Parchment in the Pillar

Speculation that Abbé Saunière had found a collection of parchments hidden in his church, that were supposedly placed there by his predecessor, Abbé Antoine Bigou, who ‘may’ have recovered them from an earlier hiding place on the deathbed instructions of Marie de Nègre d’Ables, Dame de Hautpoul-Blanchefort. The parchments were said to contain genealogical information relating to the survival of the Merovingian bloodline (Bloodline of the house of David), and extracts from the Gospels in Latin that contained coded messages and secrets. So powerful was the content thought to be, it was capable of destroying or shaking at the very least the foundations of the Catholic Church (and many others sects) and its accepted belief system.

Many (some supposedly codded) parchments have been published but have as far as I know in the main, have not been made available for public examination. One example being Gérard de Sède’s 1967 book L’Or de Rennes. How de Sède came by them is not made clear - he only said that he was given them by someone closely connected with Rennes-le-Château. It has been speculated that this was either Noël Corbu or Pierre Plantard. They could have of course been forgeries- it is important to bare this in mind with any of the documents that surface, unless proven otherwise. More likely than not to be genuine, The Shepherdess and Dogobert Parchments among them. The Author, Henry Lincoln (in my opinion who produced some great information) in 1969 is widely credited with having found a hidden message and code in one of them. Some of the letters are raised above the rest on the parchments lines, and simply reading them in order gives the following sentence: A DAGOBERT II ROI ET A SION EST CE TRESOR ET IL EST LA MORT, which translates to: To Dagobert II, King, and to Sion is this treasure and he is there dead. Perhaps pointing to the existence of tomb of some kind?

Many codes and solution to these parchment and apparent riddles have been put forward, however I have no plans to go into them here. I am of the opinion that if you have to change this, miss out that, perform a chess move on it and take out every other noun…etcetera…how on earth can you be sure that you could not perform the same ‘mix’ of options on ANY piece of text, even that from the back of a cereal box, and not get just as interesting a results? A code must have a fixed set of pre defined recurring strict rules to my mind, or im sure you can apply this ‘hop, skip and a jump’ mix and match approach to anything and prove something wild statisticaly.

Many documents have surfaced and floated around- trying to make sense of what is genuine and what may be a hoax has been a point of contention for many. Quite a few of these ‘genuine’ texts have been proven almost 100% to be faux, from dubious sources barring the two mentioned above so can almost certainly safely be discounted.

• Coming To America!

  Wouldnt you prefer a nice game of chess? British UFO Hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against his extradition to the United States, which will now most likely occur in the next two weeks: His solicitor Karen Todner said this had been her clients “last chance” and appealed to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to intervene. “He is absolutely devastated by the decision,” she said. “He and his family are distraught. “They are completely beside themselves. He is terrified by the prospect of going to America.” She added Mr McKinnon had recently been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and would ask for the case to be tried in this country. “The offences for which our clients extradition is sought were committed on British soil and we maintain that any prosecution ought to be carried out by the appropriate British authorities,” she added. “Our client now faces the prospect of prosecution and imprisonment thousands of miles away from his family in a country in which he has never set foot.” Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, was arrested in 2002 but never charged in the UK. For more detailed examination of this case, see my post from a few weeks back here on TDG, which includes links to the full text of the House of Lords judgement.

• Last Call!

  This story stickied for the next few days regular updates continue beneath This coming Monday is the Daily Grails 10th birthday! As mentioned previously, were celebrating this feat by asking for voluntary subscriptions to the site, in order to help the site grow and continue on for years to come. With more than 10,000 readers per day, that should be a simple matter of asking everyone to chip in just a dollar or two not bad value youd have to say, for 10 years of TDG. Unfortunately, the apathy monster generally has a pretty firm grip on everyone out there but you might just be that freespirited exception, willing to support independent news and commentary! So, one more time, this is how you can help out: You can donate using Paypal, credit card, or via selected debit cards, using the PayPal donation button beneath: Alternately, for cheques/money orders via the post only for amounts over 50 please, due to the expenses involved, or simply great wads of cash bundled in envelopes really, really big envelopes: Greg TaylorP.O. Box 28Petrie, QLD, 4502AUSTRALIA As mentioned previously, there will be prizes distributed to lucky subscribers so throw in a few dollars and give yourself a chance. Trust me, youll be kicking yourself when your neighbour proudly shows off his newly won special TDG merchandise… For those numbercrunchers out there of the 232 voluntary subscribers so far, European and UK readers are currently the majority contributors over the USA barely, with Scandinavian countries in particular making up a huge proportion, given the percent of readers we have from there versus the US. We definitely need to post more Viking stories here on TDG… Sincere thanks to all those who have contributed thus far hopefully youll enjoy watching TDG evolve and grow over the coming years, on the back of your wonderful support. For those expecting fireworks and celebrations for our birthday, please note that currently Im barely able to stay upright due to a severe dose of flu. Sorry!