The Chapelle St. Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer was the first in a row of Chapels and Churches Jean Cocteau adorned with his characteristical man size murals. He created stained glas windows for the Church of St. Maximin in Metz, murals for the church of Notre Dame de France in London and the Chapelle Saint-Blaise in Milly-la-Forêt, his last resting place.

Little is it known, that when Cocteau died he was working on a Chapel project he designed from scratch including the remarkable octagonal floorplan: the Chapel of Notre Dame de Jérusalem in La Tour de Mare.

Forming an Eight

La Tour de Mare (the tower at the sea) is a tiny village near Fréjus at the French Côte d’Azur. It is some 60 km’s from Villefranche-sur-Mer, where Cocteau painted his first Chapel as described in an earlier post. The area in which it was built was bought in the early sixties by a very rich and influential banker and freemason from Nice called Jean Martinon. He intended the grounds as an artists colony, an ideal city. He called Jean Cocteau for help who set out to draw up the plans and designs for a Chapel, assisted by architect Jean Triquenot. Cocteau died in 1963, leaving the project unfinished but with all sketches and plans ready. The project was finished by his close friend and artistic heir Edouard Dermit who finished the last parts of the murals and Roger Pelissier who did the ceramics for the floor mosaic. The difference in style between Cocteau and Dermit is quite apparent in the various tableaus inside.

In religious symbolism, the octagon or the figure 8 represent resurrection, rebirth and eternal life. Jesus’ resurrection took place eight days after his arrival in Jerusalem. Today this symbolism can still be seen in many baptismal fonts in churches all over the world. It is also the shape of the Dome of the Rock, housing the sacred stone that allegedly once supported the Ark of the Covenant.

The building is literally crowned with an iron construction in the shape of a crown. The Chapel is a veritable treasure trove of religious and esoteric imagery. Outside there are magnificently bright and colorful mosaics. Pièce de resistance however, without any doubt is the 360 degree panoramic mural on the eight walls and ceiling of the Chapel’s inside. It’s literally all around you and quite overwhelming when you first see it. It’s adorned by a beautiful floor mosaic. You can get a perfect impression of the Chapel by using the panorama viewer below. It requires the free Quicktime application to be installed on your computer.

The Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre

Cocteau devised a very clear theme for his Chapel of Our Lady of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Cross or Cross with Cross Potent is omnipresent, in fact it appears to have been the basis for the octagonal floorplan. The Jerusalem Cross was a variant of the Crusaders’ Cross (symbol of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem). It was the logo of the Order of the Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The four smaller crosses are said to symbolize either the four books of the Gospel or the four directions in which the Word of Christ spread from Jerusalem. Most frequentlu however the five crosses symbolize the five wounds of Christ during the Passion. It is here that the Arma Christi come to mind again. The association with Christ’s wounds seems very relevant here given the content of the murals that mostly depict scenes from the Passion of Christ.

God Wills It

The Jerusalem Cross is not the only thing that refers to the Crusades and the Crusader Kingdom. Cocteau appears to have adopted the motto of the First Crusade for his Chapel. At the Council of Clermont in November 1095, pope Urban II held what must have been one of the most powerful speeches in history. A French Nobleman himself, he summoned the French nobility to free the Holy Land and the Holy city from the hands of the Persians. His words that survive today leave little to the imagination:

“You, who sell for vile pay the strenght of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Machabees, go and merit an eternal award. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdons of the East will be your reward. If you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will never forget what he found you in the Holy Batallions.

This is now the time to prove that you are animated by true courage, the time to expiate violence committed in the bosom of peace, the many victories purchased at the expense of justice and humanity. If you must have blood, bathe in the blood of the infidels. I speak to you with harshness because my ministry obliges me to do so. Soldiers of Hell, become soldiers of the living God!

His speech was answered by a loud roar from the crowds. The northerns shouted ‘Dieu li volt!’; the southerns in their own tongue: ‘Dieu le veult!’.

It is this last motto that is embedded in the floor and the altar of the Chapel, the most holy spot. It is so prominent you can hardly escape from the feeling that the artist must have had a very specific meaning here.

The Murals

The eight walls of the octagon are decorated with as many tableaus:

1. The Last Supper

In the last supper we see Jesus, surrounded by his twelve disciples. It’s hard to tell who is who. The grouping doesn’t match Da Vinci’s last supper in Milan so we can’t identify the apostle from there. Christ is in the middle. A female figure is leaning against his shoulder on the right, probably John or perhaps Mary Magdalene. Judging by the face, the size and the dress, the figure is androgynous to say the least. We know John has been depicted with some femininity through the ages. On the other hand, the gospels state clearly that Mary Magdalene was present at the Last Supper, so why couldn’t she have been at the table? Remember that in the early 60’s it wasn’t fashionable yet to stage Mary Magdalene besides Jesus as his wife or mother of his children; Jean Cocteau couldn’t have been influenced by Holy Blood, Holy Grail or The Da Vinci Code. If the figure is indeed John or Mary Magdalene, there is an inversion going on, since he (or she) is usually depicted on Christ’s left. For the remainder of the article I will call this figure Mary Magdalene. Although I can’t be 100% sure I think the figure is more feminin than masculin.

In front of Christ there’s a glass of what appears to be red wine often symbolising blood. Perhaps Cocteau is confirming the fact that the Grail and the Holy Blood are in fact one. This too in an age where the translation of San Graal into Sang Real hadn’t been invented yet.

The apostle on the far left makes an inversed ‘J’ symbol. In fact the ‘J’ symbol is everywhere in the murals. It is also in the large mural of St. Peter walking on the water in the Chapel of St. Peter in Villefrance-sur-Mer (see earlier post). The gesture is often called ‘the gesture of John’, after Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting of John the Baptist (not to be confused with John the Apostle), noticeably it was also Da Vinci’s last painting.

Cocteau shamelessly inserted himself into the scene of the Last Supper. It was not the first time he put a self portrait in a religious mural (Notre Dame de France, London), but this time he painted not only himself but also his muse: the French actor Jean Marais. It was whispered that the homosexual Cocteau and Marais shared more than the films they made together. Certainly Cocteau became a father figure for Marais. After Cocteau’s death, Marais would describe his first meeting with Cocteau as his ‘rebirth’. In that sense it’s very appropriate to find him in the Octagon, which represenst that very theme.

What is remarkable is that both in Notre Dame de France and Notre Dame de Jérusalem, Cocteau is looking away from Christ. From the dead as well as the living. Why would Cocteau, who was known as a religious man, do such a thing? Moreover, his friend Jean Marais appears to be mocking Christ with his gesture.

On the far left there appears to be a second portrait of Marais, but a younger version with longer hair this time. Given the profile of the face of the man on his right, it might very well represent Cocteau in a second but younger and more stylised self portrait. Here Jean Marais seems to have little interest in Jesus but Cocteau is staring at him in admiration. Metaforically we are looking at the young Cocteau admiring Christ, but looking away from him when he is older. Something appears to have happened that made him turn away from Christ.

When you look at the scene for a while, you notice something weird. Apart from young Cocteau, nobody actually looks at Christ. Christ’s right eye is a little lower than his left, implying that he is looking at the figure leaning against his shoulder: Mary Magdalene. Closer inspection of the angles of the other figures’ eyes reveal that not only the older Cocteau, but also some of the other apostles are not looking at their Lord Jesus but at Mary Magdalene. When you count them, there appear to be five apostles looking at Mary Magdalene. Jesus is showing us his full hand as if he want to say: ‘Five’. From the previous article we know that Five was an important number for Jean Cocteau.

The fact that five apostles are not looking at Christ but at Mary Magdalene is an intriguing bit of information. The plot thickens when you combine it with the ‘J’ and inverted ‘J’ hand gestures that some of the disciples are making here, including Mary Magdalene himself.

2. Insulting of Christ

This is the scene from the Passion, where Jesus is mocked by and given the Crown of Thorns. This part of the mural doesn’t have the specific distinguished style of painting of Jean Cocteau. It’s likely it was done by Edouard Dermit. Cocteau was very specific in his sketches so the scene should be displayed as he intended.

We see two figures mocking Jesus. One is clearly a Roman soldier, the other one probably a jew, judging by his dress. Christ’s hands are tied and his left hand makes a peculiar gesture, as if imitating a walking mouse. On the right we see a woman praying with her eyes closed and face turned away from Christ, perhaps Mary.

3. The Crucifixion

This too appears to be the work of Dermit. The crucifixion is depicted from an unfamiliar angle, looking up from the bottom of the cross. Two mirrored angels make the ‘J’ and inversed ‘J’ gesture, while holding the cross bearing Orb or Globus Cruciger. It normally symbolises Christ’s dominion over the world. In this context, with the angels holding it, making the gesture at the feet of the dead Christ it could have a different meaning alltogether.

4. The Virgin of the Rose

Over the door leading to the small Sacristie, a mural is painted of a crowned woman, whose crown is overgrown with rose stalks. She is looking sadly into the direction of the Blason over the front entrance. Two giant roses adorn her on both sides. From the Middle Ages, the rose was seen as the queen of flowers, symbolysing the Virgin Mary. What is odd here is that normally she is represented by a thornless rose to indicate she is without sin. Not so here, her crown is oovergrown with thorny stems. What was her sin?

Perhaps her sins had to do with what’s depicted below her on the door leading to the Sacristie. A very vague sketch appears to display an image of the infant Jesus. Combined the pictures suggest Mary in relation to perhaps a sinful (natural?) conception of baby Jesus.

5. The Resurrection

Straight opposite the Last Supper, on the other side of the room there’s a mural of the Resurrection, this time clearly from the hand of the master himself. An Angel lifts the veil and uncovers a figure much to the suprise of the two Roman soldiers. It’s a strange scene indeed. Again, there’s the inversed ‘J’ symbol. The most prominent mystery here is the identity of the figure behind the veil. It seems a woman rather than a man from the shape of the body. Closer inspection reveals that the figure has no beard. It’s not Jesus that is resurrected here. Actually the figure looks a lot more like the person from the Last Supper identified as Mary Magdalene or maybe John. Perhaps there’s a clue in the outstretched hand of the left soldier displaying the ‘Five’ symbol again, the Last Supper taking place on a Thursday (the fifth day of the week in Jewish custom where Sunday was the first day).

6. Angel of the Apocalypse

Before an enormous buring sun, an angel blows the trumpet to announce the Apocalypse.

He is standing in front of an enormous orange sun. His chest is adorned with a cross. His wings spread out wide.

You can only wonder what he was meant to announce here in the strange combination of symbolism and religion.

7. Adoration of Christ

Adoration of Christ is the title given to this work in a brochure in the Chapel. I am not so sure these eight men are adoring or chanting to Christ. They look like Jewish, judging by the curls hanging down from their heads. Looking at their faces you would think they are reading a verdict of some sort. On the other hand, since they all have their mouths open it’s more like they’re singing or scanting. They appear to be religious figures, perhaps the Sanhedrin. On their dresses they wear the Cross Potent. Their faces are serious and don’t look at Christ. The figure of Christ in the middle once again makes the ‘J’ gesture, at the same time pointing at a beetle crawling away from him. The depiction of Christ reminds of the Turin Shroud.

The beetle is an ancient Egyptian symbol. Inlcuding a scarab in the tomb was believed to ensure the rebirth of the deceased in the afterlife. This is quite significant. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to be reborn in this one?

8. Blason

Over the front entrance of the Chapel, a giant colorful Blason is painted in Cocteau’s hand. Two mirrored winged figures are painted around a shield with the Jerusalem Cross. At the bottom there’s a figure with an Egyptian looking headdress but he is wearing a necklace with a Christian cross. The black color and the facial expression indicate she is mourning. The whole thing is painted like some kind of blason or coat of arms. In the picture there are some symmetrical black and red dots. I tried to connect them but it hasn’t led to a distinguishable image so far. I am interested to hear if anyone can connect them up to reveal something meaningful.

The mirrored figure looks very much like the person that could well be identified as the ‘young Cocteau’ in the last supper. Again it appears as if the artist has put himself into the scene. It would be a logical step to suggest Cocteau was a member of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. Perhaps not an ordinary member.

Below the Blason, on both sides of the entrance, a figure, wearing a hat with the Jerusalem Cross, holds out his hands with the thumbs touching in the old Jewish symbol for divinity.

Cocteau, the Meticulous Director

Jean Cocteau firmly believed he would transcend time and space after his death, just like the man he shared the intials with: Jesus Christ. This re-birth would not take place in this life though.

It’s hard to tell exactly what Jean Cocteau had in mind when he designed the Chapel of Notre Dame de Jérusalem. When Jean Martinon asked him to design a Chapel for his Ideal City, Cocteau must have thought to create the Ideal Chapel. Sensitive as he was, he perhaps even had a premonition of death lurking round the corner, pushing him to make his last enigmatic work the most explicit of them all. A perfect symbiosis of shape and image. Did Cocteau hide something or the exact opposite? In either case, you can count on everything being there for a reason. You have to remember Jean Cocteau was a celebrated film director. He was known for meticulously detailing out his themes and messages. A micro-director, obsessed with the right word in the right line in the right poem. The right person in the right clothes in the right spot on the stage. Cocteau didn’t leave anything in his art to chance. He was very articulate. A symbolyst; certainly not an impressionist.

So what is the symbology here and what could the master have meant to say?

My guess is that the octagonal shape was meant to guard knowledge in this place for eternity. In a great double meaning of the same octagon it looks like that knowledge had everything to do with the alleged resurrection of Christ. The outer and the inner octagon.

Cocteau tells us Mary had sins and gave birth to the Infant Jesus through natural conception. He died on the cross and changed his earthly kingdom for a heavenly one. The artist appears to be telling Christ didnot return and won’t return at the Apocalypse. While the Crusader priests pray and chant, Christ sheds tears over them in heaven where he was just reborn as symbolised by the Scarab.

At the Last Supper all eyes are on Mary Magdalene. Remember Cocteau painted this in an age where everybody still believed she was nothing but a foul footnote in the bible. Cocteau emphasises her role even more in the resurrection, straight opposite the Last Supper. Not Christ but Mary Magdalene exits the tomb with a serene expression on her face. She knows he’s in heaven and won’t be back. It’s clear now who Our Lady of Jerusalem is: Mary Magdalene.

If this is what Cocteau meant to say, how does the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre fit the picture? If the previous interpretation is correct, guarding Christ’s tomb would become a whole lot more relevant than it would be when he had walked out of it after his death. It would mean his mortal remains where laid to rest and perhaps still are somewhere today. In that respect the ‘J’ and inverted ‘J’ symbols are quite clear in their meaning: he, Jesus, is up there, not here.

Dieu le Veult, God wills it, however not as they thought he wanted it in the 10th century. Jean Cocteau, appears to show us the Crusaders went on a conquest for all the wrong reasons but found a Holy Sepulchre, worthy to protect through all times.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved

Additional credits:
Mairie et Office du Tourisme Fréjus
The Crusades, Robert Payne
Discussions on www.terugnaardebron.com internet forum
Original photos Corjan de Raaf
Panorama photo copyright Antonio Moya, many thanks!
This article was previously published on Andrew Gough’s Arcadia

On various websites and forums, the authenticity of the research that is behind the upcoming documentary film Bloodline is seriously questioned. The film is centered around the discoveries of English researcher Ben Hammott. During the production of the film, Ben was assisted by Bill Kersey, author of Still spins the Spider of Rennes-le-Château and Sandy Hamblet, editor of the Rhedesium journal.

On this page you’ll find a summary of some of the more obvious issues of authenticity with the facts and artefacts that have been dished up to the general public so far:

The Bloodline Tomb in 1995

In 1995, English researcher Ben Hammott (an anagram for ‘The Tombman’ as he then liked to be called) accidentally dropped his video camera in a hole inside a cave near the French village of Rennes-le-Château. The camera got stuck in a shaft. He fished the camera back up with a piece of rope. Only later, when he viewed what the camera had filmed down the hole, all by itself, he noticed a white cloth with a red cross on it and concluded he had discovered a tomb. He never explained how, with the camera blocking the shaft and no light source inside the tomb how an image was visible on the camera at all.

As soon as he’d discovered what had happened he returned to the tomb to shoot some more video of it. That he managed in the end you can see in the second picture. The better footage of the discovery wasn’t picked up by any media which is quite odd since it was really an astonishing find, especially since there appeared to be a body inside. Ben Hammott: “Most people in the Rennes-le-Chateau circle, especially the French researchers, believed it was because I had something to hide, that I was up to no good, the tomb was just in my imagination. Looking back on it now, I in all honesty cannot blame them for thinking this way. Suddenly it is announced, on a far from professional web site, (I am cringing again) that a Templar Tomb has been discovered in France, even worse, by an Englishman.”

The entire story about how Hammott discovered the tomb was published in 2007 by Andrew Gough.

The Bloodline Tomb in 2007

In 2007, Hammott returned to the tomb. This contrary to the fact that earlier Hammott had claimed that he’d probably not be able to find the location back at all. This time he had been equipped with a professional camera on a rope by American film producer Bruce Burgess who became famous by landing a plane into Area 51. Burgess never entered the cave himself but stood guard outside while Hammott did his thing. This time, even better video footage was shot. A comparison of this video to the images from 1995 shows that some of the objects inside have moved and the cloth is folded differently even though the only access to the tomb is the narrow shaft. The most obvious change is how the round pot has moved a lot futher away from the chest in the top picture which was taken from a recent Bloodline videoclip (click the picture to enlarge it). Ben swears the tomb only has one access and he has never been into it. Since there is no big rock in the picture that could have fallen down from the ceiling to displace objects, the only conclusion can be that someone moved them.

In the old pictures it looks like the tomb is actually a scale model, lit from a lightsource inside the tomb since you don’t see the shadows move when the camera does. In the newer video footage the tomb feels more life size.

In the Bloodline movie it’s claimed this is the burial site of none other than Mary-Magdalene and that it is just one of three such sites in the area that lie in a triangle. Nowhere is it explained why the bride of Christ was laid to rest in such pity circumstances and why. That is apart from the obvious neglect of Jewish burial practices from the time of Jesus until the Middle-Ages.

French Archeological Authority

According to this Press Release the tomb has been reported to the French Archeological Authority of Montpellier (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles, DRAC). On the Bloodline website, in the NEWS section, producer Bruce Burgess also claims that they are talking to French speleo’s of the DRAC to discuss a full-scale survey of the tomb. The man they quote is called Jean-Pierre Giraud. The RLC Research team called the man who is actually responsible for archeological discoveries in the region and to Jean-Pierre Giraud, the man Bloodline spoke to. What they told us is that Bruce Burgess and Ben Hammott showed Giraud a piece of film and asked if they would be interested to see the tomb in real life. Of course Jean-Pierre indicated that’s what DRAC is there for so yes they were. Bruce and Ben promised Giraud they would take him to the tomb and left. DRAC was later informed that the visit couldn’t take place because Ben was ill. Later it was stated to the RLC Research team that it wasn’t Ben but Ben’s son who was ill. DRAC, who would normally go to the site of an important discovery on the same day, did not create a dossier since no-one never saw the tomb or any photo or map of it. No word has been heard from Bruce or Ben since, strongly suggesting they only came in to get a quote they could use for the film, leaving DRAC embarrassed, angry and convinced this is a hoax.

First Bottle and Message

As early as 1996, Hammott turned up during a meeting of the Rennes Group. The Rennes Group is a periodical meeting of longtime English Rennes-le-Château researchers, organized by Guy Patton and Jonothon Boulter. During the meeting he showed and opened what he now calls ‘Bottle 1′. Inside was a parchment, or rather a not very old looking bit of paper that looked quite different than the pictures that are currently on Ben’s website of it.

There are a number of issues with this first piece of paper. For example that Bérenger Saunière, the priest of whom we have dozens of handwritten letters and a meticulously kept set of accounting books made a mistake in his own signature. He writes Sauniére instead of Saunière. A very uncharacteristic mistake, incomprehensible from a well-educated Frenchman. Furthermore, the priest who is well known for his beautiful cursive writing has reverted to a child-like type of print in red ink.

Typically, this signature with the faulty accent wasn’t among the ones that were shown to British handwriting expert Emma Bache when the Bloodline team went to see her to authenticate the messages. They did show it to French native and researcher of Rennes-le-Château, Antoine Captier who dismissed it immediately as fake.

There’s also mistakes in the Latin. Occultus for example is spelt as ‘Occulttus’. Apart from all these issues to do with the authenticity of the message, the paper it’s written on doesn’t look very old at all nor does the bottle.

According to Hammott, Bottle 1 was found near the Devil’s Armchair in Rennes-les-Bains. He projected the crouched statue of Asmodeus in Saunière’s church on the rock chair and dug where Asmodeus looked. There, he says, he found an engraved stone, buried about 18 inches deep. In his own words: “After a depth of about eighteen or so inches I struck a rock. Lifting it out so I could continue my excavation, I was just about to discard it, when I noticed something on the stone’s surface as it caught the light. Brushing away some of the caked on dirt, I saw some markings that didn’t seem natural, so I called Sandy over for conformation. With the stone still dirty it wasn’t until we had washed it in the Circle spring that we could finally see the markings clearly and realised we had solved the first part of the puzzle.”

What Hammott doesn’t tell is that the entire area around the Devil’s Armchair is made up of solid rock with a thin layer of soil. The arrow on the engraved stone led Hammott to the location of the infamous Bottle 1. Mind you, both the stone and the bottle, he found in an area of a few square metres that has been trampled by hundreds of researchers who have investigated every inch of it and never found anything.

Again, by the time Hammott eventually published this information on his website in 2005, 9 years after the discovery, the ‘parchment’ had mysteriously changed.

2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Bottle and Message

It took another 2 years before Hammott went on a search for even more bottles. He discovered no less than 3 perhaps even 4 more bottles with messages. Bottle 2 was found at the Source of the Magdalene, again near Rennes-les-Bains. Hammott describes his find here. As far as one can tell by the video clips from Bloodline, message two has issues as well. This time it’s in the French: it says “LA ROUTE QUE VOUS SUIVRE EST PLEINE DE DANGER” that’s not French, it’s English with French words. A Frenchman would never phrase this way. That’s apart from the more elementary grammatical problem that the right conjugation of ‘SUIVRE’ (to follow) would be ‘VOUS SUIVEZ’. Someone has not been paying attention in French classes very well here.

Little has been published about the rest of the bottles and the messages in them. Only that all three or four of them were discovered live on camera with a production team present. Bill Kersey, in an interview on Radio Rennessence in February, recounts how he was present at the discoveries and helped Ben to look in the right places…

Parchment shown on ABC’s Nightline

paragraph added to the article on 8th May
American television network ABC, showed one of the other parchments on it’s Nightline show. The 8 lines that are displayed are ridden with errors. No Frenchman, let alone Bérenger Saunière, a well-educated and erudite priest who wrote a staggering number of letters during his life in a meticulous and gracious French, would make any of the mistakes that are made in this ‘parchment’. It has systematic gender confusion all over the place. It’s LA résurrection, not LE. It’s LA vere histoire, not LE. That is, if VERE would be a French word which it isn’t. It’s l’histoire DE LA crucifixion. DES Crucifixion has a sad record for being wrong twice. It’s should be a singular and female, not plural and male. Need I go on? This is English with French words. I hope I’m allowed to quote a member of one of the Rennes-le-Château forums: It’s the hallmark of an English speaker (as are the erroneous use of the infinitive, etc.). The 8 lines on this piece of paper have little in common with the French language. This document is supposed to tell the most explosive secret in the history of Christianity: that Jesus never died on the cross but 22 days later. I can only conclude it is perhaps the worst forgery in the history of Christianity.

Bloodline BlogTalkRadio shows

added 9th May
In the BlogTalkRadio shows, hosted by the Bloodline producers, in a discussion with Lionel Fanthorpe, around 11 mins 40 secs in, Burgess recalls the discovery of the chest (from clues in the last bottle that was found), stating that Bill Kersey was dowsing for the location and “found the spot”. So we now learn that after being able to locate the bottles, Kersey was also instrumental in locating the chest – and that a technique that is only known to work to find water, somehow is able to work on esoteric treasures – at least in the Rennes-le-Château – too.
One person commented: “Let’s just say I felt a tad angry with Bruce and Lionel Fanthorpe’s comments. They seem to be suggesting one should not question the validity of Ben’s finds (which is ripe considering Bruce’s comment that he was suspicious of Ben at first). By the way, all the back-slapping made me feel nauseous.”

A Wooden Chest

At the end of 2006 Ben Hammott dug up a wooden chest from the Grotte du Fournet dite de la Madeleine (Burial Cave of the Magdalene), as it’s called by the local populace, close to Rennes-le-Château. It is unclear whether it was actually from this cave or the smaller cave with a triangular entrance some metres to the side of it. Both caves have been visted and dug in by countless researchers, notably Guy Gentil, Gérard Dutriat and Henri Buthion to name a few, yet Ben was the only one who managed to find a wooden chest, under just a couple of centimeters of earth as you can see in the video.

Inside the chest, which measures approximately 15 inches by 10 inches by 8 inches, where a small, conical pottery cup, a six inch high pottery jar, a cracked glass vial containing a rolled parchment, and a number of ancient coins.

It was immediately claimed that it might well concern the ‘wedding gifts’ of Mary Magdalene although there wasn’t a shred of supporting evidence. The box was smuggled out of the country to the British museum even though the French police actively and severely prosecutes anyone who smuggles archeological artefacts out of the country. This wouldn’t of course have been an issue if the chest had been smuggled into France to be only temporarily buried there.

Nicolas Haywood

In two of the videoclips, the Bloodline team put on the internet, interviews are shown with a certain Nicolas Haywood, who is presented as an insider with the very secretive Priory-of-Sion and thereupon goes on the record saying this secret must never come out. A sceptic might think that doing an interview about it with a notorious American film producer in front of a camera is perhaps not the best way to keep any secret. And so, after Bloodline, you’ll find yourself initiated in the age-old secret that all the claims from Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code are true: Mary-Magdalene and Jesus were married and had children. Moreover, they were all buried in the south of France. Their burial sites were discovered in the late 1800s by the priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, who left clues all over the region that have now been re-discovered by Ben Hammott.

If it looks and quacks like a duck..

There are more issues. Speculations were made about the death of Lord Patrick Lichfield, owner of the enigmatic Shugborough Hall, that upset many of his friends. Bruce Burgess, in the film, suggests his own life is in danger because of his investigations even though he worked on the project for over 4 years, giving any lunatic plenty of time to kill him well before the movie went into circulation.

Ben Hammott manages to do 6 or 7 very impressive discoveries in a very short time, 5 or 6 of them on camera with an American production team on his tail. Ben’s supporters state matter-of-factly that it is the sheer genius of the man that he managed to find what so many have searched for over 60 years and that there were of course also some trips on which he found nothing. They claim people are just jealous of Ben’s fenomenal success. Fact is that in 12 or so trips to France, he had a hit rate of 50% which is quite high for any treasure hunt I reckon.

On closer examination of the facts behind Ben’s discoveries it becomes apparent that the evidence and artefacts he brings to the table are unconvincing. There is clumsy mistakes in them, suggesting they are forgeries by someone without native command of the French langauge in the 19th century and too little knowlegde about the background of the true historical context of the Mystery of Rennes-le-Château.

The evidence in the movie is built up around dating of coins that could be bought or found anywhere, hairs said to be taken from the corpse and so on and so forth. Nowhere is there any proof that the artefacts are genuine or were there representatives from any authorities present that could easily have legitimized the claims.

Judging from the combined facts and established issues of authenticity with them it is a lot more likely that the discoveries of Ben Hammott are poorly made forgeries intended to fuel a sensational but badly substantiated story.

Let this not stop you from going to watch the film. What I have seen of it is well made. It’s suspenseful and has a great atmosphere of intrigue that many a Da Vinci Code fan will love. Burgess can tell a story allright.

Just don’t take it for fact.

Raven

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, pictures copyright by Ben Hammott and Bruce Burgess

27th April 2008 | Message from the owner

Dear visitors,

In this press release on 17th April, the producers of the Bloodline documentary claimed that the tomb that is presented in the documentary has been acknowledged by the French Archeological Authority of Montpellier (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles, DRAC) and that a full survey is on the way.

After the RLC Research Team talked to Mr. Jean-Pierre Giraud of DRAC in Montpellier, I need to conclude that there are serious issues of authenticity with the discoveries of Ben Hammott that appear in the Bloodline documentary. There is no dossier of any tomb in the area with DRAC.

The bottles and parchments Ben Hammott claims to have found are most likely forgeries. An analysis is given in this article.

Take care | Raven

Here’s the original posting:

View the clips from Bloodline, the Movie: (select one from the list and click to view)

Next month will see the theatrical release of the already controversial Documentary Film Bloodline the Movie. This project by the American Director-Producer duo Bruce Burgess and René Barnett deals with the alleged discoveries of British researcher Ben Hammott, formerly known as The Tombman. It is claimed that in the tomb Hammott discovered, there’s a 2.000 year old mummy from the Middle-East, possibly Mary-Magdalene. Hammott is not the only one who makes these claims. In the clips, long time French researchers like Gerard Thom and Daniel Duges display why they think there’s a Jewish temple under one of the mountains in the Rennes-les-Bains area that might contain the bodies of not only Mary-Magdalene, but also Christ and their children.

This 17th century painting of Mary Magdalene was found in a private house in Limoux. It depicts her with her eyes closed, leaning on a skull covered in a bright red mantle. Besides her stands something that looks like the Grail or an urn with a bearded head depicted on it. Based on the view, French researchers concluded this scene depicts an actual grotto in Mount Cardou.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved, picture reproduced with kind permission of Jean-Luc Robin

French researcher Jacques Rivière, who unfortunately passed away in 2006, left us some of the most serious books on the mystery of Rennes-le-Château as well as a great many things to ponder. On of his most intriguing claims was that, if the points of all the summits of the hills in the Aude are joined up, they reproduce the figure of Mary Magdalene as she appears on the bas-relief of Saunière’s altar, her head being the ramparts of Carcassonne.

Another leading Rennes researcher, Pierre Jarnac, has repeated this exercise and confirms that this does appear to work.

If this was indeed meant to be a map, then at the intersection of the cross on which the Magdalene’s gaze is fixed lies the village of Puichéric. That’s an amazing coinicidence, since in Puichéric, the church used to have a stained-glass window with exactly the same scene. Rivière believed that the secret is the locations of some very rich mines.

©2007-2008 rlcresearch.com, all rights reserved