Dedicated to all people who have lost their lives or their freedom through the actions of the Catholic Church. And to those who have realized that historical truth and spiritual self-determination are the right of every human being.
No crime can be hidden forever.
No culture, banished forever.
Every truth shall find the light of day.
If law can become justice,
then a divine culture can return.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2011 by Thore D. Hansen
Translation copyright © 2012 by Amazon Content Services
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
The Celtic Conspiracy by Thore D. Hansen was first published in 2011 by Scorpio Verlag in Munich, Germany, as Die Hand Gottes (The Hand of God). Translated from German by Anne Adams. First published in English in 2012 by AmazonCrossing.
Published by AmazonCrossing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183473
ISBN-10: 1612183476
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904055
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since the earliest days of our childhood we have grown used to hearing fabricated histories, and for centuries our soul has been so saturated with prejudices that it watches over these fantastic lies like a treasure until, ultimately, truth appears incredible and the lie, true.
—Sanchuniathon, Four Thousand Years Ago
THE MAGDALENSBERG, NEAR KLAGENFURT IN AUSTRIA – MAY 2, 1945
Major Sean MacClary heard the scream—like something out of a vicious nightmare—moments before the young soldier came running toward the tent where MacClary was awaiting orders from British high command.
“Major, sir, a recruit has fallen into a cave.”
In spite of the tension of battle, MacClary felt a momentary sense of relief. “Brilliant, my friends,” he said to his nearby troops dryly. “I was afraid I’d lose my men in battle. Instead, they’re falling down holes.”
The moment for joking passed quickly, though, and MacClary delivered orders for the rescue sharply. The last of the German troops had recently scattered; it was too dangerous to use a light to investigate the area, so this was going to be a more difficult operation than he would have liked.
MacClary took two soldiers and medics with him to find where the soldier had fallen. His left eye began to twitch nervously, a quirk he had developed at a young age when he was under pressure from his teachers. War had only made it worse. In spite of his reluctance to show weakness in front of his troops, he stopped for a moment, took off his helmet, and held his filthy forehead to calm himself down. His dark eyes searched for a point in the countryside where they could focus. As the twitching slowly subsided, he ran one hand through his short, gray hair and with the other put his helmet back on.
When he came to the edge of the cave, MacClary risked using a small flashlight to look into it. About ten feet down, he saw the motionless infantryman.
“Soldier, can you hear me?”
Only a faint groan confirmed that someone was still alive down there.
MacClary turned to the two men nearest him. “Smith and Rudy, rappel to him.”
The soldiers quickly did his bidding. As they reached their companion, though, MacClary heard awed whispering that had nothing to do with the wounded man.
“What’s going on down there?”
“Major, you have to see this! There’s an entrance here to a room filled with all kinds of old stuff.”
“What? Wait a minute, I’m coming down.”
MacClary rappelled into the cave, following the light that one of the soldiers had turned on once hitting bottom. When MacClary got to the cave’s floor, he couldn’t believe his eyes. At first he thought they’d found a secret bunker, but he immediately realized that this structure was hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old. Before the war, MacClary had been a professor at the London Institute of Archaeology. Seeing the artifacts the soldiers had discovered made him weak in the knees and instantly hit him with the desire to go back to the life he’d loved.
“Stay back and rescue the man,” he said briskly to the others. “I’m going to take a closer look.”
He couldn’t make out very much in the dim light, but he could see that this must have been some sort of library or special burial chamber. The condition of the stones, the statues, and the few characters he could make out in the dust-filled air suggested Celtic or Roman origins. That didn’t make sense, though, since the Celts were assimilated and converted to Christianity after the Romans conquered them; they would hardly have created this mysterious collection after that. Only the Druids would have had the knowledge and perspective to have hidden these treasures, but that would also have been impossible because the Druids only passed on their knowledge orally.
Was this cave a sanctuary? A place to preserve knowledge and culture? If so, who had built it? Questions shot through MacClary’s head like the salvoes of a machine gun, but he wouldn’t find any answers now, not under these miserable conditions.
There were few people who knew as well as he that it wasn’t the Romans and the Greeks—or the Germanic people—who had first shaped Europe. It was the Celts. True, the fate of Celtic independence was virtually sealed by Julius Caesar, but the culture and its natural religion continued for a long time, until Christianity became the prevailing doctrine in fourth-century Rome. MacClary knew that the loss of Celtic culture had not received nearly enough attention, and its significance reached to the present day. Was this the reason he’d happened upon these artifacts?
Breathing heavily, handicapped by the darkness and the dust that filled the cave, he eyed the pieces as carefully as he could. He saw scrolls that shouldn’t have been able to survive a hundred years in this region, but they were clearly ancient. Whoever had made this place had to hav
e looked long and hard for such an unusually dry and warm cave. There could only be one explanation: they wanted to make sure that these testaments to the past would endure, so that one day in the future someone would discover them and show them to the world.
But why?
Among the stone tablets, statues, scrolls, and decorative pieces, a lone chest caught his attention. It was covered with dust and partially disintegrated, but he could make out something through the filth that was written on the top:
DISTURBATIO FONTIS
Was it possible? Was he really standing in front of the records of the persecuted pagans?
MacClary knew that there were German troops in front of them and Tito’s troops behind. There was no way he could salvage these artifacts now, and there was very little time to stash them away.
Damn it! he thought. Why now? What should I do?
In spite of his confusion and frustration, MacClary felt a familiar and welcome energy. It was as though he were in his lecture hall, surrounded by students hungry for knowledge, devouring his archaeological histories like fairy tales.
“Major?”
MacClary jumped. For the briefest instant, he had been so lost in thought that he had forgotten this horrible war. He ordered Smith and Rudy to bring some new chests from the unit supply over to hold the most important pieces while he tried to think of a way to transport them securely through Austria and then through France to England. The sheer mass of these invaluable cultural treasures created an almost insurmountable obstacle. He felt like one of his medics who had to decide far too often who they could save and who they had to leave to die.
Even if he chose to transport some of the artifacts, it would be impossible to do so under these circumstances without destroying something, especially the parchment scrolls; the fact that they were in such good condition was a miracle. With the oxygen that had rushed in with the cave’s collapse, the papyrus wouldn’t last long. In ancient times, Egypt was one of the few places on earth where papyrus could be preserved for an extended period without any special conservation method. In damper regions, scrolls were copied for preservation, and it was not uncommon for adulterations to creep in.
He looked at the writing again. It suggested a time only a few centuries after Christ. If this trove were a testament to that period, it would be invaluable to researchers. MacClary almost forgot the circumstances that had brought him here, circumstances that made it hardly seem sensible to think about the future, even for a second. There were only a few hours until he would most likely receive orders to invade Klagenfurt. How could he organize a secure and inconspicuous transport now?
MacClary was well respected and trusted by his soldiers. No major had endured so few losses or made so few bad decisions. Perhaps he could hide the site of the trove and investigate it after the war, when he could be an archaeologist again. As a major and a friend of General Brown, he could have packages and documents declared secret and brought to England without being checked. He would quickly select a few pieces and then have the entrance to the cave closed so no one else would notice it. All he could do beyond this was hope that the dry climate would reset itself and that the damage to the artifacts would be minimal.
MacClary turned to Smith. “Could you seal the cave with a detonation so that no more air can get in, while still leaving the chamber and its treasures intact?”
“Yes, sir, but we need at least sixty feet inside for the blast and the debris.”
MacClary shone the light over the room and found more sections of the cave. Maybe his trove would survive the explosion if they moved everything further inside. He ordered his men to bring everything into the back rooms carefully. Then MacClary wrapped up some scrolls, ornamental pieces, and the chest in shirts, pants, and blankets. They would load them up under cover of darkness.
The dawn was slowly emerging. Even if the explosion hid the entrance to the cave, the men were faced with the problem of how to set off the explosion without being noticed.
That was when fortune intervened. They received orders from British headquarters to follow the Seventy-Eighth Infantry Division, which would reach Klagenfurt in the morning. With the onset of combat, a targeted explosion of a cave entrance would hardly be noticed. The detonation went off without a hitch.
Only a few hours later, the British troops marched into Klagenfurt with few losses. News of the German surrender gave MacClary hope that he would soon be able to return to his university work. He had managed to take only a single chest of artifacts with him. Would he ever be able to explore the other treasures of this long-dead culture? If he survived the final throes of war, he would at least be able to bring some of the pieces home safely. That was a start.
Where it would end, though, was beyond anything he could have imagined.
And he who overcomes and keeps my works unto the end, to him I will give power over the heathen, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he shall break them as the vessels of a potter.
—Revelations 2:26–27
LOWER AUSTRIA – MARCH 13, PRESENT DAY
Adam Shane sat on the edge of his bed bathed in sweat. His long blond hair was glued to his face, and his hands grabbed at the edge of the mattress while he took deep gulps of breath, as if he had emerged from the ocean seconds before drowning. A glance at the clock told him that it was six o’clock in the morning. It was time to get up.
Instead, as he tried to rise, he suddenly lost his eyesight.
“My God, what’s happening?”
He closed his eyes and fell back. His sense of balance was also gone, and when he opened his eyes again, he could only see his surroundings as different contours of light. Pictures raced through his mind, a collage of human history throughout the centuries blurring past him. Then, as he was about to move from the present into the future, everything suddenly stopped.
His eyes could again fully see his familiar bedroom. His body again controlled his spirit.
Or was it the other way around?
“What the hell was that?”
He should have known better than to ask. This was, after all, hardly the first time this had happened.
It wasn’t all that long ago that he had been following in his father’s footsteps, working as a blacksmith, a profession that befit his huge physical form. Then his wife was diagnosed with cancer. She refused to put herself through the agonizing treatments her doctors recommended because she knew their chances of success were limited. The path she chose guaranteed her an early death—until the moment when Shane knelt by his wife after the disease had left her as spent and helpless as a child. He willed himself to find a way to help her. And suddenly he was able to do so. Simply by dint of his effort, his wife began to improve palpably before his eyes.
In some ways, his entire life had been leading toward that moment. Since he was a child, while his friends spent their time with sports, motorcycles, music, or plans for losing their virginity, he was thinking about the world and how it could be saved. At fourteen, he was reading books, almost maniacally, that other kids wouldn’t pick up unless they were forced to in school. He longed to exchange ideas with others, but this proved impossible in the small, rural, conservative village where he grew up. His upbringing constricted him, and even though he left the town to go to college, the constriction remained.
He shook his head to jostle these thoughts away. They wouldn’t do him any good right now. He had to talk with someone. For a second he hesitated, then he reached for the telephone and dialed Victoria’s number.
“Adam, why in God’s name are you calling so early?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not doing well. I had one of those incredibly intense dreams and I just had to hear your voice.”
Victoria sighed on the other end. “Adam, you have to take care of yourself. I’m afraid you’re going to lose it soon if this keeps happening.”
She had every right to be afraid. Six months earlier, she had taken their child and gone to live with her mother in London b
ecause she couldn’t stand Shane’s outbursts of anger over his perceptions and despair about what he called the complete collapse of humanity. “This is no way to raise our son,” she said to him before she left. He could hardly blame her for going, though he missed her and Jarod horribly.
Victoria paused on the other end. When she spoke again, there was more warmth in her voice. “Tell me about it.”
Shane related the details of the dream to her. He was in a forest he didn’t recognize. It was cold and the wind was blowing violently. He noticed an old, very large tree whose branches were reaching toward him.
Suddenly, he saw figures in loose, bright robes in a clearing very far away. They were moving as if in a trance or in a ceremony, and they repeatedly turned their gaze to the sky. A sense of peace replaced Shane’s fear at this point, a feeling of connection and warmth. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a child. The figures seemed so peaceful, so deeply connected to nature, connected by a great love. Shane moved closer and saw that all the figures were old men. They were gesticulating quickly, but they seemed to possess a greater inner peace. It was beautiful to watch.
This clearing had to be incredibly important. The trees were arranged in a circle, all of them the same height, shape, and distance apart. In between them, Shane could make out three rows of seats forming a circle, as if it were a little theater.
Sadly, the sense of peace and community did not last. A horde of men on horseback rode into the clearing, surrounding the old men before anyone could escape. The riders’ armor looked Roman. They jumped from their horses, and even though the old men were unarmed, one of the soldiers drove his sword through the stomach of the first man until it came out the other side. Hatred filling his face, the warrior braced his foot against the chest of the old man and slowly pulled his sword out again, clearly taking pleasure in the action. Before he died, the old man shouted something in a language Shane didn’t understand.
Shane was stunned, paralyzed, horrified. He watched helplessly as the others were also brought down by swords in a blood frenzy. When the massacre was over, the soldiers got back on their horses and rode toward a small village Shane could see in the distance. He ran after them to witness the horde brutally murdering women and children.
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