CHAPTER 2

A HIDDEN HISTORY

SECRET SOCIETIES


The existence of the Priory of Sion first became public knowledge in the 1950s with the discovery of its journal Vaincre in a Freemasonic context, namely the Grand Lodge Alpina in Switzerland, one of the main global Masonic organizations. This fact alone shows that the Priory of Sion does not exist in a vacuum: secret societies have existed and cross-fertilized on every continent throughout much of history. From the followers of Pythagoras in Greece circa 500 BCE, through the medieval Assassins in the Middle East, the Thuggees in 17th-century India, the Carbonari in 19th-century Italy, and the ongoing forms of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, secret societies have always thrived in one form or another. Some fail in their purpose and disappear, others fragment into new societies or reinvent themselves, and a few have continued from antiquity to the present day.

Today there exist thousands of esoteric societies, secret and otherwise, scattered across the world. Some, like Freemasonry, are well known but most go unheard of and as such are truly secret. Of course, anyone can create a secret society; all it takes is a few friends and the pretence of possessing or doing something secret. For these groups the ‘secrets’ have no real value and must be kept secret or members would cease to pay fees and their self-important hierarchies would collapse.

The secret societies that endure the longest tend to have unique information, a core teaching, or a belief system into which they can enrol initiates and which they can pass down through generations. These are often created to protect information or beliefs that would not be tolerated in their contemporary religious or political climate. They are preserved in ritual and teachings, often in symbolic form, and passed down through family members or initiates. Sion is in a good position to work in this manner as it claims many aristocratic families among its members.

A second form of transmission occurs when the ideals and beliefs of an old society, and sometimes something of the source material, are rediscovered and resurrected to recreate a new society. Researching these resurrected groups can be difficult as many have names adopted from earlier groups, such as the numerous Rosicrucian or pseudo-Templar orders at large today. Of those that claim direct descent from their predecessors, some are actual recipients of the original materials, knowledge or spirit of the society’s previous incarnation. Others simply wish to emulate past glories or use an ancient precursor to bolster their credibility.

The notion of secret societies naturally engenders a feeling of mistrust in all of us. There may seem to be something unhealthy about keeping secrets, but it is a trait all humans have. By withholding information, such societies maintain a certain power and mystique which can be used as a means of control in the same way that the Roman Catholic Church for so long resisted the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in any language other than Latin.

There is also the risk that such groups can act as cover for anything from international espionage to political revolution or serious crime. The problem is that new members often cannot know what they are getting into until they have progressed through the ranks. Even in Freemasonry, many members in the lower degrees never truly grasp what they have joined. As one anonymous Third-Degree Freemason put it to me: ‘I don’t really know what it’s all about, something to do with Ancient Egypt, I think.’

Freemasons in Britain can be considered as falling into two groups: those who see it as part of the Western esoteric tradition and those who treat it as a men’s lunch club. Sadly the recruitment of the latter, probably to fill the coffers, has far outweighed that of the former in recent years. Many members are content to treat the rituals as a meaningless tradition, and in their ignorance they play hopscotch on the Kabbalistic tree of life. However, there remains a body of members who research arcane matters and treat Freemasonry’s rituals, those strange mystery plays, with due respect.

RITUAL AND INITIATION


We all develop and evolve throughout our lives. Our experiences change our perceptions and how we relate to the world, they change how we think and behave. But life is a slow teacher and at various points civilizations have sought to develop tools to accelerate the process. These can be encoded in the form of rituals. The initiations and rituals of all secret societies are an important means of both transmitting information and imprinting ideals on an individual.

An initiation can be used to teach or impress upon the candidate something at every level of being. Through mental contemplation, physical enactment and emotional impact a true initiation exerts upon the candidate an experiential level of teaching. It is a direct form of receiving wisdom that carries a strong psychological impact.

Rituals are central to many secret societies. Handled correctly, they can be very powerful tools for human growth. Such tools might be considered of immense value to the general public were they to be made known, but there are a number of factors that argue against this.

The first is that rituals work better if the candidate is unaware of what they are about to experience. By surrendering the known we are open to receive and learn. This can be challenging, as all personal change takes place at an emotional level. All learning is loss (of old perceptions, emotions and mindsets), so advanced warning would allow the mind to prepare mental and emotional barriers to accepting challenging insights.

The second is that in the wrong hands the power of rituals can be perverted to serve a less altruistic cause. There was once a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn who took Aleister Crowley’s dictum, ‘Do what thou wilt’ – meaning act in accordance with your own true will – and created a group to do his will and not their own. It worked for him until the power sent him insane, but for his followers this was, and continues to be, a spiritual dead end.

A third issue is that the rituals may contain teachings that are counter to the existing power structures in society. Historically the penalty for upholding or transmitting heretical doctrines (in either the political or religious sense) has been imprisonment or death.

For these reasons the tools of secret societies are often shrouded in the symbolic experience of ritual and, in theory, are only transmitted when the candidate has proven to be ready to receive the experience they impart.

That is not to say that some of the wisdom or teachings of rituals cannot be disseminated. How they are made public is the key to managing the impact they will have, if that is an issue. Should the threat of censorship be an issue there are a number of ways of releasing information via other means, such as symbolically through art and literature. Later we will discover that the Priory of Sion has done just that.

Many rituals in Western magic and occultism have the same roots, often being variations on earlier workings. These can be found in many different secret societies and show a level of cross-fertilization of ideas and beliefs that has come about through either shared membership or direct influence. For example, some of the symbols that appear in the Priory of Sion documents can be found in Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Templarism and even Catholicism. The question is: who is influencing whom?

INSIGNIA


When I first met with Nic Haywood I saw that he had a ring and a small badge that looked Masonic in origin. I mentioned this to him later. His response:

‘I was in fact wearing a small and somewhat understated Prieuré device during our interview of yesterday. A small double triangle – a diamond-shaped device surrounding a balance or pair of scales the counterpoise of which is an upright flaming sword pushing upward through a pentagon of five small pentagrams. The whole gives the immediate impression of a fleur-de-lys either side of which are the letters: ‘P’ and ‘Z’ (the alternative spelling of Sion – Zion). There are quite a few pieces of insignia, all of which bear designs and devices which are all-too-familiar in respect of the affairs at Rennes-le-Château.’

Nic also supplied me with a photograph of a Sion ‘Jewel’: a two-headed leaden phoenix carrying a solid gold sword and surmounted with a gold crown. The design includes the double-headed eagle, which appears in Freemasonry and Rosicrucian circles. It can also be found in alchemy, one of the foundations of esoteric thought and secret societies in the West.

In Freemasonry regalia are often used for ritual purposes but Sion itself avoids many of these trappings. The differences between Freemasonry and Sion were explained to me in conversation:

‘Sion does not have robes and rings, established along Masonic lines. It doesn’t have the attendant regalia, no Masonic boards, there are some regalia, [but members would wear them when] they would gather to make decisions and to vote, not to perform rituals. Now it is a modern organisation, votes etc are now done by email.’

We can see from both the rituals and regalia in circulation that there is a lot of hard evidence for the transmission of ideas between secret societies. This becomes more apparent as we attempt to establish whether the Priory of Sion existed prior to the 20th century.

THE CONTEXT FOR THE PRIORY OF SION


On the matter of historic proof the Priory has prevented any members from revealing evidence for a sustained existence from the time of their origins to present. This is not to say that one should blindly either accept or reject the Priory as an ancient, mystical order; it just means that the jury is still out until more information is revealed. I present below three of the Priory’s statements regarding its history and influence from which you can draw your own conclusions:

‘The Prieuré de Sion has a long, and murky, past. Given that it was constituted from an Ideal, it is only fitting that one understand that a small group of monks, whose anonymity was assured amidst the vast ranks of the Knights of the Temple, continued to operate as they did. Naturally, it was their intention to remain oblique and many would be forgiven for assuming them to be what are these days referred to as the Illuminati. A select group of learned incarnates whose concern is the advancement of mankind. A Hermetic conclave whose task has been, is and always will be the transmutation of the Ideal into the Real; the spiritual into the corporeal. To enrich the very existence of man; set his aspirations and advance the knowledge of his world and his part in it. To that end one might conclude it a thankless task, but the results are reward enough.’

The idea of the Priory as a ‘small group of monks’ from the time of Templars seems at odds with an earlier statement on Sion’s pre-Christian origins going back as far as ancient Egypt. I think the confusion stems from the ideals of the order being in existence long before the formally named organization was put into place. It is a situation reminiscent of Freemasonry also recognizing its roots in the rituals of ancient Egypt. The mention of the Illuminati is more a reference to the existence of enlightened adepts (which is the meaning of illuminati) than the actual secret society of that name founded by Adam Weishaupt in the 18th century.

‘You will recall that the first apparent socio-spiritual and cultural shift – which resulted in the construction of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals with its attendant knowledge of the sciences: optics, pigments, metallurgy and mathesis – came about (Classical heritage apart) through direct contact with the Arabic world engendered during the initial Crusades. However, those openly responsible for facilitating the synthesis of East-West culture played erroneously into the power-hungry hands of the ever-greedy Catholic Church and were ultimately betrayed. The small core group were, naturally, unscathed. What use would they, could they be to mankind were they so readily identifiable?’

‘Other cultural & spiritual shifts such as the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, etc. have equally been orchestrated and rely upon the free flow of socio-spiritual ideals and ideas and the freedom of expression, no more so than from East to West and vice-versa. In that respect the West – Europe in particular – is unique because it has acted as the crucible.’

The Templars will be covered below but the point of importance here is the sharing of ideas between Eastern and Western esoteric philosophies.

The esoteric aspects of Sion have a verifiable line of succession, under various names and mantles, predating the Crusades. It would seem that these aspects remain dormant until resurrected at certain times in history as events unfolded.

LINKS TO OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES


The crossover between secret societies is evidenced throughout history, with many individuals joining more than one secret society. By the beginning of the 20th century cross-membership was known to exist among the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, neo-Templar orders, occult orders such as the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Golden Dawn, and even orthodox religious groups and the priesthood. The occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) once claimed to have been initiated into so many groups that if he wore all his regalia at once he would fall over.

Even today a number of the Priory of Sion’s members are also members of other secret societies. They have so much in common with the Freemasons in terms of symbolism and membership that I raised the issue with Nic Haywood, who gave me this response:

‘You will have gathered, by now, that Sion is not a Masonic institution, but that it operates after a similar fashion. It is not necessary to be a Mason to join the Priory of Sion.’

This implies that at least some members of Sion are Freemasons. I am also aware of other groups that share members with Sion, although the groups may not be aware of this fact because members are sometimes under oath, like those of Sion, to keep it a secret. Sion has made it clear that partnering or collusion is a matter of record:

‘The Priory makes accords and alliances with other groups and societies only when events, (or their lack), make it expedient to do so. Such amalgams are, with a few exceptions, temporary; transitory unions which serve a common aim.

A more direct form of influence takes place when a secret society creates or works through other groups or orders. This is how Sion accounts for its lack of appearance in the historic records of secret societies. Sion has been known by a number of different names and worked through other organizations to meet its aims at various points in history:

‘Perhaps it is for this reason that a United Europe has often been associated with the Prieuré de Sion … the group once known by such names as Hieron Val d’Or, Compagnie du Saint Sacrament, Rose-Croix, Prieuré de Sion, etc. formally lodged its existence in 1956 in France. It was in a “safe” post-war Europe and by this time [the group’s] tentacles extended into every field of human existence. A “United States of Europe” was most definitely on the agenda of the day!’

Here we arrive at the proliferation of secret societies whose names the Priory of Sion has used as a cover. Nic Haywood mentioned others over time: Ordre Orval du Chevalier; Zion (twice); and the Salon de la Rose-Croix. These offer great vistas of potential research in their own right and I have made some comments on this later in the chapter (see page 31).

‘[The Priory of Sion] is / has been linked with other societies and organizations for purposes already defined and, upon occasions, it has acted as a mechanism for “breaking’’ such institutions that would impede this common goal.’

‘For reasons, already outlined, the Prieuré de Sion has [held] / holds some organizations and institutions to account by virtue of original documents and materials held for such purposes... In this respect, the Prieuré de Sion is considered, by some, to be the cause célèbre par excellence. It gets its power, not only from the wealthy families and individuals who by tradition or dint of agreement act as generous patrons, but also from the essential pressure that it tries to maintain on those groups who obtain their momentum from a divided world picture.’

‘As such, Sion’s spiritual roots are at the heart of Man!’

Partnering or creating other secret societies would have provided cover and a means of dissemination for Sion without putting its core members at risk. It would also have served to keep Sion in the shadows throughout history.

In a clear statement, Sion confirmed that the message it sought to communicate was passed down through the ages using a variety of names as a cover until the late 20th century:

‘It is true that it carried, and was carried, throughout times past under a variety of names and only during the fin de siècle [the later 19th century] did it rest back with a name very similar to that which it obtained at its birth.’

The revelation that Sion did indeed use different names explains the difficulty in finding proof for its existence in antiquity. The idea that it originated with the name the Priory of Sion is also important, because the search for this early group becomes a key to the origins of Sion as a physical secret society.

‘It all goes back to the nine knights of Calabria. The Rose-Croix [Rosicrucians], Priory of Sion, the Freemasons, [Jean-Jacques] Olier and the Saint-Sulpice groups – the influence of the Templars can be seen as the source or a major influence on many of these.’

We will return to Olier and Saint-Sulpice in a later chapter. The importance of this statement is that historically it places the ‘nine knights of Calabria’ – the first Knights Templar – as the starting point for our enquiries.

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR


Sion’s links to the Knights Templar have often been stated. However, history has subjected the Templars to so much speculation and romanticism that it is difficult to view them objectively. Since their demise in 14th-century France they have become fodder for conspiracy theorists of all periods. This is caused in part by the influence of the Templars, which can be seen in many European secret societies: for example, all Masonic temples are constructed to represent the original Temple of Solomon, the physical and spiritual home of the Crusades. Aspects of the Templar legacy can also be found in Catholic architecture, for example in the design of the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris and also the church at Rennes-le-Château, which we will explore in depth later.

The military order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, to give the Templars their full title, was created to protect Christian pilgrims heading for the holy city of Jerusalem. They were founded c1118 by Hugues de Payens and eight other French knights, who embarked for the Holy Land from Calabria in southern Italy. The Templars took upon themselves vows of poverty and chastity and offered to protect pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, which had been captured by Christian forces in the First Crusade (1096–9) and was now the capital of a Crusader state. The king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, granted Hugues de Payens the former Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount as headquarters for the knights. Converted by the Crusaders into a palace and a church, the mosque was believed to be the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon, hence the Templars’ name.

Bernard of Clairvaux subsequently formulated a ‘Rule of the Templars’ based on the monastic rule of St Benedict and instructing them how to live and behave. The Templars adopted this in 1128 and were recognized by the Pope as an official monastic order around the same time. However, it is unlikely that they adhered greatly to the Rule beyond the early days of the order. Its strictures included a ban on chess – curious considering that the chessboard design featured so heavily in the groups that followed the Templars – but they were permitted to play hopscotch. The sight of a knight playing hopscotch on the streets of Jerusalem seems greatly at odds with the image of the heroic warrior held in such high esteem today.

In the early days, some knights travelled across Europe in an attempt to secure more funds for the order, spreading tales of heroic deeds and adventures. The romance of the Templars took hold and suddenly many wealthy nobles were heading east, eager to join the Crusades. The Templars gathered donations of wealth, and more importantly land, across Europe.

Some of Europe’s finest warriors and leaders joined, and during the Knights of the Temple amassed armies from European prisons and the like to join the Crusades.

The Templars were at the core of the Christian forces during the principal Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They scored some great victories and also some memorable disasters, such as the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, as recorded by William of Tyre. According to William, at the end of this siege the Muslim armies opened the city gates and the Templars, wanting the spoils for themselves, blockaded the entrance to prevent other armies following them as they charged into the city. The Muslim troops seized the opportunity and closed the gates behind the small Templar army and massacred them. Assuming William of Tyre’s account is basically accurate (he was no fan of the Templars), such a disaster illustrates the greed and pride to which the Templars had succumbed.

Although the Templars began as humble Christian warrior monks, by the time of their demise they were an immensely wealthy order. In addition, it seemed that members dabbled in all manner of arcane practices. They were charged with heresy for allegedly spitting on the cross and worshipping a head they called ‘Baphomet’. While it has to be considered that confessions were extracted under torture, they had certainly come a long way from the ‘poor knights’ that first arrived in Jerusalem.

Legends are rife about how the Templars excavated the Temple Mount and discovered all manner of relics from biblical times. A number of theories have arisen to explain what the Templars actually discovered. Even among their own accounts they claimed on more than one occasion to have discovered the True Cross of the Crucifixion. The Copper Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls is an inventory of treasures and deposits hidden around the Holy Land in Roman times and attests to the act of burying and hiding deposits of valuable material to prevent it from being looted by invading armies. The Templars may have uncovered a record of this kind, or perhaps they found an actual repository of information. One theory is that they discovered documents that had survived since the time of Jesus and gave an alternative view of Christianity. In the light of finds such as the Gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in Egypt in the 1940s (see page 217), this is entirely possible.

However, a more likely method of discovering different perspectives on biblical times would come via the Templars’ contact with the Assassins and with Islamic mystery schools. They had met with the Assassins on a number of occasions and through truce and battle it was likely that they gained a deep knowledge of some of their beliefs and rituals. Over the course of their occupation, the Templars seem to have grown less arrogant toward their Muslim enemies and eventually acquired a level of tolerance and even respect. By the 13th century the Templars had been in the Holy Land so long that many members, including some heads of the order, were born there. Most were entirely fluent in Arabic and could not help but absorb aspects of the rich culture around them.

Sion would have us believe that the actual exchange of knowledge was recorded at the highest level:

‘Western chroniclers have always maintained that Richard [the Lionheart] and Saladin never met, but we would demonstrate other-wise. And that an agreement, an accord, was struck between them’.

‘On the initial Crusade, when the knights had first entered the city of Jerusalem en masse, they had slaughtered the “infidel”: man, woman and child. But … when the city fell back into Muslim hands [in 1187], Saladin gave the order that no Christians were to be harmed. In fact, a decidedly respectful “ritual cleansing” was undertaken wherein the streets, houses and places of worship were washed with an infusion of holy water and rose petals. Likewise, the thoroughfares were strewn with them.’

‘Bearing in mind that the great Gothic cathedrals of medieval Europe had been constructed using sciences, skills and arts learned from the “infidel” [and] financed, in general, by the Order of the Temple, we should conclude that this accord, this spiritual-cultural confluence, ran far, far deeper.’

Toward the end of the Crusades there was an opportunity to join the Eastern and Western churches and also to find common ground and a common place of worship for all the religions that understood the importance of Jerusalem. Unfortunately peace did not last and eventually the entire Holy Land was reclaimed by the Muslims. The Templars were forced to retreat back to Europe and abandoned their last eastern stronghold, the island of Arwad off Lebanon, in 1303.

By the end of the Crusades the Templar order had grown dramatically in size, knowledge, wealth and power. What the Templars and other groups had learned in the East had already influenced Western thought. The construction of soaring Gothic cathedrals with their beautiful stained glass windows owes much to Arabic thought and architecture. It is said that the blue used to colour the glass has never been bettered, the builders and glaziers using skills transmitted from Arabic artificers. Among the glories of these great cathedrals, which took decades to complete, are their great ‘rose’ windows. The rose is sacred in the East and alludes to the sacred feminine and its use especially in cathedral east windows is apt: as the direction of Jerusalem and the rising sun, the east symbolizes Christ’s birth (from the Virgin Mary) and his resurrection.

The flow of information into Europe also included advances in science, maths, medicine, art, architecture and new religious thought. Not until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 would such a mass of important information, much of it from the ancient Classical world, be released into Western Europe.

Since their foundation the Templars had spread out across Europe but the largest concentration took residence in the Languedoc in the southwest of France. Here too, the Templars found themselves surrounded by heresy and original thought, for around this time the Gnostic dualist faith of the Bogomils had also taken hold in the region. The followers of this religion were called Cathars (Purified Ones), Perfecti or Albigensians (from their stronghold in Albi), and believed themselves to be in possession of the purest form of Christianity. Among Cathar tenets was the belief that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.

The stories of the Templars’ heroic deeds became intermingled with the Cathar heresies, with the popular Arthurian Grail romances allowing such traditions to continue in the face of a growing suspicion and hostility from the mainstream Church.

Eventually the Cathars were destroyed in the Albigensian Crusade of 1209–29, the last pockets being crushed by 1244. Their destruction foreshadowed the fate of many other heretics in the Inquisition that would sweep Western Europe in the years that followed, as Rome began to enforce its doctrine in earnest. The Templars, who officially adhered to the mainstream Church, seem to have been surprisingly ambivalent about the Cathars’ destruction and there are accounts of Templars fighting both alongside and against the Cathars.

SUPPRESSION


By 1307 the Templars must have been aware of what was coming. No longer focussed on the Levant, they were a powerful organization that owned vast swathes of land, especially in France, and had become the repository of much wealth. They acted as bankers and cashed promissory notes in lieu of gold, inadvertently inventing the cheque. King Philip IV had inherited an impoverished kingdom and owed the Templars a lot of money. In 1307 Philip issued a warrant for Templars in France to be arrested and interrogated about allegations of heresy, and attempted to get neighbouring countries to do the same. With the backing of a reluctantly compliant Pope Clement V, hundreds of knights were rounded up on Friday, October 13, of that year. Under terrible torture, many senior-ranking knights confessed to heresy.

Beyond the borders of France the Templars were less violently persecuted. In England, for example, the charge of heresy failed to stick. Nevertheless, in 1312 Philip IV compelled the Pope to dissolve the order. Across Europe there was an attempt to seize the wealth of the Templars, but on papal orders their lands were given over to another famous crusading order, the Knights Hospitaller (the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem). Some of this former Templar land was in the Languedoc, specifically near the town of Rennes-le-Château. The Hospitallers later became the Knights of Malta and still exist today, headquartered in the Vatican.

TEMPLAR ‘HERESIES’


Philip IV’s incarceration of the Templars was legendary for its brutality and the tortures that many knights endured must render all Templar ‘confessions’ as suspicious. There is one account of a Templar arriving at court in Paris holding a small bag containing the charred bones of his foot that had been forced into hot coals until the flesh was entirely lost to the fire.

However, certain threads running through the confessions may have some basis in fact. One charge against the Templars is connected to their mutual exchange of knowledge with the Assassins, as mentioned earlier. The Templars were accused of worshipping a mysterious head called Baphomet. This head was said to speak, imparting information as an oracle. Accounts of similar heads can be found in medieval grimoires (magical texts) such as the Picatrix, itself originally written in Arabic around the 11th century, and the Baphomet also resembles the ‘Golden Head’ of later alchemical texts (see page 259).

The mystery of the Baphomet deepened when I met, by chance, an Arabic scholar who had studied the rituals of the medieval Assassins. He revealed to me that in one of their higher degrees, the candidate would be led into a room where an apparently severed head resting on the floor would speak to the candidate, telling him important knowledge. This dramatic effect was achieved by burying the speaker up to his neck in the ground. (Unfortunately for him, the Assassin masters of the ceremony would then decapitate him so that they could later show the head to the candidate to prove that it was indeed severed.)

The Templars were found guilty in the French courts but relatively few faced trial and execution for heresy, notably the order’s last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, who died at the stake in 1314 cursing the king and the Pope – both of whom died later that same year. Some less senior knights were pardoned and joined the Hospitallers. But many others, along with much of their wealth and the entire Templar fleet, simply disappeared from France and into the mists of history. The order was formally dissolved by Clement V in 1312, but claims have been made for its uninterrupted existence and there are currently a number of Templar organizations worldwide that assert their direct descent from the original order.

In 2001 a Vatican archivist, Barbara Frale, came upon the so-called Chinon Parchment in the Vatican Secret Archive. Lost for 700 years, this document is a letter written in 1308 by Pope Clement V revealing that although he had colluded with the French king in the suppression of the Templars he was unwilling to condemn them, explicitly absolving the order as a whole of heresy.

I am always suspicious when any important historical document suddenly ‘reappears’ after a long absence. I contacted Barbara Frale for clarification as to how such a key papal document could have been ‘lost’ for so long. She replied that the parchment had been in the archive for 700 years but at some point had been under an ‘erroneous classification. Nobody had studied it before’.

At the conclusion of the Chinon Parchment the Pope instructs the Templars that they will be allowed to continue but must change their name. It is not clear whether a group of Templars immediately assumed the name the Priory of Sion, which strikingly echoes the order’s first monastic headquarters in the reputed ‘Temple of Jerusalem’. But given the transmission of Templar knowledge down the centuries to the present day it is naive to think that the Templars completely disbanded. It seems that over the coming centuries they continued to exist under many different names and guises.

In the four-year gap between the letter and the dissolution of the order in 1312, many Templars would surely have been wise enough to heed the Pope’s call for them to assume a new collective identity and ‘vanish’. There is little firm evidence for this, but after the events of 1307 it would have been an obvious course of action for French Templars in particular.

For all their occult links and possible treasures, I consider the most important aspect of the Templars is that they were rumoured to have maintained a temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that had three altars, one for Muslims, one for Christians and one for Jews. If this is true, people of all three faiths would have prayed in harmony alongside one another on the Temple Mount, which is sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In nearly a thousand years it has not been possible to replicate this in Jerusalem.

Any direct relationship between the Priory of Sion and the Templars remains unproven but the Priory’s knowledge of the events that transpired at the time of the Templars gives credit to their claims.

Let us now consider Sion in relation to later groups, beginning with the Rosicrucians.

SION AND THE ORDER OF THE ROSY CROSS


An esoteric secret society of obscure origins, Rosicrucianism, or the Order of the Rosy (or Rose) Cross, is the most closely aligned to what we think of as the Priory of Sion. Sion itself claims that Rosicrucian orders (Rose Croix in French) are its spiritual arm and a key means by which it can influence society. They assert that Sion is the small group that oversees and controls a particular French Rosicrucian order called Veritas (Truth) and its subgroups or ‘chapters’. They would also use it to recruit members of Sion.

The scope of Sion’s reach was explained when I enquired why it was only officially registered as an organization by that name in the 1950s. Through Nic Haywood, Sion had this to say on the matter:

‘Just as Freemasonry is divided into various camps (lodges) and has a number of branches (‘sides’), Sion is … itself divided into lodges assigned specific social and moral roles and tasks, etc. … The official registration of Sion occurred under new laws in a post-war France in a vulnerable and somewhat decimated Europe. However, as was stated in initial communications, the order reassumed the mantle by which it had undertaken transactions, both fiscal and temporal, during the 11th to 16th centuries, albeit a variation on the name, in keeping with a modernist Europe.’

‘Prior to 1925, and in the 19th century, the order of Sion had not made itself public other than by the use of its spiritual/esoteric body: the Ordre Rose+Croix Veritas. This is the “trunk” of what is now known as Priory of Sion, and it is the same “society” which held the Salon de la Rose-Croix in Paris in the late 19th century [headed by] Joséphin Péladan.’

Further evidence for the link between the two orders can be seen in the use of an old alchemical phrase. Documents I received from Sion were headed with a fleur-de-lys with the initials L.V.A.A. T. underneath. This abbreviation, which I mentioned in the Introduction, sometimes appears on Sion documents and stands for the Latin Lux Veritatis Alit [or Alet] Altare Templi – ‘May the Light of Truth Sustain the Temple Altar’. L.V.A.A.T. is the old motto of a Templum Rosae Crucis (Temple of the Rosy Cross) and is written around the inside of a Rose-Cross badge of office.

Unfortunately the origins of the Rosicrucians are almost as difficult to substantiate as those of the Priory of Sion itself. They can publicly be traced to a few anonymous tracts that surfaced in the 17th and 18th centuries, and some researchers, such as Masonic historian A E Waite, claimed that a form of Rosicrucian Academy existed in ancient Egypt. Like Sion, their structure and membership was a cause of much speculation, although now it is possible to investigate these with a far greater understanding.

The Rosicrucian publications that appeared in the early 17th century were the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis (Report of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, 1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis (The Confession of the Laudable Fraternity of the Most Honorable Order of the Rosy Cross, 1615), and describe the Rosicrucian movement in allegorical form relating to the transmission of secrets that have their roots in [Middle] Eastern esoteric movements. A third text, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz (1616) is an alchemical allegory describing a succession of rites. As Nic Haywood put it:

‘The very name “Rosicrucian” derives, in part, from ancient Sufi tradition and adept practices. It was after the fashion in which the Sufi, and hermetic tradition so named its illustrious and spiritually-esteemed adepts: ‘The Rose’, etc.’

‘Its connection with the Crusades is crucial … and far less known.’

Here again we see echoes of the Templars and their fusion of the spiritual, cultural and scientific elements of West and East.

Europe was enthralled by the appearance of the Rosicrucian documents. They were a call to arms for the free-thinkers of their era, but they contained no obvious means of contacting the order. As they circulated among the intelligentsia they were thought by many to be the work of a single individual but this would not account for the impression they left on society.

The anonymous appearance of these publications is reminiscent of the Priory of Sion’s Dossiers Secrets and Le Serpent Rouge texts coming to light in the 1960s (see Chapter 10).

As mentioned earlier, my principal Sion contact, Nic Haywood, exhibits many of the traits one would expect of a Rosicrucian adept, such as a deep interest in the nature of fire (see page 293).

The authentic Rosicrucian lineage disappeared at the end of the 19th century with Joséphin Péladan’s Salon de la Rose-Croix in Paris; and it was in Paris that the Priory of Sion emerged in the 20th century. Therefore it would seem not too big a leap to consider that the two might be related. This, perhaps, is why historians have such trouble tracing the Priory of Sion back through history: for most of the time they might simply be hidden from plain view.

Nic reminded me of something about the Rosicrucians that would fit well with any understanding of Sion through the ages:

‘The order shall wear the robes and masque accordant to the day and to its survival, but shall be known to the initiates always by her true name...’

Fama [Fraternitatis] appeared in 1614 and it is in the 17th century that we see the first possible links between the Priory of Sion and the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. The revised structure and concept of Sion was drawn up by Michel Le Gras, a resident of the locality and the son of Louise de Marillac, to whom we will return later (see page 51). Le Gras secured essential documents, deeds and other papers of great import to Sion likely to have been passed down through families related to the Templars. His children married into the prominent local families of Hillier and Hautpoul, placing the information firmly in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château, which takes its name from the Château Hautpoul.

As evidenced by the 1616 Chemical Wedding tract, the Rosicrucians were closely linked with alchemy. In Vienna, for example, they constructed a fabled alchemical laboratory that was mentioned in communications between members of the order.

The Rosicrucians’ adherence to the alchemical path and their subsequent creation of many complex alchemical designs also made them a magnet for alchemists and occultists of the time. Rosicrucian members scattered across Europe and became know as healers, alchemists and chemists. They included such luminaries as the fabled immortal Count of St. Germain among their ranks and are thought by some to have used tantra and sexual magic as part of their rituals (see for example The Rosicrucians by Christopher McIntosh).

This infatuation with alchemy continued through to the 19th-century Rosicrucian orders such as the Salon de la Rose-Croix and continues today as a core part of the Priory of Sion. (Alchemy is covered in more depth in Chapter 16.)

The head of Salon de la Rose-Croix was Joséphin Péladan (1859–1918), a novelist and occult expert inspired by Eliphas Lévi. Péladan believed that the Catholic Church was a repository of knowledge that it had itself forgotten, and he was particularly interested in John’s gospel. There is in Rosicrucianism a belief that a ‘true’ form of Christianity survived outside the orthodox teachings of the Catholic Church. Threads of this can be seen in the heretical beliefs of the Cathars and the reformist Catholicism of St Vincent de Paul and Jean-Jacques Olier, examined in later chapters.

The Rosicrucians had a major impact on Freemasonry via the introduction of the Rose+Croix ‘higher’ or ‘Ecossais’ (Scottish) degrees into the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It is the links between the Priory of Sion and Freemasonry to which we shall now turn.

SION AND FREEMASONRY


By now the strands of Sion’s influence are becoming clear. The body of knowledge gathered by the Templars was in part passed on via Sion to be used by the Rosicrucians. The custodians of the secrets were the old European aristocratic families. Once the secrets had passed back into secret societies they were encrypted in symbols and rituals that eventually passed from those societies into Freemasonry. The nature of these secrets was offensive enough to the Catholic Church for it to pass an edict banning Catholics from becoming Freemasons.

Even Masonic researchers struggle with the notion that Freemasons are descended from the Templars. Historically it is difficult to find direct links, but throughout the body of Masonic rituals are clear references to and re-enactments of Templar history and lore, such as the central symbolism of the Temple of Solomon. Unfortunately the Masons seem to have forgotten this. It seems that only ‘fringe’ researchers have tried to approach the esoteric side of Masonry and uncover the meaning of the rituals, even though it is clear that a great body of knowledge is available to initiates that the society itself fails to communicate. For this reason the Freemasons often seem like a mere hazy shadow of the Templar tradition. In England, for example, where the modern forms of Freemasonry were made public in the 18th century, the majority of the brethren would appear to join principally for social reasons, preferring the knife and fork over the square and compass. However, I do not doubt that there are a core number of Masons who still subscribe to the mysteries, as evidenced in recent years by the creation of the Canonbury Institute in London, an attempt to consider the more esoteric aspirations of the lodge.

The Freemasonry of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) is based on old morality plays, its rituals originally being allegorical enactments aimed at promoting the better qualities of its members. It was not originally a Hermetic or occult order and early British Masonic writings tend to support this by displaying no occult knowledge.

It was later, with the adoption of the higher Rosicrucian degrees in the early 19th century, that occult philosophy was introduced. The Grand Lodge would prefer to downplay the occult leanings of the Masonic traditions but there is evidence from occult groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn adopting many of the trappings – regalia, titles and temple designs and so on – from the Royal Arch Degree of Freemasonry (see R A Gilbert’s lecture, ‘Freemasonry and Esoteric Movements’, available from the Canonbury Institute).

It surprises me how much esoteric material exists in the workings of Freemasonry. The Grand Lodge seems to be embarrassed by this and I recall asking a guide during a tour of the UGLE in Great Queen Street, in London’s Covent Garden, why the lodge’s temple contained vast depictions of all the astrological figures. The guide’s response was that they were ‘purely decorative’.

While the UGLE has became less and less esoteric in the past century, European Freemasonry, under the control of Grand Lodge Alpina in Switzerland, continued down its esoteric path and had no such qualms promoting the Hermetic message. Freemasonry in central European countries was very much the domain of the aristocracy and was infused with the Western occult traditions of which they were the keepers. Freemasonry sat well with these traditions, as it possessed much of the structure and occult leanings of a ritual magic order.

While there are many good, decent and serious Masons, there have unfortunately also been plenty of abuses, for example in the realm of politics. The US election of 1832 was a case in point, as reported in The Men’s House: Masonic Papers and Addresses (1924), an American Masonic publication:

‘Masonry was made an issue in a political campaign, the result of which was the defeat of Henry Clay because he was a Mason – and incidentally the election of Jackson, another Mason!’

It is difficult to see democracy in an election where both candidates are members of the same secret society. The political influence of secret societies will always come as a shock to the traditional historian, but the simple statement above not only undermines any notion of democracy but also illustrates that there are aspects of politics that are entirely obscured by secret societies.

Conversely, a number of organizations have attempted to influence or even subvert Freemasonry over the centuries. In Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798), the distinguished Scottish scientist and philosopher John Robison accused the Illuminati of having sought to recruit Masons to help instigate the French Revolution; and in the 1980s Freemasons were claimed to be in the top five groups targeted by Russian spies infiltrating British society (see Stephen Knight’s The Brotherhood).

Nic Haywood confirmed the powerful influence and esoteric lore that remain within Freemasonry, even if the majority of members deny that the society has any such elements:

‘It is well to remember that Freemasonry, however questionable the cause, is an international brotherhood to which a great deal of power and influence obtains.’

‘Whether the underlying myth(s), upon which much [Masonic] ritual is set, is taken as genuine matters little. However, the attending legend vis-à-vis Solomon’s Temple etc., and the notion of [those in] the higher Ecossais [degrees of Freemasonry] being custodians or guardians of an incredible secret is a correct one!’

The Priory of Sion provided me with a design that confirmed their direct influence on Freemasonry. It is the frontispiece to a book (see page 38). As Nic Haywood says,

‘The frontispiece is interesting inasmuch as it affirms links with the overseeing Chapter of the UGLE, GLAS, and others.’

‘There exists no printed literature in respect of this body of overseers, and it has never been so. The motif of the Secret Monitors is all that any might hope to encounter short of induction.’

The abbreviations used above, UGLE (United Grand Lodge of England) and GLAS (Grand Lodge Alpina, Switzerland), are the largest and most influential Masonic factions in the world.

The frontispiece provided by Sion closely resembles the logo for the Order of the Secret Monitor, a well-established Masonic lodge under UGLE. There are variations to the design but they are clearly indicating a link between the two orders. Like the Rosicrucians, the OSM have been known to claim that their order can be traced back to ancient Egypt.

MASONS AND TEMPLARS


The influences on Freemasonry have generated a lot of confusion over the years. Officially it did not even ‘exist’ until the 17th century, but the Rosslyn Chapel, built c 1456 near Edinburgh, Scotland, has elements of both Masonic and Gothic symbolism. The creation of this remarkable building began over a century after the Templars had officially ceased to exist and two centuries before the accepted date for the first Freemasons, and it provides a good argument for an attempt at continuity, bringing together two organizations, Templars and Masons, at a time when neither supposedly existed. According to Sion,

Sion ‘frontispiece’. The design is linked to the badge of the Masonic Order of the Secret Monitor.

‘Modern Freemasonry is a speculative system derived from the medieval craft guilds, who protected their work in symbolic, sacred architecture, by a code of passwords, signs, grips and rituals. These operative masons, as they are known, enshrined much of their lore in geomantic proportion and the alchemical symbolism of Gothic architecture. In reality it had its true roots in the Sufi order known as ‘the Builders’, founded by Dhu’l-Nun in the tenth century.’

The Dhu’l-Nun were said to be steeped in alchemy and sacred geometry and influenced the origins of Freemasonry, as described by Sion:

‘It [Dhu’l-Nun] began as a Sufi alchemical society, which first reached England during the reign of King Athelstan (924–939), and was introduced into Scotland disguised as a craft guild at the beginning of the 14th century by the Knights Templar. Its ‘reformation’ in early 18th-century London by a group of Protestant sages who mistook its Arabic terms for Hebrew, has obscured so much of its earlier tradition. It is for this reason, and no other, that the ASR [Ancient Scottish Rite] is the true and legitimate Freemasonry. This is the real reason why it had to be “accepted” or recognized by the UGLE.’

The disguised ‘craft guild’ is what developed into Ancient Scottish Rite Freemasonry, with the influence of the French aristocracy, while the early 18th-century ‘reformation’ refers to the creation of the UGLE. Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (see page 36) gives an account of how he came across documentation in Grand Lodge Alpina on the existence of Adam Weishaupt’s secret society, the Illuminati. By coincidence, the Priory of Sion first came to wider attention in the 1950s with the discovery of its journal Vaincre in the same Grand Lodge Alpina. Here again we see the pattern of crossover in membership between secret societies.

The proliferation of secret societies in Europe peaked with an ‘occult revolution’ just before the turn of the 20th century, when all forms of occultism and spiritualism were becoming both fashionable and better researched. In France, Freemasonry was influenced by the Martinists, a mystical Christian order under the direction of Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865–1916), a leading French occultist who published his own Tarot deck and many esoteric works. The Martinists, whose leading members included Joséphin Péladan, resurrected old Masonic rites. I mention the Martinists here because a confirmed Martinist once referred to Sion members as ‘brothers’.

POLITICS AND CONFLICT: SECRET SOCIETIES TODAY


Although much of the information on secret societies is historical, their presence and influence is still very much in effect today. Sadly, the original core purpose of their existence seems to have become overshadowed by politics and in-fighting, though it is understandable how this may have come about.

The current state of the modern Templar order is one of disarray. In recent years the order has split geographically, with the UK separating from the worldwide order, which continues to be directed by the Portuguese Grand Master. The formerly separate Scottish and English lodges have united under a single banner but I fear that in doing so they have lost more than they have gained. There are conflicting views from both sides as to why this has happened, with the British contingency claiming that the reason for their breakaway was due to succession: the Grand Master’s successor should have been decided by vote but instead he passed the title to his son.

A representative from Portugal also threatened to disband the English faction of the order for accepting too many Freemasons into its ranks.

Unfortunately strife and upheaval seem to be the norm among secret societies. Sion has its own seemingly irreconcilable factions and will also inevitably fall into disarray from time to time. Its current aim of ‘seeding’ information into society is not welcome in all quarters. As the release of information is intended to create a shift in perception, this would inevitably cause the demise of some existing social structures, most notably the Catholic Church. A number of Sion’s members, referred to as the ‘Italian contingent’ for their Catholic leanings, are attempting to slow the pace of release. This has led to internal struggle within the organization. The ‘Italian contingent’ includes dual members of the Knights of Malta, a popular order in the US that has included many senior members of the CIA. In their present incarnation the Knights of Malta have their headquarters in the Vatican.

During an interview with Nic Haywood, I directly raised the question of whether the Vatican is an adversary of Sion. Nic’s response:

‘They have always been at war with Rome. There was a reason why Rome made an offer to the Knights of Malta [after the dissolution of the Templars in 1312]. They ended up with a lot of Templar goods they shouldn’t have had. It is the biggest game of chess, fighting for the souls of individuals, the future of mankind.’

I knew that Sion claimed to have members in other secret societies and in the Vatican, and I asked if the latter had remained anonymous.

‘Rome knows, some people you cannot remove, you can appear to uphold Rome but be a member of Sion. There is someone in the headquarters in the Knights of Malta that might speak to you.’

Unfortunately this interview has yet to take place but the battle lines are drawn.

During my time working with Sion on the Bloodline documentary I realized that all was not well within the organization. Offers of material, documents, access to libraries were often thwarted by other members. Emails were being hacked and phone taps were traced on a number of phones in use by the Bloodline documentary team. Apparently my enquiries and the candidness of those I spoke to were fuelling an already heated debate within the society.

As research progressed, the interference escalated to a stalemate at various points. Speaking to Nic I got the impression that the revelation of information was adding to a rift within Sion. Gino Sandri, an unofficial Priory of Sion spokesman, referred to it as a ‘war’ but Nic explained that this is probably too strong a word. The organization’s core and purpose remain intact and the release of information to the public is still on the agenda. The disagreement lies in the ‘when’. The timing of release is very important:

‘I thank you for your apologies re any “discord” that might have been created by your requests. However, there are certain individuals who believe that: “the time is not right” for certain matters.’

‘Whilst … this is (in part) true, it is time that certain additional pieces of this affair be put in the global domain.’

‘Some are under great pressure not to co-operate and, not for the first time, we have fallen into two distinctly opposing camps.’

From a meeting with Nic I learned that family feuds and in-fighting, rooted in old rivalries and rifts, sometimes surface in the gaps between periods of release. I got a sense that when information is released it is sometimes misinterpreted by authors and researchers and simply adds to confusion around the issues.

CONCLUSION


Returning to the existence of Sion prior to its appearance in the late 20th century, we are left with a choice of two conclusions. One is that Sion is a real order that has a long tradition going back to the Templars and incorporating the Rosicrucians and other secret societies as its public façade, with knowledge and beliefs rooted in antiquity. The second option is that the Priory of Sion was created as a means to release information from other sources, such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucians, by acting as a kind of ‘franchise’.

Sion, of course, claims the former – that it has a long and illustrious history under the guise of various other organizations. They would have us believe that it is a misconception to see Sion as a modern fabrication, fashioned upon earlier organizations and adopting notable historic figureheads as ‘Grand Masters’.

Many readers may see Sion at best as the crafting of a ‘new mythology’ which, like all myths that endure, is not without some archetypal truth that resonates through modern society.

During the filmed interview for Bloodline Bruce Burgess asked Nic if the Priory of Sion could prove its history. The answer was simple: ‘Yes, if it shows its hand.’ I probed further. The ‘hand’ that Sion holds is presumably an important secret. Does Sion exist because of this secret?

‘Sion is not the secret. It protects the secret. It doesn’t need to prove it exists…. There will come a time when it is all too clear. It is a real order, with a history to pre-Christian times. [Sion is] not an invention of the 1950s.’

Obviously we would need firm proof before coming to any final conclusions about Sion’s origins. But for me, the quality of information was always the most important aspect of what we received. In light of this, we have to acknowledge that the Priory of Sion has a historic pedigree at least in the sense that its members are party to information that has its origins in the Rosicrucian and alchemical movements. These in turn that take us back to the ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt and Sumeria, as well as medieval Arabic influences via the Templars.

But what do we know of Sion’s members, those illustrious adepts who have attempted to serve humanity as keepers of the light of truth? Sion claims many key historical figures among its ranks, and we must look to them to guide us further. A secret society is nothing without members.