Ariadne thread of rennes!
If you set out on a quest for the truth about the Rennes-le-Château Affair be warned - you face a long and arduous journey. That truth is like the shifting of sands - it changes so often that it is difficult to deal with.
You will require discipline and dedication. In the end your quest may take on a moral and spiritual significance, a pilgrimage if you will. Much can be learned in history, archaeology, esoterica, theology, palaeography, manuscripts, mathematics, puns and poetry during this pilgrimage. But more than a pilgrimage, the harder the journey both intellectually and perhaps physically, the more and the tougher the obstacles on your path, the more of a initiate researcher you will be transformed in to and acquire knowledge during your voyage of initiation. This is the pilgrimage towards the Two Rennes and to their mysteries!
You must endeavour to "... clear a path with a sword through .... the inextricable vegetation ..." of a possible physical landscape as well as a mental landscape. Both are littered with intricate complicated clues. You need to find these clues even though they can change and/or become dead-ends at any time.
Metaphorically this will feel like fighting your way through a densely wooded forest. You will constantly have the feeling of battling through it. The riddles and puzzles will overwhelm you & trap you like thorny plants eventually do. This inextricable vegetation allusion drums it home - mental and geographical landscapes may be virtually impassable - like a fortress that has foiled one invader after another over hundreds of centuries! Even then any information learned will remain difficult to unravel - like gnarled branches of ancient trees - so involved and so intricate is the puzzle. You will need strength and resilience to disentangle yourself!
To follow your own Ariadne thread of Rennes might require several approaches but which one is best to solve the mystery? Will it be a "trial and error" approach or a puzzle-solving approach? For the puzzle-solvers among us, you will realise quickly that this is the real way forward. The trial-and-error approach works in Science but is rarely concerned with how many solutions exist to a problem and can even assume only one correct solution. Puzzle solving however makes no such assumption and is capable of locating all possible solutions to a situation. Our poet confirms this in Le Serpent Rouge when he writes that it is the parchments designed by his Friend that are what we need, that this is our 'ball of red thread' equivalent to that which Theseus had to help him! For Ariadne, in the Greek myth, gave Theseus a ball of red thread, and Theseus unrolled it as he penetrated the labyrinth, which he then rolled back up which allowed him to find his way back out of the labyrinth. The famous Parchments are the 'ball of red thread' and it is these two documents you must penetrate.
Thus approach the Parchments like solving a puzzle! Put the puzzle pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct solution. Analyse what the puzzle pieces are, what exactly the Parchments are and what they encipher. Work out how to 'put them back together again'. You will need to take the plunge.
Do you accept these famous Parchments as real? Or are they a modern hoax? If so, a hoax of what? A hoax contrived or planned with subtle skill and craft? To mislead? To throw you off track? To what purpose? How about they are a fake's fake? Perhaps an adaptation from an original to obfuscate? Do you dismiss the parchments as frauds? Analyse why you dismiss, analyse why you accept. The [re]searcher will need to ponder the problem - using reasoning & study. To grasp the full meaning is to look at the philosophical, psychological and historical meaning.
Once you adopt the correct approach and mind-set and if you make it through - according to our poet - you will have reached the residence of the Sleeping BEAUTY - in whom he saw the QUEEN of a past realm. It is the same location that the Friend was searching for! Once there you will experience 'a sweet perfume rising towards you as it permeates the sepulchre"! You are inside a very important tomb! Perhaps a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone. Perhaps even a receptacle for religious relics. This past Queen, this female, this Sleeping Beauty with a sweet perfume - who is she? Is she literal or symbolic? This concealed and sacred knowledge about the Two Rennes is certainly not to be violated or tampered with!
Like Theseus, the searcher initiate should follow the Parchment thread - these are the guides that will help keep you on track. For Ariadne, on the advice of Daedalus, gave Theseus a ball of thread (a clew), so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth. As soon as Theseus entered the Labyrinth, he tied one end of the ball of string to the doorpost and followed Daedalus' instructions given to Ariadne: go forwards, always down, and never left or right. Use the clews [clues] in this Affair to create and maintain a record that tracks all the avenues available to explore and to solve. Then you can backtrack — reversing earlier decisions and trying alternatives if required. In this way you will cut through all the mystification and false trails deliberately laid to throw you off track.
You will do well to remember the admonishment given to us by Philippe de Chérisey, who is in fact our Ariadne. He wrote; "Dear Reader, to whom we tell everything, but who does not listen".
There are clews/clues to be heard as well as 'read'! Remember the phonetic play on the word clew/clue - for this is also part of Ariadne's thread. It is the langue des oiseaux - that secret language of bird speak, the language of the initiates used by Boudet and Chérisey. Read HERE to 'see' this in action!
Chérisey tells us that "every precaution has been taken for thousands of years so that the treasure location is very obvious and very mundane at the same time, recognisable through a great number of landmarks, for which the reader will be thankful to us since we gave him the main ones". Chérisey includes those markers that have gone before but lead nowhere! Use intuition and intelligence to know which information is useful and which is not!
In 1618 Johann Valentin Andreae compared those Rosicrucians as people playing in a world amphitheatre where no one or anything was being seen in their true light. He used the phrase "the ludibrium of the fictitious Rosicrucian Fraternity" when describing them knowing full well the Rosicrucian Fraternity did indeed exist. Historians have taken Andreae at his word and suggested that the Rosicrucians for him were a ludibrium that was a dramatic allegory played out in a political domain rather than a literal joke!
An allegory is a “story, picture, or piece of art that uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one.” In its most simple and concise definition, an allegory is when a piece of visual or narrative media uses one thing to “stand in for” a different, hidden idea. It’s a little bit like an algebraic equation, like y = 2x, but in the form of art. Both Plantard and Chérisey practised this allegorical way of imparting information in their literature. Did Plantard and Chérisey play out their allegory of the ludibrium of the fictitious Priory of Sion in the way Andreae meant? Was there more to the 'story' of Saunière and the events surrounding him? If so, how did they know? Has Saunière yet to be seen in his 'true light'? Did Plantard et al adopt allegorical text and prose and other pieces of visual or narrative media to “stand in for” a different and hidden idea they were trying to convey? This view would support the idea that the whole affair is not a 'hoax' per se, even though Chérisey often claimed this. We may be reminded here by a quote from a friend of Cherisey's, Paul Rouelle, who said that "Philippe claimed to have faked the parchments, but I don't believe it. He wanted to cover his tracks to avoid pressure".
Plantard and Chérisey were not poking fun at us or playing a game, their ludibrium was not for scorn and derision at our expense. They were attempting to pass on knowledge as well as searching for more information themselves.
As for my part I am convinced that there is a material archaeological 'treasure' in the form of a lost Roman town beneath Rennes-les-Bains. But there does seem to be something else. Perhaps as Gérard de Sède claimed, there is 'an inexhaustible mine that has not given up its secrets'. Or a mysterious buried tomb in a vast necropolis or perhaps an underground Temple waiting to be discovered. Or perhaps some indispensable knowledge that - as Marie Dénarnaud said to Noël Corbu - could make someone 'powerful'!
We therefore invite you to rediscover with a fresh eye the mystery of Rennes-le-Château!
You will require discipline and dedication. In the end your quest may take on a moral and spiritual significance, a pilgrimage if you will. Much can be learned in history, archaeology, esoterica, theology, palaeography, manuscripts, mathematics, puns and poetry during this pilgrimage. But more than a pilgrimage, the harder the journey both intellectually and perhaps physically, the more and the tougher the obstacles on your path, the more of a initiate researcher you will be transformed in to and acquire knowledge during your voyage of initiation. This is the pilgrimage towards the Two Rennes and to their mysteries!
You must endeavour to "... clear a path with a sword through .... the inextricable vegetation ..." of a possible physical landscape as well as a mental landscape. Both are littered with intricate complicated clues. You need to find these clues even though they can change and/or become dead-ends at any time.
Metaphorically this will feel like fighting your way through a densely wooded forest. You will constantly have the feeling of battling through it. The riddles and puzzles will overwhelm you & trap you like thorny plants eventually do. This inextricable vegetation allusion drums it home - mental and geographical landscapes may be virtually impassable - like a fortress that has foiled one invader after another over hundreds of centuries! Even then any information learned will remain difficult to unravel - like gnarled branches of ancient trees - so involved and so intricate is the puzzle. You will need strength and resilience to disentangle yourself!
To follow your own Ariadne thread of Rennes might require several approaches but which one is best to solve the mystery? Will it be a "trial and error" approach or a puzzle-solving approach? For the puzzle-solvers among us, you will realise quickly that this is the real way forward. The trial-and-error approach works in Science but is rarely concerned with how many solutions exist to a problem and can even assume only one correct solution. Puzzle solving however makes no such assumption and is capable of locating all possible solutions to a situation. Our poet confirms this in Le Serpent Rouge when he writes that it is the parchments designed by his Friend that are what we need, that this is our 'ball of red thread' equivalent to that which Theseus had to help him! For Ariadne, in the Greek myth, gave Theseus a ball of red thread, and Theseus unrolled it as he penetrated the labyrinth, which he then rolled back up which allowed him to find his way back out of the labyrinth. The famous Parchments are the 'ball of red thread' and it is these two documents you must penetrate.
Thus approach the Parchments like solving a puzzle! Put the puzzle pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct solution. Analyse what the puzzle pieces are, what exactly the Parchments are and what they encipher. Work out how to 'put them back together again'. You will need to take the plunge.
Do you accept these famous Parchments as real? Or are they a modern hoax? If so, a hoax of what? A hoax contrived or planned with subtle skill and craft? To mislead? To throw you off track? To what purpose? How about they are a fake's fake? Perhaps an adaptation from an original to obfuscate? Do you dismiss the parchments as frauds? Analyse why you dismiss, analyse why you accept. The [re]searcher will need to ponder the problem - using reasoning & study. To grasp the full meaning is to look at the philosophical, psychological and historical meaning.
Once you adopt the correct approach and mind-set and if you make it through - according to our poet - you will have reached the residence of the Sleeping BEAUTY - in whom he saw the QUEEN of a past realm. It is the same location that the Friend was searching for! Once there you will experience 'a sweet perfume rising towards you as it permeates the sepulchre"! You are inside a very important tomb! Perhaps a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone. Perhaps even a receptacle for religious relics. This past Queen, this female, this Sleeping Beauty with a sweet perfume - who is she? Is she literal or symbolic? This concealed and sacred knowledge about the Two Rennes is certainly not to be violated or tampered with!
Like Theseus, the searcher initiate should follow the Parchment thread - these are the guides that will help keep you on track. For Ariadne, on the advice of Daedalus, gave Theseus a ball of thread (a clew), so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth. As soon as Theseus entered the Labyrinth, he tied one end of the ball of string to the doorpost and followed Daedalus' instructions given to Ariadne: go forwards, always down, and never left or right. Use the clews [clues] in this Affair to create and maintain a record that tracks all the avenues available to explore and to solve. Then you can backtrack — reversing earlier decisions and trying alternatives if required. In this way you will cut through all the mystification and false trails deliberately laid to throw you off track.
You will do well to remember the admonishment given to us by Philippe de Chérisey, who is in fact our Ariadne. He wrote; "Dear Reader, to whom we tell everything, but who does not listen".
There are clews/clues to be heard as well as 'read'! Remember the phonetic play on the word clew/clue - for this is also part of Ariadne's thread. It is the langue des oiseaux - that secret language of bird speak, the language of the initiates used by Boudet and Chérisey. Read HERE to 'see' this in action!
Chérisey tells us that "every precaution has been taken for thousands of years so that the treasure location is very obvious and very mundane at the same time, recognisable through a great number of landmarks, for which the reader will be thankful to us since we gave him the main ones". Chérisey includes those markers that have gone before but lead nowhere! Use intuition and intelligence to know which information is useful and which is not!
In 1618 Johann Valentin Andreae compared those Rosicrucians as people playing in a world amphitheatre where no one or anything was being seen in their true light. He used the phrase "the ludibrium of the fictitious Rosicrucian Fraternity" when describing them knowing full well the Rosicrucian Fraternity did indeed exist. Historians have taken Andreae at his word and suggested that the Rosicrucians for him were a ludibrium that was a dramatic allegory played out in a political domain rather than a literal joke!
An allegory is a “story, picture, or piece of art that uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one.” In its most simple and concise definition, an allegory is when a piece of visual or narrative media uses one thing to “stand in for” a different, hidden idea. It’s a little bit like an algebraic equation, like y = 2x, but in the form of art. Both Plantard and Chérisey practised this allegorical way of imparting information in their literature. Did Plantard and Chérisey play out their allegory of the ludibrium of the fictitious Priory of Sion in the way Andreae meant? Was there more to the 'story' of Saunière and the events surrounding him? If so, how did they know? Has Saunière yet to be seen in his 'true light'? Did Plantard et al adopt allegorical text and prose and other pieces of visual or narrative media to “stand in for” a different and hidden idea they were trying to convey? This view would support the idea that the whole affair is not a 'hoax' per se, even though Chérisey often claimed this. We may be reminded here by a quote from a friend of Cherisey's, Paul Rouelle, who said that "Philippe claimed to have faked the parchments, but I don't believe it. He wanted to cover his tracks to avoid pressure".
Plantard and Chérisey were not poking fun at us or playing a game, their ludibrium was not for scorn and derision at our expense. They were attempting to pass on knowledge as well as searching for more information themselves.
As for my part I am convinced that there is a material archaeological 'treasure' in the form of a lost Roman town beneath Rennes-les-Bains. But there does seem to be something else. Perhaps as Gérard de Sède claimed, there is 'an inexhaustible mine that has not given up its secrets'. Or a mysterious buried tomb in a vast necropolis or perhaps an underground Temple waiting to be discovered. Or perhaps some indispensable knowledge that - as Marie Dénarnaud said to Noël Corbu - could make someone 'powerful'!
We therefore invite you to rediscover with a fresh eye the mystery of Rennes-le-Château!