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

The first part of part XI

We had one more day to kill before we picked up Roger, and his young companion at the railway station outside of Foix. In Germany, when the state takes custody of a child, it tries to place them in a stable situation, at state expense, wherein they pay the guardian, who will teach them, through experience, life-skills that will hopefully improve their character. Roger, a German, just back from the Caribbean, where he had left his wife, had been taking a twelve-year-old youth camping and backpacking all over the Pyrenees, in an effort to earn enough money to bring his wife to Germany. The twelve-year-old boy, who looked like a young Reinhard Heydrich, had a troubled past, with a mother that didn’t want him. In retrospect, we had no idea what we were getting into, and we never should have taken anyone of unsound mind, let alone, an adolescent.

We returned to the commune, adhering to our agreement that we would be back for dinner. Because Orage’s sister ranked very high-up in the commune’s hierarchy, Orage was in the position of a visiting diplomat, and we had not even yet shared a meal with our hosts. As we made our way through the twilight to the picnic table, the first thing I noticed was there were far more children here than in the commune of Orage’s sister. The seemingly feral urchins cavorted in the dirt while their twenty-something parents ate in what appeared to be cliques at different tables. There were a few elders, and about a dozen Africans, which looked to be straight from the Congo. They stayed to themselves on the perimeter, concentrating on eating as much food as they could.

The food, stewed meat and fresh vegetables were all farmed either right there, or in affiliated communes like the one Orage’s sister was from. This commune was also self-served from the communal kitchen. The kitchen was part of a dilapidated four-story structure they all lived in. A young man noticed that Orage and I were speaking English and gestured for us to come over to his table. As his five-year-old son, covered in dirt, clung desperately to his leg as he introduced himself. He was a Jew from Switzerland who had lived in Philadelphia for a while. His English was flawless and no doubt he was looking to exercise it.

He was certain he knew everything about America and what a terrible place it was. He was a hardcore Trotskyist and helped with the commune’s newspaper. He reckoned that its lead writer, another hardcore Trotskyist, was France’s greatest writer. Orage laughed in his face. I explained to him that I too wrote, and I was very high up on the dangerous dissident list. In fact, I was hoping they would even let me back into America. I told him he really couldn’t judge America by Philadelphia, one of its most drug infested cities. I said in New York City, where black people are not all drug addicts, the young men all rode brand new two thousand dollar motor scooters they bought with their COVID checks and dressed in the finest Nike gear.

Somehow, I went into a tangent about billionaires, telling him it would be best for the international working class to rise up and kill them all, not realizing, as Orage later explained, that with these new Swiss banker styled Trotskyists, it was the working class that was the enemy. The bankers paid their bills. He was mortified, and told me they do not condone violence, telling me all he could do, is live his own life with a clear conscience, and share everything he had with his African brothers and sisters, gesturing to the Africans on the edge of the flood lights, wearily gorging themselves on French food like hyenas stealing a carcass from lions.

Like a good Trotskyist, he wasn’t going to reject violence without a qualifier. Trotskyism in its essential Jewish form is violence against all that stands in the way of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He went into a paeon about the brave Ukrainian soldiers who fought because they must, against the fascist Russian aggressors. He looked down at his dirty little shirtless son and solemnly pronounced that the Ukrainians were fighting for him, so he didn’t have to grow up in a world where he could not choose his own sex.

Orage who had said nothing and gave me prior implicit instruction not to discuss transgenderism with any of them, now turned beet red. In a loud voice he seldom used, he ridiculed the young Trotskyist, asking him if he really believed the neo-Nazi skinheads in the Azov Brigade were fighting for transgenderism. He asked him mockingly if he seriously believed they would not kill him, and his children, given half a chance. The Trotskyist was flabbergasted. Orage continued to berate him in front of everyone in a loud authoritative voice, asking him if he had ever read a history book. The Trotskyist sent his urchin off to play in the dirt, and abruptly got up to disappear into the kitchen, never to be seen again, even as Orage called him back, no doubt to further abuse him. I asked Orage later wouldn’t his sister be upset when she heard about his actions? He just laughed and said, “he’s nobody, I say what I want around here.”

We left the next morning, past the stinking outhouses and the dilapidated old barn, to our car, cooking in the brilliant morning sun. We waited in the McDonalds parking lot for Jon Valentine-Lee, who was extricating himself socially from the youth hostel down the block, where he had already made himself the leading character. It was about eight in the morning, but an inebriated young girl was throwing up in the bushes, while her girlfriend stood by anxiously. The twenty-something African they were with, in all likelihood, another English import from Malawi, where the average IQ is well below the established barometer for mental retardation, grunted away on the bench next to us into his brand new iPhone given to him by the French government. He made bestial, guttural, African utterances, no doubt, to another African retard who had similarly been given a brand new iPhone by leftist fifth-columnists. Demonstrating the aplomb of a self-satisfied monkey, he was completely unconcerned that the little French girls he was with, probably poisoned by drugs supplied by him, were in distress. So long as no one threw up on his five hundred euro Nike outfit, given to him by treacherous government officials, in the pay of NGOs.

Jon finished up with his goodbyes, and we picked him up in front of the hostel. It was about two hundred miles to Montségur but we had to make a significant detour to pick up Roger and the boy at a train station outside of Foix. Roger, laden down with a backpack that looked to be a hundred pounds, and carrying a bag of about fifty, was a tall, lean and powerfully built man of about sixty, a born outdoorsman in the ancient Teutonic tradition. The boy on the edge of puberty was platinum blond and spoke only German. Jon, although speaking little German, immediately took a shine to him, and would mentor him in broken German and Pidgin English, till the boy was seized by the darkness in the cave of the abyss.

Throughout the four hour drive, between the well-irrigated prolific vineyards, the French countryside was scorched by drought. Outside of the well-ordered rows of grapevines, we didn’t see much green till we finally hit the Pyrenees, well after noon. Not that it had rained there, but the scrub pine that the mountains are covered with, requires little more water than a cactus. We stopped at a supermarket to purchase supplies, and I was delighted to see quarts of Old Grandad for half the price I would pay in Tennessee where it’s made. I purchased two quarts, a big mistake. There should be a law against Europeans drinking bourbon.

Utilizing his seemingly endless repertoire of internet magick, Orage had managed to secure us a room with three beds at a bed and breakfast, for about forty euros each, in the heart of the village below the ruins of Montségur. For one night, we would stay about a hundred meters up the street from the hotel where Otto Rahn had stayed. Roger, on the limited budget allotted by the state and fully equipped, would stay at the campsite right below the village. The village, nestled on the mountainside, was the definitive definition of quaint. Rock lined drainage ditches containing water clear enough to drink outlined the main road. At the intersection, up to the bed and breakfast, and down to the village, everyone left the car to scout up ahead for the lodgings, everyone except me.

Before I went to Germany and Vienna at the end of 2019 which culminated with the declaration of war at Koblenz, I had written a series of essays covering David Lynch’s Twin Peaks television series. The series began in the early nineties, and played for two years, building an international cult following in the magnitude of a new religion, then abruptly ended at the height of its popularity, promising to return in twenty-five years, which it did in 2017 for eighteen episodes. Those eighteen episodes should be a new religion. The maxim; “the owls are not what they seem” repeats itself thematically throughout Lynch’s series both in the early nineties, and in The Return. Lynch uses the owl as both a harbinger, and designation of the supernatural. ⁽¹⁹⁴⁾

Owls are sacred to Athena and Lilith. Witches, real ones not Wiccans, are called ‘Daughters of the Owl’. I was married to one. I’ve been haunted by owls ever since. On one of my troubled sojourns to Stephansdom, in the middle of the maelstrom of supernatural events in Vienna, I stopped for a flat white on Karlzplatz, by Resselpark. The sun seemed to be shining brilliantly although it was nowhere to be seen. When I looked up at the growing strangeness in the sky, I saw the building next to me had the top of its roof lined with stone owls, and the giant one that adorned the corner of the structure was staring down at me. That was the day the Vienna pestilence was born, and biological warfare became inevitable.  

Now, as if I were in the cinematic grip of David Lynch; before me at the crossroads of Montségur was a sign bearing the picture of an Owl. It read ‘Extinction de l’eclairage public de 23h à 6h’ or, switching off public lighting from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

In ‘Lucifer’s Court’, Rahn writes, “When I closed the piano, the valley awoke. To a life, which only the Sabarthes and its nights can engender. Thousands of owls came out from hundreds of grottoes and caverns. The small space including the rockfaces and the gorges was filled with their phantom flights and howls, yet more supernatural still.” ⁽¹⁹⁵⁾

I stood at the crossroads in the dark heart of an unspeakable Christian crime, and the owls were with me. Shortly the men and the boy returned down the hill, picked up me and the car, and drove back up to what looked to be the last house on the mountainside, a bed and breakfast that would be perfect for our assault on Montségur. I was introduced to its proprietor, his just about dead sheepdog, and his vintage motorcycle. He was a Swiss transplant, who would be counting every last penny. We were not allowed to drink our own beer, but had to buy his for five euros a pop, and the boy would have to pay full price for any food he wanted. Our room was in the back, reached by ascending three flights of stairs that clung to the building over a precipitous cliff. The beds were fine and the shower good enough. We went back outside, and sat down at the picnic bench under the shade of its umbrella. We drank some five euro beers and decided the sun was now declining, and the heat subsiding. It was show time, and the others packed into Orage’s Beemer, while I lingered at the bench staring up at the ruined citadel perched twelve hundred meters above me, atop the mountain. I was almost a senior citizen, and I knew how rapid our ascent would be. I was wondering how I was going to do this. Jon had left his sandals under the bench when he switched to hiking boots, and the Swiss Frenchman was quick to point it out. When I told him they were Jon’s, as I picked them up he snarled disdainfully, “always the English…”  

By the time we pulled into the parking lot where all but foot traffic ceased, and parked the car, the comfort station was closed. It was near six, and if we were going to get up there and film as planned, a torrid pace would have to be set. Orage, half mountain goat and Jon led the way, with the boy scampering up and down the rock path like a nimble lizard. They, small Lacerta lizards,  were on every rock and branch. At one point, one even scampered over my hand. No doubt, there were vipers to attend the feast, but they were nowhere to be seen. I tried to follow as best I could keeping Orage and Jon within sight, while Roger, in tremendous physical condition, trailed behind, no doubt to insure I did not fall. In some parts of the trail, one slip would result in certain death. In America, hikers would never be allowed up such a trail without the appropriate permit or guide, but as the French see it, you take your own chances. I was cowered when a woman not much younger than me, passed me on the trail coming down carrying her little doggie. I was sweating profusely, and chronically winded, but somehow I kept up. When we were about a hundred meters from summiting, and attaining the ruins, I suddenly had to urinate. I went behind what seemed to be the last bush on the trail, in a flat area, and to my amazement discharged rich red blood, blood upon the very foundation of Montségur. I have never before or since urinated blood, and only one time, many years ago ejaculated blood, in an unholy sexual ritual that surely the Goddess herself was attending.    

The ruins from outside the courtyard

North wall of the courtyard

South wall of the courtyard

The terrace beneath the ruined north tower, containing the puzzling excavation.

The mysterious excavation at 333 degrees northwest by north, in the terrace below the ruined north tower adjoining the north wall, since filled in, as can be discerned from Hamilton White and Richard Stanley’s latest videos.

“The small ruins of the terraced dwellings, immediately outside the perimeter of the current fortress walls on the north-eastern flank are, however, confirmed to be traces of authentic former Cathar habitations.” – Château de Montségur – Wikipedia.

In May of 1243, responding to the Pope’s murderous emissaries of the Inquisition being rejected and slain by it’s heroic inhabitants, Hugues de Arcis led a command of about ten thousand Christian devils, to besiege Montségur. Supplied covertly through secret passages by the sympathetic locals, one hundred brave knights, defending about four hundred Cathar civilians, held them off for nine months. The fortress was finally taken by treachery, when a local divulged the location of a secret passage into the fortified gateway. From there, the fortress was overrun and conquered in March of 1244. It’s inhabitants were given the option to renounce their Cathar faith, embrace the Pope’s demonic god and go in peace, but over two hundred people, including twenty-five of the valiant knights who had defended them, chose to burn instead. No stakes were needed. The martyrs descended the path to where the wood was stacked and mounted the pyre of their own volition, choosing to burn alive, rather than live in a world ruled by evil. No doubt I had just impregnated the site of their martyrdom with my own blood…

We entered the courtyard of the ruined citadel through an archway not much bigger than that found in modern courtyards. Immediately, it was as if walking into an air conditioned home on a hot summer day. The temperature dropped twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind swirled around strewn boulders and stunted grass. The still wicked sun could only scorch the south wall and southern extremity of the courtyard. I became aware that I was as thirsty as I have ever been in my life. We had no water. I sucked it up and did a five minute video in two takes, with Orage acting as director and cameraman.

What is there now is known by archaeologists as Montségur III. Montségur II where the Cathars made their last stand, was torn to pieces stone by stone, by the ever vindictive Christian devils after it was sacked. A new, proper Christian fortress was rebuilt over the ruins, and that is what we were standing in, a rough triangular plateau of maybe a thousand square meters, enclosed by ten meter high walls.

Only the ruins beyond the north wall are acknowledged by most archeologists to be Cathar, and that is where Jon found a hole about a meter and half deep painstakingly excavated through the rock. The hole was at exactly 333 degrees northwest by north on Jon’s compass, and we speculated uneasily that perhaps some tourists had been looking for the Grail. It must have been a hell of an effort, going five feet down through that rock with pickaxes. Somehow, I doubted whether the fat man and his wife, up there with us, or even one of his equally rotund brethren were up to such a feat on a lark. Richard Stanley, who has made himself a semipermanent fixture at Montségur since he filmed ‘The Secret Glory‘, reports seeing a strange, ghostly white apparition of a woman in the ruined north facing tower. He attests that apparitions of ‘La Dame Blanche’, the white lady, have been reported here since at least the 1920s. Her power is said to be particularly strong during a full moon. This luminescent lady, carrying a short sword, is perhaps an avatar of a fierce moon goddess, but Stanley believes, not Esclarmonde, Comtesse de Foix, who was a dedicated pacifist. Her apparitions in the tower have been have been documented by Maurice Magre, in his book ‘The Return of the Magi’, and by the Comtesse Miriam de Pujol-Murat, who was a mentor of Otto Rahn, and was herself a direct descendant of Esclarmonde de Foix. The apparition is said to be accompanied by the bouquet of roses, or lilies, what is known as the ‘smell of sanctity’. In recent videos of those ruins, it can be seen that the hole has been filled in…   

I found a small candle, and somehow managed to light it in the wind, a tribute to those brave men who had stood between the thousand years of darkness brought forth by Bruno’s new religion, and freedom of the human soul. There was not much to see outside the breathtaking vistas beyond the walls, and their abrupt drop into oblivion. As the sun began to set, we made our way down within minutes, careful not to fall to our deaths, but mindful that we had dinner reservations. A gallon of iced coke and the best duck dinner I have ever eaten awaited us, in the town’s only restaurant.

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

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)

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

France X, in the Footsteps of Otto Rahn by Jack Heart & Jon Valentine Lee – 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: montsegur – Search Images (bing.com)

194 -Heart, J. & Orage. (2017, September 4). The Human. From Silent Hills (P.T.) to Twin Peaks (T.P.) “Fire walk…with me.”. Retrieved from <https://jackheartblog.org/wp/2017/09/from-silent-hills-pt-to-twin-peaks-tp/.html>.

195 – Rahn, Otto and Translated by Craig Gawler. “GENEVA” Lucifer’s Court: A Heretic’s Journey in Search of the Light Bringers. 1937. 100. Web. <https://archive.org/details/otto_rahn_-_lucifer_39_s_court_1_scan_-_1_pdf/page/n186/mode/1up?view=theater>.

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