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Specifically menstrual blood has always been a highly prized ingredient in many magical potions the magicians want to concoct.

Many ancient cultures believed that the power of creation was within the blood of a woman. Menstrual blood is shed without wounding and was therefore considered to be especially sacred. The only other event on par is the blood that accompanies childbirth. The ancient Egyptians linked the annual flooding of the Nile and its reddish colour with the breaking of the waters and the pregnancy of Isis when she gave birth to the divine child, Horus.

The word menstruation comes from the Greek menus meaning both moon and power, and men meaning month. The menstrual cycle is linked to the Moon, a stellar object that the ancients knew also affected the tides and therefore seemed to regulate the liquids of and on planet Earth. The step of linking the Divine Female with the Moon is therefore but a small step and no doubt one of the foundations upon which astrology would be based.

Certain cultures distorted this ‘moon time’ into various rules: the woman was perceived unclean during this period, forced to live separate from the rest of the family, was not allowed to prepare food, etc. The psychological changes that sometimes accompany the menstrual cycle became known as lunacy – a person being affected by the moon. Once the rules of women were ‘regulated’ by social laws, the role of women within the sacred rituals was slowly replaced by a patriarchal hierarchy, where women occupied a secondary place in society. From being the regulators of the sacred cycle of the world, the new ruler was the sun alone, whereby the women could be left in the caves from which they often uttered their incantations.

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Though many esoteric Western traditions are male-dominated, those with a magical tendency often need a female component, if only because of the historical importance of the female prophetess or priestess that helps the male in his quest for enlightenment. We remember the Sibyls, whom even the Church was unable to remove from history and whose depictions frequently are encountered within church decorations. It was a Sibyl of Anjou who stood by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, and brought the Precious Blood of Christ from Jerusalem to Bruges. To make them suitable for Christianity, these Sibyls were often said to have predicted the advent of Christ – thus underlining the Church’s doctrine that everything in history seemed to be geared towards the advent of Christ. After his first coming and the non-completion of His work – in the eyes of the Church – it was of course all about his Second Coming, upon which He would finish what He had started.

Many of the esoteric societies offer special significance to Mary Magdalene, who is clearly one of the companions of Christ, either as a preferred initiate, if not his wife. And of course, the blood magic performed with the Precious Blood of Christ would provide us with the mightiest of all magical potions.

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LINKS:

Website Philip Coppens

Historical Mysteries

SuperNatural ParaNormalities

Photographer embee 

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Vintas started out together with the political organization of the “Saviours of Louis XVII”, wich later took a mystical turn. He apparently also had some kind of a “mentor”, a certain Madame Bouche who went under the name of Sister Salomé and lived in the Place St. Sulpice in Paris. Together with this “visionary”, he formed his own “Church of Carmel”.  Vintras traveled through the French countryside, wearing an inverted cross on his vestments, and he acquired many followers. His masses included visions of a Black Madonna, lilies steeped in blood, saints disguised as troubadours and angels habited like knights. Vintras had bloody sweats and his blood also appeared on hosts, where it pictured often a heart with an inscription in his own handwriting, spelling his own name. And empty chalices were suddenly filled with wine, leaving stains of blood…

By 1848, the Church of Carmel was condemned by the pope and in 1851, Vintras was accused of homosexuality, conducting black masses in the nude and masturbating while praying at the altar. At that time, he had already followers in England and Belgium, and they had set up “religious houses” at St. Odile in Alsace and at Sion-Vaudemont in Lorraine. 

Shortly before his death, Vintras befriended Joseph-Antoine Boullan (1824-1893), a defrocked priest and also a supporter of the Naundorff claim. Boullan became the successor of Vintras in Lyon, outwardly maintaining pious practices, but conducting satanic rituals in secret. Boullan would soon become the most famous satanist of the 19th century. He claimed to be a “Missionary of the Holy Blood”, the reincarnated St. John the Baptist.

In the 1850’s and together with the former nun Adèle Chevalier, “abbé Boullan” founded the “Society for the Reparation of Souls”. Boullan had met Adèle at La Salette. She was a friend of the visionary Melanie Calvat. Adèle bore the abbé two children and now they specialized in “exorcising demons by unconventional means” and “curing devilish illnesses”. They gave possessed victims human excrement to eat, mixed with the Eucharist. And they performed black masses, in which they even would have sacrificed one of their children.

Boullan said the original sin of Adam and Eve could be redeemed by sexual intercourse with incubi or succubi and he taught his followers all sorts of sexual techniques and how to copulate with the spirits of the dead. He  soon got convicted for fraud and was suspended from his priestly duties. After serving his time in jail, he voluntarily presented himself at the Holy Office in Rome – also known as the Inquisition – which reversed its former decision. He wrote down his doctrines in the “Cahier Rose” which after his death was found by Joris-Karel Huysmans, the novelist who published in 1891 “Là-Bas”, a “history of satanism” (translated as “Down There” or “The Damned”).  Huysmans, by that time converted into a Catholic, apparently saw to it that this “shocking document” was locked away in the Vatican Library.

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Around 1889 the sect of Boullan was infiltrated by the Rosicrucian Stanislas de Guaita, who published a pamphlet, titled “The Temple of Satan”. Boullan and de Guaita now engaged in magical warfare. At that time, being portrayed as “the good magician Dr. Johannes” in the scandal raising novel of his friend Huysmans, Boullan suddenly rose to stardom. He and Huysmans both claimed to be attacked by demons. When Boullan in 1893 died of a heart attack, Huysmans published an article in which he said this was due to an evil spell cast by de Guaita. The Rosicrucian challenged the writer to a duel, but Huysmans declined and apologized.

Some were saying the character of the demonic canon Docre was inspired by abbé Boullan, but Huysmans stated more than once this was not true: in his novel he depicted the chaplain of the Holy Blood of Bruges, Louis Van Haecke, as the satanist Docre. In an article published on a site dedicated to the French Gnostic Tradition it is said that both Boullan and Louis Van Haecke were ordained Pontifs Divines of communities on the model of the Carmelite Order, developing their own theology.

Van Haecke associated his group with occultists who believed in the efficacy of Black Magic; he developed a rather dark “Luciferian Theology”. In his “Gnostic Dictionary”, André Wautier says about Louis Van Haecke that he was a Flemish priest who followed the defrocked abbé Boullan after his breaking-up with the Catholic Church. Van Haecke eventually found his own way, which was typically anti-gnostic and included satanism and black masses. For Van Haecke,  Jesus of Nazareth had not kept the promises he made in proclaiming himself the Son of God, since he did not ban evil from the world. On the contrary, the religion that claimed his name, did not follow his ideal of love and poverty, but saw its leaders compromise themselves and their church with the political and military leaders and with the powers of money, thus helping to reign injustice, misery and war over the world. Therefore, it was the enemy of the Father and the Son who had to be worshipped: Satan, who allowed the act of giving love and joy and helped his disciples to get through the bad times of life.

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Read also:

The Satanist Chaplain of the Holy Blood of Bruges

Down There: A History of Satanism

The Code of the Holy Blood

Rennes-le-Château and the Holy Blood of Bruges

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While visiting museums in Germany for a piece on German art he never published, in the museum of Kassel J.K. was struck by Matthias Grünewald’s “Crucifixion”. The painting depicted in naturalistic detail the ugly face of death, with the oozing wounds and the brutally torn body of Christ upon the Cross. Precisely through this realistic depiction of suffering a miraculous spirituality was made manifest; the very excessiveness of the pain of Jesus Christ was some kind of a transfiguration without halos or other symbols. J.K. had his first glimpse of what he would call “supranaturalism” or “spiritualistic naturalism”. It was possible, through the techniques of documentation and naturalistic detail, to go beyond the material and show the human soul.

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At the same time, Huysmans’ life also was a confrontation with gruesome reality: his mistress Anna Meunier was suffering from a painful illness, his friend Jules-Amedée Barbey d’Aurevilly was dying of old age and another friend, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, was slowly expiring of stomach cancer. J.K. set about to document the manifestations of the Spirit in the real world. “Là-bas” started as a study of the model for Bluebeard: the noble and pious Gilles de Rais who fought with Joan of Arc and then, in his castle at Tiffauges, became a kidnapper, torturer and slaughterer of children. But the novel soon turned into the story of the research Huysmans did in order to write it. Autobiography and fiction had merged before, now it was J.K.’s stand-in Durtal who tried to understand the horrible deeds of Gilles de Rais. In order to achieve this, he – as Huysmans – studied the occult, the black arts and the Black Mass.

Huysmans made contact with Berthe Courrière, thanks to her lover, the writer Remy de Gourmont. Berthe believed in black magic and beguiled J.K. with tales of her paranormal experiences. Huysmans also had a brief and bizarre affair with another Lady of the Occult, Henriette Maillat. Both she and Berthe were the models for Hyacinthe Chantelouve, the heroine “down there”. Huysmans contacted, among others, a founding member of the modern French Order of the Rosy Cross, Stanislas de Guaïta; a self-proclaimed descendant of the Chaldean Magi, Sâr Joséphin Péladan; an expert on alchemy, Michel de Lézinier; the renegade priest and exquisitely evil Joseph-Antoine Boullan, no stranger of prisons, who regarded all forms of sexual intercourse as acts of worship and who was accused of having slain his own child, conceived by a nun, on the altar, after a Black Mass. Boullan provided Huysmans with all sorts of documentation on the black arts in 19th century France.

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“Down There” is the account of Durtal’s – or Huysmans’ – research, and their discovery: that Satanism is alive and kicking in 19th century France, just as it was in the medieval times. It’s a strong spiritual force, creating real phenomena one can observe and document. The subject matter of “Down There” may be abhorrent, as art – through the power of words – it is highly original, since the categories of fiction and nonfiction, reality, dreams and imagination are called into question.

The novel received a good press, but had some unpleasant consequences for its author: there were some violent attacks launched, calling the originality into question (of course it was not “original”, since J.K. had previously “lived” the plot!) and Henriette Maillat recognized in the letters of Hyacinthe Chantelouve – who had Durtal admitted to a Black Mass – the letters she had written to Huysmans. Fortunately for him, at the ministery where he was still working, J.K. had some connections with the Sûreté (the French secret police) and when Maillat discovered that detectives were asking questions about her, she disappeared from J.K.’s life.

And then there were the Rosicrucians, disturbed at J.K.’s close contacts with Boullan and his high-priestess Julie Thibault. It was the start of a Black Arts War, with magicians casting spells upon each other and Huysmans narrowly escaping a deadly duel. For years afterward, J.K. felt that he was a victim of evil magic. So from time to time he could be found huddled inside a chalk circle scrawled upon the floor to ward off hellish vibrations.

Finally, at the Black Mass J.K. attended himself, or at least at the orgiastic ritual narrated in “Down There”, he claimed to have seen a Belgian priest, who became the prototype of the diabolic Canon Docre. Of course his friend and ally Joseph-Antoine Boullan had nothing to do with it, the authorities better had a look at the life and times of abbé Louis Van Haecke. This resulted into a highly controversial issue, for Louis Van Haecke was the well respected chaplain of the famous Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges…

Read also:

The Black Mass, as described by J.K. Huysmans in “Down There/The Damned”

The Satanist Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges

Black Magic in Nineteenth Century France

To Be Continued Here:

• Rennes-le-Château and the Holy Blood of Bruges
• The Holy Blood of Bruges, a New Jerusalem
• The Holy Sepulchre of Bruges-la-Morte

The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, completed in 1432 by the Van Eyck Brothers (Hubert & Jan), is a large and complex polyptych, originally made for the Joost Vyd Chapel in Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. In the eighties, for security reasons, it was removed to another chapel in the cathedral. The Mystic Lamb is regarded as a true artistic highlight of Christianity and of Western civilisation. It is said – but it’s not sure – that Hubert Van Eyck started the work and his brother Jan, the famous Flemish Primitive who was attached to the court of the Duke of Burgundy, finished it.

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A Masterwork of Mystery

The Ghent Altarpiece consists of a complex series of 24 scenes, with two doors and a central piece which is showing some saints and apostles adoring the Mystic Lamb, or the symbol of Jesus Christ. From the panels to the left and to the right, pious hermits and pilgrims, Just Judges and Knights of Christ are approaching the ceremony in the middle. The upper register shows Christ as a King, between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, Adam and Eve. Inside, there are angels singing and making music.

The oil painting offers intricate details and composition, unrivaled realism, mystical meaning and a translucent use of colour which is responsible for the beautiful light. Over the centuries, the masterpieces has retained its luminous colours.

The polyptych, surrounded by mystery, has always been the main attraction of the impressive cathedral of Saint Bavo. After being kidnapped by the French revolutionary forces, some panels of the Mystic Lamb returned to Ghent. In 1816 however, the panels were sold for 100.000 guilders to an antiquary, while the bishopric knew they had a value of at least four times this sum… and indeed, the panels were sold very soon to a museum in Berlin for 400.000 guilders. At the end of the 19th century, these panels were cut lengthwise. In 1919, thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, they returned to Belgium again. Oh yeah, and what are the Knights Templar doing on this very catholic piece of art? 

Maybe the greatest mystery of the many mysteries surrounding the Mystic Lamb, was caused by the lower left panel, called the Just Judges. The original panel got stolen in 1934, has never been found and was replaced by a copy. It’s Belgium’s most famous unsolved mystery. Countless amateur and professional sleuths are still tracking clues. In a BBC interview with crime writer Minette Walters, Ghent’s former police chief Karel Mortier referred to the theft as “the art crime of the century”.

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The Theft of the Just Judges

In the night of April 10, 1934, two panels – the Just Judges and St. John the Baptist – measuring 1.49 x 55.5 centimeter, were stolen from the cathedral. On May 1, the bishop of Ghent received a letter, which said that the sender possessed both panels. The letter was signed “D.U.A.”. Provided he would receive 1 million francs for the Judges, he would return St. John without any charge. DUA asked the bishop to answer him through an advertisement in a newspaper, and St. John was delivered at the railroad station Brussels-North. But instead of the requested sum, the authorities only wanted to pay 25.000 francs… and the Just Judges did not return home.

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November 25… Arsène Goedertier, aged 57, a broker who lived and worked in the small town of Wetteren, aged 57, collapsed after a speech at a political rally. On his death bed, he informed his friend Georges de Vos in private that he had a file on the crime at his home. Goedertier tried to say more… but finally took the secret in his grave. Later, the police found in his home carbon copies of the messages which had been sent to the bishop by DUA. Only one single cryptic line spoke of the possible whereabouts of the Judges: the panel was “in a place where neither I nor anyone else” could recover it drawing attention.

The wife of Arsène Goedertier revealed that her late husband was an avid reader of detective novels and a true fan of Arsène Lupin, the hero in some of Maurice Leblanc’s mystery novels. Arsène, of course, was also Goedertier’s first name, and Lupin was a “gentlemen thief”. Goedertier had read The Hollow Needle (L’aiguille creuse) several times. The theme of the novel was “art thefts”. Arsène Goedertier undoubtedly felt inspired by Arsène Lupin, who always left a trail of coded messages after his thefts. Goedertier used a similar code in his ransom notes.

Arsène Goedertier was an eccentric, but although he might have typed and mailed the ransom notes, I doubt he was the original thief… and he sure didn’t act alone. The broker from Wetteren was in a very healthy financial situation. Maybe he chased some sort of a symbolic revenge. Indeed, Goedertier is said to have been “angry” at the Catholic Church.

Since 1956, former police chief Karel Mortier has dedicated himself to the search for the Lost Judges. Mortier beliefs the panel was hidden somewhere in Saint Bavo Cathedral. X-ray investigations however were fruitless. Another policeman, Chris Noppe, is convinced that the Judges are hiding in the coffin of King Albert I. A few months before the theft, the Belgian King – the hero of the Great War – died in a climbing accident, which was possibly a set up for murder. The body of King Albert I now lies in the crypt of the royal family in the palace of Laeken, near Brussels. Belgium’s own Miss Marple, Maria De Roo, is defending a conspiracy theory, claiming the authorities retrieved the panel. And I think Goedertier and two accomplices worked for Himmler’s SS and were murdered when they double-crossed a nazi agent.

Van Eyck, neo-Templar and alchemist

I do believe Van Eyck’s painting held a “Da Vinci Code”, containing information the true whereabouts of the Holy Grail, also known as the Holy Blood(line) of Christ. In the 16th century, Jan Van Eyck already was described by art historian Giorgi Vasari as an alchemist, suggesting he was a member of a secret brotherhood. In his article 666 = Satan’s Song? – Part 2: The Just Judges and Otto Rahn, Philip Coppens says that modern freemasons have noted how Van Eyck depicted a working lodge in a drawing of Saint Barbara. 

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Jan Van Eyck entered the service of Philip the Good in 1425. The Duke of Burgundy was moving his court between his palaces in Brussels, Lille and Bruges. Van Eyck resided in Lille and mostly in Bruges, where he died in 1440. He performed certain missions for the Duke, but the exact nature of these missions has remained unknown. Both men were very close, the Duke served as godfather to one of Jan’s children.

While working on his masterpiece, Jan’s patron established the Order of the Golden Fleece. The name has never been fully explained, but it is no secret that Philip was very interested in alchemy. In his palace in Brussels for example, he installed a real “alchemical room”. Though Van Eyck was employed by Philip the Good, he took the commission for the Vyd family. He knew he would have to spend a great amount of time on this Ghent Altarpiece. So, even if Jan only completed what Hubert had begun, he needed the consent of his patron. But that seemed to be no problem at all.

The Mystic Lamb clearly depicts Jesus as a King. This was very uncommon in medievalor Gothic paintings. It was also very uncommon in 1432, and even dangerous, to depict a bunch of arch-heretics on your piece of art. Under pressure of King Philip of France, in 1307 many of the Knights Templar were arrested, tortured – so they would give false confessions – and burned at the stake. The Order was disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312 on the charge of religious heresy and sexual misconduct.

So, here is one of the great Mysteries of the Lamb of God: what are the Templars doing on this “true” catholic masterpiece? The title of the panel is “Milites Christi”, Soldiers of Christ, the official name of the Knights Templar. Moreover, they don’t look like sinners who are seeking forgiveness, do they? No, this one knight in his shining armour rides with great kings and noblemen, bearing the shield and the banner of the Temple!

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On the Ghent Altarpiece, the Mystic Lamb is spilling his blood in the Cup of the Last Supper. This bleeding lamb is common christian iconography, but the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and the Chalice usually doesn’t show up together with the Templars, who were regarded as the keepers of the Holy Grail… or the secret of the Holy Blood(line) of Christ.

The Nazi Plot Theory

I have developed the “Nazi Plot Theory” for the first time in a book called Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb (Mysteries van het Lam Gods, 1991). Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, just a year before the Judges got stolen. I do think the Nazi’s commissioned the theft, because of the mystic and heretic connotations of Ghent Altarpiece. Hitler wanted to seize the iconography of the Mystic Lamb and incorporate it into the Holy Canon of his own “Arian” religion, that had to compete with Christianity.

The Mystic Lamb should be read as a code and some of the panels could be incorporating documents or a map, concerning the Holy Blood brought by the Knights Templar and Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, to Bruges. The first Grail story was commissioned by his son, Philip of Alsace. In the late 19th century the chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges seems to have turned into a satanist. His tale was told by Joris-Karl Huysmans in his book Down There (Là-Bas) and preceded that other story of a satanist priest, who found a treasure and/or a secret concerning the Templars, the Grail and the Holy Blood(line) of Christ. In other words, is the story of Bérenger Saunière, the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, nothing else than an echo, a hoax, part of a disinformation project designed to turn the eyes of the world to southern France, so that the true secret could remain a secret?

The obsession of the top Nazi’s for the Ghent Altarpiece is a matter of record. During World War II, the Ghent Altarpiece was stolen by the SS and hidden in a salt mine near Salzburg. A special agent was sent to Belgium with only one task: finding the Judges! It was to SS-officer Henry Koehn that Goedertier’s widow spoke of her husband’s fascination for The Hollow Needle. Interestingly, Leblanc’s stories of Lupin, a character he created in 1905, showed a great number of indirect references to the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château…

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Read more:

Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb

The Holy Blood of Bruges, a New Jerusalem

Rennes-le-Château and the Holy Blood of Bruges

The monks were welcomed by Count Arnould of Chiny and by Geoffrey’s aunt and foster-mother Mathilde of Tuscany, Duchess of Lorraine. From Mathilde they received the land that is now known as Orval, not far from Stenay, where once King Dagobert II was assassinated. Before these monks settled in Orval, there wasn’t any human habitation, although there were some Merovingian tombs discovered near the well.

A well-known legend says that the monastery was born out of gratitude. Mathilde, a widow, had lost her golden wedding ring, which was accidentally fallen into the fountain. She prayed to the Lord and suddenly a trout rose out of the waterwith the precious ring in its mouth. “Truly,” Mathilde exclaimed, “this place is a Val d’Or, a Valley of Gold!” – You still can visit this well, where she established a monastery.

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A Merovingian Play

Interestingly, the theme of the wedding ring which fell into the water also shows up in the play Pelléas and Mélisande (1892) by the Belgian Nobel Prize Winner (1911) Maurice Maeterlinck. His work, characterized by fatalism and mysticism, forms an important part of the Symbolist Movement. 

The play was first performed in 1893 and several composers made music for it. Claude Debussy’s impressionist opera is perhaps the best known adaptation. It is said that Debussy was Grand Master of the Priory of Sion – the keepers of the Bloodline Secret – and this in the period the parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérénger Saunière, found “something” in his church, that sent him to the occultist and even satanist circles of Paris. These secret societies included other “renegade priests” such as Louis Van Haecke, Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel of Bruges, the famous opera singer Emma Calvé, and writers such as Oscar Wilde, André Gide, W.B. Yeats or Maurice Maeterlinck.

Pelléas and Mélisande was called a fairy tale and “a Merovingian play”. Prince Golaud finds Mélisande by a river in the woods, weeping because she has lost her crown in the water. She does not wish to retrieve it, marries Golaud in a hurry and wins the favour of the old King Arkel, who is very ill. But then she falls in love with Pelléas. They meet at a fountain and Mélisande now loses her wedding ring in the water…

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The main theme of the work is the cycle of creation and destruction. The prologue – servants can’t wash the dirt from the steps of the castle – and the illness of Arkel, the famine in his kingdom, the foul-smelling waters under Arkel’s slowly disintegrating castle, remind us of the Grail romances, the Fisher King, the Waste Land.

The abbey in ruins

One of the monks who lived in Orval seemed to be Peter the Hermit, Geoffrey’s tutor. Together with Pope Urban II he preached the need for a crusade which would reclaim the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Land. In 1108 the monks disappeared mysteriously. There is no record of their destination, but it may have been Jerusalem. Peter the Hermit embarked for Jerusalem and in 1099 Geoffrey of Bouillon was offered the throne of the Crusader Kingdom by an anonymous conclave, led by a monk from Calabria.

By 1131 Orval became one of the fiefs owned by Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote the rule of the Knights Templar. He entrusted the re-establishment of Orval to the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines in the Champagne region and for five centuries, the Cistercians of Orval led a hidden life. Nevertheless, the abbey prospered.

In 1605 Bernard de Montgaillard, born in southern France, managed to have himself appointed abbot by Archduke Albert and Isabelle. He restored the buildings, reformed the constitutions of the community and put the monastery economically back on its feet. Bernard died in 1628. His last will was kindly granted: he was buried “at the foot of the stairs of the dormitory to the church”. Thus his brothers “would walk all over him”, whether they went up or down, and would be constantly reminded to pray for him.

During the French Revolution the abbey lived through various alerts. But on June 23 of the year 1793, revolutionary troops led by General Loison sacked and burned the monastery down. The community withdrew to its refuge in Luxembourg. For more than a century the charred walls of Orval were at the mercy of the weather and the treasure hunters…  You still can visit the impressive ruins of the old abbey.

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Nostradamus and the Bourbon War Chest

The fervour of General Loison, and of the treasure hunters, was caused by rumours of a Royalist War Chest, hidden somewhere on the domain of Orval.

In the spring of 1791, King Louis XVI was a prisoner in his own country. His wife, Marie Antoinette, was begging her brother the Austrian Emperor to help them. But the messages of her couriers were intercepted and the codes broken. The royalist General de Bouillé turned the fortress town of Montmédy, in the northeast of France, into a safe place for the royals. In the case of an emergency, the royals could cross the border with the Austrian Netherlands and find a refuge in the nearby abbey of Orval.

The famous prophet Nostradamus seemed to have foreseen a flight of the French King and his Queen in one of his dark verses. In quatrain 20 of the ninth century (Q20, C9) he spoke of two parts that would come, by nightfall, through the forest of Reims, to Orval. In Varennes a Capet would be the cause of storm, fire, blood and axe.

General de Bouillé realized it could be very helpful if you only had to speak about 20 and 9… and your fellow conspirators would understand you fully. Such a code could not be broken. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette could indeed take the route through the forest of Reims, to Montmédy and Orval. In Varennes, a descendant of Hugh Capet, would bring storm and fire upon these bloody republicans!

The Fortune of the Bourbons was entrusted to Leonard, the royal hairdresser. He had to bring this War Chest  in safety in the abbey of Orval. What General de Bouillé couldn’t imagine, was that Louis XVI would be arrested in Varennes, and that the King of France and his wife, Marie Antoinette, would lose their head under the bloody axe… 

The Kind and the Queen never reached Orval, but the royal hairdresser did. And together with Leonard, the Bourbon Treasure disappeared somewhere in the realms of Orval…

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Nostradamus and the Knights Templar

The retired professor Rudy Cambier published some years ago the book Nostradamus and the Lost Templar Legacy.  He discovered that the French used by Nostradamus was in fact 14th century Picard. Reading the Centuries like they were supposed to be read, the verses turned out to be written by the Cistercian monk Yves de Lessines. He was the prior of the abbey of Cambron, where the Knights Templar – at the moment their Order got suppressed – entrusted certain documents regarding their secrets and their treasure. De Lessines, not wanting to take the secret into his grave, wrote the story down in dark verses, describing the location of the Templar Treasure. Cambier located the position detailed in the quatrains. Groundscans showed that there were indeed barrels in the underground, but the Belgian authorities denied permission and blocked the enterprise.

Nostradamus seems to have destroyed the original manuscript of the Centuries. For Cambier, it was obvious why he did this: he wanted to destroy the evidence of his theft. P.V. Piobb once was a well-known occultist. In his book The Secret of Nostradamus (1927) he already stated that the prophecies of Nostradamus were in fact written by the Templars. The true nature of the quatrains was that of “instructions, given to future individuals”. The Centuries were, in other words, a coded manual.

There are certainly a bunch of quatrains speaking of a Temple and a treasure. In Q1, C5 we hear about a “celtic ruin” and two who argue in the Temple – the great one, mounted on a steed, is murdered and buried without making noises. Q7, C9 tells us of a curse, or a booby trap: evil will come to the person who opens the tomb. Q81, C11 speaks of a treasure in the secret place of a temple and Q9, C6 says that in sacred temples scandals will be perpetrated, but they will be seen as honours.

In Q13, C10 soldiers are hidden – their arms are making noises – beneath the food of ruminating animals (hay, for example). The animals lead the soldiers to a subterranean place or a city with a name that has “grass”, “herb” or “weed” in it. On Friday 13 October 1307, immediately after the arrests of the Templars in their Paris headquarters, the agents of the French King discovered that the Templar treasure had vanished, and so had almost the entire Templar fleet. A Templar sergeant confessed that the Order was tipped off about the arrests. A small group of knights managed to sneak the treasure out of Paris in three carts covered with hay. They fled to La Rochelle, a port on the Atlantic coast, destination unknown.

Nostradamus in Orval

It is known Nostradamus spent some time in the castle of Fain, one hour’s walk from Orval. And he also spent some time in the abbey. The French writer Patrick Ferté believes Nostradamus was known as the “Solitaire d’Orval”, a prophet who predicted the coming of the Great Monarch which also shows up in Nostradamus’ Centuries. However, during the French Revolution this Great Monarch also was – and still is – the hotel in Varennes where Louis XVI got arrested!

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Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln – and Gerard de Sède – have stated that, in Orval, Nostradamus was exposed to secret teachings, linked to Priory of Sion. He is said to have been shown an ancient and arcane book, on which he based all his subsequent work. This book was given to him in Orval and it was donated to the abbey by Mathilde, the foster-mother of Geoffrey of Bouillon.

There are three quatrains that could easily be interpreted as talking about a treasure in Orval. Q27, C1 is about a treasure that for many centuries has been gathered and was hidden beneath an oak tree that got struck by lightning. When the treasure is found, a man must die, his eye pierced by a spring. A legend says that Nostradamus often was sitting under an old oak tree, near the botanical garden of the monastery. The tree got struck by lightning but you can take a seat now on the wooden bench under another oak tree and look at the herbs in the garden…

Q66, C8 mentions an “inscription D.M. that is to be found in an ancient cave, revealed by a lamp”. And Q27, C2 tells us about a divine word, struck from the sky, and when you can’t proceed any further, you will see the “secret that is closed up with the revelation, as if one will march over it and ahead”. Well, under the oak tree, near the herb garden, you are only a few steps away from “the inscription D.M.”, and there, where the Secret is closed up with the revelation, you can walk over and ahead it.

I’m talking of the grave of Bernard De Montgaillard… Only these stones are left, but it was here the abbot was buried…

Photo by Patrick Bernauw

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Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb

About Nostradamus, Obama and the Antichrist

Philip Coppens and the Servants of the Grail

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An Elaborate Hoax

His story attracted Pierre Plantard, who wanted to play a vital role in the history of France and concocted an elaborate hoax, planting fake documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, that implied Plantard was a descendant of a royal dynasty. In 1967, Gérard de Sède published a book about his friend’s claim to fame. They chose the area and history of Rennes-le-Château as their setting.

The next step was The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in 1982 published by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.  They said Saunière found documents implying that the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were connected to the French royalty.  Saunière found them in his church, in a Visigothic pillar, in 1891. 

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Saunière had been a teacher in the seminary of Narbonne, but being undisciplined, he was appointed in 1885 to Rennes-le-Château. He renovated the church, built a grand estate for himself (the Villa Bethania) and a personal library which resembled the Tower of David in Jerusalem (the Tour Magdala). In 1896, the bishop of Carcassone investigated how Saunière had been able to fund these building projects. The bishop relocated him to a different parish, but Saunière refused and resigned. In 1910 he was tried for fraud; he had been selling masses he never performed. In 1917, Saunière died in poverty.

Some theories developing around Rennes-le-Château and Bérenger Saunière said that the Catholic Church was paying the priest vast sums to buy his silence, because he knew all about The Holy Blood – also known as The Holy Grail (Sang Royal, San Greal, Saint Grail) -, being “the bloodline of Christ”. He might even have discovered the grave in which Christ had been buried. Arch-heretics such as the Templars and the Cathars once were the safekeepers of the Secret. It was also the reason why Saunière lost his belief and got involved with trendy occultist and maybe satanist circles in Paris, featuring the composer Claude Debussy, the Belgian symbolist playwright Maurice Maeterlinck or that other “decadent” writer, Joris-Karl Huysmans. He also knew Emma Calvé, the Maria Callas of her age, who was a high priestess of a Parisian esoteric sub-culture.

And Nothing More?

The Mystery of Rennes-le-Château is probably a hoax, made of facts and fiction, and inspired by hard facts that had nothing to do with southern France, but with the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, Flanders. I even strongly believe that the hoax was made up to turn the attention of the public away from the real secret that was kept in Bruges.

In 1891, the year Saunière allegedly “found” something in his church, Joris-Karl Huysmans – born in Paris from a Dutch father – published his novel Là-Bas (translated as Down There or The Damned) and was the cause of a public scandal because of his depiction of satanist circles in Paris. The novel had a very vivid Black Mass scene, calling Jesus Christ an “Artisan of Hoaxes”, a “do-nothing King”, a “coward God”. 

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The “abominable truth” was that the canon Docre, Huysmans’ black mass celebrant, could be identified as the Flemish priest Louis or Lodewijk Van Haecke, Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel in Bruges. Docre/Van Haecke was reputed to have the tattoo of a cross on the soles of his feet, so that he could walk continually upon the symbol of the Saviour. Huysmans said that Van Haecke paid three visits to Paris, where he moved in occultist circles. He was seen in an establishment known for “its clientèle of renegade priests”.

Huysmans stated that the Chaplain of the Holy Blood, keeper of the Holy Grail, lost his faith because Jesus, “the Artisan of Hoaxes”, didn’t die at Golgotha… And who brought the one and only Holy Blood – or Holy Grail – in the 12th century to Bruges? The Knights Templar, together with a Count of Flanders, whose son later would commission Chrétien de Troyes to write the first Grail romance…

The Holy Blood of Bruges, a new Jerusalem: full story.

Read also:

The Mysteries of the Mystic Lamb

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