One of my favourite French recentists has touched the subject in this long article not for the faint-hearted. I hope he is not spreading French freemasonic disinformation, LOL. Here the translation otherwise you can read the article on his blog (
Le Temple d’Isis):
The Temple of Isis
Researchers like Howdie Mickoski or Alexei Khrustalev claim that the Holy Land is 14th century France. The tradition or the "golden legend" of Jacques de Voragine generally speaks of a migration from Palestine of Joseph of Arimathea, or of Lazare, Marie de Béthany or Marie-Madeleine. Lazare then becomes the first bishop of Marseilles and is buried in Autun. Joseph of Arimathea is buried in the abbey of Moutiers, Pilate whose wife was from Narbonne is buried in Gaul. The relics of the Magi, who died in the east, have been brought to Cologne Cathedral. Hélène, the mother of Emperor Constantine, who is about 80 years old, is said to have brought relics from Palestine such as the crown of thorns to Notre-Dame de Paris. The Shroud was first seen in Metz and is now in Turin. Thus all the relics of Christianity are in Western Europe.
Sometimes tradition has not retained migration: Anne the mother of the Virgin was born in Morbihan. The Notre-Dame Church had on its facade the statues of the kings of Judea until 1789. Mickoski is favorable to the recentist point of view: the relics, pilgrimages and the churches seem to appear after the year 1000. He notes that Montreal, presented as a new Jerusalem and founded in the 17th century, is built according to the model of Paris. Montmartre or the mount of the martyrs and would make an acceptable Golgotha, and the Jesuits were founded precisely in Montmartre in 1534. Abbé Boudet's "La Vraie langue celtique" makes the Celtic language practiced in the south-west of France the Biblical Hebrew. Boudet is part of the band of priests who officiated in Aude at the time of Abbot Bérenger Saunière and the famous affair of Rennes-le-Château. Gérard de Sède's 1967 book "L'or de Rennes" claimed that Saunière had found the Templar treasure, then Henry Lincoln's books claimed he had proof that Jesus' family had carried his line to France through the Merovingian dynasty. A priori, the relationship between the two is not direct, and these works benefit from a halo effect, where a priori proven facts are supposed to prove unrelated conclusions.
Like Mickoski, I don't believe that Jesus' family would have taken the boat to Gaul. I add that the Merovingians are an invention hiding the Valois, and the Carolingians the Bourbons.
Gérard de Sède and his source Pierre Plantard is filled with false information. First of all, Sède and Plantard had collaborated together before and Sède acts as if he had just met him. The date of January 17 comes up regularly: it is the date of the death of Saunière, then that of his governess Marie Denarnaud (not the actress, another), and that of the death in 1781 of a certain Marie de Hautpoul having owned the presbytery and goddaughter of a certain "Montreal" (a code name). On January 17 Nicolas Flamel would have transformed gold into mercury, and on January 17, Robert Fludd, who would have visited Rennes-le-Château (?), made the philosopher's stone. All this tells us that Sède and Plantard want to talk to us about
alchemy. What antics. My apologies to the legend experts if my details are a little off. I don't really want to devote myself to it.
The biography of this Hautpoul is partly modeled on that of Marie Denarnaud: she sells because she has no money but continues to live on the grounds of the presbytery. It was the priest Antoine Bigou who buried him in the church cemetery in 1781. On his instructions, he would have found three or four manuscripts in the Church of Saint-Pierre in Rennes-le-Château. which he would then have hidden in the Sainte Marie-Madeleine church during the revolution. In the 1880s, Saunière would have found them in a hollow column while doing work in the church. This copies the 17th century Rosicrucian account of three manuscripts, found in a church dedicated to Mary Magdalene which was being restored.
Then it is claimed that Saunière would have destroyed the tombs of the cemetery, but that then the tombs were redone, and in particular the inscription relating to the death of Marie de Hautpoul. Presumably Saunière never destroyed tombs, but he may have carved a bogus epitaph on the tomb of Marie de Hautpoul. This one is called there at the beginning “nobile” then at the end “catin”. She is called both de Negri and Blanchefort, in connection with two stages of alchemy, and her name Hautpoul suggests the "Great Prostitute" of the Apocalypse. This is Isis, the queen of heaven in the Egyptian religion. Howie Mickoski leans for Marie-Madeleine, Christianized version of Isis, companion of Osiris as Marie-Madeleine is that of Christ. So Saunière, if it is he who does this, simply draws attention to the
cult of Isis.
The owner of the presbytery after Marie Denarnaud is from 1956 a certain Noël Corbu. It is he who tells the story to Gérard de Sède. Part of the falsifications are attributable to him as well as to Plantard and Sède. It is indeed impossible to prove the age of the documents provided by Plantard. The date of the Hautpoul tomb is curiously not 1781 but 1681, and the code 681 is found on one of Plantard's parchments. The drawing of the epitaph would have appeared on a 19th century work by a known author named Steblein , but the work is not part of the list attributed to this author, and the document is a reissue of 1964, few time before Gérard de Sède's book.
Saunière had a Villa Béthany and a Magdala Tower built, which obviously relates to the character of
Lazare in the Gospel of John. The mummification of Lazarus and his resurrection at Jesus' command to "arise and walk" is clearly a mockery of the god Osiris. The original Gospel of John does not include an episode of the resurrection or the reception of the Holy Spirit. Thus the resurrection and the reception of the Holy Spirit are elements of the religion of the Egyptians, but not of the religion of John. An investigation carried out by an American suggests that mummification was practiced in the southwest of France.
Passing through the Louvre, Saunière would have bought reproductions of Poussin and a portrait of Clement V, but it seems that the Louvre was not selling them at that time. Then he would have found a treasure in a crypt. Sède then Lincoln thus take at face value the documents provided by Plantard which link Saunière to the
Grail and the latter to an alleged lineage of Christ through the Merovingians.
Here is what we can sum up about the character of Saunière: he had an inexplicable source of income. He was interested
in the cult of Isis and Osiris, alchemy, the Grail and the Cathars. We learn from a few sentences that Saunière is supported by generous patrons like Marie-Thérèse de Habsbourg or John D. Rockefeller. With such friends, there is no need to find treasure. And if such characters were interested in Saunière's research, it was because they belonged to the esoteric societies concerned. These societies at the end of the 19th century are powerful, one thinks first of all of Freemasonry. The connection between Grail literature and alchemy is well known. It is less obvious to link it to the Cathars, but it is already a commonplace. That all these elements are part of French history and culture is not in doubt.
It is generally accepted that alchemy developed in France and Italy from the 15th century, but was imported from Egypt. The presence of Temples of Isis in Gaul does not, however, lead historians to conclude that the Egyptian religion itself was present there. Without affirming it explicitly, the follower Fulcanelli in "The Mysteries of the Cathedrals" writes that the black virgins of the south of France are statues of Isis, generally accompanied by the child Horus. And – separately – points to the alchemical representations of Gothic cathedrals, where Christian symbolism is sometimes lacking. René Schwaller de Lubicz writes that the cathedrals are built on the model of the Temple of Luxor. Tournus Cathedral features an inscription in stone with the name of a 12th century bishop and suggests he was… a priest of Isis. In Arles or Chartres there was a Temple of Isis, on the site of Notre-Dame de Paris, a Temple of Jovis. Sebastian Munster's map of Paris from 1545 in its Latin version shows instead of Notre-Dame the mention "Summum Templum" and the drawing of a church which is not Notre-Dame. It is accepted that in Rome as in Paris, the basilica of Saint Peter and Notre-Dame are built on the very site of the former Temple of Jovis. Maps of Paris then call the old Church Notre-Dame, until the current Notre-Dame appears on maps around 1600. However, it seems that in many cases the Egyptian Temple was simply converted in a Christian church.
The supposed Egyptian religion is the superposition of several cults which do not mix. Ra, Ptah or Atum are not present in the story around Hermes, Isis, Osiris and Seth. Gaul knows only these figures. Hermes seems to be one of the forms of Mithras. Thus Hermes and Osiris represent the messiahs resulting from the reform of the Temple by King David in the First Book of Chronicles: to the line of Ithamar, David adds a line of Eleazar (falsely presented in the Book of Numbers as the sons of 'Aaron). These are Mithras and Osiris. Hermes is generally related to the Egyptian god Thôt, but Hermes corresponds to Mitra or Moses, also a magician. Thoth is David. Jewish tradition claims that there are two messiahs: a messiah of Joseph named Ephraim presented as the priestly messiah, and a messiah of David who is a warrior messiah. Ephraim is a deformation of Ithamar, also Mithra is the messiah of Joseph. If this Joseph is the Joseph of the Book of Genesis prime minister of Egypt, the local version of Mithras is the god Amun. David's messiah is therefore Eleazar. The Books of Numbers and Chronicles present Eleazar as more important than Ithamar, as Osiris is more important than Amun.
Mithras and Osiris have initiation rituals associated with their names in Masonry, which identifies Masonry as the continuation of the Temple of David. Masonry today claims Solomon's Temple, but this may be a distortion brought about by the 1723 Hanoverian Reform of English Masonry.
Were the Cathars then of Egyptian religion? If the name of Isis is known in Gaul, Osiris is not mentioned, but Jovis (Yahvé). In terms of doctrine, they are quite close to the Christian Gnostics of Alexandria. The 2nd century Gnostics of Alexandria follow the Gospel of
Mark . Mark follows Paul's influence. The Gnostics of Alexandria are therefore probably identical with the Pauline sect of the 7th century in Eastern Europe. It is claimed that the Paulinians originated another sect in the 12th century: the Bogomils. Probably the three groups are identical and correspond to the 15th or 16th century.
Like the Gnostics and Muslims, the Cathars believe that the real Jesus is not of flesh and therefore did not die on the cross. The evil god - whom they call Rex Mundi (Ialdabaoth is a name used by the Gnostics of Egypt) - created the material world. He is the god of the Old Testament, which they reject, although they admit the ten commandments. They also do not admit the New Testament, but only certain unspecified texts. It is supposed to be the Gospel of John or a "secret" John, but this is unlikely, because the little Genesis at the beginning of the Gospel of John makes Jesus the logos, the verb creator of God, the role that the Cathars assign to the demiurge. The modern Johannite Church claims that the Cathars had their Gospel of John short, devoid of the resurrection and later episodes. But this gospel also has the little Genesis. Moreover, if the Cathars worshiped Lazarus (Osiris), the Gospel of John mocks him. As for Isis or Mary Magdalene, the Apocalypse of John makes her the Great Prostitute.
The Marcionites of Alexandria admit the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark, but the Cathars are unlikely to have admitted Mark. Indeed Mark presents the baptism of Jesus in the waters of the Jordan by John the Baptist. However, the Cathars reject this baptism in favor of the sole baptism of the Holy Spirit, which corresponds to the reception of the Spirit by the disciples in the form of tongues of fire in the episodes of the Gospels after the resurrection – precisely those that we do not admit the Johannite Church.
This baptism among the Cathars takes the form of a single sacrament, the Consolamentum, which is a simple prayer, and removes the person's sins. This consolamentum can only be taken once in a lifetime. So many only received it at the end of their life. This sacrament may have become extreme unction in Roman religion. Those who received it earlier in life became perfected and their obligations changed. It was no longer possible for them to touch a person of the opposite sex. The parfaits, however, went in pairs of a man and a woman, nomads.
As with the Gnostics of Alexandria, the soul for the Cathars is the divine part in man and is likened to a star. They call themselves the "poor of Christ", say they are wanderers. The beginning of the year is marked by a communal meal where bread is blessed and shared. They were vegan because animals were also given a soul, except for the fish they ate because they believed they did not reproduce through sexuality. Sexuality is allowed for those who are not perfect, but not for reproduction, which condemns a soul to incarnate.
For the Cathars, the Last Judgment has already taken place and we are in hell. Like the Buddhists, the Cathars want to break the cycle of reincarnations, but the number of reincarnations is limited to 7 or 9. The expression "cats have nine lives" may come from this. The cat has a reputation as an evil animal in the 17th century and the church burns them, like the Cathars will end up at the stake. The Gnostics of Alexandria and the Marcionites do not seem to have been so radical.
