"But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you...."

"Okay, are you going to let me read this or do I have to ruin the print with tears? Thank you. Thoth remarks, Know that the secret of life in Amenti is the secret of restoring the balance of poles. All that exists has form and is living because of the spirit of life in its poles. That is so us - you know how in alchemy, the balance is represented by the joining of the king and the queen - sun and moon - right? Well, your sun in Gemini is opposite my moon in Sagittarius, and my sun in Taurus is opposite your moon in Scorpio - that's why we clicked from the minute we met - we're a big cosmic X marks the spot! Not to mention you are a Gemini with a Scorpio moon - very close to that weird astrological engraving at RLC, although your saturn isn't in Libra," Olivia frowned, bending down to pat the latest additon to the family, Lucky Charms, a cat rescued on a recent sojurn spent in Maine.

"Sorry, I'll play you a song to cheer you up," Domenico laughed, strumming his instrument wildly, producing a frenzied flamenco beat, a tune sure to always enliven his lady love.

"Diablo," Miss O responded with a wink. "Where are my castanets when I need them, eh Lucky, my pet?"



Now 22 knew much concerning the lore of Rennes-le-Château, however, Mr. Lone Star's mention of a famous French fairy tale, Melusine, jogged her recollection of ancient printers' watermarks hailing from the south of France during the time of the Cathar faith.

"Where is that book?" she muttered to herself, searching the shelves of her Hollywood library. "Ah yes, The Lost Language of Symbolism by Bayley, here it is. I know he talks about mermaids in here..."

For Melusine had been rumored to be a fish-tailed beauty, although our Marie Negre knew that such allegory went far deeper than aquamarine waters and shiny scales - no, she pondered, there was a reason why the word emerald itself was a combination of "e" and "mer" and she was determined to find the link. The Black Popess also was mindful of Miss O's theory that the family Roger had been in possession or protectors of the Cathar's Grail, and that Melusine's husband, Raymond, hailed from the famous Raymond Roger heroes of Toulouse - a city not far from Pibrac, where the Cinderella Saint Germaine had been born.

Watermarks denote that paper-making was an art introduced into Europe, and fostered there by the pre-Reformation Protestant sects known in France as the Albigeois and Vaudois, and in Italy as the Cathari and Patarini.

These heresies, though nominally stamped out by the papacy, existed secretly for several centuries subsequent to their disappearance from the sight of history.

The present makers of the paper used for the Bank of England's notes are descendants of the De Portal family of Provence, many of whose members are recorded as amongst the most active leaders of the Albigeois. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the founder of the present business fled to England, where he died in 1704. In his will, which is written in French, he says: "In the first place, I thank my God without ceasing, for having put it in my heart to escape from persecution, and for having blessed my project in my own person and in that of my children. I regard my English refuge as the best heritage which I can bequeath to them."

The headquarters of the Huguenots (French Protestants-16th c.) were Auvergne (led by the de la Tour d'Auvergne family), Angoumois, and the Southern Provinces of France, where, in Angoumois alone, they owned six-hundred paper mills.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ostensibly wiped the Huguenots - whom Pope Clement XI identified with "the execrable race of the ancient Albigenses" - completely out of France; yet it is characteristic of the spirit of the southern provinces that one hundred years after that disastrous event it was the progress to Paris of a battalion of Marseillais, marching as they believed to support the tottering statue of Liberty, that tuned the scale of the Revolution (in France).

The historian of paper-making at Arches, in the south of France, states that secret organisations, dating from immemorial antiquity, existed among the paper-making workmen, and that these "solidly organised associations of comradeship" endured for long after the Revolution. "One is struck," says he, "by the general spirit of insubordination which from all time under the ancien regime animated the paper-making workmen. Collaborating in the propogation of written thought, which, during the eighteenth century, was the main destructive agent of the existing state of affairs until then respected, it would appear that the paper-making workmen had a foreknowledge of the social upheavels that were about to take place, and of which they were the obscure auxiliaries. Heckethorn devotes a chapter of his 'Secret Societies' to these guilds or corporations, which existed not only among paper-makers, but also among other French artisans and journeymen. Freemasonry was early mixed up with this compagnonnage, and various other sections were known by titles such as Sons of Solomon, Companions of the Foxes, Daughters of Maria Magdalena, and so forth."

"How ironic that they would speak silently using watermarks, especially those employing the symbol of the mermaid Melusine," 22 chuckled. "Hmm, so the word emerald must mean auld from the sea - ancient sea stories? Could Thoth, Sekhment and the Seshat neter been that...nautical? Of course, they were the original navigators of humankind! What else does my old friend Harold the Scotsman say here?"







Text Copyright © 2001 - 2005 cybersybils.com & 22
All rights reserved.