INTRODUCTION

THE UNDERGROUND STREAM


In December 2005 I received a Christmas card from a representative of the secret society or order called the Priory of Sion. It was inscribed with a Latin abbreviation – L.V.A.A.T. – and stamped for release as a legitimate Priory of Sion document. The card depicted the Three Wise Men following the Star of Bethlehem.

The significance of the three men following the stars – astrologers perhaps – was not lost on me. For nearly six months I had been mediating between the Priory of Sion and 1244 Films, who were producing a documentary on the heretical notion that Jesus had fathered children.

My introduction to this mystery began long before the documentary. I had researched both the Priory of Sion, and the idea of the bloodline of Jesus, for fifteen years prior to 1244’s invitation. My interest during this time centred on the mystery of Rennes-le-Château, a small village in southern France where a priest had become suddenly very wealthy at the end of the 19th century and had spent the money on modifying his church to include an array of unorthodox symbols.

Some twenty years ago a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail had sparked my interest. Published in 1982, this was the first English account of the Rennes-le-Château mystery. The authors, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, briefly outlined the mystery and then introduced one Pierre Plantard as the current Grand Master of a secret society called the Priory of Sion.

In 1956 Plantard registered the Priory of Sion (la Prieuré de Sion) as an official organization in France and it later emerged that at around this time documents were deposited in the French National Library in Paris under the title Dossiers Secrets. These Dossiers Secrets contained a collection of esoteric cuttings, genealogies and a list of Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion over the centuries. Then in 1967 two encoded parchments appeared in a publication called The Accursed Treasure of Rennes-le-Château by Gérard de Sède, who was also influenced by Plantard. This in turn inspired Henry Lincoln and the writing of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Sion were beginning to go public.

In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail Plantard claimed that the key to the mystery of Rennes-le-Château was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. At the time this was a shocking revelation and I commend the authors on their bravery for bringing this idea into the public domain.

However, I had read many antiquarian books on secret societies, and I had never encountered the name Priory of Sion. I did not trust Pierre Plantard and I suspected that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail had been led away from the truth, so I began my own quest to unravel the mystery of Rennes-le-Château.

By 1994 I had joined Watkins Bookshop in London. As one of the oldest and largest esoteric bookshops in Europe, Watkins attracts people from many religions and disciplines and during my time there I met Templars (English and European), Freemasons (English and European), Sufis, astrologers, occultists, members of the Order of Lazarus, the Golden Dawn, Gnostics, academics and archaeologists, and many authors on the subjects surrounding these mysteries.

During this time I was visiting Rennes-le-Château at every opportunity and was reasonably well equipped to interpret the symbols for myself. The aim of my quest was simple. I sought to find the truth.

In early 2003 documentary-maker Bruce Burgess contacted me with a view to working on a film about the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I had known Bruce and shared ideas with him over a number of years. He was aware of my interest in Rennes-le-Château and the Priory of Sion and because he sought to unravel the mystery with an open mind I agreed to join the production as lead researcher.

Unknown to Bruce, I had encountered the Priory of Sion at Watkins Books in the 1990s and had access to one of its members. As the documentary (titled Bloodline – the Movie) progressed it was clear that Bruce and his co-producer, René Barnett, intended to undertake an investigation of the mystery without bias or agenda and so I chose to contact Sion to see if they were willing to become involved in the project.

At the time Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code had attained such a high profile by mentioning the bloodline and the Priory of Sion that it had started a flood of other books and documentaries exploring these ideas. None of these included any new information from Sion itself and many failed even to acknowledge its existence.

By involving the Priory of Sion in the documentary I had hoped to give it a platform to set the record straight. What I was unprepared for was the sheer mass of information they were willing to impart. So far I have received over 300 emails, artworks, designs, documents and a wealth of other information that has previously never seen the light of day. Together with producer Bruce Burgess I met a representative of the Priory of Sion on several occasions and recorded a three-hour interview, some of which appears in the film.

In May 2008 Bloodline – the Movie was premiered at the East Village cinema in New York and received a standing ovation from a packed audience. Due to the scope and depth of the information that I had been receiving it had become clear very early on in the project that it was far more than could possibly be included in a documentary. With this in mind I began to organize the material, along with my own eighteen years’ worth of research, into the book you are now reading.

In this book I have focussed on the information received from the Priory of Sion itself and attempted to create a coherent picture of who they are, what they claim to be, and more importantly, what they claim to possess. A number of chapters were passed to their representative in this matter, Nic Haywood, for his comments. At no time did he ask that I remove or alter any of the content; on the contrary he accepted the text as written and where possible generously clarified or embellished the information that I presented.

After looking at the Priory of Sion as an entity, the book goes on to examine the information that they have provided, which illuminates a vast and diverse range of esoteric areas, from the strange story of Rennes-le-Château to the great and profound mysteries of Christianity, alchemy and the apocalypse. These revelations take the reader into ‘the underground stream’, a symbolic name for the current of esoteric and heretical information protected and passed down through history by secret societies, noble families – and even the clergy. The underground stream speaks of a secret history, often bound up in symbolism, encoded in art, encrypted in documents or expressed through rituals. But occasionally it surfaces and we catch a glimpse of the arcane mysteries that lie beneath. There are signs and symbols in plain view that stare out of stained glass windows and church statues.

Like Dante’s Virgil, the Priory of Sion is our guide through this journey. The members of this secret society claim to have protected and promulgated the secrets of the underground stream throughout history. We must study them closely for they are not only the keepers of these esoteric traditions but they embody the ideals therein. Over time it had become clear that my initial distrust of Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion was unfounded.

There is much more to be done in terms of exploring all that has been revealed to me on this journey. Some areas I hope to revisit one day, the rest I leave up to you, the reader.

Fittingly, let us begin this journey with my translation of the abbreviation on that Christmas card. L.V.A.A.T. stands for Lux Veritatis Alet Altare Templi – ‘May the Light of Truth Sustain the Temple Altar’.

It is time to shed some light on the truth.

Rob Howells, December 2010