I would like to use this forum to introduce a minor discovery of mine which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been publicly described before. It concerns the bookplate which the authors of The Tomb of God (1996) describe having found at Rennes-le-Château in the early 1990's. It seems reasonable to suppose that this was in fact the bookplate of the priest Bérènger Saunière, as the authors claim. However, they have erred in supposing that this curious design was either created by Saunière himself, or by a draughtsman at his instigation.

The reproduction of the bookplate may be found on page 182 of The Tomb of God. It consists of a pair of triangles forming the "Seal of Solomon", within a circle, together with various other geometrical designs, and surrounded by some latin text. The letters B.S. feature prominently, and it is undoubtedly for this reason that the authors of The Tomb of God assumed without further proof that it was the product of Saunière's own hand, or at least his imagination.

Figure 1: The Sauniere bookplate, as shown in The Tomb of God:

In fact it is not an original design of Saunière. The device appeared on the frontispiece to Heinrich Madathanus "Aureum Seculum Redivivum", or "The Golden Age Revived", first published in Frankfurt in 1625. Madathanus was the pseudonym of Adrian von Mynsicht (1603-1638), an alchemist, esotericist and apologist for the Rosicrucian impulse. There can be little doubt that it was Mynsicht who was the original designer of the device.

Figure 2: Frontispiece of Madathanus "Golden Age Revived" (1677 edition)

This same curious symbol is also prominently displayed in an enigmatic monument in Rome, Italy, known as the Porta Alchemica, or "Alchemical Door". This "Door", covered in hermetic and alchemical symbols and quotations, is to be found in the walls of the Villa Palombara, located in the Piazza Vittore Emmanuele. The Villa was built around 1680 by the Marquis Massimigliano Palombara, a keen student of esoteric matters, and it seems reasonable to assume that he "borrowed" Mynsicht's design to incorporate into his own elaborate sculpture/installation.

How is it that this same design came to the attention of the priest at Rennes-le-Château?

In 1806, a certain Abbé Francesco Cancellieri wrote an account, in Italian, of his studies of the inscriptions on the Porta Alchimica. This work was later translated into French, in 1895, by Pietro Bornia, and it appeared in the April/June 1895 issue of L'Initiation, revue philosophique des hautes etudes.

It seems plausible to suggest that a copy of this journal fell into the hands of Sauniere, and that this might have been the source from which he selected the device as his "personal" bookplate.

Figure 3: The Porta Alchemica, or Alchemical Door, Rome: Note the Madathanus device above the lintel

The pictures shown are admittedly not of the best quality, but one can make out clearly the Madathanus/Mynsicht/Saunière device above the door, together with various alchemical symbols engraved upon its other surfaces. There are also a series of inscriptions, in Latin, interspersed amongst the designs, and on and around the door itself. These enigmatic quotations are presented below, together with their translations into English. Note that there are numerous puns in the Latin which do not survive the translation.

Villae Ianuam-Trahan-do-Recludens Iason-Obtinet Locuples-Vellus Medae
Pushing the door of the villa, Jason discovers and conquers the precious Golden Fleece.

Cum solo-Sale et-Sole sile
As with the earth, the salt and sun: Be Quiet.

Sophorum Lapis non-Datur-Lupis
The stone of the sages is not given to the wolf.

Tria sunt mirabilia deus et homo, mater et virgo, trinus et unus
The three are admirable: god and man, mother and virgin, three and one.

Centrum in trigono centri
The centre in the triangle in the centre.

Horti magici ingressum hesperius custodit draco et sine Alcide Colchicas delicias non gustasset Iason.
The dragon of the Hesperides guards the entrance to the magic garden, without Alcide Jason would not taste the delights of Colchide. (This appears on the lintel, below the device, and immediately underneath Hebrew letters which spell Ruach Elohim; or Spirit of God.)

Quando in tua domo nigri corvi parturient albas columbas tunc vocaberis sapiens
You will be called wise when in your house the black crows will beget white doves.

Qui scit comburere aqua et lavare igne facit de terra caelum et de caelo terram pretiosam.
The one who knows who knows how to burn with water, to wash with fire, make the sky with earth and the precious earth with sky.

Azoth et ignis dealbando Latonum veniet sine veste Diana
Azoth and fire, whitening Latone, Diana will show

Diameter spherae thau circuli crux orbis non orbis
The diameter of the circumference, the thau (?) of the circumference, the cross of the circle is useful and not the circle.

Si feceris volare terram super caput tuum eius pennis aquas torrentum convertes in petram
If by his feather, you make earth fly on your head, you will change into stone the torrents of water.

Filius noster mortuus vivit rex ab igne redit et coniugio gaudet occulto
Our son dead life, the king comes back by the fire and rejoices in a secret marriage.

Si sedes non is - Est opus occultum veri sophi aperire terram ut germinet salutem pro populo
If you are not sitting you are working: the hidden work of the old sage is to open earth in order to procure the salvation of the people.

Figure 4: The Porta Alchemica flanked by guardian figures

On page 227 of The Tomb of God, an analysis of the geometry in the design of the "Sauniere Bookplate" is presented. The aim of this construction is to link it to geometry allegedly present in the Poussin Shepherds painting, and thereby to "prove" that, as Sauniere constructed the bookplate, he must have known about the hidden design in Poussin. This chain of reasoning obviously fails if, as we have shown, Sauniere was not the designer of the device. However, in any case, the analysis of the geometry which is presented in Tomb of God is fatally flawed, and is easily shown to support no such conclusion.

Only the end results of the geometrical construction are given in the body of the text. The full steps are reserved for an appendix, hundreds of pages further on in the book. As the authors write: "Only sceptics and keen geometers need follow the description, which is in Appendix J" .

As both a sceptic and a keen geometer, I felt duty bound to follow their steps in the Appendix, and quickly discovered the real reason why they buried the details of the construction at the back of the book. It is because they do not result in the tidy completed diagrams shown on page 227! If one follows the instructions in the appendix, they fail to result in the figures claimed! I leave it to others who are so inclined to satisfy themselves that the circle which allegedly passes through the two feet of the pentagram in fact does no such thing. Further, while the appendix cheerfully refers to a "slightly different margin" at top and bottom in their diagram of the steps, as confirmation of their analysis, they do not point out that the larger margin appears at the top in their construction, but at the bottom in the " bookplate" design itself! Their construction simply does not do what they claim it does. Had the steps been reproduced alongside the final result, these discrepancies would have been glaringly obvious.

It is clear that the device has a geometrical basis, but there is no reason to link it to the Poussin painting, or indeed to suggest that Saunière himself had any knowledge of it.

We are left with the clear conclusion that Sauniere did not design his bookplate, but that it derives from an obscure esoteric text first published centuries before. It seems reasonable to suppose that he adopted it as his own as a conceit based on the prominent letters B.S., and that he came across it in Bornia's account, published in French in 1895, of the Porta Alchemica in Rome.

That leaves the question: what do the initials actually stand for? At time of writing several interesting suggestions are being pursued on the Key to the Sacred Pattern Discussion Forum. 

Further Links:

J.R. Ritman Library - Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica:

Esoteria - Symbologia

La Porta di Villa Palombara
Note: For translation into English, paste url into AltaVista Babel Fish

Christina of Sweden, the Porta Magica and the Italian poets of the Golden Age

Key to the Sacred Pattern Discussion Forum

Note: This page grew out of material first posted at the Key to the Sacred Pattern Discussion Forum, a highly recommended site for anyone interested in the Rennes Affair and one which includes a number of threads discussing issues surrounding the "Sauniere bookplate". I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Andre Klijmstra and Alexander Roob in sourcing some of the items referred to in the article.