Masonic initiation and counter initiation into play on Rennes le Chateau is finally emerging as what it reasonably might be: an Alchemy affair.
Perhaps even an immortality one. And the more dangerous: that after death. We continue our scrutinizing of ”Sulle Tracce del Graal” or on the trail of the Grail by Bizzarri and Scurria, Roma 1995, on the Rennes le Chateau affair.
But, according to the two Italian authors, initiation and counter-initiation still find a battlefield just around the corner of that winding road. Watch out, because a “terribilis” chicken is laying her egg.
We are trying to discover why the Italian masonic environment is so scared about this little french village, or better makes efforts for us to be. Anyway, Mariano Bizzarri and Francesco Scurria wrote a penetrating, learned, and powerfully rich book. A must-read for anyone caught up in the mystery. This post has been intended as a continuation of “Italian Masonry, Initiation & Counter Initiation“, which reading I believe to be essential to introduce our topic. But let’s start now.
Henry Lincoln is a long-time Rennes le Chateau researcher, quite an authority on the topic now, he wrote books and produced documentaries of great significance due to his unbiased presentations. Lately, he was one of the first “celebrities” to assume that the french village was much more than royal lineages, fake documents, poor quality renovating of an ancient chapel and Christ Tombs ( at least literally), accepting Alchemy as a possible key to understand the mystery. But after spending years in researching, much to his surprise, Lincoln asks “ Porquoi rien dire? Ca m’a etonné. Why say nothing? That’s amazing” (1). Like many not-insiders, he cannot understand alchemists’ silence. As a matter of fact, alchemists do speak, but only on allowed arguments which preferably deal with more innocuous metals transmutations into gold or reach of Lapis Medicinalis (see an Opus Magnum scheme).
Very few have ever unveiled something on the immortality issue (2), which might be the Philosophers Stone’s ultimate cause to be. And one of the two reasons alchemists do not speak up is that they (we) generally know nothing about the topic. The second reason is that this is a classified topic. As I presented in my page “An Alchemist Forma Mentis” this forbidden world had been, or maybe still is nowadays, performed “sub rosa, under rose (3)” inside, and we are glad to know, impossible to reach milieus.
But are we so sure that Rennes le Chateau was a foreigner to the orthodox permitted Alchemy we are used to knowing? Berenger Sauniére, our leading role actor for the best and for the worse, stiffed his restored chapel with hermetic symbolism, in some cases with a really repellent taste. Laypersons entering the little temple (Indeed, I presume it is no more a consecrated catholic church) usually get childishly (4) upset by some carving figures: a bearing Asmodeus and two more interesting dragons (on the left) alchemically standing for our Mercurius Philosophorum or Mercurius Duplicatus, necessary to get the Projection Powder for a transmutation.
When Claire Corbu, Noel Corbu’s daughter, was asked about Marie Denarnaud’s (Berenger Saunière assistant) statement about villagers unknowingly walking on gold, she confirmed all and added: “ Marie Denarnaud usually said to my father, who had money worries, Monsieur Corbu don’t worry. One day you will have more money than you can ever spend” (5). Back at this first interview, Claire Corbu seemed, in an ambivalent way, to designate a hidden treasure.
But in more recent times, she dares to affirm further:” dans la ville Bethanie Marie Denarnaud avait vu des lingots d’or, c’est à dire de l’or qu’il fondait” (6). Inside villa Bethania Marie Denarnaud had seen some gold ingots, that’s to say from his casting gold. When saying “he” Denarnaud intended Berenger Saunière. Why has Claire Corbu taken so many years to recall these not-insignificant details? I guess she was afraid of appearing too much irrational. Which, for a french person, has never been a desirable label.
We can furthermore take advantage of another valuable witness. Antoine Captier, grandson of the man who first discovered something inside the chapel before restoring works. Captier here recalls his grandfather’s finding:” He was Saunière bellringer and one night, when he was coming down from the bell tower, he saw something glinting from a pillar at the front of the stairs. The top of the pillar had come off and inside it he noticed a glass phial. He took it out and in it, there was a scrap of paper rolled up. He quickly went to the priest to give him what he has found”(7).
So we are pretty sure that a phial is involved. French-speaking people can clearly understand, in original french, Captier saying the term “phiale”. Glass phial, back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were in pharmaceutical as well as alchemical use. As a matter of fact, why hide a scrap of paper inside a difficult-to-make glass phial ( from melting glass) when a little bottle could serve it easier and better? In Alchemy history we often encounter glass phials with a rolled-up scrap of papers inside, sometimes even together with Projection Powder, left somewhere for common people to find it. Inside walls or pillars, behind altars, under tiles. Many hermetic authors have so begun their alchemical careers, or daredevil their disgraces. Yes, because making gold is an absolutely forbidden practice, but people have always been allured by practical goals. Then it is up to them. Has Berenger Saunière fallen inside the trap? And then? We know that his fortune suddenly disappeared after devastating the marquise D’Hautpoul’s tomb.
Very few have noticed the best and the most scholar between Saunière symbolic specimens. It is outside the chapel: a white ceramic chicken on her egg standing on a pedestal ( of course alchemical eggs too have to be suspended) and close to the entrance main door.
I think neither adults nor children are upset by that vision. All over the world chicken are harmless and funny fowls. Who can possibly be scared of a chicken laying her egg? Nevertheless, she and her “production” was dedicated to the too much-famed motto: ”Terribilis Locus est iste” latin for “this is a terrible place”. Chicken is an allegory for Mercurius. And Mercurius is the “Door” for entering others’ worlds. Keep an eye on the Opus Magnum scheme.
Chicken is poule in french language. In fact “High Chicken” is incidentally the translation for Hautpoul. If you remember a post of mine on light rotation, the picture of Aion statue contains an interesting specimen of a fowl (this time a cock) with an egg. The egg can be a synonym for Grail or Graal, in latin languages. Maybe a contraction for “ Sang Real”. The royal blood is an allegory, of course, for something purple color which has never contained any human cell. As a matter of fact, Grail-Graal is not to be found but to be made, like a chicken laying her egg or a Vase. So we must get the chicken-Mercurius first. But let’s hear Bizzarri and Scurria presentation of the Rennes le Chateau affair now (8):
”… we are on the trail of that Grail, which for millennia, man, in different civilizations, different cultures, different religions, is looking for power. The sacred vessel, according to secret stories, that even evil Hitler wanted, at any price at any cost, to bind the magic world in its monstrous dream of omnipotence… ”. What’s better to give a hint of horror than nominating nazi concentration on it? Gallerie degli Uffizi museum undergrounds in Florence had been very often searched by SS men during the second world war, yet nobody said that Florence is a gruesome town and inside Uffizi, there surely were sinister items to bind the magic world in a monstrous dream of omnipotence.
And, incidentally, how comes that a “sacred” item can officially belong to the magic sphere? In the western world, and moreover, in Italy, the term “sacred” can only formally be a religious concept. We are presently forbidden to take a “sacred” concept outside an established church and pick it up from nature. Is Graal or Grail or chicken egg or alchemical vase a sacred or a magic concept? Bizzarri and Scurria seem not to have already made up their mind. Unless they intend the medieval idea of a cup filled with Christ’s blood. This is a typical masonic behavior: to be in an establishment while playing underground.
“… from the thirteenth century, suddenly as though a switch had been pressed, Grail was not mentioned again in any way in the literature and no one took it more into consideration, at least officially. Some faint traces, however, are to be found in the secret police archives of the old European states and, even more covertly, in rare books which not all are allowed access to”. Grail is an allegorical term, as aforementioned, and allegories are subjected to fashions. Nevertheless it would be interesting to know what officially happened in the thirteenth century to “bury” Grail term. Pope John XXII’s “Spondent quas non exhibent” bull took place in the first half of fourteenth century, though. Bizzarri and Scurria seclude Grail issue inside secret police archives. I’m Venetian and, of course, not surprised to hear that. I saw with my teenage eyes some ancient ducal documents my father unsuccessfully tried to save from destruction (as a regional official he had been appointed to) and I can witness that rulers used to keep an eye on every human action, as it is today. Concerning the rare books on the topic, I strongly doubt they may possibly have come into existence. I would like authors to mention something more on that, like a title or an author.
“In Rennes Le Chateau, this small village in southern France, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, inhabited by about forty people today, a center of originals, there’s rumors of Satanism, of Isis worshippers, of mysterious spaceships; … There was buried, Montfaucon de Villars. the author of the booklet “Le Comte de Gabalis”.
Well… it is an Italian feature to scatter satanism everywhere. We love mystery, you know. In addition, we apprehend from Mariano Bizzarri and Francesco Scurria that Isis’s worship is bound with satanism. They are too much learned hermetic researchers not to know that Isis, Moon, is an important alchemical allegory. And if not, Isis was a major deity in ancient Egyptian religions, so why give her such a bad name? There are sections in this book that might be taken from a seventeenth-century pamphlet against syncretism. But the authors actually wrote at the end of the twentieth. And published in an Italian masonic site (not the book on the subject though). Montfaucon de Villars wrote in the seventeenth century the first European novel on secret initiations, causing quite a stir back at that age. Anyway, why mention Montfaucon? And fail to remember that Blaise de Vigenère’s birthplace was in a little village some very few miles away, and his grandparents were exactly born in Rennes le Chateau?
“… Rennes le Chateau villagers do not have the reputation of being devout Christians and it is rumored that some have engaged in witchcraft, something not so rare in the Carcassonne diocese. There are still many traditions, some quite beautiful, like that of garlic on the table and having a peony under the pillow before going to bed, reflecting, perhaps, an ancient belief in vampires”. Here Bizzarri and Scurria make us plunge into a medieval domain: not Christians, witchcraft, garlic, or vampires. I don’t know anything about Francesco Scurria, but Mariano Bizzarri is a medical researcher as well and has written very learned and interesting essays on hermetic symbolism on an Italian masonic site ( namely montesion.it). Not all people are allowed to get their research published on a masonic site unless they are freemasons. In fact, Bizzarri has been presented as a “ brother”. Is there a coincidence that Bizzarri was one of the rare erudite brothers to write about topics so concealed as women’s initiations? As we will see in the next posts, Bizzarri and Scurria will point to the heart of the Rennes le Chateau matter on the two marquises D’Hautpoul. Mother and daughter. A real chicken yard.
And when mentioning french writer Gerard De Sede about a secret mystery emanating from the D’Hautpoul de Blanchefort stele in the tiny cemetery of Rennes le Chateau, authors seem to take a firm stand: “… from this, apparently of a purely literary, that we should start to identify the background of a plot that goes far beyond to give the impression to be exclusively journalistic to rise to the level of an “evil” project, intended to somehow “subvert”, not only the truth on the Saunière affair but rather the very nature of what the esoteric teaching is connected to the initiatory tradition”.
What does it make of those domestic fowls to be against roman initiation? Two aged marquises, even if alleged to sleep inside a stone and go through walls, against roman legions? A very unequal battle (10).
To balance, both legions and marquises need maintenance.
To be continued at The last Lady of Rennes.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2tITEiCbc&feature=related 00:00:18;
- A part from Cleopatra and, more modestly, by Johannes de Monte Snyder, Lemnius-Levinus, and to some extent also by Blaise de Vigenère. But a seventeenth-century abbot in the area, Polycarpe de la Rivière, wrote some interesting works on the topic;
- Between secret walls;
- On the contrary. Children always appreciate monsters, are adults to be shocked;
- http://www.rlcresearch.com/2008/08/29/tomb-of-god/ 00:05:58 (the site seems now expired);
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2tITEiCbc&feature=related 00:00:26 (in french);
- http://www.rlcresearch.com/2008/08/29/tomb-of-god/ 00:02:29 (the site seems now expired), http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf1ugt_le-secret-de-rennes-le-chateau-2sur_webcam 00:04:21 (in french);
- “Sulle Tracce del Graal” has been downloaded from scribd.com. The document is in Italian and without pages numeration;
- See also Rossetti and the Mystery of Platonic Love, part 1 ;
- See also Pompeii Mysteries Villa: a Gentle Flowing with Mystica Vannus ;