Or the gold desert of the sunlight crossed Traversing great wastes of splendour and of fire, Or met the moon gliding amazed through heaven In the uncertain wideness of the night, Or the stars marched on their long sentinel routes Pointing their spears through the infinitudes: The day and dusk revealed to me hidden shapes; Figures have come to me from secret shores And happy faces looked from ray and flame. I have heard strange voices cross the ether's waves, The Centaur's wizard song has thrilled my ear; I have glimpsed the Apsaras bathing in the pools, I have seen the wood-nymphs peering through the leaves; The winds have shown to me their trampling lords, I have beheld the princes of the Sun Burning in thousand-pillared homes of light. So now my mind could dream and my heart fear That from some wonder-couch beyond our air Risen in a wide morning of the gods Thou drov'st thy horses from the Thunderer's worlds. Although to heaven thy beauty seems allied, Much rather would my thoughts rejoice to know That mortal sweetness smiles between thy lids And thy heart can beat beneath a human gaze And thy aureate bosom quiver with a look And its tumult answer to an earth-born voice." (Savitri - A Symbol & A Legend: Canto III, 4th revised edition: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India, 1993.)

• PREFACE -
• Jason Crisp's Erotic Novel "Rose Thorne Lives!" is an erotic novel with a difference; it is, like The Song of Songs, unashamedly esoteric and can be read as a love poem written in heaven. Perusing such fragments of it as are still available may delight and please you in ways that are hard to parallel…
• I suggest you read these surviving fragments from Jason Crisp's masterpiece carefully and savour them with love. Believe it: Rose Thorne, David Waterman and Peter Thorne truly live, and are eager and willing to meet with you at any convenient time and place, if you yourself so wish - so I hope you will very much enjoy filling in all the gaps in the following narrative for yourself and in your own individual, personal and, I feel sure, quite inimitable way! Meanwhile, in their name I send you greetings and bid you welcome!

• CHAPTER ONE
• The first passage was in a French Book by Jean-Pierre Deloux. It said that to the temporal ambitions of Popes and Heads of State, one ought to oppose Spiritual Royalty, attributing the origin of this esoteric message to a priest of Alexandria called Ormus, converted by Saint Mark to Christianity in A.D. 46, but prior to that an initiate in the Egyptian mysteries, an influential figure who seemed to have identified Light with Wisdom.
• The second reference was to another French book, one of several by Gérard de Sède. The statement David found there was brief, and very much to the point. "The Cross puts Man at the Centre of the Universe; a Rose makes His Heart the central point in Man."
• The third quotation he found in a recent commentary on the prophecies of Nostradamus. If the author was correct, any semblance of peace in London between 1982 and 1986 was deceptive, since the Catholic Church would suffer from the evils of schism, Prince Charles would be a murder victim, and the sorts of freedom being fought for would prove to be, in any case, both illusory and misconceived.

• CHAPTER TWO
• He went over to one of his bookcases, and took down his hardback copy of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.
• Even at the first reading this book (helpful corrective available had proved a disappointment, and to a certain extent the priest had been puzzled.
• In their Introduction the authors referred to Gérard de Sède's writings on the same theme as light-weight entertainment, despite the fact that the French author's works were so obviously more detailed, more thoroughly researched and, taking dates of publication into account, less derivative than their own ostensibly serious study.
• Moreover, in contrasting a Christian Church of redemptive suffering based on the teachings of Saint Paul with a hidden Church of free love based on The Gospel according to John, they made the claim that Jesus had not really died on Calvary, but that he had survived, and that today in France at least one of his direct descendants was still alive.
• In occult circles two sorts of direct descent are recognised.
• One, of course, is by natural birth, and it is largely a matter of taste whether one focuses on the male or on the female line of parenthood, and whether or not one considers the issue of civil or ecclesiastical legitimacy of birth to be relevant.
• But an equally valid, some would say a much more authentic line of direct descent is by astrological correspondence.
• According to Saint Matthew's Gospel the wife of Pontius Pilate had a dream in connection with her husband's trial of Jesus.
• When, despite her pleadings, Pilate arranged for the crucifixion to proceed, she is unlikely to have left things at that. Very likely she kept in close touch with influential astrologers.
• One of these will have indicated to her some child about to be born as a suitable direct descendant of Jesus, and will have at the same time furnished her with the necessary information about the movements of planets.
• She will then have bribed the Roman soldiers, not to disobey their instructions which were to make sure that Christ was dead, but to do her the favour of making sure his death occurred at a very precise moment in time.
• It is obviously unthinkable that faced with the demands of a woman who had not been afraid to disrupt her husband's official business in court by sending him messengers about dreams, private soldiers would have risked their commandant's displeasure by denying his wife such a seemingly small favour.
• As a result of this, the horoscope of Jesus's death, Father Waterman reflected, coincided perfectly with that of the birth of a carefully selected child, no doubt subsequently and conveniently also called Jesus. Mary Magdalen, eager to atone for her previously in her own eyes sinful life, did not take much persuading to do the charitable thing and adopt the child, particularly since Pilate's wife was providing money for its future.
• It only remained to give the child a cup of blood collected by soldiers on her instructions from the body of Christ immediately after his scourging and, once he had drunk it, Jesus II was, indeed, by astrological descent, the royal son of David and, by Pilate's decree as well as by historical title, King of the Jews!
• If Mary Magdalen did later move to Marseille, she would naturally have taken her adopted child with her, and his direct descendants might very well have become the Merovingian dynasty, have survived until today and, of course, have emphasised the Gospel of Love.

• CHAPTER THREE
• "Have you been to Rennes-le-Château?" she asked.
• "I was there on 20th June, fishing for the treasure," he replied very seriously.
• "But you must know the treasure isn't there anymore!" she protested.
• David laughed.
• "It was the village fete that day," he explained. "There were guessing games, all sorts of free gifts for the children and, of course, fishing for treasure on one of the stalls was a great attraction. So, I had a go - but I wasn't lucky."
• "But what do you know about the real treasures of Rennes-le-Château?"
• "It's all past history now," the priest answered. "Each of the traditional Stations of the Cross from the second to the thirteenth in the parish-church is a coded indication of one of the twelve original hiding-places, though somewhat indirectly.
• The amount of the treasure is practically unlimited, and it was buried in locations in the local macrocosm based on the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, for which the Stations of the Cross provide symbolic references within what has been described as the local microcosm.
• The Abbé Boudet's book about the Celtic language and the cromlech of Rennes-les-Bains, which has just been re-issued with an Introduction by Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, is also really a guide in coded language to the twelve hiding-places."
• "Go on. I'm listening."
• "Well, Bérenger Saunière, the parish-priest of Rennes-le-Château, who set up all the fourteen Stations of the Cross, and carried out various other expensive undertakings, under the instructions of Boudet, then parish-priest of Rennes-les-Bains, just before the turn of the century, actually had access to, and made use of some of these hiding-places, but others among them have never yet been discovered by anyone outside the inner circle."
• "So you've realised that Saunière was only a pawn in the game?"
• "He was a good priest in a run-of-the-mill sort of way. He saw nothing wrong in taking money from the rich for the benefit of the poor, even when he was making sure that he himself was the principal beneficiary. His parishioners admired him, and were grateful for the running water, the well-surfaced roadway and the other improvements he brought to their village. How he found the money was a mystery that both baffled and amazed them, but they reckoned some matters were things it takes priests to understand; they were more at home tending their vines, or out hunting deer and wild boars, which can still be found in the neighbourhood."
• "Behind the scenes, then, Saunière was just doing what he was told to do by his young, rather attractive housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud, who was the Abbe Boudet's agent?"
• "Partly that. But he was also working directly for the Archduke John-Stephen of Hapsburg, who had visited him in 1885. Unfortunately for him, he also tried to do one or two things on his own account, and delayed too much in carrying out some of their instructions. His death on 22 January 1917 was no accident. But, of course, you know that."
• "Let's not get side-tracked too much. You were going to tell me what you know about the treasure."
• The priest opened one of the drawers of his writing-desk, and drew out a folder of papers.
• "Take a look at this map," he said. "The Route Nationale D613 goes East from Couiza to Narbonne. Just over a mile on the Narbonne side of Serres, before you reach Arques and, as it happens, precisely on the meridian that also runs through the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, is the stone tomb painted by Poussin in his famous masterpiece, Shepherdesses in Arcadia."
• "But surely," she interposed, "Poussin's painting shows an inscription - Et in Arcadia Ego - on the tomb, but the one you are talking about is quite plain."
• "That is because it was tampered with in the last century," he continued gently. "The little museum adjoining the church of Rennes-le-Château contains, as you will remember from the time when you last bought your own 4-francs ticket to visit the place, an inked copy on cardboard of an inscription from a stone that used to be there in the church-yard. It reads, once you work it out: 'Et in Arcadia Ego. Reddis Regis Cellis Arcis. Praecum.' I won't waste your time repeating to you the other details, which you know already. But the point is this - that slab was originally part of the stone tomb on the road to Arques, until, that is, it was cut off and removed."
• "So you're telling me that the double arrow on that stone, when it was in its original position, actually pointed to one of the local microcosmic points corresponding to the neighbouring macrocosmic hiding-places for the treasure, 10 metres in the territory of the so called microcosm equating with 100 metres in the macrocosmic terrain."
• "Right. Poussin knew all about the mysteries of this symbolic geography. That is why his painting draws attention to the inscription, but does not give it in the original form. It is impossible to understand the message concealed in the painting without visiting the place it represents. Look at these photographs."
• Rose examined very carefully the four Polaroid snap-shots that David had extracted from the folder.
• "The tomb is only about twenty-five yards from the main road," the priest continued, "but it stands on private property, is surrounded by barbed wire, and there is a notice advising people to keep out. I've also good reason to think there is a motor-cycle patrol detailed to keep an eye on the place. The first two photos were taken from the parapet of the bridge, which is part of the D613. As you can see from these, Poussin's painting is not an exact photocopy of the original background; he has concertina-ed it somewhat, so as to include in his canvas both that left-hand easterly feature, the Bézil Grand, and the other right-hand feature, more to the West, which you can see in my second shot."
• "Gérard de Sède has identified that second elevation as the rock of Blanchefort."
• "I think it's safe to assume he was being deliberately misleading. The rock of Blanchefort lies on the Couiza side of the D14 from Rennes-les-Bains, which forms a T-junction with the D613 about a third of a mile on the Couiza or more westerly side of Serres, but this prominence is definitely on the Arques side of the D14. My third photograph, in fact, shows you the very same spot seen from a hundred yards or so down the D613, as you walk along it towards Serres after passing that very junction."
• "But it looks completely different!" Rose said excitedly. "It also reminds me of something else I have seen."
• "You're a genius," the priest agreed. "It was that resemblance that enabled me to solve this particular part of the mystery."
• Rose broke in, before David had had time to continue. "Your photo is of the Pech Cardou. It reminds me of that painting of Christ on Mount Tabor at the back of Saunière's church, with this outcrop of stone replacing the Christ figure. Most people have claimed that Christ was standing very close to the summit of a single hill, but the perspective is deceptive, and your second shot from the tomb-stone shows clearly that this outcrop is really two-thirds of the way down the mountain, though in your third picture one gets the impression it is very close to the final summit."
• "Perspective plays tricks even on the most careful observers," David Waterman agreed, "but there is another point that needs to be noticed. People often remember that Saint Peter is the Rock on which Christ founded his Church. What they fail to notice is that the Greek gives us two quite distinct words for 'foundation-stone,' one for the cut-stone that is set in place by human choice, the other for the natural bedrock on which it rests. The Tabor painting both reveals and conceals the Teaching that Christ's Glory is not purely supernatural, but is also to be identified with the humble, earthly eminence of his position as the natural mountain bedrock of the Church set on a hill."
• "The mountain of Venus some call it," Rose agreed, with a wicked gleam in her eye.
• "You are right to remind me of that," David continued. "The hardness of rock and the tenderness of love can sometimes come together. If near Rennes-les-Bains we find a Trembling Rock, it is, no doubt, to remind us of the reverence and awe with which the male principle of the cosmos naturally responds to the gentle magic of the eternal feminine, the Fountain of Love, the Magdalen Fountain."
• "All place-names still current in the locality that contain a multiplicity of messages, and that the majority of people misinterpet by understanding them on a gross materialist level. But you don't need me to tell you that. If Popes have been known to sin for gold, shall we blame common folk for lusting after the pleasures of human flesh?"
• The priest sighed. Then, before continuing, he took out of the same folder a small map of Rennes-les-Bains and district.
• "There's the Pech Cardou, Rose, just where you said it was. It is definitely the spot the arrow on the orginal tomb inscription would have pointed to. Also, as you can see, it is not very far from the old mine here to the South, and there is a path connecting each of these two places with the cart-track linking both Fourtou and Sougraigne with Rennes-les-Bains. This other path takes you to Lake Barrenc. Some of these tracks go back to Roman times."
• "And you think there is, or at least there used to be treasure hidden in these three spots - Pech Cardou, the old mine and somewhere at the bottom of Lake Barrenc?"
• "Undoubtedly, though the earthly treasure in hiding inside some cavern within the Pech Cardou would have had its even more valuable, even if purely symbolic, macrocosmic counterpart in the Philosopher's Stone that lies buried in a secret recess near Roquetaillade. Monsieur Élie in his À La Gloire de Jésus Christ - Le Saint Graal - Révélations des Mystères du Haut Razès (Imprimerie Antoine Vogels, Arques, 1983) has done as much as anyone to sort out the topographical complexities. So we needn't dwell on them. Indeed, as I imagine you will agree, since you have taken some trouble to find me, the urgent thing is to find out not where the treasure is now, but who are the people who already know where it is and, even more important, what use they intend to make of this knowledge."

• CHAPTER FOUR
• "Though I'm a barrister by profession," Peter vouchsafed, "my hobby is archaeology. My wife tells me you have visited Rennes-le-Château."
• The parish-priest laughed. "Don't believe what you've read about Father Saunière's museum--collection of local stones and fossils," he said. "Most of them are quite unremarkable. In any case, they are little more than fragments of pebbles, hardly worth calling stones at all. The only thing that might interest you is part of a meteorite there. Apparently it was found in the Place de la République in Quillan, which is less than ten miles away."
• "That certainly is intriguing," Peter agreed. "Why do you think it has ended up in Rennes-le-Château?"
• It was Rose Thorne who answered. "That's easy," she said. "Don't forget that that whole region is Cathar country. The true macrocosmic Holy Graal is, of course, the total assemblage of Stars that together form the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, and the Cathar religious stronghold of Monségur, which can be reached in half a day from Rennes-le-Château, if you ride a fast horse, is for that reason precisely oriented to give sightings of each of the constellations at its own proper time of year.
• Quite naturally, then, in the local symbolic macrocosm of the Haut Razès the eye-sockets of the huge stone skull in the underground temple at Rennes-les-Bains are positioned to keep Monsegur in their line of vision."
• "A rum business, Rose," Peter stroked his chin. "Didn't you tell me that the nose alone on that skull is about 35' high and almost 17' wide?"
• His wife nodded her agreement, and then continued. "Of course, everything above must have its counterpart below, as Thoth or, if you prefer, Hermes Trismegistus, so wisely taught. The microcosmic holy graal, then, was quite naturally a meteorite of bright green stone, not too dissimilar from emerald in appearance, though its texture was closer to that of alabaster. The graal of the Arthurian legend is a stone cup carved out of this meteorite. Bérenger Saunière will not have made the mistake of identifying the Quillan meteorite with the original graal, but he may well have imagined that, by some sort of sympathetic magic, possession of a fragment of that meteorite would attract to its owner the powers of the Graal itself."
• "That makes good sense to me," the priest granted gravely. "All good Catholics are taught to believe that each consecrated host and even each fragment of each host, not only reminds us of, but is IN very Truth the Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity of Our Lord & Saviour. In a similar Way the Ancient Egyptians held that every pyramid and, in a certain sense, even every cartouche was not by resemblance merely, but by actual metaphysical identity that unique point on the surface of the globe where land and life first emerged from the chaos of the primeval waters."
• "In the same way," Rose interrupted him, "they felt that every act of sacred love-making not only put the lovers in touch with, but was the original creation of the world."
• "You are quite right," her husband assented, "but I think Father Waterman's point is that Sauniere may very well have regarded his meteorite as a Sacramental, and so as an authentic reproduction by identity of the Graal!"
• "Exactly," the priest agreed, "and I believe that brings us to your real reason for inviting me here this evening. As I said to Rose earlier this afternoon, the question is not so much where has the treasure of Rennes-le-Château gone to, but who are the people who know its whereabouts, and what are their present plans for its exploitation."
• "I couldn't have made that point more incisively myself," Peter Thorne commented. "You have obviously given this matter a great deal of thought. What conclusions have you come to?"
• "Let me take the amusing side of the situation first," David suggested. "Some of the digs in Rennes-le-Château itself have reached a depth of almost 60', and it has been found necessary to make a special local bye-law to forbid any further digging for buried treasure there, yet it is obvious the village was never one of the twelve hiding-holes.
• On the other hand, as you walk in to Rennes-les-Bains on the D14, not far from the Source du Pontet, shown here in my fourth photograph, you'll actually come across a notice that reads - Dépôt interdit, 'Deposits Forbidden,' though there you are much closer to several possible hiding-places!"
• "It's nice of you to try and protect me from nastiness and violence, Father," put in Rose, "but you won't find me squeamish, I promise. Tell us all you know."
• The priest squared his shoulders, and took a deep breath.
• "Judgment belongs to God, not man," he said at length, his eyes riveted on Rose, "but, unless I am mistaken, knowledge of the great treasure's whereabouts is now in the possession not only of two, but of three quite distinct groups."
• "Just as Rose feared," Peter Thorne put in. "You can be sure you have the support of all my own poor energies and not inconsiderable influence in any campaign you commit yourself to for the preservation of civilisation in Europe."
• The priest expressed his appreciation..., and then went on: "It is agreed, I take it, that the treasures we are talking about include those from Solomon's temple, from the sack of Rome, from other conquests by the Visigoths, together with gold and silver mined locally, all the riches of the Templars and the Cathars, including the holy graal, as well as the relatively modest, more recent additions to the horde made by Nicholas Fouquet, when he was Louis XIV's Superintendant of Taxes. But the first point to remember is that not one of those treasures was ever hidden near Rennes-le-Château."
• "But surely," Peter Thorne protested.
• "Let him finish, darling," said Rose, putting a hand on her husband's knee.
• "What I am saying," the priest continued, "is that this location was not chosen as a hiding-place, but as an appropriate site for ritual deposits. Don't forget that the Visigoths' administrative capital was Toledo; Rennes-le-Château was their sacred centre. Also, in A.D. 378, when Saint Ambrose of Milan avoided the total destruction of the city by voluntarily delivering to the leader of the Visigoths the treasures of the Cathedral and sundry other valuables, he at the same time indicated the neighbourhood of Lake Barrenc as an appropriate resting-place for this treasure-trove, at the same time revealing to the Visigoth chieftain, Brennus, that the same location already contained a vast amount of previously deposited wealth, a fact which is independently confirmed by Posidonius."
• "The point being," Peter interjected, "that if Brennus placed a lot of fresh treasure, and left even more previously deposited treasure in a place known to the Archbishop of Milan, it was hardly a hiding-place."
• "Precisely," David Waterman smiled roguishly. "Call it rather the wedding dowry of the sometimes holy and sometimes unholy alliance of Church and State that has for almost 2000 years been the backbone of European history. Behind the scenes, despite the rise of apparently independent nations, despite the so called freedoms ushered in by the French Revolution, the unity of the Holy Roman Empire has remained a significant centre of power."
• "Church and State. That seems to account for two groups," Peter speculated.
• "Right again," David agreed eagerly, and allowing Rose's husband to pour him a second glass of Armagnac. "Of course, only a select few on each side have been trusted with the secret, and not all of them have known the whole of it. On the Church side, as well as Saint Ambrose, one can mention Pope Clement IX, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint John Bosco, Father Louis Fouquet, Saint Bernard and several others whose names are already in the literature.
• On the civil side we have such figures as the Merovingian kings, young Thomas Plantard de Saint-Clair, once he gets a bit older, Victor Hugo and the various Éminences grises detailed in the famous papers of the Priory of Sion.
• These two groups have survived together in one way or another since the Beginning and, despite the occasional assassination, conspiracy or even war that one of them has found it necessary to get involved in from time to time down the centuries, in order to keep things in the family, as it were, and also to prevent treasures needed for purposes of ritual magic and alchemy being diverted to ephemeral, temporising and merely pragmatic ends, it is, I think, pretty safe to claim that, on the whole, the alliance has worked remarkably well.
• It is not these groups, so much talked about whenever this whole affair is discussed, we need to worry about. The big problem, and here your services will certainly be invaluable, Peter, is the new third group we now have to contend with...."

• CHAPTER FIVE
• "Pope John-Paul II is quite correct," he said. "For a husband to have intercourse with his wife out of lust and without Love is rape, and a worse sin than adultery out of weakness, because it is to profane what should be a sacred bond...."
• The Cathar Peter Clargues taught his mistress, Beatrice of Planissoles, that love-making between strangers, between close relatives, and even between brother and sister is no more blameworthy and can easily be less culpable than that between husband and wife, because the latter don't even feel remorse over their behaviour, and yet their copulation is sometimes shameless and without love....

• CHAPTER SIX
• Hitler took great interest in the occult. When I visited Rennes-le-Château I learned that some German soldiers were detailed to dig up the ground there on more than one occasion. On 16th March 1944, the 700th anniversary of the burning at the stake of the 215 Cathar martyrs of Monségur, a Fieseler-Storch German reconnaissance plane overflew the ruins of Monségur itself, and made a cabbalistic smoke signal in the air.
• A number of demonstrably false reports have been circulated about the identities and missions of the German officers involved, and about the interest of the Gestapo and the S.S. in this area of the Pyrenees. But it seems reasonable to suppose that some individuals in Hitler's most devilish inner circle of thugs knew the secret and so, presumably, its history, and that some of these hell-hounds survived the Second World War and are now planning something even more terrible than the gas-chambers."
• "Very plausible, David, but isn't that really just guesswork?"
• "Unfortunately, darling, even if I am completely mistaken about the identity and immediate historical origins of the third group we have to contend with, the evil nature of the group is quite certain - by sheer cosmic necessity."
• "As it happens, I've just received in the post my advance copy of the next issue of Newsweek. It includes an article on 'Giving the Devil his Due,' which re-hashes the Ancient Persian dichotomy between Ohrmazd, God of Order & Light, and Ahriman, Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies and source of human suffering and death, twinned forces, equal yet opposite."
• "The subtlest of lies, dearest, is to tell only the truth, but to tell it without heart."
• "That sounds like a good opening-line for a sermon. But how does it apply here?"
• "At this very moment I'm not quite sure. But at the back of my mind I'm beginning to have the inkling of an idea. Shall we order a fresh pot of tea, and see if that helps?"
• "A good old English wizard, eh, as well as a priest! Yes, we still have some time, I think."
• "Well, let's remind ourselves of the real facts about dualism. The Ancient Egyptian account is probably the least misleading. The main polarities to consider, from the present point of view, are those of male and female, and of good and evil. Obviously the Egyptians never made the mistake of identifying these two quite different distinctions."
• "I can't see yet where this is all leading to, David, but I'm listening."
• "Good girl! The next thing to remember is that while their account of the Creation includes an All-Powerful Sun-God, Ra-Atum, and a feminine sky-goddess, Nut, who is also very important, the real originating principle is not twofold but One only, and it is feminine, viz., Nun, the Primordial Chaos which, of course, is not in the past, but transcends time, and so abides IN an Eternal Presence, as the very Heart, for instance, of our own here and now in this tea-room."
• "A satisfying account," Rose admitted, after a pause for thought, fluttering her eye-lashes almost imperceptibly, "but where does that leave the Christian Trinity?"
• The priest laughed. "So, even yhou still choose to ask that question! Several very early Christian hymns refer to the first Person of the Trinity as Parent, not 'Father,' and since, etymologically, a 'Parent' is 'One who gives Birth,' it should be clear that that designation, never reproved, was not neutral, but feminine. Obviously, the social climate made patriarchal language more common, but that is hardly the main point.
• By the way, I suppose you realise that, quite apart from Isis not being the main expression of the feminine side of divinity, though supposed to be hers, the famous Ankh-of-Life so many feminists insist on wearing is actually about as chauvenistic a token as one could find?"
• "Yes, I accept that. The genuine knot of Isis is quite different. In the ankh symbol the horizontal line is the division between life and the after-life, in other words, death; the vertical line represents the Individual's earthly pilgrimage from womb to tomb; the oval is the rising sun, the other side of death, of his or her eternal life, which in this symbol, therefore, is attributed to a wholly male principle!"
• "Of course," David conceded, "the ankh can be understood on a variety of levels of meaning. But let me move on to the question of good and evil."
• "That would seem the most likely one to have a bearing on our present problem. Do go on."
• "I won't recite the whole of the Osirian myth. Suffice it to say that Seth is the villain of the piece. He murdered Osiris. Seth, of course, is the same as Satan, who can also be identified as Saturn, the slowest moving of the planets. But unless Osiris had been murdered, and unless fragments of his corpse had been scattered over the whole of Egypt, three great benefits would have been lacking - the land would have lacked this ritual blood which the Egyptians regarded as an essential ingredient in its fertility and prosperity - both natural and cultural, Osiris would have been deprived of the opportunity of demonstrating his own inexhaustible capacity for self-renewal in the continuing cycle of rebirths and, worst of all, the Eternal & Immortal falcon-headed Horus would never have been born nor have ascended to Light & Glory."
• "So, you're saying Seth's wickedness was a good deed in disguise?"
• "Not quite that. Evil is real enough, but only in its own order and degree. The Church in the Easter-Vigil service refers to Adam's original sin as 'a truly necessary and blessed fault,' because, without it, there would have been no redemption in this actual order of Providence, but fault it was."
• "I notice you use the past tense."
• "This links up with what I've said earlier about the annihilation of sin by Christ. Reverting to the Egyptian account, each human being, man or woman, can follow the darkness of Seth or the naturally attractive light, the contrasting light that the geography of Egypt made so clear, of Osiris. To side only with Seth is evil, darkness, death, black magic - going by the Old Testament's account, Moses does not come out too unfavourably, if he is judged as a black magician! To side only with Osiris is to prefer the rising sun on the East bank of the Nile to the jackal-haunted desert on the West; it is to love family, life, plants, animals, affectionate and gracious living, and to desire for one's dear ones, as for oneself, an after-life that is a renewal of the joys of this one - the tomb-paintings are full of expressions of this simple and touching hope.
• For people who live exclusively at this level, black is black, and white is white, and, even if one agrees with Alfred Noyes that one cannot paint with gold on gold, one still bitterly resents the sort of cosmic arrangement that has made some occurrence of evil necessary, even if its specification remains a matter of free choice."
• "But don't you resent the death of Janice Saunder's baby?"
• "All my instincts revolt against it, and my head tells me that that murderous deed was pointless and silly, but I hold my heart in Peace, and so I do not judge rashly. No, I have no resentment."
• "Dear David, you are a brave man. Our world is not exactly nice."
• "That is where Horus comes in. The Egyptians taught those who were ready to hear this word that continuing rebirths along the Osirian path, confronting in life after life the struggle inside oneself between the evil allurements of Seth and the natural life-loving joy of Osiris, while sadly realising that without death there cannot be life, without evil there cannot be good, since to live one must eat, and to eat is also to destroy, was not the only option - one could, if one wished it strongly enough, reconcile Seth and Osiris by dying to both good and evil, by rising above all individual attachment to or fear of either life or death, and so being reborn as Horus, the falcon-God. Horus is the same as the resurrected Christ.
• "These are not things I have never heard before; they may even be implicit in the magnificent achievements of our own William Shakespeare, without needing to go as far back as Jesus Christ. Still, your saying them certainly does tell me quite a lot about you, David, and makes me even gladder we have met. How precisely does it relate to our present problems?...."

• CHAPTER SEVEN
• Sister Mavis, for new nuns admitted to the order no longer changed their names on the occasion of their religious profession, moved to a lectern to read the Epistle for the day. The choir then sang the Alleluia. Father Waterman censed the missal, then he read the Gospel.
• Save for the distribution of Communion under both kinds, the rest of the Mass was about to proceed as on any other day, but at this point it fell to him to preach the sermon. Whatever he chose to say now, Mavis Brown and her parents would probably remember for the rest of their lives.
• "Beloved daughters and dear brethren and sisters in Christ," he began, "at this eternal moment we are each of us present to Jesus, who IS Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity here in the tabernacle on the altar, and He wishes to be present to each one of us. Although the value of Jesus is infinite, the tabernacle is not meant to be a safe storage, a strong-box to keep Him away from unwanted hands; He wishes to give Himself freely to everybody. The tabernacle is not a sort of spiritual fridge in which we store Jesus for our own benefit, so that He may nourish us whenever we feel we need Him. Jesus Himself is hungry, hungry all the time, hungry for your minds and souls and hearts, which He would consume completely, transforming your flesh into His Own Living Self, so that you have no other life left, save that Holy Spirit which IS the Risen Saviour's undying Gift to His Church. Like the container of the Ark of the Covenant, symbol for the Jews of God's Presence among them, and for us a type and prefigurement both of Holy Church and of Our Blessed Lady, the tabernacle is a tent. Tents are not the dwellings of people who stand still, but get moved about a lot, and have to be pitched at need in whatever place turns out to be available. If you own a house, you are tied to one place, one set of circumstances; if you have a tent, you can take it with you anywhere. Jesus lives among us in the tabernacle to teach us two lessons. Firstly, He is willing to be our companion in each and every circumstance of life, however dreadful or frightening it may appear to be; secondly, His expectation is that we are not stick-in-the-muds, that we are not stagnant, static, stationary, not people with definite projects and plans, fixed ideas, or a set mentality - Jesus is the Brother & Leader of a Pilgrim People, always moving, growing, changing, developing, climbing out of the sleepy stillness of night's shadows into the rapidly accelerating vibrations of Eternal Life in His Kingdom of Pure Light.
• Today, as yesterday and tomorrow, Jesus welcomes IN an embrace of Love the Church, His spotless white Bride. In that sublime context we greet Mavis with a holy kiss, and wish her joy, peace and a fruitful apostolate in the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts. Amen."

• CHAPTER EIGHT
• "You know about the precession of the equinox?"
• "What of it?" he rejoined.
• "As the Ancient Egyptians realised, long before the time of Hipparchos, every 26,000 years the vernal point travels through the twelve sites of the sky designated zodiacally by their dominant constellations. The figure I've mentioned was valid about A.D. 50. In 3000 B.C. it was about 26,280 years, but by A.D. 1942 the figure had dropped to 25,785. In other words, the overall duration of the cycle is decreasing by 11.4 years every century."
• "Mathematics is one of your strong points, dearest, and I imagine our parish-priest is well grounded in the subject as well, but, as you know, it is not something I am particularly good at. Still, I find it impossible to credit that either David Waterman or yourself is a person suffering from sleepless nights about a loss of that sort, even if it does amount to more than eleven years a century. It can't be that you mean, when you say time is running out!"
• "Of course not, my sweet, but it is connected. I mean pre-Pharaonic Egypt was ruled by Gemini, the Ancient Egyptian Empire and the great Cretan civilisation were dominated by Taurus, from the Middle Empire until Christ, which accounts for a good deal of Old Testament times, the ruling sign was Aries, Pisces ushered in Christianity, and somewhere round about now is 'the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,' as the musical Hair aptly puts it."
• "Summing things up, then, you're saying that, because of the steadily decreasing length of the overall cycle, plus the lack of exact correspondence between astrological views and current astronomical knowledge, it is difficult to say exactly when the era of Pisces ends and when that of Aquarius begins, but that, whenever that events occurs, traditional forms of Christianity, however varied, are all obsolete and a radically new brand of religious and cultural sensitivity is called for?"
• "You state the case admirably, my very own barrister, and this is what lay at the back of John XXIII's urgings that we should read the signs of the times, the Vatican's recent readiness to cut itself free from scholasticism and the Latin liturgy, the growth in various Churches of the charismatic movement, and so forth. But in some ways all these are just examples of nibbling at the biscuit. Moreover, these periods of great transition are frightfully risky, and that's the context in which Father Waterman and myself make our tiny efforts to understand the problematic world we find ourselves committed to living in, even though we are not anything like as doughty warriors and champions of social justice as you are, darling."
• "I never tire of your silvery voice, Rose, but it is very hot in this garden," he said, and settled down for a nap.
• She took his newspaper and began to leaf through it.

• CHAPTER NINE
• "At least as regards Prince Charles," he was saying, "things may not be quite so bad as we feared."
• "How so?" Peter queried.
• David withdrew from his pocket a copy of the Prophecies of Nostradamus, and read out the exact text of the 22nd quattrain in the 6th Century: "Dedans la terre du grand temple Célique, Neveu à Londres par paix fainte meurtry, La barque alors deviendra schismatique Liberté fainte sera au corn et cry."
• Rose translated this for her husband's benefit. "That's Old French," she explained, "so putting it properly in modern English is quite tricky, but I think this gives the gist of it - In the territory of the Vatican, when the grandson is either physically bruised or caused mental anguish in London by a sham peace, the bark of Peter will become schismatic, and false freedom will be proclaimed with a hunting-horn and by shouting."
• "Do you accept that translation?" Peter looked across at David Waterman.
• "Oh, yes. Célique is a poetic word for temple and, given Nostradamus's background and interests, obviously means the Catholic Church. His use of the word dedans puts us inside the Vatican. That part of the prophecy links up with Archbishop Lefèbvre. Meurtre as a noun can imply real physical murder, but the past participle may mean no more than mental anguish or some relatively minor injury, though I wouldn't expect Nostradamus to mean merely a scratch!"
• "It's nice to know he's going to survive at any rate," Rose put in. "I simply adore Diana as well as our future King, and little Billy looks so sweet." But she shivered uneasily as she spoke.
• "Of course," Peter ruminated, "I realise the London grandson Nostradamus mentions is clearly of the blood royal, but doesn't young Prince William fit the bill, as well as Charles?"
• "That's a horrible pun, darling, quite uncalled for!" broke in Rose, a trifle sharply.
• "You may be right, Peter," observed the priest. "I hadn't thought of that."
• There was a pause, and then David Waterman resumed.
• "My main reason for coming over this afternoon," he said, "is that I thought I should explain why exactly I think these black witches, the Seven Sisters, are linked to Rennes-le-Château. It is quite a long story."
• "In that case," Rose interposed, "we'd better have a drink." She turned to Peter. "Put the kettle on, dearest, and I'll make some coffee."
• While the kettle was coming to the boil, she brought in a plate of brandy-snaps. David Waterman plunged into his explanation. "Astarte or Astoreth is the great Nature Goddess, the principal female divinity in one sense, the Goddess of Love & Fruitfulness, the Moon Goddess, identified with Selene, Artemis and Aphrodite, and corresponding with the male Baal. Solomon was among those who built temples to the Goddess, which is already one possible link with the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, and the popularity of her cult is evident from the many biblical references, as well as from the many representations of the deity that have been discovered, especially clay plaques dating from 1700 to 1100 B.C., probably worn to promote fertility. The worship of Astarte, according to one opinion the most impure and revolting that can possibly be imagined, was celebrated in shady groves, scenes of the most degrading lust and debauchery. Astarte, also called Asherat of the Sea, is said to have been the wife of the supreme God, El, and by him to have been the mother of seventy deities; the worship of Astarte was basically a fertility rite of sympathetic magic....
• After denunciation as an enemy of the Christian God, Astarte became Ashtoreth, somewhat strangely a male demon, recognised by his fetid breath. When summoned by magicians, the demon appears in human form, but half-black and half-white; he knows all secrets and can reveal events of the past, present and future. In 1673 Madame de Montespan, in her attempt to utilise black magic to influence Louis XIV's affections, sacrificed children to Ashtoreth, who was also among the demons possessing some of the Aix-en-Provence nuns earlier in the same century."
• "Which puts him right in the middle of Nostradamus's interests, as well as in his home territory," Rose added. "The plot thickens."
• "As the Phoenician equivalent of Isis," David Waterman resumed, "Astarte, the Mother Goddess, is referred to as Queen of Heaven in the Old Testament, and some subsequent writers have thus found ambiguous the dedication of, for example, Notre Dame cathedral in Paris to the Queen of Heaven, saying it stands on the foundations of a temple of Isis.
• Indeed, according to Joshua 18, the territory of the tribe of Benjamin included what subsequently became the sacred city of Jerusalem, which, therefore, was that tribe's birthright before it ever became David's and Solomon's capital. But Judges 21 presents the Benjamites as protecting from the Jews of the other tribes the local worshippers of Belial, a variant of the Sumerian Mother Goddess, Ishtar to the Babylonians, Astarte to the Phoenicians. The Benjamites may themselves have revered this same deity, Belial, the Mother Goddess, in the form of the Golden Calf of Exodus - the subject of a famous painting by Poussin."
• "Another link with Rennes-le-Château," Peter noted. "Your presentation of the evidence is quite impressive."
• "And the Golden Calf, of course, places that phase of these developments in the Age of Taurus," Rose added. "But do please continue."
• She handed round the brandy-snaps.
• "Robert Graves," the priest affirmed, "an excellent Roman Catholic authority on these matters, believes the Greek legend of King Belus's son, Danäus, arriving in Greece with his daughters by ship records the arrival of colonists from Palestine, arguably the Benjamites, in the Peloponnesus, King Belus being Baal or Bel, and his daughters being the ones who introduced to the Arcadians the cult of the Mother Goddess."
• "Et in Arcadia Ego," Rose murmured softly, and David thought he caught a glimpse of a momentary dreamy and very far away look in her eyes.
• "The Arcadians later knew her," he continued, resisting a strange urge to use the second person instead of the third, "as Demeter, Diana, Artemis or Arduina, tutelar deity of the Ardennes.
• Homer mentions an Arcadian presence at the siege of Troy, and some early Greek histories claim Troy was founded by settlers from Arcadia.
• Now the totem of Artemis was the she-bear, Kallisto, whose son was Arkas, the bear-child and patron of Arcadia. The very name Arcadia derives from Arkades, meaning People of the Bear. The ancient Arcadians claimed descent from Arkas, and the nymph Kallisto who bore him, as well as being connected with Artemis the huntress, is the constellation Ursa Major, Kallisto, the Great Bear.
• Arcadian Benjamites are towards the advent of the Christian era said to have migrated up the Danube and Rhine, intermarrying with certain Teutonic tribes, and eventually engendering the Sicambrian Franks, referred to in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail as the immediate forbears of the Merovingians."
• "But surely that's hardly credible," Rose protested.
• "What treasure of information have you that our parish-priest has missed?" Peter queried.
• "Professor Wallace-Hadrill," she stated, "is probably the greatest reputable authority on the Merovingian period. In his study of the long-haired kings he mentions that Fredegar, writing about 642 A.D., was the very first author ever to mention a Trojan origin of the Franks. His words seem to have been a deliberate, though certainly a very powerful fiction. In fact, according to the learned professor, no tradition of significance survives to illuminate the tribal origins of the Franks."
• "At all events," David Waterman continued, "it may be from the Merovingians that derive the houses of Plantard, Lorraine - and so such persons as Monsieur Alain Poher, from 28 April to 19 June 1969 and from 2 April to 27 May 1974 Provisional President of France and, by some accounts, the present-day, true Merovingian King of France."
• "Doesn't that honour belong to Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair?" Rose interrupted again.
• "All that I can say about that," the priest answered, and his voice was firm as well as warm, "is that on 17 January 1981 it was Pierre Plantard who, on the third ballot, was elected 27th Navigator of the Royal Ark and Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, by 83 votes out of 92."
• He paused, and Rose's eyes now indicated clear admiration. Peter, too, was obviously much impressed. The priest went on.
• "Despite the historical record, several of our contemporaries are reinforcing the legend that it was from the Ardennes of Artemis-Astarte that the Sicambrian so called forbears of the Merovingians first issued into what is now France, the hexagon-shaped Republic, and that these were, if Benjamites, clearly also Jews."
• "France has always been pro-Israeli," Peter reflected, "which is also a very good reason for not being anti-Palestinian, if you think things through logically to their conclusions. Remember Suez."
• The priest nodded in agreement, then continued once more. "The fact that the Merovingians and Spartans, like Saul and the Nazarites, among whom some, of course, want to include Jesus Christ, wore their hair long, is alleged to reflect their common lineage and magical practice."
• "Of course," chimed in Rose, "we cannot be sure the later tonsuring of Christian kings was meant to be anything more than a ritual humiliation and a purificatory inducement to tears of repentance for sin; whether or not it entailed loss of magic power, it obviously didn't deprive a person of either royal power or rank.
• In any case, I believe we must agree with Wallace-Hadrill that the only form of magic used by the Merovingian kings was that of sealing official documents with a wax image, showing the king's front-face, eyes staring, as if he were there inside the parchment, ready to speak for himself should any person foolishly presume to doubt the force of his written words!"
• "All the same," David insisted, "the legend of the magical power of long hair is still being cultivated, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that all the Seven Sisters are careful to keep their own hair always very long."
• Rose stroked Peter's abundant locks thoughtfully, but said nothing.
• "The Merovingians, by the way," David came to his final point, "are even alleged to have claimed descent from Noah. Also, the mystery cult of Arduina persisted well into the Middle Ages, one centre of this cult of the Queen of Heaven being Lunéville, not far from Stenay or Satanicum, and also not far from Orval. A few kilometres from Stenay on the fringe of the forest of Wśvres, where Dagobert was assassinated, is a village called Baalon.
• Incidentally, the Welsh word for bear is arth, whence Arthur. That's why some imagine the holy graal is simply the blood royal that runs down from the Great Bear via Astarte into the Merovingians' only half-human veins!"
• "You've certainly given us quite a lot to think about, Father," Peter Thorne sighed....
• "The cult of Astarte," the priest concluded, as he made his way out, "involved a seven-stage initiation. The dove was her sacred symbol, and Migdal or Magdala, whence Mary Magdalen, was the Village of Doves. Even if in Orthodox Jewish eyes a sinner, the Magdalen, prior to her conversion to Christ, had never been merely a common prostitute. She was a woman of means, as is clear from the expensive ointments she used on Jesus in preparation for his burial. I think we shall find that the Seven Sisters, too, are very well connected, and also that they have considerable means at their disposal."

• CHAPTER TEN
• "My idea about when Pisces ends and Aquarius begins is still too hazy for my liking, Rose darling. Isn't it possible to name the year?"
• "Only very approximately, I'm afraid. If Taurus began about B.C. 4380 and Aries about B.C. 2200, rough dates for more recent Ages would be something like B.C. 40 for Pisces and so, say, A.D. 2120 for Aquarius."
• "But we'll all be dead by then! So why the rush this August?"
• "Oh, the pressure was on before this month, believe me. It's simply that, until I discovered Father Waterman, there was no point in bothering you with this. You fight best when the campaign is concrete and well defined. Also, the pressure is going to stay on for quite some time. You see, dearest, though it's a campaign we're talking about just now, this campaign is part of a war in which I have, even if I have never previously mentioned this to you, been very much involved for ages...."
• For the briefest instant there was once again that far away look in Rose Thorne's eyes, but her husband never seemed to think it called for any comment on his part.
• "What is this war you're talking about now?" he asked.
• "Since 1400 we have been living in the last third or decan of the Piscean Age. Ideally, these 720 years would have been a period that combined reaping the mature harvest of Pisces with tilling the soil, as it were, to be ready for an Aquarian Spring. The period from 760 B.C. until B.C. 40 was principally characterised by such positive processes."
• "You're saying that in our own case this ideal has not been realised?"
• "Exactly so, darling. I don't deny that a lot of positive developments have taken place, in spite of everything, since A.D. 1400, but the main movement has been pretty disastrous - call it a hard winter, coupled with desperate attempts at prolonging the agony by a multiplicity of individual and social therapies that obstruct rather than facilitate the preparation of the eventual Aquarian dawn."
• "I like your analogy, Rose, but can you be a bit more specific?"
• "First, many leading Christians threw off the divinely inspired guidance of the Pope," Rose touched the index-finger of her right hand to her left-hand thumb as she spoke, then moved it to touch her left index-finger as she continued. "Second, the leaders of nations rejected the spiritual guidance of the local Churches, and took refuge in cold reasoning and an excessively abstract science. Third," and she touched her middle finger, "those who instigated the French Revolution cast out empirical science in favour of an even more abstract cult of ideology." Her right index-finger moved on to contact her left ring-finger. "Fourthly, the Russian revolution meant the end of ideology and the rise of a purely pragmatic totalitarian dictatorship, and finally," she caressed her little finger rather suggestively, for it was growing late, and it was time they went, if not to sleep, at least to bed, "most contemporary men and women experience at some time or other the urge to spit in the face of this totalitarian dominance, whether Eastern or Western in style, and are tempted to opt out of the truly human race altogether."
• "The increase in suicides and crimes of violence," Peter spelled it out, "rising unemployment, economic crises, the breakdown of law and order, and all those other sorts of human garbage the philosophers have eloquently summed up as lack of involvement, fear of commitment, existential Angst and pure nausea. Roquentin is certainly not alone!"
• "Thank God we have each other!" Rose smiled across at him.

• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• Travelling tourst-class, Father Waterman was turning over the pages of a book he had brought with him. He was refreshing his memory on the subject of the Rosicrucians and the Free Masons.
• The strictly historical antecedents of each of these two venerable organisations did not carry their origins so far back in time as their contemporary adherents liked to pretend, but nevertheless their spirit and traditions linked them to many ancient esoteric schools and clandestine groups, and it could not be denied that, if not their actual founders, some at least of their very early members had been initiates of a number of highly influential secret societies.
• The Rosicrucians were in many ways the spiritual progeny of the Cathars and the Troubadours, while the Free Masons had had undeniable links with the Knights Templar.
• Though officially Christian, there was something very unusual about the Constitutions and the life-style of the Templars.
• In 1158, for instance, when Thomas Becket had been sent over to France by Henry II to negotiate with Louis VII on his behalf, he had been the guest in Paris of the Templars, and it is known that Saint Robert of Salisbury found reason to doubt the orthodoxy of Becket's religious beliefs - he may, for instance, have denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, like certain others among his clerical colleagues. Not long afterwards, in November 1202, Pope Innocent III would find it necessary to write to the Archbishop of Lyons to insist on that very doctrine.
• It was to be noted that one of the Pope's objections was to the theory that the drop of water mingled during Mass with the wine in the chalice did not, after the consecration, become Christ's Blood along with the wine, but was changed into his phlegm. Now, the Templars were later accused of sometimes spitting on the crucifix. Was there some connection here? And had the Templars been involved in the ritual murder of Thomas à Becket?
• Despite the elaborate and widely publicised cover-up about the Archbishop's having been murdered at the altar, Father Waterman realised that in all probability there was some truth in those contemporary accounts, which can be consulted in Migne's Latin Patrology, which describe him as having four days prior to the Kalends, i.e., the 1st of January, been killed by four knights, each of whom, precisely at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, struck him with four blows of the sword, as he was standing on the fourth step leading up to the pulpit of his cathedral.
• And, come to think of it, what about the meaning that Becket and the Templars attached to the feast of Christmas? Was it not perhaps a disguised fertility cult, the continuation of the pagan celebration of the feast of the winter solstice?
• In Gaul, certainly, as late as A.D. 789, the latter's continuing observance was still the object of ecclesiastical disapproval and reprobation. And it is know that Saint Bernard, who had a deal to do with the founding of the Templars, had relations with some of the last surviving Druids.
• David Waterman found his reading utterly absorbing.
• The hierarchical structure of the Templars' organisation was parallel and, in all but name, identical to that of the Mohammedan Order of Assassins. To the Sheikh El Djebel corresponded the Grand Master, to the Knights of Refik the Grand Priors of the Dais, while the Equerries were the equivalent of the Fidavi, and the Brethren the opposite numbers of the Lassik. Like the Templars, the Assassins wore white, and though the Assassins had not, of course, worn a red cross, a red cincture had been part of their regular apparel.
• It was hard to avoid the impression, to put it no more strongly than that, that underneath a veneer of superficial conformity with the requirements of either the Muslim or the Christian faith, the Assassins and the Templars alike had welcomed within their ranks, and even promoted to high office a number of elements who were really free spirits, for whom such religious adherence was never more than lip-service.
• Was this, he wondered, what had eventually caused the Priory of Sion to sever its own links with the Templars in 1188?
• It was at least clear that in incorporating into his Plantagenet coat-of-arms the figure of a leopard or panther, reminiscent of one of the ritual garments adopted by Egypt's ancient pharaohs, Henry II had wished to express anti-ecclesiastical sentiments, and even his acknowledgment of the great god Pan, in other words, of a self-sufficient cosmic principle, Nature herself.
• David mused for a while over the implications of his own growing fondness for the many-sided Rose Thorne, and then turned back to his reading.
• The Rosicrucians, he learned, though not founded as such until 1604, and while having been, as Richard Wagner had realised, utterly inimical to the Templars, had had obvious and undeniable links with the Cathars of southern France. Their interpretation of the cabbala, for instance, incorporated many features of the cult of the Graal.
• Malkuth, the foundation placed in that region of death which is the prelude to New Life, was the castle of Camelot, from which each knight rode out; it was the base of the Graal Chalice.
• Within the Cup, of course, were the refreshing wines of victory in the joust of Love, Netzach, twinned with the Glory of Secret Knowledge, Hod; the former was the castle of Joyful Guard, the latter the castle of the Magic Chessboard.
• Above the Cup of the Holy Graal, One Naturally placed the equally Holy Lance, and this was displayed not point downwards, as if it were dominating and penetrating the receptive vessel of the Sacred Chalice but, faithful to the Tantric-like Tradition of the Cathars, it rose straight up, as if the thrusting energy of male vigour, nourished by feminine support, would fertilise Heaven itself, and so enliven IT with human meaning and value.
• The Gateway to this vision was the castle of the Fisher King, the knob at one end of the strong shaft, that extremity which made immediate contact with the female - this was Tiphareth, the experience of Beauty.
• The sharp tip of the Lance, corresponding to the penetration of the spinal marrow into the brain-case, and so to the Final Opening of the Third Eye, was Kether, the Final Crown of Self-realisation.
• The intervening stages, Geburah - Strength, Chesed or Gedulah - Grace or Mercy, Binah - Understanding and Chokmah - Wisdom, were all implicit in the task of ensuring the actual shaft of the Lance was straight and hard enough for the job, and that One's masterly control and direction of IT was steady, swift at need, powerful too, and unerringly accurate.
• From the Cathars the Rosicrucians seemed to have derived a body of Teaching that was at once sexual-initiatory, cosmic and profoundly Spiritual.
• The Dove of the Cathar symbol evoked the rising of the New Dawn of the Aquarian vision of the Holy Spirit out of the violent crusades of Piscean, Christ-centred religious currents, though the sound of the Dove's wing-beat might well prove to have greater symbolic and stronger effective import than the sight of this divine creature that can fly far more gracefully than any aeroplane.
• The priest put away his book, fastened his safety-belt, after first making the Sign of the Cross, and then waited for his plane to land.

• CHAPTER TWELVE
• Turkdean Peter Thorne was quite enthralled by what he was reading in the Redgrave parish papers.
• Early evidence of Christianity throughout the whole of Gloucestershire was slight, and of the Old British Christianity there seemed to have survived scarcely a trace. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Christianity had been introduced into the county during the reign of King Lucius, and the legend of the burial of that king in A.D. 156 perhaps testified to the truth that Christianity had spread into the district soon after it was first brought into Britain. The name Lucius, of course, means Son of Light.
• Up to now it had proved impossible to trace the gradual growth of the Church in the county, but about 715 there had been a small monastery at Redgrave. It was mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle, and comprised a house and a church, both built only of timber. Thus, it was clearly earlier than the better known churches of Deerhurst, Cirencester and Winchcombe, though, of course, not quite as old as Gloucester Abbey.
• A slightly later reference to Redgrave occurred in the Acts of the Council of Cloveshoe, A.D. 803, when the Archiepiscopate of Lichfield was abolished and restored to Canterbury.
• It therefore seemed obvious that though the present Saint Mary's church ostensibly dated only from round about 1135, it had been preceded by an earlier presumably timber structure, and very likely rested on the same site, unless - but that was what, with Rose's help, he would do his best to find out....
• So far as Father Waterman's researches had disclosed, it was in the reign of Henry I that the Chamberlain of Normandy, Rabellus, had given the territory of Redgrave to the monastery of Saint Barbe-en-Auge in Normandy, which had been founded as a house of Augustinian Canons in 1128. A Prior and one or two Canons had been sent over to occupy Redgrave and establish a cell, presumably the beginnings of the present church.
• When other alien priories were seized by Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, the priory of Redgrave seems to have remained intact, with the Prior paying a ferm to the Exchequer, but in the reign of Richard II custody of the residential quarters and outbuildings had been assigned to one of the King's clerks for a rent of one hundred marks a year, and the church had on the same occasion passed into the hands of the diocesan clergy.
• From the time of the reformation onwards it had, of course, been for a long time the local Anglican parish-church, but, because of the proximity of more conveniently appointed churches, the Commissioners had eventually sold off the property, which had in this way passed into possession of the present-day Roman Catholic diocese of Codfield.

• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
• Herr Müller had reason to be proud of his country's contributions to Egyptology. Wilhelm Spiegelberg had, round the turn of the century, advanced enormously the knowledge of Demotic, the cursive Egyptian script and language of the Late and Greco-Roman periods. In 1911 and again in 1913 George Möller had directed important excavations at Deir-el-Medina. Immediately after this, in 1913-14, Ludwig Borchardt had unearthed the house of the sculptor Thutmose, containing the world-famous bust of Nefer-Titi, at El-Amarna. Then, between 1926 and 1953 Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow had published their monumental 11-volume Dictionary of the Egyptian Language. But, of course, what principally rejoiced the heart of Herr Müller was his own participation, as the officer of the Gestapo mainly responsible for matters of state security, in the Third Reich's patronage of Pierre Montet's excavation of a set of intact tombs of the XXIst- and XXIInd-dynasty kings and royal family at Tanis in the Nile Delta.
• The whole world recognised that these excavations had provided rare examples of art in precious materials from a period that had left behind it only very few significant remains. But of the most significant of these remains, Otto congratulated himself, the world still remained ignorant. Possession of it was the key to that self-confidence which was the secret of his power.
• His eyes ran over to the small rug that covered the electronically protected safe set into his floor. The green chalice in it was fashioned out of part of a meteorite, and it was very ancient, the cup being of hexagonal design.
• The famous European graal, if, indeed, it still existed, was certainly not unique.
• Nevertheless, so long as an European graal was allowed to survive intact, his own power might be challenged by anybody whose skill in high magic enabled them to mobilise the European graal's occult forces against his own.
• That was why, in March 1944, he had taken a certain interest in the 7th-centenary manifestations at Monségur.
• It was for the same reason that, the following year, he had been careful to keep himself fully informed about the Nazi burial of a certain secret treasure in the glacier of Zillertal in the Tyrol, just above the Furtschlag mountain-refuge.
• If, afterwards, Lieutenant Franz Gottlich, as well as three mountain-climbers, Helmuth Mayer, Ludwig Pichler and Emmanuel Werba had been murdered, Otto Müller, though not the only guilty part, could not claim entire innocence of these crimes.

• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
• Waterman did not write letters while on retreat. Neither did he listen to the radio, watch television, nor read the secular press. But he saw no reason to deprive himself of the enlightenment afforded him by the frequently instructive pages of the Vatican newspaper.
• There was one particular item that especially engaged his attention.
• The reputed chair of Saint Peter, honoured by a special feast of the Church as well as by the homage of centuries of pilgrims, was evidently not the fake that some Protestant and liberal historians had liked to think.
• Hitherto, it had been too readily assumed that this chair, which was kept, of course, in the great basilica of Saint Peter's, had been made some time after the reign of Charlemagne in the 9th century, in order to make the claims of the Roman Primatial See come true in a more tangible way than the simple words of Christ to Saint Peter, as these had been recorded in the Gospel.
• Professor Margherita Guarducci had, David Waterman remembered, served the Church well during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, when her decipherment of the many inscriptions in the cemetery beneath the crypt of Saint Peter's had helped to establish that the basilica did, indeed, rest on a spot which had originally been hallowed by the first Pope's sacred remains.
• The eminent professor had now published a new book in Italian showing that parts of the chair dated from the 3rd century.
• Scenes carved on it had come from Alexandria in Egypt, and had been brought to Rome by Maximian, then a persecutor of the early Christians.
• It was his daughter, Fausta, who had married the Emperor Constantine, and it was, of course, the latter who had made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
• The Egyptian initiate and Alexandrian Christian, Ormus, David Waterman mused, had certainly been a most influential figure. Was this fresh evidence going to bring to light his hidden influence on the inner development of the Christian teachings, even in the very heart of Rome itself?
• According to the account published in the Osservatore Romano, the throne in Saint Peter's also incorporated part of a chair which Charles the Bald had brought with him to Rome, when he had been crowned by Pope John VIII in 875. The priest found this detail extremely important.
• Dagobert II, descendant of Clovis, had been assassinated on the orders of Pepin on 23rd December 679, but his burial-place had only been rediscovered in 872, and when, on 10th September that same year, he was canonised at Douzy, this had obviously been to satisfy the wishes of Charles the Bald.
• It had sometimes been suggested that, by consecrating Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas day A.D. 800, the Church had perjured her own sworn alliance with the Merovingian dynasty, established by the baptism of Clovis at Rheims in 496.
• But other commentators, of course, had thought Saint Ambrose's earlier understanding with the Visigoths had been betrayed by the Church's Merovingian flirtation, and that something had had to be done to set matters to rights.
• After all, Hincmar's Life of Saint Rémy, written about 869, does not glorify either Clovis or the Merovingians, whom it looks upon simply as instruments of the Church, Saint Rémy himself having been, indeed, Papal Vice-Gerent over the suffragan bishops of the region and also, as such, superior to the Crown - even in temporal matters.
• At the time, of course, this would not have appeared at all strange. Thirty-four letters of exhortation or admonishment addressed by the Pope to the Gaulish bishops between 404-464 were, Father Waterman seemed to remember, still extant. The Gaulish bishops had perceived in such missives not merely the spiritual authority of Saint Peter's successor, but also the well established temporal overlordship of the ruler of the great city of Rome, in other words, of Caesar's heir.
• It was also a fact of history that, while benefitting from the undeniable consequences for them of Clovis's baptism at Rheims, the core of Merovingian kingship had nevertheless, at least for a time, remained heathen in some indefinable way. Whether or not that was a good thing, it was not Father Waterman's duty to decide.
• Even if it were true that Charlemagne's own subsequent imperial consecration in Rome had embarrassed him, and had occurred against his will, and only at the Pope's insistence, and even if it were also the case that, like Charlemagne, Charles the Bald was sensitive to the need to pay public witness to the prestige and merits of the Merovingian royal line, if he had himself brought a throne with him to the City for his own coronation by the Pope, it certainly could not be held that he either doubted the Pope's own authority to make kings, or was himself unwilling to wear the crown.
• Sigisbert IV may have maintained his claims as a Merovingian ruler by divine right, even without ecclesiastical support, and may even have held limited court as Count of Rhedae, Rennes-le-Château, but the dice had very clearly been cast, and the game had taken another fresh turn, one that it seemed inopportune to try too hard to reverse.
• The chair of Saint Peter in its present form, David read that Professor Guarducci had concluded, had been put together out of these two different sets of historical relics, the Egyptian and the Frankish, at some time in the 13th century.
• The twelve ivory panels incorporated in the throne were actually of pre-Christian design, and depicted the Twelve Labours of Hercules, with another six panels depicting mythological monsters.
• Might not these monsters relate to astrological themes with some bearing on our own dawning experience of the Aquarian revival, the priest wondered.
• At all events, even if Saint Peter had never actually sat on any part of the present chair, at least a man or woman living in the 3rd century might have been taught by some elderly person who had known Saint Peter when he was alive, his wife perhaps.
• This person might then have lived long enough to see the chair coming to be used by the Pope himself. It certainly seemed to be one more vital link with the Church's complex and mysterious past.
• He would show the Vatican-newspaper article to Rose Thorne, and see what she and her archaeologist husband had to say about it.

• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
• "Franck Marie is the author. He helped edit Viollet-le-Duc's excellent work on Carcassonne. He also carries national responsibility for the running of the French Secretariat for Research & Special Studies. He has been probing the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château since 1967.
• The first book of his you should read is La Résurrection du Grand Cocu. It is a detailed analysis of l'Abbe Bérenger Saunière's Last Will & Testament. His most recent book hasn't been out more than two weeks, and it is marvellously enjoyable. He claims in it that Jules Verne's novel, Clovis Dardentor, was actually written in code, and that Captain Bugarach is a specially significant character. Its title, by the way, is Le Surprenant Message de Jules Verne.
• "Thank you very much. This information is most useful," said David. "Bugarach is only a few miles South-East of Rennes-le-Château."
• "Why this interest in buried treasure, mio caro?" his friend quizzed him.
• David knew an indirect reply would please Marco Andrea best. "To answer that question," he said, "I must first tell you about my experience in Quillan."
• "You mean the small town to the West of Rennes-le-Château?"
• "Yes. The parish-church there is well worth visiting. There is no crucifix on the high altar, no crucifix on the wall behind the high altar, no crucifix anywhere to be seen in the main body of the church."
• "Many Catholics would find that extremely unusual," Don Todeschini admitted, reserving his own position.
• "Instead, there is a beautiful new oil-painting, about 6' by 12', on the middle of the wall behind the altar. The red of God's Holy Spirit is its dominant note. There is a plain, silvery white Cross in the top left-hand corner of the composition. In the middle and to the right, in the lower half of the picture, are represented no clergy at all, but six or seven lay-persons, men, women and children, depicted with their backs to the viewer and, indeed, to the altar, so that they themselves are facing and looking up towards the Cross, from which broad rays of brilliant sunlight, bands of various tones of red interspersed with hints of gold, stream down upon them, giving the impression that the shoulder- and almost-waist-length, golden blonde hair of their spokesperson, whose face can be glimpsed in half-profile, is the embodiment in this beautiful young woman of the gracious Gift that is God's Salvation."
• "I get the picture," the Italian broke in. "It is all the Glory of the Resurrection, without any need to pay the price of suffering and death; in other words, from the traditional point of view at any rate, more a Cathar than a Catholic theological position."
• "I knew you would understand," David continued. "And there is more. The top of this back wall above the painting almost vanishes into a sort of mock cupola, which may be thought of as Heaven itself. Instead of this section of wall having been left blank, it has been surfaced with an oval arrangement of long and slender rays of red brick - another Sun-burst, if you like, a sort of explosion into Space & Time of God's Self-giving Grace. Well, this is used as contrasting background to set in relief a 4'- or 5'-high, pale-blue and white, presumably plaster statue of Our Lady."
• "And how is Our Blessed Mother represented?" The question was an inevitable as it was obvious.
• Not so David's answer. " The first impression is that of a statue of the Immaculate Conception. However, the rosary does not hang from the cincture at Mary's waist, and the hands are not joined. Instead, the right arm is held high, with the shoulder drawn back somewhat, and the arm is slightly bent at the elbow. The four fingers and the thumb are spread around the cupped palm. The impression is half that of a Joan of Arc summoning troops to battle, half that of Mary's hand beaming down Grace - like a Light-House protecting her children, as they are storm-tossed on the turbulent sea of life."
• "So much for the active right hand. What about the receptive, more passive left hand?"
• "Though unusual, the scene is theologically appropriate. A 2- or 3-years-old Child Jesus gives Divine Life to his Mother symbolically, since it is his tiny right hand that holds her left hand. However, he is clearly striding forward and tugging away from her laterally at the same time, as if seeking to find some opening, some way forward, on the left...."
• "How sinister!" murmured Don Todeschini, intending not a facile pun, but a sobering truth. "Pope John XXIII's apertura alla sinistra didn't exactly help the Christian Democrats. Do you think a theological dialogue with Satan can help the present-day Church in France?"
• "A grave question, perhaps," David replied - and this time the pun was very probably intended. "You asked me about my interest in certain buried treasures. It is not their burial that bothers me, but their present resurrection. Is the gold of Rennes-le-Château serving God, or Satan, or both? These are, I believe, the most pressing questions I need to ask you."
• "I appreciate your confidence, and I note the questions. God bless you, David. We must speak again tomorrow."

• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
• "I adopt B.C. 40 and A.D. 2120 as hypothetical starting- and finishing-dates for the Age of Pisces. In Alexandria, the recapitulation of Ancient Egypt, and also an important seed-bed of Christianity, I find Ormus converted by Saint Mark in A.D. 46. I link Ormus's own insistence on the victory of Light over darkness to the dominance of the Transfiguration and Enlightenment themes in Mark's Gospel, evidenced, in particular, by the special attention given by that Evangelist to the miraculous cure of the man born blind."
• Marco Andrea nodded his approval, and Father Waterman continued. "Faith in cosmic equilibrium as a bipolar dialectic of complements makes me assume the contemporaneous presence in Christian circles of some high initiate in the Black Arts, very possibly a woman. She was secretly responsible for the inclusion of certain mythological scenes in the decoration of what is now called Saint Peter's chair, but may originally have been more like Eve's."
• "Most interesting, though highly speculative so far. But do continue."
• "Saxon Christianity, which in Gloucestershire dates from before the death of King Lucius, Son of Light, in 156, seems to have been uncontaminated by such aberrations as beset Rome. In my own parish, where a small monastery was founded round about 715, Christianity was at first all purity and light."
• "At first, you say?"
• "I'll get round to that by and by. Remember, however, that even as early as that, European Christianity was already infected with this Alexandrian poison; at least that's what I suspect lies partly behind Pepin's ordering Dagobert's assassination in 679."
• "That would take some proving, with so much evidence tampered with, or even destroyed. But do continue with what you were saying."
• "The spiritual pestilence first reached Redgrave in or just before 1135, the year in which the present stone church was originally built. The trouble was due to its Norman links with certain Augustinian Canons from Saint Barbe-en-Auge. It was a period of religious and anti-religious ferment. 1135 also saw new constructions going up in the old Chartres cathedral. The bankers, so to speak, for many such ventures, whether in England or here in Europe were, of course, Saint Bernard's darlings, the Knights Templar, and they were deeply immersed in all aspects of life in the Middle East."
• "So you don't think the accusations against the Templars, that they were involved in the Black Arts, were baseless ones, merely the result of envy and rancour?"
• "No smoke without fire," David sighed heavily, as though even he was finding acceptant resignation difficult. "In 1158 Thomas à Becket, as emissary of England's King, honoured the Templars' Parisian residence with his exalted presence, yet merely thirty years later, in 1188, the Priory of Sion disowned them and, from then on, disaster and doom pursued them to their final downfall and disgrace. Their evil secret is currently my own major problem."
• "How so?" Don Todeschini put this question as gently as he could.
• "Several commentators," David replied slowly, "have remarked on the striking contrast that we find between the Cathars' compulsive obsession with the Holy Graal and the Templars' apparently total indifference to it, let alone its whereabouts.
• My own belief is that just as the celestial Graal of the Zodiac is balanced by an invisible anti-material graal of Black Holes, so the pure Graal of the Arthurian legend is balanced by a Satanic graal of darkest necromancy. Knowledge of and interest in the power of this death-dealing cup will have been propagated in Alexandrian Christianity by that dark Mistress I have already referred to.
• In the later Muslim culture such knowledge formed part of the secret knowledge in the harems of the most powerful Courts in those regions. The Order of Assassins secretly worshipped at these evil shrines, and so, even more secretly, did the Templars, when on active service in the Middle East. It was the discovery of this tremendous scandal that caused the Priory of Sion to disown them."
• "But it was too late; the damage had been done," Don Todeschini intervened to express both his understanding and his compassion.
• "And so much damage!" Father Waterman looked quite haggard. "Not just my own parish-church of Saint Mary, but very probably the great reconstructed cathedral of Chartres, built a couple of generations later, together with numerous other sacred buildings, while apparently consecrated to the exclusive worship of God and dedicated to the honour of Our Saviour's Most Holy & Blessed Mother, were also secretly intended to be shrines of the wicked Black Virgin, the devouring spider of death, Our Lady Queen of Darkness."
• "What you are claiming to be fact, if I understand you, David, is that while the Cathars and, after them, the Rosicrucians have cultivated interest in the Arthurian Graal, and so have sought to purify their lives in preparation for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Templars and Assassins, together with their heirs the Free Masons, are the secret slaves of some Order of women consecated to the victory of death over Life."
• "Exactly so, Marco Andrea. Just to have said all that to a friend who can understand, already brings me great relief!"
• "Thank God for that, carissimo," said the older man. "But surely your story isn't over yet. You've still left out the most important part. Most of what you have told me about, I knew already. In any case, it refers to a dim and distant past. Besides, however great and terrible the powers of darkness, our Faith assures each of us that God's Saving Love IS Infinite. We have, therefore, no grounds for either fear or anxiety, no cause for alarm."
• "Thanks for the reminder. It is true my biggest problem is something that is going on at this very moment."
• Don Todeschini looked at his own four walls and ceiling, saw they were still intact, refilled David's and his own glass with sambuca, and smiled reassuringly.
• "I was telling you yesterday about the parish-church in Quillan. I have some additional misgivings. It isn't merely that there is no crucifix in the main body of the church. There is a small room up a few steps from the nave at the back of the church, to the right of the West door, and across from the entrance on the North side, which is the one that is mainly used.
• Well, the original crucifix from the sanctuary has been set up in this dark hole, and the two small walls to either side of it are almost completely covered with the fourteen Stations of the Cross. These fifteen objects of traditonal devotion are so crammed together, and the place is so dark one can hardly see or recognise them. On a third wall a notice scrawled on cardboard states - The Old Church."
• "Shocking, no doubt," agreed Marco Andrea. "Yet, if Jesus himself rose in Glory after three days' burial in the darkness of the tomb, need we doubt the ability of his Phoenix-Church to resurrect herself in triumph after this period of deep travail she is now experiencing?"
• "I sincerely hope not," David stated.
• "Excellent. Then leave Quillan to me. You concentrate on Redgrave."
• Father Waterman was about to continue, but Don Todeschini put a finger to his lips. "Redgrave is your very own parish; God, not I, must give the strength and wisdom you need."
• David rose to leave, but paused and turned back towards Marco Andrea, just before he reached the door. "By the way, I almost forgot, there is another point about Quillan I've still not mentioned."
• Don Todeschini's limpid gaze fixed itself expectantly on the English priest's still anxious but candid countenance. "Speak, my son," he said, "and be at peace."
• "There is some strange carving on one of the stones set high up in the outside wall of the church and to the left of the entrance-porch. Its Cathar symbolism is apparent, but I think it has some other meaning as well. The lines in the crude geometry of the design are most likely topographical indications.
• In my honest opinion, it is now at Quillan, or very close to it, and no longer at Rennes-le-Château, that you are likely to find Bérenger Saunière's present-day successor."

• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
• Up in his room after supper, Father Waterman had finished Compline, and was wondering if he had been entirely wise to let Don Todeschini know everything he had learned about the parish-church in Quillan.
• In his own mind, the almost equilateral, isoceles triangle incised in the stone, its base-line rising slightly as it moved from left to right, on which side it was then extended to form the base of another similar but inverted half-sized triangle, held a whole wealth of significance.
• He had noted how a straight line flowing down from the apex of the larger triangle bisected its base, and then continued just long enough to form with it the outline of the equal-armed Cathar cross. This entire device was etched out, inside a plain-stone armorial shield, below and slightly to the left of which another, almost horizontal line had been cut deep into the same single block of masonry.
• Clearly, he thought, this symbol needed to be suitably related to the date, 17 March 1912, inscribed beneath the only statue to be found standing in the public square just by the church.
• Father Waterman suspected it also somehow related to the Cathar cross on the outside of the Retreat Centre in the Maison des Hospitaliers, barely a few yards away from the Pont Vieu in Carcassonne.
• There were Cathar designs, too, he had noticed, on the railings around the adjacent statue of Our Lady of Consolation, very likely an only slightly camouflaged reference to the Cathar Church itself, their last sacraments being usually referred to as the Consolamentum. And that meant the date, 3 May 1861, might also have some special numerological import.

• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
• "Strange business for a priest, don't you think, even one so exceptional as David?"
• "Oh, I don't know. Cardinal Richelieu had a most extensive library on all manner of occult subjects. It has also been suggested the Bishop of Rheims was a warlock in one of Joan of Arc's Covens. As for today, it is an age of encounter and dialogue, and so who is the Devil, if not the President of the Assembly of Separated Angels?"

• CHAPTER NINETEEN
• David, he thought, Israel's Shepherd-King, prophetic type of the future Messiah, a man of dreams, in love with Nature, valiant warrior, passionate and all too human sinner, a great leader with a warm, repentant heart and a soul steadfast in prayer - perfect archetype of the Age of Aries.
• His own first name, then, evoked the memory of David's and Solomon's royal sway over Jerusalem, a memory sacred to all Orthodox Jews, but looked upon by the heirs of the Benjamites as a sacrilegious usurpation of the prerogatives of Astarte's Golden Calf.

• CHAPTER TWENTY
• "Some time ago an interesting article appeared in Harper's. Movies have been made showing a mule making its away across steep, mountain slopes, while controlled by a Sun-compass and brain-electrodes. It didn't matter whether the going was rough or easy, the mule always kept on walking in a perfectly straight line. I found this fact interested me strangely, so I decided to look into it further.
• Some of the research encouraged by the United States National Institute of Health, and specifically by the National Institute of Neurological Disease and the National Institute of Mental Health, appears to have attracted the attention, quite some time ago now, of the FBI, the CIA, Air-Force Intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the State Department. With all those slobs looking into something, it simply seemed too bad to miss.
• Apparently electrodes can be implanted in the brain without needing to use any anaesthetic. During the process of implantation, there seems to be no more pain than that of a simple needle-prick in the scalp. In this way, short lengths of hypodermic-needle tubing, equal in length to the thickness of the skull, can be pushed through the subject's scalp and into the skull. The technique seems to work equally well on both men and women. These stainless steel guides furnish easy passage-ways for the later insertion of the actual electrodes into the brain to any desired distance, and at any selected location - whether in the cortex, or right at the bottom of the skull. Because the brain has no pain fibres itself, a man or woman doesn't even notice the penetration of an electrode deeper into the brain.
• Provided one is careful to use a balanced bi-directional pulse-pair wave-form, with the current flowing briefly in one and then momentarily in the opposite direction, so that ions within the neurons move first in one way but then in another, it is quite possible to stimulate the brain electrically without injuring the nerve cells.
• This technique, in conjunction with suitable radio impulses, makes it feasible to trigger from a distance reactions of pain, fear, anxiety, anger, pleasure, sexual arousal, or generally positive reinforcing motivations within one's target subject, and to switch such reactions on and off at will."

• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
• "A friend of mine in the Vatican Library," Father Waterman confided, "was able to give me one or two additional bits of information about the distant history of this parish-church. The resulting picture is still not entirely complete, so that a certain amount must remain for the present merely conjecture.... As we suspected, there is a link with the darker side of Ancient Egypt."
• "Red Seth and Black Isis!" Peter shook his head. "I'm sorry. Please, go on."
• "Well," David continued, "Ormus's own conversion to Christianity seems to have been genuine enough, but one result of it was that some far less pure members of his entourage established clandestine contacts with certain less enlightened disciples of Saint Mark. The cult of darkness infiltrated primitive Christianity, first in Alexandria, then in Rome itself. The Church was never corrupted, but several churchmen were corrupt. Unfortunately, I don't mean simply as individuals; they had their own undercover organisation as well....
• A young cleric in this corrupt group was partly responsible for Dagobert II's murder in 679, and some 36 years later, a not insignificant number, he left France, and came to Redgrave as first superior of the small monastery established here in 715.
• As well as fulfilling his public duties as a Christian Churchman and pastor of souls, he established relations with secret worshippers of the Dark Goddess numbered among the surviving members of some local Druid cults. I expect we shall soon uncover evidence of their celebration of the dark mysteries."
• "All this is certainly very exciting," said Rose. "When do we start digging?"
• "Patience, darling," put in Peter, "I don't think Father Waterman has quite finished."
• "I won't keep you on tenter-hooks much longer," the priest agreed, "but it does seem best to put you fully in the picture. It was, I believe, a growing realisation among the better churchmen of the extent of the evil undercurrents flowing through Christian churches in these parts that occasioned, in 803, the Council of Cloveshoe's decision to dismantle the Archiepiscopate of Lichfield, hoping that the authority of Canterbury would suffice to restore right order.
• Unfortunately, as we know from history, this step only motivated these secret worshippers of darkness to aim their evil darts at Canterbury itself. They were the force behind Saint Thomas à Becket's murder; the King's anger with his Chancellor was only their pretext."
• "How do you make that out?" asked Peter, while Rose smilingly nodded her head in agreement.
• "It would," Father Waterman readily acknowledged, "be silly even to attempt to deny that today most Free Masons are good and honest folk. Equally it seems to me more than likely that the majority of their predecessors, the Assassins in the East and the Templars in the West, were perfectly upright men. However, a clandestine yet extremely influential minority of members of these related organisations have always worshipped Astarte, taking their orders from her earthly female Advocates.
• One such, at least, was of the company of those four Knights who murdered Thomas; indeed, I have reason to believe this scurvy individual was later buried at Redgrave.
• Having said that much, I feel it's best we go and dig. However, though I don't want to digress too far from the subject, I can at least mention that another local worshipper of Black Isis is known to have been behind Simon de Montfort's cruel crusade against the Cathars - the followers of Astarte have always felt that, if only the Graal of Pure Love can be destroyed once and for all, their own green cup of misery and poison would be free to unleash a flood-tide of sufferings upon the world."
• The parish-priest fell silent, and the trio walked back across the fields to the track leading to Saint Mary's, where, unless one of the Seven Sisters or some other hostile agent had got there before them, they now planned to start digging.

FOR FURTHER READING

• SYLVIA FRANCKE & THOMAS CAWTHORNE, The Tree of Life and the Holy Grail (London, Temple Lodge, 1996).
• ALFRED WEYSEN, L'Ile des Veilleurs (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont 1986).

- Shalom & Welcome! -

Jason Crisp's "Rose Thorne Lives!" is Volume Zero I+N The Neith Network Library's Preliminary Series of Books I+N The New Millennium Collection currently being issued I+N the service of The Primordial Wisdom Rainbow Programme from Amydon-Exeter Centre 113.

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