Why has Sauniere emptied her grave, perhaps scattered the bones, broken the stele, and done away with the tombstone? Why this rage against this burial, helped by all these secret societies? A syllogistic reasoning might infer that these secret societies reason for existence is to destroy the memory of the burial of Marie and even to deny it to Elisabeth. All the Rennes le Chateau affair machine created to deny these women right to be buried? You might think that these secret societies are against the system of burial of our European civilization in recent centuries. But it soon turns out from the beginning that they only pointed to these two women.
The family Hautpoul disappears and let do. For an aristocratic family, graves represent their history, their line of descent from an ancestor. If the tomb of a great-grandmother is sacred to all of us, for the noble should be even more. Imagine, someone desecrates and destroys the tomb of one of your great-grandmothers and denies it to another, and you ignores it. Do you suffer, with resignation these brutalities and without even asking why? If any journalist or writer asks you for an interview to explain your reasons, you reply that you have no reasons to defend and nothing to say, that such is life and we must submit to the nasty boys who want to play with your great-grandmother ‘s grave. And anyway, it does not concern you, so are things that happened a long time ago. And let them be written hundreds of books, with the most outlandish theories on the grave of your great-grandmother, and you do not react. This was the reaction of the family Hautpoul when the Rennes le Chateau affair became world wide known.
Are they perhaps indignant on esotericism and hermeticism? It is hard to believe, since during Saunière time it was difficult to find a Masonic lodge in the Midi of France where there wasn’t enrolled a d’Hautpoul on. Indeed, it even seems that members of the family were among those who have brought the Freemasonry in France from Britain. A Hautpoul sustained the rise of Martinist movement. But also the members of the other families of Razès didn’t stand aside, Marconis de Nègre, a descendant of Marie’s family, in 1836, created the Rite of Memphis whose foundation myth speaks of an Egyptian sage named Ormus, who is converted to Christianity by St Mark (I wonder why it looks so similar to a legend that circulated in Venice on San Marco). According to this myth, Ormus disciples were the sole repositories of Egyptian wisdom until 1118 and then transmitted it to the Templars. Gold Rose-Cross and Priory of Sion were modeled on similar foundation myths.
Nothing, in esoteric circles, is more dangerous than a lone individual, independent and determined, who can not be controlled and on whom one cannot rely on. Berenger Sauniere very soon loses its independence and becomes a puppet in the hands of some secret societies that provide him with the know-how to do the symbolic remake of the church, to dig underground caverns and fill them with water, erect a tower Magdala, since in Hebrew Magdala means tower. They let him destroy the church, which is basically what they wanted. Very likely they start Saunière to Alchemy, the most harmless, and they probably even help him to make gold.
Nevertheless just look at a Sauniere’s picture to understand that this partnership could not last long. Saunière is a brave man, daring, intelligent and curious and unfortunately begins to act independently. He’s not like Antoine Bigou. In 1895 he opens the grave of Marie de Blanchefort. That begins his end, he will not be forgiven. Not for the desecration of the tomb itself, but because he must not see what was inside.
There was nothing in there, not even a bone. The Marquise, there in that hole, has never been lying. That’s the pivot of the enigma. In fact, nobody will ever accuse Saunière of desecration of the burial grave, an offense which, at the time, was a great crime. But only to the destruction of the stones. Saunière would easy proved that, in that hole, there has never been a body. And the Hautpoul descendants, in charging him with this crime, would have risked too much. So they content themselves to ruin him financially for the rupture of the stones.
What definitely will ruin Saunière is his friendship with Boudet, the man who knows the stones in the Razés. Together they begin to study and move stones in the territory of Rennes le Chateau and Rennes les Bains. When, at some point, Saunière orders a smelter to make a “maquette”, or bronze plastic of the two Rennes territory, for his principals is too much. The abbot shall never be able to see the work carried out with the plastic summary of his research ( the one on the picture is the plastic mould), because he strangely suffered a stroke the same day he had to go to pick up the maquette from smelter. Now to destroy all researches made by Saunière, they only needed to lose the memory of the real tombstones of the Marquise. It is a pity not to know if those destroyed by Saunière were different from those made by him.
Who were the principals of Saunière? Who were in charge of these secret societies who tried to maneuver Sauniere? Almost certainly members of d’Hautpoul family. Back at the end of the nineteenth century it would not have been difficult to have Saunière to keep quiet and silent for ever. If they had wanted to.
Who did hide the little treasure in the church? Almost certainly Elisabeth, when she realized the Hautpoul, the bloodline, had become unworthy. It was necessary to find new heirs, less power-hungry, more spiritual, it was necessary to take the millenarian wisdom one’s way from the aristocracy and secret societies. Elisabeth and her mother were probably two women not subservient to power, but the spirit. Why did the nobles let decaying their castles? I do not know, but it is typical of the alchemists to abandon the places where have worked. What did these secret societies, probably operated by Hautpoul, aim to? To demolish the memory of Marie and Elisabeth. Actually………..no, to ensure their memory to be eternal, instead. That curiosity about them never extinguished. In this sense the d’Hautpoul family demonstrated worthy of the legacy.
Who had the original Marie de Blanchefort’s stele and tombstone carved? and who should that be but Elisabeth? Would you have accepted that the priest chose a tomb to his taste? Furthermore, offensive and extravagant, to offend your mother? How could have the last lady of Rennes allowed that? Why did Saunière break the stele, and took away the tombstone? Perhaps because they were very similar to the fake later stones. Maybe because there really was carved “Catin ” in the stele, as well as the motto ” in arcadia ego ” together with the octopus in the tombstone. It is a pity not to be sure of this. In theory, the original inscriptions should have been very simple and not at all extravagant. In fact, a true initiate must never show off, but rather he/she is disguised in the ordinary. Especially if she is a woman. But, in the case of ordinary gravestones, Saunière has had no reason to destroy them ….. unless he thought the soul of the Marquise was in the stones. This hypothesis, which now makes us smile, was instead an ancient belief as well as an alchemical axiom.
It must be said that those who have the little treasure hidden in the church wished this mystery not to fade into oblivion. This wish is immensely contrary to the tradition that , instead, requires a secret initiation. Thus it might be plausible that it was decided to flout the tradition even in burial symbolism.
And what about the drawings meaning to certificate the burial stones trustworthiness? Actually two authors drew some sketches of them. The first is Eugène Stublein, (Pierres gravées de Languedoc, supposed re-edition of 1884 work, deposited 1966). Although the author has really existed, probably in later times someone else has used his name to publish the booklet, as the publication date would reveal. The second is Elie Tisseyre in an account of a trip to Rennes-le- Chateau, on 26 June 1905. He only drew the stele, since Saunière had restored only that. Now, the ancient tombs were never deprived of the tombstone, if there was an engraved stele there could be the tombstone too. In fact Tisseyre was amazed by neglected state of the tomb of the illustrious personage, as the same author defines Marie de Blanchefort. On the other hand, the oldest villagers, when they were interviewed in the 1960 ‘s, remembered a strange burial and in their eyes still had that enigmatic ” et in arcadia ego ” , some even remembered the spider – octopus, others did not ( perhaps it was copied from a book by Le Cour during the forged papers period of production). So, perhaps, who did publish that fake “Pierres gravées de Languedoc “, whoever he/she was, may have intended to restore the truth. More or less.
It is fair to say the error to break up the phrase “Requiescat in pace”, or rest in peace in Latin, into “requies catin pace” had already happened in other burial steles. Carving errors could be committed, or maybe it was done on purpose to homogeneously fill the space. Nevertheless the possibility exists that the stonemason has been commissioned that fragmentation to point at “catin.” Much has been written about this word. I agree with Mariano Bizzarrri and Francesco Scurria, who in their book “Sulle tracce del Graal”, On the Trail of the Grail, Roma 1995, mention the hypothesis that “catin” in French also means basin, cauldron (as well as “prostitute”, which in this case is a nonsense. Even if “prostitute “stands for our Alchemical Universal Dissolvent). In this story, which seems centered on a form of immortality, the term “cauldron” would be very appropriate. In fact, as I mentioned in my article The Dangerous Journey into the Gundestrup Cauldron, people who underwent some practices were called “cauldrons”. About the implications on the date January 17, see my article Hans Memling’s Altarpiece with Boar and January 17.
What has remained of Marie and Elisabeth? it is impossible to say, in the present state of our knowledge. But a kite needs someone to hold the rope to which it is linked. Without an anchorage on the ground, or in the ground, the kite will lose in the nothing of the sky.
What has remained of Rennes le Chateau mystery? Many stones scattered around the area. As Terminus, the god of stones scattered in the countryside. The god who, oddly enough, in addition of marking the boundaries, also took care of life, death and burial. We will see in next articles the works of Saunière and Boudet on the ground.
Another abbot of a monastery in the area, curiously aligned to the straight line at 0.00 degrees between Montsegur, Rennes le Chateau and the nearby castle of Blanchefort, seems to have had a similar fate to Berenger Sauniere. The abbot was Poycarpe de la Rivière and lived two centuries earlier. Contrary to Saunière he left some books. We will see to translate and read two of them.
- See also The Druidic Abbesses of Fontevraud and Remiremont. Part 1 ;
- See also Holbein Dead Christ Builds his Grave , Pompeii Mysteries Villa/ a Gentle Flowing with Mystica Vannus , Pherecydes of Syros and the Fountain of Time , The Dangerous Journey into the Gundestrup Cauldron , Rossetti and the Mystery of Platonic Love, part 1 , Dionysus, Universal Dissolvent and Kykeon , Ouspensky & Time out of Matter , Louis de Broglie and the Memory of an Immortal Particle , Eros, Psyche & a New Alchemical Body , Fortunio Liceti and the Cranial Omo , Aiòn, Light and Spirals of Immortality ;