Channel of the Grail: A Novel of Cathars, Templars and a Nazi Grail Hunter
Based on Actual History
On May 18, 1939, by order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, an announcement of the death of SS officer Otto Rahn appeared in the German newspapers. Already months since his alleged death in an Alpine snow storm, Rahn was applauded as a “comrade, a decent SS-man and creator of outstanding historical-scholarly works.” But his Swiss lover, Raymond Perrier, knew first-hand that Otto had not died in an accident nor was he any longer a member of Himmler’s Black Order at the time of his demise.
In the early 1930s, Otto Rahn had gone to the French Languedoc to research the medieval Cathars, a heretical sect that after a thirty-five-year struggle finally succumbed when their last stronghold, the castle of Montsegur, fell to the Crusader force charged by the Roman church to destroy them. In 1933 Rahn published Crusade against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome that hinted to his having discovered further important information about the actual Arthurian Grail while in France. The evidence eventually proved substantial enough that Rahn’s biographer, Nigel Graddon, dubbed him “the real Indiana Jones.”
An occult enthusiast who believed he was Henry the Fowler, the founder of the German state, in a past life, Himmler enticed Rahn to join the fledgling SS historical research department, the Ahnenerbe, in 1936. Concerned to have Otto’s knowledge and eventually the Grail itself in his esoteric arsenal, the Nazi chief coddled his protégé, even including Raymond, a foreigner, in the SS inner circle despite the suspected nature of the two men’s relationship. With so powerful a protector, Otto Rahn’s star continued to rise even as the SS evolved into one of the most sinister operations in history.
After Otto’s final disappearance, Raymond that knew his friend’s work deserved a prominent place in history, but not as the “SS-man” of Himmler’s obituary. Rather, he should be remembered as the appointed troubadour who had resurrected the heroic tradition of a valiant people that had embraced the flames prepared for them by the jealous Roman Church 700 years before. Otto and Raymond’s joint mission, too, extended back those many centuries. By giving his life in the Alpine hills, Otto had completed his portion of the task. That left Raymond to conclude the work by preserving Otto’s reputation and thus the legacy of the Grail even as Hitler’s hordes readied to set Europe ablaze with the invasion of Poland and World War II.
Channel of the Grail is a visionary novel based on the history of the medieval Cathar persecutions and the life of twentieth-century German author Otto Rahn.
CREATING Channel of the Grail
Like its older sibling The Anathemas published by Outskirts Press in 2010, Channel of the Grail spans two different lifetimes in the story of its main characters and thus continues to explore reincarnation as an essential element in the drama of human evolution. Capitalizing on four decades developing a multi-lifetime model of the visionary novel, in this work I aim to take its intricate elements into deeper waters.
A true visionary work is discovered rather than fabricated, I have found. My readers say that I know how to pick interesting topics. I consider it fortunate that these topics have picked me. The adventure in my creative work has been through the experience of discovery in the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical realms from which the story emerges. As with the Stanislavski method of acting, I have to live my book as nearly as possible before writing it.
Road Research
Channel of the Grail bridges two historical periods in two parts of Europe. Thus I took two literal journeys in the course of researching it. (If that sounds more like fun than labor, know that I am blessed with a career where work and play aren’t very different.) Before setting out, I pore over maps, electronic and paper, of my target area, approximating time and mileage and making daily itineraries. Once in the destination area, I prefer to go by car. Many of the places I am most interested in seeing are off the beaten tourist track.
In August 2010, I visited the Languedoc-Roussillon-Provence regions of southern France, retracing the footsteps of my historical subject, Otto Rahn, who documented his travels through the area in the 1930s in his second book, Lucifer’s Court: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Light Bringers. I had, of course, read everything about the Cathars I could get my hands on, but I wanted to steep my intended story in the environment in which this mysterious heretical sect blossomed, only to be eliminated in the 13th century by a bloody Crusade and the relentless Inquisition. Fortunately, Cathar history and spirituality is enjoying a healthy revival after the publicity given to its cause by several 20th century scholars in addition to Rahn. Many of their castles and historical places have been restored and opened to tourists. (To read my blog about that amazing journey day-by-day, , click this link: Travel France 2010.
In October 2011, a second trip took me to the protagonist’s homeland, Germany, and the adjoining countries connected to his story, Austria and Switzerland. There I focused on the decade prior to World War II when Nazism was still burrowing in. It was an emotional journey for a second-generation American—my mother was born in Freiburg, which I visited, and she was able to get out of the country before the war—whose Jewish great-grandmother has to be counted among the victims of the Holocaust. (To read my blog of that poignant adventure, click this link: Travel Europe 2011 .
Home Work
But all the travelling, literally as above or virtually on the Internet, must eventually come down to, as my journalist father put it, “the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair,” be it the meditation chair where I access the spiritual and paranormal realms about which I write or the office chair in front of the keyboard. Much of my time between that last physical journey and the book’s completion was spent in those two chairs.
The finished novel is merely the record, compiled to the best of the writer’s ability, of the intertwined journeys through the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual realms. For me, undertaking such work requires an act of faith. With only a vague inkling that I am going in a generally-right direction, I start walking, blindfold on, arrival time undetermined, and destination unknown, nevertheless believing that my pilgrimages, external and internal, will arrive to places worth writing about. Then I allow something larger than me–it need not be defined–to take the wheel. I release myself to experience what Carl Jung says about the visionary creative process:
Art is kind of an innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him.
Carl Jung, “Psychology and Literature,” Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 169
As was the case with The Anathemas, something compelled me to bring Channel of the Grail into existence. Whether this impulse came from Universal Consciousness, the Akashic records, some personal karma, or the Easter Bunny seems not to matter.
This mysterious process is reflected in something I have Otto Rahn say in the novel to summarize his own life:
When my father gave me that copy of Parzival, he handed me my life plan. By reading it, I was anointed an Arthurian Knight, one compelled to seek the Grail. It was my star…. Once I embraced my destiny, the entire universe—every person I met, every place I went, every situation I encountered, and every idea that rose in my mind—carried me towards the Grail.
Intuitive Research in Channel of the Grail
Luck, accident or chance? Any writer worth the title has to wonder when elements of a story fall together so perfectly that the resulting fiction is more authentic than reality. With the experience recurring, the faculty that works such magic is upgraded from random happenstance to an internal quality we can call intuition.
While the phenomenon, no matter how often it occurs, always leaves one breathless, the manifestation is particularly stunning when it occurs in so concrete a form that the connection between prior thought and current demonstration must be drawn. On this site’s Parapet page I give an example of such intuition unfolding while researching my first novel, The Anathemas.
Similar uncanny experiences, which now perhaps greedily I have come to expect, occurred during the development of Channel of the Grail. One such happened on my trip to southern France in 2010. Previously, I had noticed in a scan over 13th century history that two controversial groups, the Cathar heretics and the Knights Templar Order, existed in the same time period and locale. Remnants of the fortifications of each were situated side-by-side in the Languedoc; and yet few if any historians drew a connection between the two groups.
The Templar Commandery of Mas Deu
In Channel I was not particularly focused on the Templars (their story has been well told), but I stumbled across a brief reference to one of their establishments, the commandery of Mas Deu, where, the tidbit noted, several Cathar sympathizers were buried, later to be unearthed and burned by the Inquisition. Why, I wondered, were Cathars heretics buried honorably on the grounds of an institution dedicated to the very pope that ordered the Cathar massacre? A fascinating question—and I leave that open here so as to avoid spoilers—but the article also stated that only an insignificant wall fragment along a remote highway remained of the Mas Deu site.
On my 2010 trip I spent the night in Perpignan. Looking over my notes that evening, I saw that the Mas Deu location was on the way I planned to take the next day. Only a wall to see, I thought, but why not take a look? I knew of the psychic ability called psychometry, the supposed ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them, and thought to give that old wall a chance to say its piece.
The next day, I found the place easily; it was marked with a sign. But imagine my excitement when, instead of a mere fragment, I drove up to a large gated establishment surrounded by a sturdy new stone wall. And, talk about luck, there was no one around and the high gate was ajar. Needless to say, I grabbed my camera, walked through, and began snapping pictures as fast as I could.
Improbable, not Impossible
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This sequence of events stunned me, not so much that the report I’d read about this was an extensive and still undeveloped ruin was so off the mark, or that it looked like its restoration was planned in the near future and I’d been given a sneak preview. I was awed more by the improbable chain of events that led from the casual reading of that blip to arriving to the supposedly insignificant site on a morning when the gate was wide open. Am I susceptible to believing that I was led to that spot at that time by some inexplicable power that knew I needed that evidence to set my story right? You can bet I am.
This was only one instance. Two others critical sites that I explored intuitively before going on location and capturing them on video are now on YouTube. The first: the ruins of the chateau of Montsegur where the last formal battle of the Cathar Crusade was fought. The second: the remains of the lesser known fortress of Montreal de Sos, where impressions that came to me on that mountaintop later formed the second-to-last chapter of Channel of the Grail.
I claim no greater psychic gifts than anyone else, but I remain wide open to such synchronicity and pay close attention, expecting it to come. Twenty-some years of meditation and thousands of journal pages over that period have given me confidence in these skills. In them I see the signs in my own person of the emergence of the next evolutionary level. And this it is, clumsy prototype that I might be, that drives me to continue to ponder, explore, and write about what I am privileged to view on such fantastic journeys.
Publication
As of May 3, 2016, Channel of the Grail was released in both print and eBook. Click HERE to order from Amazon.com.