I have been working for weeks now at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris because the records of the Inquisition are kept here. They give a clear picture of Montsegur’s tragic end. Now I know that during that Palm Sunday madness when Montsegur was betrayed, four heretical perfecti wrapped in woolen sheets were secretly lowered on ropes from the summit of the castle rock into the abyss to save the heretical treasure.1 The project succeeded. They were able to hand over their precious property to Pons Arnaud, a heretical knight who was the lord of the small castle Verdun in the Sabarthes.
The canyon west of the Tabor range is called the Sabarthes. A mule path—the Route des Cathares, the pathway of the pure ones—leads there from Montsegur. If the mysterious Cathar treasure was indeed the Gral, which according to legend can be recovered only when the congregation is attending Mass, then we must look for it in the Sabarthes. Soon, spring will come, and I will travel again to the land of the Albigensians—and this time also to the Sabarthes!
Thanks to my research in the Nationale (as Frenchmen call their state library), I discovered hitherto new and strange aspects of the Cathars and troubadours, who formed a single “community of the Minne.” For instance, the German Cistercian monk Caesarius von Heisterbach, who was their contemporary, wrote that if the Cathars had recognized Moses and the Prophets, they could not have been considered heretics; that the Albigensian error was so popular that it would have affected a thousand cities within a short time—and all of Europe would have been poisoned had the sword of the believers not smashed it. It became a conflict between so-called orthodox Christianity and the world of the Cathars. In reality, the crusade was the enforcement of the bigotry and intolerance of the Old Testament.
Furthermore, twenty years ago, the Catholic University of Louvain published a thesis of Edmond Broeckx, a theology professor who presented it during a short seminar at Hoogstraten. Dedicated to Cardinal Mercier, the dissertation was entitled Le Catharisme, The World of
i lie Cathars. In it, the author asserts that only a few heretics practiced monkish asceticism, which was an exception. (I probably do not need to worry about exceptions!) Broeckx wrote in his thesis that some heretics li.nl practiced the trade of butcher, and gave as an example the story of i man from Salsigne who was not required to give up his occupation. < Concerning killing in general, a heretical perfectus named Guilhelm de I'r I i baste was permitted to kill not only animals but also Catholics as ‘.non as they began hunting heretics! More important, however, was mother discovery that I made in this book and which consists of only mm sentence: La secte possedait ecrits et chants nationauxd"
All these writings and songs were destroyed in a fate similar to that ■ I those who wrote them. That painting hanging in the Prado in Madrid, ' Im h shows St. Dominic burning heretical books, says enough.
The Grail legend, which came “from Provence to German lands” iitiil, in the land of the Franks, “was sung in the German language” by Wi ill ram von Eschenbach, is one of these national songs. Wolfram wrote nt Ins Parzival that peregrini burned Provence—that is, the pilgrims of iIn Albigensian crusade, innumerabiles cum ingenti gaudio (innumerable ones with tremendous joy). This terrible sentence can be found in i In writings of Pierre de Vaux Cernay in Hystoria Albigensis.31 In addi-m 111, we can find the more pleasing fact that “ nearly all the barons of the i uiintry were protectors, and harborers of the heretics. These men sin-ricly loved and defended them against God and the Church.” Wolfram • mi Eschenbach was a courageous man, otherwise he would not have mii rded that the true tale came from Provence!
Bernard of Clairvaux once said that there were no greater Christian inions than those given by the Cathars, because their morals were pine and their actions were in harmony with their words. Nevertheless, Ik' was careful to add that he wanted to have all heretics burned at the i ilm. 1 am really not qualified to say if the Cathars held proper Christian inions, as the French Dominican Jean Guiraud maintained in 1907, m i hat heretical rites agreed with the Liturgy of early Christianity. It i et i a inly seems, however, that the Christ of the Cathars was completely illllerent from the one who grew out of the Bible. In the Inquisition
"| I lie sect possessed national writings and songs. —Trans.] "|Albigensian History. —Trans.]
registers, we can read: dicunt Christum phantasma fuisse non homi-nem. They stated thus that Christ was a ghost, not a human being! In another place, I found that Christ taught that he was “held in the stars of the sky.” The Cathars must therefore have confessed (like that recently deceased and hard-struggling German Arthur Drews)2 the point of view that Christology is nothing other than an astral myth gathered from the course of the stars.
The heretics loved the stars, an old woman whose ancestors were Cathars recently said to me. She told the truth. I visited the local palace museum. Approximately three hundred years ago, Henry IV, the so-called Huguenot king of France from the noble House of Foix, resided here. In a large hall are displayed prehistoric finds from the Pyrenees. Hardly an article is without a swastika, the age-old symbol of the sun and salvation. It makes me think of Germany.
I a in again in southern France. Cahors is the town in which, from my express train window on my first trip to the land of the Albigensians and ilie troubadours, I saw a bridge that spanned a river. I wonder: Why do
II icy call the pope pontifex maximus, a “great bridge builder”?
Viscount Raimundo, a troubadour who hailed from this area, was H azily in love with the heretical Lady Adelaide of Pena. Separated dur-Ing the Albigensian wars, they were reunited in the castle of Montsegur, w here he finally found his lost lady. And what a strange coincidence: I he German Cistercian monk Caesarius von Heisterbach, to whom we owe so much information about the Albigensians, made a pilgrimage lu re around the year 1198! Already sometime before, St. Engelbert, who was the archbishop of Cologne and a notorious heretic-hater, had undertaken this pilgrimage—twice, no less. It seems to me that these were u mally study trips. Once, Caesarius observed how a Spanish heretic w.is incinerated. This experience became useful to him when some her-■ i ics were burned near Cologne’s Jewish cemetery. I will return to this .mother time.
Caesarius once explained how and why he entered the Cistercian older:
Once, I went to Cologne with the Heisterbach abbot Gevard. Along t he way, he exhorted me urgently in conversation, and told of that wonderful appearance in Clairvaux, during harvesttime, when the brethren cut sheaves in the valleys. In bright clarity, the holy bearer of God, her mother Anna, and holy Mary Magdalene came down from the mountains into the valley and dried the monks’ sweat, fanning and cooling them. That impressed me so much that I promised the abbot that if God would give me the will, I would enter no other monastery than his. At that time I was still bound, because I had vowed a pilgrimage to holy Maria von Rocamadour. When I had completed this pilgrimage at the end of three months, I betook myself, without any of my friends knowing about it, for the valley of the holy Petrus behind Heisterbach . . .
So Caesarius became a monk. He then wrote his famous Dialogus miraculorum (Miraculous Dialogue), which Roman theologians and historians declared dangerous for the Church, because he makes genuine miracles appear suspicious and ridiculous. He also wrote Vita S. Elisabethae Landgraviae;3Ad petitionem Magistri Joannis4 (John was a real tortor haereticorum, “torturer of heretics”); and finally the essay Contra haeresim de Lucifero (Against the Heresy of Lucifer).
As I read again those verses of the Prophet Isaiah in the Bible that herald the damnation of Lucifer and his children by Yahweh, the God of the B’nai Israel (Children of Israel), I decided to give this book—for which I am traveling, thinking, and writing—the title Lucifer’s Court: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Light Bringers.
In this way, I am hoping my readers will appreciate the story of those who sought justice regardless of the Mosaic twelve commandments and from their own sense of justice and duty; those who, rather than arrogantly expecting assistance from Mount Sinai, went to a “mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north,” in order to bring solace to their kind; those who placed knowledge above faith and existence above the light; and, not least, those who recognized that Yahweh could never, ever be their divinity and Jesus of Nazareth could never, ever be their salvation. In Lucifer’s house there are many dwellings. Many paths and many bridges lead to him.
Hie Sabarthes, where I am living now, is a narrow valley enclosed by i normous limestone cliffs and the wild waters of the Ariege River on the l ist. This crystal-clear river, leaving beautiful waterfalls in some places,
i .iscades down the valley over boulders from the Col de Puymorens to where the road from Toulouse forks at a much transited pass that leads into Catalan territory and Andorra. Finally, it reaches Ax-les-Thermes, .111 age-old resort. Roman centurions healed their scars in its sulfurous waters. In the Middle Ages, Crusaders returning from Palestine looked io restore their gaunt and exhausted bodies in its waters. The Church had assured them as long and vital a life as possible.
Turning northwest from Ax-les-Thermes, the still-gushing Ariege inundates a dark ravine that separates the foothills of the Pic du Saint I'arthelemy from those of the Pic du Montcalm. We can find here the ■ illages of Verdun, Bouan, and Ornolac and the resort Ussat and the m.ill picturesque town of Tarascon (not to be confused with the more i Il-known Tarascon on the Rhone). Also found here is Sabarat, which in I ormer times was a place of pilgrimage. It lost its fame when Lourdes blossomed in the last century. Sabarat gave its name to the Sabarthes. Aller this, the Ariege turns in a northerly direction toward the cities I oix, Pamiers, and Toulouse, to unite with the Garonne. Together they I low to the Bay of Biscay.
I went in the opposite direction of the same road where, on Palm ‘iiniday of 1244, four sturdy Cathars rescued the mysterious treasure n| (he church from the besieged castle of Montsegur.
Still called the Route des Cathares, the Pathway of the Cathars begins at the small village of Ornolac, where I live, and climbs, detour-ini', to the Plateau de Lujat, a sort of plateau on the mountain. In line places, the Pic du Saint Barthelemy falls perpendicularly to the ibarthes. On the plateau, which is covered with thick hawthorn bushes mil wild blackberry hedges, I found an arch built into the mountain. What purpose it once served I cannot say. I could imagine, however, 111.11 it was a kind of wayside rest area for those Cathars who traveled liuni Sabarthes to Montsegur. They needed such a place, because here begins a grandiose high mountain world: Rock and more rock piles
ii .nil higher and higher until it reaches a summit nearly three thousand
meters high.5 The Pathway of the Cathars is admirably and safely built. Often, when a sudden abyss opens up and you are sure that this is the end, strong tree trunks joined by planks cross the gorge. Anyone who isn’t afraid of heights and is persistent can arrive on the summit of Tabor after a climb of several hours.
The Pyrenees farmers call Tabor the Pic du Saint Barthelemy. Up there, if no clouds obstruct the view, you can see the castle-crowned peak of Montsegur, the path’s goal, and, in the far distance, Sierra Maladetta. On the Tabor summit lie the remnants of a sacred site, which include a bell tower and a weather station. This station, built on the remains of the temple, was destroyed by a storm. Only the foundation walls and some smooth, polished stones are left here.
As I further explored the Vai de l’Incant (Enchanted Valley) near Montsegur, I had to kill a dangerous viper on which I had negligently stepped. It had already pulled itself up to bite.
Among the many partly fortified Sabarthes caverns, I want to give priority to two: the Lombrives Cave and the cave of Fontanet, also called the Font Santo, the Holy Well. Each bores miles deep into the limestone mountain. Wonderful stalactites decorate them; marble and crystal glitter and sparkle in the light of a miner’s lamp (to which I have managed to accustom myself). Bizarre shapes and designs and inscriptions and indications of paths can still be found on the cave walls; and from deepest depths roar the sprays of underground rivers, carving out channels in the mountain. Sometimes a yawning ravine obstructs those who walk in the caverns. It is better to hesitate and proceed with caution, so that a wrong step does not crush human bones. Since the time when man produced devices and weapons from stones, people slept here. The cave of Eombrives, the largest and most branched, contains an enormous hall—known as the cathedral—that is more than eighty meters6 tall in its interior. It is the most enormous underground gleyso, or church, as a cave cathedral of the Albigensians is still called today. The cave of Fontanet must have likewise seen cult activities of the Cathars. It is also a gleyso, and in it stands the so-called altar, a stalagmite of indescribable beauty. The bright walls of the hall in which nature placed it are smoke-blackened. These traces of smoke, which start at approximately a man’s height above the ground, could have been made only by lurches. Thus the following explanation may pertain to this place: The Provencal heretics conducted their highest consecration ceremony, the (ionsolamentum, by torchlight in these caves.
Wolfram von Eschenbach also describes a cave: Before his hero, Parzival, finds the light of the Grail, he stops in the cave of the hermit Trevrizent by the Fontane la Salvasche. There Trevrizent leads him before an altar, where Parzival is dressed in a tunic, just like a Cathar (who put on tunics before heretical ordinations in Fontanet). The cor-u spondence is surely unambiguous!
In a similar way, the cave of Lombrives can be linked to the Grail legend. A set of stone stairs leads from the cathedral to another part of the tremendous labyrinth. Suddenly, a ravine hundreds of feet deep opens up. Overhanging it is an enormous boulder from which the dripping water has conjured a club. The farmers call it the tomb of Hercules, and Wolfram also mentions Hercules as a prophet of the Grail. The rural legend tells it thus: In times long gone, King Bebryx ruled from an underground palace in the Lombrives. One day Hercules came along. He was welcomed by Bebryx, who had a daughter called Pyrene. Hercules and I he king’s daughter fell passionately in love. Soon after, the adventurous warrior was called far away, and he left King Bebryx’s palace. Pyrene, however, was carrying his child and followed him out of fear of her I al her’s scorn and longing after her true love. Wild animals pounced upon the helpless princess. Screaming, she called for Hercules to help her. Hearing the distress call, he ran to her aid, but it was too late. Pyrene was dead. Hercules cried, and the mountains roared, echoing his misery against rocks and caves. Then he buried Pyrene, but she can he never forgotten, because the Pyrenees bear her name until the end of lime.
Three other stalagmites in a lake in the midst of the cave form what ire called the Throne of Bebryx, Bebryx’s Grave, and the Grave of Pyrene. There the water runs incessantly, as if the mountains are weeping for the dead king’s daughter. Her petrified garments that she wore in her life hang on the wall and ceiling. Pyrene is also supposed to have been the goddess Venus. Because this Sabarthes cavern is more beautiful, larger, and more mysterious than the others, if I wanted to relate all the experiences I had in it, then I would fill many, many pages. Quite often, I dangled in mortal danger, but I always found my way back in one piece. I almost never came home without discovering something. If you visit the Sabarthes, explore Ornolac. Other discoveries there are very close to my heart—in particular, designs and inscriptions. Some are age-old, while others are from our time. The most recent inscription may be the question asked by a young man: Why did God take his wife and the mother of his children? Another, from the year 1850, demands an answer: “What is God?” And another offers: “Je me cache id, je suis I’assassin de Maitre Labori Labori.”7 (Maitre Labori was the man who defended Emile Zola, the writer who wrote the famous novels Rome and Lourdes, and, if I am not mistaken, was wounded in Rennes in 1899.) Even Henry IV, the French Huguenot king, wrote his own name on the cave wall in 1576. Four decades later he was murdered by the fanatical Catholic Franqois Ravaillac.8 Henry was a descendant of Esclarmonde de Foix. Her burial place could very well be in proximity to these stone objects, where Hercules and Pyrene slumber in death.
The inscriptions from the Albigensian era deeply impressed me. There are many, but they are difficult to find. A whole year had gone by until, on the marble wall in the eternal night of the cave, I finally saw a ship drawn in coal by a Cathar hand many hundreds of years ago. The sun serves as its sail, life-bringing and reviving after a long winter! In the vicinity of this drawing, I excavated human bones from the sandy soil. They were charred. I asked myself if the Cathars burned their dead. These could not have belonged to the victims who were put to death on funeral pyres by Rome’s Inquisition, because the inquisitors threw to the four winds the ashes of burned heretics.
Last but not least, I became aware of a tree of life, also drawn with coal, and the design of a dove hewn into the stone in a very mysterious cave. The dove is the symbol for God’s spirit and is the coat of arms of the Grail knights.
With nostalgia, I pack my bundle to leave the Sabarthes. I must iIso leave a cat that had approached me the previous year and had Become my constant companion, even in the caves. She was faithful lo me, and with her loyalty, she, an animal, chastised the lies of those medieval monks who said that the heretics are “wrong like cats.”
As I reflect on this time of my life on Montsegur and near the < > mil Castle, I confess openly that I would gladly have found the Grail I hat could have been the heretical treasure which I read about in the Inquisition’s register.
I am not a Bible expert, nor would I wish to be one. Nevertheless, for me it is clear: The Old Testament and the New Testament do not speak of different or opposing Gods. For me, the Gods in both are one and the same. The Old Testament curses the “beautiful morning star”; yet the New Testament reveals in the Apocalypse of John a “king and angel of the abyss,” who has “in Greek the name Apollyon.”9 Apollyon, angel of the abyss and prince of this world, is none other than Apollo, the light bearer. My belief that the “morning star” of the Old Testament and the figure Apollyon, who appears in the New Testament, are one and the same is based on the fact that in Greek, the morning star, or Phosphoros (this name also means “light bringer”), is the constant companion, messenger, and representative of the sun god Apollo, as the supreme Light Bringer was then called. Further, the beautiful “star of the morning” is a reference to the sun.
Significantly, I have selected the small Pyrenean town of Mirepoix as the appropriate place to write these lines. It is located at the foot of that great pyramid that dominates the Grail mountain of Montsegur, some two hours away from the hamlet at the foot of the castle rock. I was again up there at Montsegur Castle. The engineer from Bordeaux is still looking for the true gospel of John for his secret society. The principal reason for my being here is this: In pre-Christian times, Mirepoix was called Beli Cartha, which means “city of light”; Belis and Abellio were the local names of the light god, Apollo.
Once every year, Apollo, son of Zeus, returned to the south from blessed Hyperborea, that mythical country “beyond the north wind,” only to soon head north again on a predetermined course. The Greeks celebrated the day of the spring equinox as their holiest festival. Apollo was the rising sun—a majestic and unalterable light. Times set for the sun god when Helios, who was initially admired as the main god only on the Isle of Rhodes in the seas off Asia Minor, assumed Apollo’s place or both became one with him.
In the beginning, Apollo brought light to the Dorian and Ionian hunters, herders, and field farmers who migrated from the north to I Iellas, after the long winter night. They were the guardians of the fields and pastures and the herds and bees and everything else that tugs at I he heart of a farmer. Therefore, the herders celebrated a festival in his honor with a ram, and the farmers honored him with their harvest celebrations. In their songs, they sang how he had slain the winter dragon Pythos and begged the light not to stay too long in the north with the lucky people of Hyperborea.
Because spring and summer drive out the diseases of winter, Apollo was raised to a god who defends against all evils and was celebrated ns the father of the semidivine physician Asclepios, who was a part of Apollo. One was known as a savior and the other, a rescuer. The cock, which announces the morning light, was holy to them. Therefore, when Socrates had to empty the deadly cup of hemlock, he told his pupils not lo forget to sacrifice a cock to Asclepios. With absolute trust in Apollo, the savior, and in Asclepios the redeemer, Socrates confidently awaited the new morning.
In addition to the farmers and herders, Apollo was beloved by way-l.irers and sailors. He accompanied them over the mountains and seas, the flatlands and islands, so that they could reach their destinations ..tfely. Near the northern Greek mountain called Parnassus, where the 1.1mous temple of Delphi was located, on the seventh day of a spring month, Apollo’s birthday was celebrated on the island of Delos in the Aegean Sea. He was most beloved on this island. The myths say the r.irth laughed on his birthday, and immediately the cherub’s voice resonated: “A lyre would be better, and a curved bow. I will announce Zeus’s infallible advice to mankind!” Then Apollo jumped out of the circle of die “goddesses” who had assisted his mother as midwives, and high over i lie clouds, he announced Zeus’s law to mankind, and taught songs and how to play the lyre. In this way he became a god of poets, for whom verse and prayer were one.
When Apollo appeared, the earth was said to have laughed. Did she I now that she would be granted a merry science? Delphi, which was located, along with Delos, in the landscape of Phokis at the foot of the Parnassus Mountains in the country of Phokis, became the main place
of worship of the god. It is in Delphi where Apollo, a Hellenic Sigurd-Siegfried, is supposed to have defeated the dragon of winter and darkness, Pythos, and buried him under a stone. Here in Delphi, Pythia sat on a tripod and spoke wisdom over a chasm from which rose a cold and numbing steam. Here the Castalian spring poured the cleansing waters that were essential for a dialogue with God, a katharsis. In the spring, Apollo returned from the sun country of the Hyperborea, which was beyond the north wind commemorated here.
Whoever admired Apollo would never forget to dedicate sacrifices and prayers to his twin sister, Artemis, who is beloved in the Pyrenees under the name of Belissena. Like her brother, she governed a star: She was the law of moon and its natural light. The moon receives light from the sun and goes through the same zodiac, only faster. Artemis was accompanied by her nymphs on quiet solo hunts of animals in field and forest, but she was also the animals’ gamekeeper in addition to being their hunter. As the goddess of the dew, which falls more plentifully on moonlit nights, this goddess and her light-bringing brother fed the plants. The monthly flow of women is subject to the rule of the moon and is under her special protection. As a rule, a woman stays away until Artemis comes unnoticed as Eileithyia. A midwife to women in childbirth, she assists them in childhood emergencies. The Romans, who admired her as Diana, imagined her as the moon, the familiarissimelumen, the most trustworthy star in their firmament. As the goddess of birth, she is also the goddess of fertility—but this fertility goddess was not conceived in voluptuous Asiatic sensuality. Virginal, she chastely awaits her beloved, who blesses her and makes her a mother, the highest goal of femininity.
The Greeks also venerated a maternal and terrestrial Artemis who resembled the mother of the earth, Gemeter or Demeter. Once I had learned the ancient Greeks’ basic principles, I can assert the following with some degree of confidence: They did not pray to personal gods, but to powers and forces that prevail in the universe above this world and in the underworld, to the Great Father and the Great Mother. In his Gallic Wars, Caesar said that the Germanic tribes venerated only those gods whose power was obviously manifested: The sun and moon and fire composed almost literally the religious concepts of the north in general and northern Greece in particular. The Greeks also believed that
i he universe was ruled by the sun, this world was ruled by the moon, and i he underworld was ruled by fire. This threefold pattern corresponded in turn to their three genders: the male, the female, and the neuter. Fire was imagined as neutral (or androgynous), the earth and the moon were feminine, and the sun and the sky were male. This group of three coexisted in various relationships with each other, which led the ancients to give these natural forces a divine appearance, helping to bring them into harmony with one another. (An example: From the sky in which the sun rises, lightning flashes to earth and ignites a fire. Very probably the (J reeks would have said that the sky and the earth had ignited the fire.)
I spoke of the goddess Artemis, who is known in this country as Belissena. She is the female moon. At night, she can never be touched by l he sun-male—to whom the day belongs—and so remains untouched, lor in many respects she is similar to him; she is often imagined as his i win sister! The godlike woman is also the female earth, who must be fertilized by the sun-man in order to bear earthly children, which is an expression of love itself and for which she awaits the sun-husband. In I ormer times, the Greeks felt that the goddess of love had remained in l he sky, where she developed a special personality. This easily explains i he fact that several goddesses are derived from the god woman: Hera, the mother of the sky; the virgin Artemis; the beloved Aphrodite; and I feineter, the mother of our earth (which were called by the Romans, respectively, Juno, Diana, Venus, and Ceres). The much maligned polytheism of the pagans looks completely different in this light. We have either misunderstood them or, as I believe, wanted to misunderstand!
In the heyday of Catharism, a famous hermit named Joachim de f lora lived in Sicily.40 He was considered the best commentator on the Apocalypse of John. When the ninth chapter of Revelation speaks of grasshoppers, Joachim believed it referred to the Cathars: “Some with I he strength of scorpions will come out from the bottomless depths of I he abyss.” Joachim lamented that these Cathars were the personification of the Antichrist. He believed their power would grow and their king was already selected. In Greek, this king’s name is Apollyon.
Apollo cannot be any other than Lucifer, who was called Lucibel
*"|Joachim of Flora ( I 132 1202), Cistercian abbot and mystic. —Trans.\
by the Provencal heretics. They believed that an injustice was done to Lucifer. The Cathars interpreted Lucifer’s fall as “the illegitimate usurpation of the firstborn son of God—Luzifer—by the Nazarene.” Some of them—who were the exceptions—considered Lucifer equal to the lost Son of the Gospels and one who strayed from God the Father through overconfidence and pride. They believed that he would fall on his knees before the Almighty on Judgment Day and ask him for forgiveness. This cosmogonical myth (it should not be seen as anything else) assumed that the world was a suffering place far from God that could aspire to perfection only when the eternal God-spirit spiritualizes, sanctifies, and releases it from the perishable and nonspiritual. For those heretics who formed the exception, the Christian concept of redemption, although practiced in an un-Roman way, worked its weakening influence. We do not need to worry about these exceptions.
The cornerstone of Christianity is the belief in the personification of God through Jesus, the son of God who became a human being. The Cathars cryptically stood in contradiction to this concept. They said: We heretics are not theologians, but philosophers who seek only wisdom and truth. We have already recognized that God is light and spirit and strength. Even if the earth is material, it exists in a relationship with God—through light and spirit and strength. How could we and this world live together if the sun did not give us life? How could we think and recognize if we had no minds? How could we recognize truth and wisdom, which are so difficult to find, to seek, and, despite all obstacles, seek again and again, if we had no strength? God is light and spirit and strength. He works within us. God is law and gives laws; however, these are not the ones that Moses brought down from the summit of Mount Sinai and annouced to the B’nai Israel. For us, God’s book of laws is made up of the starry sky and the earth, which is filled with living creatures. By the same law, the sun goes through its preordained rotation, from its rise to its setting, through the twelve signs of the zodiac or between winter and summer and back again to winter. The sun leaves mankind in the evening, and then God’s law allows the moon and the countless stars to radiate out along their prescribed path in the sky. We are not saying that the sun or another star is God. They are divine messengers and only bring him closer to us.
The Cathars said: Divinity is multifaceted, but there are not several (Jods, as we are often accused of believing. With our senses we can grasp only one part: nature. This is composed of ourselves, because we are perishable material; the thousandfold faulty world in which we have to live our lives; and the starry sky, days, and nights. Nature is not God the bather, who is absolute light and spirit and strength. She is God’s child, a creation of that light, spirit, and strength. She governs herself according to the laws given by God the Father. Therefore, we find it foolish lo request from God the Father rains or beautiful weather or health or money, as many Christians do. No miracles can break the law.
The law alone is miracle enough. If anyone tries, anybody can achieve miracles. A physician (the Cathars were so renowned as physicians that even Catholic bishops allowed themselves be treated by them in order not to leave this wonderful world just yet) can achieve the miracles of healing only if he knows the prevailing laws of the human body so well i hat he is able to restore the disturbed order. Nature is not God, but she is divine. She is not absolute light, but is the bringer of light. She is not absolute strength, but is strength’s distributor. She is not absolute spirit, hut from our birth she obtains an effective spirit in the law of realization i hat leads to God. This is the only real redemption. Our supreme light bringer is the sun. The leaders of the heavenly host, which some call angels, are nothing other than the stars. They all are subject as well to earthly laws. Thus, we can recognize humans if we search and observe the sky carefully for the laws that reign up there and arrange our lives m such a way that we do not break divine law, but fulfill it. We must be children of the Light Bringer’s sun!
A subject and relative of the House of Foix lived in Mirepoix at the lime of the Albigensian crusade. This knight, Peire-Rotger de Mirepoix, was a member of the radical Cathar group known as the Sons of Belissena. When the fortress of Montsegur was besieged in his territory, lie became the citadel’s commander. When the situation was most grave, <m his instructions the treasure of the church was taken to the Sabarthes by four heroic Cathars. Before Rome and Paris had carried out their long-planned crusade against the Albigenses, his castle at Mirepoix had been a place of assembly for courtly life: At any time, troubadours and wandering knights could enjoy his hospitality there, and they were not
conscripted without receiving substantial provisions for their journey. Most Minnesingers were bitterly poor. Many of them came from the common people. To cite one of many examples, Bernard de Ventadour was the son of a baking-oven stoker. In no way, however, did poverty and humble origin block their way to chivalry. The eloquent farmer or the composing craftsman was ennobled when he sang to chivalry. A song written by troubadour Arnold von Marveil, he who was not distinguished by birth, might nevertheless be suitable, because everyone—citizens and craftsmen and farmers alike—had virtue and a sense of honor. The poet felt that cowards and fools were not worthy of his attention, let alone his verses. He spoke from the heart.
Much was required of a troubadour: He must have “an excellent memory, and comprehensive historical knowledge”; he had to know all myths and legends of his homeland; and he had to be “cheerful and kind, full of spirit and adroit, attracted by gifts of the spirit and the heart, courageous in war and tournament, and receptive to all who were great and good.” Every genuine troubadour had to possess—to express it in today’s scholarly language—an encyclopedic knowledge. Perhaps the time of the Minne has come again in our age, which strives for summary thinking. It is true that the way of thinking of that long-ago age may be appropriate for us. Without reservation, we can affirm its “sincere desire for the expression of beauty in life and for tasteful education in accordance with a joyful artistic existence and with its ideal of the internal nobility of mankind.” Provencal chivalry did not have anything to do with the infamous feudal system!
Paris and Rome were white with hate and looked with envy upon the Provenqal world of the Minne. At the height of its power, the French Crown had long desired access to the Mediterranean and domination over the richest part of old Gaul. And why did the the throne of St. Peter express such hatred? Like the Cathars, the troubadours (since that time, we have lost the usual distinction) were condemned by the Roman Church as slaves of the devil, intended for eternal damnation. Often, papal legates intervened against individual troubadours with prohibitions—but to no end, for the Minnesingers abruptly rejected all Catholic theological concepts, terms, teachings, and legends. They sang not to Jehovah or Jesus of Nazareth, but to their hero Heracles
or the god Amor. And this god was deeply hated by the vain Roman (ihurch, which was rejected by the Cathars as “Satan’s synagogue” •ind a “basilica of the devil.”
The famous troubadour Peire Cardinal believed that God-Amor can be experienced by a strong spirit whose eyes have been cleared by faith. So sang the no less famous Peire Vidal, but he added that God appears only in springtime, and to catch a glimpse of him, we must go farther into his house, which is newly blossomed nature. This God looks like ,i knight: He has blond hair and rides on a light horse that is black like i he night on one half and dazzling white on the other. A garnet on the reins shines like the sun. In this knight’s attendance is a paladin whose name is Loyalty.
The Bible tells that a person should be faithful until death so that (iod can bestow the crown of eternal life. As far as Rome was con-cerned, however, the troubadours were the serfs of the devil because i hey had sworn loyalty to the god Amor. As innumerable examples of I heir poems show, they sang of the wonders of a stone that fell from Lucifer’s crown—thus, if we use the language of the Bible, the “crown of eternal life” could be construed to be Luciferian, and if we spin the i h read further, God-Amor seems to be the incarnation of Lucifer. This becomes certain if we tie the thread differently: God-Amor is the god of springtime, and Apollo is this god. Therefore, both Amor and Apollo are I he god of the spring. He who restores the sunlight of the spring to earth i. therefore a light bringer—a Lucifer. As we have read in Revelation, Apollyon (or Apollo) is equated with the devil. Therefore, according to i he dogma of the Roman Church, which is based upon the Bible, and the writings of the Fathers of the Church, Lucifer is Satan. Consequently, i he Church believes that the God of spring, who is Apollo-Amor, is Satan or the devil. Following this line of thought, it is easy to understand why Rome labeled the troubadours slaves of the devil and why Joachim von Flora cried woefully that the Cathars were anti-Christian because Apollyon was their king. From now on, I probably need to make no more distinction among the Cathars, the troubadours, and the stewards ol Lucifer’s court.
Peire Vidal, who was the son of a Toulouse furrier as well as a I night and troubadour, calls his paladin Loyalty. As result, loyalty is
conditioned by a law that can be both external and internal. As such, the troubadours were subordinate to the law of the Minne. Its highest clause declared that amor has nothing to do with carnal love. All troubadours, however, were so-called chantres d’amor, “singers of love.” We find an easy way out of this dilemma if we use the centuries-old German translation for this: Minnesinger. Provencal amor is the courtly love of Germany. Originally, this courtly love had nothing to do with physical love, because as Walther von der Vogelweide very probably knew, “neither man nor woman” has “soul nor body” without spiritual strength, and what fortifies the spirit is loyalty. That is also Wolfram von Eschenbach’s opinion: True love is true loyalty!
The laws of the Minnesingers consisted of several clauses known as leys d’amors. The first troubadour found the laws in the boughs of a golden oak, where a falcon had left them. Therefore, he is a troubadour, a “finder.” He was also called “savior.”
As the pilgrims of the Albigensian crusade (which the Jesuit historian Benoist called “the most just thing in the world”) eagerly implemented the pope’s orders to subjugate the land for its new masters because the Church had promised them eternal life and booty, the troubadours sang of the loyalty required “in the service of their threatened princes, and their politics against the Church, Frenchmen, and the Inquisition of the Dominicans.”10 So they sang—and fought. When the magnificent castles of their sponsors lay in ashes, they fled to foreign lands, over the Pyrenees or over the Alps. From then on, guilty of heresy, dispossessed of their lands, they were known as faydits: outlaws. Now they were a wandering people, and their real homeland became at first the forests and the highways of Germany, northern Italy, and Spain. I recently read in a Welsh researcher’s book that some troubadours were supposed to have been found in Iceland.
But the Light Bringer Apollo, god of protection for poets and wanderers, did not leave his people in their emergency. He also had become an outlaw; he had even become the devil himself. Because he was not the Evil One, however, he remained faithful to the heavenly laws and reigned over the forests, and roads. He let the garnet on the bridle of
his light horse shine like the sun. If a singer died, then Apollo carried him over the clouds to the “mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north”—to the farthest northern point. Why were his children not allowed, like others, to inhabit cities, and be buried like them? There is light in the Light Bringer’s house—more light than in all the cathedrals ■md churches and places of worship, where Lucifer is nowhere to be seen .i mong Jewish prophets and apostles or Roman gods and other holy ones on dark glass panes. His forest is free!
Far from the heavenly law, Apollo’s garnet could not shine, and the devil’s grandmother came—the grandmother who reigns over the earth ■md the moon.42 Under cover of darkness, she gave outlaws a meal of her game—for she was the gamekeeper—and a drink of her dew, which ■.he dispensed, and she pointed the way with her silver rays, for when ilie devil and his grandmother were not at home or could come only 1.1ter, they sent a representative, or a messenger. Lucifer sent the morning ■.tar and the grandmother sent the evening star. The same star is called I ticifer or Venus. By no means has it fallen from our sky!
”| t he garnet is the carbuncle or shining stone, the grandmother earth is a pagan idea. Tmns. |
[The names of the four perfecti were Poitevin, Hugues, Amiel Aicart, and Raimundo de Alfaro. —Trans.]
[Arthur Drews, a professor of philosophy and German at the University of Karelsruhe, provoked a great deal of controversy during his lifetime because of his unorthodox ideas on religion and because he disputed the notion of the historical Jesus. —Ed.]
[Li£e of Holy Landgravine Elizabeth of Thuringia. —Trans.]
[Upon the Request of Master John. —Trans.]
[Approximately ninety-eight hundred feet. —Ed.]
[About 260 feet. —Ed.]
[I am hiding here; I am the killer of Maitre Labori. —Trans.]
’’[Francois Ravaillac, Henry’s assassin, was drawn and quartered. —Trans.|
[Apollyon corresponds to the Egyptian falcon-god Horus. In fact, the names are sometimes run together—Horapollyon is the subject of the first treatise of Nostradamus in 1541. —Trans.]
[From de Benoist’s tome on the crusade dated 1691. —Trans.]