Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (11 page)

After enduring the blindfolded knock at the lodge door and the request for “More light!” James was asked to place his nose alongside a mock guillotine. When the guillotine left his nose intact, he was ordered to step carefully among several scattered rat traps, followed by walking a plank.

Nothing surprising occurred until the most dramatic part of the ceremony, which consisted of James being set in front of a shelf holding two empty tin cans. At a signal, a Masonic brother was to fire a pistol in James's direction, and the two tins cans would tumble noisily from the shelf, convincing James that the gun had actually been loaded.

The shots were to be fired by 77-year-old Albert Eid, who arrived for the ceremony carrying a .22 caliber revolver in one pocket and a .32 caliber revolver in the other. The smaller pistol was loaded with blank cartridges, the .32 with real bullets. At a signal from one of the brothers Eid reached into his pocket, withdrew a pistol and, instead of aiming it at the empty tin cans,
he pointed it directly at William James and fired. He had chosen the wrong pistol. The bullet entered James's head and he died instantly.

Freemason leaders quickly distanced themselves from the tragedy, noting that the procedure had nothing to do with true Masonic traditions or ceremonies. Anti-Freemasons had little to say at first. After such a tragedy, how could anyone seriously consider the Masons a dangerous society? Then came the revisionists. Within a year, stories circulated on the Internet and elsewhere that James's death had been no accident at all. Eid had been ordered to eliminate James because the about-to-be-initiated Mason had planned to infiltrate the organization and reveal its true clandestine activities. Ignoring the fact that Eid was one of James's oldest and closest friends, and thus the least likely person to be assigned the murder, theorists pointed to the gentle manner with which Eid was treated by the courts, who called the death a senseless tragedy and handed down a five-year suspended sentence. This, they said, was proof that Masons controlled both the media and the justice system.

A new legend was born. If Freemasons endure for a few more centuries, William James may well be associated with William Morgan as another tragic victim of the Freemasons and the machinations of their secret society.

THREE

PRIORY OF SION

KEEPERS OF THE HOLY GRAIL

IF ALL FAMILIES HAVE SECRETS, THEN SOME SECRETS ARE
more common than others. Surely among the most familiar of family secrets is a clandestine marriage (or no marriage at all) that produces a child whose existence is never acknowledged. That's the basis for the Priory of Sion, whose members are legion, whose adherents are fanatic and whose history, according to serious researchers, is either mundane or absurd.

Mind you, the tale has its understandable appeal. Who could resist a story involving a fake death, a reformed prostitute and a bloodline traced through individuals as eminent and gifted as Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy, Jules Verne and Victor Hugo? Toss in the Templars, the Nazis, a vast hidden treasure and the promise of retrieving an artifact of Christ's crucifixion (the grail), and the epic grows more enticing than anything a Hollywood scriptwriter could create. For this reason alone, the Priory of Sion boasts thousands of adherents who allege proof of its existence and contend that it has influenced world events for 2000 years.

In spite of many celebrated names associated with the Priory, reality suggests that the tale revolves around three primary characters: a poor parish priest who needed an explanation for his accumulation of personal wealth; an anti-Semitic Frenchman searching for a way to fulfill his wartime dreams; and a charming medieval princess. Not to mention Jesus Christ and his wife and child.

The basis of the tale, which has more variations than the works of Mozart, is this:

Despite certainty among Christians, Mary Magdalene was no Jerusalem strumpet but the middle-class Jewish wife of Jesus, their union either never divulged or conducted in a manner described today as common-law. Depending on the source, Christ's crucifixion was faked and he and his wife fled Jerusalem to escape death, or Mary Magdalene escaped alone from Palestine following Christ's death. Either way, she arrived on the Mediterranean coast of France, suggesting she traveled by boat, and she was pregnant. Moreover, her pregnancy resulted in the birth of a healthy baby whose offspring, traced through two millennia of history, have influenced world development to an enormous degree even while their existence has been hidden from the general populace.
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It is difficult to imagine a story more capable of tilting virtually every tenet of Christianity into a cocked hat than the suggestion that Mary Magdalene gave birth to a descendant of God through Christ. That premise alone has spawned dozens of explanations for historical events, including those for which no “explanation” would otherwise be deemed necessary. The creation and initial success of the Templars, for example, is traced by some to the French-based line of Christ's descendants. Proponents of this theory point to France as the acknowledged root of the Templars’ strength and to the fact that their destruction was organized by a French monarch, who perhaps had learned the truth of their blood heritage. In partnership with a newly elected pope aware of the dangers to the Church if the truth were revealed, the French king grew determined to eliminate the Templars. He was motivated not by fear of the Templars’ power and his avarice for their wealth, but by the need to purify Christianity.

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According to proponents of the priory's existence, the term “holy grail” refers not to a chalice or other utensil used at The Last Supper, but to the bloodline traced from Christ through descendants.

Indeed, a lengthy list of descendants of Jesus may be found on “secret dossiers” written on ancient parchment and placed in
the care of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Many names in the dossiers are obscure. Some are recognized by scholars for being associated with the occult, especially during medieval times. A few qualify as first-rank historical celebrities: Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy, Jean Cocteau and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci.

Why maintain records of such a distinctive lineage and keep it secret for twenty centuries, only to make it public at the end of the second millennium? Perhaps to restore the dynasty established by Mary Magdalene, a bloodline that extends not only to the throne of France but to thrones of other European nations, creating an international cabal tied by common lineage and devoted to controlling world events. This family line, known as the Merovingian dynasty, took control of France about ad 475, filling the power gap created when the Roman empire collapsed and extending its influence across history ever since.

“Merovingian” is derived from Meroveus, father of Childeric i, who became the first non-Roman ruler of Gaul, the region now known as France. Meroveus, so the legend goes, could trace his ancestry back through Joseph of Arimathea to Christ. Or maybe not. While some monastic records identify Meroveus in this manner, the historian Priscus claims he was sired by a mysterious sea creature, explaining the source of his esoteric knowledge and skills in the occult. This relationship with a sea-beast is seen as evidence that (a) Mary Magdalene stepped out of a sailing vessel onto the shores of France, where she gave birth to the son of Jesus; (b) an effort has been made to obscure this same historical fact by immersing it in fable; (c) an attempt has been made in the opposite direction, identifying Meroveus's ancestor with Christ, because the fish is a symbol of Christianity.
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Or, if you prefer, (d) the Merovingians were descendants of extraterrestrial beings who bred with chosen Israelites, creating a true superrace.

The tale remains murky until 671, when the Merovingian prince Dagobert ii marries Giselle de Razes, daughter of the Count of Razes and niece of the Visigoth High King, thus
uniting two powerful forces that had long struggled against each other for control of France.

Dagobert appears to be an erudite man for his time. Educated in an Irish monastery, he married Mathilde of York, a Celtic princess, and settled in England, where he became friends with Saint Wilfrid, the Bishop of York. Upon the death of Mathilde, the bishop guided him into the marriage with Giselle. Based on a description of Giselle as a ravishing beauty skilled in the arts and educated beyond the level of women of her day, it sounds like a marriage made in heaven, or at least in Languedoc, the area of France bordering the Mediterranean between Marseilles and the Spanish border. Here, in an old Visigoth chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene, near the city of Rhaede, they were wed.

Thanks to several geographic advantages, Rhaede boasted a population at the time of more than 30,000 inhabitants. Situated at the intersection of roads extending across adjoining valleys, with several fresh-water springs nearby, the town dated back to pre-Roman times. It was a natural location for celebrating the union of two powerful families.

Things went reasonably well at first, especially for a Dark Ages warrior. Dagobert managed to wrest what is now modern-day France away from the clutches of three brothers who had claimed the land after the death of their father, and Giselle rewarded him with a son and heir, an important achievement in those times. Meanwhile, Dagobert began to consolidate his power, which angered both the Church and his old friend Wilfrid. Like most rulers of his time, Dagobert created enemies, so many that few of his subjects were surprised when he was murdered while on a hunting expedition, and it was only through luck, perception or divine intervention that Giselle and their son Sigisbert, accompanied by a small group of faithful knights, escaped a similar fate. From that point on, Sigisbert and his descendants kept their lineage a secret from others, even while recording it among themselves so that members could recognize the holiness of their ancestry and employ it to achieve greatness of one kind or another.

Soon after, Rhaede began a long decline from its status as a major center. After being devastated during battles with Spain, its inhabitants suffered terribly during the plague years. Repeated sacking and burning by Catalan bandits persuaded the remaining residents to abandon the city entirely. Most fled inland, while a hardy few remained, rebuilding their community as a village named Rennes-le-Chateau.

Meanwhile, a monastic order was founded in Jerusalem. Known as Our Lady of Mount Zion, the order later transferred its headquarters to St. Leonard d'Acre in Palestine, and later still relocated in Sicily. It operated there for some time before being absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617, its history easily confirmed through authentic Church records. Everything we know about it appears to verify that this Priory of Sion functioned like dozens of similar facilities of its time. As a center for meditation and salvation, it interacted with the community around it, playing the usual feudal/medieval role of social hub, inspirational retreat and cultural resource. Nothing suggests that it seethed with conspirators, harbored Templars plotting revenge against the Church, or served as a genealogical resource for latter-day Merovingians. Its only role in history has been to provide a name for a society that claims 2000 years of threatened yet influential existence.

The next chapter of the tale begins in 1885 when a Catholic priest named Francois Berenger Saunière is dispatched to the parish surrounding the village of Rennes-le-Chateau. Over 1000 years had passed since the wedding of Dagobert and Giselle that bound the Visigoth kingdom and the Merovingian blood line. The old strategic city of Rhaede that had been the site of that marriage was now a backwater village housing barely 200 residents.

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Alert readers of
The Da Vinci Code
will recognize that the book's author employed this name to identify the mysterious individual whose death, at the beginning of the book, sets the novel's plot in motion.

Saunière
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is an interesting historical figure, made more interesting by his involvement in perhaps the most compelling
secret society legend of our time. Well educated and ambitious, the handsome Saunière could only have been disappointed, if not crushed, upon arriving at his new posting. Located about forty kilometers from Carcassonne in the shadows of the Pyrenees, Rennes-le-Chateau might as well have been on the moon as far as a priest with high aspirations was concerned. At thirty-three years of age, Saunière probably saw the assignment as the end of the road, if not the end of his dreams.