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After finishing ‘City of Secrets’, I thought the story was complete. I had no idea of the amount and quality of material that was available now that the protagonists in the published book were satisfied with what was revealed. One of the qualifying factors for joining the private society which holds the Grail Rituals is the ability to do the journey. This, I discovered is not simply a geographical experience but a profound test on all levels of being.
The journey consists of 11 destinations along an area of Catalonia adjacent to the Pyrenees and its sacred mountain Canigou. It is set in a Venus magic square under the constellation of the Great Bear and has been trod for hundreds of years since the beginning of known time.
One of the ancient sites featured on ‘the journey’
The end of the 11 sites demands a test of physical and spiritual cleansing, and transformation, which makes the goal of the journey possible. What is the goal? The portal on Mt Canigou. Be prepared if the resonance is right to enter this hallowed and most private territory and find the reality beyond the 5 admitted senses – a reality beyond the limitations of time. I have twice entered a portal – it is an unforgettable life changing experience – not a given, but a state we must work for.
- Patrice Chaplin
9/9/2009 – Primrose Hill
More information on Patrice’s work can be found on her website at: www.patricechaplin.com
Patrice Chaplin, moments after writing the above introduction
I thought at first the journey led to a state of realisation. Other people thought other things. We were all wrong. The journey led to the unexpected, unbelievable, beyond the laws of this universe as it was understood. It was kept hidden, not surprisingly. The society members through the ages defended it with their lives.
Shortly after Jose mentioned the journey in 2003, the local hotel owner, Senor Mons, said it began at the barraca. He hadn’t been on it himself but had heard it wasn’t a tourist excursion exactly. The ones who came back were changed by the experience. I asked if it was religious.
‘Not to do with the church. You can be sure of that.’
‘Black Magic?’
He didn’t think the kind of people that were purported to be involved would be associated with magic. So who were they? People of standing? He didn’t know anymore at least when I asked. He did say it was more than a myth. When he said the ones who came back, I asked what happened to the others. He didn’t give a satisfactory answer.
‘Was it like the pilgrimage to Santiago?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ And he introduced a few ironic Catalan jokes to get my mind off what it shouldn’t be on anyway.
The Catalans were not keen on the occult or mysticism in general. Even their visions had to be confirmed by the Church otherwise those who witnessed them were lunatics or drunks. The acceptable were myths, miracles, especially where Catalunia was spared from the French, visions coming from the stones or water. The Catalans for centuries considered themselves down to earth, materialistic, dealing with the land, food, money, survival. Until Franco’s death they were dominated by the Church, the military, the police, bureaucracy. They acquired property if they could, and land. They were not like the French who had a long history, style, culture, and enviable aristocracy. The French gave them an inferiority complex and they were still dealing with it. The Catalan rich, and there were always rich ones, whatever the circumstances, amassed land and the people on it, huge country houses, and palaces in the cities. These were minor aristocrats and as the historian Luis Maria de Puig said, ‘They were not exciting and grand like the European aristocracy further north and they knew it.’
The Catalans would not have believed in the subject matter the private society guarded anyway. They did not make journeys except to work, to church, bank or bar.
Naris, who had built up a good business exporting fruit, understood Senor Mons was a Freemason and had got his information about the journey from them. After Senor Mons’ sudden death in 2004, his widow said he’d only known of one person making the journey and from him they had heard of others and their experiences. It had interested him for a while but had not been for him, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. It was all in the past and didn’t happen anymore.
During the research for the book City of Secrets records were found of journeys made in the 1890s. They didn’t happen often and usually for the purpose of a ritual experience or for the initiation of a new member. It was clear the French priest had been on such a journey. Why did the experience begin at the barraca and how many points on the journey were there? Where was the destination? After a while I understood it wasn’t where but what. I was told not to involve myself in the process but stick with my book – that had enough obstacles.
The barraca, a tough little building, stood alone and had hardly changed over the centuries, with a solid roof, well crafted chimney, two friendly windows. Thick trees kept it private. Many things had been hidden in this one-room stone hut including people. In some lights it belonged in a fairytale. The land was variously used for keeping small animals, growing vegetables, and Jose had cultivated the garden without losing its wildness. For a while it was a place for celebrations with lights in the trees, dancing to live music well into the night, lamb and sausages cooking on the wood fire. But essentially it was a hidden place on the slope amongst the trees at the junction of two tracks. Few people even knew it was there. Neighbours passed without seeing it. There was no electricity or running water which had to be carried up from the fountain. It was one of the original outposts of the city and Charlemagne had rested there on his stealthy journey into Gerona. The legend stated he’d had a strange experience while resting and later placed a sundial in the grounds. The sundial was still there and had odd markings which seemed to change with the light.
The first track reached up from behind the cathedral, passing the Frenchwoman’s garden to the broken Torre Gironella, a legendary landmark, especially in the Napoleonic war in the nineteenth century. The other track, steep with sliding stones, passed the fountain to the agricultural neighbourhood San Daniel, and it was by this approach Charlemagne marched into Gerona, then under Moorish invasion. He’d paused at the barraca its land then used for animals, and entered the city without obstacle. The Moors did not expect this cunning French attack and were defeated within days.
The barraca was always swept and clean with a stone floor, table, a bed, a stove. Jose inherited it from his uncle and it pleased him more than any place except the Frenchwoman’s garden. He would stay there in silence, giving himself time to write, to reflect. The barraca didn’t change. It was said a ritual had been performed in the eighteenth century to keep the place safe and secret. The payment? The land could not be sold or exchanged but handed down through the family or to another member of the society. To try and make a profit on the property would bring bad luck. In 1910, the hut was designated as a place to sit in silence, reflect and prepare for the journey. There was a list of questions in French kept beneath the stone floor:
‘Am I strong enough to be a member of the society? Am I able to fast? To be alone? To cut from those I love and need? To keep the secret?’
It was in the barraca that Jose all of a sudden revealed the story of Maria Tourdes ad Berenger Saunière. Mid-nineties and I had just come from a visit to Rennes le Château and was showing my literary agent and his wife the French garden. They had read my books on Gerona and were keen to see the city. The heat was suddenly terrible and I took them towards the shade of the cathedral. I would not have seen Jose at all if a wind from the south, always lucky for me, hadn’t started up and made me turn to enjoy the sweetness, and there in the distance was a figure I’d know anywhere walking along the path leading a way to the barraca. He was carrying a large string bag of oranges and a bottle of water from the fountain. I called his name and in spite of the heat hurried towards him.
‘I’ve been to Rennes le Château,’ I said.
‘But Rennes le Château is here. You’ll find nothing there.’ And he kissed me politely, but his eyes were fixed on mine in a way I’d remember till death.
My agent and his wife were quite impressed by this meeting, its sheer improbability. Even they had understood Luis of the Arc Bar saying Jose was out of town with his wife.
‘Oh, he’s always the first person I see,’ I said, nonchalantly, now I knew the love was still in place. I wasn’t the person they’d met an hour ago. Octaves of high happiness had made me unrecognisable.
‘We’re on a magnetic path, aren’t we?’ And Jose explained it away.
The barraca was cooled by the abundance of trees growing densely together and gratefully we sat in their shade and drank fountain water. He showed us Charlemagne’s sun dial. ‘It’s made in the French way. When he wanted privacy, Charlemagne used to sit here in the cool evening and listen to the music from the cathedral, smaller in those days.’
The next story just came out of him without caution. Was it the surprise of our meeting that made him so free with the facts?
‘Of course Rennes le Château is here. That’s why the priest came here. Gerona always had the secret. A place like this with all its resonance. Of course it would have something as powerful as that.’
‘So the priest came here?’ It was the first I’d heard about it. Bestselling books had been written on the subject yet he’d not said one word.
‘But yes, he came to see the Frenchwoman. It is well known in Gerona. My cousin Geli, the organist of the cathedral, knew all about it and looked after her. He did not know the priest but my grandfather did. The French priest came here to get that which was never in Rennes le Château.’
‘But what about the parchments, the ones that were found in the church?’ My agent had turned from a tourist to a tiger. He knew the smell of ‘bestseller’.
‘The original ones were coded instructions indicating the location of the material.’
‘Material?’ We all had a turn at that one.
‘Documents. The ritual. The …’ He stopped and asked if anyone wanted an orange. Nobody wanted anything – just him talking. ‘It’s unlikely the parchments today are the originals. They would have been copied and changed several times since 1891. Saunière would have seen to that.’
‘Who put them in the church if the secret isn’t there?’ my agent asked.
‘Abbé Bigou. He was the priest of Rennes le Château in the eighteenth century and got out before the Revolution. He had certain information that linked with Gerona.’
‘Where did he go?’ My agent, soft and persuasive, moved closer to his prey. Before the sun went down Jose could get a glowing deal.
‘Here. He came here and to a village nearby. And he had to get the information out. It was 1792.’
Jose was different. I would have said proud of his claim of the importance of his city.
‘Any documentary evidence?’ my agent asked, carefully.
‘A correspondence exists between Saunière and Maria Tourdes.’ And then he said no more.
How did he get the secret? What was it? My agent asked the questions and we all wanted the answers but we got another orange each and a sightseeing journey through the old part and that was that.
Later, I realised Jose was just throwing us a small unimportant part of the truth. Although the mystery of the French priest had filled books and documentaries for two decades it was the periphery just as the nineteenth-century society’s visitors from France and Northern Europe had been – the core belonged to the Catalans and carried a bigger unknown truth.
The next time I saw him I did ask why when he knew all this he hadn’t told me.
‘I don’t think it’s a subject for discussion.’
Was that his way of saying he didn’t trust me? It took a few more years when I was researching City of Secrets in 2004, before I understood more about the journey. Why was the barraca such an important place? Why start the journey there? Jose said it had always been a site of reflection and enquiry. What better place to begin. And things could be well hidden there. In the 1790s, when Bigou came to Gerona, a hiding place had to be found for the material he carried, documents, artefacts. The barraca wasn’t even considered being worthy. The society members in disagreement spent many stressed weeks seeking the right place.
‘It was there under their noses. The barraca was warm, waterproof, safe from movements of the earth, sudden floods, or robbers. Some members of the church, aware of Bigou’s presence in the city, compromised his safety and for days he was kept in the barraca before being moved to a house adjoining a private church in a forest in Palera outside of the town Besalu, west of Gerona.’
In the fifties, Jose’s nearest neighbour was Maria Tourdes but from the barraca he could only see the tower. I said the tower was a strange addition, neo-gothic, young in such a feast of history. He made no response but later I discovered the point of the tower and it certainly wasn’t grandiosity on the part of the house owners. I asked if Maria Tourdes visited the barraca.
‘Only to hide with Saunière when Roger Matthieu arrived unexpectedly.’
I asked who he was.
‘Her husband.’
It was the first I’d heard of him. I asked why she married if she was in love with the French priest.
‘Perhaps she saw there was no future in that particular person.’
Roger Matthieu was a silent participant in the story and I got little information. Maria Tourdes had appeared in Gerona as a very young woman and to begin with stayed out of sight. Saunière visited frequently in the late 1890s. He kept material in the house that would no longer be safe in his parish. Too many people knew of his wealth. He entertained guests of importance in Maria’s house who could no longer be seen in Rennes le Château. At some point towards the end of Saunière’s visits Roger Matthieu, described as a man of letters, made Maria’s acquaintance and later married her. He was the worst choice. Secretly he worked for the Vatican and his intention was to trap Saunière. But the French priest was too wily and dealt with enemies secret and obvious. Maria’s French gardener Guillem, probably her chaperone, stayed in the barraca when Roger Matthieu first arrived. It seemed as a man of letters Matthieu travelled in Europe and had a house north of Gerona in Llansa near the French border. He was considerably older than Maria and died in 1940. Maria’s friend Gloria said that the marriage had not been happy.
Jose kept an envelope of Maria’s letters to Saunière and others from him which were matter-of-fact. When her house and tower was pulled down stone by stone in 1964, and the palm tree dug up by its roots it was prudent to secret any information that might be of interest to this intrusive group or establishment in the barraca. When I photographed this small hut for the book I had no idea it played such an important part in the Gerona story. On Jose’s table letters were lying quite casually as he sorted through what I could use. The paper looked well preserved and of good quality, the writing stylish. Maria wrote several to the priest about the house and they were returned to Gerona with other papers at the end of his visits around 1910.
‘Why does she ask him how he wants things arranged? It’s her house.’
‘Perhaps she thought she should. He paid for it.’
And Jose explained how Saunière had set her up in the house sometime at the end of the 1890s. She was the first secular person to own it. It had always belonged to the Canons of the church and a sign over the entrance ‘House of Canons’ was still there. Jose had the deeds of the house showing a lawyer, named Saguer, had done the deal in his name as Maria was too young, probably just seventeen, and Saunière’s name must not appear anywhere on any document. Jose’s grandfather looked after both Saunière and Maria at some point. The Catalan priest and poet Jacinto Verdaguer had visited the barraca and had made the journey. I saw references to the journey as ‘walking with the Great Bear’. I thought it was to give courage. Elsewhere it was described as ‘tread the seven stars’.
So the stone hut had an importance. It was described as ‘the hidden’. A cabalist later confirmed it was on an advantageous ley line. Although a place of enquiry no questions were asked of it.
© Patrice Chaplin.
All queries should be made in care of Quest Books to Publicity@questbooks.net.
Arcadia would like to thank the amazing Xochi Adame of Quest Books for her invaluable assistance and vision, and of course Patrice Chaplin, for her trust and friendship.
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