Andrew Gough's Arcadia

By Patrice Chaplin

A poor priest in a rundown parish in the South of France woke up one morning wealthy beyond measure. It was 1891. The parish of Rennes-le-Château and Abbe Bérenger Saunière has mystified the world ever since.

Bérenger Saunière

How did he acquire this endless wealth? Trying to find that answer has given rise to a spate of grail books, the favourite speculation being he found evidence of Mary Magdalena’s escape to Marseilles with the cup used at The Last Supper carrying the blood of Jesus. In some accounts she was also carrying His child. Did the priest have knowledge of a continuing blood line of Jesus? The Vatican would pay highly to suppress that. The story lent itself to alchemy, a fake Crucifixion, Jesus dying in France. Placing the Catholic Church as the paymaster obscured the real story which hid in timeless ritual. The photograph I first saw in Girona of 2 towers not quite identical with a series of numbers underneath remained unexplained.

Years later my friend Josep Tarres said the numbers meant: “I know Sion and were Jewish”. They were used by a private society in Girona existing since the Jewish expulsion in 1492. Its centre was a house with a neo Gothic tower in the old quarter in which a French woman had lived most privately for many years.

Maria Tourdes - The French Woman in Girona

A foreigner, especially a woman alone in that city was most unusual. But then Girona was a city of secrets and had held many not least the Jewish presence, a rich quarter of mystics and scholars in the middle ages unknown to modern Catalonia. It had been closed by order of the Church in 1492 and was restored by Tarres in the 1970s as an offering to Jews to reclaim their heritage.

He uncovered ancient Jewish artefacts, ritual stones and documentation of the cabalist’s meditative journey to dimensions beyond the 4 we know including their ritual known as “the key”. Much of this was held by the still existing private society.

The courtyard at Jose’s Kabbalah Centre (© Patrice Chaplin)

I visited Rennes-le-Château in the nineties when it was teeming with seekers after the priest’s secret. It seemed ransacked, empty with its disquieting church and neo Gothic tower that was on reflection similar to the one now destroyed in Girona. Was there a connection between these towers? The enigmatic priest had gone to the grave in silence. Why had he restored his church in such a challenging way?

The Saint names in Saunière’s church highlight The Grail

Here did he go on his discreet journeys? Who were his pay masters? Back in Girona Tarres had a surprise.

“There is no point going to Rennes le Chateau. You’ll find nothing there. The secrets are here, always have been. And Saunière came here for them.”

A heart attack in 2000 was responsible for his next revelation. The private society had been the custodians of the most inflammatory material sought by kings and popes down the ages. It had waited for a more optimistic world to reveal the source but that time had not come and now Jose faced his own mortality. The photograph of the 2 towers was one purpose of Saunière's visits. Where had he gone on those flights from his parish? Simply across the border to the house of the Frenchwoman. He had copied her tower Magdala built in 1851 and placed it with an exactitude on his land facing Girona. He needed material held by the society especially the sunstone and the key which would give the holder infinite power beyond what could be imagined. His search and discoveries had nothing to do with the church but with ancient Judaism secreted in Girona.

A German cabalist provided a new picture of the priest. “They think he was arrogant throwing away money on useless follies. He had a job to do and this was his best disguise. He understood the term: I know Sion. It brought him to Girona to practice the ancient rituals which he gave to his paymaster, a piece at a time. To give all would be fatal. It had nothing to do with the Vatican. The society had kept the Jewish material safe from Catholic eyes. Saunière had much to decipher, uniting by ritual North and South, Isis and Nephted to make way for the unmanifest messiah. This was his purpose”.

And the 2 towers. Their alignment activated the ritual. He hid their significance in the coded design of his church. What better place than symbolism to keep knowledge safe for those initiates yet to come. The cabalist said it was there in Psalm 48. Everyone looked for an object. She said it was not a thing but a state of being.

Who were the paymasters? The Habsburgs through a Rosicrucian society. You can be sure what he was doing had nothing to do with the Catholic Church or gold bars.

Patrice Chaplin – City of Secrets