SHADOW OF THE GRAIL Magic and Mystery at Montsegur Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stanley Published by Innervision Media Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. Multimedia Edition: January 2011 ISBN 978-0-9567241-3-7 About the Author .........................................................................6 Introduction .................................................................................7 Darkness Visible ...........................................................................8 VIDEO 1. ...................................................................................17 The Cathars ...............................................................................18 Crusade Against The Grail ........................................................23 The Grotto of Ornolac ..............................................................28 Return to Montsegur. .................................................................30 Ussat-Les-Bains, spring 1998 .....................................................32 Family Memories ........................................................................38 The Black Forest - winter 1998 ...........................................................................38 A United Europe ........................................................................44 Summer Solstice .........................................................................47 VIDEO 2. ...................................................................................49 Pagan Imperialism ......................................................................50 Chimeras ....................................................................................52 Carcassonne - summer 1998 ......................................................57 The Polaires ................................................................................60 Knightsbridge - summer 1999 ....................................................66 Parzival .......................................................................................71 Trail of the Grail ........................................................................73 Spooks ........................................................................................81 London - summer 1998 ..............................................................83 Otto’s Room ...............................................................................91 The Devil’s Lake ........................................................................93 Esclarmonde ...............................................................................96 VIDEO 3. ...................................................................................99 The Power to Heal ...................................................................100 Stones from Heaven .................................................................104 The Black Madonna ................................................................110 The Secret of the Cathars ........................................................117 Ends of the Earth .....................................................................120 The Arctic Circle - 2006 ...................................................................................120 The S.S. ....................................................................................124 Stuttgart - winter 1998 ......................................................................................124 Westphalia - winter 1998 ..........................................................126 Downfall ...................................................................................133 VIDEO 4. .................................................................................138 Aftermath .................................................................................139 The Coming of the White Lady ..............................................142 Montsegur - 2007. .............................................................................................142 Empire of Shadows ..................................................................149 The Door into Summer ...........................................................155 Postscript ..................................................................................169 Acknowledgements ...................................................................171 Resources ..................................................................................171 About the Author Richard Stanley with Scarlett Amaris Richard Stanley is an award winning film-maker, anthropologist and esoteric scholar. He has written and directed such feature films as Hardware and Dust Devil. The iconic writer-director is currently in production on Mother Of Toads, his segment in the upcoming horror anthology, The Theatre Bizarre. Introduction What follows is not a fantasy or work of speculative fiction. It is a faithful account of recent events in the south of France drawn from first hand testimony, letters and journal entries. Whenever possible I have left the original texts unchanged. The names of some of those involved have been changed to protect their privacy but otherwise what follows are the facts of the case as clearly as we can establish them. Old Occitania – the hour between the dog and the wolf Darkness Visible From the travel journals of Richard Stanley - September 1992 I first came to the remote Pyrenean settlement of Montsegur and scaled the mountain overlooking the village in the dog days of the summer of ‘92. Britain’s Channel Four Television had recently broadcast a hit show entitled ‘The Real Jurassic Park’, concerning efforts to extract dinosaur DNA from amber and were looking at a potential follow-up, provisionally entitled ‘The Real Raiders of the Lost Ark’, for a similar child-friendly early evening slot. They say the devil makes work for idle hands and when their religion department offered me a healthy advance to research the story I jumped at the chance, being shy of a few pence at the time. My companions on this ill-advised junket were a researcher and occasional writer for the ‘Fortean Times’, named Mike Dee, and my then partner, a young artist and designer named Cat Knightly. Having come to the conclusion that a material hoax rather than a supernatural treasure lay at the core of the celebrated ‘Rennes mystery’, I had no reason to believe that I might have been putting Cat in danger by bringing her with me. Our relationship had been on the skids at the time and I suppose I had been hoping that the light and space of Southern France would help get our lives back on track. We arrived in the village of Montsegur late in the day and resolved to hike up to the ruined castle on the mountaintop to watch the sun go down. We were due to make an early start the following morning, so this would be my one and only chance to take in the remains of the 12th century citadel fancifully identified by the American army colonel Howard A. Buechner as the ‘Grail Castle’. Montsegur, east gate, known by some as ‘the gate of the gods’ (photo by Richard Stanley) The fortress of Montsegur clings to a spur of rock, 1207 meters ( 3960 feet) above the hills of Plantaurel on the northern face of the Saint Barthelemy massif. Thanks largely to its inaccessible location it was among the very last of the so-called ‘Cathar’ castles to fall to the crusaders. During a ten month siege, the castle’s defenders, a core group of little more than three hundred knights and men at arms, held at bay an army of up to ten thousand battle hardened dogs of war. Despite the individual heroism (some might say fanaticism) of the defenders, the siege’s outcome was sadly inevitable. The beleaguered garrison capitulated in the spring of 1244, and after a brief ceasefire to allow the surviving heretics to celebrate the spring equinox, a date synonymous with the Cathar feast day of ‘Bema’, some two hundred and twenty five martyrs walked willingly into the fires kindled by their persecutors on the ‘camp de cremat’, the ‘field of the stake’, at the base of the mountain. This action effectively marked the end of any real political resistance to the patriarchal rule of the Holy Roman Church, and rang the death knell for the mysterious dualist faith of old Occitania. The trees crowded in around the narrow, snaking path and as we climbed higher Mike seemed to grow visibly more nervous. Perhaps it was simply his, quite reasonable, fear of the coming night which was already creeping up out of the cracks around us but, for whatever reason, by the time we came in sight of the walls of the keep Mike was feeling too uncomfortable to go any further. When he realized I had no intention of turning back he rounded on Cat. “Are you coming with me or staying with him?” “Staying with him, I guess...” She cast me an uneasy side long glance, confused by the change that had come over our companion. “Then give me the car keys.” Mike thrust out his hand and with the slightest of frowns, I did as he asked. Then, turning wordlessly, he hurried away down the mountain as swiftly as possible. We watched him go, confused and a little unnerved, wondering what it was about this place that could have had so deleterious an effect on our friend’s normal good humour. Shrugging it off we found our way to the highest point in the castle, the broad white battlement overlooking the gorge of the Lasset far below.