Capcir Spring

by Jean de Beurre

  "Welcome to my summer residence" he called, come and I'll introduce you to people."

  The camping coach was dark and musty inside with strange scents. It seemed to be furnished with crates only covered with brightly coloured cushions and drapes. There were hangings on the walls of brightly coloured fabrics, in ethnically home dyed patterns. A heavy and rather shabby red velvet curtain curtained off the rear portion of the bus. Andre nodded towards two seats and they sat down and he joined them, carrying with him a bottle of beer for each of them.

  The cushions were comfortable and the brand of beer familiar and they relaxed even though the faint scent of oriental spiced joss-sticks sat heavily on the air.

  "You found us OK? Are you impressed by the tidiness of the site." they nodded " Most of our visitors are. The Gendarmerie visit us and it is our gesture to keep in with the local Marie. You must meet Mark." He leant back on his cushion and tugged the red velvet open.

  "Mark, you can't sleep all day and all night. Come and meet some of your kinsfolk"

  Grunts came from behind the curtain and a young man emerged, bleary eyed and joined them at the table. He was dressed in the same style as the others they had seen from the encampment but his hair was short and spiky.

  "Hi." He was in his early twenties but no more thought Mary. No amount of rough living could disguise a southern English accent that had been so carefully cultivated over many years expensive private education. His eyes indicated a bright keen intelligence.

  Andre continued, explaining the reason for getting Mark to join them. "My young friend here is also a historian, well at least he dropped out after the first year at your Oxford University and he too loves the old stories about the mountains."

  "The ancient gods that people worshipped for centuries are still very mush present in these mountains." Mark began" As in the Celtic areas the coming of Christianity merely took over the peoples belief and moulded it in slightly different form. The belief and superstitions stayed the same. Hence the attraction of the Cathars who emphasised certain aspects that clearly resonated with the ancient religions of the area."

  "So Andre tell us your version of the history of the Cathars" challenged Mary.

  Andre smiled and begun "Not very far from here on a sacred mountain are the whitened ruins of Montsegur, a reminder of the last actively visible Gnostic centre in Western Europe: the Cathar's headquarters. Below Montsegur today lies a peaceful meadow called "Field of the Burned" and this is the only indication of the grim event that took place there a little over 750 years ago. In March, 1244, 205 Cathars were burned alive on the site, rather than renounce their faith.

  "The word Cathar comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure. The Roman Catholic Church called them heretics and most of what we know of them today comes from the records of the Inquisition. Their writings were destroyed along with their earthly stronghold. Yet, in their time their influence was enormous. Similar views were held in the Balkans and the Middle East by the medieval religious sects of the Paulicians and the Bogomils, with whom the Cathars were closely connected. They were part of a network with centers in Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland and Germany. There is evidence also of a connection with Moslem Sufi communities in Spain and the Middle East and with Jewish Kabbalist scholars who lived in surrounding cities. They are even connected with legends of the Holy Grail. They promoted a spirit across the land, known in those days as the region of Oc, of tolerance and personal liberty, most rare in any age.

  "Much of their faith rested upon a form of Manicheaism brought to Gaul in the 8th century by missionaries from Bulgaria, Croatia and Bosnia. There was a close relationship to Druidic teachings, the rallying of the poor to resist Church and secular tyranny, and the appeal of an elite strata of the faith to the aristocracy, made rich soil in which the teachings could take root. Cathar doctrines that came from an interpretation of the Gospel according to John, provided a highly workable alternative to the confusion and misery that existed in much of society of the time.

  "Central to the Cathar creed is the concept of Duality, that is, the opposition of the material world to that of the spirit. For the masses, this translated into a battle between good and evil. However, if we return to the source of one of the many strands of which the Cathar faith is woven, we see in early Zoroastrianism, the root of Manicheaism, a less encrusted form of dualism. According to the prophet Zoroaster, God created twin forces of reality and unreality. Reality and unreality are seen as essential elements from which our world is created, not poles of good and evil. Objective meaning represents reality, and unreality is human subjectivity, which only becomes negative when we are enmeshed and blinded by it.

  "For them, the Creator was either a being fallen from the perfection of Heaven who had seduced a proportion of the angelic souls there and then entrapped them in matter, or, he was a co-eternal power, quite independent of the Good God of the spirit. The only release for those souls encased in the material prison of the body was through the Cathar ceremony of the consolamentum, which was the means by which they could return to their guardian spirits in Heaven.

  "The Cathars believed that matter was evil, and that Humanity was an alien sojourner in an essentially evil world. Therefore, the main aim of Man was to free his spirit, which was in its nature good, and restore it with God.

  "Human beings, according to the Cathar creed, have three natures: the body, which is the abode of the soul; the soul, which is the abode of the spirit; and the spirit, the divine spark.

  "By living a life dedicated to ever increasing purity, the mixture which forms human nature can undergo a double death and transfiguration, so that the formed spirit, born of the spark and nourished in the soul, will eventually separate, returning to the Light. A rigorous, ascetic discipline to achieve this state was available to the masters called "Parfaits" (or "perfects"), and a lower grade of adepts. The Cathars also allowed women to be perfects, that is, priests. The ordinary believers were allowed to share fully in the life of the higher believers, and understood that they were in cycles of reincarnation to be reborn on Earth. They did not believe in a Last Judgement, believing instead that this material world would end only when the last of the angelic souls had been released from it. They believed in reincarnation, and that souls could take many lifetimes to reach perfection before their final release.

  "The outer appearance and practices of the Parfaits were simple. They worshiped in forests and on mountaintops, utilizing the strong spiritual vibrations of the region. Their initiations were held in a series of limestone caves, chiefly near the Pic de St. Barthalemy. They renounced worldly riches, they wore plain dark blue gowns, ate vegetarian foods, and kept strict vows of chastity in keeping with their belief that it was sacrilegious to procreate. They held to the beliefs that Jesus Christ was a divine being, (and so could not have been crucified), that suicide was sacred, and that the role of woman was equal to that of man with the only stipulation being that a woman could not preach. Marriage, baptism, and communion were not recognized as valid rituals. What set the Cathari apart from other Gnostic sects was the ritual of the The Consol-amentum. This ceremony consisted of the Parfait laying his hands upon the head of the literally dying or upon the head of the believer who aspired to enter the community of the Parfaits. A transmission of immense life-giving energy was said to take place, inspiring to those who witnessed it. The ritual of The Consolamentum may have strongly contributed to the rapid spread of Catharism. This energy transmission allowed the spirit to continue its ascent towards the Light in safety, to evolve, or if the recipient was on the threshold of death, to make the leap into the cosmos. To have no fear death was one outcome of going through this process. This courage served the adepts well when they were ruthlessly hunted down. At Montsegur, at Minerve, in the dungeons of Carcasonne, it is told that the Parfaits went willingly to their fate, helping others at the same time achieve release without fear or pain.

  "Quite near here are the sacred caves near the small
resort town of Ussat-Les-Bains. They are known as 'doors to Catharism'. To reach Bethlehem, the most important of the Cave Churches of Ornolac, one must climb the steep Path of Initiation. The Cave of Bethlehem may well have been the spritual centre of the Cathar world. For it was here that the 'Pure' candidate underwent an initiation ceremony that culminated in The Consolamentum.

  "We know very little about what actually happened in the ceremony in the cave but we do know that there was square niche in the wall in which stood the veiled Holy Grail. The cave also had a granite altar upon which The Gospel of John lay. The wall had a pentagram hewn on it, and they were very conscious of spiritual vibrations emanating from the rock walls and floor.

  "The Cathar church was organised into dioceses, who bishops presided over an order of succession consisting of elder and younger 'sons', deacons, and perfecti and perfectae, their priesthood. Many supporters were among the nobility of the Languedoc, which was one of the most sophisticated, wealthy and cosmopolitan civilisations in all Europe at the time. Many lay people supported the perfecti (priests) by becoming credentes, and most took the consolamentum when near death, as the hard, ascetic rigours of the life of the perfecti were too demanding for the average person. So, they could marry and have a family, while the perfecti lived a monastic life; it is also known that the Cathar perfecti travelled in pairs while doing their ministry. They were successful healers and doctors, and knew a great deal about herbalism. Overall, the Cathars had a large number of followers,

  "As you know the crusade against the Cathars began in earnest in 1209. The very foundations of the Roman Catholic Church and feudalism were rocked by Cathar teachings. You couldn't have a whole people cutting their ties to the material world. They practiced what they preached with great humility, they attacked the corruption of the Catholic clergy, and established prosperous, cooperative communities in the land of Oc. All of these things angered the Roman Catholic Church and also the French, Northern based, nobility.

  "When the first rumblings of persecution were heard in 1204, Montsegur was rebuilt and fortified with a garrison. At first the Cathars used the ancient ruin for meditation. With the threat of persecution, according to legend, it served an additional function as a refuge for the sacred treasure of the Grail, the safekeeping of which I believe was part of the function of the Cathari.

  "The military campaign on the South of France was led by the fanatical nobleman, Simon de Montfort. Whole towns loyal to the Cathars were massacred in the most brutal fashion. You know how wild the countryside around here is and this shows the depth of De Montfort's obsession. Innumerable men must have been lost as he plunged armies into deep, craggy ravines and up steep mountainsides. De Montfort's first vicious attacks on Montsegur were successfully repulsed. Montsegur stood firm as a symbol of hope. In part the ferocity of the crusades was fuelled by the greed of northern French barons who saw the opportunity of appropriating the lands of the disposessed heretic nobility in the wealthy Languedoc in the South. Arnold Aimery, the Papal Legate at the siege of Beziers, ordered his men: "Show mercy neither to order, nor to age, nor to sex....Cathar or Catholic, Kill them all... God will know his own....".

  "By 1215, the Council of Lateran established the dread Inquisition. During the next 50 years the toll of those killed by this infamous arm of the Roman Catholic Church climbed to one million, more than in all of the other crusades against heresies combined. Throughout these trials, Montsegur quietly defied the Church, standing as a bastion of faith. The murder of two Dominican Inquisitors at Avignonet was the pretext for resuming attacks against the fortress-temple. The brave Cathari and their supporters resisted for six months, but through an act of treachery, the difficult mountain was scaled, and in March of 1244, Montsegur surrendered. The Cathars marched down the mountain singing and into the large bonfires awaiting them. Two hundred and five of them were burned alive.

  "The coins and sacred objects left behind by the Cathars were distributed to the conquerors, but according to Inquisition records, the real treasure vanished the night before the surrender. The story circulated that Four Cathars and the Cathars' treasure were let down the steepest side of the mountain by ropes and disappeared.

  "Speculation still exists about the nature of the treasure - sacred books, the Grail Stone, or the Holy Grail itself? And where might it be hidden? The silent ruins of Montsegur do not reveal these secrets. Obviously there are those who think some of the treasure lies very close to here."

  Andres lecture was impressive and had stunned them into silence. The depth of his knowledge impressed Mary. John was impressed too as his ecclesiastical history classes in seminary never had been as animated or passionate as Andre's version of this long dead sect.

  Mary had a few questions of clarification for Andre and every time she spoke John used the excuse of concentration to stare at her. Her brows knotted when she was concentrating as if he could see the thoughts being squeezed out. And there was a spark of fire in her eyes that as she deepened and developed some long held and previously less clear ideas. But most of all her face was lovely. He wondered if he was drooling. He could play no part in the discussion, indeed after a while it bored him as she was interested in minutiae rather than the grand sweep of the story that had captivated them all. Is this another infatuation or is this possibly the beginnings of what all the poets describe as romantic love, he found himself asking himself.

  After about half an hour of discussion the three fell silent, each considering what they had learnt from the other and each taking breath before launching off in another direction. John decided it would now be acceptable for him to ask a question of his own without offending the historians so he asked Mark, "What attracts a young man like yourself to the vagrant life?"

  "Need you ask when you see the dawn breaking over the mountain tops and then from the same vantage point see the sun going down. Need you ask when you are out in the open air listening to the birdsong away from the cities smoke and smog. Need you ask when you are surrounded by a rich history and spirituality the breathes out from every rock and tree in this whole beautiful mountainous area. Need you ask when you have parents who have been pushing you to become everything they have not achieved in their boring, middle class lives. There is a freedom on the road. A recognition of this all as being one earth. We are a new race of peaceful pilgrims, travelling on a journey of discovery. We are a mixed band. As you can probably guess I want to be a poet. But there are people running away from all sorts of things with us. There are those running from the law. Those who have left families because of pressures they couldn't take and those who are truly searching for the real spiritual meaning of life. Am I making sense or do I sound like a romantic drop out."

  John wondered what reply to give, having spoken to more that had opted out of mainstream society in various ways over the past few years while he was at the centre than probably Mark had ever met.

  "You have done nothing that countless others who have rebelled at their parents generation haven't done. You have gone away to find yourself and I hope you are successful. There are many who are never able to connect up with their real selves however long they travel and where ever they go. The important thing is that you recognise for yourself the real reason you have got away, what you are escaping from and you are honest with yourself while you can still remember."

  "Are you a guru?" asked Andre, only half tongue I cheek.

  Mary and John both laughed.

  For the first time John had no difficulty in talking about himself. "I am only an old Jesuit who has fallen out with his church." As he said it, he wondered for the first time whether this falling out was temporary or whether it would be forever.

  "Well Father" said Mark half in a tone of mocking, yet half in a tone of respect, "What do you make, as a man of prayer, of the spiritual energies of this place?"

  "Spiritual energies come from inside you. Some are spiritually stimulated by certain environments that do nothing for other people. What you see as a spi
ritual stimulus tells me more about your culture, background, class and religious upbringing than anything objective about the physical world that we see around us."

  "Are you saying there is nothing magic in these beautiful surroundings that you would not find in some city centre Gothic architectural monstrosity?"

  "Are you saying there are no external realities," interjected Mary, "That everything spiritual comes from inside us?"