Publications
Genesis, the First Book of Revelations
David Wood
Baton £15
This is the second big seller in Britain on the Rennes mystery and others are on the way. Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln and co. started the craze by proclaiming the existence of a secret masonic society – the Priory of Sion – which claims to have operated various fronts for at least 900 years, including the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians. The big secret is, of course, the preservation of the bloodline of Jesus, whose descendants allegedly intermarried with European monarchs and whose centre amongst the gnostic Cathars of Southern France was destroyed in 1209 by the Pope’s Albigensian Crusade.
It is in an archaeological site in this area (near Rennes) that Wood stakes his claim towards a solution of the mystery. He is less concerned with the J.C. bloodline (one might ask what it would matter nowadays anyhow) than with the secrets the stones betray and what artists, cranks and conspirators down through the ages have gleaned from them.
Briefly, the buildings and rock formations form a “temple” of precise geometrical symbols of gods worshipped by the Egyptians, and possibly others before them. These gods – Set, Isis, Osiris and Nephthys – were worshipped as the gods of Creation and also spell SION. The creation story is linked to the theory of cosmic catastrophe wrecking the Earth’s surface thousands of years ago – an event which myths throughout the world seem to allude to. Wood argues that this is recorded at Rennes as a warning to posterity.
The ancients used geometry because as the ‘language of the gods’ it is the least perishable.
Wood’s ‘crown jewel’ is his location of a ruin, unrecorded by archaeologists, which he argues (again with his geometry) marks the burial place of something very secret and important, which could explain what all the fuss has been about. Naturally he has urged Mitterand to start digging. (1)
His linking of the Atlantis myth in the paintings of Poussin and Leonardo with the Rennes geometry is fascinating. But his belief in the Atlantis myth and its extra-terrestrial origins (!) he should have kept to himself, since despite being a crank he has done some useful research.
Since the Rennes forest seems to be full of masonic symbols, and since the Priory of Sion – if it exists (2) – is plainly masonic, it’s hard not to wonder if there might be a connection with some faction of mainstream Freemasonry. Wood has a chapter on how the Rennes geometry corresponds with measurements of Solomon’s Temple carried out by Hiram Abiff, the celebrated martyr of the Masons. Stephen Knight, in The Brotherhood, reveals the Masonic Secret to be the “shocking” and “unchristian” worship of Osiris and Baal in the higher degrees. Alex Mellor, in Our Separated Brethren, says that the arcane knowledge passed on in the higher degrees can only be grasped by the individual privately: ‘Those who know do not speak’ – even to other Masons. So all those Catholic exposes whose sources are failed seekers of the ‘Big Secret’, are largely guesswork and Knight’s book is just the latest in this tradition.
Apologists for the Masons (such as Mellor) trace the movement’s origins back to the building trades in the late Middle Ages and their need then for trade secrets – the myth of ‘operative’ masonry preceding the ‘speculative masonry’ of the Renaissance.
This myth has been well bombarded by everyone from De Quincey in the early 19th century to the Catholic polemicists of the 1950s. More reputable researchers like Frances Yates and the marxist Christopher Hill have pointed out that the Renaissance founders of science were not rationalists but Hermeticists, Alchemists, Magi and Caballists who relied on secret societies to exchange ideas and protect each other from the Inquisition. Yates gives evidence of links between such groups as the Rosicrucians and ‘ Scottish Rite’ Freemasonry. (3)
Lincoln and co.’s selling of the idea of conspiracy to create a new world monarchy is so unconvincing that you get the impression that they are more interested in the cheap thrills market. Inextricably tied to the bourgeoisie, the various factions of masonry sold their occult souls to rationalism and the needs of industry long ago. Their conspiracies wrested all the power they could handle from Feudalism centuries ago (P2 notwithstanding). The establishment today, be they masons or trappists, are too busy conspiring to preserve the present crumbling world order to do much work on the Fifth Monarchy and the Second Coming.
If Wood, Lincoln et al really are selling the secrets of the establishment elite, all well and good – power needs demystifying. George Orwell, writing on the connection between French Fascism and the Occult wrote, “the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates.” (4) But there is need for less wide-eyed amazement. Occult and religious secrecy merely serves the needs of political and economic elites whose contributions to humanity ceased to be useful long ago.
Two other books, The Holy Grail Revealed, P and L Fanthorpe (Newcastle,U.S., £5.95) and The Treasure Maps of Rennes, Stanley James (Seven Lights, US, £9.95) concentrate on the ‘buried treasure ‘ theory concerning Abbe Sauniere who was paid millions by the Vatican after he unearthed some ancient coded scrolls in his church which may have led him to Visigoth gold. Both books add little in the way of new and solid information.
David Black
Notes
- Someone may have already dug. Wood doesn’t mention it, but there is an old mine marked on the map just a few hundred yards from the ruin.
- In the late 19th century Leo Taxil conned a massive reading public and Pope Leo XIII into believing his wild tales of a Masonic/Satanist body called the Palladium. Eventually he told a massive religious rally in Paris that he’d fabricated it all to further the cause of anti-clericalism. See Satanic Mask by H.T.F. Rhodes, Arrow Books, 1964.Could the current Grandmaster of the Priory of Sion, M. Plantard, be another Great French Hoaxer? Holy Blood with its dubious sources, certainly smells of this possibility.
- Frances Yates Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Paladin Books, 1972
- Essay on W. B. Yeats in Articles and Letters Vol. 2 (Penguin Books)