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The study of Rennes-le-Château is indebted to Henry Lincoln. Without his contribution, the story would have been a footnote in the annals of alternative history, and not the film and publishing industry it is today. Quite simply, Lincoln is the Godfather of Rennes-le-Château. And that demands respect.
Lincoln was the first to elevate the enigma of Rennes-le-Château and Berenger Saunière to the masses, and his discovery of pentagonal geometry in the landscape took the mystery to a new level. And at the ripe old age of 76, he (along with journalist, researcher and writer Jean-Luc Chaumeil) is the surviving member of the Rennes-le-Château rat pack, a group that included Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Chérisey and Gerard de Sede; men who shaped the legend all those years ago.
Born in London in 1930, Henry Lincoln, a pseudonym for Henry Soskin, has had a remarkable career. His credentials are sensational and include the following:
Co-authored several Doctor Who episodes in the 1960’s and appeared in television programmes such as the Avengers. He also co-wrote the screenplay to the 1968 Boris Karloff film The Curse of the Crimson Altar and specialised for a time in writing scripts for historical documentaries, suchas The Tomb of Akhenaton, Nostradamus, andThe Man in the Iron Mask. He wrote the first of three BBC documentaries about Rennes-le-Chateau, The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem, in 1972.
Co-authored 1982’s landmark The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (along with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh).
Co-authored 1987’s The Messianic Legacy (with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh) and authored 1991’s The Holy Place: Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau - Discovering the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World, 1998’s Key to the Sacred Pattern: The Untold Story of Rennes-le-Château and co-authored 2002’s The Templars' Secret Island: The Knights, The Priest and The Treasure (with Erling Haagensen), which was also made into a four episode TV-series, The Secret of the Templars.
I visited Henry in August of 2006, in the garden of the Villa Bethania in Rennes-le-Château. Although advanced in years, Henry was as razor sharp as ever. His highly provocative and uncensored banter reflects a lifetime of research, revelation and intrigue, and makes for essential reading.
With Henry, during the interview in Rennes-le-Château.
[Note: where there are links in the text you can click and listen to audio snippets of Henry answering the questions.]
Well I don’t know if fair is the right word, but I suppose it is true, in that he (Plantard) fed the material to Gerard de Sede, and de Sede was the first person to write a book about it. There had been newspaper articles, but he wrote a book and generated a small interest in France and then, ya I picked it up in 1969. And I suppose if I had not made my first film for the BBC nobody would have heard of Rennes-le-Château. So, yes I suppose it’s true, I could be called the Godfather of it all.
1972 is when the first film went out. Of course I was working on it for about 2 years before that. The first film was broadcast in February 72 and ya, it got a very strong reaction so we continued with it. There was obviously more to discover, and I am still waiting for genuine discoveries after all these years. Everything has been wishful thinking and guess work. I am waiting for people to make a genuine discovery. I am no longer interested in hypothesis. I am only interested in that which is demonstrable and provable. And now that we have got that, there are only three people who have made genuine, provable discoveries.
The three people who I consider to have made genuine provable discoveries? The first is David Wood, who saw the film in which I first presented the geometry, which I had found, and he wrote a book developing that geometry. And I confess that had he not, I would have never have realised that the geometry went beyond what I had already found; which was the pentagram of mountains here, which is demonstrable and provable. Ah, without his discovery I think that I would not have realised that it went further. Unfortunately, he is locked to his one, what he calls, the extended pentacle. He cannot see the rest of it, which is a pity because his expertise is very good. If he turned his vibes to what is beyond his small piece, he might have found some very interesting things. However, that is David Wood.
The other was a mathematics teacher in Brittany, who read an article I had written for a magazine in which I had asked the readers to look for the church measure, the defining measure of the Rennes-le-Château geometry, and she found the locked hexagon and pentram in the North of France. Although she did not know I found it, she just found the repetition of the measure which I asked her to look for and I was able to identify the hexagram and pentagram there.
And of course, the other important one was Erling Haagensen, who had been working on Bornholm and had discovered the sacred geometry there, and not realised its connections. So the work we had done since, we now established the connections between the geomotry in the Baltic’s and what’s happening down here. The link is hardly known at all to the French – the link with the Danish, because it was the great Burgundian families who are at the origins of all mystification around this story, the grail legends, the establishment of the Templars through Bernard of Clairvaux, all those great Burgundian families, their origins are on the island of Bornholm and that is not known very well in France. Also that the archbishop who was in control of Bornholm and the time of Bernard of Clairvaux. They were very, very close friends.
Eskill not heard of in France, but the Archbishop and he were the one who established what happened on Bornholm. It’s a complicated story, as you know…
I don’t know if it is the word mystery or mystification? I think that this place, because of its very special nature and because of what I found, it is a very special place. So I think it has been surrounded by mysteries for a very, very long time. And it’s hard to know why the mystification has been piled onto it.
Well, it is hard to know because now you are asking me to guess and your guess is as good as mine. I am only interested in that which is demonstrable and provable. I know longer entertain entering into a hypothesis, and so to guess what de Sede might have meant or what Plantard might have known, my guess is no more valid than anyone else’s. But I have a suspicion that, well, what did they mean by someone like me? Someone who had access to the media? After all I was a writer for the television. But no, it does not seem that. Someone who was capable of finding the secret messages? Because after the very first one, which was such baby and child’s play, I am amazed that people could look at it and not see it. But then most people do look at the reproductions of those parchments and don’t see it. So maybe they were looking for someone like me with my curious sort of mind who would be able to unravel some of the things which they themselves could no longer understand. I must admit I have certain evidence which implies that.
Slightly. Not easy to make clear. When Gerard de Sede first published, he wrote the book called, L’Or de Rennes, or The Accursed Treasure, which was the one I bought, and which is the one that I had found the secret messages in. (long pause).
There were more than one original edition. There was obviously the paperback which was the one I picked up which was not illustrated; there were just a few line blocks, which included the parchments. But there was a hard back edition which had illustrations and which I acquired. And there were some extra things in there of course, which were the captions to the photographs, in the hardback edition. And the captions of the photographs were strange! Ah, so what do I mean by strange? Well, for instance, there was a picture of... Now let me jump back, I don’t want to discuss that one yet.
First of all when I came down here to look, I found that de Sede’s picture which he had put into the book saying ‘here is the grave of Berenger Saunière’, was not anything of the sort. The picture does not show Saunière’s grave at all. The next curiosity I found was a rock on the hillside at Rennes-les-Bains called the Devils Armchair. He printed the photograph upside down. That could have been an accident. But more curiously, there were things written under the photograph. For instance, Station 6 of the Stations of the Cross. Stations of the Cross, which are in all catholic churches, sometimes, simplified, merely with numbers 1-14, sometimes very elaborate paintings. Here at Rennes-le-Château they are taken from the mould of the bass relief’s, and you can see them at other churches, but the background detail is painted on! And the caption for Station 6, which is always ‘Veronica wipes the face of Jesus’ that caption read, ‘high shield, half the power, Veronica with the cloth. Simon is looking’. Now what the hell sort of caption is that?
That intrigued me no end.
But, that’s not all. For I said there was more than one edition. There was also a Book Club edition; a limited number edition. And I got a copy of that. And there were some more curiosities in there, especially in relation to the illustrations. The caption to Station 6 of the Stations of the Cross was the same but there were other illustrations. For instance, there was an illustration of what the caption told us, was that the dining room door in a hotel at Rennes-les-Bains. And it was a picture of a woman in plain cloths standing in a circle and a bee in each corner. Now there was absolutely no reference to that in the book at all. I found that strange that there was a picture of the dining room door with an odd caption, and no reference in the text. But that does not create a mystery, necessarily, and I wondered if there simply had been an explanation for this when the book was being prepared for publication, and they cut that piece of text, and it was just too late to remove the photograph, and so the photograph survived. However when I got the Book Club edition, that proved not to be true, because although the picture of the dinning room door was there, it was no longer the same picture. One had been a harsh tone print; the other was a line block drawing. Therefore, the illustration was there deliberately. But there was no mention of it! There are curiosities in those books. And maybe, going back to your original question, maybe someone like me was someone who was capable of unravelling those sorts of oddities.
I have certain indications that this could have been the case and that de Sede may not have been aware. This takes us to the question of de Sede, who in 1965 I think it was, offered to sell me pictures of the treasure discovered by Berenger Saunière, which he said he had seen and was prepared to let me have photographs of.
Maybe I should go into some detail, if you like, as it is quite a story.
Well I was preparing the second film, I received a letter from de Sede saying ‘I just heard that you are making a second film, so I think you will find it interesting to know that one of my colleagues and myself have discovered the treasure found by Berenger Saunière and am prepared to offer you photographs of the 7 pieces of treasure’. And he gave me a telephone number and asked me to ring him thinking that I would be excited. Naturally, if someone offers you access to a treasure – hooray! However, I do not react like that. I sent him a simple note saying I found your letter interesting, tell me more. And so a week later I got another letter form him, this time saying that he was prepared to not to give me photographs, but a 10 minute sound film of himself presenting the 8 pieces of treasure.
Very strange, because in the first letter there had been 7 pieces of treasure, and now he was offing to provide me with film of himself presenting 8 pieces of treasure, and for me to broadcast it on the BBC. Therefore, he must have thought it was genuine himself, otherwise he would not have wanted to expose himself on the BBC presenting something that was a fake.
Yes, that is probably the case. Yes, I think it must be.
So, he must have thought it was genuine because he was prepared to expose himself with it. I, however, was quite certain it was a fake, so I did not respond to his letter. I merely filed it and forgot it. I suppose with hindsight it was a little foolish of me. I should have let him do it. But I am not interested in that sort of level of sensationalism and playing games. I knew he was trying to play a game with me, but perhaps he wasn’t and there was somebody behind him. At that stage I did not know of the existence of someone named Plantard. So obviously someone had convinced de Sede that he had a genuine treasure. He in turn tried to convince me. But I did not rise to the bait. So de Sede and his colleague, who proved to be a man called Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who is now wheeled out as a so called expert on the Rennes-le-Château story, though I think one has to approach his expertise with some degree of caution, as he himself offered with de Sede. He was the colleague who was going to sell me the pictures of the treasure. Because I did not take it he wrote an article for a magazine called Charivari saying 'the treasure is real, I have seen it.' And that was obviously untrue. Some strange mystifications, being wrapped around this story and that is why nothing in the story of Rennes-le-Château is reliable. Absolutely everything is either heresy or invention. There is very little which is not heresy or invention and so should be regarded with extreme caution. There are no facts. We don’t know anything, for instance, even about Berenger Saunière; at least I don’t know anything about Berenger Saunière apart from his name. Everything else is heresy. Totally unreliable.
Yes, don’t believe a word. By that, I don’t mean, I am telling lies. When I say don’t believe a word of it I am not telling lies, I am saying go out and prove it for yourself. Don’t believe it just because I say it. The only things I ask you to believe are the things that are demonstrable and provable, and I give you the mathematics; boring though they are.
The tomb in the Poussin painting?
It was while we were preparing the first film that I was contacted by de Sede who told me that the tomb depicted in Pousins Shepherd’s of Arcadia had been found. It was near to Rennes-le-Château and he would send me the photographs when he had them. Now, it has to be said about this question of the tomb and the Poussin painting, that again, in de Sede’s book there is a one sentence reference to the fact that when Sauniere was in Paris he went to the Lourve and bought copies of 3 paintings, one of which was Shepherd’s of Arcadia. Now that seemed to have no significance beyond a demonstration of how carefully he had done his research. After all, hooray, so the man had bought some paintings – so what. There is no other significance to that statement in the book at all. It was not until we were making the film that he said, hey we found the tomb. So we stopped at the BBC. We stopped making the film and said hey this is getting bigger and more important and so we waited and began to do the research for this and that tomb, which sadly no longer exists, was supposed in the painting, an imaginary tomb in an imaginary landscape. But it isn’t. It’s a real tomb, or was a real tomb, and it is in a real landscape. The art establishment now, happily after all these years has accepted this fact and they now do agree that Poussin did paint that landscape. So, interesting that just a few miles from Rennes-le-Château we have Arcadia – Et in Arcadia Ego; I too am in Arcadia, and there it is.
That was because, when I was looking with care at Poisson’s Sheppard’s of Arcadia, I found an anomaly in the painting when I came to Paris to look at the xrays. I decided that I wanted to look at the xrays and I found a small tiny, apparent anomaly, not visible on the painting itself but only visible on the xray, and it drew my attention to the Shepherd’s staff. Because on the xray you could see through the wreaths around the Shepherd’s head and you could see that the staff, the foreground detail, had been painted before the tomb, which is a background detail.
It seemed strange, that an artist would paint a foreground detail before he put in the background detail. So it just drew my attention to it. I need not say more than that, for when my attention is drawn to something, I look at it. And once I began to look at the Shepherd’s staff and wondered why he had painted it first, I discovered a geometry, which I was not expecting, and did not understand. So I thought we would need an expert and Professor Christopher Conford was teaching at the Royal College of Art and he had made the geometric analysis of paintings and had already done one by Poussin, so they asked if he would do a geometric analysis of Shepherd’s of Arcadia. I did not tell him what I found in order not to affect his thinking and he did the analysis and was totally staggered by what he found. It was out of Poussin’s period. Poussin should have not been using that sort of geometry.
Many classical paintings dramatise their paintings, but this one was not of Poussin’s period. Poussin had based the painting on the 5-pointed star, a regular pentagram, and that surprised him. It surprised me even more, but for a completely different reason. This was because, when examining the messages supposedly found by the priest hidden in the church, the parchments, which were supposed to be the beginning of the mystery, not only were there the secret messages, but I also found the geometric shape, the pentagram. This was meaningless when I discovered it, but it was again the 5-pointed star, the pentagram. So, twice it has surfaced in the story. So when Professor Conford found it, it was quite staggering. So it had to be looked at and had to be considered seriously. This is where we eventually then became lead to the demonstrable and provable discoveries. It was Professor Conford who said, ‘why don’t you look in the landscape?’
Oh no, it was well developed!
Yes, it was well developed. It has been in my films. But the Holy Blood and Holy Grail, after all was the exploration of a hypothesis that there may have been a continuing blood descent from Jesus. It is a different approach to the story altogether. We were looking for a historical background, and so the geometry and in fact, anything in particularly relevant to Rennes-le-Château as such, was not really relevant to that book. In fact my two co-writers really are more concerned with historical fact than they are with Rennes-le-Château. They know not very much about Rennes-le-Château at all. It’s that historical background which is more of their interest, I think.
No I don’t, and I think there have been many garbled representations of what happened. There was more in that original film, but no, I don’t think it’s possible to explore that. I don’t know what Roy Davies was looking for. It certainly was not what I was looking for. He had already attempted to make a film which somebody had told him they found the treasure, and were going to dig it up. I have never been one for galloping down treasure hunting pathways. That’s just wishful thinking. So, I think he had another agenda.
It is very hard to know what he knew. When he saw the geometry for the first time he reacted very strongly. He was startled, let’s say. Now I don’t know whether he was startled by the site of it because he was not aware it was there, or he was startled by the fact that I had found it. So I can’t give you any valid answer about what his reaction really would have meant. So I do not know whether he knew of the existence of the geometry itself. I found that myself, independently. But when I, on occasion in a private meeting I had, put in front of him a piece of geometry, which I had uncovered in amongst all this mish mash of evidence, I showed it to him and he looked it for a moment and said ‘I find it disturbing’. And that is all he said.
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