The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man
Part V-h: Visa to Magonia

Now that we have, for all intents and purposes, disposed of the "Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau" as generally promulgated, what do we have left? Remembering that our "final word" about the "parchments" was:

After so many discrepancies were discovered in the various stories, and serious questions began to be asked, Philippe de Cherisey wrote:

• There were three parchments, not four.
• These parchments were genealogies, not 'faked' gospels.
• The gospels are of recent manufacture, photocopies of two sheets of paper composed a little before the publication of Gerard de Sede's book, and designed to produce an effect upon that author that has exceeded the wildest expectations. [Emphasis, mine.]
• The text Jesu medela vulnerum inscribed by Sauneire on a plaque situated at the foot of the altar in his church has been put to good use by the author of these pseudo-parchments with the intention of giving them an air of authenticity.

The important thing to remember, at this point, is that ALL of the conjecture about the Poussin painting, The Shepherds of Arcadia, resulted from the "deciphering" of the mysterious parchments purportedly found by Berenger Sauniere and reproduced in Gerard de Sede's book. In other words, the "fake" parchments as described by de Cherisey above, were the ones that led to the identification of the painting Shepherds of Arcadia as being "significant" in some way.

Now, if De Cherisey has said that they did not exist, that the "real" parchments were only genealogies, what do we do with our famous painting? Does this mean that all of the "sound and fury" about Bernenger Sauniere and his trip to Paris, and the use of the painting as a clue system "signifies nothing?" What does that make of all the books written by authors who have found such "miraculously synchronous" landscape markers and other clues that "mesh" with the painting and the clues in the parchments?

And, if all of the clues of the parchments and the painting are nonsense, what are we to make of the fact that they HAVE produced strange connections?

For the sake of the reader who is not familiar with the story of the parchments and the painting, I AM going to re-tell it in brief rather soon; but, before I do, I want to go in a slightly different direction in order to give us some more tools with which to evaluate what we are going to discuss.

In Mircea Eliade's most useful book, The Myth of the Eternal Return, he discusses the "mythicization" of historical personages. In Eliade's presentation, he describes the "archetype" of an event as being a sort of "mold" that has a much deeper reality than actual historical events. In this sense, any event or series of events which does NOT fit the "exemplary model" is meaningless, or rather, lacks "true reality" in Platonic terms. Another way of putting it is: there is nothing new under the sun; to everything there is a season.

Eliade writes:

Just before the last war, the Romanian folklorist Constantin Brailiou had occasion to record an admirable ballad in a village in Maramures. Its subject was a tragedy of love: the young suitor had been bewitched by a mountain fairy, and a few days before he was to be married, the fairy, driven by jealousy, had flung him from a cliff. The next day, shepherds found his body and, caught in a tree, his hat. They carried the body back to the village and his fiancee came to meet them; upon seeing her lover dead, she poured out a funeral lament, full of mythological allusions, a liturgical text of rustic beauty. Such was the content of the ballad. In the course of recording the variants that he was able to collect, the folklorist tried to learn the period when the tragedy had occurred; he was told that it was a very old story, which had happened "long ago." Pursuing his inquiries, however, he learned that the event had taken place not quite forty years ealier. He finally even discovered that the heroine was still alive. He went to see her and heard the story from her own lips. It was a quite commonplace tragedy: one evening her lover had slipped and fallen over a cliff; he had not died instantly; his cries had been heard by mountaineers; he had been carried to the village, where he had died soon after. At the funeral, his fiancee, with the other women of the village, had repeated the customary ritual lamentations, without the slightest allusion to the mountain fairy.

Thus, despite the presence of the principal witness, a few years had sufficed to strip the event of all historical authenticity, to transform it into a legendary tale: the jealous fairy, the murder of the young man, the discovery of the dead body, the lament, rich in mythological themes, chanted by the fiancee. Almost all the people of the village had been contemporaries of the authentic historical fact; but this fact, as such, could not satisfy them: the tragic death of a young man on the eve of his marriage was something different from a simple death by accident; it had an occult meaning that could only be revealed by its identification with the category of myth. The mythicization of the accident had not stopped at the creation of a ballad; people told the story of the jealous fairy even when they were talking freely, "prosaically," of the young man's death. When the folklorist drew the villagers' attention to the authentic version, they replied that the old woman had forgotten; that her great grief had almsot destroyed her mind. It ws the myth that told the truth: the real story was already only a falsification. Besides, was not the myth truer by the fact that it made the real story yield a deeper and richer meaning, revealing a tragic destiny?

This mythicization of historical personages appears in exactly the same way in Yugoslavian heroic poetry. Marko Kraljevic, protagonist of the Yugoslavian epic, became famous for his courage during the second half of the fourteenth century. His historical existence is unquestionable, and we even know the date of his death (1394). But no sooner is Marko's historical personality received into the popular memory than it is abolished and his biography is reconstructed in accordance with the norms of myth. His mother is a Vila, a fairy, just as the Greek heroes were the sons of nymphs or naiads. His wife is also a Vila; he wins her through a ruse and takes great care to hide her wings lest she find them, take flight, and abandon him - as, by the way, in certain variants of the ballad, proves to be the case after the birth of their first child. Marko fights a three-headed dragon and kills it, after the archetypal model of Indra, Thraetona, Herakles, and others. In accordance with the myth of the enemy brothers, he too fights with his brother Andrija and kills him. Anachronisms abound in the cycle of Marko, as in all other archaic epic cycles. Marko, who died in 1394, is now the friend, now the enemy, of John Hunyadi, who distinguished himself in the wars against the Turks ca. 1450. It is interesting to note that these two heroes are brought together in the manuscripts of the epic ballads of the seventeenth century; that is, two centuries after Hunyadi's death. In modern epic poems, anachronisms are far less frequent. The personages celebrated in them have not yet had time to be transformed into mythical heroes.

The same mythical prestige glorifies other heroes of Yugoslavian epic poetry. Vukasin and Novak marry Vila. Vuk (the 'Dragon Despot') fights the dragon of Jastrebac and can himself turn into a dragon. Vuk, who reigned in Syrmia between 1471 and 1485, comes to the rescue of Lazar and Milica, who died about a century earlier. In the poems whose action centers upon the first battle of Kosovo (1389), persons figure who had been dead for twenty years, or who were not to die until a century later. Fairies cure wounded heroes, resuscitate them, foretell the future to them, warn them of imminent dangers, just as in myth a female being aids and protects the hero. No heroic 'ordeal' is omitted: shooting an arrow through an apple, jumping over several horses, recognizing a girl among a group of youths dressed alike, and so on.

Certain heroes of the Russian byliny are most probably connected with historical prototypes. A number of the heroes of the Kiev cycle are mentioned in the chronicles. But with this their historicity ends. We cannot even determine whether the Prince Vladimir who forms the center of the Kiev cycle is Vladimir I, who died in 1015, or Vladimier II, who reigned from 1113 to 1125. As for the great heores of the byliny of this cycle, Svyatogor, Mikula, and Volga, the historic elements preserved in their persons and adventures amount to almost nothing. They end by becoming indistinguishable from the heores of myths and folk tales. One of the protagonists of the Kiev cycle, Dobrynya Nikitich, who sometimes appears in the byliny as Vladimir's nephew, owes his principal fame to a purely mythical exploit: he kills a twelve-headed dragon. Another hero of the byliny, St. Michael of Potuka, kills a dragon that is on the point of devouring a girl brough to it as an offering.

To a certain extent, we witness the metamorphosis of a historical figure into a mythical hero. We are not referring merely to the supernatural elements summoned to reinforce their legend: for example the hero Volga, of the Kiev cycle, changes into a bird or a wolf, exactly like a shaman or a figure of ancient legend; Egori is born with silver feet, golden arms, and his head covered with pearls; Ilya of Murom resembles a giant of flolklore - he boasts that he can make heaven and earth touch. But there is something else: this mythyicization of the historical prototypes who gave the popular epic songs their heroes takes place in accordance with an exemplary standard; they are 'formed after the image' of the heroes of ancient myth. They all resemble one another in the fact of their miraculous birth; and, just as in the Mahabharata and the Homeric poems, at least one of their parents is divine. As in the epic songs of the Tatars and the Polynesians, these heroes undertake a journey to heaven or descend into hell.

To repeat, the historical character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is not in question. But their historicity does not long resist the corrosive action of mythicization. [Emphasis, mine] The historical event in itself, however important, does not remain in the popular memory, nor does its recollection kindle the poetic imagination save insofar as the particular historical event closely approaches a mythical model. In the bylina devoted to the catastrophes of the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, the role of Czar Alexander I as head of the army has been forgotten, as have the name and the importance of Borodino; all that survives is the figure of Kutusov in the guise of a popular heor. In 1912, an entire Serbian brigade saw Marko Kraljevic lead the charge against the castle of Prilep, which, centuries earlier, had been that popular hero's fief: [Emphasis, mine] a particularly heroic exploit provided sufficient occasion for the popular imagination to seize upon it and assimilate it to the traditonal archetype of Marko's exploits, the more so because his own castle was at stake.

"Myth is the last - not the first - stage in the development of a hero" (Matthias Murki) But this only confirms the conclusion reached by many investigators: the recollection of a historical event or a real personage survives in popular memory for two or three centuries at the utmost. This is because popular memory finds difficulty in retaining individual events and real figures. The structures by means of which it functions are different: categories instead of events, archetypes instead of historical personages. The historical personage is assimilated to his mythical model, while the event is identified with the category of mythical actions (fight with a monster, enemy brothers, etc). If certain epic poems preserve what is called "historical truth," this truth almost never has to do with definite persons and events, but with institutions, customs, landscapes.

The memory of the collectivity is anhistorical. This statement implies neither a popular origin for folklore nor a collective creation for epic poetry. Murko, Chadwick, and other investigators have brought out the role of the creative personality, of the "artist," in the invention and development of epic poetry. [Emphasis, mine]...the memory of historical events is modified, after two or three centuries, in such a way that it can enter into the model of the archaic mentality, which cannot accept what is individual and preserves only what is exemplary. This reduction of events to categories and of individuals to archetypes, carried out by the consciousness of the popular strata in Europe almost down to our day, is performed in conformity with archaic ontology. We might say that popular memory restores to the historical personage of modern times its meaning as imitator of the archetype and reproducer of archetypal gestures - a meaning of which the members of archaic societies have always been, and continue to be, conscious...

We have the right to ask ourselves if the importance of archetypes for the consciousness of archaic man, and the inability of popular memory to retain anything but archetypes, do not reveal to us something more than a resistance to history exhibited by traditional spirituality? [Eliade, 1954]

Now, there were a couple of things I emphasized above. One of them was:

...the historical character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is not in question. But their historicity does not long resist the corrosive action of mythicization.

And the other was:

Murko, Chadwick, and other investigators have brought out the role of the creative personality, of the "artist," in the invention and development of epic poetry.

Taken in the context of the question asked:

We have the right to ask ourselves if the importance of archetypes for the consciousness of archaic man, and the inability of popular memory to retain anything but archetypes, do not reveal to us something more than a resistance to history exhibited by traditional spirituality?

...we must seriously consider the "Control System" proposed by Dr. Jacques Vallee, and it implementation in terms of the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery.

I am here going to present some of Dr. Vallee's closing remarks from Passport to Magonia, reminding the reader that, although Dr. Vallee is discussing the UFO phenomenon, in every place where he refers to it specifically, if we insert "The Rennes-le-Chateau Mystery," it is exactly as applicable, with some interesting conclusions to be drawn later. A more accurate assessment of the RLC problem cannot be found anywhere, and it bears serious consideration. Dr. Vallee writes:

What does it all mean? Is it reasonable to draw a parallel between religious apparitions, the fairy-faith, the reports of dwarflike beings with supernatural powers, the airship tales in the United States in the last century, and the present stories of UFO landings?

(And, I would add, the Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau.)

I would strongly argue that it is - for one simple reason: the mechanisms that have generated these various beliefs are identical. [Emphasis, mine.] Their human context and their effect on humans are constant. And it is my conclusion that the observation of this very deep mechanism is the crucial one. It has little to do with the problem of knowing whether UFO's are physical objects or not. Attempting to understand the meaning, the purpose of the so-called flying saucers, as many people are doing today, is just as futile as was the pursuit of the fairies, if one makes the mistake of confusing appearance and reality. The phenomenon has stable, invariant features, some of which we have tried to identify and label clearly. But we have also had to note carefully the chameleonlike character of the secondary attributes...

Human actions are based on imagination, belief, and faith, not on objective observation - as military and political experts know well. Even science, which claims its methods and theories are rationally developed, is really shaped by emotion and fancy, or by fear. And to control human imagination is to shape mankind's collective destiny, provided the source of this control is not identifiable by the public. And indeed it is one of the objectives of any government's policies to prepare the public for unavoidable changes or to stimulate its activity in some desirable direction.

Thus the Soviets have skilfully employed the services of science fiction writers to supply the emotional support of their space effort among the young people. In the Western world, control over our imaginations is more diffuse, and many sources compete for it. But it is significant that intelligence agencies and advertising companies alike should be so highly interested in folklore. Not only are Batman and the Jolly Green Giant instances of experiments in this direction; the Vietnam war has seen similar appeals to public imagination through the use of local superstition.

I am not saying, of course, that the UFO phenomenon is produced by a similar trick. But I do say that, beyond the question of the physical nature of the objects, we should be studying the deeper problem of their impact on our imagination and culture. Whatever they are, a lot of books about them have been written, sold, and read. How the UFO phenomena will affect, in the long run, our views about science, about religion, about the exploration of space, it is impossible to measure. But to those who follow the situation closely, the UFO phenomenon does appear to have a real effect. And a peculiar feature of this mechanism is that it affects equally those who 'believe' and those who oppose the reality of the phenomenon in a physical sense. ...

For the time being the only positive statement we can make, without fear of contradiction, is that: it is possible to make large sections of any population believe in the existence of supernatural races, in the possibility of flying machines, in the plurality of inhabited worlds, by exposing them to a few carefully engineered scenes the details of which are adapted to the culture and superstitions of a particular time and place.

[Dr. Vallee gives examples of some completely bizarre UFO cases that reflect in many strange ways the "synchronous" goings on in the Rennes-le-Chateau story as told by Henry Lincoln and others, including the library story I have included in this series.] He then asks:

...What could be the purpose of such a worldwide elaborate hoax? Who can afford to contrive such a complex scheme, for so little apparent result? Is human imagination alone capable of playing such tricks on itself? Or should we hypothesize that an advanced race somewhere in the universe and sometime in the future has been showing us three-dimensional space operas for the last two thousand years, in an attempt to guide our civilization? If so, they certainly do not deserve our congratulations! [Vallee]

At this point, I would like to insert a little remark made by the Cassiopaeans in response to a question about a bizarre synchronicity that seemed a definite confirmation of an idea, a minor idea, it should be said.

11-19-94

Q: (L) Is the information about the electronic ignition systems correct?

A: Disinformation comes from seemingly reliable sources. It is extremely important for you to not gather false knowledge as it is more damaging than no knowledge at all. Remember knowledge protects, ignorance endangers. The information you speak of, T___, was given to you deliberately because you and J__ and others have been targeted due to your intense interest in level of density 4 through 7 subject matter. You have already been documented as a "threat." Remember, disinformation is very effective when delivered by highly trained sources because hypnotic and transdimensional techniques are used thereby causing electronic anomalies to follow suggestion causing perceived confirmation to occur.

Q: (T) But I'm just a nobody. Why would they go to all trouble ...

A: Several answers follow: Number One, Nobody is a "nobody." Number two, it is no trouble at all for aforementioned forces to give seemingly individualized attention to anybody. Number three, T___ has been targeted and so has J___ and others because you are on the right track.

Now, the implications of the above, in regard to Rennes-le-Chateau, are enormous. IF any part of it is correct, it means that the "synchronicities" and strange events that seem to confirm this or that idea can, and very wall MAY BE, designed to lead the researcher in the WRONG direction!

But, returning to Dr. Vallee's comments:

Are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, where there are human races living, and where we may go at our expense, never to return to the present? Are these races only semi-human, so that in order to maintain contact with us, they need crossbreeding with men and women of our planet? Is this the origin of the many tales and legends where genetics plays a great role: the symbolism of the Virgin in occultism and religion, the fairy tales involving human midwives and changelings, the sexual overtones of the flying saucer reports, the biblical stories of intermarriage between the Lord's angels, and terrestrial women, whose offspring were giants? From that mysterious universe, have objects that can mateialize and 'dematerialize' at will been projected? Are the UFO's 'windows' rather than 'objects'? There is nothing to support these assumptions, and yet, in view of the historical continuity of the phenomenon, alternatives are hard to find, unless we deny the reality of all the facts, as our peace of mind would indeed prefer.

The problem cannot be solved today. If we absolutely must have something to believe, then we should join one of the numerous groups of people who have all the "answers." Read Menzel's books or the Condon Report, that fine piece of scientific recklenssness. Or subscribe to the magazines that "prove" that "flying saucers are real and from outer space." I have not written this book for such people, but for thsoe few who have gone through all this and have graduated to a higher, clearer level of perception of the total meaning of that tenuous dream that underlies the many nightmares of human history, for those who have recognized, within themselves and in others, the delicate levers of imagination and will not be afraid to experiment with them.

It may seem useless to conjecture about a phenomenon that, according to all authorities, remains unidentified. But... it has left a clear series of marks in the beliefs and attitudes of our contemporaries, in pattern not only identifiable but also by no means unprecedented. Hence it is not necessarily pointless to try to devise critical tests, both sociological and physical in nature, to determine whether or not purposeful design is involved in the phenomena the witnesses describe. If the answer is yes, the problem of deducing the identiy of the intelligence that generates it is not necessarily a solvable one...

Whenever a set of unusual circumstances is presented, it is in the nature of the human mind to analyze it until a rational pattern is encountered at some level. But it is quite conceivable that nature should present us with circumstances so deeply organized that our observational and logical errors would entirely mask the pattern to be identified. To the scientist, there is nothing new here. The history of science consists in dual progress: the refinement of observational techniques and the improvment of analytical methods. On the other hand, the proposition that the universe might contain intelligent creatures exhibiting such an organization that no model of it could be constructed on the basis of currently classified concepts is also theoretically plausible. The behavior of such beings would then necessarily appear random or absurd, or would go undetected, especially if they possessed physical means of retiring at will beyond the human perceptual range. It is interesting, but only incidental, to observe that such physical actions would appear on scientific records as mere random accidents, easily ascribable to instrumental error or to a variety of natural causes.

Considering the UFO phenomenon as a special instance of that more fundamental question, we are presented with the dual possibility of very long-term unsolvability and of continued manifestation, and this is true whether the phenomenon is natural or artificial in nature.

This being the case, the development of a new myth feeding upon this duality is entirely predictable. In the absence of a rational solution to the mystery, and the public interest in the matter being intense, it is quite likely that in the coming years every new brand of charlatanism will use it as a base, although it is not possible to predict its exact form. We may very well be living the early years of a new mythological movement, and it may eventually give our technological age its Olympus, its fairyland, or its Walhalla, whether we regard such a development as an asset or as a blow to our culture. Because many observations of UFO phenomena apear self-consistent and at the same time irreconcilable with scientific knowledge, a logical vacuum has been created that human imagination tries to fill with its own fantasies. Such situations have been frequently observed in the past, and they have given us both the highest and the basest forms of religious, poetic, and political activity. [...]

We must finally address ourselves to the question: "If we reject the naive theory that the UFO phenomenon is caused by friendly visitors from Mars, what alternatives can we suggest?" It is amusing to try to answer this question. Imaginative science fiction buffs could perhaps look into the following lines of speculation:

1. There exists a natural phenomenon whose manifestations border on both the physical and the mental. There is a medium in which human dreams can be implemcnted, and this is the mechanism by which UFO events are generated, needing no superior intelligence to trigger them. This would explain the fugitivity of UFO manifestations, the alleged contact with friendly occupants, and the fact that the objects appear to keep pace with human technology and to use current symbols. The theory explains the behavior of the "visitors": aggressive in Latin America, "Cartesian" in France, "alien monsters" in the United States, etc. It also, naturally, explains the totality of religious miracles as well as ghosts and other so-called supernatural phenomena.

2. The same result would be obtained if we could hypothesize mental entities, which would be simultaneously perceptible to groups of independent witnesses. Unfortunately it would stop short of explaining the traces left by such phenomena.

3. We could also imagine that for centuries some superior intelligence has been projecting into our environment (chosen for reasons best known to that intelligence) various artificial objects whose creation is a pure form of art. Perhaps it enjoys our puzzlement, or perhaps it is trying to teach us some new concept. Perhaps it is acting in a purely gratuitous effort, and its creations are as impossible to understand as is the Picasso sculpture in Chicago to the birds that perch on it. Like Picasso and his art, the Great UFO Master shapes our culture, but most of us remain unaware of it.

Unfortunately, none of these attractive theories has a scientific leg to stand upon! I must apologize for presenting them here, but I only wanted to show how quickly one could be carried into pure fantasy as soon as the hard lesson of the facts was ignored. Clearly, a hundred or a thousand such theories could be enumerated at very little expense, and every one of them could serve as the basis for a very nice new myth, religion, or pseudo-scientific fad.

If we decide to avoid extreme speculation, but to make certain basic observations from the existing data, five principal facts stand out rather clearly:

Fact 1. There has been among the public, in all countries, since the middle of 1946, an extremely active generation of colorful rumors. They center on a considerable number of observations of unknown machines close to the ground in rural areas, the physical traces left by these machines, and their various effects on humans and animals.

Fact 2. When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumors, the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations of the scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological de-scriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.

Fact 3. The entities human witnesses report to have seen, heard, and touched fall into various biological types. Among them are beings of giant stature, men indistinguishable from us, winged creatures, and various types of monsters. Most of the so-called pilots, however, are dwarfs and form two main groups:

( 1 ) dark, hairy beings--identical to the gnomes of medieval theory--with small, bright eyes and deep, rugged, "old" voices; and

(2) beings - who answer the description of the sylphs of the Middle Ages or the elves of the fairy-faith - with human complexions, over-sized heads, and silvery voices.

All the beings have been described with and without breathing apparatus. Beings of various categories have been reported together.

Fact 4. The entities' reported behavior is as consistently absurd as the appearance of their craft is ludicrous. In numerous instances of verbal comnmnication with them, their assertions have been systematically misleading. This is true for all cases on record, from encounters with the Gentry in the British Isles to conversations with airship engineers during the 1897 Midwest flap and discussions with the alleged Martians in Europe, North and South America, and elsewhere. This absurd behavior has had the effect of keeping professional scientists away from the area where that activity was taking place. It has also served to give the saucer myth its religious and mystical overtones.

Fact 5. The mechanism of the apparitions, in legendary, historical, and modern times, is standard and follows the model of religious miracles. Several cases, which bear the official stamp of the Catholic Church (Fatima, Guadalupe, etc.), are in fact--if one applies the definitions strictly--nothing more than UFO phenomena where the entity has delivered a message having to do with religious beliefs rather than with fertilizers or engineering.

Given the above five facts I believe the followmg three propositions to be true:

Proposition 1. The behavior of nonhuman visitors to our planet, or the behavior of a superior race coexisting with us on this planet, would not necessarily appear purposeful to a human observer. Scientists who brush aside UFO reports because "obviously intelligent visitors would not behave like that" simply have not given serious thought to the problem of nonhuman intelligence. Observation and deduction agree, in fact, that the organized action of a superior race must appear absurd to the inferior one. That this does not preclude contact and even cohabitation is an obvious fact of daily life on our planet, where humans, animals, and insects have interwoven activities in spite of their different levels of nervous system organization.

Proposition 2. If we recognize that the structure and nature of time is as much of a puzzle to modern physicists as it was to [our ancestors], then it follows that any theory of the universe that does not take our ignorance in this respect into account is bound to remain an academic exercise. In particular, such a theory could never be invoked seriously in a discussion of the constraints placed on possible visitors to our planet.

Proposition 3. The entire mystery we are discussing contains all the elements of a myth that could be utilized to serve political or sociological purposes, a fact illustrated by the curious link between the contents of the reports themselves and the progress of human technology, from aerial ships to dirigibles to ghost rockets to flying saucers--a link that has never received a satisfactory interpretation in a sociological framework. ...

To conclude, let us remark that the density (timewise) of UFO manifestations is not decreasing. Let us also note that knowledge of the structure of time would imply superior knowledge of destiny (I am using the word "destiny" to designate not the fate of individuals but the mechanism through which physical events unfold and the canvas upon which they are implemented). Perhaps I should remind the reader of two points we have touched upon earlier:

(1) the relativity of time in Magonia, a theory passed on to us in numerous tales we have reviewed; and

(2) that astonishing little remark made by a sylph to Facius Cardan, which antedates quantum theory by four centuries: "He added that God created [the universe] from moment to moment, so that should He desist for an instant the world would perish."

As Jerome Cardan says, "Be this fact or fable, so it stands." I cannot offer the key to this mystery. I can only repeat: the search may be futile; the solution may lie forever beyond our grasp; the apparent logic of our most elementary deductions may evaporate. Perhaps what we search for is no more than a dream that, be-coming part of our lives, never existed in reality. We cannot be sure that we study something real, because we do not know what reality is; we can only be sure that our study will help us under-stand more, far more, about ourselves. [Vallee, 1969, 1993]

So, with this new perspective on the problems, we are now standing with our feet squarely planted in quicksand and ready to have another look at Rennes-le-Chateau and the Shepherds of Arcadia!

First, we want to remember what Dr. Eliade has asked:

We have the right to ask ourselves if the importance of archetypes for the consciousness of archaic man, and the inability of popular memory to retain anything but archetypes, do not reveal to us something more than a resistance to history exhibited by traditonal spirituality?

And the answer Dr. Vallee has given:

...it is possible to make large sections of any population believe in the existence of supernatural races, in the possibility of flying machines, in the plurality of inhabited worlds, by exposing them to a few carefully engineered scenes the details of which are adapted to the culture and superstitions of a particular time and place.

Remembering that:

...the historical character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is not in question. But their historicity does not long resist the corrosive action of mythicization.

And the means by which it is accomplished:

Murko, Chadwick, and other investigators have brought out the role of the creative personality, of the "artist," in the invention and development of epic poetry.

In the Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau, we have mythicization on a grand scale. Many of the "little myths" were already in place, just waiting for someone to come along and weave them all together into a grand myth, an archetype, a "Holy Grail" of a story with something for everyone. And, Henry Lincoln and pals, as well as those who have followed with their own theories and "proofs" have obliged. What Gerard de Sede did on a national scale, Lincoln et al did on a global scale, and Rennes-le-Chateau is now practically a household word - a modern myth of epic proportions.

We have located some of the "artists" of the myth, the creators of the saga: De Cherisey and Plantard, aided and abetted by Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent, but we still do not know what motivated them, what forces acted on them, and where the inspiration for the truly engaging drama originated. And, what's more, we do not, and perhaps even THEY do not, know yet the MEANING - the objective. What is the myth designed to DO?

Remember what Jacques Vallee said:

And to control human imagination is to shape mankind's collective destiny, provided the source of this control is not identifiable by the public.

And:

Whenever a set of unusual circumstances is presented, it is in the nature of the human mind to analyze it until a rational pattern is encountered at some level. But it is quite conceivable that nature should present us with circumstances so deeply organized that our observational and logical errors would entirely mask the pattern to be identified.

Because many observations of UFO phenomena apear self-consistent and at the same time irreconcilable with scientific knowledge, a logical vacuum has been created that human imagination tries to fill with its own fantasies. Such situations have been frequently observed in the past, and they have given us both the highest and the basest forms of religious, poetic, and political activity.

So, let's have another look at the story from a different angle, and examine some of the "evidence" a bit more closely.