Arcadia Discussion Zone

I'd always felt like I'd known the RLC story long before I read HBHG around 1993. Going through the darkest depths of one of my cupboards the other day I found my full collection of The Unexplained which was a week by week mag that ended up containing 156 installments in 13 folders - ran between 1980-83, so it was running when HBHG was actually first published. Low and behold in the first volume of 12 mags was the RLC story. It was interesting to get an early perspective on it and it was mentioned that De Cherisey had actually sent them a letter. The writer of the article also mentioned the natural pentagram that I thought HL discovered/highlighted after HBHG. Now the paticular edition the article was in was probably published around 1980/81. Had Henry mentioned the pentgram then or was it known about? Also the writer walks or trys to walk from point to point. The only 2 he can walk ok between was from Serres du Lauzet to RLC and he says there is a clear line of sight between the 2 (or there was then). He says along this line just to the east of it is an opening in the ground that leads to an extensive underground cave system. You can see this on the 1:25000 map south of RLC and is marked Aven. Anyone been there? It is near where you would park up to walk up to Grotte du Fournet

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Hi Davinho - in answer to your question above, it would have been known about by then. HL first made that discovery when researching the second of the three Chronicle programmes, some time in the early to mid-1970s, and it was while looking into the Poussin painting and the geometry he saw in it, that Professor Christopher Cornford recommended that he look for alignments in the landscape, so it stemmed from there, and would have been an idea in the public domain by then. I've only seen "The Priest, the Painter and the Devil" (the film he did this research for) once, but I'm fairly sure it was in there. That said, it was only post-HBHG, and the follow-up book, when HL stopped working with Baigent and Leigh, and went solo, so to speak, that he really started to get into this aspect of the mystery. But the idea first got floated in the mid-1970s.

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the pentagram aspect is what really intrigues me. The more I look at the Sauniere aspect the more it seems fabricated. I mean so much is just based on heresay - finding parchements, the amount of money he allegedly spent, obtaining a "copy" of Shepherds etc etc. It's clear he spent money but my own belief is he likely got bequeathed that by a rich widow(s) he may have been "servicing" so to speak . The mystery though depends on 2 big hoaxes, one by Corbu and one by Plantard/de Cherisey. The first I can understand a motivation, the 2nd is a little more difficult to pin down. Now (and correct me if I'm wrong) although Cornford said to look for pentagrams after studying Shepherds the pentagram was hinted at in the Dagobert parchment with the 36 degree angle of the symbol in the top left corner. So if that is the case it seems whoever made the parchment knew of the pentagram. Of the five points of the pentagram 3 have structures on, 2 of these are hundreds of years old, the other built by our main character of if we use the chateau at RLC also hundreds of years old. The article I mentioned ealier states that there is a menhir at La Soulane (lower east point). I'm not sure about that but will check when I'm there next month. Possibly we have 4 out of 5 points with human strcutures on them. Now I can understand the point that you could make geometric shapes on any map but the fact that there are pretty old structures on these points is very intriguing.

Hi Davinho,

Davinho wrote:



Can you (or anyone else for that matter) say which issue of the first volume the article is in? I've rooted out my old copies of The Unexplained and I can't seem to find it

Regards,

Spartacus

there are articles about Rennes, The Priory, the bloodline of Jesus etc throughout the collection but the first appearance of Rennes and Sauniere appear in the first binder as do follow up ariticles so that means it will be in one of the first 12 mags. I'll confirm the page number and issue tonight

Lookee here

Hi Davinho,

Thanks for the reply.

This is my No.9 from Volume 1:



I realise now it is from a later series .

Regards,

Spartacus

f.y.i
first Rennes le Chateau article is in mag # 5 then # 9 # 12 and finally # 13

I used to collect these ones too and I remember having a fascination with spontaneous human combustion after one episode showed a picture of a pair of feet surrounded in ash. I often think about it every time I have a hot flush

I had three or four copies of the Unexplained - long disappeared I'm afraid I think Lynn Picknet was the editor of the magazine.

Re the RLC pentagram: it wasn't until The Holy Place was published that Henry Lincoln (for want of a better word) unveiled his pentagram. However it was David Wood in 1985 with Genisis who first gave details of pentagrams in the landscape surrounding RLC . As to Mr Wood's conclusions...well that's a different kettle of fish...

I had that one as well when I was younger Missed out on the RLC one though Oh well, good magazine though, there wasn't really anything else like it at the time except maybe Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World on TV.
Regards
Nic

haha yeah I remember those SHC pics and the drawing of the nude alien girl with red pubic hair
dusted down my 13 binders and have been gradually going from them...ah memories

Hi Pilrig,

Pilrig wrote;



Are you suggesting that you don't believe that: Extra-Terrestrials terraformed the southern French countryside to resemble the Vagina of Nut? Or that all members of the Priory of Sion are ritually castrated with a razor sharp stone, including even Jesus? Or that their dismembered members are stored in a special communal jar?

You're such a sceptic?!



Regards,

Spartacus

Well ... I believe that's ... nuts!

the article detailing the pentagram was written pre HBHG

Hi Davinho:

Davinho wrote:



That's very interesting. Was there any pentagrammatic theorising involved with the Chronicle episodes?

Could and would you scan and post The Unexplained article, or even parts of it? Would that be breaking copyrights? Would anyone care almost 3 decades later?

Regards,

Spartacus

when I get a chance I will scan it. As far as I remember the piece about the pentagram is in issue 12 and it's the article that mentions the aven mentioned in first post. They were weekly magazines and started in 1980 although I don't know exact month or date, but even if it started in December (and I'm right about mag no. 12) then the article would appear March 1981

Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, “Turin Shroud: in whose Image?”, 2000, pp 148-149:

“Giovanni [...] began to ask us what we thought about “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” in terms that suggested he knew something that the authors of the book did not. [...] The conversation then moved to secret societies... It was particularly chilling to hear him list a publishing consultant with whom Lynn had worked many years before as a fellow member [of the Priory?], and a former creative director who had been her boss on a long-running partwork (and with whom she had had several dramatic rows) as a master alchemist.”

But Picknett and Prince have never had the same cachet since their cameo roles in "The Da Vinci Code".

Hi Paddy,

Paddy wrote:



So, which was which? Was Innes the Master Alchemist and Brookesmith the Sion member or was it the other way around?

Btw...has it ever been confirmed that Picknett's supposed Sion 'deepthroat' was Gino Sandri?

Regards,

Spartacus

Gawd, that is going back quite a few years, Spart. Given that Lynn and Brian had the long-running relationship punctuated by dramatic rows, and he's an art director, I guess that makes him the alchemist?



Does it need to be? Then again, I've always wondered if Lynn's "Barcelona PoS mouthpiece" was actually Martin Lunn? Still, I don't think Lunn was part of the composite identity known as Giovanni...

Tough to tell, she and Clive always seemed to be taken in by just about anybody who claimed they were with the "Priory"...<cue spooky music>

TCP

Hi Tim,

Tim wrote:



You are very naughty...

What... no mysterious letters burned for safety, no mysterious burglary, no dangerous rendezvous...you're sooooo skeptical......

Tim wrote:



Do ya think she'd accept my credentials



Regards,

Spartacus

No, I just don't give a rat's ass anymore.



I think I've just sat through too many performances over the years. Thankfully I seldom delete e-mails, I've got them going back to the late '90s.

Tim wrote:



Depends on whether or not they're creepy enough to spin into her next plotline. But don't you think the PoS is a bit overdone? I mean - look at the current roster and ask yourself if you really want to be cast with that lot. Romanians are the new fascinati...

TCP