It is said that, Berenger Sauniere, priest of the village Rennes-le-Chateau, was guarding a secret about Jesus Christ. The Priory of Sion, an organisation apparently founded in the 12th century, is said to lie behind the tale. This book publishes a study of the village, and reveals the source of Sauniere's wealth and nature of the Priory of Sion.

The follow-up to the bestseller The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail

Since February 1972 when Henry Lincoln introduced Rennes-le-Chateau and its priest Berenger Sauniere to the world outside France, vast numbers of people have become intrigued... some even obsessed... by the mystery. But those who do not understand the French language could not read "The Prime Source." The first book to tell the strange story has never been properly translated. This book fills that gap. The Accursed Treasure was the first important sign-post along a trail of discovery - and it remains key to the mystery. There is much yet to be found... much work yet to be done... before we can begin to understand its true significance. In your hands, you hold a mysterious, a significant - and a very important - book."

From the coauthor of Holy Blood, Holy Grail—a basis for The Da Vinci Code—comes a deeper exploration of the secrets of Rennes-le-Château. In 1982, Henry Lincoln, along with colleagues Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, published Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which became an immediate international bestseller. It investigated Rennes-le-Château, a small town in France where, in the late nineteenth century, Bérenger Saunière’s discovery of a series of parchments led in turn to a large but cursed treasure that challenged many traditional Christian beliefs—including the possibility that Jesus’s bloodline still exists. The treasure’s story moved back through history to the Crusades, the origins of the Knights Templar, and the Virgin Birth itself. While Baigent and Leigh have moved on to different subjects, Lincoln has continued to pursue the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château. Dan Brown’s international bestseller The Da Vinci Code—based on Holy Blood, Holy Grail—reignited curiosity about this ancient, powerful town. In The Holy Place, Lincoln reveals through further surveys, decoding, and analysis that this area in southwest France is the site of a vast megalithic Christian masterpiece—a holy place of enormous size and importance.

The legend of the Holy Grail is far from unknown, but this is the first time the quest has been given the punk rock treatment. "Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail" is a psychedelic, Pythonesque road trip, a testimony to the sometimes odd nature of friendship, and a rich historical yarn.

Recent works of fiction and popular history have promoted the idea that the Holy Grail symbolizes a physical bloodline resulting from the union of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. This, supposedly, is the 'secret' that esoteric movements have kept tirelessly for the past 2,000 years. From her groundbreaking research, Sylvia Francke exposes this notion to be a blatant misinterpretation of the mystery traditions that preceded and ran parallel to the birth of Christianity. She traces the ancient spiritual paths of knowledge from the Cathars, the Knights Templar and the enigmatic Rosicrucians, to the work of Rudolf Steiner in the twentieth century. Here, she concludes, is true Grail knowledge: the Tree of Life and the Holy Grail itself explained in their metaphysical context. From her research she suggests a solution to the riddle of the sudden wealth and strange behaviour of Bérenger Saunière, the mysterious priest of Rennes-le-Château in southern France. True Grail knowledge, she concludes, has nothing to do with bloodlines or worldly status, but is an ancient lifeline to the spiritual origins of creation. Its energetic forces ray up from the earth and down from the constellations and planets while interacting with individual human beings. It holds the key to the fulfilment of mankind's quest, a step to the next phase of human evolution... The recent explosion of interest in an alternative history of Christianity - the shadow Grail - prompted Sylvia Francke to revise The Tree of Life and the Holy Grail, first published in 1996. The result is a completely reworked and expanded book that constitutes a powerful and convincing refutation of distorted esoteric truths.

An extensive examination of the religious anomalies and lost treasure of the Mary Magdalene Church in Rennes-le-Château • Looks at the connection between the Templars, Cathars, and other enigmatic groups in the history of this church and the surrounding area • Maintains that Mary Magdalene was the high priestess who anointed Jesus into his priesthood, in accordance with ancient religious tradition • Explores the role of the Sacred Feminine in early Christian Church history The small church of Rennes-le-Château, in a remote village in southern France, may well hold the key to the proof of Mary Magdalene’s marriage to Jesus and the bloodline they founded. In 1885 the village of Rennes-le-Château welcomed a new priest, Abbe Saunière, for its church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene. Abbe Saunière ordered very strange restoration work for the church, and it is thought that he discovered something during this renovation that brought him to the attention of the power brokers of that time and made him a very rich man. Possible identifications of his discovery range from the gold pillaged from Delphi in Roman times; the treasure brought out of Jerusalem by the Templars, who had a strong presence in this area; and the missing Cathar treasure, spirited out of Montségur mere days before the fall of that fortress. Yet even more curious and compelling is this church’s ambiguous portrayal of Mary Magdalene. Markale explains that the unusual depictions of Mary in the church hint at an even more archaic role performed by Mary that could shake the very foundations of the Church if it were fully understood: that of the high priestess who anoints the priest king into his spiritual duties.