France IX, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart & Jon Valentine Lee

I awoke with my bare skin sticking to the sheets. It had turned oppressively hot and humid overnight, gone was the mistral. I pulled on my sweatpants and went to the windows in the kitchen for a smoke. People moved up and down the alleyway below, some carrying their fresh baked bread others on their way to get it. No European could ever live in Tennessee where the only baked bread is the white bread Kroger’s bakes in the morning and tries to pass off as French or Italian. As if weighed down by the heat, which was already about thirty degrees Celsius, the bread procession moved sullenly through the oppressive morning. The only sound was the cackling of the crows and the cooing of the pigeons. The cry of the French crows, in all likelihood Jackdaws the smallest member of the corvid family, is far different from the abrasive call of its American cousin. One could easily imagine they were engaged in civil avian conversation.

We drove back up the mountain to the commune to have lunch with Orages sister. I was told not to take any pictures many of the young people there did not want anyone knowing where they were. It looked different in the light of the day without the crowd, even more ramshackle. Ancient tractors and backhoes were scattered haphazardly amongst the dilapidated buildings. Orage told me a few of them even worked. Dogs and cats wandered about freely. There were two dining areas, one outside the main building in the sun, and one in the shaded courtyard, both self-served from a large communal kitchen. Washing the dishes was the shit job and nobody wanted it. I was told it was difficult to get the young people to do it. There were about a hundred residents all told, about a third of them were old timers who had to do everything. Orage introduced me to one of the guys who had built the place, a seventy plus Swiss electrician who had done all the wiring. Orage said, “when he goes, I don’t know what these kids are gonna do most of them can’t even drive a backhoe or tractor let alone fix the wiring.”

We sat in the courtyard with the older crowd, not because there was any particular pecking order. The elders were dedicated communists but because the young people apparently wanted to be alone. Some of them were quite attractive and all of them were hitting on each other. I said to Orage, “this must cause all kinds of problems, no?” Orage laughed and said, “you don’t know the half of it and it can get very violent.” I guess the sixties never counted on the mentality of the twenty-first century. All the food was their own produce, shuffled between the communes in the Occitan and lunch was quite good. When we left we had to go through the kitchen to exit the courtyard and I couldn’t help but notice an exasperated older man shouting instructions in French to the reluctant young girl who was washing the dishes.   

It was three in the afternoon by the time Orage got Jon Valentine Lee on the phone. He was in Marseilles, the capital of the Occitan, and stomping grounds of Albert Camus. Marseille was apparently like a second home to Jon who hails from Liverpool but is truly a European in the Nietzschean sense. He could hop a train to Arle and met us there on Thursday, it was Tuesday. The temperature outside was thirty-eight Celsius and there was an extreme heat warning. The cafes were closed and would not open till five or six. There is no air conditioning in the Occitan, as hot as it gets no one can afford the energy cost. Most people stay inside at midday where it’s a little cooler but not much.  

When the brutal sun finally began to set Orages sister drove us and her dog in her beat up jeep to a nearby lake just outside of Oraison. One side was a beach where many of the locals were cooling off after a long hot day but the other side was wooded and was easily reached with the jeep. Wild flowers and berries, which we ate right off the bushes, abounded. We ate gourmet cheese and they drunk Absinthe. Apparently French people love Absinthe just as much as wine. I found it repulsive and stuck to beer. I scaled a diminutive hill to better see the sunset and noticed a small river ran parallel to the lake. I was told the river was critical to crop irrigation in Provence.

We had a day to kill before Jon arrived in Arle, about a hundred- and fifty-kilometer drive in Orages BMW. To pass the time we decided that I should see some more of the Occitan where it had settled in the foothills of the Alps. It was some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen and I have been all over Tennessee and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The land itself has a soul that seems to embrace the people in contrast to the sinister, although breathtakingly scenic, aura of the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains.

By midday I was scorched and dying of thirst, it was now well over thirty degrees so we stopped in a little hilltop village called Bannon. In the shade of the awning I ordered a coke on the rocks at the local café but the French are very sparing on the ice and it was not as cold as I had anticipated. In the heat the ice cubes were gone before the drink was. Out on the street a contingent of proud French women, dismounted, and marched their horses through the center of town. Bannon itself was medieval with the monastery occupying the top of the hill and reached only by picking ones way up through the cobblestone alleyways. An old man which we both assumed was the only one left in the village who knew how to repair the streets mixed cement in the broiling midday sun. At the top of the hill the modern art display in the art gallery of the monastery did more to disgrace Roman Catholicism than Jorge Bergoglio…  

Banon France – Search Images (bing.com)

We went back up to Orages apartment. It was after ten and the cool of the darkness mitigated the heat of the day. Music drifted along with the evening breeze through the wide-open windows. Orage broke out a bottle of fine vodka and we did shots washed down with Monk Beer, which in my estimate is the finest beer ever brewed. The video How Bizarre was playing on Orages giant screen TV mounted above the kitchen table. Not the official one of Mexican gang bangers aimlessly driving a car but a seemingly homemade version I’d been using for the past couple of years that told our story and has been known to induce hallucinations in some of my more sensitive readers.

We’d done at least a half dozen shots and a half a case of beer when a girl heard the music and called up to us from the alleyway below, “hey, are you American? I’m American and I’m dying to hear some American music.” Orage answered her in his California accent, “I’m German but my friend is American, c’mon up.” She did and it turned out she was an attractive fortyish Scotch-Irish girl from Roanoke Virginia. She was the lead singer for a band that specialized in Jazz. Her, her husband who was already in bed due to a heart condition, and her son, who would be arriving in two days, were the nucleus of a very chic band that would be doing the Occitan for the next two weeks. She did shots and scoffed down monk beer like a man.

After half a dozen rounds, we induced her to sing one of Happy Parrots poems for us. I was astonished, she had a voice that was the embodiment of the finest southern soul and she sung the poem as if she had been practicing for weeks, having never even seen it. She didn’t miss one word. It was close to three in the morning when she said she had to go and I insisted that Orage should walk her home. American men don’t let their female friends walk around by themselves at three in the morning. She consented and promised to be back the next day with her husband to demonstrate his prowess with the guitar. True to her word they came by the next day and he was as good as advertised. We resolved to put a Happy Parrot poem about the Cathars to music when we returned from the caves of Ornolac in the Ariege.    

The next day we went to the sprawling café below the apartment for dinner. I would finally get my French food made in France. We both got the special for the evening which was a beef stroganoff type of dish. Without the drinks it was under fifteen euros, about the price of dinner at McDonalds. Far from McDonalds the cuisine was exquisite, and we mopped up the sauce with the copious French bread provided with the meal.

There was a concert on the other side of town that night, highly recommended by Orages sister. We walked the mile distance fully intending on drinking our fill of beer. The French drink Blonde beer and it’s almost as good as Monk beer. No American beer aficionado, which I am, should ever deprive themselves of a trip to Europe. I don’t care how dam good you feel your favored microbrew is, European beer blows it away. The band was good, nowhere near as good as Ankle Beat or our new friends but they were certainly worth the three euro cover. Again the crowd, of about two hundred, varied from toddlers to pensioners. We stayed for their entire set drinking about three or four beers each, then made the mile walk back to Orages apartment. The sounds of merriment seemed to come from every direction of the darkness. It was Wednesday night, hump day in America, and the French were partying hardy.

When we got back we decided to watch The Secret Glory again before we embarked on our quest in the morning. I hadn’t seen it since I wrote about it back in early 2018. ⁽¹⁶⁶⁾  We had each had three beers at the concert and nobody had put their drink down unattended. Of this I am quite certain. At the dawn of the twenty-first century when I worked security at the Café Royale, one of New Yorks swankest strip clubs, the girls had made a sport out of spiking each other’s and the customers drinks with a lid, an overdose, of Ketamine or special K as they called it. One very attractive Black girl left by ambulance and would never dance again after that. Another, who Richie Capri the owner was having sex with, recovered but she was a basket case after that. With the Russian, Hispanic, and White trash biker bitches it was pretty much open season on Black girls in the Café Royale. And me? I learned never to let anything out of my sight that I was planning on ingesting. I watch my friends drinks too and Orage was pretty much my closest friend. 

It was closing on midnight when we got back, there was no rush. The plan was to pick up Jon in late afternoon the next day. Orage put the film up on his giant screen TV and broke out the vodka. Up to then he was fine. We both noticed that the film had changed since we last saw it. There were parts I didn’t remember, very strange music which I suspect was the supposedly magical flute of Christian Koenig. Eerie noises seemed to come out of nowhere and served no purpose in moving forward the narrative. By about the third shot Orage was visibly drunk. He slurred his words as he kept saying, “this is no movie it’s a spell.”  I’d seen him drink three times more than he had drunk that night but I had never seen him visibly drunk before. I tried to answer him but he abruptly stood up and staggered into his room to go to bed. I stayed up and checked the partial transcript I had made in 2018 for the parts I didn’t remember. There was nothing and I ended up going to bed sometime after one. 

My room had a hallway at each entrance. The hallway behind the door at the foot of my bed led to Orages room, another bedroom then to the rest of the flat. The other at the head of the bed was an open archway into the entryway for the backdoor with another archway that led to a bathroom. The bathroom window was opaque, behind the shower curtain, and overlooked a sealed alleyway. There were no windows in the hallways or in my room so it was pitch black at night unless I left the bathroom light on which I did. Not so much so I could find the bathroom but because the life I have led has conditioned me to prioritize knowing what is around me at all times, so much the more so when I just wake up. Darkness is only a friend to those who know what’s in it. That night I awoke about 3A.M. to see Orage standing at the foot of my bed. The light was on in my room and he was opening the door to the hallway. He muttered something unintelligible and flicked off the light switch closing the door as he left, plunging me into visually impregnable darkness. He had turned off the bathroom light.

I got up and felt my way down the bed. The bed seemed shorter as the foot of it came up abruptly after only about a meter.  I groped my way along the foot to the wall. It was about a meter maybe a little more from the foot of the bed to the door and light switch. I made my way feeling along the wall for them but after going a good five meters which should have put me past the far wall of the room, I could find neither. Remembering a reading lamp by my pillow I felt my way back to the bed which now felt two meters long. When I got to the head of the bed, I found the lamp easily and switched it on. In the light the proportions of the room were as they had been, not what I had felt in the dark. Anyone who knows me will tell you I have ice water flowing through my veins and never panic even in situations where the strongest men would.

The whole thing had taken about a minute, I couldn’t believe I could not find the door and light switch. I had searched for them vigorously with great determination. I opened the door and entered the hallway illuminated only by the light of the alleyway coming in through the window of the room adjacent to Orages. His door was shut and on the other side I could hear him snoring robustly. Figuring he had been sleep walking I wasn’t going to wake him. Down the hallway which should have been backlit by the light over the kitchen stove that we customarily left on, past the second bathroom, I could see a blur in the darkness. As I approached it I could see it was the front door which was wide open and blocking the access to the loft and kitchen area. I couldn’t help but wondering if Orage had been wandering around outside in his birthday suit. I closed the door and switched on the lighting for the loft next to it. The dining room table was askew, as were some of the chairs. It looked like someone had been going through our electronic equipment.

Since I was wearing only my underpants I switched on the light above the stove and turned off the overhead loft lights. I settled by the windows and lit up a French cigarette, far better than their American counterparts. I looked down into the alleyway and two of the girls who hung out at the Greek restaurant across the way were right below the window, the two most attractive ones. One about sixteen, was a dark haired beauty that could have adorned the cover of Vogue Magazine. You couldn’t help but notice her in the crowd of teenagers, self-assured with perfect and unblemished physical features. I had once watched her smoking a cigarette with what the French call a sa​voir faire that no sixteen year old girl should ever possess. The Greek place closed around midnight and sometimes the boys would hang out in front smoking and talking but never past one and never with the girls. I wondered what the girls were doing down there but said nothing. I was in my underpants and I am not a pervert. The next morning Orage remembered nothing of it and told me he had never sleep walked in his life. Orage had been married for quite some time and bedded many other women in LA. If he sleep walked someone would have told him…

It should have but it didn’t dawn on me till the next day when I did a podcast and someone who knows her coyly commented that it wasn’t Orage who had been in my room. A few years ago I published my first book; Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan. This will be my second. The first chronicles my encounter with an entity that Judeo-Christians call Lilith. In the Qabalah, there is no Satan, no Lucifer, not even a Devil, as Christians and Muslims understand him. In fact there is no king of demons. Asmodeus and Beelzebub are princes, not kings. There are seven princes for the seven palaces of hell. There are no kings. Only god is king. The name of Lilith’s consort; Kebad, has the same numerical value, twenty-six, as God. According to the rules of the Qabalah God and Kebad are the same entities. ^{(167) (168)}

Lilith together with her sidekick Naamah are the mothers and Lilith the queen of all demons. Lilith and Naamah are rabidly hostile to Judeo-Christians. They kill babies in their sleep and are considered to be the cause of sudden infant crib death by the Rabbis that know the Qabalah’s secrets. According to them Lilith was Adams first wife but being as old as god and his equal she refused to accept a subservient position to man, particularly during intercourse. So she fled to the shores of the Red Sea and through her many fornications, which only could have been with god himself which the Rabbis neglect to say, she birthed the entire hierarchy of demons who torment men till this very day. Many observant Jews put a tiny scroll somewhere in the entrance to their home respectfully asking Lilith and Naamah to stay out.

That is as the Rabbis tell it. But far older than the Torah, the Talmud and even the Qabalah itself is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Written long before the Babylonian Talmud the Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of the flood rather differently than the Pharisees, now euphemistically called Rabbis to dupe their “goyim” Christian dogs to do their bidding. One of the most powerful of the Anunnaki, Enlil became annoyed with the human race. The epic doesn’t say why but I will tell you now it was because the Babylonians chose Marduk to be their most revered God over him sending him into a jealous rage. Enlil decided the easiest way to sooth the irritant was to drown the entire world that his father Anu had created and given his children the Anunnaki dominion over.

After the flood the survivors gathered on the side of the mountain where they had taken refuge from the water and made a great bonfire out of all the sacred incense that they had salvaged to give thanks to the Gods that had saved them. Most of the Anunnaki showed to bask in the aroma of the sweet incense, which is as nectar to a butterfly to them (Marduk did not show, he now had a score to settle and he would become the Devil, sworn enemy of god, to the Judeo-Christians who currently worship Enlil under the name of Jehovah or Yahweh). When Enlil tried to join the rest of the Anunnaki on the mountainside Ishtar, the greatest of all the female Anunnaki barred his way. She tore from her neck the sacred necklace that marked her stature as queen of the angels and swore on it eternal vengeance upon Enlil for murdering her children…

When we returned from Ariege both girls were gone and it was as if they had never existed. Because of my Judeo-Christian upbringing, which long ago forgot the real Gods were shapeshifters, I have never been able to accept the fact that she is a shapeshifter. She has used that flaw in my perception many times in the past right up to the present to confound me. The important thing was and still is that they are both still with me, they are both still watching. Good, I will show them something they have never seen before, not in heaven or in hell.    

France, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart with special thanks to Orage, Jon Valentine Lee & Joe – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France II, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France III, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France IV by Jack Heart & Jon Valentine Lee – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France V in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France VI, In the Footsteps of Otto Rahn – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France VII, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

France, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn VIII by Jack Heart – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

Previous posts on our expedition to the Sabarthez:

Jack live from Montségur, France – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

Cave Wrapup – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

Behind Paywall: La Chevalerie Amoureuse Troubadours, Felibres and Rosicrucian’s – Translated by Romain

La Chevalerie Amoureuse Troubadours, Felibres and Rosicrucians – Translated by Romain – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

La Chevalerie Amoureuse Troubadours, Felibres and Rosicrucian’s – Translated by Romain – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

La Chevalerie Amoureuse Troubadours, Felibres and Rosicrucian’s – Translated by Romain – The Human: Jack Heart, Orage and Friends (jackheartblog.org)

Citations

Cover Photo: (38) Pinterest

166 – Heart, Jack and Orage. “Otto Rahn, Hidden Master or Madman.” The Human. Mar 2018. Web. <https://jackheartblog.org/wp/2018/03/otto-rahn-hidden-master-or-madman/.html>.

167 – Heart, Jack and Orage . “Of Freyja and Lilith, Goddesses and Demons & the Lie of Judeo-Christianity I.” The Human. 20 Apr 2019. Web. <https://jackheartblog.org/wp/2019/04/of-freyja-and-lilith-goddesses-and/.html>.

168 – Heart, Jack and Orage . “Of Freyja and Lilith, Goddesses and Demons & the Lie of Judeo-Christianity II.” The Human. 30 Apr 2019. Web. <https://jackheartblog.org/wp/2019/04/of-freyja-and-lilith-goddesses-and_30/.html>.

Below are two links where you can purchase Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan. I would suggest you buy it in hardcopy, not because I make more, I actually make the most from Amazon E books, but because you will avoid giving Amazon any money. Frankly you should be shooting Amazon employees in the street, Google too.

Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan by Jack Heart, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Amazon.com: Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan: Memoir of an awakening god: 9781736288016: Heart, Jack: Books