A Spanish connection? Part 3: Of Sun and stones

 

Cameras. Action. Roll.

In 1851, the “House of the Canons” in Girona received the addition of an enigmatic tower. In 1962, the municipality took the decision to purchase the estate – and demolish it. Only the garden and gateway remained intact. Whatever “Great Work” was meant to be accomplished by joining the energy of the twin towers, was now no longer workable.
In 1955, when Chaplin arrived on the local scene, she reports that a major celebrity was presenting Girona: Jean Cocteau. He was making a short film and Chaplin was invited to assist during a scene. Throughout the shooting, Chaplin reports that the making of this movie seemed to be an excuse for Cocteau to try to get into the House of the Canons. She found the director climbing up ladders, trying to look through the windows; he was making measurements of the house – obviously a non-essential requirement of any production.
Chaplin also reports that during the production, she saw Cocteau participating in one of the occult ceremonies the group that decades earlier had associated with Saunière performed. He seemed to be allowed to participate, though does not seem to have been a member of the “inner group”, as he assumed someone had a key, yet that person seemed unwilling to let him inside. Still, in 1961, Cocteau and members of this group apparently met up in Paris – Cocteau would die in 1963.

Cocteau’s visual guide to enigmatic homes

Cocteau making a movie about an enigmatic home was nothing new to him. In fact, in 1952, his previous project had been about La Villa Santo-Sospir, a short film “which was a professional production, yet which I tried to give the appearance of an amateur film”, on Mrs. Weisweiller’s Villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferat, on Côte d’Azur, which was decorated by Jean Cocteau and saw the likes of Pablo Picasso visiting. So, Cocteau in 1952, made a movie about a bizarre home, occupied by a rich German woman, in France; in 1955, he made a movie about a bizarre home, occupied by a rich French woman, in Spain.
Unfortunately, there is no record of this movie in Cocteau’s official cinematography. According to Chaplin, the movie is called “The Blind Man” (L’aveugle?), which may be a reference to the great local alchemist, Isaac the Blind. Though no official mention of this film exists, Chaplin states she has a copy. And it may indeed be that the production was merely used as a smokescreen so that certain doors might be opened for the great director, which without a camera might otherwise have remained closed.

The Great Architect

In 1955, Cocteau apparently did everything in his power to gain access to, and make measurements of, the enigmatic tower in Girona.
In 1897, Saunière had done his utmost to get accurate plans of the tower, apparently in a desire to reproduce it in Rennes-le-Château. As researcher Corjan de Raaf has noted, though Saunière seems to have laid his hands on the plans, the Tour Magdala is not an exact copy of the Girona tower – for example, the number of crenellations is different.

As mentioned elsewhere, later on, Rennes-le-Château witnessed the arrival of Alain Féral. Féral had been a member of the music group “Les Enfants Terribles”, whom had taken their name from Cocteau’s production. Furthermore, Féral knew Cocteau personally and says the two had a master-apprentice relationship – spiritually, rather than artistically.
How remarkable therefore that Féral is noted for having spent an enormous amount of time and effort in making extremely detailed measurements of Saunière’s estate. Nevertheless, we are very grateful for his detailed measurements, for they have allowed us to trace an overlay of Saunière’s model on top of the garden – as well as the Tree of Life… if not others.
By this overview alone, it is clear that Chaplin is indeed correct: that somehow the dimensions of this building were deemed to be very important, at least for a man like Cocteau… and his apprentice, Féral, whose arrival occurred after the demolition of the Girona tower.

The sun stone

The Girona sun stone. © Patrice Chaplin.

In 1968, Patrice Chaplin found some men, all members of the local “Saunière organisation”, digging in the “jardins de la Francesa”, the only part of the enigmatic house that remained. The men were digging under a tree, uncovering a large stone. The “inner group” of the occult society stated that though during the demolition, men had hoped to uncover the secret of the house, this had been, in fact, hidden in the garden, buried.
The artefact they uncovered was a large stone, containing certain symbols. It required several men to remove and during this operation, Chaplin states she saw several tunnels running under the house, each large enough for a man to crawl through.

The large stone was named “the sun stone” and was put on display in a local Kabbalah centre, though disappeared from there in the late 1980s. Its present whereabouts are not mentioned in the book, though in an interview with Andy Gough, she states its present location is believed to be Perpignan.
As to its purpose: it might have been an ancient altar stone and Druidic sign were carved on one part of this “altar stone”.

A mirror stone

If the twin towers form one connection between Girona and Rennes-le-Château, this stone may be another. Unknown to Chaplin is the story of Rennes-le-Château’s “altar stone”, which today sits next to the new mayor’s building of Rennes-le-Château. It too has enigmatic inscriptions, it too is believed to have been an altar stone, it too dates back to Druidic, in fact megalithic, times.
But less known is the fact that the stone comes with its own controversy. From what we gather, in 1999, a request came from a group of Spaniards, stating they would like to acquire this enigmatic stone, in return for which they would donate a new clock for the bell-tower of the village. At the time, the altar stone was not located in Rennes-le-Château, but sat outside, in its original location, near the Ruisseau des Couleurs, where it was possibly part of an ancient, sacred landscape, including alignments to the sun – making it a perfect candidate for being the local “sun stone”.
Still, we have also reported on the existence of a third such stone, again in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château, and discovered by Flemish researcher Jos Bertaulet. The latter’s stone existence is largely an unknown, but it is remarkable to note that the two locations had more in common than just an enigmatic tower: an enigmatic stone was also part of the puzzle.

Finally, when Chaplin was confronted with the existence of such a stone in Rennes-le-Château and told that a Spanish group had made enquiries to make an exchange for it (which never happened), she felt that this could only have been the Girona group.
If so, it seems that it was not the first time that this Spanish group of former Saunière associates had made contact with the mayor. According to Chaplin, in 1955, the Girona group was upset with the news about Marie Denarnaud’s demise and questioned whether she had said something before her death. They decided to go to Rennes-le-Château and speak with the mayor – at the time Etienne Delmas – and see whether this might have been the case and what specifically Noel Corbu was planning. Apparently, when they heard that Corbu was promoting the theory that Saunière had discovered the treasure of Blanche de Castille, they felt satisfied that no-one was onto the “real story”.

The grotto

Of course, interest in this stone in the 1990s is a century removed from Saunière’s time. Is there any evidence that Saunière was interested in this stone? The answer, remarkably, is yes.
One of the more enigmatic constructions in the garden in front of the church is the so-called grotto – practically totally dismantled and rebuilt in recent years. What specifically Saunière was trying to achieve with this construction has always been unclear, but some details are known; for example, the origin of the stones used in its construction.
It is known that these stones were gathered by both Saunière and his maid Marie. Rather than just use any stone, the pair went out to collect decorative stones in the vallee of the Bals, south of the village, the location of the Ruisseau de Couleurs. Coincidence?
According to researcher Pierre Jarnac, Saunière was intimately familiar with this river. At the age of 15, he was the leader of a group of teenagers that raced up and down this valley. Hence, at an early age, Saunière may have known every centimetre of the valley.

Amateur archaeologists

The altar stone, in the “centre” of Rennes-le-Château, is an archaeologically important stone. And it is a matter of record that Saunière was interested in archaeology, even giving lectures on the local history.
In part 1, we noted that the Spanish group had a file on Julien Sacaze, a man not only interested in Rosicrucianism, but also interested in local archaeology – the president of several amateur archaeological associations.
We also noted that Maria Tourdes met Saunière when the priest was visiting her parents. Chaplin reports that Ernest Cros was present at that meeting too. Cros was a retired railway engineer, who spent his holidays in Quillan, where his wife owned the baths at Ginoles. Like Sacaze, he was a dedicated archaeologist; like Sacaze – and Saunière – he was fascinated by ancient stones. It is Cros who apparently accused Saunière of treating the “Dalle des Chevaliers” with contempt, using it as a floor slab, as well as erasing the inscription of the slab of Marie de Nègre’s tombstone. It is Cros who made a drawing of the latter stone, containing the all important “ET IN ARCADIA EGO” inscription.
It was also Cros who discovered the Coumesourde stone, which, to this day, remains an enigma. As a man who was clearly intimately familiar with every stone in the area – and perhaps a man who knew more than he let on? – Cros, like Sacaze, must have been a key player for Saunière, if the latter was searching for ancient sacred stones.

Discovery?

It is unknown whether Saunière knew of the location of the altar stone along the Ruisseau des Couleurs. If he did not, then it is clear that he must have passed very closely nearby. And though it is impossible to prove, I would argue that Saunière knew of the location of this altar stone, but unable to move the stone himself, and no doubt one of very few who were even remotely interested in it, he may have judged that its safest location was the very location where he had found it – and leave it there.

Mirrors

Like Cocteau in his movies, we know and have shown that Saunière was obsessed with mirrors, from the landscape of Perillos which he worked into the model (though as a mirror-image), via the stations of the cross, which he positioned anti-clockwise, to making the garden in front of the church into a mirror of the church layout. Though a mirror image purports to be the same, it is, of course, the inverse – the opposite. Like ying and yang, it is black and white – or north and south, meeting each other on the “meridian”, which is the surface of the mirror.
Chaplin argues that Rennes-le-Château and Girona were mirror images of each other. For this, she has put forward the two towers. But it is clear that the altar stone – the “sun stone” – was another ingredient of the story of Girona. And it had at least one counterpart in Rennes-le-Château.
The local stone was obviously important for the Girona group… and it seems the one in Rennes-le-Château at became of interest to a Spanish group in the late 1990s. Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

continued >>

Filip Coppens