The entry of the Prieure de Sion/Priory of Sion onto the world stage occurred via the efforts of Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. It all began rather innocently when Lincoln, a television writer, was on an ordinary family vacation back in 1969, at which time he stumbled upon a little mystery that he had no idea was soon going to explode into the mass consciousness as a result of his curiosity. He writes in Holy Blood, Holy Grail:

...En route for a summer holiday in the Cevennes, I made the casual purchase of a paperback. Le Tresor Maudit (The Accursed Treasure) by Gerard de Sede was a mystery story - a lightweight, entertaining blend of historical fact, genuine mystery, and conjecture. It might have remained consigned to the post-holiday oblivion of all such reading had I not stumbled upon a curious and glaring omission in its pages.

The "accursed treasure" of the title had apparently been found in the 1890's by a village priest through the decipherment of certain cryptic documents unearthed in his church. Although the purported texts of two of these documents were reproduced, the "secret messages" said to be encoded within them were not. The implication was that the deciphered messages had again been lost. And yet, as I found, a cursory study of the documents reproduced in the book reveals at least one concealed message. Surely the author had found it. In working on his book he must have given the documents more than fleeting attention. He was bound, therefore, to have found what I had found. Moreover, the message was exactly the kind of titillating snippet of "proof" that helps to sell a "pop" paperback. Why had M. de Sede not published it? [Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982]

Lincoln goes on to say that this little omission continued to bother him "like an unfinished crossword puzzle," so he decided to see if he couldn't get funded to investigate it for a possible television show, thus satisfying his personal curiosity within the constraints of his work schedule which did not allow time for the investigation he would have liked to undertake.

The idea was received favorably by his employers, the BBC, and he was sent to dig deeper into the mystery so as to make a short film. Lincoln arranged to meet the author of the book, M. de Sede in Paris in 1970 and there, asked him the question: "Why didn't you publish the message hidden in the parchments?"

De Sede's answer astounded Lincoln: "What message?"

Lincoln writes:

"It seemed inconceivable to me that he was unaware of this elementary message. Why was he fencing with me? Suddenly I found myself reluctant to reveal exactly what I had found. We continued a verbal fencing match for a few minutes and it became apparent that we were both aware of the message. I repeated my question: "Why didn't you publish it?" This time de Sede's answer was calculated. "Because we thought it might interest someone like you to find it for yourself."

That reply, as cryptic as the priest's mysterious documents, was the first clear hint that the mystery of Rennes-le- Chateau was to prove much more than a simple tale of lost treasure. [Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982]

What kind of answer was that? "Because we thought it might interest someone like you to find it for yourself." Was Mr. Lincoln dealing with a very clever con artist, or some forces that were unknown? After all, nobody forced him to buy the book and read it; nobody forced him to be curious about the hidden message; nobody forced him to seek to investigate further. It was all a series of chance events. Or so it would seem. Nevertheless, there was the most curious fact that a number of documents, "Secret Dossiers," had been "published," (i.e. deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale of France) several years in advance of Gerard de Sede's book and Henry Lincoln's curiosity.

The earliest of these documents, dated August of 1965, is entitled Les descendants Merovingiens ou l'enigme du Razes Wisigoth, or The Merovingian descendants, or the enigma of Razes of the Visigoths. Its purported author is a Madeleine Blancasall, and claims to have been translated from German by a Vincent Celse-Nazaire, and supposedly published by the Grande Loge Alpina. The document describes the descent of the Merovingians from their alleged biblical origin to the 20th century, by way of the family of Plantard. The genealogy is signed by a Henri Lobineau.

Now, of course, M. de Sede helpfully informed Henry Lincoln in advance that he must not look under the name "Lobineau," but instead must look under the name "Schidlof."

Henry Lincoln notes:

Madeleine Blancasall is clearly made up from a reference to Rennes-le-Chateau's patron saint, Marie-Madeleine, linked with the names of the two rivers, the Blanque and the Sals which conjoin just to the south of Rennes-le-Bains. [A town near Rennes-le-Chateau.]

And, of course, we note that the church of Rennes-les-Bains is dedicated to the two saints Celse and Nazaire. The Grande Loge Alpina, the main lodge of Swiss Freemasonry, denies all knowledge of this little work.

Nine months after the deposit of this curious genealogy, in May of 1966, another document was deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It also bears the imprint of the Grande Loge Alpina and the title is Un tresor Merovingien a Rennes-le-Chateau. The author is Antoine l'Ermite. The grotto of St. Antony the Hermit is only a short distance from Rennes.

One month later, June, 1966, another document was deposited in the Bibliotheque entitled Pierres gravees du Languedoc, and this was a purported reprint of an earlier book published in 1884 by Austrian historian, Eugene Stublein. [Stublein DID exist and DID publish a book in 1877 entitled Description d'un voyage aux establissements thermaux de l'arrondissement de Limoux. There is, apparently, no known extant REAL copy of his 1884 book of which the 1966 version purports to be a copy.] Papers in the Dossiers also suggest that the author of the genealogies, Lobineau, was a pseudonym for this same Leo Schidlof, who had died in Switzerland the previous year. Schidlof's daughter has insisted that he knew nothing of genealogy. So, we find a dead man's name being used to give credibility to something with which he probably had absolutely no connection.

Then, in March of 1967, still another document was deposited/published with the Bibliotheque Nationale. It was entitled Le serpent rouge, and this one had three authors: Messieurs de Koker, Saint-Maxent and Feugere. There is some disagreement over the date on which, after the necessary red tape had been gone through, the document was considered to be officially "published." The Depot legal states March 20th, but Lincoln et al gave it as January 17. This matter was investigated by another researcher, Franck Marie, who claims to have established the date of February 15. Whatever the date of deposit, it is a fact that Louis Saint-Maxent and Gaston de Koker were found hanged on 6 March, and Pierre Feugere the following day.

Were these three men victims of revenge or a suicide pact as de Sede suggests? Their respective families all insist that the three were absolutely unaquainted with one another and that their deaths by hanging, so close to one another in time, are just horrible coincidence. The obvious conclusion is that someone found the names of three unrelated persons with suitable deaths in the French newspapers, put their names on this document, and THEN deposited it after falsifying the deposition slip and that the date of March 20, as given by the Bibliotheque Nationale, is the correct date. Again, we have dead men being made authors of books they probably knew nothing about.

At about the same time of the publication of Gerard de Sede's book L'or de Rennes, another document attributed to Henri Lobineau was deposited with the Bibliotheque Nationale entitled Dossiers secrets. Lincoln et al say it was:

...a thin, nondescript volume, a species of folder with stiff covers which contained a loose assemblage of ostensibly unrelated items - news clippings, letters pasted to backing-sheets, pamphlets, numerous genealogical trees and the odd printed page apparently extracted from the body of some other work. Periodically some of the individual pages would be removed. At different times other pages would be freshly inserted. On certain pages additions and corrections would sometimes be made in a miniscule longhand. At a later date, these pages would be replaced by new ones, printed and incorporating previous emendations.

The main thrust of this odd collection of items was the establishing of Pierre Plantard de St.-Clair as a direct lineal descendant of Dagobert II, who was assassinated in 679 and was not known to have had any legitimate issue. It seems that the name "Lobineau," was derived from the Rue Lobineau near Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the church that plays a significant part in the story of Berenger Sauniere.

But, before we proceed, let's just give the story itself a general overview: In 1885, at the age of 33, Abbe Berenger Sauniere became priest of Rennes-le-Chateau and employed a young girl named Marie Denarnaud as his housekeeper. She became his lifetime companion and confidante. The church was terribly run down and the village was poor and it seemed that Abbe Sauniere faced a life of penury and obscurity.

However, he received a serendipitous donation (though the source of this money varies from researcher to researcher) and decided to upgrade his church a bit. During the renovation work, he supposedly discovered some mysterious documents containing a coded message. He then made a trip to Paris and hung out with some fellows with connections to the Parisian occult world, purchased copies of an odd selection of paintings from the Louvre, and returned to Rennes. At this point it is said that his behavior suggested strange doings. He was reported to have been tramping around the country side collecting rocks, holing up in the church doing secretive things at night, and then, ultimately, redecorating the church in a bizarre way. At some point, he traveled a great deal and it was reported that money poured in to his housekeeper during his travels, originating, it is said, from various religious houses around Europe.

Over the next twenty years, Abbe Sauniere allegedly spent huge amounts of money on his building projects, entertaining lavishly, living the high life and other activities.

That's the basic story. Of course, there were a couple of murders tossed in for good measure and an on again, off again friendship with another priest who was equally mysterious and clearly involved in whatever was going on.

The region already had legends of buried treasure, and now it was thought that Abbe Sauniere found it or, at least, part of it. And now, the curious story of the "accursed treasure" of Rennes-le-Chateau was to be brought to the attention of the world by the BBC through the efforts of Henry Lincoln.

At his meeting with Gerard de Sede, Lincoln indicated that he wanted to make this short television program. De Sede agreed to assist in such a project by digging up all the information he could and sending it to Lincoln.

First came the full text of a major encoded message, which spoke of the painters Poussin and Teniers. This was fascinating. The cipher was unbelievably complex. We were told it had been broken by experts of the French Army Cipher Department, using computers. As I studied the convolutions of the code, I became convinced that this explanation was, to say the least, suspect. I checked with cipher experts of British Intelligence. They agreed with me. "The cipher does not present a valid problem for a computer." The code was unbreakable. Someone, somewhere, must have the key.

[Laura's note: in other words, whoever deciphered the documents MUST have also possessed the key either by virtue of being the author of the documents AND key, or by having been given same.]

And then de Sede dropped his second bombshell. A tomb resembling that in Poussin's famous painting Les Bergeres d'Arcadie had been found. He would send details as soon as he had them. Some days later the photographs arrived and it was clear that our short film on a small local mystery had begun to assume unexpected dimensions. [Lincoln, Leigh, Baigent, 1982]

This item, the Poussin painting, The Shepherds of Arcadia, had a strange effect on me at the time that I was reading the story. There was a reproduction of it in the article about the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, but it was a poor copy. I was thumbing through an art book on my shelves, trying to find any scholarly commentary, and lo and behold, there was a large, full page reproduction of it right there. I cut it out of the book and pinned it to the wall over my desk where I could see it all the time and went back to studying the matter at hand.

With the addition of such mysterious developments, Henry Lincoln decided to do more research and make a longer program. The first screening of The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem, which was the result of the first stages of research into the matter, was on February of 1972. Essentially, the conclusion was that Abbe Sauniere had discovered the Temple Treasure of the Jews. Supposedly, it had been taken by the Romans and then, when the Visigoths sacked Rome, they took it and it ended up in Rennes-le-Chateau.

Apparently, the public was consumed with curiosity about this mystery, so a follow-up film was planned with more research. In 1974, The Priest, the Painter and the Devil was screened, and it was an unmitigated hit with viewers. More research was needed and Mr. Lincoln decided that the many complexities of the mystery were too much for one man, so Richard Leigh, a writer with graduate degrees and knowledge of history, philosophy, esoterica, etc. was brought onboard. Richard brought in Michael Baigent, a photojournalist and researcher of Templar history. The three of them began to dig into the problem of Rennes-le-Chateau in a more thorough way and produced another television special entitled The Shadow of The Templars in 1979. Mr. Lincoln writes:

The work we did on that film at last brought us face to face with the underlying foundations upon which the entire mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau had been built. But the film could only hint at what we were beginning to discern. Beneath the surface was something more startling, more significant, and more immediately relevant than we could have believed possible when we began our work on the "intriguing little mystery" of what a French priest might have found in a mountain village.

In 1972 I closed my first film with the words, "Something extraordinary is waiting to be found... and in the not too distant future, it will be." [Lincoln, Leigh, Baigent, 1982]

What Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent claim to have found is the secret that Jesus was a king in a long line of Priest kings, and that he had been married to Mary Magdalene, and produced a child, born posthumously (after his crucifixion), and that this child had been spirited away to France to be the progenitor of the kings of the Franks, the Merovingian, and that this Holy/Royal Bloodline is the real secret contained in the mysteries of the "Holy Grail" stories.

How in the world did a story about a possible hidden treasure found by an obscure priest in a remote corner of rural France transmogrify itself into THAT?!

Good question. It's a complicated story that you will have to read on your own for all the juicy details. But intimately connected to the "how" of it, and far more important, is the "who says?"

A group calling itself Le Prieure de Sion, The Priory of Sion, and its purported agent, Pierre Plantard.

Messrs.. Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent write in the conclusion of Holy Blood, Holy Grail,

We were looking for answers to certain perplexing questions, explanations for certain historical enigmas. In the process we more or less stumbled upon something rather greater than we had initially bargained for. We were led to a startling, controversial, and seemingly preposterous conclusion. ...We were simply trying to determine whether or not our conclusion was tenable. And exhaustive consideration of biblical material convinced us that it was. Indeed, we became convinced that our conclusion was not only tenable, but extremely probable. [Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982]

Note that they "stumbled upon," and were "led to" this conclusion, and it was, apparently, the idea that the Priory of Sion wanted them to believe and publish.

About the latter they say:

If we cannot prove our conclusion, however, we have received abundant evidence - from both their documents and their representatives - that the Prieure de Sion can. On the basis of their written hints and their personal conversations with us, we are prepared to believe that Sion does possess something - something that does in some way amount to "incontrovertible proof" of the hypothesis we have advanced. [Ibid.]

What do they think this proof is that is in the possession of the Priory of Sion? They write:

If our hypothesis is correct, the Holy Grail would have been at least two things simultaneously. On the one hand, it would have been Jesus' bloodline and descendants - the "Sang Raal," the "Real" or "Royal" blood of which the Templars, created by the Prieure de Sion were appointed guardians. At the same time the Holy Grail would have been, quite literally, the receptacle or vessel that received and contained Jesus' blood. In other words, it would have been the womb of the Magdalen - and by extension, the Magdalen herself.

...But it may have been something else as well. In AD 70, during the great revolt in Judaea, Roman legions under Titus sacked the temple of Jerusalem. The pillaged treasure of the temple is said to have found its way eventually to the Pyrenees; and M. Plantard, in his conversation with us, stated that this treasure was in the hands of the Prieure de Sion today. But the temple of Jerusalem may have contained more than the treasure plundered by Titus' centurions. In ancient Judaism religion and politics were inseparable. The messiah was to be a priest-king whose authority encompassed spiritual and secular domains alike. It is thus likely, indeed probable, that the temple housed official records pertaining to Israel's royal line - the equivalents of the birth certificates, marriage licenses, and other relevant data concerning any modern royal or aristocratic family. If Jesus was indeed "king of the Jews," the temple is almost certain to have contained copious information relating to him. It may even have contained his body... [Ibid.]

There are a few problems with this. If M. Plantard claims that the Priory of Sion holds the Treasure of Solomon's Temple, they must have a pretty empty treasury and maybe that's why he has been known to do the "Midnight flit" without paying his rent, (as has been reported by a number of researchers into his past and background). You see, the Temple of Solomon was looted by Antiochus Epiphanes NOT Titus. And, of course, this was AFTER the Temple had been sacked by Rameses in 930 BC, and the Babylonians in 586 BC

As I have noted elsewhere, the existence of the original Temple of Solomon is problematical. There is actually no evidence that it EVER existed - in Israel, that is. Yet, somehow, the scribe Ezra managed to convince Cyrus, King of Persia, of the "chosenness" of his people, thereby garnering support for the return of the Jews to Israel and the "rebuilding of the temple." I would suggest that this was not a "rebuilding," but an original building motivated by myths and legends patched together by Ezra, extended in time by endless faked genealogies designed to deceive. By convincing Cyrus that the Israelites had been guided and chosen by the One God, he would naturally think that he would be blessed by Israel's god if he assisted this project.

According to the Book of Ezra, there was a whole slew of treasure given to the Jews by the Persians to put in their new temple. This was done approximately 516 BC And, supposedly, for the next 481 years the treasure of Solomon's rebuilt temple just hung out there doing what treasure in a temple is supposed to do. We should note right here that the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from view and discussion between 750 B.C and 650 B.C., more than a hundred years before Ezra, who would have, if he had been able to do so without being caught out at lying, claimed that it was still present among the treasure.

Over and over again we read in these Rennes-le-Chateau books a citation from Josephus that Titus sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and made off with the treasure. However, that is not quite accurate as I have just noted above. Here is the relevant excerpt from Josephus about the loss of the treasure of the Temple:

King Antiochus ... got possession of the city by treachery; at which time he spared not so much as those that admitted him into it, on account of the riches that lay in the temple; but, led by his covetous inclination, (for he saw there was in it a great deal of gold, and many ornaments that had been dedicated to it of very great value,) and in order to plunder its wealth, he ventured to break the league he had made. So he left the temple bare, and took away the golden candlesticks, and the golden altar [of incense], and table [of shew-bread], and the altar [of burnt-offering]; and did not abstain from even the veils, which were made of fine linen and scarlet. He also emptied it of its secret treasures, and left nothing at all remaining; and by this means cast the Jews into great lamentation, for he forbade them to offer those daily sacrifices which they used to offer to God, according to the law. [Josephus, The Jewish Wars, Emphasis, mine.]

Note that Josephus clearly says that Antiochus "left the Temple bare." Not only that, but he also "emptied it of its secret treasure, and left nothing at all remaining." Those are strong words. And nowhere does Josephus indicate that the Temple was ever again replenished in terms of treasure.

The story is, in the short version, in the year 175 BC, Antiochus IV, also known as Epiphanes, murdered Seleucus IV and took the throne. In the year 169 BC Antiochus invaded Egypt in an attempt to destroy the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Soon it was rumored back in Palestine that the king had been killed in battle. The news of Antiochus' death was false, however, and when he returned to Jerusalem, he entered the Temple and stole a great deal of valuable treasure, an act which the pious Jews looked upon as an abomination before God. The following year (168 BC) Antiochus renewed his campaign against the Egyptians, but he was stopped by the Roman representative Popilius Laenus, and was ordered to leave Egypt and never come back. This so infuriated Antiochus that he came back and took out his frustration on the city of Jerusalem. He tore down the city walls, slaughtered a great many of the Jews, ordered the Jewish Scriptures to be destroyed, and he and his soldiers brought prostitutes into the Temple and there had sex with them in order to defile the Temple. He also issued orders that everyone was to worship the Greek gods, and he established the death penalty for anyone who practiced circumcision, or who observed the Sabbath or any of the Jewish religious feasts and sacrifices. The cruelty of Antiochus in enforcing these new laws against the Jews became legendary. The final outrage for the pious Jews of the land came when Antiochus sacked the Temple and erected an altar there to the pagan god Zeus. Then, on December 25, 168 BC, Antiochus offered a pig to Zeus on the altar of Jehovah/Yahweh.

Now, if the treasure was taken by Antiochus in 169 B.C., that is 200 years before Titus sacked Jerusalem, and during all of this time, Jerusalem was in an almost constant state of occupation by foreign powers, oppression and/or revolt, such conditions were definitely not conducive to either assembling or displaying any treasure of significance, much less keeping any! Josephus never mentions any "restoration of the treasure" in the temple. What Antiochus did with it, we can only guess, but the likelihood is that it was spent wildly and wantonly.

Nevertheless, one writer on Rennes-le-Chateau claims that confirmation of the existence of this treasure comes from the discovery of the Copper Scroll in Cave 3, Qumran, in 1952. This turned out to be a list of 64 hiding places in Jerusalem and surrounding districts, where gold, silver, Temple offerings and so forth are said to have been deposited. In modern terms, it amounts to 65 tons of silver and 26 tons of gold.

The experts are arguing over it, but the consensus of opinion is that the style of the document, i.e. dry realism, along with the fact that it is recorded on copper, a valuable metal in its own right which therefore would not have been used to record a fairy tale, all contribute to the idea that it describes a REAL treasure.

Now, just WHAT treasure it was describing is in dispute. Was this the treasure from the Temple at Jerusalem?

Not very likely. In the first place, the scroll was found among the Qumran/Essene documents. The Essenes were dedicated opponents of the Temple at Jerusalem; so the Essene community would have been a hostile environment for such a list, to say the least, if it WERE the Temple treasure. Besides that difficulty, it is not likely that the sack of the Temple was foreseen so that any treasure, if it had existed by this time, could have been hidden. And, of course, hidden treasure around the time of the fall of Jerusalem to Titus contradicts the words of Josephus who has already told us that it was all plundered by Antiochus.

There are experts who propose that the treasure listed on the Copper scroll belonged to the Essenes themselves, which is hard to understand since they were advocates of poverty, simplicity and were a relatively small community.

So, that is all that can safely be said about the "proof" of the Copper scroll. It is certainly suggestive of some group that had a treasure, but just who or what this group was cannot be determined. Maybe some of the clues the Cassiopaeans have given will point us in the direction of this group? But more on that later.

In 35 B.C., Herod decided to build a new Temple because, apparently, the old one was pretty run-down and must have been falling apart. It was this temple that was sacked by Titus. It is possible that Herod did some decorating and jazzed things up with a little gold here and there, but it is unlikely that he had the resources to adorn his temple in the manner of the former one. Josephus' remarks relating to the Roman sacking of the temple of Herod are as follows:

Accordingly, the number of the high priests, from the days of Herod until the day when Titus took the temple and the City, and burnt them, were in all twenty-eight; the time also that belonged to them was a hundred and seven years. [Josephus, The Jewish Wars]

Notice that here, Josephus made no mention of Titus making off with the Treasure of the Temple. Yet, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln cite a record of this purported carrying off of the treasure by Titus. And everybody who has researched in Rennes-le-Chateau since then, has referred back to this "original research" of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln which claims that Titus and the Romans took possession of the Treasure of the Jewish Temple. It has even been said that the Arch of Titus, built in AD 81 by the Senate at Rome, is proof of this because it has a bas relief depicting the return of the triumphant General Titus, the priceless seven-branched candlestick carried on the shoulders of Jewish prisoners.

If you look at this bas relief, you see the giant menorah and an object that can only be a stylized representation of the scroll of the Torah. I have to think that this "proof" that Titus obtained the treasure of the Temple at Jerusalem may fall under the category of artistic symbolism. How else could one express the conquest of the Jews other than depicting their main religious symbols on a bas relief? And, of course, this menorah taken by Titus could certainly have been gold. But, it seems clear that the main treasure, the piles of loot that everyone is looking for, actually disappeared with Antiochus, and what he did with it is anybody's guess.

But, such a detail as that doesn't stop the Rennes-le-Chateau crowd! The story continues that when the Visigoths sacked Rome, Alaric took the Temple treasure of Jerusalem and it ended up in the Languedoc.

The conclusions reached by Lincoln, Leigh and Baigent are very well presented, even if somewhat carelessly researched, and it is much easier to read it as they originally wrote it than to attempt to summarize all of it, but the main point should be that the whole thing started with Gerard De Sede's book Le tresor maudit de Rennes (The Accursed Treasure of Rennes), which Henry Lincoln read on his vacation in France. And also keep in mind that most of the "source notes" in the back of the book refer to the information supplied by the purported Priory of Sion and its "agents."

The intrepid threesome were pretty busy. By the time they finish with their investigation, we have not only the Treasure of the Temple of Solomon hiding at Rennes, we also have the Treasure of the Templars and the Treasure of the Cathars! We have all the noble families of the region connected to the Templars as Guardians of the Grail, we have the Holy Grail and maybe even the Ark of the Covenant! Heck, all the mysteries of the whole blasted planet are right there in Rennes-le-Chateau for the enterprising treasure seeker to discover!

And the Pied Piper is the Priory of Sion.

The whole deal about the Priory of Sion boils down to this: Their claim is that a secret order, (The Priory of Sion), predates the Knights Templar and that the Templars were actually created as the military and administrative arm of this other group. Supposedly, the heads of this Prieure de Sion, Grand Masters as they are called, are nearly all people whose names are famous through history.

Supposedly, even though the Templars were dissolved between 1307 and 1314, the Prieure was untouched by this tragedy, and continues up to the present day, playing a significant part in contemporary international affairs. And, here's the clincher: its declared objective is the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty!!!

Why?

Well, because they are supposed to be the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the proof is in their long hair! (Just joking!)

The Merovingian dynasty issued from the Sicambrians, a tribe of the Germanic people collectively known as the Franks. Between the fifth and seventh centuries the Merovingians ruled large parts of what are now France and Germany. The period of their ascendancy coincides with the period of King Arthur - a period that constitutes the setting for the romances of the Holy Grail. It is probably the most impenetrable period of what are now called the Dark Ages. But the Dark Ages, we discovered, had not been truly dark. On the contrary, it quickly became apparent to us that someone had deliberately obscured them. To the extent that the Roman Church exercised a veritable monopoly on learning, and especially on writing, the records that survived represent certain vested interests. Almost everything else has been lost - or censored. [Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982]

Lincoln, Leigh &Baigent (LL&B) say that there are enigmas surrounding the origins of the Merovingians because they did not find any abrupt transition or usurpation - that they seemed already to rule over the Franks; that they were duly acknowledged kings. Not only that, but it seems that there was something special about the one who gave the name to the dynasty, Merovee/Merovech/Meroveus. They state that he was a semi-supernatural figure.

LL&B say that according to both the leading Frankish chronicler and subsequent tradition, Meroveus was born of two fathers. When already pregnant by her husband, King Clodio, Merovee's mother supposedly went swimming in the ocean. In the water she is said to have been seduced or raped by a "Quinotaur." What a Quinotaur is, we have no clue. Nevertheless, this creature impregnated her a second time and when Merovee was born, he supposedly had a dual bloodline.

Yes, it is true that very often, behind a facade of legend lies a truth. And here LL&B suggest that the seed of truth behind this one is that there was an intermarriage of some sort, a pedigree transmitted through the mother, as in Judaism, for instance. The idea is bruited that this might indicate a alliance with someone from "beyond the sea."

In any event, because of this, Merovee was supposed to be a supernatural being and "the Merovingian dynasty was mantled in an aura of mystery and magic."

According to tradition Merovingian monarchs were occult adepts, initiates in arcane sciences, practitioners of esoteric arts - worthy rivals of Merlin... They were often called the sorcerer kings or thaumaturge-kings. By virtue of some miraculous property in their blood they could allegedly heal by the laying on of hands; and according to one account the tassels at the fringes of their robes were deemed to possess miraculous curative powers. They were said to be capable of clairvoyant or telepathic communication with beasts and with the natural world around them and to wear powerful magical necklaces. They were said to possess an arcane spell that protected them and granted them phenomenal longevity - which history, incidentally, does not seem to confirm. And they all supposedly bore a distinctive birthmark, which distinguished them from all other men, which rendered them immediately identifiable, and which attested to their semidivine or sacred blood. This birthmark reputedly took the form of a red cross, either over the heart - a curious anticipation of the Templar blazon - or between the shoulder blades.

The Merovingians were also frequently called the long-haird kings. Like Samson in the Old Testament, they were loath to cut their hair. Like Samson's their hair supposedly contained their vertu - the essence and secret of their power. Whatever the basis for this belief in the puissance of the Merovingians' hair, it seems to have been taken quite seriously, and as late as AD 754. When Childeric III was deposed in that year and imprisoned, his hair was ritually shorn at the Pope's express command.

...The Merovingians were not regarded as kings in the modern sense of that word. They were regarded as priest-kings - embodiments of the divine. ...And they seem to have engaged in ritual practices that partook, if anything, more of priesthood than of kingship. Skulls found of Merovingian monarchs, for example, bear what appears to be a ritual incision or hole in the crown. Similar incision can be found in the skulls of high priests of early Tibetan Buddhism.

...In 1653, an important Merovingian tomb was found in the Ardennes - the tomb of king Childeric I, son of merovee and father of Clovis, most famous and influential of all merovingian rulers. The tome contained arms, treasure, and regalia such as one would expect to find in a royal tomb. It also contained items less characteristic of kingship than of magic, sorcery, and divination - a severed horse's head, for instance, a bull's head made of gold, and a crystal ball.

One of the most sacred of Merovingian symbols was the bee, and King Childeric's tomb contained no less than three hundred miniature bees made of solid gold. [Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982]

The remark is made after this that Napoleon not only had the miniature golden bees affixed to his coronation robes, but that he commissioned a genealogy report by someone named Abbe Pinchon, the ostensible reason being to determine if the Merovingian bloodline had survive the fall of the dynasty. And then we get the clincher for this one: much of the so-called Prieure documents are genealogies based on those compiled at Napoleon's request!

Now, who do we have to thank for all of this startling information? Well, the Priory of Sion, of course. If we look to the back of Holy Blood, Holy Grail where the reference notes are assembled, we find that the whole story is based on "a comprehensive body of material is contained in L'Or de Rennes pour un Napoleon" which is handily made available by one of Pierre Plantard's close associates, Philippe de Cherisey.

The first thing we want to look at is the "tradition" of the origins of the Merovingians. What their chronicler, Gregory of Tours says in book II.9 of his History of the Franks is:

Many people do not even know the name of the first king of the Franks. The Historia of Sulpicius Alexander [which has been lost, by the way] gives many details about them, while Valentinus does not name their first King but says that they were ruled by war-leaders.

Gregory then quotes directly from the Historia:

"At that time the Franks invaded the Roman province of Germania under their leaders Genobaud, Marcomer and Sunno..."

[Sulpicius] says that these events occurred at a time when the Franks were ruled by war-leaders. Then he continues: [This is Gregory quoting Sulpicius] "A few days later there was a short parley with Marcomer and Sunno, the royal leaders of the Franks." When he says "regales" or royal leaders, it is not clear if they were kings or if they merely exercised a kingly function. ...He goes on: "That same year Arbogast, urged on by tribal hatred, went in search of Sunno and Marcomer, the kinglets of the Franks. ...He ...crossed the River Rhine and laid waste the land nearest to the bank, where the Bructeri lived, and the region occupied by the Chamavi. He did this without meeting any opposition, except that a few Amsivarii and Chatti showed themselves on the far-distant ridges of the hills, with Marcomer as their war-leader." A few pages further on, having given up all talk of "duces" and "regales," he states clearly that the Franks had a king, but he forgets to tell us what his name was.

[Gregory quoting Sulpicius] "The next thing which happened was that the tyrant Eugenius led a military expedition as far as the frontier marked by the Rhine. He renewed the old traditional treaties with the kings of the Alamanni and the Franks, and he paraded his army, which was immense for that time, before their savage tribesmen."

So much for the information which this chronicler Sulpicius Alexander has to give us about the Franks.

As for Renatus Profuturus Frieridus... when he comes to tell us how Rome was captured and destroyed by the Goths, he writes: [Gregory quoting Frieridus] "Meanwhile Goar had gone over to the Romans, and Respendial, the King of the Alani, therefore withdrew his forces from the Rhine. The Vandals were hard-pressed in their war against the Franks, their King Godigisel was killed and about twenty thousand of their front-line troops had been slaughtered, so that, if the army of the Alani had not come to their rescue in time, the entire nation of Vandals would have been wiped out."

[Gregory is speaking here] It is an extraordinary thing that, although he tells us about the kings of these various peoples, including the Franks, when he describes how Constantine, who had become a tyrant, summoned his son Constans to come from Spain to meet him... [Gregory quoting Frieridus] "They sent Edobech to contain the people of Germania and they themselves set out for Gaul, with the Franks, the Alamanni and a whole band of soldiery... Constantine had been beleaguered for about four months when messengers arrive all of a sudden from northern Gaul to announce that Jovinus had assumed the rank of Emperor and was about to attack the besieging forces with the Burgundes, the Alamanni, the Franks, the Alani and a large army."

[Gregory is speaking here] After a few more sentences, Frigeridus goes on: "...The city of Trier was sacked and burnt by the Franks in a second attack."

He notes that Asterius was made a patrician by a patent signed by the Emperor and then he continues: [Gregory quoting Frieridus] "At this time Castinus, Master of the Imperial Household, was sent to Gaul, as a campaign had been begun against the Franks."

That concludes what these two historians have to say about the Franks.

[Gregory is speaking here] In Book VII of his work, the chronicler Orosius adds the following information: "Stilicho took command of an army, crushed the Franks, crossed the Rhine, made his way across Gaul and came finally to the Pyrenees."

The historians whose works we still have give us all this information about the Franks, but they never record the names of their kings. It is commonly said that the Franks came originally from Pannonia and first colonized the banks of the Rhine. Then they crossed the river, marched through Thuringia, and set up in each country district and each city long-haired kings chosen from the foremost and most noble family of their race. ...We read in the consular lists that Theudemer, King of the Franks, son of Richemer, and his mother Ascyla, were executed with the sword. They also say that Clodio, a man of high birth and marked ability among his people, was King of the Franks and that he lived in the castle of Duisburg in Thuringian territory. ...Some say that Merovech, the father of Childeric, was descended from Clodio.

This particular race of people seems always to have followed idolatrous practices. ...They fashioned idols for themselves out of the creatures of the woodlands and the waters, out of birds and beasts: these they worshipped ...and to these they made their sacrifices.

Childeric, King of the Franks, whose private life was one long debauch, began to seduce the daughters of his subjects. They were so incense about this that they forced him to give up his throne. He discovered that they intended to assassinate him and he fled to Thuringia. He left behind a close friend of his who was able to soothe the minds of his angry subjects with his honeyed words. Childeric entrusted to him a token which should indicate when he might return to his homeland. They broke a gold coin into two equal halves. Childeric took one half with him and the friend kept the other half. "When I send my half to you," said his friend, "and the two halves placed together make a complete coin, you will know that you may return home safe and sound." Childeric then set out for Thuringia and took refuge with King Bisinus and his wife Basina. [After eight years] Childeric's faithful friend succeeded in pacifying them secretly and he sent messengers to the exile with the half of the broken coin... By this token Childeric knew for sure that the Franks wanted him back, indeed that they were clamouring for him to return. ...Now that Bisinus and Childeric were both kings, Queen Basina... deserted her husband and joined Childeric. He questioned her closely as to why she had come from far away to be with him, and she is said to have answered: "I know that you are a strong man and I recognize ability when I see it. I have therefore come to live with you. You can be sure that if I knew anyone else, even far across the sea, who was more capable than you, I should have sought him out and gone to live with him instead." This pleased Childeric very much and he married her. She became pregnant and bore a son whom she called Clovis. [History of the Franks, translated by Lewis Thorpe, 1974]

The History of the Franks, in the words of one translator, "is spattered with blood and festers with pus, it re-echoes with the animal screams of men and women being tortured unto death: yet Gregory never once questions this effective method of exacting confession, implicating confederates, or simply satisfying the blood-lust of Queens and Kings. ...Time and time again, usually at the conclusion of some most serious passage, of some stomach-turning description, he adds an amusing comment, often a sly quip at himself."

I can assure you myself that this is not a book for the highly imaginative nor the squeamish. It's a great read, however. And, what may happen to you by the time you finish reading it is that you will think: Good Riddance! What person in their right mind would want those lunatics back in power? There is definitely something about the Merovingian blood - it is tainted with madness.

According to Dr. Ian Wood, author of The Merovingian Kingdoms,450-751 AD, the Franks were the last of the invaders of Gaul; and the most successful. In spite of this, their origins are shrouded in mist. Clovis's father, Childeric I, is the first of the dynasty who is well attested by legitimate sources and before him, most of the evidence for a royal dynasty is legend.

The Franks were reasonably well known to the Roman emperors in the 4th century; but even they couldn't make up their minds as to who, exactly, they were. Neverthless, the myths and legends that have been shaped around them may hold some clues. On the other hand, they may be more red herrings.

Writing in the mid-seventh century, probably in Burgundy, the chronicler known as Fredegar recorded the tradition that Priam was the first king of the Franks. Friga succeeded him. the people then split up, some remaining in Macedonia, others following Friga to the Danube and the Ocean. There a further division took place. Some stayed and, ruled by Torcoth, they became known as Turks, while others followed Francio to the Rhine, where they became known as Franks. Thereafter, under the leadership of miltary leaders, duces, they remained undefeated.

Another version of this Trojan origin legend was written down in 727 by the [anonymous] author of the Liber Historiae Francorum. According to him or her, after the fall of Troy Priam and Antenor led twelve thousand men to the river Tanais, and then to the Maeotic swamps. From there they moved to Pannonia, where they built a city called Sicambria. Meanwhile the emperor Valentinian offered remission of tribute for ten years to any people who could drive the Alans out of the Maeotic swamps. This the Trojans did, and as a result they were called Franci, which the author thought was the Attic for "fierce." When the ten years were over the Romans tried to reimpose tribute on the Franks, but the latter killed the tax collectors. As a result Valentinian sent troops against them, but they fought back. In the battle Priam was killed. The Franks left Sicambria, and moved to the Rhine. There Sunno, Antenor's son, died, and on the recommendation of Priam's son, Marchomir, the Franks elected Faramund as their rex crinitus, of long-haired king.

[Common to both these stories] are Trojan and migration traditions. The Trojan story is first recorded in Fredegar, and it seems to have had some vogue in seventh and eighth century Francia, where other Trojan legends were preserved.

...Gregory of Tours seems not to have known about the Trojan origin of the Franks, but he did know an undeveloped version of their migration legend. He thought that the Franks came from Pannonia, and that they crossed the Rhine, and marched through Thuringia... [which makes no sense.] The peculiar geography involved has disturbed many, who have wanted to emend Thuringia to Tongres, and emendation already made by a scribe of one manuscript of Gregory's Histories. ...The fuller versions of the migration, as preserved in Fredegar's Chronicle and in the Liber Historiae Francorum, may have been written in response to the origin legends of the Goths, which had been developed by Cassiodorus. In fact there is no reason to believe that the Franks were involved in any long-distance migration: archaeology and history suggest that they originated in the lands immediately to the east of the Rhine.

...The Franks first appear in historical sources relating to the barbarian invasions of the third century. There they are already established in the region of the lower Rhine. ...It is generally thought that they were a new people only in name, and that they were made up of tribes such as the Amsivarii, Chattuarii and Chatti, who are mentioned in earlier sources, but rarely, if at all, in later ones. At the end of the century the Franks appear in the Latin panygyrics as a maritime people, causing trouble in the Channel. As such, they were the precursors of the Saxons, who came to be more and more associated with attacks on the coasts of northern Gaul and Britain. By the late fourth century, in fact, the Saxons were said to have been involved in raids which had previously been ascribed to the Franks.

...In the fourth century the Franks were also in close contact with the Romans, as allies and as recruits for the imperial forces. ...One or two even gained the consulship. ...Sulpicius Alexander recorded conflict in 389 between Arbogast, a Frank who held high military office in the empire, and two regales, or petty kings, of the franks, Sunno and Marcomer, and he revealed that the latter was the warleader of the Amsivarii and the Chatti. The History of Frigeridus covered events of a slightly later period. From it Gregory learnt about the activities of the Franks in the first decades of the fifth century, including their involvement in the civil wars which followed the usurpation by Constantine III. [The Merovingian Kingdoms,450-751 AD, Wood, 1994, emphases, mine.]

Gregory could not understand how the Franks of the late fourth and early fifth centuries could be related to those led by the Merovingians in the late fifth and sixth centuries. What distressed him the most was the failure to talk about the royal lines, the kings. If Gregory had read Ammianus Marcellinus, as Wood notes, he would have known about a Frankish king called Mallobaudes. Gregory tried to make Faramund the father of Chlodio. This would have served to unite the Trojan and Merovingian families. Fredegar, on the other hand clearly stated the Trojan origin and then, after the death of Francio just said that they were ruled by duces, or petty kings. This was his explanation for the lack of a royal family that was so upsetting to Gregory.

Fredegar also provided an account of Merovech's birth, which may cast light both on the origins of the Merovingians and also on the strangeness of the account by Gregory.

According to Fredegar, Merovech was conceived when Chlodio's wife went swimming, and encountered a Quinotaur. Although is is not explicitly stated that this sea-monster was the father of the eponymous founder of the Merovingian dynasty, that is clearly the impression which Fredegar intended to give. The royal dynasty, thus, was thought to have had a supernatural origin. Gregory may well have known of these claims, and have thought of them as pagan. Whereas Fredegar relates the tale of the encounter with the Quinotaur, in the corresponding section of his Histories the bishop of Tours has an outburst against idolatry.

The origin legend of the Merovingians as recorded by Fredegar is important not only for its suggestion that the family claimed to be descended from a supernatural ancestor, but also for the implications it has for the rise of the dynasty. [The Merovingian Kingdoms,450-751 AD, Wood, 1994]

And, it seems that we have a serious problem here: Chlodio was recorded by Sidonius Apollinaris as having lost a battle at the vicus Helena in Artois - an event that took place c. 448 AD. Merovech would then have to belong to the second half of the fifth century if he was Chlodio's son. This suggests that the emergence of the family as a power should also be dated to this same period. At the same time, Faramund, who is supposed to have been Chlodio's father, is not attested to in any early source. In other words, the Merovingians were not a significant dynasty at all before the mid-fifth century. Their origins were separate and later than those of their people.

In this respect, we can see that it is possible that Thuringia may have truly been more significant to the family of Meroveus than to the origins of the Franks themselves. If we consider the fact that Merovech's son, Childeric, had close ties to Thuringia (remember the story of Basina!), it is altogether possible that the Merovingians originated in the east of Frankish territory. In other words, the "Trojan origin" story of the Franks seems to belong to the people themselves, and not the family of Merovech. The family's own stories of its origins are peculiarly supernatural and pagan and different from the Franks themselves.

I have before me a book entitled The Plantagenet Chronicles, which is a compilation of the many contemporary documents written by various medieval chroniclers regarding the Angevin dynasty. Most of these writers were monks living in monasteries or attached to great cathedrals. They were, for the most part, members of well-established institutions who took great pride in their traditions and whose agenda was to protect their own properties and independence within the feudal system. These historians didn't try to produce rational and detached analyses. Their intent was to demonstrate the power of god via the presence and activity of the Holy Mother Church. If they could make an example out of a saint or a king, they did so shamelessly. Nevertheless, even though they were making "morality lessons" out of their material, for the most part, they were still reporting facts.

In reading the Plantagenet Chronicles, we find that the Counts of Anjou were said to have come from the Devil. Gerald of Wales refers to the legend that they were descended from the daughter of Satan, a woman named Melusine, who was the wife of an early Angevin count. The problem is, this was only promulgated in much later times, probably by Richard the Lionheart who was quoted as saying: "What wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind - we come from the Devil and must needs go back to the Devil."

My curiosity is piqued by this story of the origins of the Angevins which is so similar to the story about the Merovingians. My question is: has this story been "borrowed?" Or is it common to certain peoples because of some relationship to strange "beings?"

As to whether it applied to either group is debatable. Count Fulk Rechin de Anjou (1068-1109), admitted that he knew nothing of the first three of his line: Ingelgar, (the first Count of Anjou), Fulk the Red, and Fulk the Good (941-960). Nevertheless, the 12th century seems to have been a great time of mythmaking when many noble houses invented pedigrees in order to give themselves legendary ancestors. And we may discover a reason for this as we go along!

The enormous volume of literature that has resulted from the story of Berenger Sauniere suggests to me that the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau is a "staging area" for a subject that is of great importance to someone! The ideas reek with the stench of having been "planted" and systematically released to tease and entice researchers and treasure hunters around the world. Part of the "aura" of the material rests on the fact that it is supposed to originate with "highly privileged" sources. The subjects that are all connected together in this morass of disinformation include the Cathars, the Templars, the Merovingian kings, the Rosicrucians, the Masons, the Nazis and, of course, the royal line of Jesus Christ! But, all of this may be a series of red herrings!

The majority of the so-called "documentation" of the events of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Priory of Sion nearly always turns out to be of dubious, if not untraceable authorship. Names of the dead are regularly "borrowed" for attribution, and when investigations ensue, inevitably prove to be false. Addresses of "significance" turn out to not even exist. Documents seem to appear and disappear within the Bibliotheque Nationale, appearing first in one form, then another.

The whole problem seems to stem from the fact that LL&B accepted the claims and documents of the Priory of Sion mainly due to a series of numerous "strange coincidences" and anomalous findings during the course of their research. Whoever was behind these events picked their publicists well because these events were experienced by people with considerable ability to influence the thinking of large numbers of people. And they did. They worked carefully and put their findings together clearly and eloquently despite a curious blindered optimism that what they were experiencing HAD to be the truth because, of course, THEY were experiencing it and it clearly was not being faked because there simply wasn't anybody who could fake all the "confirmations" and synchronicities they encountered. It would have been a conspiracy of such vast proportions, over such long periods of time, that such was incomprehensible.

Well, without considering the Control System and space/time manipulation capabilities of 4th density beings, it IS incomprehensible.

We have to remember something the Cassiopaeans said here:

Beware of disinformation. It diverts your attention away from reality thus leaving you open to capture and conquest and even possible destruction. [...] 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. [What I want to know is who has the power and ability to set up these kinds of "confirmations" or synchronicities?] Same forces spreading disinformation: Brotherhood/ Consortium/ Illuminati/ New World Order/ "Antichrist"/ Lizards. ...It is no trouble at all for aforementioned forces to give seemingly individualized attention to anybody.

Notice the initial remark about disinformation diverting our attention away from reality, leaving us open to capture, conquest and even possible destruction!

Nevertheless, the idea of a royal bloodline of Christ created not only a sensation, but a veritable industry of books. We are here in the presence of mythology in the making and it is awesome to witness it! Most people never noticed that LL&B repeatedly urged caution about accepting the Priory of Sion as valid and its documents as unimpeachable, even if they, themselves, tended to "believe." At the end of their second book The Messianic Legacy, they wrote:

We had endeavoured to learn more about the Prieure de Sion today. We had sought to ascertain something definitive about its membership, its power and resources, its specific objectives. We had hoped at some point to reach the centre of the labyrinth, not necessarily to slay whatever minotaur lurked there, but at least to confront it. At the same time, however, we could not escape the rueful recognition that we were often being outmanoeuvred by individuals who contrived, with great subtlety and skill, to remain consistently one step ahead of us.

[...] The Prieure de Sion is particularly well equipped to put itself forward as a vehicle for chivalric ideals. It is also particularly well equipped to put itself forward as something more. Unlike many other social, political and religious institutions, the Prieure, as we noted... has considerable psychological sophistication. It understand the depth and magnitude of humanity's internal needs. It understands how to manipulate archetypes - archetypal images and themes - in such a way as to invest them with maximum appeal.

One of the most resonant of archetypal symbols, for example, is that of the roi perdu, or lost king - the supernaturally aided monarch who, having completed his task on earth, does not quite die, but retires into some other dimension where he bides his time until the need of his people dictates his return. English-speaking readers are familiar with this archetype through King Arthur. In Wales, Owen Glendower conforms to the same pattern, as does Friedrich Barbarossa in Germany. The roi perdu who figures most prominently in the Prieure de Sion's mythos is Dagobert II, the last effective Merovingian monarch. Dagobert is presented by the Prieure in such a fashion that his image becomes fused in people's minds with that of the supreme lost king, Jesus himself. On a psychologically symbolic level, quite independent of any question of a blood descent, Dagobert becomes an extension of Jesus. With this psychological association established, even if unconsciously, the idea of a literal and historical blood descent becomes that much easier to propagate. It is by just such techniques that the mystery attached to Rennes-le-Chateau has been invested with such magnetic attraction, not only to us as authors, but to our readers as well.

The Prieure also understands the intimate relationship between trust and power. It understands the potency of the religious impulse and knows that this impulse, if activated and channelled, is potentially as puissant a force as, say, money - so puissant, indeed, as to represent perhaps an alternative principle of power. Finally, the Prieure knows how to sell itself, knows how to purvey an image of itself that accords with its own objectives. As we said before, it is able to orchestrate and to regulate outsider's perceptions of itself as an archetypal cabal, if not the supreme archetypal cabal. Whatever the ultimate authenticity of its pedigree, it can convey the impression of being what it wishes people to think it is, because it understands the dynamics whereby such impressions are conveyed.

But psychological sophistication and an ability to "market" itself are not the only points the Prieure de Sion has in its favour. In 1979, M. Plantard had said to us, quite categorically, that the Prieure was in possession of the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem, plundered by the Romans during the revolt of AD 66 and subsequently carried to the south of France, in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Chateau. The treasure, M. Plantard stated, would be returned to Israel "when the time is right." If the Prieure does indeed possess the treasure of the Temple, and could produce it today, the implications are staggering. ...It would be fraught with contemporary religious and political repercussions. What, for example, would be the implications for modern Israel, as well as for both Judaism and Christianity, if - on the basis of records or other evidence issuing from the Temple of Jerusalem - Jesus stood revealed as the Messiah? Not the Messiah of later Christian tradition, but the Messiah expected by the people of Palestine two thousand years ago - the man, that is, who was their nation's rightful king, who married, sired children and perhaps did not die on the Cross at all. Would it not rock the foundations of two of the world's major religions, and possibly the foundations of Islam as well? Would it not, at a single stroke, eradicate the theological differences between Judaism and Christianity, and at least some of the antipathy of Islam?

In any case, and quite apart from the treasure of the Temple, the Prieure de Sion can promulgate a claim which would enjoy considerable currency even in today's world. On behalf of the families it represents, it can establish a dynastic succession extending back to the Old Testament House of David. It can establish, quite definitively and to the satisfaction of the most fastidious genealogical inquiry, that the Merovingian Dynasty was the Davidic line - and was formally recognised as being so by the Carolingians who supplanted them, by other monarchs and by the Roman church of the period. Aided by the techniques of modern public relations, modern advertising and modern political packaging, the Prieure could thus present to the modern world a figure who, by the strictest scriptural definition of the term, could claim to be a biblical Messiah. It may seem preposterous. But it is no more preposterous, surely, than the conviction of tens of thousands of Americans who are prepared to be "raptured" upwards from their cars at various points on the freeway between Pasadena and Los Angels.

This does not mean, of course, that we an expect an imminent press conference and the media circus which would follow. ...The Prieure de Sion and/or the Merovingian bloodline could never simply unmask themselves, divulge their identity and rely on popular fervour to do the rest. There would be too many sceptics. There would be too many people who were simply not interested. Even among those prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Merovingian descent, there would be too many objectors - too many people who, whatever their religious affiliations, would have no greater desire to be ruled by a Messiah than by anyone else. And there would be too many people already in power, or jockeying for it, who would be hardly disposed to welcome a new challenge on the scene.

[...]For all these reasons, then, a pedigree cannot be used as a steppingstone to power. Rather, it is a trump card which can be played only to consolidate power once power has already been obtained.

[...] We are wary of the Prieure de Sion. ...The fact remains that any concentration of power in the hands of a small group of individuals- especially a group of individuals who function in secret - is potentially dangerous.

[...] And yet our age appears determined to embrace one or another form of Messianic myth in order to obtain a sense of meaning. ...We question whether anyone other than the special effects department of a Hollywood studio can provide a Messiah of the sort that has come to be erroneously expected. [The Messianic Legacy, 1986; emphases, mine.]

Well, let me suggest someone else who could provide a messiah that will literally knock the socks off the peoples of the world: 4th density Orion STS.

And from following this Priory of Sion phenomenon, it looks exactly like this is the groundwork for just such a coup. How about a little One World Religion with that New World Order? Will that be "to go?"

The new Universalism holds that mankind's gnosis of a universal God perceived or known as the Fire or Light is central to all religions and civilizations and explains their growth and decay. [Haggar, The Fire and the Stones, 1991]

"...The fact remains that any concentration of power in the hands of a small group of individuals- especially a group of individuals who function in secret - is potentially dangerous."

A: Here is something for you to digest: Why is it that your scientists have overlooked the obvious when they insist that alien beings cannot travel to earth from a distant system???
Q: And what is this obvious thing?
A: Even if speed of light travel, or "faster," were not possible, and it is, of course, there is no reason why an alien race could not construct a space "ark," living for many generations on it. They could travel great distances through time and space, looking for a suitable world for conquest. Upon finding such, they could then install this ark in a distant orbit, build bases upon various solid planes in that solar system, and proceed to patiently manipulate the chosen civilizations to develop a suitable technological infrastructure. And then, after the instituting of a long, slow, and grand mind programming project, simply step in and take it over once the situation was suitable.
[...]Q: (L) Well, since there is so many of us here, why don't they just move in and take over?
A: That is their intention. That has been their intention for quite some time. They have been traveling back and forth through time as you know it, to set things up so that they can absorb a maximum amount of negative energy with the transference from third level to fourth level that this planet is going to experience, in the hopes that they can overtake you on the fourth level and thereby accomplish several things. 1: retaining their race as a viable species; 2: increasing their numbers; 3: increasing their power; 4: expanding their race throughout the realm of fourth density. To do all of this they have been interfering with events for what you would measure on your calendar as approximately 74 thousand years. And they have been doing so in a completely still state of space time traveling backward and forward at will during this work.
[...]Q: Now, from putting the information about religions together throughout the centuries, I am coming to a rather difficult realization that the whole monothiestic idea, which is obviously the basic concept of the 'sons of the law of One,' is the most clever and devious and cunning means of control I have ever encountered in my life. No matter where it comes from, the religionists say "we have the ONE god, WE are his agents, you pay us your money, and we'll tell him to be nice to you in the next world!"
A: Clever if one is deceived. Silly truffle if one is not.
Q: Well, I know! But, uncovering this deception, this lie that the 'power' is 'out there' is unbelievable. So, the Kantekkians were the 'Sons of Belial,' which is not the negative thing that I interpreted it as at the time. And the 'Sons of the Law of One,' was perverted to the monotheistic Judaism, which then was then transformed into the Christian religious mythos, and has been an ongoing theme since Atlantean times.
A: Woven of those who portray the lights.
Q: And that is always the way it has been. They appear as 'angels of light.' And, essentially, everything in history has been rewritten by this group.
A: Under the influence of others. And whom do you suppose?
Q: Well, the Orion STS.
A: Sending pillars of light and chariots of fire to deliver the message.

Q: (L) Why are there more abductions by the grays in the United States than in other countries around the world?
A: Government opened channel. North America, is the "capitol" of STS, currently.

The so-called Secret Dossiers of the Priory of Sion that had been planted in the Bibliotheque Nationale where shown to be very clever fabrications combining a deep knowledge of history combined with masterful divergences into fantasy. And so on.

Apparently, from the research done for this program, it was learned that Gerard de Sede knew that the documents were forged either before his first meeting with Henry Lincoln, or very soon thereafter. Henry Lincoln and his associates worked for ten years unaware that they were being led down the primrose path.

Nevertheless, most of the authors who have written on the subject of Rennes-le-Chateau have followed the research of LL&B. They all seem to accept the validity of the Priory of Sion and the Priory documents and Secret Dossiers and all that.

Nevertheless, there was SOMETHING going on there in Rennes-le-Chateau that was very powerful to deceive so many people!

Recently, a new book was published entitled Web of Gold by a gentleman named Guy Patton. Mr. Patton contends that there IS a cabal of some sort surrounding the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, and they are associated with Nazi types. He makes a good case for Plantard's association with such. More interesting is his connection of the politics of the Abbe Sauniere with certain groups who were involved in the Arktos myth of Aryan Supremacy. This is a most interesting series of observations that will have great bearing on our story as we progress. Unfortunately, Mr. Patton didn't check the sources of his sources and the book is rather shallow in terms of claiming that the whole issue is the great treasure of the Temple and that this is what the Nazis and others have been after for a very long time. It is not that, I can assure you. But, as we will see, they are definitely after something that they believe will give them ultimate power over the entire globe. And it may be that the secret to this is revealed in Rennes-le-Chateau to those astute enough to wade through the disinformation.

It does seem pretty clear that there is a strong belief in a treasure of some sort being hidden in the region, but another book, The Horse of God, (which suggests by a series of more amazing coincidences that the treasure is the Ark of the Covenant), indicated that Abbe Sauniere was being paid by Abbe Boudet. Tracking the spending habits of Abbe Sauniere does seem to confirm this. He did have a falling out with Boudet, his friend, and during this time, the flow of money ceased. Shortly after their reconciliation, the money began to flow again and Sauniere made some ambitious building plans, but Boudet died rather soon after, and it was all brought to a halt by Sauniere's death as well. Maybe one brought about the death of the other and then had to be gotten rid of himself?

Another recent book has come along, Rex Deus, that surpasses all the others in its absurdity and reliance on the same old assumptions. Only the fraud chronicled in this one is truly pathetic compared to the work of the Priory of Sion! In Rex Deus, the "bloodline" is that of the 24 elders of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the only proponent of the idea is a strange informant who mysteriously appears to the authors and tells them his story with great sincerity and conviction. But, unfortunately, he was unable to provide the documents that he claimed existed because his brother sold the dresser in which they were hidden! How sad and how convenient! Of course, the authors claim to be extremely impressed by his manner, his story, and the subsequent "verification" they found in other works (most of which were based on the Rennes-le-Chateau business to begin with). Geez! Didn't they learn anything from LL&B's experiences?!

The only question I have for Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy about their book, mentioned above, is: did you ask your guy to take a blood test? If he was of the line of the priests of the Temple as he claims, that means he is a Cohen, and it has been proven scientifically that the Cohens have a very distinct set of genetic markers.

Cohanim (plural of Cohen) are the priestly family of the Jewish people, members of the Tribe of Levi. Jewish tradition, based on the Torah, is that all Cohanim are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. The Cohen line is patrilineal -- passed from father to son without interruption for 3,300 years, or more than 100 generations.

In a study, as reported in the prestigious British science journal, Nature (January 2, 1997), 188 Jewish males were asked to contribute some cheek cells from which their DNA was extracted for study. Participants from Israel, England and North America were asked to identify whether they were a Cohen, Levi or Israelite, and to identify their family background. The results of the analysis of the Y chromosome markers of the Cohanim and non-Cohanim were indeed significant. A particular marker, (YAP-) was detected in 98.5 percent of the Cohanim, and in a significantly lower percentage of non-Cohanim.

In a second study, Dr. Skorecki and associates gathered more DNA samples and expanded their selection of Y chromosome markers. Solidifying their hypothesis of the Cohens' common ancestor, they found that a particular array of six chromosomal markers was found in 97 of the 106 Cohens tested. This collection of markers has come to be known as the Cohen Modal Hapoltype (CMH) -- the standard genetic signature of the Jewish priestly family. The chances of these findings happening at random is greater than one in 10,000.

In the absence of a single shred of evidence to prove the "Rex Deus" claims of their informant, it wouldn't be too much to ask for this - a few cheek cells and you've got a case. Without it, you've done nothing but clutter the market with more of the same old nonsense.

But, getting back to the repeated incidents of "amazing synchronicities" and coincidences, and being "led" to this or that amazing discovery, I think that the authors of The Tomb of God , (which claims that the secret is that the body of Jesus is buried near Rennes), and The Horse of God, are right up there with LL&B for weirdness! The experiences described by Martha Neyman, author of the latter work, prompted an exchange between us that I would like to share here:

From: Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Date sent: Tue, 3 Nov 1998
Dear Martha,
... I realized a long time ago that this Rennes-le-Chateau "business" was an "engineered" archetype. Those who have played parts in it have done so for reasons, though, most often, they did not even realize that they were being manipulated to say and do what they did by the "hidden superiors." And, make no mistake about it, these beings DO exist and all the events of our lives and world are "managed" by them from behind the scenes. They create and destroy "secret societies" at will, including Templars, Priory of Sion, Masons, Rosicrucians, etc. These are all "covers" and "smoke screens." And, they have existed, in a continuous line, for