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The Trail of

“I am gobbling it up. There are really no words of appreciation that would honor the depth of your journey!” –S.G."

After a few days of exploring the contents of The Trail of Gnosis, I am profoundly impressed. There is made available that I have not found elsewhere. Your book is opening new and exciting channels for me. Thank you for your important contribution to a virtually forgotten tradition." --L.J

"In her work on the Cathars of southern , Ms. Mann has recovered a vital spiritual practice that is as important to our of ourselves as to our understanding of another culture." --E.R.

The Trail of Gnosis A Lucid Exploration of Gnostic Traditions

Judith Mann

Published by Pacific Rim Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2002 Judith Mann

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Introduction

The Trail of Gnosis is the culmination of more than twenty-five years of research. It is my sincere hope that it provides inspiration for your own explorations of gnosis.

I have trekked across far-flung parts of this earth to identify and record the many diverse links that compose the great chain of . It seems important not to confine gnosticism to a particular locale, historical period or system, but to acknowledge that it encompasses all that we call ‘human’ connection to the Divine and to apply these experiences meaningfully to our times.

The term ‘gnosis’ is the Greek root of ‘to know’. It is knowledge by direct perception, personal intuitive or inspirational experience. As such, it imposes no or obedience to an authority outside of ourselves, only to the Divine within each of us. Earlier Gnostics, such as the Mandaeans, Cathars, Bogomil and Manichaeans, believed that each approach to the Divine is individual. From traces of their teachings, we can learn to take responsibility for identifying our specific , pursuing spiritual experiences by whatever means we deem appropriate. Within these parameters, we can also develop a climate of respect for each manifestation of the spirit as having something to offer, no matter how diverse.

How was I ‘called’ to this task? Well, in 1976, I accompanied my eleven-year-old actor-son to Europe for his six-month acting stint in Robert Wilson’s and Phillip Glass’ Einstein On The Beach. A knowledgeable friend suggested that while in France and Yugoslavia, I devote what time I could to researching the Cathars and Bogomil, whom I had not known of before then. On looking back, it seems that unseen forces had conspired to place me there so as to begin a life work.

Though the south of France, once Oc, land of the Cathars, was our first and longest stop, serendipity in a month later in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Synchronistic events are signals to me that a connection exists with some guiding intelligence and the events themselves. The events began to proliferate at an incredible speed.

Because I do not read Cyrillic and did not speak Serbo-Croatian, my son and I were often lost on the streets of Belgrade. One day, in such a circumstance we passed a sign in English that read ‘American Library’. Seizing the opportunity to correct our course, we raced up a steep flight of stairs and out of breath, were greeted by a gracious Yugoslavian librarian who spoke fluent English. After she explained how to return to our hotel, I brought up the subject of the Bogomil. “What a coincidence! My brother-in-law, an archeologist and an expert on the Bogomil is returning from Paris just this night. Please come to my house at 9 p.m. this evening and meet him”. Of course!

So meet Dr. Bogdanovic, I did. He suggested that on my return to Paris, I purchase recent copies of Archeologia, which contained his articles about the gnostic Bogomil.

Armed with these magazines, I made my way one afternoon to a quiet vegetarian restaurant in the Marais quarter of Paris. While waiting for my lunch to arrive, I opened one of the magazines and saw this woodcut. Then, I looked up at the wall in front of me and saw —the same image! I asked the waiter who had created the woodcut on the wall. He replied matter-of-factly that he was in the kitchen, but could come out to talk with me.

No, Christian A. was not the artist, but he had hung a reproduction of the same medieval woodcut illustrating the of the Grecian, Thales, as had appeared in Archeologia. He turned out to be a Rosicrucian, a group claiming spiritual descent from the Cathars, and extraordinarily open. Christian’s immediate response was to invite me to his nearby apartment, where he gave me several Rosicrucian books, a map covering many important Cathar sites in the Ariege and introductions to people who would guide me further. Years later Christian accompanied me to Armenia, which helped me to access information on Manichaean connections to the Bogomil and Cathars.

This initial series of ‘happenings’ have been signs enough to propel and sustain me through the years, though other synchronistic events have unfolded along the way. And thanks to the special people who have helped to create The Trail of Gnosis. I am truly grateful.

Judith Mann September 2002 p.s. Though the city of Beziers was central to Cathar history, and though I have researched the subject thoroughly, there is a deep obstacle to my writing about the demise of Beziers at this time. In simplified terms, recently it came to light that I hold the consciousness of a Dominican friar at the time of the . This individual saw the errors of his beliefs about ‘heretics’ after the Beziers tragedy, but was powerless to speak his truth or impact the situation in a meaningful way. Honoring this connection, my task now is to research, verify and reveal as much as possible of what I feel to be true about gnostic history. July 2012

Table of Contents Introduction 1 ; His Origins & Doctrines The Origins of Dualism The Organization of The Three Seals of Righteousness The Silk Road & Manichaeism Manichaeism in China The Western Dissemination of Manichaeism 2 The Paulicians The Key of Truth The Tenets of The Key of Truth 3 The Mandaeans Mandaean Cosmology & Customs 4 The Massalians 5 The Bogomil The Apocryphal Literature Bogomil Cosmology Bogomil Rituals Bogomil Doctrines Manichaean Elements in Bogomil Stele 6 The Entry of Dualism into Western Europe 7 The Johannites 8 The Kabbalists The Ein-Sof The Sefirot Otz Chim, the Da’ath The Tsimsum The Qelippot Ecstatic Kabbalah 9 Cathar Symbols The Dove The Solar Cross The Solar Cross of Montsegur The Celtic Cross The Knights Templar Rose-Cross The Tau The Pentagon & The Pentagram The Pentagon & The Five Elements The Fleur-de-Lys The Six-Petaled Rose The Energetic Hand The Stag Hunt 10 The Consolamentum, Meliormentum & The Endura 11 The Lyon Codex 12 The Council of St. Felix 13 The Inquisition & The Cathars 14 Principals of the Albigensian Crusades The Siege of Montsegur 15 The Caves of Sabarthez Bethlehem Ussat Lombrives Ornolac Spougla de Bouan 16 Cordes Minerve Montsegur, Zodiac of Morenci Queribus Sainte Juliane 17 The Agotes/Cagots 18 The Knights Templar 19 Journey of The Grail Montreal-de-Sos San Juan de La Pena 20 The Vera Cruz of the Knights Templar Bibliography About The Author Other Books by The Author

Chapter 1

Mani: His Origins & Doctrines

During Medieval times, Catholic writers tended to use the term, “Manichaean” to describe any dualistic , whether or not derived from the teachings of Mani. Today's scholars consider Manichaeism to be a separate , not a heresy in the strict sense of the word.

Its founder, Mani, was born into an educated Persian family on April 14, 216 a.d., in what is now Iraq, but then the Persian-dominated province of Babylonia. Living near the crossroads of Ctesiphon, Mani was exposed to diverse traditions: Gnostic , , Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Greek philosophy, Chaldean astrology and other doctrines emanating from Central Asia.

An exceptionally gifted child, it is said that Mani experienced his first vision at age twelve, that of an angelic being, who came to him from “The King of the Paradise of Light”. The being, named al-Tawm, “the Divine Twin”, seemed to be his mirror image. He was told that later, he would leave the Elkesaite community he was born into and given the basic tenets of a future religion.

A Coptic Manichaean codex acquired by the University of Cologne in 1970, claims that the Baptist sect Mani grew up in was founded by Elchasai, an early second century Judeo-Christian leader from Palestine. Elchasai preached that fire sacrifices led to error and should be avoided, but that water was and acceptable to . Influenced by gnosticism and living by the law of Judaism, the sect, had little contact with the mainstream Christianity of that era, which was dominated by Greek-speaking churches of the Roman Empire.

At the age of twenty-four, Mani was expelled from the Baptist sect because he refused to work in the fields. He feared damaging light particles that he believed to be present in plants, and also because he was opposed to the strictly ruled ablutions, and diet of the Elkesaites. In addition, he had committed the unforgivable crime of reading the works of the Hellenic enemy, the Apostle Paul. Mani identified with Paul and believed his mission to be a spiritual war to recover the light imprisoned in the dark world.

It was also at this time that al-Tawm reappeared to tell him “The time is now come for thee to manifest thyself publicly and to proclaim thy doctrine aloud.” The mysteries, hidden until then from the world, appeared in the Manichaean text Kephalaia as the mystery of Destruction, mystery of the Great War stirred up by Darkness, the merging of Light and Darkness and the Creation of the World. These were to become the basis of a new gnostic system of Light and Dark as two contrary, coeternal principles and the Three Times of original separation: fusion, cosmic struggle, and ultimately, future separation. Accordingly, he preached his religion for the first time at the coronation of the Sassanian ruler, Shapur I, in Ctesiphon on March 24, 247 a.d.

Forced to leave Persian Babylonia immediately after this event, this ‘Messenger of Light’ traveled for many years in Turkestan, Northern India, Eastern Iran and Western China, absorbing Buddhist tenets and preaching his . His appraisal of the cosmos became an amalgam of gnostic Christianity, Buddhist teachings and Zoroastrianism, then the principal religion of Persia. Mani was indebted to Marcion’s teachings of two – the good Father of Christ and the of the material world. He seems to have drawn particularly on the teachings of Marcion’s theological adversary, of Edessa (c.154-222) in his view of a primordial confrontation between two realms possessing symmetrical sets of elements with antithetical qualities. Mani also followed Bardaisan in depicting Darkness as an invading, contaminating force, not merely the absence of Light. In the developing contest, the Light suffers defeat and the Darkness takes possession of some portions of Light, intermingling with them and creating the heavens, our earth and the first humans, man and woman. Darkness, then, is seen as all that is material. To save the portions of Light from their union with Darkness, a fresh contest is waged by emanations or sparks from the God of Light. The Manichaean myth also seeks to answer basic questions of human existence, especially how souls, which are of divine origin, came to be incarcerated in bodies which are evil. Humans must learn to separate themselves from their bodies and the world, returning to their true . Richard Seddon, author of Mani, His Life and Work stated, “It is significant that he is still known in Islam not as a religious leader but as an artist. He is said to have withdrawn for a year to a cave, emerging with a scroll of extraordinary beautiful images. He loved music, ascribing to it a divine origin; he composed hymns and songs, encouraged singing, and is said to have created a new style of string music. Yet his most lasting art was that of a writer.”

Mani was known to have said, “Let he who hears these truths in words also see them in an image, and let he who is unable to learn them from words, learn them from pictures.” Mani was aware that the major he had encountered in his travels were delineated geographically and culturally. His new religion however, would transcend all cultural and national boundaries with startling originality.

Missionizing against Error was the driving force behind the religion from its inception. Mani and his Manichaean Elect entered into a lifetime of travel and evangelism, earthly agents of the 'Divine Call’; permitted to possess only enough food for one day and a single garment for one year.

At the summons of King Shapur I, Mani returned to Persian and dedicated a theological work to him. Shapur became a strong supporter. In 242 a.d., he gave Mani and his disciples, permission to organize missionary centers and preach throughout the Persian Empire, as well as to join Shapur’s campaigns against the Romans.

Apart from extending into Eastern Iran, Bactria, Armenia and Georgia, the Religion of Light spread westward to Egypt and Syria, penetrating the Roman Empire itself, where its presence was lasting and feared.

At the same time, Zoroastrian reaction to Mani’s success was steadily growing. Prodded by the Zoroastrian priesthood, the next Persian ruler, Bahram I had Mani arrested in 273 a.d. After a lifetime of preaching and organizing missionary activities, Mani could not persuade Bahram that divine was granted to himself, but not to the King of Kings, the Ruler of the World. A four-day debate with Magi priests ended with Mani’s torture and imprisonment in heavy chains for twenty-six days. Mani was then flayed to death, his body cut in two and his head impaled on the gates of the capital, Djundisabur.

Mani taught that from evil was achieved through deeply experienced knowledge of reality’s true nature and the true history and future of the universe, a gnosis. Manichaeism professed to embody a corrected Christianity and contained a path of self- development. This may explain why later, it was so strongly attacked by Rome and Byzantium, whose priesthoods wished to keep all esoteric knowledge to themselves. Mani’s system appealed to both the educated and uneducated, turning the world into a parable of the great struggle between .

The Origins of Dualism

One of the earliest references to the doctrine of Dualism can be found in the following Zurvanite, pre-Zoroastrian myth from Persia.

When nothing yet existed, the Divine Totality, known as Zurvan, offered a thousand-year sacrifice in order to have a son. Because of doubt about the effectiveness of the ritual, he/she conceived two sons instead of one: Ohrmazd, by virtue of the offered sacrifice, and Ahriman, because of doubt. Zurvan decided to make Ohrmazd, who would be born first, king. Ohrmazd, who was capable of reading thoughts, revealed this to Ahriman. The latter tore through the deity’s womb and upon emergence, announced that he was his/her son. Zurvan replied, “My son is sweet-smelling and luminous. You are dark and stinking.” Then Ohrmazd was born, and Zurvan wanted to anoint him king. But Ahriman immediately reminded him/her of the vow to make the firstborn, king. So as not to break the oath, Zurvan conferred royalty on Ahriman for 9,000 years, after which Ohmazd would reign.

A continuing Zurvanite myth relates that Ohrmazd and Ahriman fell to making creatures. Everything that Ohrmazd made was good and straight. Everything that Ahriman made was evil and crooked. After Ohrmazd created this world, he did not know how to make the Sun and the Moon. But Ahriman knew. He told his demons that Ohrmazd must lie with his “mother” to make the Sun, and with his “sister” to make the Moon. A demon conveyed this formula to Ohrmazd, who then complied. What is of significance here, is not the incest, which was sanctified by both the Zurvanites and later Zoroastrian priests, but that the good creator god was unable to complete his work on his own, and needed the knowledge of his adversary.

Centuries later, this story is echoed in a Bogomil version. As mitigated dualists, Bogomils tended to see the principal of evil as having sprung from God or being permitted by God to exist until some future date.

In the Bogomil variation, God allows his younger brother Satanael, to create the material world. Though there are definite Iranian influences in Bogomil and Cathar cosmology, there appears to be an underlying Judeo-Christian belief in which antagonism and tension between polarized figures play an essential part.

When the of the myth was adopted by Cathars, it took on an absolute form, attributable to the Manichaeans. Here, the universe is divided into good and evil forces, forever at war. The Manichaean concept of cosmic duality divides into three pre-linked periods. At first, good and evil, light and dark were completely separate. The principle of light was divine and spiritual; the principle of dark, evil and material. They were personified as the Father of Greatness and the Prince of Darkness and can be identified with deities of other religions.

In present time, the chaotic world of matter is both intermingled and in conflict with the ordered world of light. To battle cosmic evil, the Father of Greatness manifested the Mother of Life, who in turn gave birth to the Primordial Man. A second divinity, the Living Spirit, battled the dark forces with the Primordial Man. In the ensuing battle, the Prince of Darkness defeated the Primordial Man and ate his five children, though some of their escaped light became the heavenly spheres. The Living Spirit rescued the Primordial Man and created the physical earth from the bodies of slain demons.

Finally, all lost particles of the light of good imprisoned in matter will reunite with their source. The Third Messenger, another emanation of the Father of Greatness was sent to capture the remaining light. Each month, the waxing of the moon represents the addition of particles of light. As the moon wanes, these particles to the sun, and finally, to the highest heaven.

Humans are the offspring of demons who had swallowed particles of light. The first man, Adam, was awakened by the Son of God and realized that he contained a spark of the . When Jesus returns, the world will collapse into fire and burn for 1,468 years until it is destroyed, with the unrepentant demons and the damned imprisoned forever. Through the Third Messenger and Jesus, the Father regains lost particles of himself, separate human souls now at a higher spiritual stage--The New Man.

At death, the soul of a Manichaean Elect was ceremonially purified and carried directly to the Kingdom of Light. Hearers, who had not taken final vows were usually reincarnated. This doctrine seems to be a meld of Christian, Buddhist and Zoroastrian perspectives. As death was viewed as something good, mourning and lamentation were sinful and funerals, superfluous.

As soon as the soul of an Elect left its body, it met its twin, the redeemer and savior who was always within, even if unknown in life, and three accompanying angels. Together, they traveled on a column of light to the moon. There they came before the Judge of Truth. The soul was exhorted by eighty angels to step into the Paradise of Light and know joy. Perfect Hearers were also able to receive complete salvation, but other Hearers were ‘reforged’, first in the light of fruits, then in the bodies of Elects before they could gain entrance into Paradise. Those judged ‘not awakened’ returned to earth as beasts.

The Organization of Manichaeism

Manichaeans were divided into two basic groups, the Pure or Elect and the Hearers or Auditors. The Elect, an elite minority, were entrusted with redeeming the light elements from the bondage of matter and led strict ascetic lives as missionaries, spreading the throughout the world. Anointed with oil and bound by the rules of the Three Ethical Seals, the Seals of Mouth, Hands and Breast, they were forbidden to possess property, could accept food for only one day and dress for one year. They could not practice sexual intercourse, blaspheme, drink wine, eat meat or pursue work that would damage the elements of light. In addition, they were to pray seven times a day. In the East, the Three Ethical Seals were replaced by purity of mouth, avoiding injury to anything, purity of body, blessed poverty and truthfulness.

A person who could not adhere to such a strict code was allowed to become a Hearer, recognizing the Four Bright Seals: love for the , faith in the Sun and Moon, reverence for Primordial Man and belief in the existence of Divine Messengers who bring inspired knowledge to the world. The lay Manichaean had to keep the ten commandments of Mani, which forbade idolatry, lying, avarice, murder, adultery, theft, false doctrine, magic, doubt and idleness. They also had to protect and provide support for the Elect, collecting ‘merit’ by ‘soul-service to their own souls’; give a property tithe; live in monogamy; avoid “demonic procreation”; observe fasts; pray four to seven times a day; participate in festivals of the holy days and confess sins on a regular basis.

Corresponding to the five worlds of Light were five degrees of Manichaean hierarchy: Masters or the Sons of Gentleness; Enlightened by the Sun or Sons of Knowledge; Presbyters or Sons of Intelligence; True Speakers or Sons of Discretion; and Hearers or Sons of Inquiry.

The Manichaean Church of Light was led by Archegos, a title ascribed earlier to Elchasai. Below Archegos were twelve apostles followed by seventy-two or deacons and then by three hundred sixty elders. This arrangement is based partly on the number of signs in the Zodiac and the days in a year.

In the Manichaean community, women could achieve the status of Elect, but not occupy a hierarchal position in the Church of Light.

The Three Seals of Righteousness

The Seal of the Mouth Covered both cleanliness of thought and word, which was freedom from desire and ingesting only plants, oil and fruit, but not wine. The daily ritual meal began with an Elect’s apology to the bread: “I did not mow thee, nor grind thee, nor knead thee, nor bake thee-another did this for me; I eat thee without sin.” This apology was evoked as an act of purification, so that the light of the plant might be redeemed through the digestive systems of the Elect to the realm of light.

The Seal of the Hands Avoiding all harm to light particles and carrying feeling and morality into all activities, including art, handwork and writing. Bathing was proscribed as it defiled the water and its light particles. Material riches were seen as a prison, so that anyone who built a house had to care for at least one other person in it, or could suffer homelessness.

The Seal of the Breast This was the overcoming of inherited sin and the renouncing of sex, marriage and possessions. The opposite sex was to be treated as a craftsman treats fire, with respect and not letting it burn him.

The Silk Road & Manichaeism

The lands that lie northeast of the Oxus River were known to the Greeks as Sogdiana. Alexander’s victories against the who ruled the area, led to the dispersion of the Sogdians, who soon established a string of colonies from Merv to the western frontier of China.

At the time when Manichaean missionaries were active in Transoxania, Sogdian traders had already established a reputation as the principal conveyers of , especially silk for warhorses, between China and the lands west of the Pamirs. Because of Turkic invasions of the Silk Road and later of Sogdiana, it took three centuries before China would hear of the teachings of Mani.

As Manichaeism moved east into lands dominated by Buddhism, it was inevitable that it should adopt an increasing number of Buddhist features. Its cosmology became more elaborate, its confessionals more repetitious and the structure of its communities came to resemble Buddhist sanghas.

Manichaeism was strongest from the fourth to sixth century in the regions south of Samerkand, Bactria and Tocharistan. During this period of eastern expansion, Manichaeism assimilated many features of Buddhism, which was disseminated by monks from India on the southern trade routes. In the same way that their co-religionists in the West used Christian and Acts to support and illustrate their teachings, the Manichaeans in Central Asia made use of the life of the Buddha as a teaching aid. It was through the Manichaeans as literary intermediaries using the Georgian language, that the Life of Buddha was trans- mitted to the West in the form of the medieval legend of Barlaam and Josaphat.

When the famous Chinese monk Hsuan-tsang traveled through Bactria and Tocharistan, he heard that the heresy of The Pures existed in nearby Persia. In its long stay in Central Asia, Manichaeism not only assimilated many Buddhist terms and practices into its system, it also earned the status of a heresy in Buddhist eyes.

In the 6th century, a trade agreement between Sogdiana and Byzantium permitted the Sogdians to sell silk directly to the Roman Empire. Though the agreement lasted only eight years, it marked a return to more regular trade and diplomatic relations between Europe and Central Asia.

Events in both China and Persia also stimulated contact between the two empires. China, reunited under Sui and T’ang rule, was again influential in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. During this time, Arab persecutions sent another influx of Manichaeans into Central Asia from Babylonia. Those of the first mass exodus formed a new sect, the Denawars, ‘The Pure Ones’.

The rulers of Samerkand were not sympathetic to Manichaeism. When some Manichaeans fled there in the tenth century, the ruler wanted to put them all to death. However, the neighboring king of the Uighurs was a Manichaean and threatened to kill all Muslims in his kingdom if any harm should befall the Manichaeans of Samerkand. Later refugees from Abbasid persecutions were not always received well by their co-religionists, who had privileges and wealth bestowed upon them by the Uighur Turks.

Samerkand became the hub of trade as new routes opened to the north at Turfan after crossing the Pamirs, continuing on to Byzantium via the Caucasian countries of Armenia and Georgia.

It was among the Sogdians in the Tarim Basin that Manichaeism found its most ardent followers. The resumption of trade in the sixth century was an important factor in the eastward spread of the religion. Tributes of horses procured by Sogdians in Tocharistan and Bactria for the Chinese court allowed for repeated contact with Manichaean communities. The Sogdian language at this time came to be used by the Manichaeans along with Parthian and Middle Persian for their religious tracts. The spread of the Manichaean gospel was also tied to trade routes because the Elect, honoring severe taboos, required the constant service of their Hearers. They were limited to moving on foot from one merchant compound to the next. Association between the Manichaeans and the merchants was so close that in most of the oasis towns, the two were synonymous.

Manichaeism in China 768-600 A.D.

The first converts to Manichaeism within China itself were probably Uighur Turks and their Sogdian camp followers who had settled in China after surrendering to the Chinese in the frontier wars of the sixth and seventh century. These foreign communities were important links between the Chinese and the visiting caravansaries and traders.

Chinese Manichaeans preserved the tradition that the spread of the religion was inaugurated by the arrival of a missionary named Mõzak during the first T’ang Dynasty, 650-84 a.d. When Mõzak’s most outstanding student, Mihr-Ohrmazad, was granted an audience with the Empress Wu somewhere between 684-704 a.d., he presented her with the Sutra of the Two Principles, destined to become the most popular Manichaean work in China. The Empress was very pleased with the scriptures, which was upsetting to Buddhist monks of her court. She had been favoring Buddhism, because it legitimized her reign as the female head of state, which the Confucian system did not allow for.

Her short-lived Chou Dynasty was abolished in 705 a.d., the T’ang reinstated, and with it, an imperial edict limiting the practice of Manichaeism to foreigners. An edict of 732 a.d., attacked Manichaeism for pretending to be a school of Buddhism. However, the T’ang was not in a position to enforce this edict, as a powerful half-Sogdanian, An Lu-Shan, captured the capital cities of Lo-yang and Ch’ang-an with lightning speed. The T’ang court turned for help to the mighty Uighurs, living on the border of China. Together with Persian refugees and Arab adventurers, they quelled the of An Lu-Shan, and in 762 a.d., liberated the eastern capital of Lo-yang. There, the Uighur army was greeted by, among others, Sogdian Manichaean priests. It was in Lo-yang that the Uighur Khaghan, Mo-yu, was converted to Manichaeism, and with this, the religion found the political support it had been denied in China.

The T’ang court now had no alternative but to adopt a more favorable attitude towards Manichaeism. Both capital cities soon possessed Manichaean temples, built with imperial sanction. Missionizing in other parts of China became a Manichaean priority. With the backing of the Uighurs, necessary permission from the government was se- cured, allowing the establishment of temples in four prefectures in the Yangtze Basin by 768 a.d. The T’ang may have hoped that the spread of the religion could be contained, as these temples soon became centers for expatriate Uighurs and Sogdians, seen by the native populations as foreign. This proved wrong, as the Manichaeans saw to it that their faith would not be confined to the four walls of their temples.

In Compendium of Mani, a Chinese text recovered from Tun-Huang, Manichaean priests, Electi, were not permitted to dwell in the temple precincts unless they were ill. Germane to the original teaching of the sect as laid down in the seventh century Peking Treatise, was that the Electi should assume the role of wandering preachers. A complicated cell-structure of lay people and Hearers, evolved to provide food and lodging for the Electi . The Electi were not allowed to prepare their own food because the acts of harvesting and cooking were regarded as murdering the light particles in the earth and fruit. While the priests led a life of and abstinence, the Hearers carried on their normal lives, except for looking after the needs of the priests. This inevitably led to increased contact between the believers and the lay people, spreading the religion as well as adapting it to the social and cultural conditions of China. The fact that Manichaeism gained converts from the local population in the years when it was a privileged foreign religion meant that it was equipped for survival.

Manichaean missionaries translated their texts into Chinese prior to official recognition. The content of these texts could be easily understood by anyone accustomed to reading Chinese Buddhist literature. The characters used for transliterating the name of Mani in Manichaean texts are the same as those used for the Buddhist Sanskrit word ‘mani’. Both mean ‘bright pearl’.

In 840 a.d., the Uighur empire suddenly collapsed after a Kirghiz attack on its capital, Karabalghasun and the death of Mo-Yu. The Chinese then turned upon the Manichaean temples, which were both a symbol of foreign arrogance and a sore reminder of Chinese military weakness. In 843 a.d., the T’ang court ordered the suppression of Manichaeism, killing many priests, both male and female, and exiling the remainder to Kan-Su, where remnants of the Uighurs had established themselves. Manichaeism came under the censure of the T’ang not because its dualism was heretical, but because its organization and practices threatened the Confucian way of life. These events led in turn to a full-scale attack on Buddhism and other foreign cults two years later, marking the end of a two-century period in which China experienced an unprecedented amount of contact with the West.

However, one Manichaean priest, Ho-lu Fa-shi, managed to flee from the persecution to the comparative safety of Ch’uan-chou in Fukien province. From this base, Manichaeism spread rapidly as a secret society into the neighboring provinces well into the 16th century, thoroughly sinicized and shorn of its foreign elements.

With an ensuing 400-year reaction against foreign influence under the Sung Dynasty, the Manichaeans in South China could not hark back to their former status as followers of a privileged foreign religion. Because the sect was officially proscribed, the Manichaean temples were now registered as Taoist Kungs and Kuans.

To minimize its foreign origins, the sect was referred to as Ming-Chiao, the religion of light, eliminating the name of Mani from the term. In attempting to masquerade as Taoists, the Manichaeans also benefited from the reference to Mani in a possibly Taoist, Sutra on the Conversion of Barbarians in a version updated from that by the 4th century Taoist priest, Wang Fu. The original scripture has the founder of Taoism, Lao-tzu, never dying, but leaving China for the Western Regions, India and Central Asia, where he became the Buddha after converting a barbarian king to his teachings. The revised eighth century version has Lao-tzu traveling to the Roman Empire’s territory of Assuristan, where he is reborn as Mani.

The identification of Mani with Lao-tzu is of great significance, as it established a much-needed position for the Manichaeans in the mainstream of Chinese religious life. Evidence seems to suggest that Mani was made an honorary member of the Taoist pantheon to show that Taoism lay at the root of both Buddhism and Manichaeism. The Manichaeans were eager to accept the honorary citizenship of Mani and cited the Conversion of Barbarians to avoid later confiscation of their scriptures by officials. When Buddhists became more hostile to Manichaeism because of Mani’s claim to be a Buddha, the Manichaeans strengthened their ties to Taoism, which less hierarchically structured, had room for refuge. Manichaean cells soon became self-help societies with important consequences.

Throughout the Sung period, the cells were the nuclei around which new social ties were forged and economic links established at the expense of traditional Chinese society. Though adapting some aspects of their religion to Buddhism and Taoism, the Manichaeans maintained self-identity through preservation of the chief fundamental doctrines of The Two Principles and The Three Moments or periods of existence of the universe; veneration of Mani as The Buddha of Light, and the use of a treatise on the deliverance of the Primal Man and the creation of the world that has no Buddhist parallels. As late as the 16th century, Manichaeans in Ch’uan still knew Mani’s date of birth; that the religion began in Assuristan and was propagated in Persia; and that the canon of Mani consisted of seven books. Owing to the greater degree of tolerance in the East, temples and shrines dedicated to Mani were erected, which was not possible in the West.

The last significant mention of Manichaeism in Chinese sources is in the Min-shu, a 16th century catalog of temples and shrines describing a fourteenth century Manichaean shrine overlooking Ch’uan-chou. It still stands.

The Western Dissemination of Manichaeism

The spread of Manichaeism from Southern Mesopotamia to adjacent provinces of the Roman Empire was part of a well-orchestrated effort by Mani to demonstrate the universal acceptance of his . At his death, Manichaeism was already well established in eastern parts of the Roman Empire through the missionary work of his disciples.

Rome’s trade with the East via land and sea, was an important factor in Western diffusion of Manichaeism. Multilingual Syrian merchants were ideal missionaries, often acting as envoys to Persia by the Roman emperors. An important stopping place for traders who travelled to the Roman Empire from Mesopotamia was Palmyra, situated on a major travel route linking Antioch to the Euphrates. It was here that the Manichaean apostle, Addã, by evoking the name of Jesus and the laying on of hands, cured the sister of Queen Taõi and gained royal protection.

Manichaean sources in Middle Iranian say that Addã eventually reached Alexandria in the course of his travels. Egypt became an important center of Manichaeism. From Egypt, the religion spread swiftly along the Mediterranean to Roman North Africa. The first public edict against the sect was issued in 302 a.d., by the Emperor Diocletian on the strength of a negative report written by the procounsel of Africa. Persecutions were relaxed in 312 a.d., with the Edict of Constantine, which granted universal religious tolerance.

After the decline of Palmyra in 273 a.d., the main trade route between Rome and Persia shifted northwards to Edessa, where Manichaeism had been established in Mani’s lifetime. Edessa also provided the steppingstone for the entry of the religion into Armenia. The task of bringing Manichaeism to Armenia, possibly the first durable Christian nation, was entrusted to a disciple named Gabryab. Here too, we have a story of a miraculous cure of a fatal illness in the court of the King of Yeravan. Opponents at the court were orthodox Christians. Gabryab proved through his greater skill as a healer that he was a true follower of Christ, while those who called themselves 'Christians' were not.

However, in their missionary efforts in the West, the Manichaeans owed a debt to the expansion and diffusion of Orthodox Christianity, as it prepared the ground for receiving the revelations of Mani, the new apostle of Christ. The subjugation of Armenia by Shapur I may also have provided Manichaeism with opportunities for evangelism. With the establishment of Christian in the Roman Empire, Armenia became a refuge for heretics. Marcionite and other gnostic groups, including Manichaeans, were thriving in Armenia well into the fifth century.

The Paulicians, a gnostic group pivotal to the later Bogomil movement, appeared there in the 6th century. There also may have been a mission and conversion of the king of neighboring Georgia, as indicated by fragments of Manichaean history in Parthian and Uighur. The Uighur fragment speaks of the lame, wounded and infected being cured of their ailments by drinking from a special water at the gate of a Manichaean temple.

From bases in cities along the eastern frontier, Manichaean missionaries took their religion into Syria and Asia Minor, and then to the Balkans and . Missionary access also took place in Spain and Gaul, active traders with Egypt at that time. This success galvanized the Roman Church into frantic attempts to counter its spread, especially the diffusion of its literature. Wherever Manichaeism spread, owing to its radical tenets and cosmology, it provoked a storm of opposition. After two centuries of persecutions by the Roman Church and repeated barbarian invasions in missionized lands, the westward course of the Manichaean mission collapsed. From the 7th to the 10th century, the Manichaeans remained centered in Babylonia until, under the pressure of severe persecutions, moved entirely to Central Asia and Sogdiana.

Chapter 2 The Paulicians

In the eighth century, a large number of ‘heretic’ Paulicians from Armenia and Manichaeans from Syria were transplanted to the Bulgarian city of Philipolis (Plovdiv) by Emperor Constantine V to kill or be killed by enemies of the . By banding together, these sects formed a strong colony with considerable influence. Another wave of Syrian Manichaeans sent to Philipolis and its environs by Constantine V’s successor, Leo IV in 778 a.d., strengthened the colony even more. The colonists proselytized openly and maintained communication with those Paulicians and Manichaeans remaining in Syria and Armenia.

The forerunners of the Paulicians were a nameless, leaderless group, condemned and persecuted from 447 a.d. by edicts of the Armenian Church Council of Sahapivani. As ‘the filthy ones’, they were often punished with a fox branded on their faces, as were the later T’ondrakeci. It is entirely possible that they were followers of the early Syriac form of Armenian Christianity, originally Orthodox, then driven into heresy by the hellenization of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The Paulician sect originated in western Armenia at Kibossa in 657 a.d., when Paul of Samosata introduced the absolute unity of God that could not be modified into an old form of Christianity based upon the Epistles of St. Paul and the Gospels of St. Luke. Though early Paulicians adhered to Armenian Church teachings that Christ was adopted as the Son of God after his , later Paulicians professed to believe that Christ’s incarnation was illusory, praising Mary as ‘The Heavenly Jerusalem’, not as the mother of Christ, and rejecting all Church sacraments, which they considered the work of Satan. In turn, they were accused by the Orthodox Church of consorting with Zoroastrians and observing some of their customs, such as sun and exposure of their dead to the elements on rooftops. Some Paulician groups may well have adopted these practices. In 719 a.d., an Armenian Church council led by the Katholikos John III, denounced the Paulicians as ‘sons of Satan’.

For the next three hundred years, the Paulicians were problematic for Byzantine authorities and severely persecuted. At the height of their influence, they had founded seven ‘churches’ in Armenia and Asia Minor and had come to be known also as T’ondrakeci.

A book containing the profession of their faith, The Key of Truth, led its translator, Fred Conybeare, to present them as a simple, godly folk who clung to an early form of Christianity.

Practising the apostolic poverty they preached, the churches were under the charge of democratically elected leaders, who did not differ economically from their followers. As this ran counter to the tenets of the existing feudal order of Byzantium, the Paulicians were forced into conflicts early in their history. They become famous as dangerous and aggressive warriors, often inflicting heavy losses on Byzantine armies in such battles as that of Karbeas. Several different forms of Manichaeism and Paulism spread rapidly in during the tenth century as religious, political and social structures deteriorated under the weak rule of Tsar Peter.

Byzantine Paulinism was not homogeneous in nature, but split in two. In accordance with the Armenian Paulicians, one branch admitted the unity of God and the elevation of Jesus by divine grace to ‘Son of God’ upon his baptism as the age of thirty. This basic teaching was accompanied by the belief that ordinary men had the potential to become the equivalent of Jesus. In this we also see a parallel to the Boddisatva tradition of Buddhism.

Emerging in the ninth century, the other group, characterized by a mitigated dualistic and a docetic christeology, soon dominated the beliefs of the Paulicians.

After Peter’s death eastern Bulgaria was conquered by the Byzantine Emperor, John Zimiskes. He proclaimed the new territory an inseparable part of the Byzantine Empire and subordinated the Bulgarian church to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This rendered conditions even more favorable to spread the teachings of Mani.

In the rule of Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118), Paulician warriors from Philipolis serving in the imperial Byzantine army deserted the battlefield at a critical moment in a battle with Normans. It was an initial victory for the Normans, though soon they were driven off the Adriatic coast by Alexius, who then punished the Paulician leaders. This action roused the Paulicians to an open rebellion much like that of the ninth century and allied themselves with enemies of Byzantium. Alexius solved the problem by imprisoning spiritual leaders of the Paulicians and then buying off the masses with a prosperous new settlement on the condition of conversion.

The Paulicians remained a distinct sect in the Balkans as traces of them were lost in Byzantium in the course of the 11th century. They never merged with the Bogomil, but continued to live in tight-knit communities, sometimes proselytizing among the Slavs, but more often fighting with them.

At the end of the 12th century, Kaloyan Asen began a campaign to repossess most of the area that once belonged to the First Bulgarian Empire, but which had come into the possession of the Latin kingdoms set up after the Fourth Crusade. He was offered the Duchy of Philipolis by the Thracians, a position that required the unification of all subjects, regardless of religion or origins. The Paulicians rebelled against the French Baron of Trit who ruled the city and personally delivered Philipolis to Kaloyan in 1205.

The Key of Truth

In 1828, a remnant group of Armenian Paulicians, called T’ondrakeci, emigrated from Turkey to Russian Armenia. By 1837, an inquisition was opened against them based upon their evangelizing their Armenian neighbors, and their manual The Key of Truth, was seized by the Russian Court.

A handwritten copy of The Key of Truth was preserved in the Archives of the Holy Synod at Echmiatzin, Armenia where Fred Conybeare, an English scholar, gained access to it in the 1890’s, translating The Key in its almost entirety.

About 38 of its original 150 pages were torn out when the owner of the book found that he was detected by the Inquisition and tore out what would give most offense to the orthodox.

Its prayers are pure examples of the classical speech of the 4th and 5th centuries, while the controversial chapters that accompany them belonged to the 9th century. It is not improbable that Gregory the Illuminator originally composed the prayers and liturgical parts of The Key. When questioned by the Inquisition, the Paulicians stated, “We are sons of the Illuminator, apostolic men, the people who have not swerved in our faith.” Even into the 19th century, Paulicians viewed themselves as the true, original and orthodox Church of Armenia.

A revival of the Adoptionist faith had appeared in Armenia in the 8th century as the Paulician movement, sanctioned by Constantine V, Emperor of Byzantium. The Adoptionist form was an old one in Armenia, but until Smbat Bagratuni, was without organization or a church of its own. Before his advent it may have been a conservative party within the Armenian Church, opposed to the doctrines of the Greek and Latin Churches. Its apostolic leader formally codified their chief rituals in The Key of Truth, which accurately reflects the opinions and rites of the Paulician from 800 to 1200 a.d.

Smbat maintained the castle of Sim in T’ondrak or Thonrak, a volcanic mountainous region from where his missionary efforts radiated. According to Conybeare, Smbat Bagratuni caught the tone of St. Paul. There is the same assurance of being the vehicle of the Holy Spirit of being a missionary inspired and sent by God to teach the way, the truth and the life.

Conybeare found a curious passage in the recantations of 1837, where Gregory, one of the Elect of the T’ondrakeci said: “Lo, I am The Cross. On my two hands light tapers and give me adoration. For I am able to give you salvation as much as The Cross and the .”

He interpreted this singular utterance to mean that in some rituals, the elect spread out his hands like Jesus on the cross and received the adoration of the faithful, who lit their tapers on either hand. In this rite he saw why the Paulicians repudiated crosses of lifeless stone and even broke them up when they could. The Paulicians adored their elects as living representatives of Christ, shrines of his spirits. Accordingly, the faithful adored them or prostrated themselves before them, and as their flesh was Christ’s and they Christ’s body, it was the same whether the change of the eucharistic elements to be into their body and blood or into Christ’s be declared. The transubstantiation was not so much of the lifeless elements in themselves, as of the elect who blessed and offered them. Their change of nature was a corollary of his.

The Tenets of The Key of Truth

The following are Paulician tenets of The Key of Truth as translated by Fred Conybeare in 1898:

1. Smbat Bagratuni and his readers did not call themselves Paulicians or T’ondrakeci, but rather, ‘The Holy Universal and Apostolic Church, founded by Jesus Christ and his Apostles’. They shrank from the use of titles, which were so closely identified with their persecutors.

2. Their Church consisted of all baptized persons and preserved the apostolic tradition that Christ revealed to the apostles and they to the Church by unbroken transmission.

3. Three sacraments were requisite to salvation: repentance, baptism and the body and blood of Christ. Marriage, ordination, confirmation, extreme unction was not necessary.

4. Baptism was only to be performed by an elect or ordained member of the Church and in answer to the personal demand of the person who seeks to be admitted into the Church.

5. All true baptism was preceded by repentance and faith.

6. All persons of the faith were baptized on the model of Jesus at the age of thirty, in order that he may be able to understand, recognize and repent of his sin, which is twofold, original and operative or effective.

7. Consequently, infant baptism was invalid. In allowing it, the Latins, Greeks and Armenians lost their Christianity, lost all priestly functions, forfeited their orders and became a Satanic mimicry of the true faith.

8. On the eighth day from birth, the elect solemnly conferred a name on the newborn, using a prescribed form of prayer, eschewing mythical or superstitious names.

9. In doctrine, the Paulicians were Adoptionist, heirs to the 3rd century Ebionite or earlier Nazorean phase of Christianity, the latter the sect from which Jesus himself sprang. The characteristic Ebionite note was the absence of the Orthodox Church’s Doctrine of the Incarnation.

10. Jesus was a mortal until he reached his thirtieth birthday. He then was baptized by John and the grace of the divine spirit entered him. Anointed, he become the , chosen to be the eternal only-born Son, mediator of God and man and intercessor, as a reward for his complete fulfillment of divine command.

11. Jesus was born without original sin.

12. The Holy Ghost entered the baptismal candidate immediately after baptism when a third handful of water was poured over a candidate’s head and excluded evil spirits. At the close of an ordination service, the Holy Ghost was breathed into an Elect by the .

13. The word ‘’ was rejected as being unscriptural and was never used. However, in baptism, three separate handfuls of water were poured over the head of the candidate, one in the name of the Father, one in the name of the Son, and the last in the name of the Holy Spirit. The releases certain rulers from the prison of sin; the Son calls them to himself, comforts and gives them hope; and then the Holy Spirit crowns them and dwells in them forever and ever.

14. The Virgin Mary lost her virginity at the birth of Jesus. She could not intercede as Christ expressly denied blessedness to her because of her disbelief.

15. There was no intercession of saints, for the dead need the prayers of the living, rather than the living of the dead.

16. The Paulicians could also be called Unitarians, in so far as they believed that Jesus Christ was never God the creator, but a created man. It is specially declared that God created heaven and earth with a single word, with the implication that Christ had any creative functions.

17. The idea of Purgatory was false. There is only one last judgment.

18. Images, pictures, holy crosses, incense, candles were all fashioned by human hands. As such, they were to be condemned as idolatrous, unnecessary and alien to the teachings of Christ.

19. The Paulicians were dualistic only in the sense that the New Testa- ment is dualistic. Satan is the adversary of man and God, and owing to the fall of Adam, held all, including patriarchs and prophets in his bonds before the advent of Christ.

20. Sins were to be publicly confessed before God and the congregation.

21. There was only a single grade of ecclesiastical authority. The elect alone had the power of binding and loosing, transmitted by Christ to the Apostles and then to their universal and apostolic Church.

22. Although all authority is one and the same, the elect depository of this authority could have various titles depending upon the function being fulfilled.

23. Their canon included the whole of the except for the Apocalypse. The was not rejected, though rarely cited. A newly-elect received a copy of the Gospel and Apostolicon.

24. In the Eucharist, bread and wine were changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ through an invoked blessing. When Jesus said to his followers that his body is the true food and his blood the true drink, he was talking figuratively. However, at the Last Supper, when he blessed the elements and prayed that the Lord truly change the bread into his body and the wine into his blood, it was verily changed by the Holy Spirit and Jesus saw that it was so and thanked the Lord for the change of it into his body and blood.

25. The false priests of the orthodox churches either deceived with mere bread, or, changed the elements into their own sinful bodies when they said “This is my body”.

26. An unleavened loaf and wine was to be offered as the eucharist sacrifice

27. In baptism, the candidates passed naked into the middle of the water on their knees. It was also necessary to pour three handfuls of water over the head.

28. Before baptism an exorcism of the candidate was performed by an elect.

29. The sponsors in the infant baptism of the orthodox churches were at best, false witnesses.

30. The word used to denote authority is ishkhan-uthiun, so it is probable that the ishkhanq or rulers were themselves elect priests and elders, choosing and presenting a candidate to the bishop and then, with the bishop, laying on hands for the ordination.

31. The presbyters and arch-presbyters mentioned in their Service of Election appear to be identical with the ishkhanq. They seem to have had the same the same duties of testing, choosing and presenting the candidate to the bishop.

32. There is no trace of in The Key, nor any denial of the real character of the Passion. Christ’s sufferings are declared to have been insupportable.

33. Animal sacrifices as expiations of the sins of the dead were condemned as contrary to Christ’s teachings. In opposition to this relic of pre-Christianity, the Paulicians were the spokesmen for a higher concept of sin and repentance.

34. Newborn children have neither original nor operative sin, so as such, don’t need baptism.

35. A strong prejudice against monks runs through The Key. The Devil’s favorite disguise is that of a monk.

36. The scriptures and knowledge of divine truth were not to remain the exclusive possession of the orthodox Catholic priests.

37. Rejection of the Logos Doctrine. Jesus Christ was a man not a god, so there is no room for it in Paulician theology.

38. The elect one is an anointed Christ and the ordinal is a ritual for the election and anointing of a presbyter in the same way that Jesus was elected and anointed by the Holy Spirit.

39. Satan was responsible for the existing order of things, particularly the administration of the Roman Empire.

40. The Paulicians were Old Believers, enemies of the Catholic innova- tions of the fourth century: images and pictures, intercession of saints, fasts, purgatory, papal pretensions. They rejected the mass, the communion, the confession and the cross; did not genuflect or make the sign of the cross.

41. The Baptism of Jesus on January 6th was the main festival of the Paulicians, and their symbol, the fish.

42. After he was baptized, Christ fasted for forty days. The Paulicians kept the same fast as opposed to the fifty-day fast of the Catholics. The persistence of its name Quadrangesima, indicates that the Paulician fast was its original form.

43. Christ celebrated the mystery of the offering of the bread in an ordinary house and sitting at a common table. The Paulicians celebrated their Eucharist in a cellar or stable, or wherever they could.

44. In accordance with the precept of St. Paul of Samosota, a Paulician bishop had to be married and to have fathered a family.

Chapter 3

The Mandaeans

On secluded rivers surrounding the marshes of southern Iraq and in smaller numbers, in southwest Iran, live a peaceable and deeply religious people known as the Mandaeans. In 1978, they numbered about 15,000, but may have been brought to the brink of extinction by the persecutions of Saddam Hussein.

Mandaean literally means ‘gnostics’ and their priests known as Nasoreans. They are known to neighboring Marsh Arabs as Subba, and appear in the Koran as , a people of the Book. Driven out of Palestine at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, they moved east and south in their flight from subsequent persecutions to Parthia and Persia under the Sassanid rulers and to Harran in Mesopotamia.

Until the tenth century, Harran was the center of the Sabian sect, playing a very important role in the history of esoterica. Heirs to Egyptian , including the pursuit of alchemy, the Sabians were an influence on the Sufis, who in turn influenced the Cathars and Knights Templar of Spain and southern France.

The Mandaeans claim that the precursors of their sect came from ancient Egypt. Ptahil, ruler of the world, bears a striking resemblance to that of the Egyptian god, Ptah. And their funerary ceremonies appear to owe much to the ancient .

Ptatil, with the aid of evil helpers, created the body of the first man, Adam. But the body remained motionless. Only by the soul or ‘secret inner Adam Adakas’, which came from the World of Light, was Adam’s body animated. This is one of the main events of Mandaean theology, but has become confused in their mythology. Their piety is focused on saving the light particles found in human and world darkness. Ascension of the soul to its native realm of light is by gnosis. Although their writing includes the names of some Old Testament characters, Mandaeans of today are genuinely ignorant of Jewish customs and ritual observances.

The sect has a legend about a woman called Miriai (Miriam or Mary), daughter of ‘the rulers of Jerusalem’ who elopes with her Mandaean lover to the mouth of the Euphrates. There she becomes a prophet, reading from the Book of Truth, while her family desperately seeks to get her back, though misunderstanding her as a ‘whore’. This story may be an allegory of the sect’s own travels and persecutions, indicating that a Jewish faction merged with a non-Jewish group, forming the Mandaeans. The story is also suggestive of the Magdalene tradition. Though the Mandaeans once lived near the Jews, they may not have been totally of Jewish extraction, inferring that might not have been of full Jewish heritage. Nevertheless, indications are that they originate from a syncretic form of Judaism given over to Gnosticism.

Their Book of John or Sidra d’Yahya dates from the seventh century. The John of the title is the Baptist, referred to by the name Yohanna (Mandaean) and Yahya (Arabic). The latter is used more often, indicat- ing that the book was written after the Moslem conquest of the region, though the material dates from a much earlier period and indicates the sect's ancient use of baptism to contact the worlds of light to purify the believer of sin and transgressions.

The Sidra d’Yahya tells the story of John and Jesus. John’s birth is foretold in a dream, with a star appearing and hovering over Enishbai (Elizabeth). His father is Zahria (Zachariah), both elderly without other children. After his birth, the Jews plot against the child, who is hidden in a holy mountain by Anosh (Enoch) for protection until he is twenty-two. Represented as a gifted healer, he then becomes the leader of the Mandaeans. John is called The Fisher of Souls, a term also used to describe Jesus, Mary Magdalene and many old Mediterranean deities, including, Isis, Tammuz and Osiris. He is also called The Good Shepherd, who laments for one lost sheep who became stuck in the mud when he bowed down to Jesus.

A strange element in the legend is that the Mandaeans appeared to have had no knowledge of John’s death, though in the New Testament it is a dramatic martyrdom. There is a suggestion in the Book of John that John dies peacefully, his soul led away by the god Manda-t-haly in the form of a child. This may be a poetic prefiguring of what should have happened to John the Baptist.

Jesus appears in the Mandaean Book of John as Yeshu Messiah and Messiah Paulis, derived from the Persian word meaning ‘deceiver’, as well as Christ the Roman.

In an astonishing parallel to the Christian stories concerning , Jesus ‘proceeds to pervert the word of John and change the baptism of the Jordan and become wise through John’s wisdom.’ Jesus first turns up in a story applying as an‘outsider’ to become a disciple of John. When he appears at the Jordan River requesting baptism, John refuses, skeptical of his motives and worthiness. Jesus eventually persuades him, and as he is baptized, Ruha, the dark goddess, appears as a dove and throws a cross of light over the Jordan.

In the Mandaean history, the Hawan Gawaita, Jesus is denounced in these words, ‘He perverted the words of the light and changed them to darkness and converted those who were mine and perverted all the cults”. And their most sacred book, the Ginza states, “Do not believe him (Jesus) because he practices sorcery and treachery.” The Mandaean view of Jesus agrees with that of the Jewish Talmud in which he is condemned as an occultist ‘leading the Jews astray’.

In its original form, the New Testament Gospel of John was not a Jesus movement scripture, but a document originating with the followers of John the Baptist. It has been suggested by many respected and influential twentieth century scholars, including H. H. Schaeder, that parts of the New Testament Gospel of John have been directly taken from the sacred books of the Mandaeans, such as the Gospel’s prologue, “In the beginning was the Word’. Other elements were ‘borrowed’, such as the ‘John Nativity’ in Luke and Mary’s Song of the Magnificat. Evidence in the Mandaean books also links Herod’s massacre of the innocents with the birth of John, not Jesus.

Notable too are the parallels between the discourse on the Good Shepherd in the New Testament Gospel of John and the Good Shepherd section of the Book of John, which again, applied to John the Baptist, not Jesus. It has also been argued that the apocalyptic material in the Q, the source document for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, comes from the same source as the Mandaean Ginza. So it is possible that much of the material concerning or even representing the actual words of Jesus were really about his rival, John the Baptist, who was revered as the Messiah himself, not as the foreteller of the coming of Jesus.

The British biblical scholar, C. H. Dodd, concluded that Jesus began his career as a disciple of John, but went on to start his own cult, taking the names or Nazorean with him, derivatives of Nasurai or adepts.

Mandaean Cosmology & Customs

The supreme being of the Mandaeans appears under various names that translate as Life, Mind or King of Light and is surrounded by a wealth of light-beings he created. Five beings of light automatically brought into being five equal but opposite beings of darkness. It is these , fundamentally split between light and dark, who created and rule the material universe including our planet.

Mankind was created by one such being, called either Hiwel Ziwa or Ptahil. The first humans were the physically inanimate Adam Paghia and Hawa Paghia, and their spiritual counterparts, Adam Kasya and Hawa Kasya. Mandaeans believe they descend from both sets of primordial ancestors.

Their nearest equivalent to Satan is the son of dark god(dess) Ruha, who rules over the light less realm, but dualistically, is also regarded as the Holy Spirit. The original Hebrew word for ‘spirit’ is Ruah, a feminine noun also meaning ‘breath’.

This Dualist emphasis on equal and opposite forces of good and evil, male and female, light and dark, is very similar to Manichaeism. Indeed, the baptismal sect of the Mughtasilah to which both the gnostic teacher Mani and his father belonged, were Mandaean. Mani’s doctrines were undoubtedly influenced by the Mandaeans. and his doctrines in turn, influenced the Cathars and other European gnostics.

The Mandaeans have a number of sacred texts written in Aramaic: The Ginza, also known as The Book of Adam; The Sidra d’Yahya or Book of John, and the Hawan Gawaita, a history of the sect. These sacred scrolls are illustrated with gods who bear striking resemblance to those in Greek and Egyptian magical papyri. Many prayers found in Mandaean texts are to the goddess Libat, identified with Ishtar, the Egyptian goddess. It is also maintained that the Psalms of Thomas, written by a disciple of Mani is of Mandaean origin. The Manichaean Psalm Book, dated 275-300 a.d., appears to be an adaptation of a Mandaean text, dated 200 a.d.

The Mandaean community is ruled by the priests, although some religious duties may be carried out by lay members. The hereditary priesthood consists of three tiers: Tarmide, (disciples) or ordinary priests, bishops Ganzibre (treasurers), and an overall ‘head of the people’, the Ris Ama, No one has been deemed worthy to fill this role for over a century. In each local community the priest is positioned like a King or Malka.

A Mandaean priest’s ordination and continuing ministry is based upon rigid qualifications that exclude his being blemished, circumcised, a eunuch, impotent or celibate. If a priest suffers an injury costing him a limb or destroys his manhood, he is no longer allowed to officiate.

The priest lives a strict religious life, with special duties that include prayers morning, noon and night. Each morning, a ritual washing called signing must be performed. Prayers are usually recited standing and facing North, where the worlds of light are located.

White clothing, rasta, must be worn by both priests and lay members at all rites, as it is symbolic of the heavenly dress of light worn by angels and pure souls. All go barefoot during ceremonies, though sandals are mentioned in ancient texts. During ceremonies, the priest represents the celestials by wearing a silk turban-crown and a golden seal ring.

A ritual banner, The Drafsa, is present at main ceremonies and must be consecrated by a special rite. A myrtle wreath slipped over the top of the banner is secured by gold wire. The Mandaeans believe that this banner is a symbol of light and is concurrently present in the heavenly worlds where the light of the sun, moon and stars radiate from these banners. Drafsa also appear on images of Cosmic Ships.

Central to Mandaean communities are little huts called Mandi, connected to a pool placed at the south of the hut and fed by a river. They are always called Jordans, 'living waters' descended from the heavenly Jordans, which exist in worlds of light. Masbutta or baptism takes place here each Sunday, a day celebrated like Christians.

Baptism is the key sacrament of the Mandaeans with complete immersions in these special pools connected to a river. Baptism consists of two parts.

First, a water ceremony of triple self-immersion by the person to be baptized and the priest, followed by a triple-signing on the baptized’s forehead by the priest, a triple drink of water, the investing of a myrtle- wreath and a blessing by the priest laying his right hand on the head of the candidate. All are accompanied by prayers, hymns and formulas.

The second part takes place on the riverbank, where the priest anoints the forehead of the candidate with sesame oil. Then both partake of a holy meal of bread and water and a 'sealing' against demons by prayers recited over the head of the baptized. At the end of each of the ceremonies, a ritual handshake known as ‘giving truth’ is performed between the priest and the baptized. It is likely that Christian baptism evolved from these Mandaean rituals.

An essential part of Mandaeaism is that it attempts to solve the problem of death through deep faith in the survival of the soul, but not the body.

Another main ceremony, the mass of the soul, the ascension of the soul to heaven addresses this. The center of the ceremony is the complicated preparation and consecration of biscuits called fatiri. Only the priests are allowed to eat the fatiri, which may represent the power necessary for a soul to travel through dangerous and demonic regions to reach the worlds of light

Chapter 4

The Massalians

The Massalians, ‘the people who pray’, were condemned as the greatest heretical threat at the Council of Side, Armenia in 390 a.d. Rejecting the Orthodox Christian Church and hierarchy, they held the cross in horror and refused to honor Mary as the mother of God, or John the Baptist, who was considered the forerunner of or the actual Anti-Christ. They rejected the Old Testament and interpreted the New Testament in an individualistic manner.

Their main belief, a type of anthropological Dualism, was one in which a demon dwelt in every person from birth. Only after a three-year period of strict that included a wandering beggary and above all, unceasing prayer, could the Massalian expel the demon, join with the Holy Ghost and acquire the ability to see the Trinity. This state was reached through constant prayer often accompanied by wild jumping and dancing, symbolic of the trampling of the demon underfoot. Once this pinnacle was achieved, the adept was no longer considered capable of sin and could return to the mundane world without aesthetic constrictions. Fasting was no longer necessary and the male and female ‘enthusiasts’ slept together in warm weather on the streets. This led them to be accused of extreme sexual immorality.

To the two principles of Mani’s teachings, the creator of Good and the creator of Evil, the Massalians added a third. Their trinity consisted of the Father, associated with the realm beyond heaven and earth, the younger Son who ruled over heaven and the older Son who reigned over the earth.

These three principles led to the emergence of three distinct trends among the Massalians.

The first trend revered both Sons as they had originated from one Father and would eventually be reunited.

The second trend acknowledged the younger Son as the ruler of the better, superior part and the older Son honored because of his power and ability to cause evil.

The third more extreme trend separated themselves completely from the ruler of heaven and worshipped only the earthly Satanael.

The Massalians buttressed their doctrine with the written word. Their most important work, The Asketikon, made its way to the Balkans despite the condemnation of the Third Ecumenical Council. The Church was unable to destroy it, as it was preserved, to a large extent, in the Fifty-Seven Homilies of the late fourth century Egyptian , Macarius.

A detailed comparison of the eighteen propositions of John of Damascus, a Massalian, with those found in the Homilies of St. Macarius, reveals their Massalian character. It establishes further proof of the continued dualistic-Gnostic tradition within both the Syriac and Armenian communities. The Byzantines were so concerned with the situation in Armenia that they forced its 4th century Kathalicos, Sahak I, to persecute and burn many of the Massalians. It is entirely possible that before this occurred, the Massalians were able to transmit their doctrines to the Paulicians, or that the remnants were later expelled from Armenia to the Balkans along with the Paulicians in the eighth century and influenced the development of Bogomil cosmology.

Chapter 5

The Bogomil

In the troubled times of Tsar Peter, 927-969 a.d., an off-shoot of Manichaeism was created in Bulgaria, possibly by Father Bogomil, ‘Beloved of God’.

Father Bogomil formulated a new stage of development for dualist-Gnostic doctrines that had been expressed chiefly through Paulism and Massalianism. He coupled their Gnostic doctrines with the pagan dualism of the Slavs, which had been suppressed when the Bulgarians re-adopted Christianity and the ethicaI, social, and political doctrines of the Gospel. Though the first Christian missions dated back to apostolic times, the Christianizing of the Balkans had been severely interrupted by invasions of , Huns, Ostrogoths and Avars in the fourth and fifth centuries and the great Slav colonization and Bulgar expansion of the sixth and seventh centuries.

The Bulgars had migrated to the Balkans from Sogdiana in southern Central Asia, where they had been in direct contact with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism. So it is not surprising that Bulgar cosmology possessed a number of elements similar to the Dualism of Manichaeism, as well as religious tolerance for, and syncretism with the ancient Thracian mystery cult of Orpheus, which also incorporated elements of Dualism.

Fifth century Orphism most likely had its beginnings in what is now Bulgaria and Macedonia. According to legend, there existed in the mountains of Thrace, tablets known as 'sanides’, which bore the original writings of Orpheus.

The Orphic heritage included the following beliefs and practices: Immortality of the soul; Vegetarianism based on a belief in transmigration that precluded the practice of eating meat or sacrificing animals; as a road to salvation, to pierce the veil of appearances; The practice of pacifism; The source of evil lies in the body and its desires which must be subdued. Present life is a punishment for previous sins. The punishment is the soul being fettered to the body. The span of a life is a time of trial, during which, the soul may finally be purified.

On this fertile ground, the enigmatic priest Bogomil and his followers spread the new faith. As followers of Bogomil preached against both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the tsar, the nobles and the clergy, Bogomilism appealed strongly to the burdened peasant class.

The growth of Bogomilism in Bulgaria was also a proof of Byzantine influence. Very active Byzantine sects, such as Paulinism, aroused lively interest as suffering spread in Bulgaria and people urgently questioned the origin of evil. The Bogomil doctrine that attributed the very existence of the world to the principle of evil, was particularly suited to the times.

The Bogomils had the opportunity to prosper in Bulgaria, spreading their teachings to other nations. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries they had even penetrated Constantinople and greater Byzantium.

The Bogomil believed that the faithful should be bound together in religious communities similar to those of the earliest Christians described in the Book of Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul. From the first in Bulgaria they were divided into the categories of Perfect, Faithful and Listener, with a single leader, sometimes known as the Protos or Protosdid-askalos (first teacher). The first teacher was Father Bogomil, and after his death, he was succeeded by his disciple Mihail. In the 11th century. Marko of Thrace and John Chourila in Asia Minor were‘first teachers’, while the 12th century produced Vasali of Thrace. The Protos was surrounded by Apostles, chosen from the Perfects who were exclusively involved in teaching; constantly traveling from one place to another to propagate their faith.

All Perfects of the Bogomil faith were literate and educated. Many completed their studies at the renowned universities of the time, acquiring theological knowledge there for their battles against the Christian clergy. Unlike the official Christian priests who tried to maintain a monopoly on theology, the Bogomil Perfects freely disseminated this knowledge among the common people. Using the language of the region to spread their teachings, the Bogomil opened schools wherever and whenever they were able. This dedication to education and literacy later allowed converted Bogomil to succeed when the Balkans were annexed by the Ottoman Empire.

The Bogomil constantly meditated on the texts of the New Testament in search of their gnostic meaning, often ingenious in interpreting various passages in the Gospels as allegories. Like the Paulicians, they regarded the body and blood of Christ not as the Eucharist, but rather, his teachings; his body being the four Gospels and his blood being the Acts of the Apostles. In this context, they claimed that the only true Eucharist was the five loaves with which Christ fed the multitude, the five loaves being the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The Bogomil also chose to interpret many of Christ’s miracles as allegories of man cured of sin.

The private lives of the Perfects were led in complete with the main requirement of Bogomil ethics that they give priority to the spiritual. As such, they broke off their marriages or did not marry, eat meat, drink wine or own property. The Perfects were prepared at all times to enter into pointed disputes with their opponents, with the object of unmasking them and proving the correctness of their own beliefs. They were more than ascetics, fighters who did not run away from society, but who remained in it to spread the ‘Bogomil word’. Their followers saw to their modest daily requirements of food and shelter.

The Believers were accepted in the Bogomil communities and allowed to participate in the rituals. They had to observe certain norms, such as fasting on certain days, praying frequently, being humble and not desiring excessive wealth, but they could own property, marry and have children. The Listeners were those who did not yet participate in the life of the communities and only allowed to attend sermons. No special way of life was required of them, so that they remained the same as other people.

The Bogomil division into three categories was the result of the very nature of the movement as an intricate social and religious doctrine, embracing various sections of medieval Bulgarian society. It reflected the evident contradictions between dogma and reality, between theory and necessity. Bogomil was used selectively depending upon the particular situation and social environment in which it was being propagated.

By the 12th century, there were many Bogomil communities spread throughout Bulgaria, as well as in neighboring countries. Each had a leader known as a Dedats, interpreted by Latin sources as a ‘bishop’. His helpers were known as or Gost.

In agreement with the principles laid down by the gospels and early Christian communities, Bogomil religious life was highly simplified. According to the Bogomil Catharist Prayer Book, only four rites were performed: general prayer meetings where sermons were also given; mutual confessions by members of the community; the admission of Listeners into the group of Believers; the initiation of Believers into the ranks of Perfect.

By claiming that “knowledge is light”, the Bogomil were in the forefront of all medieval scholars. Through direct experience or gnosis, the Bogomil aimed at gaining a profound knowledge of cosmic questions. Theirs was the first daring step towards the literary and philosophical of the . They sought to explain the origin of the material world; to discover eternal truth and to learn how man, who is caught in Satana’s net, can be released and returned to God.

It was during the time of Alexius I of Byzantium, the First Crusade, the founding of the Knights Templar and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, that Bogomilism was regarded as the greatest heretical menace to the Orthodox Church.

Thousands of Bogomil and representatives of similar throughout Europe paid dearly for their ‘heresy’. The obsessive Alexius I launched an anti-heretical crusade against the Bogomil stronghold of Philipolis and surrounding areas in Northern Thrace, now Bulgaria, converting whole towns and districts by means of force. He next focused his attention on Constantinople, where many noble families were practicing Bogomils. There, Alexius tricked the fearless monk Vasali into revealing the details of Bogomil inner teachings by pretending that he and his brother Sebastocrater Isaac desired conversion. Vasali was burnt at the stake in 1111, after a trial based upon a written account of the teacher’s oration. His last words were “For my beliefs I am ready to suffer torture, the fire and a thousand deaths.” Alexius then ordered a systematic persecution of Vasali’s disciples and Bogomil followers, with his goal the total extinction of Bogomilism in Byzatium.

Anti-Bogomil persecutions continued to rage in Byzantium under the reign of Manuel Comnenus, 1143-80 a.d. In Bulgaria they were hunted down and eradicated by Tsar Peter, 927-969 a.d., and the later Tsars of the Second Bulgarian Empire. In 1211, Tsar Boril convened a synod and ordered that “their faces be branded with iron, and like this, be driven from the state”. In Serbia, the Church Synod headed by Stefan Nemanja, 1168-1196 a.d., also condemned Bogomilism and pronounced severe punishments on those involved in the movement. The head of the Bogomil Church had his tongue cut out for not preaching the word of Christ as son of God and Bogomil books were burnt. Some Bogomil were burnt at the stake, others were exiled and all lost their property, which was parceled out to nobles of the Orthodox Church.

The Bogomil were driven into the Western Balkans, where Bosnia emerged as the European center of dualism, geographically poised between the East and West. From there, the teachings spread to Italy, France and Germany, where Bosnia was often mentioned in neo- Manichaean texts.

In 1235, a Hungarian Crusade against the Bogomil in Bosnia was mounted by Pope Gregory IX. After great bloodshed and rampage, the result was increased Bogomil activity and deepened anti-Rome sentiments. In 1236, Gregory referred to a Bosnian prince and his mother as the only good Catholics in the midst of a heresy-infected nobility. The persecution lasted until 1241, when Hungary suffered a disastrous Tartar invasion, marked by the deaths of its leading crusaders, Archbishop Ugrin and Count Coloman.

The persecution of the Bogomil was not limited to the Balkans, but raged throughout Europe against their co-religionists, such as the Cathars and the Paterenes.

By the turn of the 13th century, despite the opposition, the “heresy” was spreading so swiftly that the Pope in Rome, the Patriarch in Constantinople and all secular powers launched a savage “holy” war against the “wrong-believers” who were endangering Europe and initiated the office of the Inquisition. “All sins are less than heresy” was the Church slogan.

In 1461, three Bosnian nobles, seen as powerful ringleaders of the “heresy” at the royal court, were brought before the Pope to renounce their “Manichaean errors”. Witnessing this humiliating event was the infamous Cardinal Juan de Torquemada who went on to compile a list of fifteen Bosnian Manichaean errors.

Three or four decades before the Osmanli conquest of the Balkans, a loose confederation of Shi’ite Sufi gnostics, the Bektashi of Central Asia, infiltrated remote areas of Bosnia. It is quite possible that their preaching influenced the Bogomil, who held similar views.

One of the first was the 13th century saint, Sari Saltik. Though most details of his life are clouded by legend, it is known that he traveled throughout the region well in advance of the Ottoman armies.

To this day, Bosnian Sufis still make a yearly pilgrimage to his tomb at the source of the Buna River in Blagaj, Hercegovina. According to a Bosnian Sufi legend, a dragon lived in a cave above the source of the Buna, to whom a girl was offered each year as tribute. When it was the turn of Milica, the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Hercegovina, Sari Saltik came to her rescue, then married her. AS the legend goes, they lived together for many years, until the day he became invisible.

In 1463, Bosnia was swiftly conquered by Ottoman Empire. With it came a new and powerful religious factor, Sunni Islam. Though the traditional view of the religious history of Bosnia attributes its fall and Islamization to the religious and political strife in the wake of Bogomil persecutions by Stefan Tomas, another view suggests that the characteristic lack of religious uniformity in medieval Bosnia allowed for the rapid spread of Islam.

The Islamization of Bosnia marked the closing chapter of the five hundred year history of dualism in the Balkans, though as late as 1920, reference was made to an existing Bogomil enclave on the Peljesac Peninsula to the north of Dubrovnik.

There are also indications of Bogomil practices in the Gorani villages of Kosovo through the 19th century. The Gorani appear to have been expelled from Bulgaria by order of St. Theodosius and the Orthodox Church Council of 1360.

Today what remains of the Bogomil tradition are dualistic beliefs and legends imprinted on southern Slav folklore and a ‘Bogomil spirit’ that survives in the craft and literature of the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. By rejecting and opposing the authority of the Papacy, the Bogomil became the true forerunners of the Reformation. What seems certain is that the religious toleration of Bosnia until the mid-fifteenth century, allowed for the long survival of Dualism

The Bosnian Church

The origins and nature of the Bosnian Church have been subjects of wide debate. One view holds that it evolved from the Bogomil movement into a national church displacing Catholicism as the established religion of Bosnia in about 1250. The Bogomil also came to be known as Paterenes or Kudugers at this time.

A second view rejects the dualist nature of the Church of Bosnia but admits the presence of a dualist movement in the religious life of medieval Bosnia and its potential influences on the church. According to this view, the Church emerged as a reaction to the Hungarian Crusades, but had deep roots in an earlier Catholic monastic tradition developed in isolation from both East and West.

This newly formed fusion Church would have abandoned some of its Dualist beliefs and practices on its way to becoming an established ecclesiastical body. A creation of a rival Church with a Slavic liturgy would prevent Rome from taking firm control. Concurrently, a Dualist sect such as the Bogomil might have remained independent from the Bosnian Church but still capable of influencing members of the church and perhaps even reviving Dualist concepts in its theology.

The first signs of an organized Bosnian Church appear in 1167, at an assembly of Cathars near Toulouse, France, where the faithful were informed of “Pope” Nikita and the existence of the Bosnian Church.

In 1199, Pope Innocent III received the alarming report that Ban Kulin of Bosnia, who sought independence from the suzerainty of Hungary, had succumbed, along with his family and 10,000 Christians to the‘heresy’.

A year later, Ban Kulin was accused of granting asylum to Bogomil expelled from Dalmatia. Ban Kulin insisted that they were actually Catholics, though they kept their faith. However, with the threat of a papacy-backed Hungarian attack, Ban Kulin sent several suspected priors of Bosnian monasteries to Rome for a profession of faith and to accept a papal inspection of the religious affairs of Bosnia. The priors promised to bring altars and crosses into the churches, to read from the Old as well as the New Testament, to observe fasts and church services in accordance with the and not to admit Manichaeans and other heretics into their orders.

The measures of the anti-Bogomil Council of 1211 failed to suppress the neighboring Bulgarian Church. The Bulgarian Tsar, Ivan Asen II (1218-41), the most powerful monarch in the Balkans, released the Bulgarian Church from its allegiance to the Roman See in 1235, which directly threatened the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Pope Gregory IX prevailed upon the Hungarian King Bela IV to launch a Crusade against Bulgaria, which was ‘infected by heretics’. This projected Crusade was foiled by the diplomacy of Tsar Asen.

From the middle of the 13th century, Bosnia was considered the center of the heretic movement in Europe. The early 14th century witnessed the increasing importance of the Bosnian Church in the volatile political affairs of Bosnia. Though not an official state religion, the Bosnian Church had the support of powerful Bosnian nobles and was active in the Bosnian Court. In 1325, Pope John XXII issued a complaint to the Bosnian Ban and the Hungarian king that numerous heretics from different states were streaming into Bosnia. The report was written at the same time as the Inquisition was extinguishing the last visible traces of in the and Lombardy, and testifies to the papal distress with Bosnia for giving refuge to persecuted heretics and becoming a center of the heretical diaspora.

In 1337, Pope Boniface XII appealed to Croatian nobles to aid a new Franciscan mission to Bosnia with military force, as the Ban and part of the nobility were protecting the heretics. The Bosnian Ban swiftly deflected the Croatian forces, but soon found it necessary to sanction a Dominican Vicarate in Bosnia, which subsequently failed. He then established a Franciscan Vicarate and accepted Catholicism himself.

Warfare between Bosnia and Hungary flared up in 1363, and upon his invasion, Louis, the Hungarian- king, declared that he would annihilate the large number of heretics in Bosnia. The Hungarians were repelled by the seemingly Catholic king, Tvrtko, accused by his own brother of accepting and defending heretics who flocked to his domain. Tvrtko expanded his kingdom into Serbia and was crowned by an Orthodox metropolitan as king of Serbia, Bosnia and the coastal lands in 1377.

In 1443, the Bosnian throne was occupied by Stefan Tomas, a member of the Bosnian Church , described by Pope Nicholas V as 'entrapped in Manichaean errors' until his conversion to Catholicism. Though the conversion was not followed by persecutions, some nobles were also converted and the Franciscans became more influential at the Bosnian court. The Bosnian Church appeared to have split and a Dualist wing emerged. By the middle of the 15th century, Dualists were seen as obstructions to the progress of Catholicism in the realm. In 1459, King Tomas succumbed to mounting pressure and offered the “Manichaeans” in his country the option of conversion or exile. Two thousand chose baptism. The remainder, including the hierarchy of the Bosnian Church fled to refuge in neighboring Hercegovina.

Apocryphal Literature

As mentioned, the followers of Bogomil were literate. The orthodox Presbyter Kozma stated that they always carried the Gospel and both read and commented on it. They must certainly have realized the important role of books. Undoubtedly, their body of apocryphal literature was one of the most powerful means to propagate the Bogomil faith.

Official Bulgarian literature of the 10th century was elusively theological, derived from Latin sources. Such a literature was unsatisfactory, as it did not reflect the national spirit. For that very reason the people sought to have a literature of their own creation.

Taking advantage of this tendency, Bogomil authors, such as the tenth century Jerimija of Bulgaria, richly illustrated and wrote manuscripts known as apocryphal literature. Miniature symbols and illuminated letters were important to the diffusion of apocryphal books in Bulgaria in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in Serbia in the 12th, and Bosnia in the 13th century. Appearing as Visions, Acts of the Apostles, The Evangelicals and questions and answers, the books provided simple explanations to problems that plagued the people of those times, preserved in Cyrillic characters.

The most famous of the apocryphal manuscripts is The Secret Book, said to be written in two versions, that of Carcassonne and that of Vienne. It is a dialogue between Jesus and his preferred disciple, John, who asks questions of Jesus. His Dualist responses allude to the differences between the eternal universe and the actual world, to the battle between Good and Evil.

Proscribed by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, apocryphal literature was read with great interest. The Bogomils made their position among the people stronger by reading these productions to the illiterate. As it was difficult then to secure written books, the folk learned them by heart to recite. In this way, a large part of the apocryphal literature adopted Bogomilian traces.

For example, stories about the origin of the Devil and the creation and the redemption of the world, which have several versions, show dualistic features. There are also Bulgarian folksongs in which Bogomilism and Christianity are mingled together. Other apocryphal Bogomilian stories, called 'Bulgarian Fables', passed into Russia.

Missionaries who were dispatched from Bulgaria to Western Europe translated books and carried them to their new countries. An example were books taken from Bulgaria to Italy by the Cathar bishop, Nazarius.

Bogomil Cosmology

The basis of the Bogomil belief system was Manichaean Dualism, in which there are two creative principles, good and evil. The first principle, visible, perfect, merciful and mightly was the good God, The Bog. The second principle, or evil deity was called Satanael The Deceiver, regarded as the creator of the entire visible world -- heavens, earth, sun, moon, animals, humans and the Church and cross of the Christians. The Bog was perfect and as such, did not create the imperfect things of this world. created only the invisible world and the angels.

As elder son, Satanael the chief angel held the position of honor in Heaven. But Satanael became jealous and revolted against his father along with some angel-followers. God then drove him and his followers out of Heaven.

Since he was not deprived of his creative powers, Satanael brought into existence all visible things and created the first man, Adam. He formed the soulless effigy out of mud and caused it to stand upright. A little stream of water flowed out from the big toe of Adam’s right foot and a snake appeared. When Satanael tried to breathe a soul into Adam, his breath went out through the same toe and entered the snake. Satanael then prayed to God who helped him on condition that they both should ruIe over man. God breathed a soul into Adam and endowed him with the qualities of Light. Eve was created in the same way.

When began to live their lives, they declared that they were not dependent upon Satanael. The Devil thereupon regretted that he had made the agreement with God to rule together over human beings. Being afraid that he might lose his prerogatives, Satanael seduced Eve, who bore him two children, a son, Cain, and a daughter, Comena.

Under the influence of SatanaeI, Adam committed the same sin with Eve and she gave birth to Abel who was purer and better than Cain. God punished Satanael by depriving him of his creative power and celestial qualities, but he allowed him to rule over the material world because he hoped that the souls who had been led astray would themselves revolt against evil. For this reason Satanael became gloomyand began to plot against God. He caused Abel to be murdered by the wicked Cain, and thus crime began on earth.

The fallen angels, likewise, married the daughters of men and gave birth to giants, who rose against Satanael. In his anger, Satanael created the flood to destroy the giants; he confused the languages and caused the dispersion of men over the earth; he likewise destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and appeared to Moses at Sinai, thus giving through him, a bad law. He also sent the prophets to lead mankind astray. On seeing all of this, God The Father resolved to redeem the world from his evil son.

For this reason, fifty-five hundred years after the creation of the world, God plucked from his heart his own son called the Christ, and sent him to redeem mankind.

The Christ entered the right ear of the Holy Virgin and going out through her left ear, assumed a visible human form and a phantasmagoric descent to earth. The Bogomil did not consider The Holy Virgin an earthly woman and in some instances, did not recognize her as the mother of Jesus, but called her ‘the Heavenly Jerusalem’. Pregnancy for humans was considered an act of Satan, who assisted the mother through birthing and could not be driven away by the baptism of the Catholics, prayer or fasting.

As a machination of Satanael, Jesus only appeared to be persecuted, tortured, tried, condemned and crucified by the Romans. Only seemingly, Jesus died and rose from the dead, but through this resurrection he crushed the power of Satanael, chained him, and caused the last syllable of his name, ”el” to be dropped, so that Satanael came to be known as Satana.

Shackled and degraded, Satana was shut up in Hades. When Jesus ac- complished this, he returned to heaven. Casting his human form off in the air, Jesus was united again with God. Jesus had overcome Satana, but because of the compassion of God The Father, the demons, former angels, were not exterminated. They and Satana managed to escape from Hades and continued their evil ways on earth. Which is why they were special objects of dread to the Bogomils.

Satana chose the Temple of Jerusalem as his headquarters and dispatched his demons to the many churches. He continued to rule the world with the emperors and powerful men who are his servants. However, Satana’s empire would only last until the second coming of Jesus, which would take place in a year ending with three zeros. Then, sinners, Satana and his demons would be hurled into the fiery pit to roast forever, and the righteous would live eternally in the Kingdom of God’s Light on earth.

The Bogomils interpreted the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in their own way. Both Satanael and Jesus originated from a higher and more perfect Being. These three composed the Holy Trinity. Besides this Holy Trinity, there existed another, God the Father, Jesus his son, and the Holy Ghost, which was subordinated to God. But this Trinity existed only thirty-three years, from 5500 to 5533, because prior to 5500, neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost had existed on earth.

The Bogomils entirely rejected the prophets, whom they believed had led mankind astray. They likewise rejected the saints, because they paid reverence to the cross and icons and believed in the Old Testament and miracles of Christ. Their special reason for not revering the cross was that it was made by Satana and as the Jews crucified Jesus on it, was therefore an object detestable to God. ”If somebody murders the son of the King with a piece of wood, is it possible that this piece of wood should be dear to the King? This is the case with the cross. Jesus came to destroy idolatry”, said the Bogomils, ”and it is a crime to revere icons, which are idols”.

To support this theory, they often quoted The Gospels. But it was also reported by the orthodox Presbyter Kozma in the tenth century, that because they were persecuted and feared the wrath of the people, Bogomil attended churches and kissed the cross and the icons.

Bogomil refused to accept the Old Testament, because it had been given by Satanael. The New Testament that was given by God was their law. They carried the Gospel with them, read and commented upon it. But, as previously mentioned, they rejected the miracles of the New Testament, as they believed that Jesus did not really perform them. Christ only healed human sickness through spiritual means

In all this the Bogomil were directly following the tenets of Mani, established centuries before, and celebrated the birthday of John the Baptist on the eve of June 24. They baptized without water, reciting The Lord’s Prayer.

Evil in Bogomil theogony corresponded to the Black God of Slavonic mythology and the God of Light or the Good White God. It is known that Old Slavonic festivals, customs and songs were adopted by the Bogomils.

The social attitudes of the Bulgarian nobles were very similar to Byzantine nobles, which is a reason why Bogomils preached against them. If any of the tsars committed an unlawful deed, such as Tsar Boris who seized the throne illegally, they worked against him, holding secret meetings, criticizing and plotting to dethrone him. They condemned introduced by the Byzantines, and preached freedom, giving aid to Bulgarians who fought for national independence.

Bogomil Rituals

The Bogomil strictly followed the words of Jesus in maintaining that “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4. 21.) For this reason they did not construct temples, where, they said, the demons dwelt.

They claimed that Satanael lived in the Temple of Jerusalem and after its destruction he moved into St. Sofia in Constantinople. They prayed and worshiped in their simple huts, in accordance with the words of Jesus--"When thou prayest enter into thine inner chamber and having shut the door, pray to thy father which is in secret". (Matthew 6.6.) "And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in synagogues and in the corners of the streets". (Matthew 6.5).

For that reason they considered street corners to be churches. The Bogomils were particularly strict in their observance of prayer, praying four times a day and four times a night. According to their doctrines, priestly orders, pontifical hierarchy, liturgy, holy days, fasts, prayers and hymns of the official church were arranged not by Jesus and the apostles, but by men, and therefore real Christians should not recognize them. The Bogomil maintained their own system, observing Sunday as a fast day and also keeping June twenty-fourth as a special day.

They loathed baptism with water because they believed it had been instituted by the Devil, and instead, baptized themselves with the spirit and fire, reciting ‘Our Father’. For them, the Eucharist did not represent the body and blood of Christ. They reproached the Christians for this practice, because according to the Gospel it was to be understood only in a figurative sense -- the blood and the body were the Scriptures themselves. Confession must be made before God, often with public repentance of their sins.

Bogomil Doctrines

Bogomil maintained high standards of morality, preaching humility, modesty, Christian love, and sanctity. They reproached the orthodox when they did not behave according to the Gospel. The Orthodox Kozma stated that “the heretics in appearance are lamb-like, gentle, modest, and quiet; they do not talk idly, nor laugh loudly, nor do they manifest any curiosity. They keep themselves away from immodest sights and outwardly they do everything so as not to be distinguished from the orthodox Christians.” As their enemy, Kozma then goes on to say, “Inwardly they are wolves. The people, on seeing their great humility, think that they are orthodox."

According to Bogomilism, the two supreme principles of Good and Evil are in unceasing conflict. Because the spirit must rule and over- come the flesh, the Bogomils prohibited the eating of meat, the drinking of wine and the living of a luxurious life. They strove to live according to the words of Jesus:”Be not therefore anxious, saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the gentiles seek.” (Matthew 6. 31¬32.) The Bogomils preached that it was unbecoming for a man to work. They despised wealth which they believed came from Mammon and preached a life of poverty. Opposed to marriage and family life, the Bogomils claimed that a woman becomes pregnant by an act of Satana, who assisted her until the birth of her child.

Bogomils did not recognize the ecclesiastical organization and hierarchy, but maintained a loose hierarchy of their own. Adherents of Bogomilism were divided into two groups, namely, the Credents, or 'believers', and the Perfects, or 'selected', corresponding to the Auditors and Elect in Manichaeism.

To the first group belonged all those who accepted the Bogomil creed and wished to receive baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire. They were free to marry, serve the tsar and fatherland, and to go to war. They were obliged to support the Perfects and to show them honor. Their ultimate duty was to struggle unceasingly against evil and thus, at the end of life, through repentance to receive complete sanctification.

The Perfects were only those who were able to maintain an entirely ascetic life. They took an oath that they would give up forever all bonds of family life, and if they were already married, that they would leave their wives and children. They never served the state, never went to war, never attended the meetings and festivals of non-Bogomil and had to undergo special fasts. Their duty was to constantly teach and preach.

Leaders of the Bogomilian hierarchy were selected from the Perfects. Called Dedetsi, ‘grandfathers', their position corresponded to that of an orthodox bishop. The Dedetsi governed a diocese and had two elected members as assistants. Even into the seventeenth century, sectarians near Plovdiv elected the most honest and conspicuous old men of their community to perform the duties of priests, since they did not have any official priests.

It must also be mentioned that in the general organization of the Bogomil, as in Manichaeism, women were equal to men. The Bogomils did not follow strictly the words of Paul as to the inferiority of women, much to the disapproval of the orthodox Christians. Once accepted into the circles of the Perfect, women could conduct the prayer- meetings and perform absolution and confession. The attitude of the Bogomil towards women is all the more praiseworthy for being held at a time when women in other circumstances were assigned to positions of the utmost subjugation.

The Bogomil community was supported by the donations of its members. Given that the Bogomils denounced men of wealth, it may be supposed that they compelled each new convert to sell his possessions and give the money to the community. Probably in this way they could support the general community of the Perfect, as well as the ecclesiastical heads, since the latter never worked.

Manichaean Elements in Bogomilism

Comparing the teachings of Mani and that of Father Bogomil, we find that the differences between them are due to the conditions from which they respectively arose. Bogomilism resembles the Occidental version of Manichaeism as well as the Oriental.

The source of the Bogomil creation legend lies in Manichaeism, though influenced by Christianity and Slavonic . The Bogomils kept Mani's doctrine of the conflict between the two principles but simplified his complicated story of the creation.

The concept of the Trinity was not strange to Manichaeans, who accepted the Threefold Almighty God: the Father, his son Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus had his throne in the sun and the Holy Ghost dwelt in the atmosphere.

The Bogomil recognized two . The supreme and most perfect being, attended by Satanael and Jesus, composed the first Trinity. In highest heaven there is another Trinity, composed of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, similar to the Trinity of the Manichaeans. The last two originated from the Father and are subordinated to him.

Jesus, like Zoroaster and Buddha, was fully recognized by Mani as one of his three great forerunners. Mani acknowledged Jesus as an envoy of the True God and called himself the disciple and apostle of Jesus. The Bogomils held a similar view in regard to Jesus Christ as a divine messenger. God the Father sent his only begotten Son to redeem the soul from the snare of the body. He was not born of the Virgin Mary because he was the Son of God, and came, suffered, and rose from the dead only in appearance. Both the Bogomils and the Manichaeans rejected the law of Moses, as given by Jehovah, and because they rejected the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, they rejected the prophets and saints. They accepted the New Testament, so far as it suited their purposes.

The Manichaeans and the Bogomil did not recognize the Eucharist or baptism by water. Idolatry was for both the Manichaeans and for the Bogomils the most grievous of sins, and for that reason, the latter did not pay reverence to the cross and icons.

Like western Manichaeans, the Bogomil did not construct temples. They prayed four times a day and four times a night. Manichaeans prayed either four or seven times daily. Ecclesiastical orders, liturgy, holy days, prayers and hymns of the official church were rejected by the Bogomil. The two sects had their own works of devotion. Bogomil recognized only the Lord's Prayer; the Bulgarian Manichaeans did the same. In Manichaean prayers from Turfan, Mani himself is worshipped. The Manichaeans fasted very often; so did the Bogomil, and both fasted on Sundays.

Both Manichaeans and Bogomil maintained a high standard of morality, preaching and practising humility, modesty, Christian love and sanctity. Both strongly emphasized the importance of abstinence and tended to stress the ascetic side of the religion.

Bogomil abstinences resemble those of the Manichaeans who were commanded to abstain from adultery, theft, slaughter and sexual intercourse, the latter injunction being absolute in the case of the Elect. Continuation of the human race through the act of generation was thought to be a practice that owes its origin to the Devil. The Bogomil prohibited the eating of meat, the drinking of wine and living a luxurious life, as did the Manichaeans. The Manichaeans forbade killing and were naturally opposed to war, state and King, true predecessors of the Bogomil. The Elect of both sects conducted themselves according to Jesus' injunction to take no thought of the needs of the body but to cultivate the things of the spirit (Matthew 6. 3I-34).

In general, organization into two groups, Perfect and Hearer, was the same in both religions with similar duties. The fivefold division in the ranks of the hierarchical order in Manichaeism is not so clearly defined in Bogomilism, though the Bogomil had their Dedetsi, ”bishops” or “grandfathers”.

Women enjoyed full rights in the hierarchy of Bogomilism. In Manichaeism, records indicate that women could reach the degree of Elect, but no evidence that they occupied the three higher degrees. The cosmogony of the two religions, though differing in terminology and names, are basically the same. Bogomil dogmatic, ethical and social doctrines were borrowed from Mani's religion.

The influence of the Christian Gospel is manifested both cases. Thus, six centuries after Mani, the noted religious teacher Bogomil revived the teachings of Light, but adapted them to Bulgarian conditions with a more distinctive Christian tinge. The personality of this successor must have been profound, as he succeeded in making a deep impression on the religious beliefs of the Balkans, and indirectly, upon those of Western Europe.

Bogomil Stele

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more than 50,000 steli were erected by the Bogomil in over 3,000 necropoli, mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Richly carved vertical slabs and sarcophagi trace back to central Asian Uighur iconography, to ArmenianKatchkars and to significant Manichaean symbolism and Slav mythology.

Bosnian Bogomil stele display a rich profusion of symbolic carvings: enlarged hands, fleur-de-lys, suns, crescent moons, rosettes, swastikas, pentacles and crosses, along with hunting, dancing and jousting scenes.

As symbols of the creations of the Good God, moons and suns often appear on Bogomil stele, along with images of celestial arches upon which rest souls of the Pure prior to departure for Paradise. The sun, appearing frequently on the stele as a rosette, is also a symbol of the Christ mentioned in the Secret Book of the Bogomil. The same significance is attributed to the grand sun symbol on the Cathar monument of Domazen, France. The crescent moon was also an important symbol for Slavs in the Balkans.

Bogomil Stele Sites in Bosnia

Stele sites in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia. A possibility exists that some stele were destroyed during the Bosnian war, as the map was drawn before that time.

Chapter 6

The Entry of Dualism into Western Europe

The first notice of the Dualist movement into Western Europe came in the middle of the 12th century with the name 'Publicani', an eastern pronunciation of Paulicians. A number of Dualist communities in the west also adopted names such as Bulgars and Sclavini to honor the Balkan origin of their faith.

The earliest public acknowledgement of the Dualist movement was in a letter from Eberwin of Steinfeld to St. Bernard of Clairvaux in 1143-44. He wrote that German crusaders returned from the ill-fated Second Crusade preached by St. Bernard had revitalized the apostolic heresy in the Rhineland.

In 1160, Eckbert, Abbot of Schonauge, described the tenets of the Cathari of Cölogne who claimed that they were numerous in other countries as well and that their religion had persisted in secrecy ‘from the time of the martyrs’ in Byzantium.

From his tract against the Cathars, we learn that they were led by their own bishop and well equipped with sacred texts to defend their apostolic Church and assail the Roman Catholics. They taught that the true faith of Christ existed only in their own gatherings, which they held in cellars, workshops and similar underground places. They said that they alone led the life of the apostles with a genuine priesthood that had been lost by the Roman Catholic Church. They rejected belief in purgatory and the baptism of infants, because the infants could not seek baptism by themselves nor make profession of faith. They declared that the water baptism did not lead to salvation. Only their baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire could save men.

The faith of the Cathari were deeply invested with Manichaean beliefs as they kept the commemorative festival of Bema for Mani, their Perfects were vegetarians and celibate and they said that Christ had only an appearance of human flesh, making a mere pretense of death and resurrection.

The Cathers were divided into three grades, Listeners, Believers and the Elect or Perfects. Through the ritual of Consolamentum, the laying on of hands, a listener could enter the ranks of the believers. After a probationary period, believers were initiated into the elect through a baptism of the Spirit and fire. Women were also initiated into the ranks of the believers and the elect as equals, an anomaly in medieval Europe. Marriage was condemned as fornication except between virgins. They blessed their vegetarian meals with the Pater Noster prayer.

Though the unrepentant Cologne Cathars were burnt along with their Bishop, their emergence and suppression were just the beginning of a resolute, prolonged challenge to the Roman Church.

According to the chronicles of Guielmus, several German Paulicians who journeyed to England to proselytize, were condemned by the Council of Oxford in 1162 a.d., because they rejected the institution of infant baptism. They were publicly flogged, branded and left to perish in the cold outside the city limits. William of Newburgh who witnessed the ‘pious severity’, said it not only purged England of the heretical pestilence, but prevented the heresy from ever reaching the island again.

At about the same time another group of Publicans were prosecuted in Flanders. At a trial held in Vezelay in 1167 a.d., Publicans were also questioned about their secret tenets and condemned to death.

A few years later in 1179 a.d., the teachings of the Cathars and Patarenes were condemned in the Third Council of the Lateran. Here they were identified with the Cathari-Albigensians of the Languedoc as well as the Patarini and Waldesians of Italy. It was agreed by all that the centers of diffusion were in France and .

Chapter 7

The Johannites

In European occult circles, the Knights Templar were said to have gained their knowledge from the Johannites of the East, who venerated John the Beloved. Other esoteric movements such as the Freemasons also make this claim.

The religion of the Johannites was based upon the secret teachings of Jesus as passed on to his disciple, John the Beloved. Once it is understood that The Gospel of John was originally Baptist material, the apparent confusion noted between John the Beloved and John the Baptist is clarified.

The main points of the Johannite tradition:

1.Special emphasis on John’s Gospel because it retains secret teachings given to John the Evangelist, the Beloved disciple, by Jesus Christ.

2.Evident confusion between John the Evangelist, the presumed author of the Fourth Gospel, and John the Baptist. This confusion is still a part of mainstream Freemason teachings.

3.The secret traditions referred to are specifically gnostic.

4.The tradition shows a lack of respect for the divinity of Jesus, though claiming to represent an esoteric form of Christianity. At best, it seems to regard him as merely mortal, perhaps even suffering from delusions of grandeur.

5.The term Christ, does not signify divinity, but simply a term of respect. In fact, every one of their leaders was known as 'Christ'. For this reason, when a member of such a group calls himself a Christian, it may not have the same meaning as in a mainstream Christian group.

Chapter 8

The Kabbalists

Towards the end of the 12th century, a gnostic Jewish movement emerged in the Sephardic communities of , Languedoc and Roussillon, most likely interacting with their Cathar and Sufi neighbors. Its name, Kabbalah, derives from the Hebrew word that means ‘to receive’.

Kabbalah is concerned with the nature and structure of all creation from the divine to the material worlds, as well as ecstatic experience. It is a system of esoteric philosophy, psychology and cosmology that allows any aspect of existence to be assimilated and related to any other on many levels, both rational and transrational; a key to the control of subtle forces and the attainment of mystical union.

The actions of the Kabbalists has three goals: tikkun, the restoration of primal unity and harmony, both in the universe and in the individual; kavvanah, contemplative meditation; devekut, ecstatic merging with the Divine.

The earliest Kabbalistic text was the Bahir, The Book of Brightness that took the form of a Midrash; that is, an interpretation of scripture attributed to ancient rabbinical authorities, helped with a particular interpretative method. This Midrash combines a symbolic rendering of myth, cosmology, sacred history and eschatology, through which a gnostic doctrine is formulated. Except for adjustments that eliminate the radical depreciation of the visible world, it is similar to Manichaean, Mandaean, Zoroastrian, Sufi and Cathar doctrines.

In the Bahir are survivals of gnostic speculation on Sofia or “Wisdom”, who is involved, sometimes to her misfortune, in the material world. This power is also Shekhinah, the divine “Presence” of rabbinical theology, but profoundly transformed.

Shekhinah is now characterized as a feminine being that finds itself, while remaining an aspect of the divinity, in the position of a totally dependent daughter or a wife, who owns nothing herself and receives all from the father or the husband. It is also identified with the Community of Israel, a radical innovation facilitated by the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon, which represents the relationship of God to the chosen nation in terms of the marriage bond.

In this light, the obedience or disobedience of Israel to its particular vocation is a determining factor of cosmic harmony or disruption and extends to the inner life of the divinity. In the same document is the resurgence of a belief fought against by theologists, that of metenso-matosis, the reincarnation into successive bodies of a soul that has not attained the required perfection in a previous existence.

The Bahir was first studied by Isaac The Blind, a Jewish mystic who lived from 1160 to 1235 a.d., in the Languedoc, expounding on the heavenly spheres or Sefirot as attributes of God.

The Bahir teaches transmigration of souls in a manner more similar to Shi’ite than to Judaic tradition. Transmigration survived in Catharism as well. In the early writings, Gilgul, a ‘rolling over of souls’ was seen as a punishment, since the righteous didn’t need to experience reincarnation. The notion of cycles of transmigration traces back to Jewish-Christians known as Ebionites who also influenced the prophet Mohammed. The migrating soul does not leave its earlier body, but acts as a candle lighting other candles. As we have all fallen away from Adam Kadmon, primal man, the function of transmigration is to mend us, and in doing so, mend the original Adam.

The Kaballah movement took approximately thirty years to cross the to Catalonia, when it appeared In the first years of the 13th century in a Gerona rabbinical circle that included Ezra ben Solomon, Azriel and Nahmanides. These gnostics explored the teachings of Isaac the Blind using ancient techniques known as gematria, the study of the numerical values of letters and words; notarikon, the study of the first and last letters of words. Rabbis Solomon and Azriel were among the first to commit the formerly oral Kabbalic teachings to writing, laying the foundation for all future Kabbalic speculation. This was not necessarily accepted as a positive development by other Kabbalists. Their teacher, Isaac the Blind, wrote an angry letter, demanding that the Kabbalah be kept secret and protected. His request was not granted, and the Kabbalic teachings soon spread westward to Castile and south to Leon.

The Zohar, The Book of Splendor, the main text of the Kabbalah, was composed during the 1280’s to ‘90’s in an artificial Aramaic, the language of the greater part of The Torah, masking a medieval Hebrew. The intent of its author, Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon, was to present it as the compilation of teachings and revelations of the second- century Talmudic sage, Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, heir to pre-Kabbalic Merkabah and Hellenistic gnostic magic and cosmology. Mandaean sources also provide striking parallels to Merkabah and Kabbalic texts

Classical Kabbalah integrates the cosmology of Merkabah literature into four spiritual universes that follow each other from above. The universe atsilut or emanation contains the ten sefirot. The universe beriyah or creation, contains the seven hekaloth and the merkabah. The universe yesirah or formation contains the angelic hosts. The universe, asiyah or making is the prototype of the visible world. The ten sefirot manifest in asiyah as forms such as the rainbow, waves, tree.

Zohar imagery follows a pattern that is often shown as Otz Chim, a tree with its roots growing in heaven or as the primordial Adam Kamon.

Both are organic symbols of a spiritual reality beyond normal comprehension. These images are not to be taken literally, which would pre- vent profound .

The Ein-Sof

According to Gershom Scholem, Ein-Sof is a term designated by Isaac the Blind for an infinite, unmanifested domain that is above all reflective contemplation and divine Thought itself. It cannot be described or comprehended. The pure nature of Divinity is unity, so that the seemingly separate aspects or emanations exist only in view of the emanated, who live in a state of illusory separation. This is expressed in the Zohar: “in creating this world below, the world above lost nothing. It is the same for each sefirah. If one is illuminated, the next loses none of its brilliance”.

The absolute divine light can be said to be refracted through the prism of the sefirot into the apparently multifarious world of creation. For the Kabbalists, the Ein Sof and the manifested Sefirot formed a unity, “like flames joined to a coal”.

The Ein-Sof is virtually identical to the Tao of Taoism, which defines the Absolute Creator as limitless, undefinable and without attributes. So it is within the range of speculative possibility that these concepts may have come from through the Sons of Keturah, who, according to Genesis 25:1-6, were missionaries to the “East countries” of India and China, dispensing the esoteric aspects of their father, Abraham’s new religion. Supportive of this theory are Chinese inscriptions on the pillars of the ancient synagogue of Kei Feng that read: “Through Abram the Religion was established, and its Laws had no visible image”. “From the time of Abram, when religion was taught to us by talented men of Western India, men of China have diffused instruction, and obtained complete knowledge of Confuscianism, of Buddhism, and of Taoism.”

The Hidden Splendors

These are the three unmanifested Divine principles or Zahazhot, which govern the relationships between the Sefirot. Primordial Will holds the balance, Mercy expands and Justice constrains the flow of emanation from the Ein-Sof.

The Sefirot

The term Sefirot originally meant ‘numerical potencies’ and probably corresponded to the ten commandments. During medieval times, the term evolved to mean aspects of divine attributes, informing all of the worlds of creation through pattern and rhythm. These ten energy- are said to be in constant interplay and underlie all of the cosmos.

Each Sefirah is negative or receptive in relation to the preceding Sefirah and positive or transmissive in relation to the succeeding Sefirah. So, for example, Tifereth is negative to Geburah and positive to Netsach. Examining the Tree in isolation, Kether may be considered as entirely positive (masculine) and Malkuth entirely negative (feminine), in that they respectively have no preceding or succeeding Sefirah. However, Malkuth in one world is Kether of the next. Even these Sefirot can be viewed in their dual aspect. They are in contact with the universe in a way that the En-Sof is not, as the Sefirot connect with everything in the universe, including humanity. The good and evil that we do resonates through the Sefirot and affects the entire universe, including the En-Sof.

According to Genesis 1:27, a human being is created in the image of God. The Sefirot are the divine manifestations of that image and the of our archetypal nature. The ten Sefirot include both masculine and feminine qualities, with considerable emphasis on the feminine.

Though this nature often seems lost to us, through purification, a person can re-connect and become a container for the Sefirot. In this sense, the aim of the medieval Kabbalists paralleled that of their gnostic contemporaries in the Languedoc, Catalonia and Castile, the Cathar and the Sufi.

Ketar, The Crown or Kether Elyon, Supreme Crown This first Sefirah is co-eternal with En-Sof. As it represents the aspect of the Infinite that turns towards manifestation, it is known as Razon, or Will. As no differentiation or individuality exists in Ketar, It is also known as Ayin, or Nothingness. All emanation flows from Ketar. Its color is a blinding, invisible white.

Hokhmah, Wisdom Hokhmah is upper father, mate of Binah and father of Tiferet, connected to all colors.

Binah, Understanding or Intelligence Binah is the upper mother, the mate of Hokhmah and mother of Tifereth and all other Sefirot. Its color is yellow or green.

Chesed, Mercy or Grace or Gedullah, Greatness Chesed stands for the expansion, the first day of creation and is connected to the element of water. Its color is white or silver.

Geburah, Severity or Power or Din, Judgement or Pahad, Fear Geburah is connected to the element of Fire and its color is red or gold.

Tifereth, Beauty or Rahamim, Mercy Tifereth is the Heart of Hearts. With Chesed and Geburah it forms the triad of the Divine Soul; with Hokhmah and Binah it forms the great triad of the Divine Spirit. It refers to air and the heavens. Its color is yellow or purple.

Netsach, Victory or Eternity Netsach corresponds in Divine terms to the expansive role of the Hosts of God sent to do God’s will and the human processes of impulsiveness, activity and instinct. Its color is light pink.

Hod, Reverberation Hod corresponds in Divine terms to the constrictive role of the Hosts of God and the human processes of passivity, cognation and control. Hod is represented by dark pink.

Yesod, Foundation or Tsedek, Justice Yesod is a complex Sifirah containing all that has gone on before. It is both generative and reflective, a mirror within the Mirror, which must be kept clean and sound.

Malkuth, Kingdom or Shekinah, The Presence of God Malkuth with its fourfold nature is the Sefirah most accessible to our world. Its feminine aspect is contained in its other name, Shekhinah. Its color is dark blue. There are shared elements between Shekhinah and the Virgin Mary of Catholicism. Both are identified with the rose, i.e., the rosary and compassion. The height of the cult of the Virgin Mary occurred in Spain precisely at the same time as that of the Kaballah.

Otz Chim The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is a representation of the thirty-two paths, composed of ten sefirot and twenty-two paths connecting them. They correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Creation, as an on-going process, takes place through these thirty-two primordial elements. The Otz Chim then, is a specific archetypal pattern, the model upon which, everything that is to come into manifestation is based.

From above to below, the Sefirot enact the transition from Ein-Sof to creation. From below to above, they form a ladder of ascent back to the One. The Tree of Life describes the descent of the divine into the manifest world and methods by which union with the divine may be attained in this life.

The Tree may be viewed by grouping the Sefirot together in different ways, depending on circumstance. The most important views are the three pillars of Severity, Sefirot 3, 5 and 8; Equilibrium Sefirot 1, 6, 9 and 10 and Mercy (Sefirot 2, 4 and 7); and the three major triangles: the divine triangle, Sefirot 1, 2 and 3; the ethical triangle, Sefirot 4, 5 and 6 and the astral triangle, Sefirot 7, 8 and 9. Also to be considered are the seven planes of the tree and the correspondence between the Sefirot and the chakras of eastern mysticism.

Following traditional rabbinic perception, the Kabbalah recognizes that the universe could not survive if it were founded only upon justice or only upon mercy. So, the middle column of the Tree represents the ideal balance between divine mercy and justice. This harmony is best exemplified in the Sefirah of Tiferet, which exists midway between the extremes of Din and Hesed, female and male.

In viewing the Tree as comprised of the three pillars of Severity, Equi- librium and Mercy, each Sefirah can be classified as either negative, balancing, or positive, depending respectively upon whether it lies on the pillar of severity, equilibrium or mercy. As with Taoism, no value judgement is implied in the terms ‘positive/masculine’ or ‘negative/ feminine’. Each is neither better nor worse than the other. It can be said that evil is a synonym for ‘imbalance’, a contrast to the vital, complementary natures of the pillars.

Sefirah in the same pillar can be viewed in relationship. Thus Chesed may be seen as negative to Chokmah and positive to Netsach. Sefirah on the middle pillar also incorporates a strong sense of balance, each being a balance or resolving point of dualities, Chockmah-Binah, Chesed- Geburah and Netsach-Hod.

Da’ath

In addition to the ten Sefirot, there is a non-Sefirah, Da’ath, which has no position on the Tree in relation to the other Sefirot, though when it is shown, it is located centrally in the Abyss between the planes of Binah-Chokmah and Geburah-Chesed, with no explicit connection to any other Sefirah. Da’ath is Knowledge, a place of balanced power and the site of The Holy Spirit. This is where the Absolute may enter at will to intervene directly in existence. It is the Knowledge that emerges out of nowhere, directly from God, and different from the revelation of Hokhmah or the deep reflection of Binah. Da’ath is not only observation, but becoming.

The flow that manifests the Sefirot can be visualized as a zigzag of light from the central position of Balance to Expansion on the right and across to Constraint on the left.

From Ketar, the first emanation, the beam of light under the influence of mercy, force and expansion, manifests Hokhmah, active inner intelligence experienced as genius, inspiration or revelation. It is balanced on the side of severity, form and contraction by Binah or Understanding, manifested as reason and tradition.

The beam then touches the Pillar of Equilibrium, the site of The Holy Spirit and marked by the unmanifested Da’ath. Below Da’ath the flash passes to the Pillar of Mercy and then back to the Pillar of Severity, where it defines Chesed, active or inner emotion and Geburah, passive or outer emotion. It now returns, at a stage lower, to the Pillar of Equilibrium. Here the central Sefirah of Tifereth is manifested, relating directly to all the Sefirot of the Pillars of Severity and Mercy. It is where the essence of the Tree can be found. Below Tifereth, the flash manifests the complementary attributes of Netsach and Hod on the Pillars of Mercy and Severity. Between and below these two practical Sefirot is Yesod. Most of our perception of the world and most of implementation of Will takes place here. Ketar, the Divine flash is grounded in Malkuth, the Will, Heart, Mind, Body of the Divine and the four elements of our own bodies, earth, water, air and fire.

The Tsimtsum

The third century definition of Tsimtsum was a ‘concentration’ or a ‘contraction’ of the divine to a single point, finding a parallel in the Bindu of the Hindi. Some time during the middle of the 13th century, an unknown Kabbalist put forth the doctrine of Tsimtsum as ‘withdrawal or retreat from the divine point', an opposite meaning.

Isaac Luria, the 16th century visionary whose thought structures resembled those of ancient gnostics, elaborated upon this latter interpretation. According to Luria, The Divine Being abandoned a primordial space within himself in order to return to it in an act of creative revelation, making room for the Universe. The cosmic process becomes two- fold as every act of manifestation is preceded by one of concentration and retraction. It is only through this perpetual tension that everything in this world exists.

An aspect that Luria found very important was that before the Tsimtsum took place, the Divine Being contained not only the qualities of love and mercy but also Din or Judgement.

This Din was not recognizable as such, it was like a grain of salt dissolved in the sea of God’s compassion. In Tsimtsum, Din became crystallized and clearly defined, for Tsimtsum was an act of judgement as well as an act of negation and limitation. Judgement to the Kabbalist means the imposition of limits and the correct determination of things.

Luria interprets the first act of Tsimtsum as an act of Din, revealing the roots of this quality in all that exists. These ‘roots of divine judgement’ subsist in chaotic mixture with the residue of divine light that remained after the original withdrawal within the primary space. A second ray of light out of the essence of Ein-Sof brings order into chaos and sets the cosmic process in motion by separating these hidden elements, molding them into a new form. During the process, the tendencies of perpetual ebb and flow continue to act and react upon each other. Just as humans exist through the process of inhaling and exhaling, and one cannot be conceived without the other, so the universe constitutes a gigantic process of divine inhalation and exhalation. According to Gershom Scholem, this also implies that the root of all evil is already latent in the act of Tsimtsum.

The concept of the residue of divine light, Reshimu, has a close parallel in the system of the second century gnostic, . Here too was an idea of a primordial space which could not be conceived of nor characterized by any word, yet was not entirely deserted from the ‘Sonshop’, Basildes’ term for the most sublime consummation of universal potentialities. Even when the Holy Spirit remained empty and divorced from the Sonshop, it retained the flavor of the latter and permeated everything above and below.

In the Coptic translations of the gnostic Book of the Great Logos, is the prototype of the Tsimtsum. Here it is written that all primordial spaces and their ‘fatherhoods’ have come into being because of the ‘little idea’, the space that the Divine Being left behind as the shining world of light when He withdrew Himself into Himself.

The Qelippot

Like other Gnostic systems, pre-Lurian medieval Kabbalah made the problem of evil a central focus. It did not maintain evil in a state of dependence on the “attribute of judgment” within the structure of the Sefirot set up by the earliest Kabbalists, but constructed a parallel system of “left-hand Sefirot,” the Qelippot, with a corresponding development of a demonology located outside the divinity.

Each Sefirah on the Tree of Life has its unbalanced aspect; a Qelippa or shell. These are said to form the infernal Tree of the Qelippot that grows down from Malkuth of Assiah as an inversion of the Divine Tree. The unbalanced Qelippa corresponding to Malkuth, stands above that which corresponds to Kether, matter as master of spirit, an inversion of the natural order of Creation. The qelippotic equivalent of the supernal triad, Kether, Chokmah and Binah, consists of Tohu the Formless, Bohu the Void and Chashek the Darkness. The remaining seven Qelippot correspond to seven hells.

A way to consider the formation of the Qelippot, is as a direct consequence of the Lightning Flash of Creation. The Sefirot were emanated in order, one from the other, from Kether down to fulfillment in Malkuth. At the formation of one Sefirah, and before the subsequent emanation of its successor, that Sefirah was in a sense unbalanced. For example, with Chokmah formed but not having yet emanated its balancing successor Binah, this unbalanced state of Chokmah created a pattern around which the Qelippa Bohu could later crystallize.

On the plane of Atziluth, the Qelippot have no influence, and so there is no qelippotic equivalent of the Name of God. But there is qelipotic influence in the three lower worlds. In Briah, the Archangel of each Sefirah has a corresponding Devil of the Qelippa; In Yetsirah, each Angel is matched by a cohort of Demons. And in Assiah, each mundane chakra has a corresponding Infernal Habitation.

It is important to make the distinction between true and apparent evil in the Kabbalic system. Geburah may be considered “evil” in its cruel, destructive aspects; but the true essence of Geburah is vital as a balance to the otherwise wanton inclusiveness of Chesed.

It is an error to view one half of a dynamic duality as “good” and the other “evil”. Both are necessary for balance, to prevent the true evil of imbalance. It is precisely the unbalanced aspects of each Sefirah that are to be found in the Qelippot. The qelippotic equivalent of Geburah really is pure destructive cruelty, not as a balance to anything else, but solely for its own sake. It is part of the Great Work to neutralize such forces, not by suppression or subjugation, but by bringing them into balance as aspects of their corresponding Sefirot. The Qelippot can also be accessed through the “Sefirah which is not a Sefirah”, Da’ath.

Ecstatic Kabbalah

The major representative of ecstatic Kabbalah was the 13th century mystic Abraham Abulafa, whose goal was devekut, or mystical union with God. As in Sufism, devekut is the experience of the transformation of the human into the Divine. After receiving a vision in Barcelona in 1270, Abulafa developed his own system. He based his practice upon methods called hitbodedut, or concentration, consisting of grammatology and pronouncing of divine names, breaking with prevailing theosophical Kabbalic belief that the essence of the Divine realm rests in the ten Sefirot.

Kabbalic mysticism has its origins in the Merkabah practices of the first centuries, A.D. Through fasting, meditation, prayer and incantation, the mystics sought experience of the Merkabah, the ‘Throne-Chariot of God’ described in Ezekiel 1. Ascent of the soul was practiced as part of this inheritance. A rabbi, Michael the Angel of mid-13th century Provence, was said to have remained motionless for three days while his soul ascended to heaven to receive answers to questions he had raised while active.

The Kabbalah made its first known written appearance with the Sefer Yetsirah, ‘Book of Formation’, a short work expounding the basic structure of the Kabbalah. It details the creation of the universe via thirty-two hidden paths: ten Sefirot, numbers, emanations or spheres and twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Though commonly attributed to the great martyr, Rabbi Akiba, its exact date of origin could be as early as the third century, but no later than the tenth.

What was to become known as German Kabbalism or Early Hasidism, began in Italy in 917 a.d., with Aaron ben Samuel. This had its roots in , involving magical rituals, meditation, prayer and ecstatic experience. Its emphasis on the magical power of words fueled the development of the gematria, notarikon and temurah. Many other techniques were developed to facilitate access the universe of emanation, including color visualizations. The path was a difficult one, because of the presence of evil in the prototype of this world.

The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, served to spread the Spanish Kabbalah further into Europe and the Middle East. The next major development occurred with the advent of Lurianic Kabbalah, named after its originator, Isaac Luria (1534-1572). In this, the Ein-Sof contracts at the start of creation, allowing “room” for cosmic expansion. This also allows “room” for evil, the Qelippot, literally “shells” of spiritual refuse, in which sparks of the divine light become entrapped after a shattering of the divine receptacles that were expected to hold the Sefirot during emanation.

This theme of sparks of divine light entrapped in evil matter is also basic to Manichaean cosmology with a belief that humans are the offspring of demons who had swallowed particles of light. Adam, the first man, was awakened by the Son of God and realized that he contained a spark of the divine light.

The similarity in belief systems continues in the concepts of reunion, redemption and reincarnation. For Manichaeans, all lost particles of the light of good imprisoned in matter will reunite with their source. The Third Messenger, another emanation of the Father of Greatness, is sent to capture the remaining light. Each month, the waxing of the moon represents the addition of particles of light. As the moon wanes, these particles progress to the sun, and finally, to the highest heaven. The Kabbalistic Neshamah or perfect spirit, is almost identical with the gnostic spark, which is not a part of the created world but is as old as God, indeed a particle of God. According to Harold Bloom, it is difficult to determine whether both esoteric systems rely upon common archaic Jewish sources, or are the result of Sufi influences on the Kaballah in medieval Spain.

For Kabbalists, freedom of choice is born of the godhead’s self-inflicted suffering. Tikkun, the redemption of the broken world and the reunification of divinity, becomes the overriding goal of humanity. The exile of all human beings is symbolized in the exile of Israel, and Tikkun is paralleled in Israel’s task to “gather what has been scattered”, symbolizing the redemption of the world, crowned with the coming of the Messiah.

Gilgul, which has come to mean reincarnation or the transmigration of souls, may have been introduced to Jewish circles after the second century through Manichaean sources as suggested by Gershom Scholem. The doctrine has been interpreted by Kabbalists with wide differences of insight. In Beyond The Ashes, the author cites five levels of the soul: nefesh, the biological life force of the body; ruach, the lower emotional spirit or ego; neshamah, the individual ; chayah, the unconscious of the group; yechidah, the level of unity with creation and God.

Like their fellow gnostics, some medieval Kabbalists believed that we are not necessarily born with all five levels, but must consciously develop some. One interpretation of the 613 laws of the Torah is that a Jew who fulfills all is not only carrying out the laws of the Torah on the earth plane, but is also building a ‘spiritual body’ for the next world.

As some of the commandments apply only to certain classes or genders of people, it would be impossible to fulfill all commandments in one life time. The doctrine of reincarnation solves this problem.

By being reborn many times into the Covenant under different circumstances, a Jew could eventually fulfill all of the commandments. The doctrine of reincarnation within Judaism has long evolved from being an ethnocentric interpretation into one that embraces non-Jews as well.

Of the five levels, the nefesh and ruach do not survive beyond death because they are dependent upon the physical body. The physical body with its particular brain and personality is gone forever.

The level of neshamah, associated with the intellect, personal disposition and eternal soul, does survive, but according to some Kabbalists, must be consciously developed to evolve throughout life. This level opens with the onset of puberty when the person demands the right to‘think for their self ’. All of a soul’s incarnations are remembered on the neshamah level as significant lessons and truths. The rest are shed like old garments; the possible reason why most people cannot remember specific information about a past life. In the case of murder or other severe injustice that is not resolved, the event may press itself on the neshamah, to be carried through incarnations until it is finally dealt with.

In chayah and yechidah, the higher transcendental levels, where the soul touches the light of the All-Knowing God, all details are preserved for- ever. A mystic can sometimes bypass his or her own nefesh, ruach and neshamah levels, getting in touch with the level of chayah.

Chayah represents the of one’s particular karmic group. If an event is experienced by enough people simultaneously, it may become an archetype. This, in turn could make the symbolism of an event accessible to all souls who are somehow connected to the karmic group which originally experienced the event.

From chayah, the mystic can sometimes see into the yechidah level and access the Hall of Records, where God preserves everything that ever happened. Once this information is accessed, it must pass back through chayah and into the conscious mind. This belief in The Book of Life is common to both Jewish and Muslim traditions.

On the levels of yechidah, the soul is united with all creation and touch- es its origin in the consciousness of the Creator. In , it usually does not go as far as a total merging of the soul with that of God, because God is understood to be a completely unique and independent entity that consciously sustains the universe from moment to moment.

Chapter 9

Cathar Symbols

It is important to look at the symbols attributed to the Cathars in a historical and geographical context, in other words, starting as close as possible to the origin of their use and link the symbols to their role in other cultures.

Early man was driven to convey deep spiritual urges or emotions as tangible, agreed-upon signs. Over the course of years, the meaning of ancient symbols such as the dove, the pentagram, the solar cross, became understood across national and linguistic boundaries, eventually incorporating into the Cathar lexicon.

Common to early gnostic Mystery cults, Druids, Cathars, Templar, Sufis, Kabbalists and later, Freemasons and Rosicrucians, was a veneration of the female principle in partnership or balance with the male. This veneration is one of the keys to understanding the spiritual truths revealed through these occult symbols.

The Dove

Sculptures of doves have been found in several Cathar strongholds, including Ornolac and Montsegur. The small stone dove from Montsegur, seemingly in flight, dates back to the 13th century.

A major Cathar symbol, the dove represents the Holy Spirit. With its complement, the Pentagram, symbolizing The Perfect Man, the two form a hieroglyph, recognizable as Cathar.

The story of the Dove is complex. The original myth tells of Euphrates River doves that caused the Cosmic Egg to open from the heat of their intensely beating wings. Thus was born Semiramis, whose name means 'branch-bearing dove'. The goddess is the prototype for Isis, Juno, Cybele, Aphrodite and other goddesses. The symbol of the Dove was later borrowed by the Christian Arkites, who deified Noah as the second “father” of the human race and who recognized the Dove as the symbol of the blessing bestowed by the Holy Spirit.

When the wings of the dove are outstretched in the form of an ‘x’, both the reign of Christ and the influence of the Holy Spirit are signified. In the Greek alphabet, ‘x’ represents Christ, while the dove, as mentioned, is the Cathar emblem for the Holy Spirit. A vestige of this symbol can be found attached to the crosses worn by Protestant women in remote mountain villages of the Ariege and the that once were Cathar.

The Grandmaster’s Cross found in the caves of Ussat, shows the balance between the dove with out-stretched wings and the symbols “I” for God and “X”, the Christ. Notice also how the cross rests firmly in the crescent moon, a classic symbol of the female, surrounded by stars, The Perfect Men.

The Solar Cross

It is possible that the earliest use of the Solar Cross was by the Phoenicians, as a marker to show channels in the Mediterranean that were newly freed from ice. In this instance, the wheel represents the movement of the sun and its effect on ice masses at the two poles. Later, the Solar Cross symbol was appropriated by the Cathars. Along with other Cathar graffiti, it is inscribed on the rock walls of the cave of Lombrives in Ussat-les-Bains, France. The V is a symbol of life.

A similar cross graffiti found in Lombrives, terminates one of its branches in the symbol of the Christ. It also utilizes the V.

A further development of Cathar symbolism is the Grail Cross. Here the U can be interpreted as The Grail, the cup or life; the — as Jesus, and the I as God.

The Alpha-Omega sign is based upon the New Testament saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega...

This can be read as the beginning and the end, the material world of death and the spiritual world of life. The P represents God.

The Solar Cross of Montsegur

The equiform cross set in a solar wheel is an exceedingly ancient symbol, and represents the four cardinal points or directions of a solar cycle. The cross of Montsegur, inspired by the ancient stele of , was erected on June 6, 1960, by the Society of Remembrance and Cathar Studies to commemorate the burning of Cathar Pures in 1244 on the site.

Also called the Celtic Cross, Bogomil Cross or Greek Cross (as opposed to the Latin Cross, which is the image of a crucifix), the symbol was employed time and again by the Cathars, on steles in ancient cemeteries, on fragments of pottery. Later variations included the more ornate Maltese Cross and the Sassiac Cross of the initiated Sassiac family.

For Celts, the largest outer circle of the cross represents chaos, out of which, souls arose. The next circle is that of the earth, where souls play out their destiny between good and evil. Given the life choices made, the soul can travel after death to the smallest, inner circle, that of supreme ascension to God, or return to the outer circle to await a new rebirth.

Celtic Cross

A Celtic cross found at a curative spring near the Armancon River in France, bears energy symbols, entwined snakes and two five-petaled flowers, the cosmic roses.

The snakes possibly represent the Druidic fifth element, Ether, as well as Kundalini energy that travels the human spine. The twined snakes can also be found on the staff carried by the god Hermes/Mercury, a healing arts symbol in Western culture.

The Knights Templar Rose-Cross

At the same time the Rose-Cross appeared on the coat-of-arms of Raymond of Toulouse, another order of Knights Templar was founded in Aragon, Spain, also employing the Rose-Cross as their emblem.

The Order of The Knights of The Rose-Cross of St. Jean was formed to honor the vision of the Aragonese knight, Inigo Arista, lost in the Pyrenees one night after a battle with Saracens. The sudden appearance in the sky of a luminous cross with four roses between its four equal branches, allowed the knight to find his road home.

The order of the Knights of the Rose-Cross of St. John headquartered at the monastery of St. Juan de la Pena near the village of Santa Cruz de los Seros. It was here that the Knights received their investitures in front of their community. It was here too that they were interred after their deaths. Twenty-four of these knights lie in two rows of stone tombs known as 'The Pantheon of The Nobles'. Sculpted on most of the tombs are variations of the Rose-Cross.

The Tau

The Tau symbol, one of several now almost effaced from the walls of Lombrives, traces back to a T, the Chaldean symbol for Tam-Muz, archetypal god of dying and resurrection; son of ‘The Burning One’ or the sun.

With the addition of the circle, which represents the eternal seed, the Tau becomes the sign of immortality. Its use extended from the Assyrians and Egyptians to early Christians, and later, the Cathars.

Some Lombrives graffiti are both anthropomorphic and representational of a cross at the same time. The anthropomorphic cross is also found on Bogomil steles in the former Yugoslavia. A similar cross is sculpted on a 12th or 13th century sarcophagus in Lurs-Domazan, alleged to be of Bogomil origin.

The Pentagon & The Pentagram

The geometric figure of the five-sided Pentagon and the five-pointed star, the Pentagram, are inextricably bound together in the Cathar lexicon of symbols.

To the Cathars, both are symbols of consciousness without limit as a pentagon engenders a pentagram, which engenders a pentagon, and so on to infinity.

According to ancient Greek Pythagoreans, the Pentagram also reproduces thedivine proportions of the human body. These symbols are found inscribed on the walls of Cathar and Templar caves, such as Montreal-de-Sos, Lombrives, and Bethlehem.

The Pentagon & The Five Elements

Taoist Order of the Production & Conquest of The Five Elements

In Taoist thought, the five elements became associated with every conceivable category possible to classify into fives. How much of this migrated into Cathar use of the pentagon is open to speculation, but hints lie in the Manichaean-Taoist link of T’ang and Sung China. We can also trace the use of the pentagon to early Chinese Taoist thinkers.

In 135 b.c., Dong Zhongshu identified the order of the five elements in a way quite different from the modern Chinese sequence of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth. In his Order of Mutual Production, Wood produces Fire; Fire produces Earth; Earth produces Metal; Metal produces Water and Water produces Wood. In an earlier Order of Mutual Conquest by Zou Yan, Wood conquers Earth as Wood is harder than Earth and the roots of a tree can penetrate the Earth; Metal conquers Wood as one can cut Wood with a Metal axe; Fire conquers Metal as it can melt it; Water conquers Fire as it can extinguish it; Earth conquers Water as it absorbs and when made into a dam, can constrain. Two further principles are deduced from this order. The Principle of Control depends entirely on The Order of Mutual Conquest, as the destruction process may be controlled by the element that destroys the destroyer. The Principal of Masking arises from both the Order of Mutual Conquest and The Order of Mutual Production, referring to the masking of a change process by another process producing more of the substrate, or produces it faster than can be destroyed by the primary process.

The Fleur-de-Lys

Though the fleur-de-lis is most famed as the heraldry of French royalty, its antecedents can be found in the margins of the 13th century book, Rituel Cathere and incised on both Cathar crosses and Bogomil stele.

The central flower of the fleur-de-lys, or iris suggests a link to the Tau, which together with the two auxiliary stems, form a trinity.

The Six Petaled Rose

5th and 6th Six-petaled ”roses” ornamenting century Visigoth tombs and Merovingian monuments in southern France would indicate that the “rose” existed long before the Cathar and Bogomil movements, though the acquired symbol was of paramount importance to the sects, and took on additional meaning as the rose-cross of the Manichaeans.

6th Century Cathar Lead Weight

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The six-petaled flower is the Cosmic or Solar Marguerite. The first flower of creation is found as early as the lst century a.d., inscribed on a limestone ossuary in Jerusalem, along with the Fleur-de-Lys and Greek inscriptions. The rose-cross of the Knights Templar would appear to have been influenced by both their association with the Cathars and neo-Manichaean contacts in Palestine during the first Crusades of the 11th century.

The Energetic Hand

Enlarged hands and spiral energy symbols are consistently encountered on both Bogomil and Cathar tombs and stele. These seem to relate to the Cathar ritual of energy transmission, the ‘laying on of hands’ that occurred both in The Consolamentum and The Endura.

A similar ritual might have been employed by the Bogomil, as they too appeared to have understood the nature of energy transmitted through the hands.

According to one of the foremost authorities on the Cathars, the late Rene Nelli, the sarcophagus found in Domazen and the Christ of Casses predated the creation of Bogomil stele. He surmised that both groups were influenced by the same or similar pre-Roman sources. In the south of France, we can look to Visigoth, Merovingian and Celtic traditions.

As for the Bogomil, they were strongly influenced by gnostic Paulicians and Manichaeans. In turn, they had been introduced to this knowledge through Central Asia. Before their exile to the Balkans, the Paulicians and some the Manichaeans had lived in Armenia, on the route of the famed Silk Road, linking Western China to Byzantium and to Visigoth, Celtic and Merovingian traditions.

A later use of this symbol appears as The Christ of Santiago de Compostela. There he appears as uncrucified with an exaggerated large hand, much like those found on Cathar and Bogomil artifacts. Energy whorls can be seen in the folds of his garments.

12th century sarcophagus Domazen, France

12th Century Resurrection of Christ, Tomba di Rotari Monte Sant’ Angelo, Italy

Like The Sarcophagus of Domazen, The Resurrection of Christ bas relief of the Tomba di Rotari was sculpted in the 12th century by Languedocian sculptors. The enlarged left hand of the Christ is very possibly a Cathar influence or a Catholic co-option, as the sculptors of the Resurrection were from Toulouse, then a major Cathar center. Both hands of Christ in the Passion basrelief above the Resurrection are of normal size. The Tomba is just steps away from an important medieval pilgrimage site, the cave sanctuary of Saint Michael.

Prior to 1980, the sanctuary of The Cave of the Stones dispensed limestone fragments to pilgrims to dissolve in water and drink as insurance against plagues. This safeguard was in accordance with an apparition of St. Michael seen in 1656.

A most curious connection occurs between the ancient cave and Bogomil stele. The sanctuary cave of Monte Sant’ Angelo is on a prehistoric break-away from the Dalmatian coast directly across the Adriatic Sea and home to medieval Bogomil. The breakaway limestone mountains now butt starkly against the flat plains of Apulia, Italy.

The Bogomil too, used limestone fragments for healing. A noted Croatian historian stated that the Bogomil would scratch fragments from their stele, then dissolve and drink the fine limestone in water for curative purposes.

The Stag Hunt

A theme common to the sacred art of the Bogomil and the Cathari is that of the hunter and his dogs pursuing a deer. The theme symbolizes a righteous soul of man pursued by the spirit of evil and sins. It might also be construed as a righteous believer pursued by the Church and its agents.

The chase theme frequently appears on Bogomil tombs and stele, as well as carved on the lintel of The Deer House, a still inhabited, 14th century structure located in the remote mountain village of Roquecourbe, France.

Chapter 10

The Consolamentum, The Meliormentem, The Endura

In the gnostic Kephalaia, The Chapters of Mani, discovered in 1930 at Fayum, Egypt, chapter ten explains how an Elect who has renounced the world receives the imposition of hands and is ordained in The Spirit of Light. At the Elect’s moment of death, The Form of Light, which is his or her spirit, offers its right hand and greets the Elect with The Kiss of Love. In turn, the Elect venerates his or her own Form of Light, a feminine Savior.

A version of this gnostic ritual surfaced in the Languedoc as the Cathar Consolamentum. During a year of instruction after a successful three-year trial, the candidate was taught the Cathar technique of saying The Lord’s Prayer in multiples of two or six, accompanied by prostrations. The Cathar wording differed from the orthodox in only one place, where give us this day our superstantial bread replaced give us this day our daily bread, because they believed in the metaphysical interpretation of bread as divine love.

The initiate promised not to kill, lie, utter any oaths or make judgements; never to disavow the Cathar faith, even under the threat of being burnt alive; to practice celibacy and to subject his or herself to a strict vegan regime because meat, cheese and eggs were thought to be directly or indirectly the result of sexual intercourse or pro- creation which strengthened Satan’s powers. The initiate vowed to practice these tenets for the rest of his or her life.

The initiate and the instructor stood before a Parfait, who asked who wished to receive the spiritual baptism by which The Holy Spirit is given in The Church of God, together with The Holy Prayer and the imposition of hands by a Good Man. Receiving a positive reply, the Parfait and the initiate then exchanged The Meliormentem, a request for a blessing accompanied by three genuflections. Then The Pater Noster was recited as the Parfait put The Gospel of John on the head of the applicant and laid hands.

A seemingly simple act, the laying on of hands was actually a baptism, a transferance of intelligent energy, used as the culmination of a Parfait initiation or at the time of death for both Parfaits and lay Believers. It seems to have been as important for those conferring the Consolamentum to remain pure as for those who were recipients. As the Cathars rejected clerical hierarchy, they held that if the Parfait who conferred The Consolamentum fell from his/her state of purity, all those whom he or she had consoled, also fell. But any of the living could be reconciled by another Parfait. The Consolamentum ended with the reading of the prologue of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word...”

From this point on, the applicant was a Parfait and could also be called a Revetu, not only because of the plain black or dark blue habit that distinguished a Parfait from a simple Believer, but because the Parfait had shed his or her old personality. The Consolamentum freed the person receiving it both from personal sins, as well as from the ‘sin committed at the fall from heaven.’ This allowed him or her to pursue release from earthly existence and reincarnation.

This solemn undertaking to carry out a life of an exemplary austerity was given only to those who had already been put to the test. Believers who wished to receive The Consolamentum, but were still too involved in daily life and its needs, had to be satisfied with The Convinenza, a ritual performed in front of a Parfait as a declaration of intent. This gave them the right to have The Consolamentum administered at the time of their death.

There are questionable references in Catholic sources to The Endura, a ritual in which the consoled Cathar was supposed to take no food, and starve to death. Other methods of ritual suicide included poison, opening their veins, jumping from a precipice or plunging into freezing water after a steam bath, which brought on fatal pulmonary congestion. In this way, they would commit no further sins. At times, The Endura did not end in death. It then took the form of a prolonged two-month fast, interrupted by short periods, during which participants ate bread and drank water. Though this is not attested to in early Cathar sources, it does appear to have been a practice among the Cathars of Montaillou in the fourteenth century and may or may not have been typical. It was especially during times of persecution that the Cathars, after receiving The Consolamentum, chose to end their lives voluntarily. By choosing how and when to end their lives, the Cathars believed that they were defeating Satan, ending the cycle of transmigration and imprisonment in the material world.

Maurice Malgre in La Clef des Choses Cachee, indicated that sometimes the Cathars chose to die together as a group, such as those who allegedly left a circle of skeletons found in the Cave of Lombrives with heads at the center and hands touching.

Otto Rahn, author of The Crusade Against The Grail, noted, “Their doctrine allowed suicide but demanded that one did not put an end to his life because of disgust, fear or pain, but in a perfect dissolution from matter. This type of Endura was allowed when it took place in a moment of mystical sight of divine beauty and kindness. It is only one step from fasting to suicide. To fast requires courage but the final act of definitive ascesis requires heroism. The consequence is not as cruel as it may look.”

Chapter 11

The Lyon Codex

A Cathar codex written in Oc and Latin in the latter half of the thirteenth century, was found in the library of Lyon by Fred Conybeare. His translation of 1898 was the first into English.

The manuscript contained the rite of Consolamentum, the Cathar spiritual baptism by the imposition of hands, which communicated the inspiration of the Holy Spirit along with the power to bind and loose.

Jesus bestowed this energy transfer on his disciples when he blew on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It was handed down in an unbroken tradition through the Perfects of the Cathar faith to both men and women alike. In The Consolamentum, the believer is adopted as the ‘son/daughter of God’ and wins eternal life. It was to a great extent, the analog of the deferred baptism of the fourth century, where the spiritually baptized alone formed the Church.

It was preceded by another ritual, also recorded in the Lyon manuscript, the giving of The Prayer, along with the Book of the Gospel to one who was already a Believer.

Benedicite parcite nobis. Amen. Fiat nobis secudum verbum tutum.

Here the entire congregation repeated as far as the tutum, then the Perfect responded with the blessing:

Pater et filius et espiritus sanctus parcat vobis omnia peccata vestra. Adhoremus patrem et filium et espiritum sanctum.’

This was repeated three times, then The Pater Noster was chanted, with panem super-substancialem substituted for the panem quotidianum of the Catholic Church.

Next came: Quoniam tuum est regnum et virtus et gloria in secula. Amen. Adhoremus patrem et filium et spiritum sanctum.

Gratia domini nostri Ihesu Christi sit com omnibus vobis.

Benedicite parcite nobis. Amen Fiat nobis secundum verbum tuum. Pater et filius et spiritus sanctus parcat vobis omnia peccata vestra.’

And after, originally in Latin, The Servitium:

‘We are come before God and before you, and before the ordinance of the holy church, to receive service and pardon and penitence for all our sins, which we have done or said, or thought, or worked from our birth until now; and we ask mercy of God and of you, that you should pray for us to the holy Father of mercy that he pardon us.’

This petition was made to the Perfects, who, because they were purified, could mediate between God and the congregation.

The practice of the Endura also appears in The Lyon Codex. Here the sick believer was given the Lord’s Prayer and told, ‘Never shall ye eat or drink anything without first saying this prayer.’ The abstinence imposed on the person consoled was ‘to keep himself or herself from lying and swearing, and from all else forbidden by God. The Consolamentum was given to the mortally ill of both genders as a last unction.

Chapter 12

Council of St. Felix

Sometime between 1166 and 1176 a.d., a crucial Cathar council was convened at St. Felix-de-Caraman near Toulouse. There it was decided to establish an elected hierarchy of bishops and demarcate boundaries between Cathar sees. The Council, presided over by Nicetas, head of the Cathar Church of Constantinople re-consecrated the bishops of northern France, Lombardy and Albi and newly-elected bishops for the new dioceses of Carcassonne, Agen and Toulouse. Parfaits were reconciled upon receiving The Consolamentum from Nicetas.

These consecrations and consolations were essentially rituals of conversion in which the Parfaits abandoned belief in the subordinate status of the evil principle monarchial dualism, inherited from the Bogomil, to embrace the doctrine of absolute dualism; oppositional energies of good and evil present at the beginning of the world and present at the end of it. Absolute dualism retained its hold on the majority of Cathars of the Languedoc until their extinction.

Near the end of the Albigensian Crusade, between 1223 and 1227 a.d., the Cathar Bishop of Agen staged a concerted campaign to win back Languedocian Cathars to monarchial dualism through the formation of alternative moderate dualist churches and the consecration of its bishops. But his influence of did not long survive his death in 1227 a.d. Absolute dualism was restored in Agen in 1229 a.d., and in 1232 a.d., its Parfaits moved to Montsegur.

It is difficult to determine the reason for the sudden revival of radical dualism, especially as Nicetas declared at St. Felix that all Bogomil churches were operating in perfect doctrinal agreement.

An explanation might be that Thracian Paulicians who comprised the Bogomil Drugunthian Order, sparked this doctrinal reorientation. The ensuing supremacy of absolute Dualism was a graver heresy for the Inquisition than ‘errors’ of moderate Dualists, for whom the evil god of the material world was subservient to the sublimity of the divine Father.

Chapter 13

The Inquisition & The Cathars

Although earlier Church councils, such as The Peace of Paris and The Council of Toulouse had authorized the prosecution of heretics, the official beginnings of the Inquisition can be dated to 1231 a.d., when Pope Gregory IX decreed that repentant heretics be imprisoned for life and those who refused to disavow their beliefs, be turned over to secular authorities for execution. From this point on, the Roman Catholic Church returned to the policy of treating heresy as a crime against both state and church.

The Cathars proved such a threat, though they had been militarily suppressed by the Albigensian Crusade. Reversals such as the reconquest of the County of Toulouse by the two Raymonds and the return of Cathar refugees who had escaped to Catalonia, Aragon and Lombardy made it necessary to establish the Inquisition for extensive, lasting persecution.

The Bull of Innocent IV further strengthened the aims of the Inquisition by permitting use of torture to gain confessions and reinforcing burning at the stake as the primary method of execution. Various provisions in the Inquisition’s constitution included instructions to dig up and destroy bones of dead heretics and to demolish the homes of living, convicted heretics. Cathars were excommunicated, along with their friends, defenders and anyone else who failed to denounce them.

A subsequent Bull divided Europe between the Franciscan and Dominican Orders, with the newly founded Dominicans responsible for hunting Cathars in southwestern France. These monks, as a pun on their Latin name, Domini Cani, were called ‘Dogs of God’.

From the moment of its inception, the Toulouse- and Carcassonne-based Dominican Inquisition encountered strong popular opposition. In 1234 a.d., Raymond VII complained to Pope Gregory IX of their abuses, so that the Dominicans were temporarily expelled in 1235 a.d. But this led to Raymond’s excommunication.

The Dominicans returned in 1236 a.d., to Toulouse, resuming their hunt. In 1237 a.d., during escalating conflicts with Frederick II, a desperate Gregory IX negotiated with Raymond to lift the excommunication and temporarily suspend the Inquisition in Toulouse, but not from the remainder of the Languedoc. An unsuccessful campaign against the French with King Henry of England led Raymond to excommunication again. With his surrender in 1243 a.d., Raymond undertook the obligation to combat heresy in his domain.

The Dominican strategy was to first proclaim a month of grace. Each local inquisition began by calling together all males over fourteen and all females over twelve of a parish to hear a general sermon. Those who confessed their heresy were absolved, but forced to disclose the identity of other heretics or their protectors. In total ignorance of the objective, they were told to name those they considered their enemies. This list was to be as long as possible and the testimony was automatically valid.

The period of grace was followed by secret trials of suspects. Initially, the accused was never told of what offense he or she had committed. This was learned only as faults more serious than those that brought the accused to the Inquisition chambers in the first place, were con- fessed to. So it was that a person could learn that ten years earlier he had given a drink to a Parfait. The names of the accusers were always kept secret.

An important early manual prepared by Raymond de Penafort in 1242 a.d., began by defining a heretic as anyone who professed Cathar beliefs, listened to Cathar sermons or believed them to be good people. Also considered worthy of prosecution were those who knew of Cathar presences but did not report them and backsliders to heresy. The language of the manuals effectively prevented the accused from being represented at trial, as anyone helping a heretic in any way was automatically suspect.

For faults considered to be venial, one might have to pay a fine, be scourged or undergo a pilgrimage. From Inquisition records, we know that an elderly man was given the penance of traveling by foot to the distant shrine of Compostella just for the ‘crime’ of talking briefly to a heretic.

For the next tier of more serious sins, yellow crosses, two inches wide and ten inches high were to be worn on the back and chest for life. With all doors shut, literally banned from society, the marked person was stripped of his possessions and civic rights, suffering a living death. If the accused persisted in denying guilt, torture was exerted.

According to canonical law, torture was to be applied only once. If there was resistance, the torments were to be relaxed. But the Dominicans manipulated the texts in such a way that torture was employed continuously. Thus, if the accused retracted a confession, it was a signal to continue the torture, not start it again, which would have been illegal. Moreover, in 1256 a.d., Pope Alexander authorized dispensations for any ‘irregularities’ on the part of the inquisitors. For those accused who still affirmed their after torture, only one sentence was possible, and that was burning at the stake.

The legal machination that sanctioned the claim that the Inquisition never executed any one, was played out as the condemned were forced to take themselves to prison. If they failed to do so, secular authorities were to take them there, thus absolving the Roman Catholic Church.

And the zeal of the Inquisitors did not stop with the living. Even the dead were not safe. If declared heretics, their bodies and bones were disinterred, dragged through the streets and flung on the burning pyres. “Our justice”, the infamous inquisitor, Bernard Gui told a Cathar one day, ”our justice is not the same as yours. There are many things that are specific to the Inquisition”. Gui, who wrote a very complete manual for dealing with heretics, was responsible for pronouncing 930 sentences between 1308 and 1323 a.d., among which were forty-two death decrees.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Parfait, Peter Autier, returned from hiding in Italy to instigate a brief Cathar renaissance in Foix. Braving the vigilant dragnets of the Inquisition he made secret missionary journeys throughout the Languedoc. It took the Inquisition fifteen years to capture and burn Autier in 1311 a.d. His companion, Guillaume Belibaste, known as the last Parfait, escaped to Catalonia, but was enticed to return to the Languedoc. Betrayed to the Inquisition, he was burned in Toulouse in 1321 a.d.

Despite intermittent resistance to the brutal procedures and the tension between Innocent IV and the Dominican inquisitors, which had led to a brief suspension of trials from 1249-1255 a.d., the Inquisition continued its ghastly work into the 1400’s in southern France, Catalonia and Aragon, once Cathar strongholds. What little remained of Catharism in the Languedoc went underground, surviving only in remote hamlets of the Pyrenees and Alps.

Chapter 14

Principals of The Albigensian Crusades

The Popes

Calixte II: Convoked The Council of Toulouse in 1119 a.d., where Catharism was condemned for the first time.

Innocent II: Renewed the anathema against the Cathars. Ordained as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to preach a mission to the Midi. The mission was unsuccessful.

Eugene III: Traveled through France in 1147 a.d., instigating the Second Crusade. He decried the progress of the heresy in the Midi as well as the moral degradation of the Roman Catholic clergy.

Alexander II: Assembled The Council of Tours in 1163 a.d., to denounce the new ‘heresy of the country of Toulouse’.

Lucius III: Promoted the Decree Ad Abolendam with Emperor Frederick I, which specified that Cathars hand over their sacred books to the secular government.

Innocent III: Installed as Pope in 1198 a.d., at age of thirty-eight. He decided, no matter what the cost, to ‘purge the Midi of the heresy’, designating as his executor, Pierre de Castelnau. He then made an associate of the Abbot of Citeaux, Arnaud-Amaury, and gave his approval to the mission of the future Saint Dominic, who preached the return of clergy to a life of poverty and evangelism. After the failure of Dom- inic and the assassination of Pierre de Castelnau, Innocent III gave the order to French knights to mount a crusade against the and his vassals. He gave attentive approval to the course of the Crusade and encouraged the beginning of the infamous Inquisition.

The Fourth Council of Latran marked the apogee of his career when it officially dispossessed Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Innocent III died in 1216 a.d.

Honorius III: Launched a major diplomatic campaign against Ray- mond VI, who had mortally wounded Simon de Montfort in Toulouse. At his death, Simon was succeeded by his son, Amaury de Montfort. Noting Amaury’s lack of intelligence, Honorius excommunicated Raymond VII, ceding the rights of the Count to the King of France and calling the crusade a ‘Royal Crusade’. He died in 1227 a.d.

Gregory IX: At the Council of in 1227 a.d., Gregory encouraged the zealotry of the Inquisitors by establishing drastic new penal- ties for heresy. In 1233 a.d., he established The Holy Inquisition in the Languedoc. In response to the growth of Catharism in the north of France, throughout Flanders and Champagne, he named as Grand Inquisitor, the Dominican, Robert, who left a trail of terror. Gregory died in 1241 a.d.

Innocent IV: It was at the heart of his Papacy that Montsegur fell, marking the agony of the Cathars in Languedoc. The last Parfaits took refuge in the Corbieres and in the high valley of the Ariege. Innocent IV died in 1254 a.d.

Benoit XII: As Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, he captured the last Parfait, Guillaume Belibaste. Condemned to death by The Inquisition, Belibaste was burned at Villerouge-Termenes in 1331 a.d. Fournier became Pope in 1334 a.d., and died in 1342 a.d.

Catholic Bishops & Inquisitors

Diegue, Bishop of Osma, Castille: As Papal legate, Diegue urged Pope Innocent III to renounce his ostentation and return to a life of consecrated poverty, giving as examples, the Cathar Parfaits.

Dominic de Guzman: The future Saint Dominic who founded the Dominican Order of Preachers. Approved in 1216 a.d., by Pope Honorius III, it produced the infamous heretic-trackers, the ‘Dogs of God’.

Folquet de Marseille: Once a troubadour, the Bishop of Toulouse fully supported Simon de Montfort, often against the wishes of his congregation.

Henry: Abbott of Clairvaux: Conducted a mini-crusade against Roger Trencaval who was forced to denounce the heresy and to promise persecution of heretics in his lands.

Pierre de Castelnau: Consul to Pope Innocent III, he participated in 1204 a.d., in a series of debates with Cathar Bishops. Assassinated in 1208 a.d., with the blame for his death falling on Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Innocent III then called Pierre de Castelnau ‘a martyr of the faith’, launching the French Order of the Cross to crusade against Raymond.

Arnaud-Amaury: Abbot of Grandselve and Citeaux, Archbishop of Narbonne, then Counsel to the Pope. Directed the siege and massacre of Beziers in 1209 a.d. Organized the treacherous arrest of Raymon- Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Beziers and Count of Carcassonne. Known to have been implacable and violent, he was the greatest ally of Simon de Montfort.

Milo: An apostolic notary, he ‘reconciled’ the Count of Toulouse with the Church in 1209 a.d., with a humiliating penance for the death of Pierre of Castelnau.

Romain de Saint-Ange: The Cardinal who excommunicated Raymond VII of Toulouse, deeding all of his lands to King Louis VIII. After the death of the king, Saint-Ange exerted a great influence over Queen Blanche of Castille. In 1229 a.d., an exhausted Raymond VII submitted to terms set by Saint-Ange in The Treaty of Meaux.

Guillaume Arnaud and Emile de Saint-Thibery: Inquisitors from Toulouse killed with their assessors in May 1242, by Cathar soldiers commanded by Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix and guided by Ramon d’Alfaro, bailiff of the Count of Toulouse. This event was an important part of Blanche de Castille’s decision to seize Montsegur.

Pierre Amiel: Archbishop of Narbonne. Participated in the siege of Montsegur.

Pierre Durand: Bishop of Albi: Inventor of a war machine which played a major role in the siege and fall of Montsegur.

Robert The Bulgar: So-called because of his Cathar past. Converted to Catholicism to become a Dominican and named by Pope Gregory IX as the General Inquisitor of the Kingdom of France. His notorious activities were focused on northern and eastern France where Catharism also flourished. In 1233 a.d., Robert discovered a very important Cathar center at Montwimer in Champagne. His inquisition moved so rapidly, that its one hundred forty-six Cathars soon perished in flames and many thousands in other locales burned alive.

Counts of Toulouse

Raymond IV: Count of Saint-Gilles: Participated in the First Crusade in Palestine. Died in Tripoli in 1105 a.d.

Raymond V: Forced to defend his lands against the Plantagenets and the King of Aragon. Under his reign Catharism entered the fiefdom of Toulouse. Died in 1194 a.d.

Raymond VI: In retaliation for the death of his legate, Pope Innocent III ordered the crusade against ‘the lands of heresy of the Count of Toulouse’. Simon de Montfort headed the crusade, gaining success af- ter success. Stripped of his lands, Raymond VI solicited the aid of his brother-in-law, King Pedro II of Aragon. Both were beaten at Muret, September, 1213 a.d. Montfort reaped the title of Count of Toulouse. Raymond VI died in 1222 a.d., and was not allowed a Christian burial.

Raymond VII: More energetic than his father, Raymond VII endeavored to regain his lands. In June 1218 a.d., Simon de Montfort found death in Toulouse at the hands of Raymond and his soldiers. Amaury de Montfort, incapable of conserving his father’s conquests, lost every- thing within a decade. Raymond VII was excommunicated. His lands were forfeited, allowing King Louis VIII to organize a new ‘Royal Crusade’. Louis VIII died a few days after capturing Avignon. Blanche of Castille ordered further combats against Raymond VII. In view of such inequality, Raymond accepted the terms of submission listed in The Decree of Meaux. A clause promised his daughter Jeanne, age nine, to Alphonse de Poitiers, a brother of Louis IX. Because he had no sons, the inheritance of Raymond’s daughter was passed on to Alphonse, which ultimately secured the annexation of the whole of the Languedoc by the French crown in 1271 a.d. Raymond VII concluded The Peace of Paris in 1229 a.d. with Louis IX, which officially ended the Albigensian Crusade and obliged him to assist in the persecution of Cathars in his lands. Raymond VII died at Millau in 1249 a.d., released from a sentence of excommunication.

The Counts of Foix

The Counts of Foix were the most illustrious allies of the Counts of Toulouse who engaged in the last battles against Simon de Montfort, Roger-Bernard I, Ramon-Roger, Roger-Bernard, Roger IV. Roger IV abandoned the fight and joined the Crown, independent of the Counts of Toulouse. Which is why, until the Revolution, Foix remained separate from the Languedoc.

The Trencaval Viscounts

Ramon-Roger Trencavel: The Viscounts of Beziers were the first to receive the assault of the French crusade. After ransacking Beziers and massacring its inhabitants, the crusaders staged a siege before the walled city-castle of Carcassonne. Ramon-Roger offered to negotiate, but Simon de Montfort and his Counsel, Arnaud-Amaury, in a veritable trap, seized and locked him into the prison of his own castle. He died after three months of captivity in 1209 a.d., Montfort then conquered Minerve, Termes, Cabaret and Lavaur.

Ramon Trencavel: Ramon-Roger’s dispossessed son who took refuge in Aragon. In 1240 a.d., he raised a small army of dispossessed Oc- citan nobility, the Faydits, laying siege to Carcassonne. The Seneschal, Guillaumedes Ormes appealed to the French King who sped reinforcements to Carcassonne. Ramon dropped his campaign and fled to Montreal. Obtaining an honorable capitulation, he left for Catalonia.

Cathar Parfaits

Bernard de Simmore: Took part in the first Carcassonne debate at with his counterpart, a Catholic theologian.

Bernard de La Motte: Bishop of Toulousain.

Benoit de Termes: Bishop of Carcassonne.

Bertrand D’en Marty: Succeeded Guilhabert de Castres. Died as a martyr in the fires of Montsegur on March 16, 1244 a.d.

Corba de Lantar: Wife of Ramon de Perella, the defender of Montsegur. A Parfait, she perished in the bonfire of March 15, 1244 a.d., at Montsegur.

Esclarmonde de Foix: Sister of the Count of Foix, Ramon-Roger. From the time she was very young she was a faithful Cathar and became a Parfait after being widowed, receiving the Consolamentum at the castle of Fanjeux. Esclarmonde took part in most of the debates staged by St. Dominic between the Cathars and Catholics. The most well-known was at Pamiers, the city where she directed a Cathar enclave.

Esclarmonde de Perella: Daughter of Ramon de Perella. A Parfait, she perished in the bonfire of March 15, 1244 a.d., at Montsegur.

Guilhabert de Castres: Known throughout the Languedoc as a wise, sainted holy man. An indefatigable preacher, he traveled throughout the Occitane and presided in 1225 a.d., at the Cathar Council of .

Guiraude de : Mistress of Lavaur and a well-known Cathar, she organized the defense of Lavaur with her brother, Aimery de Montreal against Simon de Montfort. On May 3, 1211 a.d., Montfort and his troops stormed the ramparts of Lavaur, hacking Aimery de Montreal and forty-five Cathar soldiers to death; hurling Mme. De Laurac down a well, raining her with stones, then burning four hundred Cathars.

Marquesia de Lantar: Grandmother of Ramon de Perella. A Parfait, she perished in the bonfire of March 15, 1244 a.d., at Montsegur.

Pierre Autier: After the fall of Montsegur, he took refuge in Lombardy. Returning to Toulousain, he was arrested and burned at the end of the thirteenth century.

Phillipa de Foix: Wife of Ramon-Roger, Count of Foix. After receiving the Consolamentum, she founded and directed an enclave of Parfaits at Dun.

William Belibaste: The last Parfait. Captured in Catalonia and burned at Villeneuve-Termenes in 1331 a.d.

The Crusaders

Simon de Montfort: Lord of Yvelines, Court of Leicester. Ruthless leader of the Albigensian Crusades, one of a group of nobles from the Ile-de-France who were awarded the lands of the rebels by the French King. Killed at Toulouse, June, 1218 a.d.

Guy de Levis: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given Mirepoix lands.

Bouchard de Marly: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given .

Enguerrand de Boves: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given Saverdun.

Lambert de Thury: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given .

Alain de Roucy: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s given Termes and Montreal.

Pierre de Voisins: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s given the Haut- Razes.

Arnaud de Montaigu: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given Biron.

Rainier de Chaudron: Lieutenant of Montfort’s given Puivert.

Hughes de Lacy: A principal lieutenant of Montfort’s who was given Laurac and .

The Faydits

The name Faydits, rebels, designated heretical Occitane nobility who had their lands appropriated by the crusaders. A number of Faydits found refuge in Aragon.

Among the most well-known Faydits were: Ramon-Roger Trencavel, Olivier de Termes, who later accompanied Louis IX on his trip to Palestine, Pierre de Fenouillet, Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix, Jourdain de Saisac, and the Bellissen, Rabel, d’Aniort, Castelbon, Dubran and Dufort families.

The Regents

Blanche de Castille: Wife of Louis VIII. After ordering the final assault against Montsegur, which she considered as ‘the head of the dragon of heresy’, she imposed the marriage of Jeanne de Toulouse, the second daughter of Raymond VII to Alphonse de Poitiers.

Pedro II D’Aragon: Brother-in-law of both Raymond VI and Raymond VII of Toulouse through marriages to two of his sisters. A fervent Catholic, he did not flirt with Catharism when it appeared in his lands. Rather, his reasons for supporting the Counts of Toulouse were political as well as familial. Pedro II sought to build a vast kingdom that would include Aragon, Catalonia and the Languedoc. But this ambition ran up against the opposition of Innocent III and the lack of enthusiasm of the Count of Toulouse. After various adventures, Pedro openly allied himself with the Counts of Toulouse against Montfort. On September 11, 1213, he succumbed to the blows of Alain de Roucy at the battle of Murat. The death of the King of Aragon threw the camp of the Occitans into a state of chaos and the battle was lost.

The Siege of Montsegur

In 1204 a.d., Raymon de Perella, a noble sympathetic to Catharism, constructed a fortress on ancient ruin of Montsegur.

Montsegur’s impregnable position made it a refuge for Cathars persecuted from 1209 a.d. This marked the start of the Crusade against the Albigensians, stepped up by the suppression of Catharism in the wake of The Peace of Paris in 1229 a.d.

In 1232 a.d., the Cathar Bishop of Toulouse, Guilhabert de Castres and the heretical Bishop of Agen, Tento I, moved to Montsegur. Before the siege, the everyday life of Montsegur supported Pures at worship, initiates receiving necessary instruction and an endless stream of lay people coming to receive the blessings of the Pures, or brought on stretchers to receive the Consolamentum as their last rite.

A garrison, gathered from believers and sympathizers protected the castle; the men-at-arms reinforced by rebels after the collapse of Raymond Trencaval’s campaign of 1240 a.d., Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix, a son-in-law, controlled the garrison whose knights belonged to the minor nobility of the surrounding area. He maintained relations with others opposed to the French presence in the Languedoc, such as the Seneschal of Raymond VII, Raymond of Alfaro.

Raymond of Alfaro informed Pierre-Roger of the impending arrival at his castle at Avigontet of two well-known and feared Inquisitors and their party of nine. Pierre-Roger dispatched an armed force to ambush and kill the entire group. The death of the Inquisitors met with rejoicing in the Languedoc, but was coupled with anxiety over impending hostilities with France. The subsequent defeat of an anti-French coalition sealed the fate of Montsegur.

When the famous siege began, nearly 500 people lived at Montsegur. Its lord, Ramon de Perella lived in the chateau with his wife Corba, three daughters and their young son, Jordan. His mother, the Marquesa de Lantar, having taken vows, lived as a Pure in a small hut. Esclarmonde, her crippled granddaughter, was also a Cathar. One of the refugee Pures was Bishop Bertrand Marty, successor to Bishop Guilhabert.

By May 1243 a.d., the French army of 10,000 men, commanded by Hugues of Arcis, the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne, camped at the bottom of the cliff, prepared for a long and exhausting siege. Enormous provisions were within the castle and its cisterns were full. And as long as the siege lasted, communications with the outside was constant. The army could not control all the paths, often known only to local inhabitants, day and night.

In October, nimble-footed Basques in the employ of the French, built a narrow platform downwards about 240 feet from the castle. In November, a ballista was hauled in parts to the platform and assembled outside the castle walls. Once finished, an intensive bombardment of the castle began.

Informed of the siege, the Count of Toulouse sent an engineer, Bertrand of Baccalaria, who forced his way through the French blockade to build a machine that returned the fusillade of boulders.

Towards Christmas, an act of treason made it possible for the French to seize this machine, spending the night on a path known only to local inhabitants. But the castle held its position through February despite continuous bombardments.

Finally, after nine months of siege, Pierre-Roger attempted to seize the ballista. The attempt failed and the now untenable situation of the Cathars, forced Raymon de Perella and Pierre-Roger into negotiations with the besiegers. Fifteen days of cease-fire and reflection were granted. During this time, the reputed Cathar treasure along with secret Cathar writings was clandestinely carried away by three Pures in a daring descent by cords from the Western cliff. During a Cathar holiday corresponding to Easter, seventeen people received The Consolamentum. This rite, by elevating them to the rank of Pure, condemned them to a certain death.

The terms of the agreement allowed the garrison to leave with weapons and luggage. All those willing to confess their faults and abjure Catharism would be subjected to light penances. Those who persisted in their errors would be burnt to death. More than 200 made this choice, including the recent recipients of The Consolamentum.

On March 16, 1244 a.d., Montsegur fell into the hands of the Orthodox crusaders and 210 condemned Cathars voluntarily marched into the flames of a huge pyre built on a field at the base of the mountain. The Field of Cremation, site of this brutal act of the Inquisition, is marked by a stele bearing the words: Als catars, als martirs del pure amor crestian. It is probably no coincidence that in Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach sited the Grail Castle deep within Cathar territory at Montsalvasch. In one of his poems he even names the Lord of the Grail Castle as ‘Perilla’, so similar to ‘de Perella’, the Lord of Montsegur.

Chapter 15

The Caves of the Sabarthez

Located near the French border of the Pyrenees, The Sabarthez was established by Charlemagne to commemorate his victory against the Saracens in 778, said to have been made possible by the appearance of a Black Virgin at a site of druidic worship, now the small chapel of Sabart.

A vast network of caves lace the Sabarthez valley. Some, used over 12,000 years ago as habitations, still display vivid Paleolithic images on their rough walls. Other caves are known to have been used as places of worship, initiation and refuge for the Cathars. Even to this day, it is claimed that the Holy Grail is secreted away in one of the Sabarthez caves. A clue lies in the crest of the Sabarthez, for its motto reads Sabarthez Custos Summorum, which translates as Guardian of the All Highest. The sacred caves of the Sabarthez cluster around the small resort town of Ussat-les-Bains. Lombrives, the caves of Ussat and Ornolac, the fortfied Spougla Bouan and Fontanet are all known as ‘doors to Catharism.’

Above Ussat, the sacred mountain of the gnostic Cathars is divided into two groups of caves, most of which are no longer accessible

The Cave of Bethlehem

To reach Bethlehem, the most important of the Cave-Churches of Ornolac, one must climb the steep Path of Initiation, passing through the Mystic Portal, an arch built of uncemented stones. The Cave of Bethlehem may well have been the spiritual center of the Cathar world. It was here that the candidate underwent an initiation ceremony culminating in The Consolamentum, an energy transmission passed by the hands by an enlightened master.

Four aspects of the Cave were utilized in the ceremony:

• A square niche in the wall, in which stood the veiled Holy Grail. • A granite altar upon which The Gospel of John lay. • A pentagram hewn into a wall. •Telluric currents emanating from the rock walls and floor.

At the height of the ceremony, the candidate climbed a ladder to take a place in the pentacle niche. Holding a position of outstretch arms, legs and raised head, the adept formed a pentagram. Because a pentacle engenders a pentagram, which in turn engenders a pentacle, and so on to infinity, it is a symbol of consciousness without limits. According to ancient Pythagoreans, it also reproduces the ideal proportions of the human body.

Placed in the pentacle, the candidate drew energy from intense magnetic currents emanating from the rock wall; evoked a state of transcendence through sustained meditation, and became a living mirror of The Perfect Man of the cosmos. With the administration of The Consolamentum, the candidate was on The Road of the Stars.

The Caves of Ussat

1. Cave of the Workshops 2. Symbolic Wall 3. Kitchens 4. The Chapel 5. The Crypt 6. Upper Church 7. Satan The Pentagram of Six Stars

Pentagrams, such as the Pentagram of Six Stars, found in the caves of Ussat, played an important role in Cathar and Bogomil symbolism

The five-branched star was found on many Bogomil steles in the former Yugoslavia, harking back to the ancient Pythogorian tradition. In Occataine, it was the symbol found most frequently on Cathar monuments.

Lombrives

Like all of the caves in the region, Lombrives, formed by an underground river, served as a habitat for prehistoric man. On an immense stone plate in its Great Hall have been found signs of prehistoric habitation, including fossilized bones.

Connected to the Neolithic cave of Niaux, with its 12,000 year old rock drawings, Lombrives bears silent witness to an unbroken chain of human events in the Sabarthez. Countless years of water dripping on its rocks have created fantastic stalagmite shapes, here a shaggy mammoth, that could have lumbered in from the adjoining cave of Niaux, there a pensive head called The Thinker.

Numerous myths associated with Lombrives date back to the Greeks. The presence of a magnificent underground palace in the cave is related in the legend of Pyrene. The beautiful daughter of the King of the Iberian Bebryx, she fell victim to her unfortunate love for Hercules Tyrien. It is to Pyrene that the Pyrenees owes its name, and to the hero, that of a subterranean lake in Lombrives.

The Cathedral of Lombrives

At the heart of the Lombrives cave complex lies a double cavern. Its great lower space soars up to a stunning height of nearly two hundred and seventy feet. The huge Cathedral of Lombrives served as a meeting place from the 11th to the 13th century for all Cathars, from laymen to the initiated. Here the Pures came to meditate, to preach sermons and share their truths. Cathar graffiti can still be found on some of the rocky walls, pentagrams, pentacles, six-branched stars. It was also to the Cathedral that Amiel Alcard, last Grand Master of the Cathars, possibly brought important artifacts rescued just before the fall of Montsegur in 1244 a.d. Alcard worked in the valley of the Sabarthez for many years after, inspiring the still- numerous followers of the Cathar faith. In 1328 a.d., an extraordinary event took place in Lombrives. Five hundred of the last Cathars and their faithful who had found refuge in the cave from relentless persecution, were walled in alive by the Senechal of Toulouse, who representated the Inquisition.

They were almost forgotten until 1578 a.d., when King Henry IV of France, concurrently King of and a direct descendent of the Cathar-defending earls of Foix, opened the entrance to Lombrives. Legend has it that in the Cathedral and beside the Lake of Hercules, Henry’s men found skeletons lying in circles, their hand and feet bones touching those of their neighbors. It is said that between the ordinary people were Pures, who enabled all entombed to peacefully “drop” their bodies. Possibly, they used the practice known as The Endura, said to bring about a gnostic liberation.

Ornolac

1.The Castle-Fort (no longer visible) 2.Pottery Kilns (no longer visible) 3.Bethlehem Cave 4.Table (moved to Galaad) 5.Cave of The Knights

In the fortified church-cave of Ornolac, a small bronze plaque with a bas-relief sculpture of a dove, or possibly a swallow in flight, was found at the turn of the 20th century. Other three-dimensional stone doves were found at Montsegur and in the Cave of Bethlehem.

Representing the Holy Spirit, the dove was one of the major symbols used by the Cathars, along with the pentagram and the pentacle. Reproduced on fragments of metal and medallions, they were possibly carried as objects of piety, or as symbols of gnostic knowledge.

The Spougla de Bouan

During the 12th and 13th centuries, the Cathars fortified the Spougla de Bouan, a series of caves continuously inhabited from the year 1000 a.d. The caves served as veritable castle-forts, places of refuge after the fall of Montsegur in 1244 a.d.

The Inquisition sealed off the caves in 1436 a.d., and like the Lombrives Cave, the Spougla de Bouan became a necropolis.

Plan of Spugla de Bouan

1. Entry 2. Watch 3.Exterior Door 4.Interior Door 5.High Walls 6.Castle Keep 7.Cistern 8.Chapel

Chapter 16

Oc Towns & Castles

Carcassonne

Though the origins of Carcassonne are lost in the antiquity of Gallo-Roman times, its name can be traced to a legend based upon one of the numerous French conquests in the Languedoc.

During a five-year siege by Charlemagne, the town’s leader, Madame Carcas, devised the ultimate ruse. She gathered up all of the grain remaining in the town and fed it to a sow, which was then thrown over the walls. Inflated with grain, the animal burst at the feet of the attackers. Astounded by such wastefulness, Charlemagne imagined that the city was a veritable kingdom of abundance and accepted her terms of negotiation while horns were sounded (fr. sonne) on the walls of the city. Thus the name ‘Carcassonne’.

By the 12th century, Carcassonne was a formidable city-castle, with a still solid interior wall, built seven centuries earlier. These powerful walls sheltered an important meeting in 1167 a.d., of the Cathar bishop Nikita of Constantinople and sixteen dignitaries of the Cathar Church in the Languedoc to establish territorial bases and dioceses. They were protected by Count Raymond-Roger, nominally a Catholic prince with strong connections to the Cathars. Indeed, the Cathars were given asylum for nearly one half-century in the city, until the Crusades against the Albigensians began.

The first punitive expedition against Carcassonne and Roger II Trencavel, was led by Cardinal Henri, Bishop of Albano in 1181 a.d., for the imprisonment of a Catholic bishop and for protecting heretics.

The next attack came in 1209, when several days after the destruction of Beziers, an enormous army of crusaders led by Simon de Montfort, appeared in front of Carcassonne.

Two populous suburbs rested on what is now the inner wall. The first was captured immediately; but conquest of the second was harder. Attack on the high enclosed walls was balanced by severe losses by the attackers. While the Count of Toulouse passively viewed the tragedy, Pedro II, King of Aragon, offered to mediate, but conditions imposed were so severe, Carcassonne’s defender, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, declared. “I would rather be sinned alive than abandon even one of my subjects”

Carcassonne’s wells dried, and with the lack of water, the city capitulated on August 15,1209. Raymond-Roger, captured by sheer trickery, was imprisoned in the dungeons of Carcassonne. Terrified by the treason, its inhabitants immediately abandoned the city, possibly with the permission of the crusaders or unseen through a secret tunnel.

Trencavel died in September, 1209 a.d., entrusting his four-year-old son, Raymond II to the Count of Foix. Simon de Montfort, now deemed Viscount of Carcassonne, continued the crusade to the great profit and advantage of the top Catholic clergy, especially Pope Innocent III.

Montfort’s domination of Carcassonne barely lasted fourteen years. After the death of Simon de Montfort in 1218 a.d., the lords of Oc retrieved a great part of the castles and cities taken by the Crusaders, including Carcassonne. The still very young Raymond VII then repossessed Carcassonne for a short period.

Amaury, the slow-witted son of Simon, was forced to return to the North, destitute, carrying only his father’s bones wrapped in cowhide. There he turned over his rights to Avignon and the city was easily recaptured. The following year, Raymond VII was ex-communicated by the Council of Narbonne. He then fled to Aragon.

In 1240 a.d., Raymond VII emerged with the support of the majority of his old vassals and attempted an ill-fated attack on the city. In 1247 a.d., he was forced to renounce all rights to his lands, turning control over to the Senechal of Carcassonne. For this occasion, St. Louis gave the former inhabitants of the city, banished because of attachment to Raymond II, the right to establish a town below the castle.

In spite of these humiliations, Catharism remained quite alive in the city, which continued to protect Parfaits from the barbs of Inquisitors. At the end of the 13th century, a plot was organized with the support of several consuls of the city to withdraw the registers of the Inquisition from the royal administration. Despite the failure of this plot, the bourgeois of the city continued the fight in legal and political arenas.

At the beginning of the 14th century, the monk, Bernard Delicieux, commandered several buildings in the city for the first offices and torture chambers of the Inquisition.

This provoked a new insurrection, resulting in the arrest and torturous death of about fifteen Carcassonne notables. To boost the defenses of the city during the years that followed these tragedies, Louis IX constructed a second wall parallel to the interior wall that remains intact to this day.

Cordes

In 1222 a.d., Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse built Cordoa, a fortified town on the flanks of a steep hill to serve as a refuge for those accused of heresy. Boroughs close to the town had been razed by the Second Crusaders and were no longer inhabitable.

After the death of Louis VII, Imbert de Beajeau seized a castle close to and devastated the surrounding countryside, taking care not to lay siege at the base of Cordes.

It was only following The Peace of Paris that Cordes, with other Occatain fortresses, surrendered to the King of France.

On December 1,1249, consuls and nobles of the city were forced to pledge their fidelity to Alphonse de Poitiers, brother of Louis VII, and his wife Jeanne, daughter of Raymond VII.

Later, depositions given to the registrars of the Inquisition stated that heretical meetings were held in 1226 a.d., at a weaver’s workshop in Cordes, and further reason for royal control of the city.

The weaving profession was so common among the Cathars, that the word ‘weaver’ was synonymous with ‘ heretic’. Several historians have surmised that this workshop was in reality a kind of Cathar seminary. This might have been possible, but it should be considered that though the weavers were often connected with the heresy, weaving was, during the Middle Ages, a noble and very remunerative trade. These workshops belonged to the rich middle-class who owned buildings sufficiently large enough to house Parfaits and who had foreign contacts that allowed for escape routes and havens for heretics too compromised in the Languedoc.

The archives of the Haute-Garonne from 1254-1256 a.d., still contains the names of twelve persons suspected of heresy in Cordes. Other records show that in 1268 a.d., Alphonse de Poitiers and his wife approved a sale in their name of the goods of two heretic brothers, the Pellipier.

The Inquisition reached its heights in Cordes in 1320, when twenty heretics confessed that they received and venerated the Parfaits, Raimond de Bosc, Raimond Didier d’Albi and Bernard de Goch de Cordes. Witnesses also declared that they had contact with heretics in Lombardy, Italy. The confession of Benoit Molinier on April 11, 1301 a.d., gave a very precise description of receiving The Consolamentum.

It was only after the Franciscan monk, Bernard Delicieux and notables of Carcassonne and Albi intervened with the King that the repression lessened. Delicieux sent two advisors to the Languedoc in 1301 a.d., Jean de Picquigny and Richard Leneveu, to whom the consuls of Cordes addressed their objections against the bishop of Albi and his agents.

The defeat of Bernard Delicieux after five years of battles, brought a renewal of severity. The Pope issued The Bull of July 27, 1308, that led the Bishop of Albi to reinforce the capacities of the Inquisitors. As a result, the inhabitants of Cordes gave up their struggle and one can suppose that the last heretics slipped away to Catalonia or Lombardy.

On June 19, 1321 a.d., a Brother-Preacher of Toulouse listened impassively to a petition read by a consul of Cordes asking for the forgiveness of all offences, either against the Bishop Bernard de Castanet or against his predecessors, the exoneration of excommunications and judgements, and pledging fidelity and submission to the Church. Part of Cordes’ obligation was to build a chapel dedicated to St. Peter, St. Cecile, St. Louis and St. Dominic, with a stone statue of Bernard de Castanet flanked by two inquisitors at the front doors.

A story originated by the Dominican, Giffre de Rechac still circulates of three inquisitors who were thrown into a deep well by irate citizens of Cordes. The well still exists in the market place, marked by a nearby cross, but it is difficult to judge if this story is true or not. Neither the city archives nor the registers of the Inquisition record this incident. It may have been confused with the massacre of Inquisitors at Avignonet in 1242 a.d.

Until the beginning of the 14th century, the Inquisition supported by Bernard de Castanet, Bishop of Albi, unleashed a reign of terror on Cordes. Under official edict, all inhabitants including Catholics, were deprived of their rights.

Minerve

Once a major Cathar center, the village of Minerve rises like an eagle’s nest above a barren stone landscape at the confluence of the Cesse and Briant rivers. The base of the village still carries the remainders of unassailable ramparts carved from the surrounding limestone cliffs.

In the very dry climate of the Mediterranean Cevennes, danger came for Minerve only from a lack of water. When the town’s well went dry after a savage six-week siege by Simon de Montfort and his Crusaders, thirst forced Guillaume de Minerve to accept heartless conditions to leave Minerve and the sacrifice of resident Cathars by fire in exchange for the lives of the remainder of the population. Countering the opinion of Montfort and Arnaud-Amaury, leaders of the Crusade, the Pope’s legate then proposed that if the Cathars converted to Catholicism, they too would be saved. He was also reputed to have said to Montfort and Arnaud, “You have nothing to fear, because I truly believe that few will convert”.

As expected, the Cathars flatly rejected the legates offer, and the tragic outcome peaked on July 22, 1210 a.d. Montfort lit what was to be the first human bonfire of the Crusades. One hundred forty-five Cathar martyrs singing Te Deum, held hands as they walked into the high, darting flames.

A plaque on the wall of the tiny village church commemorates this courageous act. It is enough to meander through Minerve’s sun-scorched lanes to evoke the battle sounds of seven hundred years ago.

The Zodiac of Montsegur

A series of plans by Fernand Neil based upon his extensive investigations at Montsegur, indicate that the fortress-temple was built to incorporate specific orientations to the zodiac and the solstices.

Montsegur was built oriented to the four cardinal points of the zodiac. It would seem that the builders of Montsegur took advantage of the height of the site, as the lines of the rising sun extend into infinity on all sides of the horizon. An example are rays of the rising sun of the equinoxes resting on the peak of , the culminating point of the Corbieres, and which is at exactly the same altitude as Montsegur. This may or may not be a simple geographical coincidence.

If we join points B to G, we have a perfect meridian, and if we draw a straight line from b to H, we establish the east-west direction of the rising sun on the Equinoxes of March 21 and September 23.

Cardinal Directions of Montsegur

Winter Solstice at Montsegur

Tracing the lines of E’h, F’a, ca,b’a we see that these four lines are exactly parallel and indicate the rising sun of the Winter Solstice.

The line a’H indicates the rising sun of the Summer Solstice on June 21. This rising is mirrored through two arches at the other end of the temple shown by the lines de and cf.

To complete the Zodiac of Montsegur, the lines fA corresponds to January 21, Aquarius and November 22, Sagittarius; CH to February 19, Pisces and October 23, Scorpio; Bh to April 20, Taurus and August 23, Virgo; a’H to May 21, Gemini and July 22, Leo

Summer Solstice At Montsegur

Fernand Niel, the chronicler of Montsegur, was the opposite of an armchair researcher. Admirably, he knew the whole area; climbed the mountain tens of times and examined the castle in its farthest recesses, measurement instruments in hand. He was known to have declared, “I do not count the days and the nights that I have passed in the storehouse, very often in the roaring of a furious storm, with my only companions, the eagles who live in the vertiginous heights. All that was to arrive at the origin of a certain personal vision. It matters little to me that this vision is not very orthodox. “

After years of study, Niel reached the conclusion that Montsegur was a castle-fortress, a sun temple and an observatory. Its form poses an enigma as its plan is a lengthening pentagon, flanked by a smaller, rectangular storehouse.

One enters by a monumental portal, approximately ten feet high. Another portal, almost as large, pierces the opposite wall. When we place ourselves at a given point in the castle’s storehouse on the summer solstice, we can see the rays of the sun shining through two arrow slits to two more slits on the opposite wall.

It is difficult to know to what civilization the sun temple can be attributed to. Prior to inhabitation by the Cathars, there is evidence gained from scattered artifacts that the site had been sacred to Neolithics, Celts, Romans, Visigoths, Saracens and Franks.

Montsegur is the only structure on the Eastern horizon entirely freestanding. To the east, the direction of the rising sun, the castle is at the same altitude as the infinitely extended horizon. The rays of the rising equinox sun fall on the highest point of the Corbieres, the peak of Bugarach, at the same altitude as Montsegur. It may suggest a simple geographic coincidence, profited on by the builders of Montsegur. But such a coincidence is unlikely, and given this very rare site, an analog of Bugarach could have been more easily built at Montsegur than a fortress-temple.

The Orthodox Christian Fathers, B.G.de Champeaux and Sebastien Sterckx, authors of Introduction au Monde des Symboles show in their fundamental text, how the connection between and solar symbolism translates into architecture.

An observation point was placed in the center of a sacred circle facing the east and the rising sun, where a precise and non-varying ritual was performed.

The ritual followed successive displacements of the rising sun, with the horizon between the extreme limits reached with the solstices of summer and winter.

These two essential points were marked on the ground by two columns or as in certain prehistoric alignments of and England, by two menhirs. Such columns directed towards the East, have been found at certain old temples, like those of the Temple of Jerusalem.

The case of both columns located in front of Egyptian temples is particularly interesting because they form a unit with the building without serving a useful architectural role. They constitute a precedent for a number of Occidental churches whose large solid Eastern gates are surmounted by two bell towers. Here, the line of evolution of the ancient “gates of the sun” continues, so that ritual observation places the way the sun rises in the Summer Solstice against the left side, with the Winter Solstice against that of the right-hand side. Their context also allows us to understand why the arches of the storehouse at the summer solstice play the role of the “doors of the sun”.

Montsegur was not a sun temple in a literal sense. The Cathars did not adore the sun, nor did the Manichaeans, though it was a prime symbol of their religion. If this is the case, why was such precision invested in the zodiacal placement of Montsegur? The answer might lie in the cosmology of the Cathars and Manichaeans, who believed that the sun was the only exception to a world created by Satan.

It is entirely conceivable that on the mornings of the Summer Solstice, the feast of the apostle St. John, Cathars faced the arches of Montsegur’s storehouse, chanting the Johnnite prayer: As long as you have the light, believe in the light and you will become Children of the Light.

Morenci

The mysterious, deeply silent ridge of Morenci is only a kilometer as the crow flies from Montsegur. It seems caught in an earlier epoch, with its remains of a Celtic burial ground, two strange rock outcroppings and a small cross-shaped stele, once adorned with an African head and an infinity symbol. The head has been thoroughly defaced, riddled with bullets, but the infinity symbol remains.

Stele of Morenci

Two large boulders crown the ridge, shaped like a yoni and a lingum. The yoni boulder, known as Arthur’s Throne, has steps carved by human hands that lead to a cleft resembling a seat. It was at its base that a student of the scholar, Jean Tricoire, discovered the famous ‘Magic Hand of Lavlanet’.

The large left hand sculpted from a local gypsum, is said to be prehistoric and the first of its kind to be found in Europe. Had it belonged to a statue, it would have corresponded to a giant over eight feet high. Tricoire stated that when he first saw it, a malevolent force emanating from the hand caused him to jump back in instinctive repulsion.

The main lines of the hand are well marked, but all of the fingers are mutilated above the second phalanx. The unusual length of the small finger, a peculiarity of prehistoric man, testifies to its great age.

Images of similarly mutilated hands can be found in the prehistoric paintings of various caves in the Ariege, particularly, the Cave of Garagas, carved in relief on pre-Columbian ruins and in the Celebes.

This ritual mutilation was still employed in the early twentieth century by Berbers of the North African Atlas Mountains, whose ancestors had once inhabited the Ariege. It is interesting to note that when such mutilations of the corpses of captives occurred, the women would wear the severed fingers as talismans, perhaps as reminders of the magnetic current which can emanate from fingertips, such as during the Cathar ceremony of laying on of hands.

Morenci seems to hold many secrets, a possible connection between the hand and stele; the meaning of the vandalized ancient head; a connection between Montsegur and Morenci as respective accumulators of celestial forces and the strong telluric currents that run below the surface of the earth; yin and yang.

Puivert and The Troubadour Court of Love

The symbol of the refinement and civilization that existed in the Languedoc during the period in which Cathar doctrines flourished, was the grand twelfth century chateau of Puivert. Its elegant stairwell is still decorated with lively sculptures of musicians with instruments, such as the flute, lute, tambourine and mouth organ.

Its Cathar chatelaine, Adelaide de Carcasonne, created a Court of Love at this intellectual and artistic hub; each year, calling in the most celebrated troubadours of her time. It was there in 1170 a.d., that Peire d’Auvergne composed his famous countering other troubadours. Subsequent lords and ladies of Puivert also were Cathar and died as Parfaits. One of the last Cathar strongholds, the chateau was captured by Simon de Montfort in 1210 a.d., after a three day siege. Thirty-four years later, the first death of the siege of Montsegur was that of Sicard de Puivert.

The Cathar movement and the troubadours seem to have developed simultaneously in the Languedoc. According to Denis de Rougemont, they extolled chastity like the Cathars, but unlike Parfaits, did not always practice it. Modeling initiated Cathars, the troubadours received from their lady a single kiss of initiation; challenged the marriage bond; reviled the Orthodox clergy and their allies; used expressions in their verses taken from Cathar liturgy.

The content of troubadour songs had to be hidden from Catholic scrutiny. Their information was available only for those who understood the code. When a troubadour used the word ‘true’ before words such as ‘God’, ‘Light’, ‘Faith’, or ‘Church’, it could very well have been a sign of Catharism. The Cathars took care to speak the language of orthodoxy, adding the word ‘true’ for the benefit of initiates. It was no different from coded information passed between members of oppressed groups throughout history. The heretical bent of the set phrases and expressions of the troubadours’ lyrics become evident as soon as they are compared with orthodox clerical poetry of the period.

Guilhem Figueira, one of the greatest poets of the times, expressing Cathar sentiments, sang: I am no longer astonished, Rome, if the world is deceived, because you dressed the century in torment and war.

For the benefit of a public that favored the Cathars, the troubadours created verses about a type of love that corresponded and responded to a very difficult moral situation, brought about by both the religious condemnation of sexuality of the Parfaits and a natural revolt against the orthodox view of marriage, reaffirmed by Gregorian reform.

The courtly virtues of humility, frankness, respect and fidelity to one’s Lady were expressly connected with the rejection of physical love. Their new form of poetry honored the Lady of Thoughts, the Platonic ideal of a feminine principle, dedicated to chastity and the encouragement of love as opposed to marriage.

Rene Nelli, a modern interpreter of Cortezia, or Courtly Love, wrote: ‘Nearly all the ladies of the Caracasses, of the Toulousain, of the Foix and of the Albi region, were Believers, and were aware, although married, that marriage was condemned by their Church. Many troubadours were undoubtedly Cathars, or at least were aware of the current of ideas that had been in the air for two hundred years. In any event, they sang their verses for castle ladies, whose bad consciences had to be pacified by song, and who exacted from them less the illusion of a sincere love than a spiritual antipode to marriage, a state into which they had been forced.

There can be no question of taking the chastity thus simulated as being either a real habit or a reflection of manners; it has to be taken simply as a religious, and therefore ceremonious tribute rendered by imperfection to perfection.’

The Courts of Love reflected the confluence of Manichaean-influenced Cathar doctrines and Andulusian Sufism, inclined towards and Manichaeism. The concept of Ohdri love, brought to Andulusian Spain from Arabia in the tenth century, entered the Languedoc through the Pyrenees to become Courtly love poetry. It has been ascertained that members of the prestigious Arab tribe of the Banu Ohdri died of love in accordance with the words of the Koran, “He who loves, who abstains from all that is forbidden, who holds his love secret, and dies of love, becomes a martyr.”

Queribus Castle

A historic document dating from 1241 a.d., indicates that the last of the Cathar Parfaits, fleeing the Inquisition, were resident in Queribus Castle, under the protection of Chaubert de Barbaira, its final Count. The castle fell in 1256 to the Inquisition.

It is very probable that its vaulted Gothic hall appears today as it did then. The principal elements, the four walls, the central pillar and the provisions of the annex are original. Only the arches were reconstructed in the 14th century.

Fernand Neil ascertained that the great hall had a zodiac system com- parable to that of Montsegur except that no direct observation of the rising sun was possible here. Because the Eastern wall was the only one exposed to attacks, there was no question of boring openings for the rays of the sun to shine through.

Consequently, if the zodiac of Queribus was used to mark the solstices, it was accomplished with a symbolic system. The central pillar rising from the interior of the great hall represented the sun.

The only possible direct observation was attained by standing at the West wall, s-t on the zodiac plan, of the annex. From here, one saw the sun rising at the winter solstice in alignment with the base of the small window that pierces the Eastern frontage.

Before disappearing, the sun’s ray hits the pillar tangentially. Referring to the zodiac plan of Queribus, you will see that the ray follows way DC.

It is not certain that Cathars utilized the solar symbolism of the Gothic hall, but that would be in keeping with their Manichaean beliefs.

Dominating a mountaintop, the castle of Queribus commands a spectacular unbroken 360 degree view. The entire eastern Pyrenees extends behind it, in front, the mountains of Andorra visible.

In the summer of 1255 a.d., twelve years after the fall of Montsegur, Pierre d’Auteuil, the Senechal of Carcassonne, attacked Queribus. The attack was a total failure as Queribus was impregnable. The Senechal continued the siege through the autumn of that year. During the siege, Chaubert was supplied by the Catalan and Aragonese.

At this time, Olivier de Termes, son of a famous hero, returned to the Languedoc. He had fought for a long time under the command of Raymond VII and Raymond Trencavel before committing to Catholicism and accompanying Louis IX to the Holy Land. Probably a childhood friend of Chaubert de Barbaira, he persuaded Chaubert on his return from Jerusalem, to exchange freedom and life for surrendering Queribus, “that no one took by storm, only by wind”.

By the winter of 1255-56 a.d., the Cathars who had taken refuge in Queribus, probably fled to the inaccessible castle of Usson or the Spouglas..

Several architectural anomalies appear in the zodiac plan of Queribus. All of these anomalies could have been avoided, so it is not a question of a lack of concern, errors or involuntary faults. They are too rough to be accounted for as the incompetence or the negligence of the master builder. He most certainly wanted to include these anomalies and proceeded with its plan in full knowledge of the facts. There are several explanations for the strange construction of the Gothic hall:

A line on the base of the pendant H and tangent with the pillar, indi- cates exact North-South. Another line, at the base of F, also tangent with the pillar, marks the East-West direction exactly.

If an observer stood under arch C tangent to the pillar, he could follow the direction of the rising sun of the winter solstice. The same would be true at the summer solstice, if the observer stood under arch B.

All of these directions are tangent with the pillar, which explains the architectural anomalies that turn up in the monument.

Other solar risings are indicated by the following signs: gp= January 21 (Aquarius) and November 22 (Sagittarius) gr=April 20 (Taurus) and October 23 (Scorpio) em= May 21 (Gemini) and July 22 (Leo) eo= April 20 (Taurus) and August 23 (Virgo

All directions remarkably find their origin in the points following c, g, f, e, b, (f ' delineates the direction of the equinoxes) and if these points descend as c, g, f, e, b, then ascend as b, e, f, g, c, a chronological order appears.

Sainte Juliane

Just outside the limits of Roquecourbe, a village high in the mountains of Lacaune, is the barren hill of Sainte-Juliane. Roquecourbe is best known for its 14th century 'House of the Deer,' deriving its name from its wooden frieze depicting ‘the chase of the deer’, a Bogomil theme. This remote village had a long connection with the Cathar nobility of Carcassonne, Toulouse and Beziers.

Because of Sainte-Juliane, Roquecourbe was also known as The Sacred Town. The hill is the site of a ruined church built of stones engraved with Greek khi symbols and the remains of several crude dwellings at its base. It is entirely possible that the khi stones are of Cathar origin, but whether they were utilized to show the town’s true allegiance or were co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church is not known.

A few yards from its ruined church tower, calcified bits of charred bones are scattered with the vestiges of a stake. They are all that remain to testify to the terrible act against the Cathars committed here in 1277 a.d.

Under the apse of the church, two marble sarcophagi were discovered in 1952 by Elisabeth Poulain with the cooperation of M. and Mme. Samuel Marc-Manoels. These are markedly more refined than the modestly hewn coffins scattered before the church.

One of the sarcophagi beds was covered with lime, retaining the imprint of a woman lying on her back, enveloped in a shroud. Records of a neck tumor explain the hasty burial in quicklime of Beatrice de Beziers, born into the noble Cathar family of Trencavel and the third wife of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, a major player in the struggle between France and the Languedoc. She died prior to the martyrdom of the Cathars of nearby Roquecorbe and Burlatz, who perished in flames set by Crusaders.

Buried with her was a sandstone sheep’s head and two palm fronds, affirming the importance of the deceased. The sculpture, considered an exceptional medieval archeological discovery, is in the Goya Museum of Castres.

When the marriage of Beatrice and Raymond was annulled, Beatrice, a devout Cathar, moved to the manor house of her sister-in-law, Adelaiz, Countess of Burlatz, sister of Raymond VI and married to Roger II of Beziers. The manor still exists on the banks of the Orb River, close to Sainte Juliane.

Adelaiz was a member of a substantial network of noble Cathar women in the Languedoc who took vows to become Parfaits. They offered their manors and castles as refuges from the persecutions, as well as places where itinerant Parfaits could preach to lay Believers. The latter was in lieu of churches or chapels, which were proscribed by the faith. The most historically famous of these refuges was Montsegur, administered by the Parfait noblewoman, Esclarmonde, sister of Raymond- Roger, Count of Foix.

The remarkable role of women in the egalitarian Cathar movement was enhanced by the Languedocian system of partible inheritance. Receiving an equal share of a parental legacy gave these women a margin of independence, not found elsewhere in Medieval Europe. Those who were of the Cathar faith also took solace in the knowledge that the misogynic organization of the world as they knew it, was the work of the Evil One, to be endured but not endorsed.

Toulouse

At the turn of the 13th century, the self-governing city of Toulouse was a cosmopolitan center for Cathar, Catholic and Jew. Its culture of tolerance was so exceptional, that Pope Innocent III denounced the city as a morass of moral and spiritual degeneracy. The fate of prosperous Toulouse revolved around the complex personalities of Counts Raymond VI and VII.

In 1199, Innocent III sent a Cistercian mission to reform the Languedocian Church and deter the spread of Catharism. Although Raymond VI pledged to oust the Cathars, in actuality he allowed a series of debates between the Catholic clergy and Parfaits to take place.

Preaching missions reinforced in 1206 by the Spanish bishop Diego de Osma and Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Dominicans, failed to diminish the strength and vitality of Catharism in Oc. The papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, finally excommunicated Raymond VI for stealing Church property, giving public office to Jews and supporting the Cathars. An attempted reconciliation in 1208 between Raymond VI and Peter ended with the murder of Peter, and Pope Innocent accusing Raymond VI of heresy and complicity in the murder.

The pope appealed for an immediate crusade against the Cathars, offering the same indulgences granted to earlier crusaders, as well as the opportunity to seize the land of those deemed ‘heretics’. At the same time, Raymond VI was forced to undergo a public penance at St.Gilles. He swore his undying allegiance to the pope and his legates and then flogged by Milo, the papal legate, at the foot of the cathedral altar.

To avert an attack on Toulouse, Raymond VI joined the Crusaders until the fall of Carcassonne in August 1209. Raymond VI was excommunicated again for failure to turn suspected heretics over to the papal legates for interrogation. This led also to the excommunication of the civic government of Toulouse and its placement under an interdict, during which, no Catholic service, not even burial of the dead could be legitimately performed. In response, Raymond VI and his counsels traveled to Rome, pleading directly with the pope. The interdict was lifted in 1210 a.d., but the count was not restored to the state of grace he enjoyed following the scourging at St.Gilles.

A special conclave convened at St. Gilles for Raymond VI to plead his defense in the murder of Peter of Castelnau. Arnold-Amaury, one of the Crusade’s leaders, accused Raymond VI of perjury. As such, the assembled bishops and abbots would not allow him to speak. They voted to extend the excommunication decree of 1209 a.d., indefinitely.

After a furious interchange, during which Raymond VI was unable to clear his name of repeated charges of heresy, he expelled the Bishop of Toulouse. Montfort then laid siege to the city. By 1212 a.d., it and the surrounding county was encircled, leaving only the castle of Montauban to Raymond VI. This conquest now directly threatened the vassals of Pedro II of Aragon, who pleaded successfully with Innocent III that the heresy of Raymond and other Southern nobles had not yet been proven. The Pope then tried to stop the warfare in the Languedoc and redirect it towards the original focus, the infidels. But de Montfort defeated the combined forces of Aragon and Toulouse in The Battle of Murat, near Toulouse, in 1213 a.d. Raymond VI and his son, Raymond VII fled to England and the protection of their kinsman, King John.

At the Fourth Lateran Council held in Rome in 1215 a.d., Raymond VI was again accused of protecting heretics. His title and lands including Toulouse, were ceded to de Montfort in exchange for a large pension from de Montfort. Scattered possessions in Provence went to Raymond VII. Innocent III died in the summer of 1216 a.d., leaving the two Raymonds to recover their lands.

Returning to Toulouse in triumph, the two Raymonds were able to repel the first onslaughts of de Montfort, so that two and a half years after the papal decree, de Montfort was still not in possession of Toulouse. In 1217 a.d., de Montfort laid fierce siege to the city but was killed by a stone catapulted during a counterattack.

With King Louis of France, the new Pope, Honorius III organized a punitive crusade in 1219 a.d., which initially could not crush the nobles of the Languedoc. It took several royal crusades lasting until 1241 a.d., to succumb Toulouse and Raymond VII and unleash the wrath of the Dominican Inquisition.

Chapter 17

The Agotes/Cagots

The Valle de Ansó on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees once held a sizeable population of outcasts known as Agotes, possible descendants of thirteenth century Cathar refugees who fled genocide in France.

Legend suggests that two outcroppings on a cliff guarding the narrow road leading to this secluded medieval village, represent wandering Parfaits.

The Agotes merged into the general population in the eighteenth century, leaving only symbols hewn in stone above the doors of Ansó to testify to their prior existence.

A Cathar connection is apparent in the double bear symbol, also seen on the crest of the Sabarthez in Southern France, once a Cathar stronghold. The bears, which guard castles and churches throughout Oc, represent opposite poles of the Axis Mundi, a symbol parallel to that of the Holy Lance of the Knights Templar.

After the great suppression of the Albigensians, survivors were forcibly converted. Church records dating to 1288 a.d., dictated that the Cathars of Southern France, Catalonia and Aragon should be persecuted down to the last man, woman and child. This conversion was simplified by the fact that the last Cathars of the mid-1300’s did not follow the radical dualism of their ancestors, but a mitigated faith in one god, learned from Sclavini Paterini in Lombardy.

For many generations they and their descendants were compelled to wear foot-long yellow crosses sewn on the back and front of their clothes. In this way, their connection with the heresy was perpetuated. Their attire was completed by a Phrygian cap to cover their long hair and feet were kept bare. Only in the late 18th century were the apartheid laws against them repealed in Spain and France.

Called Crestia at first, the Cagots/Agotes were also found in great number throughout Gascogne, Bearn, Lower Brittany, the Basque country and the high Languedoc of France. In the language of Oc, Crestia takes on several meanings: Christian, leprous and cretin. Leprosy here is symbolic of mortal sin; the cretinism symbolic of a state of infantile spirituality. Crestia also could mean ‘crest’, and taken one step further, mean the ‘crest of the cock’, which is red, a fire symbol. The fire sign can be identified with the red Phrygian cap worn by Persian Mages in Christian paintings up until the 11th century. The cock, emblem of Mercury, can be found on the ancient crest of Toulouse, once a center of Cathar activity. Later, pariahs might have been identified by a red duck or goose foot or an oar insignia on their clothing. This was also the esoteric symbol of ancient Tartessos , the current Tarascon at the head of the Sabarthez, Ariege; Tarragona, Spain; Tarascon on the Rhone and of the Phonecians.

It is possible that some Cathars fled into and across the Pyrenees, living in caves before descending into remote Aragonese and high Languedoc villages. Under the harsh living conditions of this period, they might have given birth to children who were malformed or cretins. An official XVII century land register in Semeac, France lists land parcels of Cagots as ‘The Camp of Cretins’. Agotes in France and Spain were forced to dwell apart in great poverty, assuming the professions of carpenters, masons and gravediggers if men, and that of seamstresses, if women. Civil employment, farming and the right to trade or own cattle were forbidden. As untouchables, they lived in special streets or quarters of their own, with segregated drinking fountains. It was considered no more of a crime to kill an Agote than to destroy vermin, a forerunner of contemporary ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Because it was widely believed that like lepers, Agotes contaminated stones touched by their feet, chapels were segregated. Forced to enter a church by a separate door, they dunked their hands in a special water basin, and received the host on a stick. Common folk believed that their excellent carpentry skills were signs that their ancestors built the cross of Christ’s crucifixion.

A curious image is engraved above the special Agote door of the church of Novailles. Two birds holding a chain between them in their beaks frame an image of St. Loup, his face rubbed out by centuries of kerchiefs passed across the carving in hopes of mystical cures. A similar image of two birds is graven over an ancient font in the former Cathar town of Cordes.

Many stories describing the origins of the Cagots/Agotes from the Ostrogoths, the Cathars, the Saracens, have one thing in common, descent from enemies of the Catholic Church. In time, the terms Cagot or Agote came to describe lepers, Jews, Protestants, colonial slaves and criminals in the galleys.

In the Basses-Pyrenees, the Agotes of Rohouilhes finally rebelled against inhuman treatment by inhabitants of the neighboring town of Lourdes, killing many. The Toulouse parliament recognized the depths of oppression endured and executed only leaders. Others were punished by being allowed to enter Lourdes only by a gate called Capdetpourtet; walk only under rain gutters; never to sit, eat or drink in the town. A failure to observe any of these rules resulted in two strips of flesh, weighing no more than two ounces each, be cut from each side of an Agote’s spine. These punishments might very well have been leveled against Agote ancestors of Bernadette Soubrious, who as a devout Catholic, received visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. True to Agote background, her desperately poor family lived in the basement of a former prison.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Agotes of Navarre finally complained to the Pope of their exclusion from the fellowship of men because their ancestors had aided Raymond of Toulouse against the Holy See. The Pope issued a Bull on May 13, 1515 ordering them to be admitted to the same privileges as other men. The secular powers and the priests opposed the Bull on spurious grounds leaving the Agotes in a worse position than before. An Agote attempt to obtain laws in their favor from the Emperor, Charles V, resulted in their tools being taken away from them by local authorities and death by starvation for others.

Though they were not allowed to freely emigrate, in a two-month period in 1695 a.d., the Spanish government searched out and expelled all Agote. The Alcaldes, Spanish police, were aided by villagers who flogged Agotes out of their hamlets. At the French borders of the Pyrenees, the Agotes were not permitted to cross, with the result that many died in the mountains of starvation or as prey to wild animals.

The law could not prevail against brute custom. It took the first for the Agotes/Cagots to finally receive some protection, finally merging into the general population.

Chapter 18

The Knights Templar

The Templar story began in 1074 a.d., when Pope Gregory VII issued the call for a Crusade, claiming that a “pagan race" had overcome Christians in the Holy Land. He called upon the "Faithful” to aid the Christian Empire with powerful rhetoric. According to Guillaume de Tyre, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118 a.d, by Hugues de Payan a noble vassal of the Count of Champagne. Unsolicited, de Payan presented himself with eight comrades at the palace of Baudouin I, King of Jerusalem, whose elder brother, Godfroi de Bouillon, had captured the Holy City nineteen years earlier. Baudouin seems to have received them cordially, as did the Patriarch of Jerusalem, religious leader of the new kingdom and special papal emissary.

The Templar lived under the religious rule created by St. Augustine, and had guidance from the canons of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The declared objective of the Templar was, "as far as their strength permitted, keep the roads and highways safe.” With this vow they undertook the protection of pilgrims on the dangerous roads between Jaffa, where they landed on the coast of Palestine, and Jerusalem. Apparently so worthy was this objective, that Baudouin vacated an entire wing of the royal palace and placed it at the knights' disposal. Despite their declared oath of poverty, the knights moved temporarily into this lavish accommodation.

The order's official name, Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, derives from their next place of residence, quarters built on the foundations of the ancient temple of Solomon, then the site of the el-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

The Templar enlarged the el-Aqsa Mosque to the west, building a refectory with three long halls. In addition, they built partitions to divide up the mosque's prayer hall into cells. They used vaults supporting Temple Mount structures as stables, described by John of Wurtzburg (1160-1170 a.d.): "When you descend to the main street, there is a great gate through which one may enter the great courtyard of the Temple. On the right side, toward the south, is the palace which they say that Solomon built. Within it are stables, so huge that they can hold more than two thousand horses or 1,500 camels, and near this palace the Templar knights have many great houses and there are also the foundations of a great new church which is not yet finished. This order has enormous property and endless revenues in this region and in other places. This allows them to give alms to the poor, though not as a tithe, as the Hospitallers do. The order also has many knights for the defense of the land of the Christians."

The Order of the Knights Templar was given early support by Saint Bernard. In 1128 a.d., Bernard of Clairvaux was just twenty-eight years old when the Council of Troyes asked him to create a Rule for the Templar. He did more than that, becoming the most vocal champion of these warrior-monks, urging that they be supported with gifts of land and money and exhorting men of good family to cast off their sinful lives and take up the sword and the cross as Templar Knights.

In a few years, the order was established in almost every kingdom of Latin Christendom. Each establishment was richly endowed with lands by kings and princes and gifts from grateful pilgrims. Spiritual privileges were granted by the Popes. As defenders of the Church, the Templar were exempted from payment of tithes, gradually becoming free from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops, vowing spiritual allegiance to the Pope alone. The result was that scarce twenty-five years after its foundation, the order was in open feud with bishops and clergy. But protected by the Pope and endowed with great wealth, the position of the Templar was secure so long as the crusading spirit lasted in Europe.

After the Crusades, the knights returned to their chapters throughout Europe and became known as moneylenders to monarchs. In the process many historians believe they invented the Banking System.

The Templar had in their possession alleged relics, including the Crown of Thorns, supposedly taken from the head of Christ. They also had the body of the martyred Saint Euphemia of Chalcedon, thought to have divine healing power and were said to have brought the Shroud of Turin that wrapped Christ in his tomb, back from Palestine. Their most treasured relic was the Holy Grail, the cup supposedly used by Jesus at the Last Supper, which they were said to have discovered buried beneath the old Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

The truths will probably always remain in mystery, as all Templar affairs were conducted in secret. Any member of the Order who revealed the proceedings of Templar meetings was punished by expulsion. They were forbidden to keep copies of the Templar statues and the Rule of the Order, in case they fall into the wrong hands. Many of their enemies believed the Templar were guarding sinister secrets. The secret meetings and rituals of the knights would add to their downfall.

The last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, who entered the order in 1265 a.d., fought in Syria, and after 1291 a.d., based at Cyprus. He was elected Grand Master of the Templar about 1298. Summoned to France in 1306 or 1307 a.d., by Pope Clement V to discuss a new crusade, Molay asked the pope to investigate certain spurious accusations of blasphemy and sodomy that had recently been made against his order.

King Philip the Fair was the perpetrator of the accusations. Philip desperately needed funds to support his war against England's Edward I and made his move against the Knights Templar. The Grand Master ranked as a prince of the blood; he commanded an army, administered vast land holdings, was elected like the emperor and had absolute authority. The French treasury, located in the Order’s Temple in Paris, was outside the King's control.

The Templar were the trustees, proxies, and administrators of an account that was the King's in name only. They paid funds in and out and manipulated the interest; they acted like a great private bank but enjoyed all the privileges and exemptions of a state institution. And the King's treasurer was a Templar.

Philip crafted an audacious plan to take the Templar treasure. Only one crime allowed a king to confiscate property, heresy. On October 13th, all Templar in France were arrested by order of the Pope, thus disbanding his own personal army. He requested all Christian rulers to follow Phillip’s lead. On October 13, 1307, all Templar in France, including Molay, were arrested and interrogated by command of Philip IV, intent on crushing the order and seizing its wealth. On October 24, 1307, de Molay, probably under torture, confessed that some of the charges brought against the order were true, but he rejected a charge of sodomy. He wrote to Templar throughout France, enjoining confession; but when the Pope sent his own delegates to conduct the inquiry, de Molay and many of his knights retracted their statements, saying they had been extracted by torture.

In 1309 a.d., and again in 1310 a.d., de Molay appealed for papal judgement. But Pope Clement suppressed the order. On March 18 or 19, 1314 a.d., a commission of three cardinals condemned de Molay and the other accused Templar to perpetual imprisonment. Upon hearing this, de Molay again retracted his confession. He was burned as a relapsed heretic on the same day.

Supposedly, de Molay had time for a curse, calling Pope Clement and King Philip to join him within the year. Clement died the next month and Philip IV, seven months later.

Over the next few years, the order was broken up in all countries. Philip was successful in stripping the Templar of their power and wealth and urged all fellow Christian leaders to do the same thing. But there is a legend that two days before Philip issued the arrest warrant, an ox-drawn hay wagon left an enclave of the Temple in Paris for an unknown destination. They say that hidden in the wagon was a group of knights led by one Aumont. These knights supposedly escaped, took refuge in Scotland, and joined a Masonic lodge in Kilwinning. According to the legend, they became part of the Society of Freemasons, which served as guardian of the secrets of the Temple of Solomon.

Chapter 19

Journey of the Grail

The story of the Grail is complex, told and retold in variations dependent upon national, spiritual or religious viewpoints.

One version suggests that the Grail was the simple stone cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. That cup was supposedly carved from soft stone, its shape resembling an orange cut in half.

The first centuries after the death of Jesus, the Grail was kept in Rome. In the third century, Pope Sixte II gave the cup to St. Laurent, a native of Huesca, Aragon. Audebert, Bishop of Huesca, brought the famous cup to the Monastery of St. Juan de la Peña in 713 a.d., where it rested in secrecy until 1134 a.d.

Because of the danger of Almoravide attacks on the monastery, Anfo the Battler, King of Aragon, sent it to the Languedoc on the northern side of the Pyrenees. There it was received by Cathars, allies of the Aragonese Knights Templar who kept it hidden in the castle-temple of Montsegur until 1244 a.d.

At the time of the siege of Montsegur, four Parfaits escaped with the Grail under cover of darkness, having been lowered by ropes down a sheer cliff. The Grail was first hidden in a deep forest, known as The Refuge of the Grail near Montreal-des-Sos, a castle then owned by the king of Aragon. The castle is said to have been the next resting place for the cup. By way of Castejon de Sos and Sos del Rey, the Grail was returned to St. Juan de la Peña, and then ultimately hidden in the “forgotten” Cave of Montesinos.

Grail Castles in The Languedoc and Aragon

After the 13th century Albigensian Crusade, Pope Benoit XII demanded that the Grail be sent to Valencia. As Inquisitor of Mirepoix and Pamiers, Benoit presided over the interrogations of many Cathars. This would have meant that he was extremely well informed. The King of Aragon, Don Martin the Humane, also displaying considerable knowledge, commissioned a copy and sent it to the Cathedral of Valencia. That copy was accidently broken in 1744 a.d., so what rests today in the Cathedral is a copy of a copy. The original was spirited away to the Cave of Montesinos, but is now lost to time.

Another even more intriguing version, albeit more speculative, connects the Grail to the Cathars via a Manichaean myth. Here the Grail is a green meteorite, the emerald that preceded Lucifer in his fall from Heaven. Meteorites are rich in iron, burning dramatic green trails as they plunge to earth. Lucifer, Door of Light, is associated with the color green and viewed by the Manicheaens as a luminous stream of fire trailing the celestial stone.

Such a stone was tangible proof of the celestial origins of Mani’s revelations. The ball of fire that transforms into stone as it falls to earth, parallels the Manicheaen belief that sparks of spiritual light are imprisoned in the dense material body as a result of the progressive fall of Spirit.

The celestial stone of the Manicheaens could very well be the same as the Emerald Tablet of the Visigoths who ruled the Occataine, Cataluyna and Aragon until their conquest by the Saracens in the 8th century.

In Parzival, its author, Wolfram von Eschenbach, speaks of a stone he refers to as lapsit exillisus, “the stone that came down from the stars”. The origins of the Grail as related to von Eschenbach by Guilhem of Tudele, is that after the fall of the Visigoth kingdom, this magnetic green stone was fashioned into a half-orange shaped cup and hidden in St. Juan de la Pena. The balance of the story is the same as the earlier version, with an additional, compelling reason for the Grail to be hidden by Cathars.

Yet another version has the waterlogged mine of Rancié in the hamlet of Sem, close to Montréal-des-Sos and The Refuge of the Grail forest, as the final resting place of the Cathar treasure.

We can look also to the speculations of Michael Bradley. In his intriguing book, Grail Across The Atlantic, Bradley traces the trail of the Grail after the fall of Montsegur, first to the Templar haven of Rosslyn, Scotland, and then to an alleged castle/fort in pre-Colombian Nova Scotia. Or according to author Christopher Knight, it never made the Atlantic Ocean journey, but remains in Rosslyn.

Mention of the Holy Grail first appeared in Western literature around 1200 A.D., in the Arthurian epic set in the 5th century by troubadour, Chretien de Troyes. Here, as in other Provencal troubadour romances, graal, appears to be an invented word with several meanings. It seems to be a composite of Latin gradual, a prayer book; Provencal French grazaal and Catalan gresal, a bowl or a chalice; and the Arabic al go’ral, meaning ‘something inscribed upon’. The word, used in troubadour romances from 1190 to 1220 a.d., was a pun meant to disguise a heresy from the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church.

In pronunciation, San Graal approximates sang real, blood royal in modern French. The Grail becomes a special lineage based on ‘holy blood’ that dates back at least to the House of David, and as such, was not an inanimate object. Reference to a ‘cup’ was made because the lineage was the living vessel in which the holy blood was held.

The Bavarian troubadour, Wolfram von Eschenbach, boldly states in Parzival, that men and women issued from the Holy Grail to become community leaders

All troubadours agreed the true Grail lineage derived from Joseph of Arimathaea and the Knights of the Round Table: Gawain, Percival (Parzival) and Galahad.

In line with this thinking, the Holy Grail that Joseph of Armathaea is said to have brought with him to Glastonbury in England was not an object, but extraordinary people, possibly Mary Magdalene and her child. Her descendents are said to have married into Romano-Celtic royalty and nobility

In their romances, the Provencal troubadours were concerned mainly with the successors to King Arthur, because after the Battle of Camlann and the wounding of Arthur in the 5th century, the Grail lineage took refuge in France from England. If Percival brought the sang real into France, then it is probably why he is assigned such a prominent position in the Grail romances.

Another Grail theory is advanced by Ian Wilson in his book, The Shroud of Turin. The Shroud, a 17-foot length of ancient linen, bears the negative transference of frontal and rear images of a crucified man, and possibly was the burial wrapping bought by Joseph of Arimathaea for Jesus Christ.

Wilson hypothesized that “In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb, the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant, the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the f lash, while its image and that of the cloth become indelibly fused onto the cloth preserving a literal ‘snapshot of the Resurrection." Recent DNA findings suggest that the likeness of Jesus was embedded in the Shroud.

In the year of the crucifixion, a disciple of Jesus called Adda traveled to Edessa (now Urfa, eastern Turkey) bearing a cloth miraculously imprinted with the likeness of Jesus for its ruler, Abgar V. Adda converted not only King Abgar but also Jewish merchants of Edessa who specialized in silk trade. Their Judeo-Christian sects included the Mughtsilah, into which, both Mani, founder of Manichaeism and his father were baptized.

A fascinating thread appears between the early Manichaeans of Edessa and the neo-Manichaean Cathars of the 13th century in their proximity to the mysterious Shroud.

The Shroud may have been hidden in the walls surrounding Edessa for safekeeping from periodic floods and enemy raids from the 3rd to the 6th century. It reappears in 525 a.d., when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian orders reconstruction of Edessa and its walls after a flood had destroyed much of its finer buildings. In 943 a.d., the Shroud is ransomed from the Moslem rulers of Edessa by the Byzantine Emperor Romanus for 12,000 pieces of silver and the release of 200 Moslem prisoners. It is regarded as a powerful source of divine protection.

The image of a dove bearing a Star of David, which appears on an old drawing of the Sabarthez crest could be an indication that the Shroud was brought to the Languedoc, or perhaps is a pointer to the ancient Judaeo-Merovingian kingdom that once existed in the same region.

During the Fourth Crusade of 1204 a.d., Knights Templar sacked Byzantine Constantinople. In the prevailing chaos, the Shroud disappeared. A theory suggested by Ian Wilson is that it was removed by Bogomil who lived in the Constantinople of that time, and who would have considered the Shroud to be other than a purely orthodox religious relic. They in turn, might have spirited the Shroud to the Languedoc via the Templar to be used as a shield to temper the genocidal advances of the Roman Church.

Jack Markwardt speculates that it may have been no coincidence that the Shroud disappeared and Esclarmonde de Foix was ordained as a Parfait in 1204 a.d., sponsoring the refortification of Montsegur. The explanation is that the Shroud was taken to Montsegur where its fabled powers could be invoked to save the Cathars.

An interesting anecdote from The History of St. Louis written less than 50 years after the event, tells of Amaury de Montfort, son of the infamous Simon, declining a Cathar invitation to view the body of Christ, “which had become f lesh and blood in the hands of the priest.” In view of the fact that the Cathars did not accept the sacraments nor did they lie, it would appear that they were inviting a leader of the Albigensian Crusade to view a cloth, which, when displayed by one of their Parfaits, manifested a mysterious image of Christ.

During the siege of Montsegur, the Cathars asked for a fifteen-day truce, which may have been used in a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to invoke the legendary powers of the Shroud during the closing weeks of the season of its origin, Easter. On March 16th, four Cathars descended the sheer rock wall of Montsegur’s western side, presumably with the Grail treasure.

From 1244-1354, the Shroud remained hidden, quite possibly concealed in the Knights Templar castle of Montreal-des-Sos. The arrival of the Black Death in the Languedoc in the 1340’s probably killed those hiding the relic, with their personal possessions possibly confiscated by a bailiff of Geoffrey de Charny. It may not have been coincidence that the Shroud surfaced in the 1350’s near Troyes, the very same region in France where the Grail stories of Christian de Troyes had the widest circulation.

The popular idea is that the Grail was a chalice for the Last Supper, but it also might have been a container for the Shroud, folded so that it showed only a disembodied head. Or the Shroud itself could be looked upon as the Grail or container of the body and blood of Jesus.

In one of the Grail romances, the Templar are identified as its guardians, and were widely rumored when they returned from the Holy Land, to be worshipping an image featuring the head of a bearded man.

In Parzival, the Grail is guarded by Templar in the castle of Munsalvaesche, which has been identified with the Cathar stronghold of Montsegur. In line with this theory, as mentioned before, the treasure of Montsegur, the Grail which was spirited away at its downfall in 1244, might well have been the mysterious Shroud.

Another fascinating theory laid out by Johannes and Peter Fiebag, the Grail is equated to the ‘manna machine’ that fed the Israelites during their forty-year wandering in the desert. The machine, called the Othiq Yomin in the Zohar, one of the books of the Kaballah, cultivated and processed an algae culture maintained by a supply of dew or water and radiation from a nuclear-powered light source.

In 1978, George Sassoon, an English engineer, retranslated the Zohar description so that he and Rodney Dale, another engineer, were able to construct a complex machine that distilled dew into a chlorella sludge, which then had its starch content partially hydrolyzed into malt-like substances with the honey-wafer taste of manna, and finally stored as dried matter in two large collection chambers.

This machine was regarded by the Israelites as a deity or semi-deity, with both male and female parts. It was kept in the Ark of the Covenant to protect it from damaging desert conditions. During the time of David and Solomon, the Ark was located in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

In 1980, the Fiebags came to the conclusion that the machine was the Grail, rediscovered and transported to Europe by the Knights Templar. This line of thinking is supported by two factors, the principal function of the Grail and its origin. In the Zohar is this information about the foodstuff produced by the Othiq Yomin or Ancient of Days? It reads: And from that dew they grind the manna of the just ones for the world to come. At that time the Ancient of Days fed them from that place.”; “See, I will make bread from Heaven to rain upon ye.”; “God gave thee of the dew of heaven.”

In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach says exactly the same thing about the Grail: “...a hundred squires were summoned, who respectfully took bread on white linen from the Grail...They said to me, and I say it to you, that it came forth from the Grail, whenever one of them put out his hand to it...for the Grail was the fruit of the blessed ones, such a fullness of earthly sweetness, that it was like almost everything that might come from the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Chretian de Troyes description is similar, though influenced by Christianity, as he speaks of the bread taken from the Grail as a ‘host’. Both the Zohar and Parzival attest to the extraterrestrial origin of the Grail/ Manna Machine.

Examining the origin of the Parzival tradition, the Medieval writers, Robert de Boron and Chretien de Troyes stated that they obtained their information from ‘a great book’. Wolfram von Eschenbach is more explicit. Either the French knight, Hugues de Payens or more possibly, Guilhem de Tudele, author of Chanson de la Croisade, found the Arabic book, Felek Thani in Toledo, Spain about 1100 a.d., and from it, translated the original grail tradition of Hiram Abiff, the architect of the Temple of Solomon.

Before he was murdered, the half-Jewish, half-Phoenician Hiram was able to send a report of the Othiq Yomin for which the Temple was built to house to his lord, the Phoenician king. In this way, it passed into the later Moslem world, and after the conquest of Spain, arrived in Toledo.

In von Eschenbach’s version of the legend, the Grail is guarded by a “grail knighthood”, referred to as Templeisen. This name is reminiscent of the monastic knightly Order of the Templar, officially founded in 1128 a.d.

In 1119 a.d., Hugues de Payens and seven friends went to Palestine. Calling themselves ‘The Poor Knights of Solomon’s Temple’, they took up quarters directly on the ruins of the temple built by Hiram Abiff. During their eight-year stay, they carried out excavations at the Temple area and other sites in Palestine and did not engage in any battles.

Something decisive happened. Two knights returned to France and reported to Bernard of Clairvaux, head of the Cistercian Order. A previous connection had been made with the Cistercians by Hugues de Payens and Hugues de Campagne, resulting in a long-term study of old Hebrew texts by the monks with the help of Jewish rabbis. Bernard contacted the Pope, the King of France and the remaining Templar, who immediately returned to France. Upon their arrival, the Order of the Templar was officially founded.

On that occasion, Bernard wrote in the preamble of their Rules of the Order, “With God’s help, the great work has been accomplished.”

According to the Fiebags, there is little doubt that the Templar did find the Holy Grail in Jerusalem and brought it back to France, where it was venerated as a holy object, possibly as Baphomet, which resembled the Zohar’s description of the Manna Machine.

During the 200-year history of the Templar, only the inner circle of the Order had access to the Grail; they were the true “Guardians of the Grail”. Among the lower ranks, only rumors of an idol were circulated.

And what happened to the Manna Machine? According to a sworn statement of the Templar, Jean de Chalon, on October 12,1307, the night before the countrywide arrests of the Knight Templar, a convoy of wagons loaded with heavy wooden chests left the Temple in Paris, heading for the coast and safety. The Machine might have been included in the convoy.

So, given these varied ways to look at the Grail and its accompanying legends, what the true events were, we can only surmise.

Montréal-des-Sos

What little remains of Montréal-des-Sos, two solitary towers and an initiation cave, belies its historical and spiritual significance. The site had been continuously occupied over the centuries by Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, the Counts of Foix, the King of Aragon, and finally, the Knights of Malta.

Montréal-des-Sos is probably one of the oldest castles in the Ariege. Initially constructed by the Roman, Crassus, it existed as a stronghold through the time of Charlemagne. Destroyed after his reign by a Saracen siege, the castle was rebuilt in 1000 a.d. by Oliba, a Visigoth count. It is possible that the tiny hamlet of Oblier below Montreal-des-Sos was named in his honor.

At the time of the crusade against the Cathars, Montreal-des-Sos was considered the most inaccessible and powerful castle in the region. Its owner, the King of Aragon, supportive of the Cathars, had fought on the side of the Count of Toulouse against Simon de Montfort. It is feasible that the three Perfects, Amiel Aicard, Hugo and Poitevin, escaped with the Grail during the siege of Montsegur in 1244, and made their way through dense forests until they reached the fortified haven of Montréal-des-Sos.

From there, the Grail might have been spirited across the Pyrenees to Aragon; hidden in a waterlogged mine in the nearby village of Sem; or perhaps secreted away in The Refuge of the Grail forest which surrounds Vic de Sos.

Another indication that the Grail was hidden in the Ariege appears on the crest of Sabarthez. Centered in a blazing sun is a cup bearing the wings of a white dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, The Paraclet. And legends say that Esclarmonde de Foix, the parfait-chatelaine of Montsegur, ascended to the heavens in the form of a white dove after her fiery death in 1244 a.d.

The hill under Montréal-des-Sos is pierced with caves. The smallest, most inaccessible cave is also the most significant. For behind a locked gate are the faint remains of a 13th century fresco based on Grail themes. The existence of the fresco suggests that the castle was connected to the Grail, and that the cave supported a Templar initiation ritual.

What appeared in the original fresco? One version proposes that there were five drops of red blood in the center, along with five crosses. Another version suggests six drops of blood. Framing the square was a red border with alternating St. Andrew and Greek crosses. To the upper right was a reddish-brown lance crowned with a golden cup. Directly above the frame of crosses was a top view of the Grail cup and/or the sun and a dagger. Lines of small black crosses were part of the background. These symbols, the holy blood, the lance, the cup are characteristic of the Grail theme.

Grail Fresco

For many years, the existence of the fresco was known only to initiates of certain secret sects. Then, in 1930, Abbot André Glory examined the fresco for Count Begouën, Director of Antiquities for the Midi. The ancient fresco left an extraordinary impression on the Abbot. He confirmed the fresco was painted in the 13th century. He also commented that the combination of a sacred fresco and fragments of stone at the base of the fresco might be remnants of an altar, its proximity to open air, strongly suggests this was a Cathar-influenced initiation site.

San Juan de La Peña

Hidden deep in the remote pine and oak forests of Mt. Pano and never discovered by Moorish invaders, the monastery of San Juan de La Peña was an important refuge for the Holy Grail.

The first record of the Spanish site’s existence was in 713, when Audebert, Bishop of Huesca, brought the Holy Grail to the grotto chapel of San Juan. The famous cup rested there under an ivory canopy until 1134, when it was sent north of the Pyrenees so as not to fall into Saracen hands.

By order of King Sancho of Navarre, a larger underground church was carved directly into the rock grotto at the base of a dramatic overhanging cliff during the second half of the tenth century. What makes the church even more powerful, is the inclusion of a natural spring. Like a counterpart, the 8th century Geghard Monastery in Armenia, both are built into rock cliffs and incorporate natural springs within their walls, very possibly utilized for their telluric properties.

San Juan de La Peña holds the remains of twenty-four Knights of the Rose-Cross of San Joan, interred in a Pantheon of Nobles. The tombs are mostly ornamented with variations on the sacred Rose-Cross.

Plan of San Juan de La Peña

1.The Dormitory, divided into four sections, has a barrel vaulted ceiling and crossed arches. At one time, it was called “The Council Room’, based upon a false council meeting there during the time of King Ramiro I.

2. The Mozarabic Church, built in the 10th century, was originally roofed in wood. The church had two naves and two rectangular apses, entered through grooved arches shaped like horseshoes. Frescos of the Crucifixion and The Martyrdom of St. Cosmo and St. Damian from the second half of the 12th century, can still be seen. At the rear of the church, a spring still gushes from a wall, though fenced off from the public. Four tombstones are embedded in the floor.

3. The Pantheon of Nobles, a series of tombs located in an inner courtyard protected by the rock.

4. The Upper Church was consecrated on December 4, 1094. Its most original feature is its barrel vault that melts into the side of the cliff, becoming, in effect, the roof. Three apses built into the rock are dedicated to St. John the Baptist, St. Clemens and St. Michael. Upon close inspection, Templar symbols can be seen scratched on the walls.

5. The Pantheon of Kings built in 1767, is the resting place of the kings of Aragon: Ramiro I, Sancho, Pedro, Pedro I and two infant princes. While the Pantheon is not architecturally in keeping with the remainder of the monastery, it does have an interesting bas-relief of a battle fought by Inigo Arista, the knight thought to have been involved in the origins of the use of the rose-cross as a Templar symbol.

6. The Cloister can be regarded as exquisite teaching tool. Inscribed on its Mozarabic entrance is a Latin motto that can be translated as “By this door, the faithful enter Heaven.” The graceful capitals of the cloister are adorned with scenes from the Book of Genesis, the childhood of Jesus, the public life of Jesus, the vision of St. Thomas and the Ascension.

7. The Chapel of San Victorian is an example of late Gothic architecture. Built in the 15th century, it is shaped like a cross with an ornate arch that opens onto the cloister.

8. The Chapel of San Voto and San Felix was built in the 17th century to honor two Mozearabic saints who, as the story goes, escaped unharmed after two stones fell on them from the vault of the cloister.

Chapter 20

The Vera Cruz of The Knights Templar

In an outlying district of Segovia, Spain, The Order of The Knights Templar built one of its most distinctive Romanesque temples in 1208. Until 1226, it was known as the Santo Sepulcro, The Holy Sepulcher, because of its similarity to The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. With the acquisition of a piece of the presumably original cross from Pope Honorius III, its name was changed to Vera Cruz, The True Cross.

At the final destruction of the Order of The Knights Templar and the burning of Grand Master Jacques de Molay, The Church of the True Cross was handed over to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Totally abandoned until the seventeenth century, it was taken over and restored by the Military Order of St. John of Malta.

Like most Templar churches, Vera Cruz was built on a polygonal ground plan, but with twelve sides instead of the usual eight, the only one remaining in Europe. The interior is a single space, circular, rather than polygonal like the exterior. It is not large as it was built exclusively for the Knights. Most interesting is the small central temple, which repeats the twelve- sided exterior ground plan.

A low vaulted ceiling covers the bottom section, accessible through four small doo rways laid out on the cardinal points of the compass. Its acoustics are formidable, and might have played an important role in ceremonies conducted above.

A twin stairway leads to an upper section with a single entrance and small windows. An exception is one larger window, through which all-night vigils could be followed from the main chapel. Central in this vaulted space is an altar on which a sacred object might have been laid. The second floor hides entrances to two tiny spaces that might have been refuges for persons in jeopardy or valuables. Certainly the Temple must have been a prized target for bandits who knew of riches inside.

The exterior, still marked by a crimson Templar cross, has its polygon plan clearly delineated by limestone buttresses. One of its most remarkable features is the head of a bearded man over one of its two doors. This is Baphomet decreed an abominable idol by the Church. Its veneration became central to the accusations brought against the Knights Templar to justify the downfall of their Order

A number of esoteric meanings have been attached to the name Baphomet. It could be a corruption of the Arabic name Abufihamet, translated as ‘The Father of Understanding’.

Another legend equates Baphomet with the severed head of St. John the Baptist, venerated by the Templar. The esoteric Atbash cipher code used by the Essene to disguise the meaning of their scriptures was applied to the name Baphoment by Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, Hugh Schonfield. The cipher code produced the name , the spiritual principle of Wisdom, originally associated with ancient Greek and Mesopotamian goddesses.

Still another theory links Baphomet to St. Bartholomew. It is possible that Cathars introduced their veneration of St. Bartholomew to the Templar through their Gospel, The Questions of St. Bartholomew. He was the only apostle who dared to approach Mary and Jesus for an explanation of the mysteries of the Annunciation and the Resurrection. ###

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Judith Mann, an intrepid traveler/photographer/writer, has spent much of her productive life investigating the sacred in Europe and South East Asia.

Five trips to Europe and Armenia led Mann to writing and publishing 'The Trail of Gnosis', a book that focuses primarily on medieval Gnostics, the Cathars, gnostic background, beliefs, symbols and sacred destinations in France, Spain, Bosnia and Armenia. Pacific Rim Press has published the revised 4th edition of 'The Trail of Gnosis' in July, 2012

Four trips to Vietnam since 2006 has led to the publication of 'Spirit Realms of Vietnam' available as two volumes, 'The Diaries' and its in-depth reference source companion, The Context', both available February, 2012.

Connect Online With Judith Mann

Further gnostic background information can be found at: http://gnosistraditions.faithweb.com

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Contact: [email protected]

Other Books By The Author

Spirit Realms of Vietnam: Volume I The Context

A 'stand-alone' guide for investigating the layered spiritual aspects of Vietnamese culture and an in-depth resource companion to 'Spirit Realms of Vietnam: The Diaries'. Includes research on Vietnamese and Cham cosmologies, symbols and funeral customs: spirit stones; wandering souls; sacred sites, mediumships, . Published by Pacific Rim Press.

Spirit Realms of Vietnam: Volume II The Diaries

In her vibrant ‘Diaries’, Judith Mann sets out to visit and unravel the mysteries of spirit stones and sacred sites of Vietnam as described nearly a century ago in the fascinating writings of Fr. Leopold Cadiere. One visit to Vietnam turns into five, filled with hazardous treks to mountain sanctums, sacred caves and wild motorcycle rides to remote shrines and back-street temples. The intrepid author’s uncanny and insight is displayed as she evokes myths and spiritual traditions foreign to our own. Original maps and a multitude of riveting photos are shared. In-depth background information is available in the companion 'Spirit Realms of Vietnam Volume I The Context. Published by Pacific Rim Press