Patrice Chaplin * The Portal * Kabbala Secrets and Rennes Le Chateaux *

[dirk hertveldt]

THE PORTAL is the true and startling disclosure of respected British writer Patrice Chaplin’s initiation into the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château. Following in the footsteps of those before her, among them, the famed priest Bérenger Saunière who rose to cult popularity due to modern-day bestsellers such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code, Patrice embarks upon a secret alchemical pilgrimage involving strict purifications of mind and body and a deadly journey they prepared her for, all of which unveils the sacred and prehistoric purpose of what is now Rennes-le-Château.

PATRICE CHAPLIN is an internationally renowned playwright and author who has published more than 26 books, plays, and short stories. Her most notable work includes Albany Park, Siesta, which was made into a film staring Jodi Foster and Isabella Rossellini, Into the Darkness Laughing, Hidden Star, Night Fishing, and Death Trap. Patrice resides in London.

'Mystical Legends - Girona, A City Of Secrets' from Carrie Kirkpatrick on Vimeo.

Chaplin Family Member Verifies Secret Government Project

New developments surface in Patrice Chaplin's stargate mystery! A group long thought to have been linked to the Vatican or the Habsburgs have now been revealed to include US billionaire Howard Hughes! In the 1930's German medievalist and Grail seeker Otto Rahn brought Hughes to Gerona, Spain. The legendary tycoon came to know of the region's natural stargates, entrances from other dimensions discussed in detail in Patrice's new book The Portal (Quest Books, Sept '10). In the 1960's Hughes sent CIA operatives to ransack private property holding related documents and artifacts. Did Hughes ever find and travel the portal located in the Pyrenees? Did Hughes employ legendary O.T.O member and jet propulsion pioneer Jack Parsons to assist in government projects aimed at creating artificial portals? Were the morbid accounts of the failed Philadelphia Experiment a botched attempt at constructing these artificial portals, or wormholes?

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Patrice Chaplin

Under the guidance of Jose’s teacher, one of the few true living Kabbalists, Patrice embarked in 2004 to ‘Tread the Seven Stars Under the Great Bear’.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) September 28, 2010

Patrice Chaplin's recent memoir The Portal: An Initiate's Journey into the Secret of Rennes-le-Château details the mysterious pre-Atlantean stargate sought after by Howard Hughes. Picking up where Patrice's previous memoir 'City of Secrets: One Woman’s True-life Journey to the Heart of the Grail Legend' leaves off, 'The Portal' discloses Patrice’s personal journey through this very real stargate.

In 2003 'City of Secrets' was in the process of being published in the UK. Jose Tarres, real-life custodian of the Holy Grail, great friend to remarkable talents such as Salvidor Dali, Jean Cocteau, Umberto Eco and Simone de Beauvoir, and forever the love of Patrice’s life, had suffered a near fatal heart attack. With Jose then in his seventies, the power of death as a silencer threatened the survival of his society’s guarded knowledge.

Patrice had thoroughly researched Jose’s documents and testimony with his permission for the writing of 'City of Secrets'. But upon its completion, Patrice confessed she still did not fully understand the puzzle revolving around the legendary, yet very real, golden cup. “So what was the secret behind the secret?” Patrice asked. With simple resolution, Jose said, “You have to do what they did in every century, the initiates. You have to do the Journey.”

Under the guidance of Jose’s teacher, one of the few true living Kabbalists, Patrice embarked in 2004 to ‘Tread the Seven Stars Under the Great Bear’. Through activating the eleven sacred sites along the French/Catalan border, Patrice journeyed detachment, death, and rebirth. Patrice lived through Mt. Canigou’s great secret, a pre-Atlantean portal, a gateway into other times and dimensions.

Recently Patrice was made aware that 'El Americano', a shadowy figure she had heard in passing since her youth, was in fact the famous playboy adventurer Howard Hughes. Now having traveled the portal herself, Patrice is continually being approached by individuals wishing to offer previously untold pieces to the puzzle. Catalan priests, Freemasons, famous pilots, and even previous NASA employees are seeking Patrice out with vital proof and testimony. The implications are startling, with widespread effects. Stay tuned to Facebook.com/PatriceChaplin for forthcoming evidence.

Praise for The Portal:

Dan Brown meets On the Road!
—Publishers Weekly

A story of love and magic steeped in the truth, a story that will stay with you years after you read the last pages.
—Kathleen McGowan, New York Times best-selling author of The Expected One, The Book of Love , and The Poet Prince

Patrice Chaplin is the first author in decades to add something original to the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery.
No one else has been so involved in the decipherment of a century-old secret that could give a quantum leap in our evolution.
—Javier Sierra, New York Times best-selling author of The Lady in Blue

The Grail mystery: Patrice Chaplin lived it and is conveying its incredible nature to the reader.
—Phillip Coppens, author of Servants of the Grail and The Stone Puzzle of Rosslyn Chapel

PATRICE CHAPLIN, journalist, author and playwright, has written twenty-eight books; her novel Siesta became a film starring Jodie Foster and Isabella Rossellini. As a Bohemian in Paris she spent time with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. When married to Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael and working in Hollywood, she collaborated with Lauren Bacall, Miles Davis, and Salvador Dali. She resides in London. Connect with Patrice at http://facebook.com/PatriceChaplin & http://PatriceChaplin.com
Patrice Chaplin interview documentary via Vimeo

[dirk hertveldt]

27
CHAPTER 2


of Patrice Chaplin New Book the PORTAL

When José rst mentioned the journey in 2003,
I thought he meant something that led to a state
of realisation. Other people thought other things.
We were all wrong. The journey led to the unexpected and
unbelievable, beyond the laws of this universe as it is normally
understood. Not surprisingly, the truth and nature
of the journey were kept hidden. Society members through
the ages had defended the material with their lives.
Shortly after José had raised the subject, I spoke with the
local hotel owner, Señor Mons, who said that one began the
journey at the barraca–a small stone hut on a stretch of land
José had inherited that happened to adjoin the property of
the Frenchwoman. Señor Mons hadn’t been on the journey
himself but had heard it wasn’t exactly a tourist excursion.
He said the people who came back from it were changed by
the experience. I asked if it was religious.
‘Not to do with the Church. You can be sure of that.’
‘Black magic?’
No, he didn’t think the kind of people who were purported
to be involved would be associated with magic. So
who were they? People of standing? Señor Mons didn’t
28
know, at least when I asked. When he spoke in terms of
‘the ones who came back’, I asked what had happened to
the others. His answer wasn’t satisfactory.
‘Was it like the pilgrimage to Santiago?’
‘No, nothing like that,’ he replied in a tone that dismissed
the subject. Then he introduced a few ironic Catalan jokes
to get my mind off what he clearly thought it shouldn’t be
on, anyway.
The Catalans were not keen on the occult or mysticism
in general. Even their visions had to be confirmed
by the Church; otherwise, those who witnessed them
were considered lunatics or drunks. The Church approved
only of visions associated with the local stories
or the appearance of water, as in the vision at Lourdes.
The favourite condoned myth was that of St Narcis calling
up swarms of flies to drive back the French in the
seventeenth century.
The Catalans for centuries had considered themselves
down to earth and materialistic–people who dealt with
the land, food, money, and survival. Until Franco’s death
in 1975, they were dominated by the Church, the military,
the police, the bureaucracy. They acquired property if they
could, and land. They were not like the French, who had a
long history, style, and culture, as well as an enviable aristocracy.
Catalans had always felt inferior to the French,
and they were still dealing with the complex even now. The
Catalan rich–and there were always rich ones, whatever
the circumstances–amassed land and the people on it, huge
houses in the country, and palaces in the cities. These land
owners were minor aristocrats, but, as the historian Lluís
Maria de Puig has said, ‘They were not exciting and grand
like the European aristocracy farther north, and they knew
it.’ Nor were these minor aristocrats any more interested in
the occult than were the ordinary citizens.
29
So, apropos the journey of which José spoke, the Catalans
would not have believed in the subject matter the private
society guarded, in any case. They did not make journeys
except to work, to church, or to the bank or bar.
Naris, who had built up a good business exporting fruit,
understood that Señor Mons was a member of the Freemasons
and had received his information about the journey
from them. After Señor Mons’s sudden death in 2004, his
widow said he’d actually only known of one person who
had made the journey; it was from that man that he had
heard of others and their experiences. The idea had interested
Señor Mons for a while, but it had not been for him,
and his widow certainly didn’t want to talk about it. It was
all in the past and didn’t happen anymore.
While doing research for my book City of Secrets, I found
records of journeys made in the 1890s. They hadn’t happened
often and were usually for the purpose of a ritual
experience or for the initiation of a new member of the society.
It was clear that the French priest had been on such
a journey.
Why did the experience begin at the barraca–the hut on
the land José owned–and how many sites on the journey
were there? Where was the destination? After a while, I understood
that it didn’t have to do with ‘where’ but with
‘what’. I was told not to involve myself in the process but
to stick to writing my book–that alone presented enough
obstacles. But I could not heed this advice and kept trying
to nd out more about the journey. Apparently it followed
an unchangeable route and entailed, along the way, a great
deal of physical and spiritual preparation.
The barraca had hardly changed over the centuries.
A tough little building, it stood alone with a solid roof,
well-crafted chimney, and two friendly windows. Thick
trees kept it private. Many things over the years had been
30
hidden in this one-room stone hut, including people. By
some lights it belonged in a fairytale. The land was variously
used for keeping small animals and growing vegetables,
and José had cultivated the garden without losing
its wildness. For a while it was a place for celebrations,
with lights in the trees, dancing to live music well into the
night, and lamb and sausages cooking on the wood re.
But essentially it was a hidden place on the slope amongst
the trees at the junction of two tracks. Few people even
Figure 2.2. Roger Mathieu, the tower at Girona in the background.
31
knew it was there. Neighbours passed without seeing it.
There was no electricity or running water, the latter having
to be carried up from the fountain on the rough path to the
village San Daniel.
But even though the baracca was relatively unknown,
it was not without historical importance. It had been one
of the original outposts of the city, and Charlemagne had
rested there in AD 785 on his stealthy journey into Girona.
The legend stated that he’d had a strange experience while
at the baracca and had later placed a sundial on the grounds.
In the 1960s, the sundial was still there and had odd markings
that seemed to change with the light.
The rst track leading to the baracca reached up from
behind the cathedral, passing the Frenchwoman’s garden
to the broken Torre Gironella–another legendary landmark,
especially during the nineteenth-century Napoleonic war.
The other track, steep with sliding stones, passed the fountain
to the agricultural neighbourhood known as San Daniel.
It was by this approach that Charlemagne had marched
into Girona, then under Moorish invasion. The Moors
hadn’t expected this cunning French attack and so were defeated
within days.
The barraca was always kept swept and clean with a
stone oor, table, a bed, a stove. José had inherited it from
his uncle, and it pleased him more than any other place
except the Frenchwoman’s garden. He would stay there in
silence, giving himself time to write, to re ect.
The barraca didn’t change. It was said a ritual had been
performed in the eighteenth century to keep the place safe
and secret. The land could not be sold or exchanged but
had to be handed down through the family or from one
member of the society to another. It was believed that to try
and make a pro t on the property would bring bad luck.
In 1870, the hut had been designated as a place to sit in
32
silence, re ect, and prepare for the journey. A list of questions
in French was kept beneath the stone oor:
‘Am I strong enough to be a member of the society? Am
I able to fast? To be alone? To cut from those I love and
need? To keep the secret?’
In the fties, José’s nearest neighbour was still Maria
Tourdes, but from the barraca he could see only the tower
of her house. Once when he and I were at the barraca together,
I commented that the tower was a strange addition,
neogothic, a young intruder in the midst of such a feast of
history. José made no response then, but later I discovered
the tower’s purpose, and it certainly didn’t have anything
to do with grandiosity on the part of the house owners.
It was also in the barraca that José would reveal the story
of Maria Tourdes and Bérenger Saunière to me. One day in
the mid-nineties, I had just come from a visit to Rennes-le-
Château and was showing my literary agent and his wife
the French garden. They had read my books on Girona and
were keen to see the city. The heat was suddenly terrible
and I took them toward the shade of the cathedral. I would
not have seen José at all if a wind from the south–always
lucky for me–hadn’t started up and made me turn to enjoy
the sweetness, and there in the distance was a gure I’d
know anywhere walking along the path leading to the barraca.
He was carrying a large string bag of oranges and a
bottle of water from the fountain. I called his name and in
spite of the heat hurried toward him.
‘I’ve been to Rennes-le-Château,’ I said.
‘But Rennes-le-Château is here. You’ll nd nothing
there.’ The kiss he gave me was polite and formal, but his
eyes were xed on mine in a way I will remember until
death.
My agent and his wife were quite impressed by this
meeting and its sheer improbability. Just minutes before we
33
started our walk, Lluís of the Arc Bar had told us that José
was out of town with his wife.
‘Oh, José’s always the rst person I see,’ I said, nonchalantly
enough, now that I knew the love between us was
still in place. Suddenly, I wasn’t the same person the agent
and his wife had met an hour ago. Octaves of high happiness
had made me unrecognisable.
‘We’re on a magnetic path, aren’t we?’ José said offhandedly,
trying to explain the surprise, the excitement, away.
The barraca was cooled by the abundance of trees growing
densely together, and gratefully we sat in their shade
and drank fountain water. José showed us Charlemagne’s
sun dial. ‘It’s made in the French way. When he wanted privacy,
Charlemagne used to sit here in the cool evening and
listen to the music from the cathedral, which was smaller
in those days.’
The next story just came out of José without his customary
caution. Was it the surprise of our meeting that made
him so free with the facts?
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘Rennes-le-Château is here.
That’s why the priest came here. Girona always held the
secret. A place like this, with all its resonance, would of
course have something as powerful as that.’
‘What secret?’ my agent asked.
‘The one they keep trying to nd across the border in
France.’
‘So the priest came here?’ I asked. It was the rst I’d
heard about it. Bestselling books had been written on the
subject, yet José had not ever said one word about it to me,
until now.
As José then explained, sometime in 1892 Saunière had
brought Maria from Quillan to Girona as a very young
woman, still in her teens. His purpose was to install her
in the house he had bought here to be a front for him. To
34
begin with she had stayed out of sight. Her supposed gardener,
Guillem, was in fact her chaperone. Saunière visited
frequently in the late 1890s and kept material in Maria’s
house that would no longer be safe in Rennes-le-Château
because his well-known wealth made his parish the subject
of too much curiosity. He also entertained guests of importance
at Maria’s for the same reason.
‘So yes,’ José concluded, ‘Saunière came to Girona to see
the Frenchwoman. It is well known here. My cousin Geli,
the organist of the cathedral, knew all about it and looked
after her. He did not know the priest, but my grandfather
did. In truth, the French priest came here to get that which
was never in Rennes-le-Château.’
‘But what about the parchments, the ones that were
found in his church?’ my agent pounced, having turned
from a tourist to a tiger. He knew the smell of ‘bestseller’.
‘They contained coded instructions indicating the location
of the material, but it wasn’t in France.’
‘Material?’ We all had a turn at that one.
‘Documents. The ritual. The . . .’ He stopped and asked if
anyone wanted an orange. Nobody wanted anything except
for him to keep talking. ‘It’s unlikely that the parchments
today are the originals. They would have been copied and
changed several times since 1891. Saunière would have
seen to that.’
‘Who put them in the church if the secret isn’t there?’ my
agent asked.
‘Abbé Bigou. He was the priest of Rennes-le-Château
in the eighteenth century and got out of France before the
Revolution. He had certain information that linked Rennesle-
Château with Girona.’
‘Where did he go?’ My agent, soft and persuasive, moved
closer to his prey. Before the sun went down, José could get
a glowing book deal.
35
‘Here. He came here and to a village nearby. And he
had to get out certain information that had been left in the
French church. It was 1792.’
José had now also completely changed, just as I had
done upon seeing him on the path. I would have said the
change had to do with his pride in claiming the importance
of his city.
‘Any documentary evidence?’ my agent asked,
carefully.
‘A correspondence exists between Saunière and Maria
Tourdes.’ And then José would say no more.
How did Saunière get the secret encoded in the parchments?
And what was it? (I understood he’d taken the
scrolls to St Sulpice in Paris to have them decoded. People
have puzzled over them ever since.) My agent asked the
questions and we all wanted the answers, but all we got
was another orange each and a sightseeing tour through
the old part of the city. And that was that.
Later, I realised that José had just been throwing us a
small, unimportant part of the truth. Although the mystery
of the French priest had lled books and documentaries
for decades, it was nonetheless at the periphery of the real
mystery.
The next time I saw José, I asked him why, when he had
known of this material all along, he hadn’t told me until
now.
In typical fashion, he would say only, ‘I don’t think it’s a
subject for discussion.’
Was that his way of saying he didn’t trust me?
It took a few more years, until I was researching City of
Secrets in 2004, before I understood more about the journey.
Why was the barraca such an important place? Why
start the journey there? José said it had always been a site
of Re ection and Enquiry, so what better place to begin?
36
And things could be well hidden there. In the 1790s, when
Bigou came to Girona, a hiding place had to be found for
the documents and artefacts he carried. The society members
in disagreement spent many stressed weeks seeking
the right place.
‘The solution was there under their noses,’ José exclaimed.
‘The barraca was warm and waterproof, and safe
from movements of the earth, sudden oods, or robbers.
Some members of the church, aware of Bigou’s presence
in the city, compromised his safety. For days afterward, he
was kept in the barraca before being moved to a house adjoining
a private church in a forest in Palera outside of the
town Besalú, west of Girona.’
I asked if Maria Tourdes visited the barraca.
‘Only to hide with Saunière when Roger Mathieu arrived
unexpectedly.’
I asked who he was.
‘Her husband.’
It was the rst I’d heard of Mathieu. I asked why Maria
married him if she was in love with the French priest.
‘Perhaps she saw that there was no future with that particular
person.’
Roger Mathieu was a silent participant in the story, and
I got little information about him from José or anyone else.
What I do know is that, at some unknown date toward
the end of Saunière’s visits, Mathieu, described as a man
of letters who travelled in Europe, made Maria’s acquaintance.
They married sometime before the onset of World
War One. Mathieu had a house north of Girona in Lansa,
near the French border, but the couple stayed mostly at the
house in Girona, with him travelling frequently. He was
the worst choice Maria could have made according to José’s
relatives, including those in the Church who got to know
him. Friends of Maria, especially Lucia’s mother, said the
37
same; and Maria’s letters to Pepita, presumably another
friend, show that she was not happy.
Secretly, Mathieu worked for the Vatican, and his intention
was to trap Saunière by proving the source of his
wealth and the extent and nature of his activities. The common
assumption in Girona was that Saunière’s occupation
had little to do with the Catholic Church. Society members
discussed the situation, and José’s uncle, the cathedral organist,
observed that the French priest had been ‘too wily’
to be caught and knew how to deal with his enemies.
It would seem that Saunière still visited Girona, in spite
of Mathieu’s presence. Maria’s friends said the three-way
relationship was a source of consternation to her. Mathieu
was considerably older than Maria; when he died in 1940,
the Vatican gave him a burial of honor. After the funeral,
a letter from Maria’s closest friend Gloria again con rmed
that the marriage had not been happy.
José kept an envelope of Maria’s letters to Saunière and
of those from him to her. Saunière’s letters were often matter-
of-fact, concerning his arrival in Girona and entry by the
city wall, the plants he was bringing, the architectural plans
he wanted of his tower, and proposed visits to Girona by
his brother Alfred. In 1964, when an unnamed contingent,
whom I later understood was deadly, pulled Maria’s house
and the tower down stone by stone and dug the palm tree
up by its roots, José thought it prudent to hide any information
that might be of interest in the barraca.
When I photographed this small hut for my book Happy
Hour, I had no idea it played such an important part in the
Girona story. On José’s table in the hut, letters were lying
quite casually as he sorted through them determining what
I could use. The paper looked well preserved and of good
quality, the writing stylish. Maria had written several to
the priest about the house; he must have returned them to
38
Girona with other papers at the end of his visits around
1910.
‘Why does she ask him how he wants things arranged? It’s
her house,’ I asked José.
‘Perhaps she thought she should. He paid for it.’
José went on to explain how Saunière had set her up in
the house sometime at the end of the 1890s. She had been
the rst secular person to own it. Before then, it had always
belonged to the canons of the Church, and a sign
over the entrance reading ‘House of Canons’ was still
there. José had the deeds of the house showing that a lawyer
named Saguer had put the deal in his name since Maria
had been too young–probably just seventeen at the time–
and Saunière could not have his name appear anywhere
on any document. José’s grandfather had looked after both
Saunière and Maria, taking care of their practical requirements
in this foreign Catalan province. On other occasions,
José’s cousin Geli told me of Maria’s need of company, and
the butcher’s daughter spoke of having done errands and
tasks for her.
Among those initiates to the secret society who had made
the journey that began at the barraca was the late nineteenthcentury
Catalan priest and poet Jacinto Verdaguer. By his
poetry, Verdaguer brought back Catalunya’s pride in itself,
uplifting the mere labour of those working the land into
an activity to be extolled. This vision was the basis of his
Catalunia and in uenced other artists and writers of that
time, especially the group known as the Revista of Girona,
which wanted a new province separate from the overbearing
dictates of Spain. Verdaguer brought back the Catalan
language into a Catalunia where at the time Castilian had
been the of cial tongue.
39
In the documents, I saw references to Verdaguer’s accounts
of the journey as ‘Walking with the Great Bear’ and
‘Treading the Seven Stars’. It is not clear who rst referred
to the Great Bear, but later I understood from the Cabalists
that its inclusion was as old as the material itself. And
in every case, the rst step of this passage into unknown
dimensions had been in a humble hut hidden on a slope
among the trees at the edge of an ancient town.
So the stone hut still had an importance, even as in the
time of Charlemagne. In the journey directions, it is described
as ‘the hidden’. A cabalist later con rmed that it
was on an advantageous ley line. Although it was a place
of mystery and enquiry, no one asked questions about it.
José’s friends saw it as the ideal esta location, with lights
strung through the trees. I myself remembered it as a place
of love and ecstatic promises. José and I had our secrets,
even as Saunière and Maria once had theirs. But I had no
idea just how many others had secrets beyond the baracca’s
low door, or what those secrets were. In 1964, when Salvador
Dali talked about an initiation in the rustic hut, was he
referring to the barraca?
Figure 3.1. St Mary’s Cathedral and the Girona
tower, rebuilt by the society in 1851.

[Myriel RAouine]