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Oct. 4, 1995 - Bill Cooper
59:54
The Templars
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Time Text
- White power of the power.
This is all of your time.
けれども.けれども.
I!
I'm William Cooper.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Good evening, folks.
Last night, within...
Remember all the talk about...
I don't know how to find out.
I can't find out.
How do you find out?
I can't go to Washington.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Remember that last night?
Within 20 minutes of the close of the broadcast last night, I knew everything there was to know about Independence Hall, including its United Nations status.
Although I myself, with no help, within 20 minutes, never went anywhere, never left my house.
Had it all, and can document it officially with no problem whatsoever.
So, for all you sheeple out there who think that's impossible, you know, I think you need to go back and take biology class again.
Human biology.
Because that thing you've been sitting on that resulted in your squashed brain is really your head, not your butt.
And if you learn the proper anatomy, you'll learn where to sit so that your brain doesn't get squashed so that you don't end up handicapped like that.
Come on, people.
Get real.
The End
Watch out for the curfew.
with and and and and
Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to the Hour of the Time.
And let me tell you right now, if you don't have a background in the subject that you're going to hear tonight, you're not even going to know what this is all about Thank you.
You're not going to understand it.
Whatever conclusions you come to are going to be wrong.
If you haven't been listening to this broadcast for at least three years, you're not even going to begin to get the point of this broadcast, so don't write me any silly letters saying that you don't understand.
I'm telling you right now, you're not going to understand.
is for the people who've got it together, who've been studying, who've been listening, who've been reading on their own.
Don't go away.
I'll be right back.
Due to the length of the subject tonight, there will be no commercials.
Tomorrow night, however, will be one long hour commercial, because by popular demand, I'm going to rerun Stephen Jacobson's tape, Wake Up America, about money.
And if you've never heard it in your life, you've got to listen to it.
It is the best, best ever done on the subject of money.
I couldn't even come close to it.
So don't miss tomorrow night.
And beginning Monday night, we will read to you the deathbed deposition of an FBI agent who wanted to face his God under some better circumstances.
And he bears it all.
So ladies and gentlemen, it is imperative that you listen closely tonight if you have the background of study that will enable you to understand what this broadcast is all about.
If not, sit back and listen.
You might get a glimmer, but believe me, you're not going to know.
Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reeds.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say, love, it is a wonder, an endless achingy.
I say, love, it is a flower, and you, it's only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to.
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to hear.
And the soul, afraid of dying, That never learns to live.
Learn to live When the night has been too lonely And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only For the lucky and the strong Oh, Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snow,
I will see that I will see that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose.
They were knights of an ancient order, defenders of Christ in the Holy Land.
But within their ranks a secret was born, a secret still kept today.
Find out more as we piece together a rose, a star, and a saint in a puzzle that is the shadow of the Templars.
The Templars.
Oh, my God.
Warrior monks of a religious and military order who fought for Christ in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Who died for Christ.
And yet who at the last were accused of many crimes.
Of denying Christ.
Of trampling and spitting on the cross.
Their story is inextricably entwined in the history of this place.
And of the mystery which broke into the 20th century across the plain at Valna Chateau.
For me, the beginning was the story of a man who lies buried here in the French Pyrenian village of Rennes-le-Château.
Here lies Beranger Saunière, priest of Rennes-le-Château, 1885 to 1917.
Sometimes when I stand beside this grave, I feel the urge to reach down into the earth and shake those mouldering bones back to life.
For nearly ten years, he's led me a curious dance.
I've chased many a false lead, leapt to many a deceptive conclusion, been blinded by ingenious smokescreens, by clues strewn by him and others before him to conceal one astonishing and simple truth.
The Templars Warriors clad in their iron mail with cloak of white, emblazoned with a cross the color of blood.
Warriors, yet monks who had taken the monastic vows of obedience, chastity and poverty.
An immensely wealthy order, who yet were individually poor, owning nothing.
One of their seals symbolizes their communal brotherhood.
An order of fighting monks, Sworn, like other brotherhoods of knights, like the pilgrims, like the crusading noblemen, to wrest the Holy Land from the Muslim unbelievers who, in the eyes of Christendom, were desecrating the places holy to Jesus, to the faith of Europe.
The earliest mention of their name appears to be here in the Chronicle of William of Tyre, written in 1160.
He tells us that the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon were founded in 1118 by Hugh of Piance.
Hugh, with eight companions, banded together with the idea that, as far as their strength permitted, they should keep the roads and highways of the Holy Land safe, with his special regard for the protection of pilgrims.
Nine men Undertaking the seemingly impossible task of policing the wild and perilous pathways of the desert.
Only nine men to protect the thousands of pilgrims and crusaders swarming into Palestine in those uncertain and dangerous times.
With this plan we are told they presented themselves to the King of Jerusalem.
He seems to have found their objective a worthy one, and placed at their disposal an entire wing of the royal palace, which stood on the foundations of the old temple.
Hence the name Templars.
Part of their home still stands.
It is the women's wing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, here on the Temple Mount.
Within a short space of time, the king vacated the palace entirely, leaving it in the control of the poor knights.
For nine years, William tells us, the nine poor knights pursued their objectives, admitting no new numbers to their order.
There is, however, a total silence on what their activities actually were during those nine years.
Word of the Milice du Christ, the soldiers of Christ, spread back to Europe, and in 1128 the Templars were officially recognized as a religious military order.
No secular authority, no ecclesiastical power would hold sway over them.
They were a power unto themselves, autonomous, owing allegiance to neither kings nor prelates, answerable only to the Pope himself.
From strongholds outside Jerusalem, they strengthened their grip on the Holy Land.
There was a certain glamour to these iron monks, enduring in the name of Christ the burning heat of the desert.
In the two decades which followed, younger sons of noble families flocked to enroll in the Templars' ranks.
Vast donations in goods, money and land were made from every quarter of Christendom, and within twelve months of their incorporation, the Order held huge estates all over Europe, and in 1147, the Templars embarked on the Second Crusade.
The reputation they established in battle was one of zeal, tinged with an almost insane foolhardiness.
Foolhardy they may have seemed, But their rule forbade them to sue for ransom, or even to retreat, unless the odds were more than three to one.
Jerusalem was their home, stronghold of the armies of Christendom, and here the Templar knighthood flourished.
The End
For a century, the power and influence of the Templars grew.
Diplomatic links were even maintained with the Muslim world, to which they were yet so often opposed on the field of battle.
But the Templars' world was not confined to war and the intrigues of international diplomacy.
In their early years here, they established markets and took commission from which they financed their operations.
With their network of castle preceptories spread throughout Europe and the Near East, they were able to organise the safe transfer of money for merchant traders.
Modern banking grew directly from the system instituted by these efficient and dedicated men.
And they traded not only in money, But ideas.
Their contacts with Islamic and Judaic culture made them a natural clearinghouse for new systems of thought, new philosophies, new sciences.
Some people have even said that they brought the chess game into Europe.
At the dawn of the 14th century, King Philippe Le Bel sat on the throne of France.
The Templars were firmly established with a network of castles throughout his kingdom.
But the Templars owed him no allegiance.
Their fidelity was reserved solely for the Pope.
Philippe had no control over them, and he owed them money, sufficient cause to spur a medieval monarch to action.
Heresy was the excuse.
The King's first necessity was to ensure the cooperation of the Pope.
Through ruthless pressure and intrigue, He engineered the election of the Archbishop of Bordeaux to the vacant papal throne in 1305.
The newly elected Pope Clement V then moved the papal court to Avignon, committing the papacy to what is remembered as the Babylonian captivity, its 70 years in France.
With the Pope in his pocket, Philippe exacted his payment for the gift of his influence, and that payment included the suppression of the Templars.
At dawn on Friday the 13th of October 1307, the Templars throughout France were arrested.
Although Philip's objective of total surprise seems to have been achieved, his prime target, the Order's wealth, was never found, and what became of the Templars' treasure has remained a mystery.
In France, the Templars were tried, and many were put to the torture.
Strange confessions, and even stranger accusations were made, Grim rumours began to spread.
The Templars worshipped a devil called Baphomet.
At their secret ceremonies they prostrated themselves before a head which spoke to them and gave them some inexplicable power.
Outsiders who chanced to witness their rites disappeared, never to be seen again.
And they were accused of other things too.
Of teaching women how to abort.
Of sodomy.
But most bizarre of all the charges to be leveled against these soldiers of Christ, who had fought and laid down their lives so valiantly in Christ's name and in his service.
They were accused of denying Christ, and trampling on the cross.
Their treatment was without mercy.
All were imprisoned, many were burned.
And in a papal bull of 1312, the entire order was officially dissolved.
But how did these knights, sworn to poverty, become the wealthiest and most powerful institution in Christendom?
How did these dedicated soldiers of the faith come to incur the terrible charges of blasphemy and heresy which were levelled against them?
Fascinating though these questions were, I began to ask myself if the mystery of the Templars was truly a part of my main task, the unravelling of the puzzle of the 19th century priest Beranger Saunière and his tiny village.
I felt that the Templars had to be left to one side, unless I could find something more tangible to link their presence here with the fabric of the local story.
True, there were links, but were they important?
Important to the story of Saunière, the penniless priest which I knew so well.
The priest who began in poverty, and yet spent millions.
who made a discovery in his church of the parchments which hid secret messages.
One speaking of a treasure belonging to Dagobert and to Zion.
And the other, more complex, more cryptic.
Shepherdess, no temptation.
To which Poussin Tenier holds the key.
Piece 681.
By the cross and this horse of God, I complete this daemon guardian at midday.
Blue apples.
The message which led Saunière to the painting by Poussin of the supposedly imaginary tomb which yet exists in the countryside nearby.
The obvious relevance of the painting led me to undertake a detailed examination of it.
And I found what seemed to me to be a curious and rigid geometry.
I sought the guidance of Professor Christopher Cornford of the Royal College of Art, who has made a special study of the geometry of paintings.
He found a totally unexpected and quite startling underlying structure, and it was pentagonal.
The pentagon is formed by overlapping regular triangles, whose angles are 36 degrees, 72 degrees, and 72 degrees.
A five-pointed star.
Professor Cornford suggested that if Poussin was saying anything, it was that pentagons and the angles of a pentagon were important.
Perhaps I should look for them in association with Rennes-le-Château.
Remember now that first hint in the parchments that the treasure belongs to Dagobert and to Zion.
Now, Zion is Jerusalem, where the story of the Templars seems to begin.
And Dagobah was one of the last kings of the Merovingian Franks.
The Merovingians were not anointed kings, but kings by virtue of their blood, which was believed to have some magical, even divine, attribute or quality.
They were called the Long-Haired Kings.
And like Samson, their power was supposedly vested in their hair, which they could never cut.
According to legend, they were identified by a distinctive birthmark, a rose-red cross.
Most famous and influential king of the Merovingian dynasty was Clovis I, who led pagan Gaul to Christianity.
When Clovis was baptized at Reims, He became king not only by virtue of his blood, but also by sanction of the Roman Church.
But as so often happens, the rule of a strong king diminishes with his successors.
When Dagobert II inherited the kingdom, attempts were made to keep him from his throne, and in the year 679, he was assassinated.
His infant son Siegbert, now rightful king, was reputed to have died with him.
But a stone uncovered by Saunière supposedly depicts the rescue of that child who was carried to safety to the ancestral home of his mother, and that home was Rennes-le-Château.
Here, Siegbert grew to manhood, and through his descendants, The blood royal of the Merovingians flowed on in gnarled and numerous family trees, nursing an accumulation of bitterness and rancor stemming from the betrayal of Dagobert and the loss of their rightful inheritance, the throne of France.
And at last, that blood bore fruit in the House of Lorraine.
Godfrey of Boulogne, Count of Bouillon and Duke of Lorraine, was a direct lineal descendant of Dagobert II, And when, in 1090, Christendom mobilized to recapture the Holy Land and the sepulchre of Christ from the Islamic unbelievers, Godfrey was in command of the mightiest of the four armies which embarked on the crusade.
When Jerusalem fell to the crusaders in 1099, a mysterious group of religious figures convened.
The identity of this group has eluded the investigation of historians.
Its task was to elect a king of Jerusalem.
This shadowy but clearly influential group of electors promptly offered the crown to Godfrey of Bouillon.
For the supporters of the blood royal of the Merovingians, Godfrey was already a rightful king.
But a king without a kingdom.
Now that mysterious conclave had given him the most precious kingdom on earth.
The Holy Land.
But could I begin to identify this shadowy but powerful organization?
And could I find a connection, a link, with the Order of Knights Templar?
And then, I found a document.
It attests to the existence in 1090 of a mysterious organization called the Order of Notre Dame du Mont-de-Zion, the Order of Our Lady of the Mount of Zion, which apparently acted in close concert with Godfrey of Bouillon.
The document also asserts that at least five of the nine founding Knights Templar were also members of this same Order of Zion.
But how authentic is this document?
History seems to make no reference to any Order of Our Lady of Zion.
At first glance, the document may well seem spurious.
But the deeper one probes into the obscured recesses of history, the greater the weight of circumstantial evidence that emerges.
In 1099, Godfra is elected king of Jerusalem.
Immediately, here on the Mount of Zion, on the ruins of an ancient building called the Mother of All Churches, an abbey is built.
It is called the Abbey of Notre Dame de Zion.
It seems reasonable to suggest that those who occupied the new abbey were members of an order which bore that same name.
But reasonable suggestion cannot prove the existence of the Order.
However, documents do exist, dating from the time of the Templars, which are not speculative and cannot be disputed.
One refers explicitly to the abbot of Notre-Dame-de-Zion, and another cites the Order in an elaborate transfer of abbeys and church lands.
It is clear, then, that we are not discussing some fictional organization, but one which had an actual and documented existence.
But what were its objectives?
And why did it remain so carefully in the background?
And what can be made of its links with the Knights Templar?
Let us look again briefly at the early known history of the Templars, but now with this new knowledge held as a backdrop to the picture.
The Priory's document insists that five of the nine founding Templars were members of Notre Dame de Zion, already established in Jerusalem for more than a decade.
If I am right, Zion was the shadowy religious group behind the election of the King of Jerusalem.
Perhaps I should look to the church for a figure known to be associated with the Templars and who could provide the link.
One figure immediately emerges from the shadows.
The dominant Christian voice of his age was Bernard of Clairvaux of the Cistercian Order.
The Cistercian monks were the purely monastic, non-military equivalent of the fighting Templar monks.
Bernard drew up the rule by which the Templars were to live.
Could he also have been concerned with the mystery surrounding the Order of Zion and their hidden involvement in the founding of the Templars, their offspring order?
It is clear that St. Bernard played a vital role in the early history of the Knights Templar.
And curious hints of that role have been proposed by certain historians who have studied and interpreted his writings.
One such hint relates to the time of the Templars' return to France after their early years in Jerusalem.
The work has been accomplished with our help, and the Knights have been sent, under the protection of the Comte de Champagne, Where all precautions can be taken against interference by public or ecclesiastical authorities.
Where one can best make sure of a secret, a watch, a hiding place.
No interference from public or ecclesiastical authorities and a search for a hiding place.
Could the Templars have been sent to the Holy Land to bring something back from Jerusalem?
Something which St Bernard was privy to.
Something which had to be protected.
Hidden away.
Could this explain why the king vacated the palace and handed it over to the Knights Templar?
And the silence of the records concerning their activities during those first nine years?
We must remember that at the end of their history the Templars kept inviolate the secret of the whereabouts of their treasure.
What precious thing might have been in their possession?
So precious that not even torture could wring a hint of it from their lips.
And where could have been the resting place of their secret?
Their watch?
They are hiding place.
On Friday the 13th of October 1307, we are told, King Philip succeeded in having all the Templars of France arrested.
That statement, however, is not quite true.
One group of Templars alone succeeded in escaping the clutches of Philippe's executioners, and they were the Templars of this preceptory of Besu.
How did they escape, and why?
The clue lies in the name of the commander here at the time of the Templars' downfall.
It was the Seigneur de Gaulle.
And the Pope, King Philippe's reluctant accomplice, was Clement V, who before taking that name on his election to the papal throne, was Bertrand de Gaulle.
Bertrand de Gaulle, whose mother was Ida de Blanchefort, of that same family who gave the Templars their fourth Grandmaster, and whose lands spread out from their ancestral home there across the plain.
An earlier member of that Blanchefort family, Bertrand de Blanchefort, became in 1153 fourth joint Grandmaster of both Templars and Order of Zion.
Bertrand can be seen to be the most significant of all the Grandmasters of the Temple.
He it was who transformed the order into the superbly efficient and highly organized institution it became.
Thus with their mysterious task accomplished in their early years and under the influence of St.
Bernard, the power of the Temple grew.
By 1187, both the Templars and their parent Order of Zion were well established.
But by then, too, the Templars appear to have grown too powerful, too autonomous, too unwieldy and unmanageable for their parent organization.
To the Order of Zion, the Templar Order may well have seemed a self-willed and unruly child.
In 1187, the Grand Master of the Temple, Gerard de Ridefort, led his knights into a rash, impetuous, ill-conceived and disastrous battle outside Jerusalem, and the Holy City was lost.
The documents of the Order of Zion refer to this action as treachery.
And in the following year, 1188, the records refer to a separation between the two orders.
The parent set the child free.
And though family links remained, the Templars now stood on their own feet.
free to ride with haughty arrogance through the remaining century and a quarter of their existence to their final grim doom in 1307.
After the split, the parent order modified its name.
Henceforth it was to be known as the Prairie de Zion, the Priory of Zion, and as such it has continued its cloaked and shadowy existence down the years.
When I first saw this document, I was by no means inclined to regard it as authoritative, or even reliable as evidence.
Among the information it contains is a list of the names of the Priory of Zion's Grand Masters after their separation from the Templars and up to the present day.
Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau, Glea... Some of these names are so illustrious that the list seemed just the sort of grandiose pedigree that would be created for itself by a lunatic fringe body of eccentrics playing at secret societies.
But it's all too easy to make assumptions.
And not to keep an open mind.
Isaac Newton.
One of the greatest scientists that England has produced.
What could the priory embody that would attract him and the other great figures on the list?
All seem to share some interest in the esoteric, the occult.
In secret teachings, hidden knowledge.
Knowledge which at certain times in the past would have been heretical and highly dangerous.
Leonardo da Vinci, great artist, great thinker.
Unorthodox in his religious beliefs.
Jean Cocteau, great writer and artist.
Unorthodox in his religious beliefs.
The common ground which all these men share, and they share much, was still not enough.
Were the connections more than guesswork?
Something was still missing.
Something which binds these great men and claimed their allegiance.
Their allegiance and their silence.
But we must not lose sight of the origins of our hunt.
Sonia, the obscure parish priest, and a remote mountain hamlet.
Here, in his church, he found the clues which led to his treasure.
Could I perhaps find traces of the Priory of Zion, here, at the heart of the mystery?
The parchments conceal the keyword Zion.
They bear also the initials PS.
This must refer not to Jerusalem, but to the Priory of Zion, which calls itself also the Ordre de la Rose Croix Veritas, the Order of the True Rose Cross.
And Saunière's imagery in his church repeats again and again the rose on the cross, the emblem of the Rosicrucians, who burst upon the world in the 17th century in the Rosicrucian Manifestos written by Valentin Andrea, Grand Master of the Priory.
The rose cross, which seems to echo the rose-red cross emblem of the Templars, birthmark of the Merovingians.
But the story seemed to stretch into a distant past through heresy of the Templars and the murdered Kings.
And my researchers had uncovered a priory document of genealogies tracing a descent from the Merovingians and leading to a man called Pierre Plantard de Sainte-Claire, in whose veins it seemed now ran the blood of the long-forgotten Dagobert II.
After some natural hesitation, he at last agreed to talk about his place in this story.
Monsieur Plantard, Is there still a secret at Rennes-le-Château?
But the secret is not only in Reign-le-Château, it is also around the Reign-le-Château.
Will the treasure of Reign-le-Château ever be found?
If you are talking about a material treasure, we do not talk about a material treasure.
Let's just say that there is a secret in Reign-le-Château.
It is possible that there is something around the Reign-le-Château.
And how does Poussin fit into this story?
Effectivement, on a tableau de Pouche.
Poussin is an initiator.
He therefore built his painting as an initiator.
But in history, there is no one other than him, another character.
You know, art is a form of expression.
Can you tell us whether the Priory of Zion still exists today?
At the moment, we still exist.
One of the last members, one of the last grand maîtres, was Jean Roteau.
Everyone knows.
Mr. Planta, over the centuries, you have supported the Priory of Zion.
We have supported him.
And Sion supported us.
Yes!
What yes?
Yes, I'm talking about the Merovingian line.
Because our line comes from Dagobert II.
The Merovingians made France.
Without them, France wouldn't exist.
The Capetians, the Carolingians, they followed the Merovingian line.
The number 21 represents France.
Presente France.
Presente France.
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor.
That leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a wonder.
An endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower.
And you, it's all you see.
It's the heart afraid of breaking.
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking.
But never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken.
Who cannot see me here.
I And the soul afraid of life that never learns to live.
When the night had been too lonely and the road had been too long, then you think that love then you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.
Just remember in the winter, far from me, Amen.
The bitter snow.
I see that with the sun's love In the spring becomes the rose But is this story really nothing more than an elaborate cloak of mystification
To cover a futile attempt to restore a long forgotten dynasty of French kings Thanks.
Rennes-le-Château, where the son of the assassinated Saint Dagobert was brought.
Blanchefort, ancestral home of the fourth Grand Master of the Templars, Bertrand of Blanchefort, and of Bézut, The preceptory which evaded the net when the Templars fell in 1307.
Béziers, Blanchefort, Rennes-le-Château.
Three castles locked together in a precise geometric relationship.
Echoed in the 17th century by Nicolas Poussin in his masterpiece Les Bergers d'Arcadie, a picture in which Saunière took a great interest.
But is there any reason to suppose that Poussin was involved in a secret other than merely the oddity of having apparently painted a landscape which the experts tell us he never saw?
Well, in April 1656, Poussin had a conversation with a French priest.
The priest wrote to his brother about that conversation, and historians have long been aware of that letter, which speaks of a secret that Poussin had which kings would have pains to draw from him.
Poussin Most certainly had a secret.
And I was convinced it lay in the Pythagorean pentagonal geometry with which he structured his painting of the tomb at Ark.
But where were all these fragments of information taking me?
Some unquestionably locked together.
Some were obviously part of the puzzle, but their place in it was unclear.
Yet another element was needed.
A connecting thread.
And that still eluded me.
The pentagram has already appeared elsewhere, hidden in this parchment.
But this pentagram, unlike the mountains, was an irregular one.
It broke through its surrounding circle.
What could this imply?
In fact, what is the significance of the pentacle?
The magician uses a pentacle enclosed within a circle for conjuration.
The surrounding circle is his protection.
To break it is to allow the evil to enter.
Is this what is being implied?
I think not.
Certainly it's a possibility.
But the pentacle is not only a symbol of black magic, of evil.
The shape seemed to be assuming an unexpected significance in my research into the history of the Priory of Zion.
It kept nagging at me.
And when I talked to Monsieur Plantard, I asked him about the geometry I had found and what significance he saw in the stressing of the pentacle.
The geometry is pentagonal, isn't it?
The battery.
Oh, my God.
At that moment, Mr. Plontar could have said, "I don't know what you're talking about." Or even "there is no significance." But in a sense, his answer confirmed my suspicion that there was an importance attached to that symbol which I had yet to discover.
Magic seemed a possible answer.
But then, magic has become a matter for ridicule.
But it's not always been so.
This story has a very long past.
And the blood of thousands has been shed in the fight against witchcraft.
And even today, there are many who take magic all too seriously, no matter how much we others may scoff.
We've even subtly distorted the vocabulary.
The word occult has come to be associated only with magic, witchcraft, devil worship.
But occult simply means hidden.
A secret body of knowledge reserved only for the initiated.
Sonia I know had left us cryptic images of one such body of hidden knowledge.
The symbols of air, fire, water, earth.
The four elements of alchemy.
Alchemy.
For most people today, no more than a half-forgotten medieval quest for a way to change base metal into pure gold.
But the true alchemist's search was much more than that.
A key phrase in their writings is, as above, so below.
Reflecting their continual search for an earthly counterpart to the immensity of God's cosmos.
Their desire to transmute base man into pure spirit.
The alchemical quest seems to have held much fascination for many of the grandmasters of the Priory of Zion.
and the Templars seem to have absorbed it along with the other Eastern philosophies and sciences with which they came into contact.
As above, so below. - Hello.
Base man into pure spirit.
A religious concept.
And the Templars were a religious organization, the Priory also.
And Saunière, the priest, emphasized the religious aspect by placing cryptic imagery in his church, a church dedicated centuries before his time to Mary Magdalene, the redeemed sinner who was the first to see Christ after the Resurrection.
When Saunière returned from Paris with his newfound knowledge, He emphasized the importance of Mary Magdalene by naming the tower which he built with his newfound wealth, La Tour Magdala, the Magdala Tower.
For the occult initiates of the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene, through her redemption from sin and her unique knowledge of the risen Christ, was regarded as a medium of secret revelation.
And those initiates had chosen the planet Venus as her symbol in the cosmos.
A saint and a star.
The connection between them could only be fanciful, subjective, close to fairy tale.
I could find no connection that seemed valid to me until I realised that I had to stop imposing modern attitudes on the thinking of those involved in this mystery.
To come to terms with it, to begin to understand I had to look at their beliefs, their interpretations, in their way, and not in ours.
If we are to find a significance in Venus, then we must look at the planet as they did.
And in the thinking of those who created this mystery, there was some connection between the pentacle at Renault Chateau, Mary Magdalene, and Venus.
But how did the medieval mind view the universe?
As soon as I began to work along those lines, I found exciting new answers to old questions stemming from the ancient belief that the Earth, and not the Sun, was the center of the universe.
Each planet has its own pattern of movement around the Sun when seen from the Earth, and for medieval astrologers, those differing movements allowed them to draw geometric shapes based on the positions of the planets when they are aligned with the Sun.
For example, Mercury in its orbit is aligned three times with the Sun, and the pattern formed by these conjunctions is an irregular triangle.
Each planet makes a different number of alignments, each forms its own irregular pattern.
Only one planet forms a precise and regular geometric pattern in the sky, and that planet is Venus.
the heavenly representation of the earthly Mary Magdalene.
And the pattern she draws, as regularly as clockwork every eight years, is a pentacle.
As above, so below.
Here was the link between the worlds of matter and spirit.
between base and corrupt man here on earth and the twinkling firmament where dwelt God and all his saints Mary Magdalene the medium of a secret revelation was herself the image of the secret revelation in the sky to the medieval mind to the alchemist to the Templar to the Priory of Zion such an image was immensely powerful immensely potent in that majestic
symbol in the sky, harmonious, unchanging, regular as a metronome, was the music of the spheres.
Ten years ago I asked a question: did Béranger Saunière really find a treasure?
That led me into a hunt for the treasure of the Templars, and I found that their shadow obscured the Priory of Zion, Ten years of research into the obscure byways of history.
Ten years of discoveries and false leads of excitement and irrelevancies.
But always there were the Templars, the Priory, and the Chateau and Saunière's immense wealth.
Did he really find some long-forgotten hoard of gold?
On balance, I think not.
I now think that that mysterious organization, the Priory of Zion, provided him with the means to buy the land, build the house and the tower, perform all his other works, but not for his sake, not for his comfort, not for his purposes, but for theirs.
For Saulnier now seems to have been no more than the guardian of this place, which had such immense significance for the Priory of Zion.
The real treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau is not one of gold and jewels.
The real treasure is a secret.
The pentacle.
A secret which held immense potency in the past, and which, for some people, still holds that potency today.
Shape, I am told, has a property.
In other words, certain shapes do certain things.
Can a pentacle really do something?
I don't know.
Perhaps in some ways I don't want to know.
I discovered it, so I can't ignore it.
All these illustrious people of the past, Poussin, Leonardo, Newton, All of them over the centuries have been involved in this story.
Were they really intent on restoring the deposed Merovingian blood?
What can there be so special about this royal bloodline that can ensure centuries of loyalty?
Still, something seems to be missing.
And only the Priory of Zion can answer all the questions which seem to increase even as the discoveries are made.
The Priory of Zion.
Does it still exist?
Is it really still alive?
Still a force to be reckoned with?
Certainly it existed in the past.
And it has been powerful.
And it has been associated with a pentacle and a royal dynasty.
If the Priory of Zion still exists, and Monsieur Plantin insists that it does, then the latest name on their list of grandmasters is Jean Cocteau.
Was he really involved in all this?
After ten years of research, I no longer wonder.
I can only observe and record.
And I have one more thing to show you.
Something which brings me to London.
Not to the Templars Church, but to a church little more than a mile away, just behind Leicester Square.
The church of Notre Dame de France.
Imagery.
The currency of all artists, all painters.
Here, we are in a church dedicated to Notre-Dame.
Bombed in 1940, it was restored and redecorated by artists from all over France.
The mural in this side chapel is a crucifixion painted towards the end of his life by Jean Cocteau.
His style is instantly recognizable.
One of the clearest, the most recurrent images in our story has been the rose upon the cross.
And here, at the centre of his design, where the body of the crucified saviour should dominate all, Cocteau gives us this.
The Priory of Zion tells us that Cocteau was their Grand Master.
For him, and for them, this was an immensely significant symbol.
The rose and the cross.
Of course, finding it here could be nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence.
For me, it is one more piece of evidence for a shadowy, centuries-old mystery, which is only now, slowly, finding its way back to the light.
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Let me give you the translations of this man.
First of all, the first answer was, there is a...
Some place out it is a river That drowns the tender reeds
Some say love it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love is a hunger An endless aching need I say love it is a flower And you
It's the heart that feels the breaking that never loses us.
God never learns the dance.
It's the dream afraid of waiting.
God never takes the chance.
If the one won't be taken, we cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dying,
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