The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘He will.’

  ‘What do you mean, he will?’

  ‘First, he has to wake up.’

  I must have looked at him blankly.

  ‘Are you surprised?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t you know that you are in a dream?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘The first time you dreamed this dream you were waiting for a vaporetto to bring you to the island. I have been asking you, over and over, why you are here, and this is because you have been here before, in those days . . . long ago. That is what I meant, when I said you invited yourself. You see, you wanted to remember Wewelsburg, and Rennes-le-Château, and the hunt for the Sixth Key.’

  ‘Remember it? I still don’t understand.’

  ‘That was the promise Rahn made to the Countess P – that he would remember his destiny as the guardian of the treasure. You see, in a previous life, Rahn had been Nostradamus’s secretary, Chavigny, and before that he was the troubadour Matteu.’

  For some reason this made sense to me. ‘What about Deodat – who had he been?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you not see Nostradamus in Deodat?’

  ‘And La Dame?’

  ‘He was the Templar knight who saved the young Matteu from Béziers. That is the bond between La Dame and Rahn – La Dame had once saved Rahn’s life.’

  ‘And you? Who are you in all of this?’

  ‘Don’t you know yet?’ He shot me a glance.

  I was filled with a sudden realisation. ‘You’re Cros!’

  ‘Matteu and I once sat together on the pog at Montsegur, aeons ago.’

  ‘You were Cros and Cros was Bertrand Marty, the Cathar perfect!’

  ‘Yes. You see, the Seventh Key is my bond with Rahn.’

  I was numbed, shocked, amazed.

  ‘Now, if you will permit me, I will tell you the rest.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Well, by the time I found the treasure in the church of Bugarach I was already ill. I felt I didn’t have much time and I was unsure of what to do. I went to Paris to see my lawyers and while there I heard the fake rumour that Monti had circulated about Le Serpent Rouge. At first, I was surprised to hear about it after so many years, and then a plan began to formulate itself in my mind. I gave my lawyers those strict instructions regarding my funeral arrangements, which you know about. I then told them to expect something from me in the coming weeks and gave them instructions on what they should do with it.

  ‘After that, I asked around about Monti. It wasn’t difficult to contact him. In a note I informed him about a missing key to Le Serpent Rouge. A key to unlocking the powers of the grimoire. I told him that clues to this missing key’s whereabouts could be found on a list somewhere in the south of France; clues that only one person could decipher – a German writer and Grail historian called Otto Rahn. I also included the name of Otto’s book and the page number where the skeleton key was mentioned. I signed it, Eugene Grassaud.’

  ‘So Monti went to Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet to see Grassaud?’

  ‘Yes, and that’s how the rumour was spread about the list.’

  ‘But how did you know about Rahn?’

  ‘Deodat had often talked about him and had given me a copy of Rahn’s book.’

  ‘And after that you placed the Apocalypse of Saint John containing the key in plain view, under the ROTAS window – the wheel of fortune – in the church.’

  ‘That is actually where it always was, I merely replaced it and planted clues to its whereabouts on the list of priests – JCKAL – and hid the list in the tabernacle.’

  ‘And the sacrament?’

  ‘I knew I was being watched by the Lodges and that it was only a matter of time before they used their Black Magic on me, so I gave my sacristan express instructions that I should have no other sacrament than the one I kept in the tabernacle, safeguarded by the Sign of the Lamb. But before I succumbed to the stroke I had a change of heart. You see, the arrival of Eva meant that the penitents couldn’t get near me to give me their desecrated sacrament, so I removed the key to the tabernacle from the sacristan’s ring of keys and hid it in the pond. Later, when AGLA tortured the poor man, knowing nothing on the list, he gave them the keys to the church, but the key to the tabernacle was long gone.

  ‘The morning Rahn came to see me with Deodat, I had Eva wheel me as close as possible to the pond. You can’t imagine my excitement when I saw Rahn. At this stage I didn’t yet know of our past karma together, but I was happy that my plans had come to fruition and that I would soon be released. I gave Deodat the word sator, knowing the combination of Rahn’s erudition and my dear friend’s wisdom would literally lead them around in circles. When Rahn and Deodat left to go to the church with Eva, I saw my chance. I overbalanced my wheelchair – it was an old chair and only needed a little tilt of my weight on uneven ground – and fell into the pond.’

  ‘So you committed suicide?’

  ‘I was already dead, incapacitated, a vegetable, and I didn’t want to end up like those others who had lost their souls.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Rahn and Deodat’s hunt for the key diverted the attention of the Lodges away from my death and burial, as I had hoped it would.’

  ‘You wanted to distract them from your burial because you had left instructions for the clue to the third part of the treasure’s whereabouts to be inscribed on this headstone.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Very clever. But if you are dead and this is your grave, how did you send me letters – how did you help me with my books?’

  ‘I told you that when you fall asleep you also enter that same realm in which the dead live. Were they letters you received? Or were they messages, impulses, inspirations, intuitions?’

  I had to pause to think this through. ‘So then, what is this moment . . . past, present, or future?’

  ‘It is the future, in Rahn’s time, and the present in yours. It is the Day of the Dead in 2012 and the Day of the Dead in 1938. You should know by now that galleries stand side by side.’

  ‘But who is the fearful monk who guards this grave? Is he just imaginary?’

  ‘That monk tends this grave lovingly because it is his. He is me, as I was long ago when you first came here. He is a remnant, a memory of what I was.’

  ‘And are you undead? Locked in limbo?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m here of my own free will. I remained behind to guard the knowledge of the whereabouts of the third part of the treasure, the Seventh Key, until Rahn returned to solve the inscription. In those days I feared not only that the living would find a way to the grave, but also that the living dead would find it. You see, intrigues don’t only occur in the world of the living, there are those who have crossed the threshold precisely in order to discover what I took to my grave.’

  ‘So who was Eva?’

  ‘On the physical level, she was the reincarnation of Isobel, the mother of the young boy who was taken to Montsegur, and Isobel, in turn, was the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. On a spiritual level, she was the embodiment of wisdom.’

  ‘I see . . . and the woman who reads to the dead?’

  ‘You will meet her when we return to 1940.’

  ‘She said she had given me the solution to the inscription. She said they knew, and that they were after me. Who are they?’

  ‘Himmler, of course, and others . . .’

  ‘Himmler?’

  ‘Yes, don’t forget Himmler knew Rahn wasn’t dead and sent his men to hunt him down.’

  ‘So you said we will return to 1940 – another gallery?’

  ‘Aptly named “The First Return”. It begins when Rahn takes up the hunt for the rest of the treasure. He will shortly wake up on a bench, waiting for the vaporetto that will bring him to this island. Rahn has to find this gravestone and to solve the cipher. At that time he had the freedom to turn around and
take a different path – the same freedom you will have when you wake up. In fact, he nearly did take another path, as you will see, because he felt he was about to walk into Hell. The trouble with inspirations and intuitions is that we soon forget them when we wake up.’

  ‘Will I forget all that you’ve told me?’

  ‘It is likely that only a vague feeling will remain in your heart. If you choose to follow it, you will find the right course. If you forget everything else, remember this . . .’ He paused to look at me and said, ‘The way to Heaven is always through Hell . . .’

  52

  The First Return

  ‘Holmes!’ I cried. ‘Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive?’

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’

  Venice, November 1940

  Otto Rahn had fallen asleep on the bench waiting for the vaporetto. He woke with a dry mouth and a crick in his neck that he was still massaging when the boat pulled up at the Fondamente Nuove. He remembered dreaming about a conversation with a man; something about being in a garden with many paths that lead here and there, something related to a promise he’d made. As he climbed aboard the vaporetto he wondered if the dream had anything to do with his promise to the Countess P.

  As the boat chugged lazily over the lagoon, he leant in to ask the boatman about their destination, ‘Is that San Michele?’

  ‘Yes, that is the cemetery island of Venice,’ the man said, in a wonderful Italian voice.

  The sun was rising, casting its golden hues over the old lagoon and the island, bringing to his mind the Egyptian river of souls and the boat of Isis in which one travelled to the realm of the dead. Well, he thought to himself, why not place a clue in a cemetery island in the middle of a lagoon? It all made a crazy sort of sense. It was something a man like Cros would do!

  The vaporetto now arrived at the landing stage on the northwest corner of the island and Rahn climbed out, paid the boatman and watched the vessel pull away. He had an unnerving sense that he was about to walk into Hell again. After all, there was a monastery on the island, and a church. His mouth was dry again, his hands were shaking and he could feel his stomach churning. He seemed destined to find himself always at the gates of Hell, but it had never prevented him from continuing, even into the flames. Like his heroes Parzifal and Don Quixote, Jason, Hercules and Alexander, he would have to take the Thief’s Path through Hell to reach Heaven.

  ‘Well then . . .’ he affirmed to himself, as he climbed those steps. ‘I dare!’

  Author’s Note

  For some years now the south of France, its churches, its priests and its secrets, have captured the minds of writers and readers alike. Hundreds of books and a very substantial number of web-sites and blogs are dedicated to exploring and understanding every detail of the multilayered, deeply veiled, enigmatic mystery behind the churches surrounding Rennes-le-Château and its priest, Bérenger Saunière.

  Likewise, Otto Rahn has been the subject of a number of books and some believe he was even the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones. The true Otto Rahn was indeed a philologist, historian, explorer and amateur archaeologist, who found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming an unwitting member of the SS.

  In 2004 I visited Rennes-le-Château as part of research for The Seal. I sensed something very sinister working there, in its peculiarly renovated church, in its Villa Bethany, Tour Magdala, restless cemetery and strange conservatory. The town filled me with a feeling of dread and I had an urge to leave as soon as possible. This intrigued me, and when many years later I began exploring the mystery of the churches in the area, I discovered a story that was quite bizarre and more complicated than I had ever imagined, a story that was tantalisingly stranger than fiction! I decided to explore the connection between Otto Rahn and these mysteries. The Sixth Key is a result of that exploration. The story is my own, but it is written around historical facts.

  In The Sixth Key I have remained faithful to what is known about Rahn’s life during this period, taking only some liberties with dates and leaving out events of lesser interest in order to focus on what was integral. Rahn did work in the south of France; he did write two books, Crusade Against the Grail and Lucifer’s Court; he was indeed searching for the treasure of the Cathars; he did work for Himmler; and there is conjecture about him being sent on a secret mission to the south of France. To this day there is a question hanging over his official ‘suicide’ and as no efforts have been made to exhume his body for DNA testing, the entire affair remains a mystery – at least for those who haven’t met Rahn, that is!

  As mentioned previously, all secret societies and groups discussed in The Sixth Key are real. All rites that I have mentioned – white, grey or black magic – have been drawn from real and credible sources. All church artwork, including the magic squares, paintings, etc., given as clues, can be found by anyone. All grimoires and books quoted do exist, including the Grimoire of Pope Honorius III, which was indeed purportedly written by a pope.

  As far as the supporting characters go, Pierre Plantard, as many of you may already know through books such as Holy Blood and Holy Grail, did have much to do with the mystery of this area and has been the focus of quite a lot of media attention over the years through his Priori de Sion hoax. Bérenger Saunière, the curé of Rennes-le-Château, is almost a figure of legend and myth but he is a true character and did renovate the church at Rennes-le-Château, building the Villa Bethany, the Tour Magdala and the conservatory, drawing from sources of wealth that were never explained. Madame Dénarnaud, Bérenger Saunière’s housekeeper, is a true personality who survived Saunière to inherit everything. Like him, she died incapacitated, never divulging her secrets. The Abbé Gélis was actually murdered in the gruesome way described in this novel and his murder has never been solved. He and Abbé Boudet and Abbé Cros did all meet according to the diary kept by Saunière. Similarly, Abbé Bigou, Jean-Louis Verger, Abbé Rivière and Abbé Grassaud are all historical personalities, as were Paul Alexis Ladame, Rahn’s best friend, the Countess Murat Pujol who was a member of the Polaires, and Deodat Roche, who had close links with anthroposophy. Interestingly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes whom I quote a lot throughout The Sixth Key, was involved in spiritualism and was known to have moved in the esoteric circles of Antonin Gadal, one of Otto Rahn’s mentors.

  The Book of the Seven Seals, the original Apocalypse of Saint John, is believed to have formed a part of the treasure of the Cathars. The sign of Sorat is real, as is the sign of the Lamb of Christ.

  And the Seventh Key? To know more you will need to follow me into the galleries and Rahn’s next adventure!

  Acknowledgements

  Some time ago my mother Rita introduced me to Otto Rahn after watching a documentary about him. Without this introduction, The Sixth Key would not be what it is and I thank her so much for that. I would also like to thank my husband, James, for his patience and diligence in reading and editing the manuscript in all its stages and for making many useful and practical suggestions.

  Finally, thanks must go to Otto Rahn himself, whose enigmatic life was an endless source of inspiration and whose two books were more of an insight into his soul and personality than any biography of his life could have been.

  See you in the galleries, Otto!