Saunière's Discovery In 1885 "the Catholic church assigned Saunière, thirty-three years old, handsome, well-educated--if provincial--to the parish at Rennes-le-Château. [Bérenger] Saunière set about restoring the town's tiny church, which sat atop a sacred site dating back to the sixth-century Visigoths." The find, which occurred in 1886 or 1887, consisted of either a single paper or four parchments according to differing accounts of the event. After reading the document(s), Saunière immediately set about excavating the aisle, nave and transcript. He then moved his attention to the graveyard outside and found an encrypted inscription on a tombstone, reputedly that of Marie de Nègre d'Ablès, Lady of Blanchfort, who had died on 17 January 1781. After deciphering the inscription, traveled to Carcassonne and talked to the deputy of the Bishop who resided there. After his visit Saunière experienced a remarkable turn-around in his fortunes. Saunière received vast sums of money [an estimated 200,000 gold francs] to refurbish the local church and also to build many structures in the area, such as his Tower of the Magdalene (Tour Magdala). (Saunière was originally so poor that he relied on the generosity of parishioners to survive in 1885.) He also built many structures in the area, such as his Tower of the Magdalene (Tour Magdala). ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieuredu Sion" Saunière decorated the village parish church in the ornate almost garish style that was popular in the late ninteenth century. Over the porch lintel is a bizarre inscription, 'THIS PLACE IS TERRIBLE'. A statue of the demon Asmodeus 'guards' near the door. The plaques depicting the Stations of the Cross contain bizarre inconsistencies. One shows a child swathed in Scottish plaid. Another has Pontius Pilate wearing a veil. Sts. Joseph and Mary are each depicted holding a Christ child, as if to allude to the old legend that Christ had a twin. Other statues are of rather esoteric saints in unusual postures: St. Roch displays his wounded thigh (like the Grail King Anfortas), St. Anthony the Hermit holds a closed book, St. Germaine releases a bevy of roses from her apron, and the Magdalene is shown holding a vase. Saunière "spent a fortune refurbishing the town and developed extravagant tastes for rare china, antiques, and other pricey artifacts. Yet how Saunièreacquired this apparent windfall remained a mystery--he stubbornly refused to explain the secret of his success to the church authorities." ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieuredu Sion" The Secret Codes A mysterious set of transcripts and photographs entitled Dossiers Secrets was deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (although the little book was never authenticated by the library). The Dossiers Secrets contained two genealogies dating from 1244 C.E. and 1644 C.E., a quasi-Masonic charter and a sketch of the inscription on the tomb of the Countess of Blanchfort. Of even greater interest were two documents which were purported to be of the parchments found in the pillar at the church at Rennes-le-Château They were apparently written by his predecessor, Abbé Antoine Bigou, confessor to Marie d'Hautpoul [Lady of Blanchfort], in 1781. (The same cypher appears on her tombstone.) ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" According to Henry Lincoln and historians Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh ('The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail') "these more recent papers contained a series of ciphers and codes, some of them 'fantastically complex, defying even a computer' to unlock their secrets. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" The first code was easily broken when letters higher than the rest of the text were identified by Henry Lincoln and arranged in order. The code in the second parchment was more complex and yielded an even stranger message. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" (in English) A third cypher that appears, not in the documents, but at Shugborough Hall's Shepherd Monument, is the curious 'D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M' which has never been translated. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" Poussin's Enigmatic Painting According to Gerard de Sede, L'Or de Rennes-le-Château, the enigmatic reference to "shepherdess no temptation that Poussin Teniers hold the key" in the second parchment refers to the the works of Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665) and David Teniers the Younger (1610-1694), who had painted The Temptation of St Antony. Poussin reportedly travelled to Paris to verify his discovery and while there visited the Louvre to obtain copies of Poussin's Les Bergers D'Arcadie, Tenier's The Temptation of St Antony and a third painting, a portrait of Pope Celestine V, artist unknown. . This tomb appears to be a virtual replica of one not too dissimilar to it right outside of Rennes-le-Château. Saunière 's church indeed contains a 'daemon guardian' which is a representation of the Biblical Asmodeus, who helped Solomon build his Temple; and some say the rays of the sun at midday passing through the glass create an optical effect they call 'blue apples'. The phrase "Et in Arcadia Ego" translated into English has been interpreted to mean "Even in earthly paradise, I (Death) exist." The theme of 'Arcadia' was prominent in Elizabethan literature, and it appears in the works of writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Phillip Sidney, and even Shakespeare, for whom the word was synonymous with the Golden Age." The word Arcadia comes from Arkas, patron god of that area of Greece, the son of the nymph Callisto, sister of the huntress Artemis....In legend, the Merovingians were said to be descended from the Trojans; and Homer reports that Troy was founded by a colony of Arcadians. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" Art expert Prof. Christopher Cornford, of the Royal College of Art, analyzed the painting and found a complex underlying geometry based on the pentagon. Andrews and Schellenberger (The Tomb of God) were able to draw an equilateral triangle between a symbol and key characters on Parchment. In addition, they constructed a square tilted at 75 degrees on Parchment 2 which contained the triangle on the first parchment. These two shapes can be superimposed on a map of the Rennes-le-Château area using the Paris Zero Meridian, appear to make a remarkable alignment with key chateaux and churches and towns. Andrews and Paul Schellenbergere were also able to discern the same geometric shapes in the three paintings above as well as several related paintings. If the secret that Saunière had stumbled onto was indeed a map, what was its significance? An Amazing Geometry The castles of Templar Château of Bezu, the Château of Blanchefort and Rennes-le-Château are each located on a mountain top. Together, with the high spots of two other peaks, the locations form a perfect pentagon (five equal sides) some fifteen miles in circumference.. "At night, a fire lit upon each peak would easily be seen." Like Rennes-le-Château "the village church dates back to at least the time of the Visigoths, some thirteen centuries ago. The church is dedicated to Saint Magdalene..." The early astronomers saw the earth as the center of the universe, around which the Sun, the stars and the planets revolved. Each planet forms its own pattern of movement around the Sun as seen from the Earth. For the ancient watchers of the heavens, those differing patterns of movement allowed them to draw geometric shapes based on the positions of each planet when it was aligned with the Sun. The accepted definition of a pole [also known as the Rod or Perch] is now 5.5 yards - one 320th part of a mile, i.e., 198 inches...The kilometer - one thousand meters or one then-thousandth of a quadrant of the earth's surface - when translated into English measure is 39,370 inches, and the square toot of 39,370 is 198.41874! The Royal Seed? The Warrior Kings Many "are in such fine condition that it is difficult to assign them a very great age in their present state. Indeed, it has been suggested that such structures were still being erected (or re-erected) as late as the 18th century." Could this 'city'...be Reddis/Aereda, the ancient and legendary city of the Visigoths, of which Rennes-le-Château is supposed to be the sole remaining trace. Certainly, Rennes-le-Château is little more than a mile and a half away and, equally certainly, no other trace of Aereda has so far come to light. ~Henry Lincoln, "The Holy Place" The Visigoths were adherents of the Aryan heresy which denied the divinity of Jesus. Their descendants founded the Merovingian dynasty which ruled Gaul until the death of Dagobert II. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris contains a facsimile (produced by the monk Lucerius) of the highly reputed Fredegar's Chronicle - an exhaustive 7th-century historical work of which the original took 35 years to compile. A special edition of Fredegar's manuscript was presented to the illustrious Nebelungen court and was recognized by the state authorities as a comprehensive, official history. Fredegar (who died in 660) was a Burgundian scribe, and his Chronicle covered the period from the earliest days of the Hebrew patriarchs to the era of the Merovingian kings. It cited numerous sources of information of cross-reference, including the writings of St Jerome (translator of the Old Testament into Latin), Archbishop Isidore of Seville (author of the Encyclopedia of Knowledge), and Bishop Gregory of Tours (author of The History of the Franks). ~Laurence Gardner, "Bloodline of the Holy Grail" Lincoln and his co-authors fashioned a theory that Christ had descendents who "legged it to the south of France where they intermarried with the royal Franks to found what eventually became the mystical Merovingian Dynasty. Ergo, the real mission of the Templars and Priory of Zion: to safeguard not just the treasure of the Crusades, but to preserve the Grail, which appeared in medieval texts as 'Sangraal' or 'Sang réal', and which Lincoln et al. translated to mean sang réal, or 'royal blood'. In other words: the dynastic legacy of Christ, literally. ~Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?" 'Sang réal' has been traditionally interpreted as the 'holy grail' which, according to legend, Mary Magdalene carried to the Jewish kingdom of southern Gaul (including Rennes-le-Château. It may have been believed by adherents of a secret tradition that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and that what she brought was not a vessel but the royal seed of David in her womb. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" The Merovingians were considered in their day to be quasi-mystical warrior-kings vested with supernatural powers. ~Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?" Up until recently, little was known about these long-haired kings, as they inhabited that historical epoch derided as the 'Dark Ages'. The founder of the royal line, Merovech, was said to be of two fathers - his mother, already pregnant by King Chlodio, was seduced while swimming in the ocean by a 'Quinotaur,' whatever that was, and Merovech was formed somehow by the commingling of Frankish blood and that of the mysterious aquatic creature. Like the Nazoreans of old, the Merovingian monarchs never cut their hair, and bore a distinctive birthmark - said to be a red cross over the shoulder blades. Their robes were fringed with tassels which were said to carry magical curative powers. They were known as occult adepts, and in one Merovingian tomb was found such items as a golden bull's head, a crystal ball, and several golden miniature bees. And strangely, many skulls of these monarchs appear to have been ritually incised - i.e. trephanned. The Merovingians traced their ancestry back to the Benjamites who, according to legend, has fled from Israel to Arcadia in Greece. One of the more mysterious footnotes in history is the story of the Principality of Septimania. Granted by Peppin III to the large Jewish population in the south of France, its first king, Theodoric, claimed descent not only from the Merovingian Kings, but lineal descent from King David himself. Both the king and the Pope acknowledged this pedigree. His son, Guillem de Gellone, was a great, almost legendary hero about whom no less than six medieval epics were written, including Wilehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach. He is closely linked with the Grail family. .His descendant, 17 generations later, was Godfroi de Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade who was, by the Pope, made King of Jerusalem. ~J.J. Collins, "Sangraal, The Mystery of the Holy Grail" An Ancient Secret Society? Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair [was] apparently the source behind much of the recent literature devoted to the hilltown and its enigmatic priest. Shepherded to Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale, our trio of historical investigators [Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln] discovered there a provocative genealogy purporting to link Pierre Plantard to King Dagobert II and the Merovingian dynasty. Throughout these Dossiers Secrets at Paris's national library were tantalizing historical references to a mysterious and ancient secret society called Prieure de Sion, or Priory of Zion. ~Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?' According to Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, the Order of Sion was founded in the 1090s by Godfroide Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade who had recaptured Jerusalem. They claim that it was this Order that lay behind Hugues of Champagne and the founding of the Templars. ~Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, "Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled" The earliest roots of the Prieure de Sion are in some sort of Hermetic or Gnostic society led by a man named Ormus. This individual is said to have reconciled paganism and Christianity. The story of Sion only comes into focus in the Middle Ages. In 1070, a group of monks from Calabria, Italy, led by one Prince Ursus, founded the Abbey of Orval in France near Stenay, in the Ardennes. These monks are said to have formed the basis for the the Order de Sion, into which they were 'folded' in 1099 by Godfroi de Bouillion. ~Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?" The avowed and declared objective of the Prieure de Sion is the restoration of the Merovingian dynasty and bloodline - to the throne not only of France, but to the thrones of other European nations as well. By dint of dynastic alliances and intermarriages, this line came to include Godfroi de Bouillion, who captured Jerusalem in 1099, and various other noble and royal families, past and present. ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" Godfroi was, by legend, a member of the Grail Family, and by lineage a Merovingian and apparently, rightful King of Jerusalem by his descent from David. It is clear that he was aware of this. When he left for the first crusade, he sold all of his property. He intended to stay in Jerusalem. Godfroi was close to de Payen and the count of Champagne, and Baudoin [his brother] was integral to the founding of the Templars. ~J.J. Collins, "Sangraal, The Mystery of the Holy Grail" One might therefore term Godfroi de Bouillon as a sort of 'king of kings', or at least a maker of kings, since he founded the Order of Sion that could crown Kings of Jerusalem. ~Michael Bradley, "Holy Grail Across the Atlantic" To the south of Jerusalem looms the 'high hill' of Mount Sion." By 1099 an abbey had been built on the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica at the express command of Godfroi de Buoillon. According to one chronicler, writing in 1172, it was extremely well fortified, with its own walls, towers and battlements. And this structure was called the Abbey of Notre Dame du Mont de Sion. ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, }The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail In 1979, M. Plantard had said to us, quite categorically, that the Prieure was in possession of the treasure of the Temple of Jerusalem, plundered by the Romans during the revolt of A.D. 66 and subsequently carried to the south of France, in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château. The treasure, M. Plantard stated, would be returned to Israel 'when the time is right.' ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Messianic Legacy" At some point, according to Lincoln et al., the treasure had passed from the Merovingians to the Priory of Zion, whose Templar operatives later hustled the precious hoard from the Holy Land to the French Cathars, who, on the eve of their destruction by the church, squirreled the lucre away in the Pyrenees. But what if the "treasure" was something other than gold? After all, legend had it that the Cathar heretics possessed a valuable, even sacred relic, 'which according to a number of legends, was the Holy Grail, itself. ~Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, "Descendants of Jesus? Or Scam Artistes Extraordinaire?" By 19 July 1116, the name of the Ordre de Sion was already appearing on official charters and documents. We found another charter, dated 1152 and bearing the seal of King Louis VII of France, which conferred upon the Order it first major seat in Europe, at Orleans. We found a later charter, dated 1178 and bearing the seal of Pope Alexander III, which confirmed certain land holdings of the Order not only in the Holy Land, but in France, Spain and throughout the Italian peninsula - in Sicily, in Naples, in Calabria, In Lombardy.
~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" Near the end of the thirteenth Century a separate detachment of Templars was sent from the Aragonese province of Rossillon to the Rennes-le-Château area in southern France [the old Cathar stronghold]." This fresh detachment established itself on the summit of the mountain of Bezu, erecting a lookout post and a chapel. Alone of all the Templars in France, they were left unmolested by Philippe le Bel's seneschals on October 13, 1307. On that fateful day the commander of the Templar contingent at Bezu was a Seigneur de Goth. And before taking the name of Pope Clement V, the archbishop of Bordeaux - King Philippe's vacillating pawn - was Bertrand de Goth. Moreover, the new pontiff's mother was Ida de Blanchefort, of the same family as Bertrand de Blanchefort [the fourth Grand Master of the Order of the Temple]. Was the pope then privy to some secret entrusted to the custody of his family? ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" In The Tomb of God, authors Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger have drawn their own controversial conclusion as to what the secret might have been: The bearings of the site, based on the parchments, paintings and drawings of the de Negre gravestones (that reportedly had been found by Saunière), intersect on one point - a rocky outcropping on Mount Cardou, five kilometers from Rennes-le-Château. Whether is was the intrigues and the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, the insurrection known as the Fronde in the seventeenth century or the Masonic conspiracies of the eighteenth century, successive generations of precisely the same families were implicated, operating in accordance with a single consistent pattern. ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Messianic Legacy" Sources and Documents Exposed Royal Blood? The confusion of "Holy Grail" le saint graal as Sang réal or "royal blood" originated with Sir Thomas Malory's misspelling in his Le Morte D'Arthur (15th C). There is no valid etymological basis for Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln's contention that "holy grail" means "holy blood". Confusion Over the Parchments According to Antoine Captier, a resident of Rennes-le-Château, his great-grandfather, who been Saunière's bell ringer, made the original find in a stone alter pillar where the top had come off. What the bell ringer discovered protruding from the pillar was not four parchments, however, but a glass vial with a scrap of paper rolled up inside. Now on display in the Saunière museum at Rennes-le-Château, the stone pillar does have a small recess set into it, but it is much too small to have held the parchments. There is a secret cavity with a sliding panel in a second column in the museum, but this is a baluster made of solid oak not of stone. It is in this column, according to the museum, that the glass vial was actually found. The actual contents of the paper inside the vial were never disclosed by Saunière. Saunière's Trip to Paris Saunière supposedly visited Paris for five days in March, 1892 to follow-up his discovery. While there, he was said to have celebrated Mass at St. Sulpice. It was also on this trip that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail allege that Saunière acquired a reproduction of Poussin's painting (along with the two others). The Louvre, however, records that no copies were made of "Les Bergers D'Arcadie" before 1901. In fact there is no evidence that Saunière ever visited St. Sulpice or celebrated Mass there, according to a letter from the seminary's archivist....What's more, most art historians [like Martin Kemp, Professor of Art History, Oxford University] reject the whole idea of occult geometry in Poussin's paintings. ~"The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996) Saunière's Wealth But Saunière did have his own secret: he traded in saying private Masses, advertising his services throughout France and abroad, far beyond the official limit of three per day. His fees amounted to thousands of francs, representing so many Masses that he never caught up with a huge backlog. He was called to account by the Bishop of Carcassonne and suspended, but by that time his church had been restored and his presbytery and tower had been built out of his illicit earnings. Saunière's presbytery, library, "an unusual circular tower of dressed stone, with a spectacular view over the surrounding countryside...and the now very overgrown garden between them indicated a man of fairly solid means rather than fabulous wealth." According to Abbé Quatrefages, a well-known church archaeologist, Saunière quite unwittingly "discovered two or three tombs underneath his church while the altar was being renewed. They contained a few jewels [a Visigoth necklace and bracelet and some old coins], a gold chalice of no great antiquity [14th C?]. He gave most away, to his housekeeper and colleagues, whose descendants still have them. No coded parchments. The hollow pillar in which the legend-merchants claim he found them is rock-solid. No secrets about the decoration of his church. Most of the items came from church suppliers' catalogues and can be found throughout France. ~Christopher Campbell-Howes, "Rennes le Château Revisited" The Mystery of the Tomb Many years after his discovery, Saunière reportedly destroyed the tomb (which consisted of a headstone and horizontal grave marker) bearing the mysterious inscription so that others would not follow the same lead. Although the tomb was identified in Gerard de Sede's L'Or de Rennes-le-Château as belonging to the Lady of Blanchfort, Saunière himself never revealed whose tomb it was. The headstone is quite well documented; a drawing of it was made by the Society for Scientific Studies of the Ande during a field trip to the area in 1905 and printed, with a report on the trip, in the Society's journal. ~Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, "The Tomb of God" (1996) L'Or de Rennes-le-Château (which Gerard de Sede produced in collaboration with Plantard) cited Eugene Stublein's Engraved Stones of the Languedoc as the source of the two drawings of the grave. Stublein was noted for an illustrated travel guide to thermal baths in the region, called Établissements Thermal. The signatures on the drawings in Engraved Stones of the Languedoc do not match those in the travel guide, however, and the drawings of the tomb have been declared forgeries. Andrews and Schellenberger dismiss this criticism by stating that the drawings are not central to their thesis since there also the proofs in the paintings and parchments. Besides, they add, the forgers themselves could have been members of the Prieure de Sion and privy to real secrets. Origins of the Prieure du Sion Plantard previously had established a pro-Vichy organization called Alpha Galantes, dedicated to renewing France through the principles of chivalry, and had appointed himself Grand Master. The Prieure de Sion was an association with a similar eccentric agenda. This mysterious secret society brought itself to light in 1956, and is listed with the French directory of organizations under the subtitle 'Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and Traditionalist Union', which in French abbreviates to CIRCUIT - the name of the magazine distributed internally among members. ~Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and the Prieure du Sion" Although an Order of Sion did exist in the Middle Ages, there is no historical evidence that Plantard's association is descended from it. In fact the orders and the charters record an abbey of Sion, but never a priory. ~"The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996) In documents dating from 1619, it [the Order of Sion] was stated to have incurred the displeasure of King Louis XIII of France, who evicted them from their seat at Orleans and turned the premises over to the Jesuits. After that, the Prieure de Sion [the Order of Sion] seemed to vanish from the historical record, at least under that name, until 1956, when it appeared again, registered in the French Journal officiel. ~Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Messianic Legacy" Plantard registered the Prieure de Sion in St. Julien. There he drew the name for his order from nearby Mont Sion, not the ancient abbey. Andrews and Schellenberger write that the original Order de Sion apparently had a secondary title "The Order of the Rose Cross Veritas" and linked it with the Rosicrucian movement in the seventeenth century. The original Order of Sion, however, had disappeared from history. ~"The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996) Plantard's Genealogy Plantard presented a genealogy which showed that the Merovingian king, Dagobert, was a direct ancestor of his, convincing both de Sede and Henry Lincoln. In fact Plantard's royal lineage rests on another forgery. His name was inserted into a genealogy copied word for word from a popular history magazine. His real ancestor was a 16th century peasant who grew walnuts. ~"The History of a Mystery", TimeWatch, BBC (1996) Although Plantard cannot legitimately claim to be the heir to the throne of France, he was assisted in his endeavors by a real, although dissolute, aristocrat the Marquis Phillipe de Cherissy. It was he, along with Plantard, who deposited the Dossiers Secrets into the Bibliotheque Nationale according to library records. Eventually Plantard, de Cherissy and Gerard de Sede had a falling out over money. The Secret Behind the Codes After their quarrel Plantard made it known that the parchments in de Sede's book were fakes. In 1971 I received a letter from Phillipe de Cherissy implying that he was the author of the two parchments published by Gerard de Sede. Plantard trusted me because I was writing a book about him and he gave me the original documents. ~Pierre Jarnac, author of "The Archives of the Treasure of Rennes-le-Château" Jarnac produced the documents for the BBC camera. A note on Parchment 1 in Plantard's handwriting stated This is the original document faked by Phillipe de Cherissy which Gerard de Sede reproduced in his book L'Or de Rennes-le-Château. In a forty-four page unpublished paper called "Stone and Paper" de Cherissy "describes how the documents were fabricated, how the ciphers were set and how they can be decoded. ~Pierre Jarnac, author of "The Archives of the Treasure of Rennes-le-Château" According to the "Stone and Paper" the solution for the ciphers in Parchment 2 is as follows: 681 The year King Dagbert was killed SHEPHERDESS From a local legend about a shepherd who falls down a hole and finds a pot of gold POUSSIN A play on words: poussin - "chicken" in French and "Hautpoul" - "big chicken" (Referring to the Hautpoul-Blancheforts of Rennes-le-Château.) LA CROIX The cross by the railway line north of Alet-les-Bains (the only agreement with Andrews and Schellenberger) CHEVAL DE DIEU Not "horse of God" but a reference to the "cabal" of de Cherissy BLUE APPLES Masonic in-joke - from "a rambling document full of puns and anagrams by a man who calls himself the Prankster"
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