Pilrig wrote:
Unless it's in the church...doubtful as it would've been mentioned before now....or in the landscape..this is cromlech territory after all..
If I remember correctly Richard gave me this link ages ago. So thank-you Richard.
http://www.alpheus.org/html/articles/es ... dson3.htmlQuote:
Also in the tomb was information about the secrets of the surrounding countryside in a form accessible to initiates, but only partially comprehensible to Sauniere. When Henri Boudet wrote of the Cromlech - or stone circle - surrounding Rennes-les-Bains, he was speaking quite literally. He was derided in his time, as he still is today, because he has been taken literally. But author David Wood has rediscovered a circle of churches rebuilt atop older ruins - as was customary for Catholic churches to be built atop Celtic sacred sites - which does encircle the area around Rennes-le-Château. Boudet knew that the Celts used standing stones to designate telluric points. And they used standing stone circles for religious purposes.(15) When he wrote that a stone cromlech (i.e, circle of standing stones) marked the area around Rennes-les-Bains, Boudet was saying that the entire area is key telluric point which was used for religious purposes.
Quote:
A labyrinth is a particular type of spiritual training tool, a groundplan which the seeker physically walks, and which incorporates three degrees, or stages. In the first stage, the individual sheds, or is stripped, of his personal entrappings, and sheds and transforms his unnecessary, negative characteristics. In the second stage, the individual is forced to come face to face with himself and find the core of his being. In the third stage, the individual returns to the world a different person. Like the old initiates, like Lazarus, he comes out of the initiatic cave or labyrinth, born again. These stages mirror the steps of the spiritual training systems used in monasteries and initiatic esoteric orders. In the western training system, these steps can take many years. In the eastern system, they are designed to take lifetimes.
Until the last century, in parts of rural Ireland and Wales, many ancient Celtic customs were preserved and several labyrinths, their actual purpose long forgotten, were maintained and the custom of ritualistically walking them observed. The ancient ritual consisted of entering the labyrinth from the north, and proceeding through it in a clockwise, processional fashion. At Rennes-le-Château, this would entail entering the valley near Blanchefort and the mountain of Pech Cardou, and eventually emerging at Rennes-le-Château. This represents the descent of spirit into man, its symbolic entombment at Rennes-le-Château, and eventual emergence.
Quote:
The path of the Rennes-les-Bains / Rennes-le-Château labyrinth was clearly marked in the past by a series of fourteen carved crosses in the landscape. They eventually became overgrown and forgotten. They were rediscovered by Abbe Boudet and he wrote of how he found Greek crosses carved in the landscape of his Cromlech.(16) To the Celts, the landscape held a special meaning.(17) They held a special spiritual communion with it, and used it as a mirror for the themes of their bards and of their Druids.(18) 600 years before Christ, Celtic crosses were used to mark special locations in the landscape.(19) Later, in these same locations in Christian times, the stations of the cross were placed in the landscape in Italy and in France to reenact in Christian terms the labyrinth experience,(20) and to create a mystical Christian spiritual transformation. In the area surrounding Rennes-les-Bains, the crosses were recarved in Christian times into "Greek" Christian crosses. Visiting these sites was the reason Sauniere took long walks in the countryside. The labyrinth of the two Rennes can be walked in fourteen successive stages.
Quote:
15. Nigel Pennick. Celtic Sacred Landscapes. Thames & Hudson. New York. 1996. p. 51.
16. Michael Gabriel. The Holy Valley and The Holy Mountain. Hurst Village Publishing. Reading. 1994. P. 131.
17. John King. The Celtic Druid's Year. Blandford. London. 1995.p. 20.
18. Pennick, p. 9.
19. Ibid., p. 47.
20. Ibid., p. 90.
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) As for the book Holy Valley... I saw that on sale in both RLC bookshops, I didn't buy it though (which is unusual for me regarding English language books about RLC) . Going by the review in Amazon perhaps I made the right decision ? Anyone prepared to say a good word about this book ?
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