The Holy Grail | In Search of Holy Treasure

And in the evening he cometh with the twelve. And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them. And they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Last Supper. One of the greatest moments in the Gospels. It was during this meal, his last with the disciples, that Christ instituted a new covenant, as he shared his bread and wine. This event inspired some of the world's greatest artists, Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Salvador Dali. And for mystery and occult enthusiasts, it was when one of the most mystic objects of all first appeared, the Holy Grail, the cup used at the Last Supper. There are mentions of the Holy Grail in Celtic literature. There was no story of treasure when he came. Yes, there were stories of treasure in this area. There always had been. If you can read through the legend, all roads lead to the Holy Grail. As far as we know, there is no Holy Grail to be found yet. That is just laughable. In 2003, Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, in which he proposed a little-known but already highly controversial interpretation of the Holy Grail. The book brought the age-old search for the Holy Grail to the foreground once again. The Christian version of the Grail is a vessel used for feeding the disciples on the Last Supper and also for capturing some of Christ's blood. There are many different ideas of what the Holy Grail really is. In one school of thought, the Holy Grail is the cup that Jesus held at the Last Supper. Another idea is that it's the green stone, Satan's emerald, that he lost when he fought against Jesus. This emerald fell to earth and became a chalice. The chalice is Satan's emerald stone. And then there's the symbolic idea that the Holy Grail represents knowledge. The most intriguing and mysterious of all the interpretations is that it's a person, not a thing, and that the person is Mary Magdalene, that she and Jesus were married, and that it was suppressed, as was the truth about their young family suppressed. After the crucifixion, the faithful Joseph of Arimathea took Mary Magdalene, wife of Christ, over to the south of France, where she was protected and looked after by good and and that her children, sons of Jesus, perhaps a daughter as well, married into the Merovingian royal family, the Meroves, the mysterious Meroves, the twice-born, as he's known in the ancient myths, who became the forerunner of that great and mysterious French royal line. Nobody really knows exactly what the Holy Grail is. Some say it was the chalice that Jesus drank from in the Last Supper. Some say it was the plaitiette from. Some say it's just enlightenment, a feeling of enlightenment. And others, of course, say it's the bloodline of Christ. Nothing has been proved. Nothing has been found. Sacred cup, universal knowledge, or descendant of Jesus Christ? In which direction should I pursue my research? My first reflex is to head to the spot where the Last Supper took place, Jerusalem. The old city of Jerusalem is a walled-in area within the modern city of Jerusalem, with a population of close to 750,000. Here, the narrow streets are off-limits to all automobiles. High walls, built in the 16th century by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, surround the old city, which is divided into four quarters, Armenian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Between the time that Christ was alive and modern times, the city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times over, according to the whims of the city's conquerors. There has been much speculation as to where exactly Jesus shared his last meal with the disciples. The Gospels are rather vague about giving details. Matthew and John hardly speak of it at all. As for Mark and Luke, these Gospels only mention a large upper room furnished and prepared in a city home. Still, according to tradition, the Cynical, the room where the Last Supper was held, was a large room with an arched ceiling on the second floor of what was once the Holy Zion Church, destroyed by the Persians in 614. The Cynical buildings are now at the end of a narrow, sunny alleyway typical of the old city of Jerusalem. The large upper room can be accessed by a stairway that leads down to the street. With all of its successive destructions and reconstructions, it is impossible to know for sure if this spot is indeed the furnished upper room described by Mark and Luke. But it seems that the first Christians put a lot of effort into perpetuating the memory of its importance by continually constructing new buildings on the site. A long Christian tradition reminds us that it was here that Jesus broke bread and shared his wine, and it was here that he held a handmade cup, which became the subject of one of the most amazing quests in history, the Holy Grail. If the Holy Grail was a cup, how can we tell it apart from others? They did not have chalices in the first century, but they used cups, very simple cups, like I have examples here in my own private collection. Here, for example, we have a typical first century Jewish clay drinking cup. A Jew would have used it to drink wine on a normal opportunity, but not for Pesach, not for Passover. Why? Because clay is not kosher. So what material did they use? Only stone was kosher, because stone was by God. So the very conservative Jews used stone vessels. The Holy Grail. Exactly when did this ordinary cup become the subject of such an extraordinary quest? More than a thousand years went by before the Last Supper was mentioned in literature. To understand the essence of the Holy Grail, we need to leave the sunny streets of Jerusalem and head to the green English countryside. We'll have to put the King of the Jews aside for a moment and focus on another king, Sir Pendragon, Arthur Pendragon, otherwise known as the legendary King Arthur. The great King Arthur is one of the most ancient and persistent of British legions. Controversy rages about whether he was an historical figure or whether he was pure myth, and that places him in the same category as our famous generous outlaw Robin Hood, who lived several centuries afterwards. And King Arthur was said to have been the leader of a band of knights, Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, and all the rest, Sir Percival. And they went around rescuing young maidens from dragons or ogres or monsters of other kinds. We are probably dealing with someone who actually existed, but who became the subject of an extraordinary legendary tale. He was made king of all Great Britain. He rid the island of Anglo-Saxons. He even conquered France, which was known as Gaul back then, going as far as Rome. All of that was invented much later, but perhaps there was a real Arthur at one point in time, a nobleman who was particularly prestigious, courageous, who fought against the Anglo-Saxons, with the result that one of the oldest legends in history was built around this man. It was in one of the epic accounts of the Knights of the Round Table, written by Chrétien de Troyes in the second half of the 12th century, that the legendary King Arthur appeared on a quest for the Holy Grail. According to the story, when Arthur was still a teen, he succeeded in removing a sword from a stone, making him king of Great Britain. Once crowned, Arthur instructed his most courageous companions, the legendary Knights of the Round Table, to find the Holy Grail. Chrétien de Troyes wrote the story of the Grail. He said that he used the oldest stories, and that is likely true. There are accounts of the Grail in Celtic literature. It is described as a cauldron of abundance from Celtic mythology, which was discovered after a long sail and brought back to mortals. It could be used to plunge into, or to find renewed life, or to heal wounds. And since it never emptied, it always provided food. But I'm telling you that Chrétien de Troyes was a clerk who lived in extremely religious times, when Catholicism was highly popular, and he transformed the Grail into a Christian relic. Arthur took part in the quest for the Holy Grail. But after Chrétien de Troyes' writings were published, there was a perception that it was the Knights, particularly Percival and Gawain, who went in search of the Holy Grail. Arthur took on a secondary role, and it was the Knights of the Round Table, the Knights of his court, who took on his place. This was the quest for the Holy Grail. According to the story, only Galahad, the purest of the Knights, was able to get close to attaining the Holy Grail. The adventure of the Knights of the Round Table came to an end during the Battle of Camelot, a bloody confrontation in which King Arthur was seriously wounded by his illegitimate son, Mordred. In agony, the king was taken to the island of Avalon, where he died. As for the Holy Grail, its fate was never known, since Chrétien de Troyes died before the story could be completed, leaving the Grail lost in a historic and geographic fog. Glastonbury, a small town in Somerset, England, was an inescapable stop on King Arthur's path. It is said that this is the site of the legendary Isle of Avalon. What's more, according to ancient Celtic tradition, Glastonbury is also where the Holy Grail is hidden. The story goes that the day after Christ's crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, who had used the Grail to collect Jesus's blood, sailed from Jerusalem, taking the precious relic with him. Joseph landed in Glastonbury, where he built a small chapel. He buried the Holy Grail somewhere on the grounds. According to Celtic legend, Great Britain's most famous abbey was built on the ruins of Joseph of Arimathea's chapel. There was a discovery several hundred years ago in Glastonbury Abbey, and the inscription there, inside an oak coffin, which was 15 feet deep, twice the depth of any normal grave, it said, here lies King Arthur and his second wife, Guinevere. After this discovery, the bodies were moved and buried once more in 1278, inside the abbey. Today, two commemorative plaques serve as a reminder of this discovery. As for the Holy Grail, a short distance from the abbey ruins lies a well, known as the Callous Well. According to lore, this is where Joseph of Arimathea disposed of the Grail. However, there appear to be no indications that it was ever found here. If the Grail that I'm looking for is no longer at the bottom of this well, and if it's hidden somewhere, then I need to look elsewhere. For many, the quest for the Holy Grail is an intoxicating adventure. Even Indiana Jones couldn't resist the temptation in his final crusade. If the Holy Grail does exist, what does it look like? What exactly are treasure hunters looking for, and where should they look? The Grail is a mortar-shaped drinking vessel in Old Spanish. So we know from the word itself that the legend of the Holy Grail must come from an area where a drinking vessel is called a Grail from Spain, from the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain's great Valencia Cathedral, visitors can view a remarkable relic. It is a small stone cup, which over time has been mounted on a magnificent gold stand decorated with gemstones. Even half a century before the first Parzival myth was written, we have a documented veneration of a stone vessel as the chalice of the Last Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ in a monastery in the north of Spain, San Juan de la Peña, at the foot of a mountain called Mont Salvatores, or in the local Occitanian dialect, Mont Salvage. Now, Mont Salvage is the name of the Grail Castle in the Parzival. Indeed, if we follow the geographical description, the topographical details, and the description of how the Grail Castle really looked in the narrations, it is identical with the monastery of San Juan de la Peña. In 1399, it was brought from San Juan de la Peña, first to Zaragoza, and then to Barcelona, and at the end to Valencia. It is today still venerated in the Grail Chapel, in the Chapel of the Holy Chalice, in the Cathedral of Valencia, where you can see it anytime you go to Valencia. This is the authentic Holy Grail, and I can prove it, because in his early story of the Holy Grail, in the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, he mentions a mysterious inscription on the Holy Grail, and he gives the name of the Grail as Lapsit Axillis. And indeed, in Cufic writing, at the foot of the original Holy Grail, in the Chapel of the Holy Grail in Valencia, there is a Cufic inscription, Al Lapsit Axillis, exactly the inscription quoted by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Although the Valencia Cup appears to date back to the time of Jesus Christ, and although the cup resembles the one described in Arthurian legend, could it be the true Holy Grail? The first written traces of the Valencia Cup date back to the Middle Ages, a time when 20 or so churches were claiming that they possessed the Holy Grail. Is the Valencia Cup really the Grail, or just a Grail? The true history of the Holy Grail appears to be much darker, but it is invariably associated with a group of noble knights, the Knights Templar, an order that was both military and religious in nature, created in 1129 to protect the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. With their headquarters built on top of the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, the knights found many amazing treasures, including the Holy Grail. After bringing their treasures back to Europe, the Templars, who worked directly for the Pope, went against all apparent logic and handed the Holy Grail over to the Cathars, a sect that was at odds with the Roman Catholic Church. The Cathars were another religious sect in France, mainly in the south of France and northern Italy. They believed in two gods. They believed in a material god, who was not so good. They believed in a spiritual god, who was basically the god of love. They believed in everything that was material, including ourselves, our bodies and everything man-made and natural, was essentially bad, malevolent, and everything in the spiritual world was good. When I think about it, they were probably a bit like hippies. They were peace-loving, free-loving, they didn't believe in marriage, they didn't believe in work. Sounds ideal. They decided that they were going to live this pure life. There were differences in opinion in the Catharic religion, a religion where followers were taught religious aspects, but they were taught in a way that was different from the Catholic Church. The Cathars were more severe and also more objective. This vision of Christianity was quickly deemed unacceptable by Rome. Consequently, the Cathars, also known as the Albigensians, were declared to be heretics. In 1209, Simon de Montfort, a knight posted in Carcassonne, was instructed to lead a full-fledged campaign against the Albigensians. Toward the end of the 12th century, Innocent III was asking nobles to take action against these heretics, who were considered to be dangerous. So he called for a crusade against these people who were worse than pagans, even worse than Muslims. And that was how he managed to get the nobles to intervene with their armies, in a crusade against the Cathars. Philip August, who was the king of France at the time, did not feel that he had the right or the competency to intervene. But the barons of northern France were authorized to take part in this crusade, starting in 1209. The crusade continued in waves and did not end until 1229, with the establishment of the Treaty of Paris-Mont. Thus, the Holy Grail, which had been entrusted to the Cathars for reasons that were unclear, was now in the middle of another crusade, this time on Christian territory in southern France. As the Cathars kept on the move, retreating from their opponents, they hid the precious relic in different Cathar castles along the way. They weren't Cathar castles. They were Languedocian castles, in which the Cathars took refuge. Some belonged to the Cathars, lords who had been converted to Catharism, while others belonged to families who were primarily Orthodox, in which only a handful of family members were practicing Cathar. Pursued by the crusaders who were commanded by the Pope, the Cathars hid their religious treasures, including the Holy Grail, in many hillside castles like Puy-Vert, Père-Pertuse, and Montségur. I followed this Cathar thread in search of historic traces of the Holy Grail. The first attack against the Cathars by the Catholic crusaders took place at Chateau Puy-Vert. Perched atop a rocky summit on a hill overlooking the town of Chateau Puy-Vert stands out regally over the countryside, in the very heart of what was once Cathar country. In the fall of 1210, Simon de Montfort's army seized Chateau Puy-Vert. They took stock of everything on the site. Perhaps the Holy Grail had been there at one time, but it wasn't there now. After Puy-Vert was seized, the Cathars were on the run in search of a new haven. Another Cathar oasis was the Père-Pertuse fortress, perched on a rocky ridge 800 meters high. In 1240, it was Chateau Père-Pertuse's turn to succumb to the French forces. When the king's men took hold of the fortress, they couldn't find the legendary Holy Grail anywhere. No doubt it had been taken to safer grounds. A small group of Cathars escaped persecution after the fall of Puy-Vert and the invasion of Père-Pertuse, taking refuge at Montségur. The people who were hiding out at Montségur, the siege went on for nine months. But you know, a nine-month-long battle like that, well, they resisted as well as they could, but this siege marked the Cathar resistance to the invaders. The Montségur fortress, which lies on a 1200 meter rocky peak, is practically inaccessible. It is so difficult to penetrate that it took three attempts to dislodge the inhabitants. But around Christmas 1243, a handful of crusaders succeeded in climbing the mountain up to the fortress, where they took control of the watchtower. The battle then began. The Cathars resisted for another three months, but on March 1st 1244, Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix, lord of Montségur, was finally forced to negotiate the surrender of the castle. More than 200 Cathars who refused to denounce their faith were burned at the stake. We know that the Cathars were clearly aware that they were about to be arrested. And from that point on, they managed to sneak out their treasures. Four of the bravest of their mountaineers carried with them, I quote, the treasures of their faith. And there are experts on Cathar history who would suggest that what they were carrying was the grail. A few Cathars managed to get away. Escaping their enemy's watchful eyes, they hid out in a cave which is still visible from the ruins of From then on, all traces of the Holy Grail disappeared once again for 600 years. On a clear day from the ramparts of Montségur, you can see the rocky hills of the adjoining Haute Department of Southern France. Some say this is where the true secret of the Holy Grail is being kept. The village is called Rennes-le-Château. How can I resist? The small medieval village of Rennes-le-Château lies at the top of a rocky peak, five kilometers southeast of the village of Cuysat. It is typical of all small villages in Languedoc. The main feature of the village is a somewhat run-down castle, formerly the stronghold of the local lord, a member of the Opul family. It was the castle which dates back to the 13th century that gave this medieval village of Rennes-le-Château its name. At the village entrance, a sign has been posted by the mayor advising visitors that they are not allowed to dig anywhere within the confines of the village. For more than 50 years, this small village has been attracting treasure hunters from all over the globe, all because of a simple parish priest, Béranger Saunière. The Rennes-le-Château story began at the end of the 19th century when a poor parish priest, Béranger Saunière, was sent to an impoverished village with a church that was falling to pieces and began to restore it. He found something while he was working and no one really knows what it was. Legend has it that he stumbled on some sort of treasure. He wasn't looking for treasure. There was no story of treasure when he came. Yes, there were stories of treasure in this area. There always had been, but these sorts of legends are attached to this sort of place. Henri Lincoln, one of the three co-authors of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, became so engrossed in this story that he left the green hillsides of England and moved permanently to a town a few kilometers from Rennes-le-Château. He and I visited the site together. He was asked to look for something in the church, it seems, by probably the Habsburg family, and they financed the work that he did. When he wanted to, as he said, restore the church, money was provided by the Comtesse de Chambord, who was wife of the claimant to the French throne, and there were documents that were of value to the Habsburg family, which had been lost at the time of the French Revolution, not so much lost as hidden away at that time. They knew that they were hidden in the church somewhere, and so the perfect alibi, as it were, to have somebody digging in the church would be to have the priest of the church restore it, and so that's how the treasure story began to develop. With the help of a few members of his parish, Saunière began renovating the church. In July 1887, while moving the altar stone, the masons discovered two Visigothic pillars. The story, the rumors of treasure began immediately when he made the discovery under the altar of Antimago. A little collection of what he said were worthless medals from Lourdes. This was reported immediately by the two workmen who actually helped him and lifted the stone under which he found these things. This discovery attracted curiosity seekers to the Saunière Abbey. He refurbished the village streets, which were pretty worn. He even surprised people by changing inscriptions on tombstones in the cemetery behind the church. What on earth could have changed this poor parish priest? What did he find, and what was he looking for? In the months and the few years that followed, he, for instance, dug up the cemetery. At night, too, the villagers didn't discover this for a while. One morning they found that he and Marie, his housemaid, had been digging in the cemetery and they dug up quite a number of the tombs. The villagers were very upset. In fact, they complained to the police about it. Throughout his meticulous searches, Father Saunière was constantly accompanied by his faithful housekeeper, Marie Desnardons. Was she in on the secret? First of all, she was definitely involved in the secret because she was the priest's housekeeper, but there was something more to it. There was some sort of bond, friendship between them. It seemed like it was just overnight that the priest began making extravagant purchases. When the villagers saw their impoverished priest begin to restore the church, and they had no idea where the money came from, so when they saw their priest restoring their church, the villagers congratulated themselves. They didn't ask where the money came from. But when their priest began buying land, building houses at the tower, setting up gardens, ordering rum from as far away as Jamaica, obviously they began to wonder what was going on. There is no way he could have amassed this wealth simply by charging for masses. Even if he had increased his fees by 10 percent, he couldn't have earned that much. The simple parish priest was leading the life of a prince. Father Saunière's sudden fortune and the inexplicable silence of religious authorities set tongues flapping. Faced with the church's silence, many alleged that Father Saunière had not found a treasure, but rather a secret, or perhaps a precious object that he used to gain money from religious authorities. Could it have been the famous Holy Grail which had disappeared in the region 600 years earlier? It's been said that he found two parchments, a large one and a small one. Both the large and the small parchment are probably fakes. Very well done, but I would say that they are fakes, probably produced by the Barquis Philippe de Chérizé, who knew a lot of things. And when people claim that the parchments are fakes, well perhaps they are fake, but they were made with historical elements. That's what makes them valuable. So even if we start off with a couple of items that are fake, they still lead us to a tangible historical archaeological path. And it's this path that Béranger Saunière discovered. After he received a donation from the Countess de Chambord, she gave him his first financial backing, he began the work on the church. It's assumed that once he began the renovation work, he discovered something. And whatever it was that he found, it made him immensely rich, since his fortune was the equivalent of a billion francs. That was quite a huge sum. The Habsburgs, it would appear, were providing him with money. There is certain evidence because he had pre-printed envelopes, a little stack of them, to a bank in Budapest, which is where the Habsburgs had their capital. So if they were paying money into his bank account, and he would go off on mysterious trips when he'd be away from the village for about a week at a time, it would appear that he was going to Budapest to bring money, cash, in order to live on it. But he ran into money troubles when the First World War began in 1914. He could no longer travel to Budapest, and so money became a problem. And then before the war had finished, he died. Father Saunière died on January 22nd, 1917. He bequeathed all of his possessions to Marie Desnardins, his faithful and devoted housekeeper. This is where Saunière spent the last years of his life. But he was a very disturbed and worried man. He shut himself away here, and he collapsed in the doorway. At one point, he collapsed there in the porch, and Maddy found him lying there, and he lingered for a few days after that, and then died. But this is where he spent the last few years of his life. This was his study and his library. It is believed that during the years he spent at Rennes-le-Château, Father Saunière intentionally planted several clues throughout the domain, leading to the treasure of Rennes-le-Château, perhaps even to the Holy Grail. Why did he leave us these curious indications? Why didn't he just speak out loud? What is it that he knew that we don't know? We have to ask the question, what did he say when he made his last confession? The priest who heard it refused to give him the last rites. That was a dreadful thing to do to a priest, to let him feel that he was dying without the forgiveness of the Church. He was given the last rites at the funeral, but that was days later. So yes, he was a disturbed and unhappy man at the end of his life. Why would the Church treat one of its members in such a way, a priest at that, at the time of his death? What did he do, or what did he find to bring on such disgrace later in life? And above all, what happened to his inexplicable fortune? Marie was cut off from the source of his funds. She couldn't get to his bank account. After the death of Béranger Saunière, Marie Desnardins was poor. Why is that? Because she inherited the domain, but didn't inherit any money. And although she sustained the legend that Father Saunière had found a treasure, and although she would often say, the inhabitants of Rennes-le-Château are walking on gold and they don't even know it, what Father Saunière left behind could feed Rennes-le-Château for generations to come, and there would still be some left over. She couldn't afford to pay the property taxes. She had no alternative but to slowly sell bits and pieces of furniture and struggle to survive. If Marie Desnardins lived in poverty, does that mean that Father Saunière's famous treasure remained in Rennes-le-Château? That's what treasure seekers believed. The first treasure seekers arrived in the 1950s, looking for a chest of gold coins. They didn't really know what they were looking for, so they just dug randomly. When they failed to find anything, they began to wonder what this amazing treasure could possibly be. Theories sprung forth, more or less based on history. The first one was related to the treasure of Blanche of Castille. Then it was thought to be the treasure of the Knights Templar or the treasure of the Cathars. Some even delved into the history of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, in search of an exciting lost treasure that might have been found at Rennes-le-Château. Once again, as the treasure hunters failed to turn up anything, these theories faded and Esoteris entered the picture with Girard de Cèdes in the 70s. Theories began to pop up that were not related to a buried treasure. Theories steeped in mysticism. There were tales of alleged documents, church secrets, and a burial grave, perhaps that of Mary Magdalene. There was even speculation about the Holy Grail. All of the clues supposedly left by Béranger-Saunière, secret codes encrypted in the way his church was built and decorated, spurred on new research. To many individuals, it was just a matter of decoding those clues. The idea that Father Béranger-Saunière might have left clues in his church, or somewhere else in the domain, was made popular by Girard de Cèdes, who based his claims primarily on the church's decor, which was quite elaborate. The church decor filled his mind with ideas of symbolic interpretation, somewhat like a treasure map you'd see in a pirate movie. Other documents were written, exploring Girard de Cèdes' ideas in different directions, with a particular focus on the domain and the gardens. Even nowadays, it's a possibility that makes treasure seekers happy, without really offering any solution. It's true, there are some extremely odd things inside the church. There are the stations of the cross, represented by some very strange paintings. The paintings and statues are all significant. For example, if you take the statues of the saints, there were five of them. If you take the first letter of each of the saints, well, you have Saint Germain, Saint Roch, up to Mary Magdalene, and the initials were inscribed on the pedestal in such a way that you end up with the French word Graal, which means grail. If you stop, if you take the time to look at each item one by one, you find clues that may not point to the final destination, but which do show that Saunière must have learned something truly extraordinary. Girard de Cèdes wrote L'Or de Reine ou la Vie Insolite de Béranger-Saunière, which transformed the small village into a national mystery and attracted treasure seekers. Thirteen years later, three English authors wrote The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Their book alluded that Father Saunière's secret was connected with Holy Grail. The authors claimed that the French word Saint Graal actually represents Saint Royal, which translates as royal blood, and point to a bloodline descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In 2003, American author Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, which soared to the top of the bestseller list. In this story, American Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology, discovered that the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, Jacques Saunière, is the head of a mysterious organization, the Priory of Sion, a powerful brotherhood whose mission is to protect a secret that could pull the rug out from the Christian religion. The secret being that the Princess of Nazareth had a child with Mary Magdalene, and this child began Jesus' bloodline, the Holy Grail. The Priory of Sion was a brotherhood established in 1099, according to certain mysterious documents discovered in the early 60s at the National Library of Paris. These documents included typewritten sheets with historic references, coded manuscripts that were allegedly copies of those discovered by Father Saunière at Rennes-le-Château. There was also a list of all the grandmasters of the Priory of Sion since its foundation, which included such famous names as alchemist Nicolas Flamel, Nostradamus, and Leonardo da Vinci. The final name on this list was Pierre Plantard. Pierre Plantard wanted people to talk about him. He jumped at the chance to make a buck for Rennes-le-Château, to get into the public eye. So Pierre Plantard was the one who came up with the theory of the secret. And the secret, which no one had spoken of yet, was the revelation that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, that they had produced children, that their children had reigned over France, and that Pierre Plantard was the last descendant. So Pierre Plantard presented himself as having both the blood of Jesus Christ and royal blood running through his veins. To give more substance to his ideas and to support his claim to the French throne, he created an association that he called the Priory of Sion. The purpose of the association was to encourage members to engage in mutual aid, so it wasn't a secret society at all. There have been a lot of wild speculations about the Priory of Sion, just like speculations about Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Magdalene, Jesus Christ, and so many more. But we want novels to spark our imagination, and the Da Vinci Code certainly did just that. The Da Vinci Code managed to get thousands of readers interested in this theory of a Jesus bloodline. The craze resulted in the production of several pseudo-historic books based on the alleged relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. There was a movement to make Jesus more human. Jesus had always been considered by a religion, namely Christianity, to be a god, the son of God, but there was also a human side to him, and this was a movement to make him much more human. The Jesus bloodline theory played that role, so it was somewhat of a reflection of modern thought. In this new light, the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene could only have been sexual in nature, and embrace could only have been a sexual embrace. But the Gospel of Philip was clearly speaking of an initiatic embrace, where initiatic knowledge was passed on, and that brings us to the idea of a secret society that was passing on a closely guarded secret. That pretty much sums it up, and what we're seeing now is a whole new way of looking at Mary Magdalene in relation to the needs of today's society. It's the emancipation of Mary Magdalene compared to the portrait that was painted back in the 1960s. If the Holy Grail really was passed on from one century to the next, we shouldn't be looking for it in the pages of Dan Brown's novel. And if the Holy Grail is indeed a symbolic representation of universal knowledge, it seems clear that this knowledge is not about to be revealed anytime soon. I could make the joke about this story and say this story is true, only the facts have been changed.