As history marched on toward the 20th century and the various Rosicrucian orders came to an end, the Priory of Sion found another outlet for an expression of its knowledge. At the turn of the 19th century in Rennes-le-Château, a village in the Languedoc in southern France, a young priest, Bérenger Saunière began renovating his church using a number of ideas and symbols known to us from the rituals of Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians. By encoding these symbols in his church the priest was preserving the information for future generations.
Sion itself lay dormant for the next 50 years, its members scattered by two world wars. Then in the 1950s it was publicly registered in France by Pierre Plantard. Sion had surfaced for another round of dissemination. Previously there was no reason for them to expose themselves by way of public registration. They were a secret society. But two events conspired to cause this shift in how they appeared. The first intention was to summon members and would-be members back to the fold. The second was that they considered the time to be right for their goals to be revealed to the public.
The old families had lost contact and many members had been killed or incarcerated during the Second World War, when France was directly or indirectly under Nazi rule. Also, there was a pervading loss of continuity and a loss of faith within society. The impression given is that Sion was working to a timetable but that events were delayed by the Second World War. Sion says that it was imperative that the existence of the order be known by the mid-1980s as if it was preparing society for the release of information linked to a coming event.
Pierre Plantard had been set a challenge and set about making the Priory of Sion known. His name was added to the list of Grand Masters and he began to circulate material on Sion’s behalf. In 1956 the Priory of Sion was registered at St.-Julien-en-Genevois, on the Swiss border in southeastern France (why this particular place was chosen is uncertain) and the statutes of Sion were deposited there by Plantard. These statutes have yet to emerge in an unedited form and we only have references from Nic Haywood to illuminate what they may contain. In their first publicized form the statutes were modified from the originals. These were modern day variants on much older statutes and their purpose remains partly hidden as one passage, Article ‘O’, has never been made public. This article allows for the rewriting of all other articles in times of oppression or to achieve a specific purpose and as such changes the context of all the articles that follow.
Shortly after the registration of Sion a collection of documents compiled under the banner Les Dossiers Secrets (Secret Dossiers) surfaced in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. The Dossiers Secrets appear to have been a tool to communicate information about Sion to other interested parties via documents and clippings deposited over a period of time. This was Sion’s attempt to reorganize after the Second World War – a noticeboard of sorts for those who knew how to read its contents.
We know for example that the Freemasons were actively hunted by the Nazis as they were seen as having the potential to undermine the regime. Many of Sion’s members are also Freemasons or members of other secret societies. During the war a number of Sion’s members would have been killed, imprisoned or displaced, and many meeting points in Europe would have ceased to exist.
Also, post-war disillusionment was seen as an opportunity to reintroduce some of the more meaningful religious ideals back into society. In such a climate it was felt necessary to reopen lines of communication as quickly as possible.
The Dossiers were treated as a ‘pigeon hole’ where members of the order could leave relevant fragments and notes for each other. It was a gathering of material reflecting Sion and its aims that could easily be identified by those who were in possession of related material. Additional to the Dossiers were a number of ‘stacks’ secreted in other locations that were used to gather information. They were created in the Bibliothèque Nationale and kept hidden by not being listed in the main catalogue. A member of staff known to Sion would retrieve them only by direct request. Even today there exists a contact for Sion in the Bibliothèque Nationale whose name I am not at liberty to divulge.
According to Nic Haywood, the Dossiers Secrets no longer serve any real practical purpose beyond signposting, but they are still updated regularly. A matter more of tradition than the once-was necessity. The secret dossiers were not meant for the public and certainly not meant to be taken at face value. They served a different purpose as a means to communicate between different factions but for now it is important to recognize that they contained references directing the reader to Rennes-le-Château. Continuity is central to the survival of secret societies and Sion’s post-war signposting actions may well attest to this desire to ensure the re-establishment of a disrupted tradition.
It is mainly on account of Pierre Plantard (1920–2000) that the Priory of Sion has attracted both respect and ridicule in equal measure. I never met or conversed with Plantard and I have no intention of casting aspersions on his name, but I can provide some information and context for those interested in this period of Sion’s history.
Plantard, who added the ‘de St.-Clair’ to his name in later years, claimed to have been initiated into the Priory of Sion in 1943 by Abbé (later Monsignor) François Ducaud-Bourget (1898–1984). Plantard had set up a number of front organizations in the 1930s and 1940s that seem to have had few members and produced very little beyond the occasional newsletter. It has to be noted that during the Nazi occupation these newsletters included anti-Masonic and anti-Semitic material while at the same time cultivating an interest in Grail and Hermetic lore. Those who defend Plantard’s politics claim that it was a wartime cover for his work in the French Resistance, but this is unproven. However, he is acknowledged by some as ‘Pierre de France’ due to his patriotism at the time.
I have no intention of apologizing for Plantard’s actions or condoning his apparent anti-Semitism, but I would not dismiss him out of hand as, for a time, he became very useful to Sion. His intentions in launching the Rennes-le-Château and Sion affair of the late 20th century appear to be based on the necessity to reveal a truth.
While researching I contacted Pierre Plantard’s son, Thomas, via an intermediary, offering him the opportunity to set the record straight on his father. However, the invitation was politely, and understandably, declined. At the time Thomas Plantard claimed to have no interest in these matters. Ultimately, readers will view Pierre Plantard how they wish. However, we should bear in mind that he clearly did not exploit his position or potential fame for wealth.
By registering the Priory of Sion his aim appears to have been to gather together the remaining adepts and bloodline members in order to manipulate a shift in society and ensure a continuation of Sion’s ideals.
This might be where the confusion surrounding the different Grand Master lists stems from (see Chapter 3). The underlying concerns and ideals of the Priory of Sion have existed since antiquity but only when necessary do these concerns and ideals coalesce in the form of a functioning group. Added to this, the loss of libraries and of Sion’s network of associates due to wars and other upheavals greatly diminished the order. Hence Plantard’s first attempt at a list of Grand Masters is wildly optimistic but useful as a basis to attract other members/archivists with more accurate information.
Later, Plantard considered Gisors as a possible conduit for the information he was to make public, but finally settled on Rennes-le-Château. While Gisors had documents and other connections to the Templars, Rennes-le-Château provided far better material with which to communicate the cause.
Through the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, Plantard brought many new ideas to light. The belief in the bloodline of Jesus, while being present in the region (see Chapter 14 Heresy and History), was not his prime purpose, but it caught the imagination of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and attracted far more publicity than anyone had imagined. If Plantard’s aim was to get certain information into the public domain and to make the masses conscious of it then he was fantastically successful. As I write this on a train the woman sitting opposite me is reading The Da Vinci Code, a worldwide bestseller that sparked a legal spat between Dan Brown and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail authors, who unsuccessfully claimed that Brown had plagiarized their book. The court case made national news as far away as South Korea.
The bloodline idea is central to the Priory of Sion but incidental in terms of its purpose. It is taken as a given within the Priory and at this point in time has little meaning to those of us not of the bloodline families. In fact, in this respect Plantard was almost too successful in his dissemination.
Through the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, Plantard has invited us to consider all manner of arcane matters for research and discussion. However much we try to refute his claims and dispense with his evidence we have to concede his success. Plantard was no fool and at his core it seems he was an alchemist, given to transformation. His achievements have set things in motion – but it is only the beginning.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail came as a great shock to many when it was released, but it also proved that society could withstand these heretical and historical revelations. Sion intended that after allowing a period of time for its ideas to be absorbed into society, further information would emerge. This book is a part of that continuing release. We are currently entering a new circuit, a new cycle.
Like Sion today, Plantard directs our attention to locations, events, art and historical figures. He charges us with unravelling Sion’s history and making its aims known to the world. As Nic Haywood said in an interview:
‘[Plantard’s release of information] was timely; the goals of the Priory of Sion are spiritual and cultural, and Pierre was a genius – he was aware that Rennes-le-Château would filter into the public domain, and what had happened there opens a whole new chapter.’
In Sion’s current ranks there exists an undercurrent of ‘old school’ machinations among Plantard’s circle from the 1970s. Some members, such as Gino Sandri, seem unable to let go of Plantard’s time or its shadier aspects, such as links to the secret service and behaviour akin to the French resistance work Plantard was credited with during the Second World War. But we cannot join Plantard’s ‘underground stream’, as that time has passed: the path, in spite of Sandri’s efforts, is no longer available to us. The current cycle of information-revealing adds some details to elaborate on Plantard’s period, but there are also plenty of new revelations that are more appropriate to our time. For other members the feeling is that the sense of opportunity has returned. They are optimistic that Sion is once again moving forward.
Recent books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code have entirely focussed public awareness on the bloodline aspect of the Priory of Sion. But Sion would have us believe that the bloodline is peripheral, having little meaning in the current world beyond its theological implications.
There seems to be much more to the order and I have discovered that Sion is very active in many parts of the world at present. The scope of its activities vary from the occult to Middle Eastern politics. The political weight of Sion cannot be underestimated. We have seen how it has a penchant for employing from within the secret service and other secret societies. To achieve its aim of a marriage of Eastern and Western philosophies it is increasingly involved in Arab-Israeli politics with the intention of putting an end to the infighting among Christians, Muslims and Jews.
This seems to be a continuation of the work of the Templars, who sought common ground with Muslims in the last days of the Crusades.
As well as the intelligence service mentioned earlier, it is Sion’s devout Catholic/Christian element, known internally as the ‘Italian contingent’, that is identified today as the primary cause of any delay in Sion’s release of information. Understandably it does not suit the Catholic Church to hurry along its own potential demise, which is what the revelations ultimately imply. In addition to this element Sion’s membership also embraces the old families of the bloodlines as well as more alchemical members. It must make for an uncomfortable crucible to work in.
In spite of this the aim of Sion in the present day – the release of certain religious truths, artefacts and knowledge – is all in service of a greater cause. Indeed, possibly the greatest cause of all. As Nic put it:
‘The fundamental goal of the Priory of Sion is the unification of mankind by means of engendered cultural and spiritual shifts in perceptions and values. It is for this reason that Sion’s name appears to be appended to so many seemingly disparate causes.’
This chapter has served as a general introduction to the Priory of Sion. But to achieve a deeper understanding we must explore further some of the themes and aspects that make Sion what it is. Let us recall the biblical quotation at the head of Chapter 1 (Isaiah 28.16):
‘I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.’
We can now view this quotation in a new perspective. The use of the word ‘Sion’ or ‘Zion’ is not merely a reference to a physical location in history, it is an ideal, a place of complete fulfilment and freedom, and perhaps this describes what lies at the heart of the Priory of Sion. There is a regressive risk with this outlook – a stultifying harking-back to a supposed ‘Golden Age’ – that has stalled many societies through history, as we will see later. But the Priory of Sion is moving forward, not backward, and its ‘Arcadian’ ideals stem from its knowledge of human potential, not from some rose-tinted nostalgia for lost glories.
There are also a number of theories regarding the transmission of Sion’s core secrets. There seems to have been a loss and subsequent rediscovery of the information at certain points in history, for example prior to the time of the Templars and the Cathars, after the French Revolution and during the Second World War. From this angle, Sion often appears as a loose group of adepts passing on knowledge and secrets down the centuries. In this form, Sion can remain a meme (something that identifies ideas or beliefs transmitted from one person or group of people to another) from age to age until the mid-20th century, when it was regrouped to serve a purpose. By regrouped I mean that all those diverse individuals and groups who could be considered ‘adepts’ of the various branches of ancient esoteric and spiritual knowledge were brought together – conceptually if not literally – under a single name: the Priory of Sion.
At one level, therefore, we have to accept that the Priory of Sion exists. It is possible to meet members, read their documents and publications and learn a great deal from them. As just mentioned, Sion as an organization is currently very active. It has a headquarters in Paris and members all over the world including in France, the US, the UK, Canada and Egypt. I have not been party to their ‘ultimate secret’, should such a thing exist, but this does not devalue the organization as a force for better or worse in the world. And it is very much a force.
In the same way that Sion uses other vehicles of dissemination to further its message it could well be that Sion itself is a method of delivery for knowledge that predates the Crusades. This will lead us inevitably to the Sion’s main point of departure: the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, where the church has amazed and baffled researchers since it came to wider public attention in the 1950s. The Priory of Sion uses Rennes-le-Château as a vehicle to disseminate certain truths, both historical and spiritual, and as explorers of Sion we are obliged to investigate this mystery in its many forms.