A wannabe writer in my early 20’s, I never imagined that typing out a couple of one-page character sketches about this imperial pair would start a process, and not merely a writing project, that would span decades before completion. Their story was history and thus worthy of a self-defined scholar, but with a twist that defied the status quo enough to support my recently adopted unorthodoxy.
In 1879, Richard Strawn, a Civil War medic disowned by his fellow Quakers, has to come to terms with his daughter Jennifer’s conviction that she was once a fabulous queen and he a king, or concur with his wife, Lucinda, that the girl is hopelessly insane.
In 553 AD, Justinian I, the self-righteous ruler of the eastern half of the decaying Roman Empire, held Pope Vigilius prisoner until the church leader agreed to sign The Anathemas of the Council of Constantinople, previously convened by the emperor. Thus, with the stroke of the papal pen, anyone who believed in the ancient doctrine that souls existed before the present body’s birth or reincarnated after its death was excommunicated from the church, subject to persecution and eternally damned.
Is it possible that centuries ago we were robbed, personally and collectively, of our true history, our immortal heritage, and then force-fed a myth about a rigid and unforgiving spiritual destiny that enslaved us to the robbers?
In the few years since the publication of my first novel, The Anathemas, A Novel about Reincarnation and Restitution, I have been asked many question about the book: What’s does the title mean? How did you come up with the material in it? How much is history and how much fiction? Did you use material supposedly from your own past lives in the book? And many more.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:11 AM Gare d’Avignon TGV
“Sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination….” The old Simon and Garfunkel song. And a reminder how radically things can change. My destination this AM is Paris CDG [Charles de Gaulle airport] and then a flight 10 days early back to NY. On Friday evening the word finally came: Mom had made her transition.
With my arrival on Tuesday night, Aug. 24, in the city of Bezier to spend the next day in the area, I reached not only the outer perimeter of Cathar country but also the gateway to a unexpected sequence of shrines and sights commemorating the enigmatic biblical character of Mary Magdalene. But the two are not unrelated.
After spending the night in the Mediterranean city of Perpignan, I returned inland, arcing northwest and then east to Bezier back on the coast. As this was my last foray through the heart of Cathar country, I left my previous day’s fatigue behind and headed expectantly into the Corbières, a mountainous region featured in both my novel’s 20th century Grail hunter and the 14th century character, Guilhem Bélibaste, the “last Cathar Perfect.”
Even though the Cathar movement was stymied by the 1244 defeat at Montsegur, it was not yet eradicated. Expelled from their hometowns and without political protectors, the remaining faithful fled south, melting into the deep valleys and high peaks of the French Pyrenean foothills, to be pushed finally in the later decades of the 13th century across the mountains into present-day Spain, then ruled by the more tolerant monarchs of Aragon and Majorca.
My week in the Foix area featuring visits to Tarascon, Ussat, Miglos, Montreal de Sos, Foix, St. Bertrand-des-Comminges, Lourdes, Prehistoric Art Park, and the Caves of the Lombrives.
