The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

by Lynn Picknett

  However, in the Grail stories these elements have become detached from the plot and taken on a transcendental character. The `unasked question' becomes a mystical quest in its own right, and the mere speaking of it lifts the enchantment. (In Perceval the question is, `Whom does the Grail serve?' - because this tale is unfinished we never find out what the answer is - and in Parzival it is, `Dear Uncle, what ails you?')

  The object in Peredur on which Chretien de Troyes based his graal is the severed head on a salver. This is supported by the conclusion that his graal was some kind of shallow serving dish. However, Chretien has chosen to omit the more significant part of the `prototype Grail' - the head - and highlight the mundane part, the dish. Clearly, Chretien has deliberately chosen to change or obscure this aspect of the Grail, but why?

  The severed head motif was common enough in Celtic mythology and folklore, so it is hardly significant to find it in Peredur. However, in a Christian context, the severed head on the platter makes an obvious association with John the Baptist, and it seems to have been this association that appealed to Chretien. But then it is odd that he should obscure the very aspect of the tale that seems to have attracted him in the first place and would make sense of the platter.

  If Chretien deliberately sought to obscure the severed head, the connection with the Baptist and the existence of the historical Johannite heresy might provide an explanation for this. (If Chretien were a Johannite, and modelled Perceval on Peredur specifically to produce a Johannite work, the question remains about where he learnt about the heretical cult of John. Chretien originated, as his name suggests, from the northern French town of Troyes, which was not only a centre of learning, but also the court of the Count of Champagne, who `sponsored' the founding of the Templars. Troyes was the site of the first Templar preceptory in Europe.)

  The military order of the Poor Knights of Christ, or the Knights Templar, became enormously rich, powerful and arrogant, especially in France, and were consequently ruthlessly suppressed in the early fourteenth century, amid accusations and confessions - admittedly extracted from them by the application of hideous torture - of blasphemy. It was said that they worshipped, among other idols, a bearded severed head called Baphomet, and that they spit and trampled on the cross. In The Templar Revelation we investigated these claims and were astonished to discover that there might indeed have been some basis in fact. For the Templars, it seems, encountered `the Church of John in the East' - the Baptist's followers, or the Mandaeans, whom we have already discussed. According to the likes of Summers, they `infected' the Christian knights with their heresy, although it would appear that only the inner circle was so contaminated. The rank and file - the vast majority of the Templars - were simply Christian warrior-monks with little or no idea of what the upper hierarchy believed or practised. In the context of the Mandaean `contamination', the rumours of spitting and trampling on the cross, not to mention revering a bearded severed head, suddenly make perfect sense, tortured confessions or not.

  When seen in Johannite terms, Chretien's choice of Peredur as his model becomes even more significant. The `secret' of the Grail lies in the identity of the beheaded man, and it is his death that has brought ruin and sterility to the kingdom, which recognizing his true identity and avenging his death will reverse. (Perhaps there is even significance in the fact that the dead man is a cousin of the main protagonist: John and Jesus were said to be cousins.)

  None of this chain of reasoning would have been obvious to Chretien's audience unless they knew his source, so it becomes a neat way of passing on the Johannite message in `coded' form. Perhaps this is why Chretien failed to finish the story, or perhaps, having removed the all-important head, he was stuck for an ending. In Peredur it centres on working out whose head it is.

  All this Johannite heresy is lost in the Christian `branch': the Grail becomes an explicitly Christian symbol, and the quest a Christian spiritual process. It was this branch that became the most familiar version. Wolfram, however, remained largely true to the Johannite line.

  However, although there are specific references to Jesus as Christ, and to conventional Christian teaching and doctrines, in Wolfram's story, by the standards of the time and culture they are noticeably few - perhaps just the bare minimum to avoid raising suspicion. It has been noted by many scholars that Wolfram has deliberately minimized the role of the Church and clergy, to the point of removing certain characters and situations that appear in Perceval. Conventionally, this is explained by the idea that it was Wolfram's intention to write a morality tale aimed specifically at the knightly caste (to which he himself belonged), encouraging them to a greater spirituality. He therefore tried to show how they could change their ways without necessarily having recourse to the clergy. But while this may or may not be correct, the significant point is that Wolfram's marginalization of the Church is so conspicuous that scholars feel a need to explain it (although, of course, they have no reason to suspect that Wolfram was trying to deliver a heretical message).

  On the other hand, there are many references that appear to be Christian, but which make more sense in Johannite terms: the frequent use of the term `baptized men' to describe the keepers of the Grail (although they are very occasionally called 'Christians', as in the above quotation concerning Flegetanis); a somewhat evasive appeal to `He whom painters still depict as the Lamb, with the Cross between His hooves', and so on.

  Tobias Churton has argued for a Sabian `Arabic' influence on Wolfram's work32 - the name of one of the great Sabian scientists, Thabit ibn Qurra, even crops up, out of the blue, in Parzival. Such an influence would have come via Moorish Spain, so Wolfram's invocation of Flegetanis and Toledo makes sense. If equating the Sabians of that period with the Mandaeans is accepted (a link Churton would reject), then the source of the Johannite elements becomes clear.

  But if Wolfram was aware of the hidden Johannitism of the Grail story, why did he change the Grail itself from a salver into a stone (although, as noted above, he kept the connection with the provision of food)? Is this, too, open to a Johannite interpretation?

  Wolfram has Trevrizent explain the origins of the Grail to Parzival:

  When Lucifer and the Trinity began to war with each other, those who did not take sides, worthy, noble angels, had to descend to earth to that Stone which is for ever incorruptible. I do not know whether God forgave them or damned them in the end: if it was His due He took them back. Since that time the Stone has been in the care of those whom God appointed to it and to whom He sent his angels.33

  But then, at the end of the story Trevrizent admits:

  I lied as a means of distracting you from the Gral and how things stood concerning it. Let me atone for my error [ ...]. You heard from me that the banished angels were at the Gral with God's full support till they should be received back into His Grace. But God is constant in such matters: He never ceased to war against those whom I named to you here as forgiven. Whoever desires to have reward from God must be in feud with those angels. For they are eternally damned and chose their own perdition.

  So it has gone from `God forgave them' to `I don't know what happened to them' to `God damned them'. It has been suggested that this reversal was the result of Wolfram being censured by his local priesthood for the earlier comments. (Parzival is thought to have been composed in parts, which were circulated as they were completed, so a correction would have to be issued for any `doctrinal error' spotted in an early part.)

  Whatever the reason, the twist makes the Grail an object belonging to condemned and damned angels, who God-fearing folk `must be in feud with' - maybe not as bad as Lucifer and his hordes, but nearly so.

  So, although Wolfram fails to link the Grail and Lucifer directly, it could be argued that he does so indirectly, by association with the fallen angels (who, if God did damn them, must have ended up in Hell and therefore be subject to Lucifer in his Satanic mode anyway).

  Undoubtedly, in medieval symbolism, John the Baptist was associated wit
h the Morning Star, although the thinking behind this is obvious and conventional - the Morning Star heralds the coming of the sun as the Baptist heralded the coming of Christ. In the thirteenth century Jacob de Voragine would write in his Golden Legend (in Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger's translation) concerning John the Baptist:

  For the Father calls him an angel, and says of him: `Behold I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face.' But angel is the name of an office and not of a nature; and therefore he is called an angel by reason of his office, because he exercised the office of all the angels. First, of the Seraphim. Seraphim is usually interpreted fiery because the Seraphim set us afire, and they themselves burn more ardently with the love of God; and in Ecclesiasticus it is said of John: `Elias the prophet stoodup,as afire,andhis wordburnt like a torch'; for he came in the spirit and power of Elias. Second of the Cherubim. Cherubim is interpreted the fulness of knowledge; and John is called the morning star, because he put an end to the night of ignorance and made a beginning of the light of grace. [It goes on to compare John to various groups of angels ...]34

  So there is a tenuous association of ideas that links John and Lucifer, via the Morning Star, but this stops far short of actually equating the two, as some did in the Middle Ages. However, in his book on the Templars, Michel Lamy quotes Jacob de Voragine's last sentence as: `John is called Lucifer or the morning star ...'

  In context, Lamy's version makes sense. Jacob is comparing John to angels, and without a reference to an angel the connection between the Cherubim and the Morning Star is a non sequitur. And there is the other, albeit tantalisingly circumstantial association of ideas mentioned earlier: the Morning and Evening Stars are, of course, really the same - more accurately, the planet, Venus. The Morning Star was linked with Lucifer and the Evening Star with the planet Venus, which the heretics associated with Mary Magdalene.35 So if we accept Lamy's curious translation of John being Lucifer, then perhaps the story of the stone falling from Lucifer's head is not so far off the mark.

  In any case, according to the Inquisition, the Cathars owned the head of John the Baptist ... Surely of all possible types of `Grail', that is the one that the Church would have really loved to have seized from the heretics.

  The Cathars' own view of John was somewhat confused: they took the idea from their precursors the Bogomils that the Baptist was `a demon', surreally, `forerunner of the AntiChrist'.36 And in the Cathars' holy book, the Book of John (Liber Secretum or Secret Book) Jesus announces that John the Baptist is an emissary of Satan, the lord of the physical world, despatched to earth to sabotage his mission. But of course this is merely an exaggerated version of what is already in the standard New Testament: as we have seen, Jesus appears to have roundly insulted the Baptist at least twice. Clearly the Cathars realized that the two men were bitter enemies, but assumed - as indeed most Christians would - that Jesus must unequivocally and eternally be on the side of right.

  Whatever their beliefs about the Baptist, perhaps they still inherited his head from some other Gnostic group, keeping it to maintain its magical enslavement. Perhaps, too, it was part of the fabled `Cathar treasure' that four Perfecti allegedly carried away the night before the others gave themselves up to the Crusaders. If so, they had also removed the Johannites' most sacred `Grail': perhaps that is why so many Templars were so friendly towards them, despite papal urgings to the contrary.

  With the martyrdoms of the Cathars of Montsegur the scene was set for a shift in papal thought: now heresy was intimately linked with Devil-worship, with the horrors of witchcraft. There was no need for the newly-formed Inquisition to kick its heels in idleness now the field was wide open for an even greater crusade.

  The terror begins

  Colin Wilson comments in his book, The Occult (1973): `Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance.'' However, this definition largely depends on the particular manifestation of Christianity in question. The calm, probity and intellectual capacity of the itinerant Cathar preachers was notably at odds with the decadent lifestyle of the higher Catholic clergy, and the often staggering ignorance of the parish priests, equipped to do little more than say the Mass and preside over the usual offices such as burying the dead. But then came Dominic de Guzman, a fanatical Spanish cleric who aimed to use the Cathars' own methods against them - and in doing so, he unleashed a virtual apocalypse upon at least 100,000 poor wretches, and caused suffering and hardship to many millions more ordinary people for generations. Under the flag of his new order, the Dominicans, he created the Holy Office, otherwise known as the Inquisition, a word that should - but these days rarely does - evoke the same concentrated shudder in the minds of all decent people as does the terrible term `Gestapo'. They are not dissimilar, except the latter was a very brief manifestation of evil compared to the lengthy reign of the Inquisition - in fact, it still operates today, but under the less emotive name of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.'x

  This speech of Dominic's to the people of the Cathar country, dating from the 1200s, reveals a hint of the horrors to come:

  I have sung words of sweetness to you for many years now, preaching, imploring, weeping. But as the people of my country say, where blessing is to no avail, the stick will prevail. Now we shall call forth against you leaders and prelates who, alas, will gather together against this country . . . and will cause many people to die by the sword, will ruin your towers, overthrow and destroy your walls and reduce you all to servitude ... the force of the stick will prevail where sweetness and blessing have been able to accomplish nothing 39

  Despite the unflinching harshness of this warning, `dying by the sword' would no doubt come to seem like an outright luxury compared to the atrocious methods of death meted out to thousands by his henchmen.

  Deeply involved with Simon de Montfort, Dominic finally settled his headquarters at Toulouse (Carcassonne proving too hostile), where he founded the Order of the Preaching Friars, or the Dominican Order, in December 1216. Three years later he and his monks were on the move again: Toulouse had proved too hot to hold them. Giving the Languedoc up as a very bad job, the Dominicans spread to various locations, including Paris and, of course, Spain. By the time of Dominic's death in 1221, his movement was riding high, with a hundred houses - and its success was assured when the Dominican-friendly pope, Gregory IX, began his reign in 1233.

  A year later two Inquisitors were officially appointed at Toulouse, centre of Cathar country - previously too hostile for the Dominicans to make their base. Now they were back, and they were in charge, with new and terrible powers from the pope himself. However, the Inquisitors by no means enjoyed unmitigated success, as Guillaume Pelhisson discovered after having several living heretics burnt, and, for good measure, also `certain deceased persons ... dragged away and burnt' 40 The people rebelled and set upon the Inquisitor, beating him badly. Outraged, Guillaume remarks apopleptically: `They beat, wounded and killed those who pursued them ... many wicked things were done in the land to the church and to faithful persons.'41

  An unedifying story illustrates the fanaticism and dehumanization of the new masters of bodies, if not souls. In 1234 Dominic was canonized - as Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh remark in their 1999 book The Inquisition: `Few saints can have had so much blood on their hands'42 - and while the Dominicans at Toulouse were preparing to celebrate the event, news arrived of a dying woman's heresy. As she lay on her deathbed, apparently she had received the Cathar version of the last rites, the Consolamentum. The Inquisitors, including the Bishop of Toulouse, rushed to her bedside, where they found her steeped in Catharism and obdurate in her heresy. `Forthwith, the bishop . . . by virtue of Jesus Christ condemned her as a heretic. Moreover, the vicar had her carried on the bed in which she lay to the count's meadow and burned at once.'4' As Baigent and Leigh remark dryly, `Thus did the Dominicans of Toulouse crown their celebration of the newly sainted Dominic's feast day with a human sacrifice.'44


  Shortly afterwards, the Dominicans were expelled from Toulouse by an outraged populace, but their revenge on that city, and on the neighbouring countryside, was so atrocious that its fallout reverberates to this day in an impoverished land still suspicious of the Church of Rome. First, to establish that their power transcended even the safe haven of the grave, the Inquisition had the bones and putrescent bodies of prominent heretics dragged from their graves and burnt `to the honour of God and the Blessed Virgin, His Mother, and the Blessed Dominic, His Servant [who] ... most happily brought about this work of the Lord.'45

  One of the most zealous (and therefore most vicious) of the early Inquisitors was himself a former Cathar, the Dominican friar Robert `le bougre' ('the Bulgar'), also known as `the hammer of the heretics'. He sent many thousands to the stake in both Flanders and France, in 1239 consigning 183 of his former co-religionists to the flames in Mont-Aims en masse as `a fiery propitiation of God'. (But perhaps even Yahweh at his sourest would stop short of demanding such an offering. And there is no record of the Devil doing so, either.) That particular horror is notable for the fact that the local bishop offered them the solace of the Consolamentum before they died 46

  Although there had been isolated cases of the execution (or exile) of heretics in the past, now the Inquisition proved a well-oiled, highly dedicated machine, a conveyor belt for tipping whole communities into Hell. However, because of a long-standing ecclesiastical tradition of not actually causing heretical blood to be shed, more or less ingenious ways of torturing and despatching the accused were devised that would keep bloodshed to a minimum, such as the thumbscrew and the rack. As Baigent and Leigh put it succinctly: `Devices of this kind would seem to have been contrived mess."Fire minimum was the answer to the Inquisitors' prayers. From the and pain maximum cause to point of view of the Church it has several major advantages. It is relatively bloodless. It has a unique capacity to evoke terror: the very thought of flames near one's vulnerable flesh induces an immediate atavistic fear, and the real thing is satisfyingly excruciating - particularly if produced by lighting slow-burning green wood, or setting the fire a fair distance beneath the heretics. And, ultimately, it is very cleansing, a purgation of the filth of heresy. As an afterthought, it could be argued that fire cleanses the heretic's soul, although mostly they were led to believe their only possible destiny was eternal hell fire. Suffering beyond imagining in life was to be followed by considerably worse - including the prospect of the spiritual desolation of being for ever removed from the love of Christ. Even the Nazis or the henchmen of Pol Pot contented themselves with mere mortal agonies.