Arcadia Discussion Zone

Looking again at the stone, and reading through the various comments above, I thought I'd try and summarise the various peculiarities that we seem to be dealing with here.

Oddities Relating Specifically to the Headstone

1. Two five-pointed stars, or pentacles, at the top of the stone.

2. The presence of four reversed Ns, one of which appears to have been deliberately inserted into the name of the deceased, causing a probable mis-spelling.

3. As per Item 2 above, the probable mis-spelling of the name Reynau(n)d.

4. Meterie is a mis-spelling.

5. Possible mis-spelling of Aram - written "Ayram". However, could this have been the correct 19th century spelling, and the word changed / evolved over the subsequent years, or has the Y been inserted for a specific reason?

6. Following on from Item 5 above, the absence of an apostrophe between the L and the A of L'A(y)ram.

7. The running together of the words "de" and "profundis".

8. The gap between the month and the year, and the presence in the gap of two dashes.

More General Questions

1. The possible importance of the location of L'Aram.

2. When did the burial of this person actually take place? Has the date been fabricated?

3. Why has the fact of Elisabeth's death been phrased in the way that it has?

4. When was the headstone moved to it's present location, and was the body moved with it?

5. Who sanctioned / facilitated the moving of the headstone, and for what purpose?

6. Who was Elisabeth Reynaud, and what really happened to her?

Hmmm. I remember reading about him. His Wiki bio is very short but look what's on the end. It seems to suggest his reversed "N" was kind of a personal signature. But maybe not so personal if other artists are using it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Signol

Émile Signol (1804 – 1892) was a French artist, born in Paris. Signol died in Montmorency, Val-d'Oise. Although he lived during the Romantic period, his classical background kept him from succumbing to Impressionism or Romanticism.

Signol painted a portrait of Hector Berlioz at the Académie de France à Rome, Villa Medici, during the composer's stay upon his winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1832. Two years earlier, Signole had won the grand prize for the same competition's painting category with Titulus Crucis. Four of his paintings are housed at the Saint-Sulpice cathedral in Paris.

Elected in 1860, he held a first seat position at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1862 , Pierre-Auguste Renoir studied under Signol and Charles Gleyre across from the Louvre at the École des Beaux-Arts. Signol and Glyere taught Jean Jules Antoine Lecomte Du Noüy in 1861.

Signol is known to have occasionally written the letter "n" backwards in his signature, signifying his backwards way of life.

[snip]

http://www.connectotel.com/rennes/serpnote/serpnote.htm

Em. Signol"

Emile Signol - Painter and member of the Academy of Arts, Paris.

"four works"

There are four paintings by Emile Signol around the Meridian line. However, the anagram SIGNOL around LA produces LANGLOIS. Claude Langlois is the engineer who completed the Gnomon at Saint Sulpice in 1744.

[snip]

Oh, and one further question in addition to the ones I listed above, bit of a long shot, but given that L'Aram is where it is, should we perhaps be looking at the Coumesourde stone for clues?

Probably not, but I thought I'd mention it, given the proximity.

Another connection between Verne and the mysterie, a reversed N, by the illustrator Jules-Descartes Férat
the book is from 1875....



For a nice list of reversed N's , http://www.lecoindelenigme.com/N-inverse.htm

As the topic is "real" RLC stones I would advice to leave out the Coume Sourde one...unless somebody can prove that it still exists (Carcassonne or wherever..) or existed or at least featured in a provable print production of a respective time.

The good thing about this stone is that it really exists, that everybody can see and touch it, that it is a "special stone" etc. etc.. Also as mentioned, there are other "real" stones nobody talks about like no-more-standing Menhirs in the area etc.

An obstacle sometimes is to know from which "school" this or that object comes from as there are overlaps which normally do not match with each other. There was a "school" before Boudet / Saunière who made at least some indications in a respective form, then there was the "Boudet / Saunière school" and then came the "Plantard / De Ch / De S school" and also nowadays there are some people forming kind of split schools...

OK. I just got another idea.

Reverse the Latin letter "N" and it becomes the Cyrillic letter "I" (their tenth letter in their alphabet).... a vowel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/И



I don't know what to do with it, of course.

See, I was the one always glancing at the back of Scientific American after reading Martin Gardner's puzzles column and looking at the answers ... I would be so much better off if I had tried to work these things out.

fmh999

With the code you mentioned above, do you mean that by the changed 1857 it now refers to the Sauniere school from 85 till 17....?

That's a nice one!! But not what I meant, no.

But think differently or just very practical: as it was mentioned a "reversed" N is a "mirrored N"....

The location of this pool, and its proximity to L'Aram is so interesting, I think, that I thought it would be worth reviewing in a bit more depth Henry Lincoln's thoughts on this, as expressed in Key to the Sacred Pattern, the book Roscoe has referred to above.

When HL first went here, in February 1974, he made the following observation about the little spinney in which the pool sits.



The denseness of this thicket, and its relative distance from the nearby farmsteads, makes HL inclined to dismiss more mundane explanations for the pool's existence. If it was for watering cattle, as some have suggested, how were they supposed to break through the trees to get to the water? Or get out again? A place for washing clothes, as was also suggested? All the nearby houses had their own spring and water trough. HL also notes that there is no trace of any sort of trodden down pathway across the field that might indicate habitual use.

So if not for regular use, for occasional, even ritual use, perhaps.

HL continues:



Two years later HL returns to the pool while making "Shadow of the Templars" and finds the following gruesome piece of evidence, indicating possible ritual use of the pool, although he does raise the alternative possibility of mischief making.



So we have a pool in an odd location. It appears to have no practical purpose, and yet it is carefully maintained. It is surrounded by a thick screen of trees which makes any goings-on inside invisible to passersby. The trees, given their size and girth, may well have been placed around the time of Sauniere. An animal carcass is put on display, suggesting ritual sacrifice. Now we have witchcraft in a nearby hamlet, or at least rumours of it, to throw into the mix. And this is all right in the centre of a giant natural pentagram, formed by five mountain peaks equal distances apart.

Nothing to see here, right?

'scuse me guys ...I'm only half reading this but....we discussed this in depth nearly three years ago and as i pointed out then...the darker trees are Yew trees and no livestock would ever be kept under a Yew tree...

In which case, apologies for the repetition, I wasn't here three years ago, though both Roscoe and I have raised this subject before in the time that I have been, probably too often for the liking of many, but it's something that seems to animate us both.

I agree totally with what you say about the Yew trees, and that seems to underline the great unliklihood of cattle using that pool to drink out of. As does the depth of it, combined with its sheer sides, btw.

Reading back through HL's account of visiting this place in the mid-1970s, I got the impression that this was arable land. Btw, I've never seen anything grazing in that valley generally since I've been going there in the early 2000s, apart from horses in the field by the ruined windmill with the line of cypresses by it - eight there last time, they looked great. Not seen many crops either, come to that, a few in the field below the horses. That said, I don't know when the P Smith photos Roscoe posted on p.2 were taken, but if you blow that photo up and look at the field to the right of the picture, the darker shade of green, and the height compared to the land on the left, I don't think that's grass, I think it's a young crop of something. But I may be wrong about that.

Don't even think about apologising Richard...we are all older and wiser since the last time this was discussed...

...looks like a crop field to me too.

If I may add to this Richard in the recently published The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail Illustrated Edition (2005) there is a picture of this copse and stone basin. The caption to the photograph on page 48 reads thus:

"A mysterious pool, once in the centre of a triangular field at Coume-Sourde, near Rennes-le-Château and close to La Valdieu – the Valley of God. It fulfills the requirement for a mikveh – a bath of ritual purification."

Now our friend Mr Paul Smith obviously poo poos this idea and quotes Roy Davies (director of the Chronicle programmes) He says:

From a letter by Roy Davies dated 31 October 1985, who directed the BBC2 Chronicle documentary The Shadow of the Templars in 1979:

"As far as the pool is concerned I can only tell you not to pay too much attention to Henry’s gobbledegook! – for it seems to me that’s what all that business about ‘underlying geometry’ is! In fact, when Henry used all his maps there was nothing at the absolute centre of the Pentagram he drew on the map. The pool was hundreds of yards (if I remember correctly) away from the centre which fell on a scree slope. The pool itself is in a farmer’s field near a secondary road and the old man in a nearby house told us it was a pool used by the local women to wash their clothes before piped water. The trees provided a screen to stop the water evaporating in the hot summer sun."

Interesting date by the way. Well I have to say that this is the answer for people who don't like to think too much. My reaction to that is 'Well they would say that wouldn't they?' what was Roy Davies expecting 'Oh that's where we do ritual killing Mr Davies'.

And actually there is something at the centre.

Now regarding the Coume Sourde stone, well apparently it's in the Rennes le Chateau Museum. Members of this forum can confirm this. But it's been defaced. There has been a lot of talk about the Dalle de Coume Sourde on here and on other sites. Maybe we should start another thread.

With regard to the book Key to the Sacred Pattern, it is a book that all Rennes le Chateau researchers should read if only for the general comments that HL has said. I particularly like his thoughts on treasure hunters holding ideas to their chest and horse trading ideas with other researchers. You may look at some of HLs comments and say to yourself 'He's talking about me' . Not only that even if you don't buy the ideas it's a great travelogue.

Richard in the context that we may be involved in witchcraft I seem to remember a picture produced in one of Lincoln's books that one of the early film producers introduced independently without Lincoln's approval showing a typical Beltane dance. I can't find it. I also seem to remember that this particular producer died suddenly.

Incidently if Andrew is still reading this thread the book has something interesting to say about bees.

Might that be what Henry Lincoln refers to as "An Independent Disaster" (pp.155-66 of Key to the Sacred Pattern)?

After Shadow of the Templars, HL got involved as a consultant for what was supposed to be an independent feature length documentary about RLC, something he was initially enthusiastic about, since it would have afforded the opportunity to make a longer, and more in-depth film than was typically possible on TV. However, once the producer (who is not named, and who did sadly die suddenly of a brain tumour shortly afterwards) got down to RLC he decided to make a Dennis Whealtley-esque film about a satanic cult, and the whole thing kind of deteriorated, and the film was never finished.

I knew that the producer had hired prostitutes from Carcassonne to dance naked around a fire for one of the scenes. What I had forgotten is that they actually filmed this scene around the pool in the copse near L'Aram. There's a photo on p.160 of what HL calls "satanic cavortings" around a fire, but it's not clear if this a photo of the scene being shot, or from something else. Possibly the Beltane type dance you're referring to?

They also shot on top of the Tour Magdala - a nude woman had a fake dove sacrificed over her by a magician. Amazing what you could get away with down there back then. It was during Henri Buthion's tenure at Villa Bethania, and much of his house red wine was used for blood (terrible waste - apparently it was very good), including getting one of the gargoyles on the church porch to vomit said red wine. They even bought an old car that they were going to push over the edge of the village car park, although I think the film ran out of funds before this could be done.

Meanwhile, poor HL, who by that time was well known in the village, and who felt responsible for the film crew, wanders around watching this all go on with a mounting sense of horror, and doing his best to placate people. Eventually the producer flipped out and went back to London, and the whole thing got called off (wonder if there's any footage knocking about anywhere?), and the poor man died shortly afterwards. HL speculates that his brain tumour might have been the cause of his irrational behaviour in the village, rather than it being caused by anything more sinister.

An "extraordinary, burlesque experience" as HL describes it, ending in a personal tragedy.

Incidentally, this was also the time when De Sede turned up in the village, and punched HL.

Another interesting stone that should be tracked further: la dalle des chevaliers. Well, one topic is the stone itself but as interesting as this was the first and second placement of it, mainly the second one as part of the stair of the calvaire in the "triangle garden", being part of the "hidden" church at RLC.

It is sad how many original things sadly get changed - by people not being able to see the importance of the stones put..

Coumesourde Stone

http://www.perillos.com/coumesourde_1.html
http://www.perillos.com/coumesourde_2.html
http://www.perillos.com/coumesourde_3.html







Real or fake? I haven't made up my mind on this one, but it's been depicted in so many different ways, as you can see, that it makes you wonder if these are all transcriptions of anything real and existent. There is no agreement on what this inscription "means" but many think it deals with the Meridian and there is the "PS PRAECUM" on it.

It might be a fake. If so, it's part of a host of hoaxed elements whose existence don't make sense. That's what I often point out to people. There are a lot of things that might have been hoaxed, but then these are the strangest hoaxers I've ever seen as the point of their inventions is unclear.

Dalle des Chevaliers -- aka "Knight's Stone" for Anglophones

http://www.rlcresearch.com/2007/11/10/knights-stone/



Plantard said it depicted Sigebert IV coming to RlC. Most people think that story bogus, so they think he made up that stone as well.

Others say it depicts Templars on their horses. Well, we know how the Templars make some people react. So that gets shot down as well.

Who knows? The third theory Raven offers is that it shows the Ark being moved to Ethiopia.

The truth is, it's a rather indistinct image, all I can really say about it is it shows some people on horseback.

I had another look at the aerial photo of the field in KTTSP, and to me it looks more like the mothman than an angel.

This is a very good thread btw.

Plantard could not make the dalle des chevaliers.

It was mentioned for the first time by the SESA in 1906. More exactly the good old known Mr. Tisseyre mentioned it in the tome 17, pages 98-105

A second report, also by the SESA from 1909, this time from Antoine Fages, in the tome 20 pages 128-133 describes it too.

BUT: Tisseyre WAS a "strange" person as we know!

According to Snorri Sturluson's interpretation of the Völuspá, the three most important norns, Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi and Skuld come out from a hall standing at the Well of Urðr (well of fate) and they draw water from the well and take sand that lies around it, which they pour over the ash Yggdrasill so that its branches will not rot.[

Notice Skuld (skulle)
ll three represent destiny as it is twined with the flow of time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norns

Thanks Richard I've just reread the chapter. Originally I read this book in a day, I couldn't put it down.

I remember what a bizarre series of incidents this turned out to be. The helicopter and the Chinese take-away incident is funny. When back in England the producer's assistant throws money out of the car window so Lincoln can get home, Lincoln is scrambling around the car park picking up bank notes (this is before credit cards). Lincoln had previously given all of his money to this producer. It's a bizarre story

Despite the fact that they hadn't finished filming this producer suddenly out of the blue gives his film party including Lincoln five minutes notice to pack and leave for Perpignan airport with no knowledge as to whether there is a flight from there or not. A few days later back in England the producer is dead.

But the producer seemed convinced that the window behind the altar is evidence that Sauniere was into pagan sex rites. He apparently got this idea from the ruined castle owner. The castle that has the Tour d'Alchemie.

And yes the nude dancing scene was filmed around the stone basin.

I have had the inkling the window behind the altar, the scene of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus, may well be a pagan scene and it was this window that convinced the producer also.

We never found out where this producer kept disappearing to. It shouldn't be too difficult to find out who this producer was, Lincoln wont give his name. Look in the obituaries could be a start and couple that with the collapse of a film company. Then find out if there is any notes and film footage in an archive somewhere.

I always thought that maybe SAE and SIS meant St Antonie l'Ermite and either Saint Isis (The Magdalene to some) or Saint Isabel, the sister of Saint Louis and Philippe Dagobert and daughter of Blanche de Castile (perhaps these are/were statues) and one of these is in the church of course. The PS PRAECUM is a giveaway because these none words appeared in a book of fiction we know was written by Philippe de Cherisey called Le Meridienne Zero. The crosses are Templar crosses. The creator of the Dalle de Coume Sourde speaks about something in the middle of an isosceles triangle framed by SAE and SIS and a Templar Site. We are told that the stone was found near to the Coume Sourde farm by Ernest Cros we are also told that it has been defaced and now resides in the museum at Rennes le Chateau.



It was below the altar and walked on (hence the wear) and early stories said that Visigoth jewels and two skulls were found underneath it. These jewels are in Spain and were shown, as well as the skulls, in The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem

The SAE saint Antonie that i find a very good one!
On the dossiers secrets, there are also are the pages of St Antonie l'Ermite and on the title page it's followed with Psp that could also be
Ps preacum, i never thought on the SAE but i think they indeed meant St. Antonie... with the SAE

The opening stone in this treath with the probably added or changed 1857 there you can also find the SAE and SIS in a plausible way, first line 8th letter
second the 5th, third the 7th and you already have the SAE.... maybe even that's why the 857 have a little bit another style...

In the "odd" line also the number 13, that is in that line the last letter I, the next two lines the last letter SS could be SIS...that's why i wouldn,t lock out the
coumesourde too soon, and if there's a good connection between the stone, Aram and Coumesourde then this is indeed a very interesting thread....

That's strange. I mean, I agree, he used it in a work of fiction.

However, they are not "non words", and they can be found in medieval inscriptions. It means "I pray for you".

I think something like a year ago Douzet published on his societe perillos site that this "famous" coume sourde" stone would have been found, by Spanish researchers as far as I remember. One glance at the pics published was enough to see that once again some fakers made a rather bad job.