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No, I don’t think it’s odd because I’m sure there are other letters where it is more suggestive. I think he covered his tracks enormously well anyway.
Maria Tourdes – Saunière’s good friend and possibly lover (© Patrice Chaplin)
Some of the letters are in the book, and yes, at great expense they have been confirmed to be of the authentic handwriting of Saunière.
One of Patrice’s Saunière letters (© Patrice Chaplin)
At the end of my research I was presented with two photographs. There’s an old woman of ninety-three, she was ninety-one then, very clear, very wonderful, and she was a great friend of Maria - the woman who was a friend of Saunière’s. She gave me one hundred and twenty letters written by Maria and she also gave me photographs. There were two photographs in sepia of the priest alone in Girona. One of him against a wall and the other with a background of some children.
There was another which I didn’t get which was of the priest in the French woman’s garden. The garden is where he entertained. Some of his guests were well known at the time. I think Claude Debussy was one of them. They used to come from Paris to see him, as did the Habsburgs when Rennes-le-Château was too hot for these people, and there was no point in going there.
Everything was in Spain, and Saunière took many trips to Girona, on average one trip a week at one point. He would do the entertaining - Maria was the cover. Saunière’s brother Alfred used to visit a lot, too. Anyway, the sepia photographs. I was in such a rush to get these eighty-six pieces of evidence, I just bundled them all in a hotel room and I didn’t look at them for some time.
I gave the photos to my publisher to have them copied because they all had to be sent back to Spain. Some time latter the publisher said to me ‘these photographs look strange. They look as if they’ve been tampered with, could you have a look at them?’
I’m no good at photography so I wouldn’t know if someone had done something or not. Anyway, I took them to Girona and took them to a man that worked in the Municipalities - we don’t worry about his credentials, he’s much respected. I showed them to him and said ‘are these the ones we got from the old lady?’ I said ‘yes.’
He looked at them and said ‘my god, no.’ He said ‘ditch these, this is discrediting’, so I said ‘what do you mean’, and he said ‘you’ve gone to far with it now, you’re being discredited, so what they’re going to try and do is point the finger at the photographs and say how can she come out with these - these are not authentic so her book is untrue.’
So I phoned up the publisher and said ‘you’re right, these photographs are funny. These photographs are definitely wild ones, ditch them.’ So I said to him ‘who could have done it?’
All he said to me was ‘don’t be anywhere on your own.’
This I heard from many people in Girona about the mirroring of a similar tower in the North. The tower in Girona is called The House with the Tower, and this of course is mad, to have a tower on that simple country house in the midst of this gothic, pre-roman even, city. So suddenly we’ve got a neo–tower from 1851 sticking up there, and no one ever questioned it. The two towers produce what is called the Golden Cut, which is to do with the energy; to unite the North and South. And if you do not unite the North and the South then the portal for the next realm of experience cannot appear.
They also said that the centre of the two towers is what’s really important. I’ve put that in the book so I won’t go into that. It’s what’s in the middle, that’s what’s special.
Yes. It’s in the book.
The Torre Magdala - Girona (© Patrice Chaplin)
Yes. Saunière’s lover Maria met Gerard de Sede in Paris. He was after the story.
That’s how the whole legend started.
I don’t think she gave him that much because I read his book and there wasn’t that much in it. I saw him in the flat in her apartment in Paris when she was ill, and that must have been in the early 60’s. He was a young author. I didn’t register him. There were so many people around, and she was dying. Jose was dead against her talking to him, that’s all I remember. I only remember recalling that he was there.
I don’t know. I have no idea.
That I don’t know. There’s a lot of talk about the towers in Girona by people that know about Saunière’s visits. These are the children of the people that remember Saunière coming to the city, and there are a lot of them. Who built the tower, well, the society built it. The society built the tower in Girona, without doubt. They organized it, they paid for it, and they had a front man to do it. He was a lawyer, I think. Most of the story has lawyers not far in front.
Train Station – Girona, in the time of Saunière (© Patrice Chaplin)
Besalú, yes, it’s a mysterious place. It’s where Bigou hid. Yes, they said he went to Sabadell, but he didn’t. He went to Besalú. One day we travelled to a private chapel in the middle of a forest, just outside of Besalú, next to a house where Bigou stayed. The people who had the key were unwilling, but we got in, and as we were entering this chapel in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of hundreds of trees, suddenly there’s a crunching of branches and along come two guys in suits wearing shades. I mean these don’t look like your average walkers through the forest.
It was, originally, but it was taken out.
So, I turned round and saw these men and thought this is not a very nice moment. And the shepherd who was holding the key turns round and mumbles something incomprehensible, but I thought well let’s get inside the church. So we went in and these two men came in, and I said to the friend who I was with, who’s well known in Catalonia, I said ‘I don’t like the look of these.’ So she said ‘they’re just taking a walk. It’s a nice day. They’re like us, they’re in the forest. Don’t worry.’
So I thought she doesn’t seem worried, so I get the camera out to take a couple of photos and one of them comes up and said in English ‘Madam this is a church’ and he said it in a way that had a hundred boundaries around it.
I thought I’d better put the camera away and get out of here. So my friend said ‘give the shepherd twenty euros and let’s go.’
We had to walk miles to the car around winding paths. I mean to get back to our car we had to walk a long way. We didn’t see any trace of these guys, no car, no nothing. So we finally got to the car, and I said to her ‘did you tell anyone that we were coming here?’ And she said ‘no.’
Then she said ‘oh yes I did tell’, and she mentioned the security agents name. Well I thought the thing to do with him is just face it full on and ask him how he protects a secret society. And he said to me ‘It’s the hardest thing to do, a society like that.’ So I said ‘how do you do it?’
He was evasive and said ‘well if such a society exists I would use a deterrent method.’ I said ‘what would that be’, and he said ‘well I would use a method on one of them or someone close to them that would discourage them from following his example, or any example which would keep them quiet.’
I then thought of the priest Gelis, the friend of Saunière who was ritualistically murdered. I thought ‘that sounds a bit like one way to keep Saunière on the hill and in place.’ It could have been a warning.
And so I mentioned that to him, and he said that ‘Saunière wasn’t the only priest involved’, so he obviously knew a lot more than he was saying. I said ‘if you had the material today, should it exist, and you wanted to keep it secret, would you give it to the church’, and he said ‘never’
I thought for a moment and then said ‘would you leave it with a bank?’
He said ‘no’, so I said ‘who would you leave it with?’
He said ‘the Masons might be an idea because they know what happens if they divulge secrets, or at least they used to.’
The strange Crucifixion scene at the church outside of Besalú (© Patrice Chaplin)
Yes, Bigou went to a house in Besalú near the chapel I’ve just described. They conducted rituals there, and in Girona. In the process of performing these rituals they created visions that even non participants witnessed. However, the church declared them not miraculous, and they were denied the miracle status. The church had to deny them. You see, Catalans like things very, very real, and reality for them is stones, water and sounds. They don’t go for visions.
Yes.
He brought what he had in that church in Rennes-le-Château, that’s what I understood, and he left information in the scrolls about the location in Spain. That’s what he did.
The scrolls which were found in the church. But we have to remember that according to the society in Spain, Saunière knew about all this long before he started stumbling over broken alter pieces. He was on a mission when he went to Narbonne, where he was seeking information about this enigma, and as we know it ended up with him having a huge treasure.
I don’t know what his precise aim would have been, but I would say it would have then been inspired by the control of the Rosicrucian’s and the Habsburgs - they were his pay masters. He went to that church in Rennes-le-Château with specific intentions.
Yes, and it came through to him through Maria Tourdes. She had a lot of it. She had to invest it. There are loads of documents of invested money. There were millions of pounds…
Well they were the grail rituals because they’re all documented on scrolls which take two hours to perform. They’re not simple. It’s at least a two hour event, and it has to be performed by initiates of a high order who have prepared for the ritual. Even to witness the rituals you have to be in a state of purification and have a very high energy level in your nervous system. So you would have been fasting, for instance.
You would have very clear thoughts, and it’s very similar, if not the same, as the one the Kabbalists did in the middle ages where they left these four dimensions and went off to other places, to other spheres. Some didn’t come back, one went mad, one ran away from Judaism, one died and the other lived and wrote a book the experience.
It was the Book of Splendour, or the Zoha. It’s in there, it’s called the Nut Garden, the actual experience, and then there was all the documentation of the experience in Girona. So what we’re really doing is going away from this planet to other places, reaching for effects from there, and resonances and bringing them here. Some people say that they’re not ours to have.
No, no never.
Yes, apparently he did. I don’t know how many people actually participate in the ritual. I don’t think there’s a particular number like number thirteen or something. I feel its very dependant on the high order of the initiates. They also say that in the ceremony, if you’re not protected and careful you can die. You can have a shock. Some people say that’s how Alfred Saunière died, through a ritual, because he drank and that made him impure. The same has been said of his brother, Bérenger. He ended up not well, he didn’t just die ok, he died not good.
It’s because the original custodians are literally dying off. And there’s a rift between them. This has been going on since the sixties. Some want the material given back to the church and other people didn’t think it should be so there was disparity in their thinking. The thing is now, as I understand it from Jose, is that it has disbanded. He has now become very vague and removed from it because he’s given what he can. He doesn’t want to endanger his family by going further into the material. That’s really what he said to me.
Oh, and Jose wrote a Forward for City of Secrets which some people have seen but in the end he never allowed it to be published.
So would I! I think the thing with the Catalans is they’re like rodents, they go underground and you never find them again. It’s very hard to catch them to talk because as far as they are concerned there was no house with a tower, you’d have to put the photo up and say ‘hey, there is a house with a tower!’
‘Oh I don’t know anything about that. That was before my time; don’t know anything about that.’
‘There was a French woman.’ ‘Oh really?’
‘Yeah she was out there, there’s a photograph of her!’
‘Oh yeah, I heard about that from my Grandmother.’
It’s not part of their lives, they’re not interested, and if Jose hadn’t told me then it would all be lost. It would have been gone. It happened as it is told in the book. Ok, I’ve left a few things out…
The publisher’s taken things out, I’ve taken things out. But for me I’m a writer and my intention is to do a good book. That’s my intention. It’s not about being a detective. I did get very caught up with this and became totally obsessed I have to say. I was 24/7 on this. I was obsessed to get this material.
He was more or less how I described him in the book. He was very pert and very sharp. He was in Girona frequently. Jose used to go and see him. He was in love with Jose you know.
Jean Cocteau
I did three films there, one was called The Blind Man, another was about a shooter on the Edgware road, in the other I was supposed to dance. He went down there. He made a short film. He was filming the house, that’s what he was doing. For Cocteau, it was all about the house.
Oh yes. He wanted to get in the house; he wanted to take shots inside. I remember
when we were filming he was all the time trying to get in, but Jose wouldn’t have it. So Cocteau never succeeded in filming inside the house, but he did film in the garden. I recall the scene. I was doing whatever I did. I don’t think I had a script. I can’t remember.
Ya, so Cocteau was fascinating. It was amazing because he was also interested in this thing about Modigliani, because I wrote all this stuff on Modigliani; the play, he bought the radio play. There was almost a movie. I mean it’s been on everywhere that play has, and Cocteau was involved in that. Its strange how he’s in both these stories you know. And with Chaplin, they admired each other.
Yes he was, yeah. I understand that from the German Woman, the Kabbalist, but I didn’t know it myself at the time. He was friendly with a great friend of mine who was a screen writer. He did films like A Place in the Sun. He co-produced and wrote lots of things like Bus Stop and Giant. He did big stuff. He was a socialite. His mother was a friend of Salvador Dali and used to stay with Dali. Also Chaplin was a friend of Dali’s, so when my husband and I went to Cadaques, near where he lived, there was Salvador Dali and his entourage all staying on the property.
Salvador Dali
I’ve been told that he was an initiate of a high order. The German Woman Kabbalist knew him quite well. They did a lot of things with numbers because apparently, higher than seeing, are numbers; sacred numbers. That’s what the ritual is. And as a psychic I don’t link with numbers, and on the Kabbalah scale, to be a seer, to see the images, to see the reality is lower than to understand the numbers. The numbers are what makes the whole thing. The tower was about numbers and the Kabbalah’s about numbers. I was never good at math. I can say that straight away!
No, the towers would make the energies. It seemed to me that they had various forces at work that they could magnetise and initiate themselves. I suppose to get a result really, so the ritual could take place. I mean you couldn’t just have it here and now. As I’ve understood it, and I’ve learned a lot about kabbalah and about portals; to enter the portal or to work in and around the portal you have to be very careful because you could be destroyed. Literally!
Painting of Two Towers by the artist, La Nuit (© Patrice Chaplin)
I’m told that a portal could be in front of you and you wouldn’t know it. If you don’t know it you can’t see it, and my sources, who are experts in portals, both said Saunière was shown how to hide the sacred messages and symbols and only those who came afterwards who had knowing would understand what they meant. That’s what his job was. He had a lot of work to do. He couldn’t leave Girona as he had work to do and he had to draw the plan for those to come after to see.
And then they said read Psalm 48.
Who? Why Psalm 48?
Well, Jose and the Kabbalist told me about it. They could have taken this bit out of the book. There is much in Psalm 48. Read it. Poussin and Terniers have something in common; the letters SIN. The sacred mountain of the Sumerians was called SIN. Later it moved to Sion, and then it moved North to Canigou. So Psalm 48 is talking about the sacred mountain. It holds the key, according to Jose. The sacred mountain was key to Jose’s work. He needed to open the path for the Messiah.
Frustrating. Very frustrating! I used to ask him questions and I’d get very unsatisfactory answers. There is a letter in the book about Jose saying that he was the tomcat of Girona. That letter was very specific. It says quite clearly follow me and you’ll find the lock. I don’t know anything about that because it wouldn’t be something he’d tell me.
I will never forget seeing a funny tin being wrapped up in hotel towels. That was a strange vessel. It was the one that was taken back up the mountain, up to Canigou. He said it was made of the oldest material ever, since the beginning of time.
As far as I know it was the Grail; the earthly Grail. As far as they’re concerned, the essence of the Grail is over there. It comes in and out of our reality, and only if we’re initiated to see it. You and I would not see it.
That’s where she (Lucia) took it, she went there with it.
Rather not say; have to be careful you know.
No, she went back to take this vessel back up to the mountain to keep it out of sight.
About twenty years go, if memory serves.
Lucia Stillman (not her real name) (© Patrice Chaplin)
They’ll be as sniffy as hell because they hate the Grail, but the book should stand on its own merits. Usually I’ve had good press with my writing. I’m a writer I’m not a Grail person. The writing is what’s important to me.
No, not surprised, but they should be very interested, especially the Jewish connection.
There is some interest. I think it would make a very good film.
I don’t know. I couldn’t even guess!
I don’t know. I don’t think anyone would find anything if someone in the Society hadn’t wanted to say something. Remember, you must go into other dimensions to get the Grail. That I do know. So I will just say that to complete the mystery for me requires acceptance on my part. It’s a journey not a destination and I know my role in it.
With Patrice during the interview - Primrose Hill
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