33 Postcards

Raven — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:42:01 +0000

Abbé Saunière was an avid collector of postcards. He sometimes put little adverts in magazines inviting people to send him cards. One know example is the advert he put in ‘La Semaine de Suzette’. As a result he for example received a card from a certain Anne Marie Maître from Nantes in Bretagne.

After the priest had finished the construction of his domain in 1907 he had a series of postcards produced himself. For the set he selected 33 photos of his domain, the Church, the Château Hautpoul, the village and one or two locations in the vicinity to which he attached special relevance. The cards give a great impression of the domain in the early 1900s. Saunière, his maid, his dogs, the villagers, they all proudly pose in front of the brandnew buildings and manicured gardens.

The number of cards was 33 and they were sold for 10 ct. each to visitors of the area, attracted by its long history, the works of Saunière or taking a break from the hot baths in Rennes-les-Bains. Commercially it wasn’t a bad move as he wrote in one of his letters to a friend: “All the bathers take the complete collection”, bathers of course being the visitors to the spa of Rennes-les-Bains. “The cards have so much success that I can hardly keep up supplying them” he added.

The number 33 carries special relevance for Christians. It is the age of Jesus when he was crucified. In relation to Saunière it should also be remarked that 33 is a pivotal number in freemasonry. It is the highest possible grade one can have in a masonic organisation. We know Saunière was involved in masonic activities. French researcher and author Daniel Dugès, in his book Rennes-le-Château entre La Rose et l’Équerre, argues that Saunière’s church is in fact a Masonic Temple.

All cards depict places in and around Rennes-le-Château with one odd exception. The 33rd card displays the Rocks and Cascades of Saoutadou. The photo, reproduced here with kind permission of the owner Christian Doumergue, shows Marie Dénarnaud, Saunière sitting with a white umbrella and an unknow figure at these waterfalls that are situated in the Brenac area.

The complete set of 33 cards was recently re-compiled and published by Michel Azens in his book Rennes-le-Château, Fenêtre sur Tour.

Selection of the postcards:

[View with PicLens]

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Tags: 33| Brenac| Daniel Duges| freemasonry| michel azens| postcards| Rennes-le-Château| rennes-les-bains| sauniere

Tour Magdala

Raven — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:17:09 +0000

In 1906, Saunière started construction of the Tour Magdala. The word ‘Magdala’ carries an appropriate double meaning. The gospels mention a village called Magdala in Galilee as the birthplace of Mary Magdalene. In Aramaic, the native tongue of Jesus, the word Magdala means ‘tower’ or ‘fortress’ (Migdal in Hebrew). On the original plans for the tower that Saunière made, he called the tower ‘Tour d’Horloge’. Some say the Tour Magdala looks like a Knight’s tower on a chessboard that needs to be moved in a straight line horizontally or vertically.

The Tour Magdala is a neo-gothic tower that sits on the far west corner of Saunière’s estate. If you climb the narrow spiral staircase to the top of this strange building an exit the little tower (échauguette) on the top deck, you are rewarded with an incredibly wide view of the surrounding countryside. It is hard to capture it here in photos or mere words. Many of the places that play a part in the enigma and legends of treasure are visible.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Click on the picture to activate and drag your mouse in all directions to look around, up and down, panoramic photo copyright Gilles Vidal

The Tour Magdala served as Saunière’s personal study and library and as such replaced the reposoir after it’s completion in 1906. The wooden housing for his books on the ground floor was made to measure and took a month to complete. In 1907 he seriously started collecting stamps, postcards and books. He sent all his correspondents little metal boxes and asked them to fill them with stamps and send them back to him.

From 1908 onwards, Saunière directed his attention fully to his vast collection of books. To create order in the stacks of papers, magazines, pamphlets and books, he hired Henri Baret a librarian from Castelnaudary, who stayed with him for three months. No receipts or records survive of the collections of books and stamps. Most were sold or given away by Marie Dénarnaud after Saunière’s death and we know very little of their content. When the Derain-Raclet bookshop in Lyon went bankrupt around 1950, three books were found that were marked ‘François Béranger Saunière, Priest at: Aude, town of Rennes.’ These works were entitled: ‘the Prophecy of the Popes allotted to St. Malachy’ by Abbé Joseph Maitre, 2) ‘History of the Large Forests of Gaule and Old France’ by L.F. Alfred Maury and 3) “Celtic Monuments, or Research on the Worship of the Stones, Preceded by a note on the Celts and Druids, and followed Celtic etymologies’ by Mr. Camby.

Although the Tour Magdala doesn’t appear to an illustrated treasure map like the church, there are some peculiarities about it. In the last tile, in the extreme west corner of the floor there is a red dot. Though many will argue it’s just a fault in the tile, it does point up to the staircase to the window that points straight into the direction of a ancient grotto, about a mile in the distance called ‘Grotte du Fournet, dite de la Magdeleine’, which translates as ‘The Burial Site of the Magdalene’.

The spiral staircase inside the tower has 22 steps, 22nd July being the feast day of Mary Magdalene. Andrew Gough has an article about this feature.

There is a little chimney on the roof of the tower, connected to the stove at ground level. The exhaust is beautifully modeled in a traditional opening representing the holy trinity. In a straight line through the holy trinity of the chimney lies the mountaintop of Pech Cerda.

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Rennes-le-Chateau Research and Resource » Domain of Saunière

33 Postcards

Selection of the postcards:

Tour Magdala