Magical Mystery Tour

The route....

You don't need to be a Romantic to be drawn into magic of the French Southwest, but driving through it may convert you into one.  In the space of an hour you can pass from picturesque villages nestled among sprawling vineyards to sublime mountain peaks, crowned by decaying castles, the silent sentinels of a bygone era.  In 2011 alone, France received nearly 80 million tourists.  Take a trip through the Southwest and it's easy to see why.  Whereas most tourists head directly to Paris, for good reason, one could easily skip the City of Lights altogether and spend weeks exploring the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon and not have "missed out" on a great French vacation.  From hiking to mountaineering, canyoning to mountain biking, the region has you covered.  History buffs will be thoroughly satiated.  Amateur sleuths will find mysteries galore.  Foodies will have to be careful not to eat until they explode.  Thin mint, anyone?

I travelled through the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon this week.  My itinerary was only a few hundred kilometers, but I saw enough to write a thick book....and what I saw was only a splinter from a massive oak.  Like I said, you can spend weeks exploring an area which can be crossed in a couple of hours.

My journey began at Saint Papoul.  I wanted to visit the Benedictine abbey (founded in the 8th c.) there in the hopes I might stumble across something which might increase my store of knowledge about Saint Sernin and the Saintes Puelles.  Papoul, or Papulus, was a priest who assisted Saint Saturninus (Sernin) in his efforts to evangelize the Gauls.  He's an obscure saint and there's not much that can be reliably said about him.  He was imprisoned for a while in Carcassonne and was killed during the Diocletian persecution, apparently beheaded.  He was also a cephalophore.  I can't find a detailed account, but apparently where he picked up his own severed head, a spring appeared.  The severed head is certainly a pre-Christian mytheme and recalls the rumours about Templar head worship.  The miraculous spring is also a familiar element.  Many of the Vierges Noires we have discussed are associated with sacred springs, as are many of the Virgin Martyrs; several among these latter were also cephalophores.  The cephalophore is not unique to France, but appears most frequently in French hagiography.  Sacred waters will reappear in this post.

In any event, we'd gotten a late start and only had a half an hour to explore the abbey; we decided to skip the visit and press on to out next destination, Saint-Hilaire.

Cloister of Saint Hilaire Abbey

Saint-Hilaire is about 50 minutes southeast of Saint-Papoul.  Like the abbey of Saint-Papoul, it was a Benedictine abbey founded in the 8th century as a dedication to Saint Sernin, a dedication changed in the 10th c. to honor Saint Hilaire (Hilarius), a fifth-century Pope.  The saint himself holds little interest to my researches, but the abbey is the site of Saint Sernin's tomb.  His sarcophagus is an exquisite Romanesque masterpiece and is carved to recount the legend of his martyrdom.  Thus it also features one of the very few depictions of the Saintes Puelles.  But France pretty much shuts down between 12 and 2, so again, I missed out.  I was able to enter the cloister, a tranquil place with a calming fountain at the center of the courtyard, but that was it.  The cloister is much like that of abbey of Saint Peter in Moissac (founded in the 7th c.) and that of the Dominican convent known as les Jacobins in Toulouse (early 14th c.), demonstrating a remarkable consistency in French monastic architecture.  A shame we missed out, but it was a fine day and a pleasant place to have lunch, a good way to ease into a long day of sightseeing.

Notre Dame de Marceille

Our next destination was Rennes-le-Chateau (RLC).  We had to pass through Limoux, a place I visited last year in order to see its famous Carnaval.  A chapel along the road caught my eye and so we popped in for a brief visit.  Lo and behold, my spider senses started tingling and indeed, the basilica is dedicated to Notre Dame de Marceille, a Vierge Noire I hadn't realized was there.  Apparently, the site is very ancient, with Paleolithic and Gallo-Roman remnants.  A church is mentioned as early as 1011.  It remains an important pilgrimage destination and has all the classic elements of Black Virgin stories.

At one time, in the quite remote past, a ploughman who cultivated his field on the slope of Marcellan saw his ox stop, as if halted by an invisible obstacle. He pushed it in vain, to urge it on, but it stood stock-still and resisted every prodding. The ploughman, who was amazed at first, suddenly felt the only other thing he could do was to call to Heaven for help. Then, somehow inspired by this plea for divine assistance, he began to dig the ground where the ox had stopped, only to find that it contained a statue. It was that of a wooden Madonna, brown and dark, with a celestial smile on her face. With great respect, he took the statue to the door of his house, where everyone in his family rejoiced at the sight of it. But their joy was short-lived: the following morning, the Madonna had disappeared. The ploughman returned to his field, and found the image in the place where he had discovered it the day before. Again, he rejoiced and carried it home, but in vain. It returned once again to the place where he had found it. He tried a third time, but to no avail. The statue returned to its hole in the ground.

Source

Compare this story to that of Notre Dame d'Alet; note also that in the vicinity of this basilica there is a village named Alet-les-Bains.....

The basilica is also built over the site of a Gallo-Roman well and a miraculous fountain reputed to cure blindness is located on the site.  This Virgin also appeals to newlyweds who leave their bridal veils to ensure a happy marriage.  It would be redundant to make a list of all the Vierges Noires whose legend involves the strange behavior of cattle, a miraculous insistence of where to be worshipped and the special place she holds in the heart of women seeking aid in matrimony and maternity.  For the general tourist, it's also an amazing basilica, beautifully appointed and covered from floor to ceiling with elaborate frescoes.  Score!  The place was officially closed but the door was unlocked, so I slipped in for some photos.  I later learned that in 2007, while the place was being renovated, someone snuck in and decapitated the statue and spirited the head away, along with Her mantle!  Nothing else was stolen.  Given it's proximity to RLC, I wonder if this was a symbolic act and can't help but recall the cephalophore mytheme of nearby Saint Papoul and the head wound of Saint Sernin.  The current statue, then, like so many others, is a replacement.

Baptismal font, Rennes-le-Chateau

RLC. I won't go into the history associated with this place, but for fans of the esoteric, the town is legendary.  The first book about RLC appeared in 1967 (L'Or de Rennes by Gérard de Sède), inspiring a long series of books speculating about the town and its famous church.  Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code both owe their material to de Sède.  Countless books have appeared on the subject and the mysterious Priory of Sion.  It's a vast and complex story the center of which involves hidden treasures and the idea that the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene continues to this day.  Gérard de Sède was involved in both surrealist and Oulipo groups and I think his work should be approached with this in mind.  De Sède's son Arnaud said in a 2005 interview that his father and Pierre Plantard invented the legend from whole cloth and created the documents "proving" the existence of the Priory of Sion.  It's a fascinating hoax, so well-constructed that despite Arnaud de Sède's statements and the rather extensive debunking, people still believe it's true.  The sheer number of books and websites devoted to the subject boggles the mind.  People believe what they want to believe.  It would be a great Ph.D. thesis to analyze how disinformation works in a a non-propaganda context, as fact and fantasy are mixed to create a viable and enduring story.  There are so many odd coincidences, everything begins to link up and "possible" become "probable" until so much stuff piles up that the "where there's smoke there's fire" mechanism kicks in and fabulism becomes accepted as history.  There are a lot of gold ingots found among the turds, however, and one can read these books with a critical eye and still glean some important insights into the region, like good literature is often more useful than poor history.

Next stop, Rennes-les-Bains.  This has been a spot for thermal cures for literally thousands of years.  The healing properties of its waters is almost certainly connected to the legends surrounding religious sites.  Whereas the claims that a spring can cure blindness (perhaps a metaphorical cure à la Amazing Grace:  "Was blind but now I see") are dubious, the healing benefits of thermal springs are real.  Thermal cures can be prescribed by doctors and are subsidized in part by the French health care system.  We stopped for an hour or so to soak in the warm waters collected in two basins by the side of the Sals River.  A lovely spot that, like every other place in the vicinity of RLC, has been brought under the umbrella of its mysteries.  Indeed RLB's former parish priest Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, wrote La vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains (1886), in which he argued that that all languages derived from English!  An earlier book from RLB (1832) by Auguste de Labouïsse-Rochefort also recounts a legend about the Devil's treasure.  Clearly, the roots of the hidden treasure story lie farther back in time than de Sède.

Just to tighten the circle a little further, there is a plaque at  the Marceille basilica honoring Boudet!  but then again, he was born, lived and died very close to all of these places....

Our next goal was to see the Gorges de Galamus.  On the way we passed through a wide, green valley with a solitary mountain at the far end.  Some memory stirred in me.  When we passed through the town of Bugarach, something clicked.  I'd read about this place in the NYT.  Apparently in the 60's this mountain, the Pech de Bugarach, became a favored destination of French hippies, a powerful place along the lines of Sedona or Taos in the American South West.  In 2012 things came to a head, many New Age types descended on the place, there were more visitors than normal and the rhythm only increased as the fateful day in December approached that would mark the end of the Mayan calendar....and the world.  Some believed aliens living inside would carry people away.  This is essentially a New Age version of the Rapture.  Curiously, the Nation of Islam also has some teachings about UFOs and mountains:

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said these planes were used to set up mountains on the earth. The Qur'an says it like this: We have raised mountains on the earth lest it convulse with you. How do you raise a mountain, and what is the purpose of a mountain? Have you ever tried to balance a tire? You use weights to keep the tire balanced. That's how the earth is balanced, with mountain ranges. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that we have a type of bomb that, when it strikes the earth a drill on it is timed to go into the earth and explode at the height that you wish the mountain to be. If you wish to take the mountain up a mile [1.6 km], you time the drill to go a mile in and then explode. The bombs these planes have are timed to go one mile down and bring up a mountain one mile high, but it will destroy everything within a 50-square-mile [130 km²] radius. The white man writes in his above top secret memos of the UFOs. He sees them around his military installations like they are spying.

Louis Farrakhan.  Source

Apparently, these UFOs will destroy America, but spare the Nation of Islam.  These UFOs all come from within one great Mother Plane, the spaceship of God, another take on the Rapture.  At Bugarach, a group of Gendarmes and firemen were called in to block access to the mountain due to fears of Heaven's Gate-like mass suicides. 

Pech de Bugarach; note the two aliens disguised as horses on the right

This was all a pleasant surprise.  It is a beautiful place and not devoid of a sense of mystery, something I felt before I even realized where I was.  Lonely mountains are often Holy Mountains, it's almost hard-wired into the brain.  A holy mountain in New Mexico called Chimayo, for example, receives over 300,000 pilgrims each year and the sanctuary there is said to be built where a hot spring once flowed, revered by Tewa Indians for....its healing powers.  The Pech de Bugarach was considered holy long before the hippies took it up for the very same reason as the Tewa.

Hermitage of Saint Anthony

The road through the Galamus gorge is perhaps the wildest road I've driven, cut straight into the rock, a sheer drop off one one side, a sheer cliff on the other.  It's not as hairy as it sounds, but it's certainly impressive.  Near one end of the road there is a hermitage built into the cliff.  This hermitage was built in 1782 following a miraculous intervention by Saint Anthony to save a nearby village from the ravages of "sweating sickness."  It's a beautiful place and a guy actually rents it from the town of Saint Paul de Fenouillet.  I asked him about the recent events at the Pech de Bugarach.  According to him, there were lots of journalists and policemen, but not the multitude of New Agers depicted in the media.  Perhaps his perception the events were not the same as those of the journalists.  Perhaps the journalist exaggerated it all for a good story.  I'd first read about in the New York Times, so who can say?

Sculpture group

I was struck by a prominent image of Saint Anthony at Rennes-le-Chateau, so this correspondence was especially meaningful in the context, especially given that there is grotto on the site dedicated to Mary Magdalene.  There's also a crucifixion sculpture which includes a blindfolded woman gazing into a hand mirror.  I've discussed the hand mirror before, as a woman reflecting the Divine light of reason onto an allegorical scene of Liberty.  It's also used to represent Venus, who I've also discussed in a previous post.  A blindfolded woman is often used to represent Justice.  But the two elements together is very curious and I wasn't certain what it represents until I asked around to some friends.  I'll come back to her.

This grotto also houses a spring at which a reproduction of Saint Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary.  Healing waters, yet again....

Chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles

From Galamus we pressed on to Tautavel in the hopes that I could get into the chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles.  It was too late to get the key the day I arrived and the following day also proved fruitless, as the woman with the key was occupied at the parish church for a funeral.  As I drank my coffee I heard the death knell and laughed at my own selfishness.  Too bad this funeral cock-blocked me from seeing the Puelles, I'd thought.  Oh yeah, that and someone's family was grieving!  So basically, no Puelles.  But Tautavel is an impossibly charming village, with a lovely space to camp by the river, abundant vineyards with wine of high repute and a museum dedicated to prehistory.  Some of Europe's oldest prehistoric artifacts were found here and the 450,000 year old Tautavel Man, perhaps a subspecies of H. erectus, inhabited the area.  Again, one is struck by the long history of human presence in the whole region, which adds a sense of wonder to the presence of healing waters and springs, most certainly the reason why people settled in these spots to begin with.  The life-giving waters took on a spiritual dimension over time, which seems only natural and for me anyway, adds a positive dimension to Catholic veneration.  Which is exactly why some Protestant groups vilify Catholicism as being too pagan and thus dilutes if not negates Christian exceptionalism.  My own view is that this exceptionalism is born of insecurity.  If so much of the Christian story can be found in classical and pagan prototypes, the belief in an exclusive path to salvation is threatened, which is simply bad for business.  Jewish precedent is okay, but God forbid if Christianity takes something from legends of Attis, Dionysus, Horus, Isis, Mithra...

Day two of my voyage was more abbreviated.  We left Tautavel towards Perillos, which has only come to my attention sometime in the past few years.  Perillos is an abandoned town now part of the municipality of Opoul.  Perillos is a bit of blank to me, but some believe that it is an element of the RLC mysteries, or rather, that the RLC mystery is actually part of the Perillos mystery.  Is the tomb of Christ located there?  What is its connection to the Apocalypse (shades of Bugarach).  Dig this:

The "secret" of Perillos really isn't so much a secret. The locals near Opoul-Perillos, the "old guys", still remember... they have stories of "the tomb of God", a site they were told by their elders not to go to and play. There are locals who observe bizarre events in and around Perillos, but keep quiet. Our organisation is almost like a "confessional", whereby these people can finally say, in all anonymity, what they see and know, and we often don't even shrug our shoulders when they tell what they know their wives or husbands would claim as "idiotic". This includes seeing apparitions of God, straight out of the Old Testament. Inverted rainbows.

Source

Chateau de Perillos

The way I went in is along a long and empty canyon.  There is definitely a mysterious feeling as one approaches the place, but then again, knowing what I know, this could easily be chalked up to a Romantic imagination.  It has even been connected to Notre Dame de Marceille.  It all links up because well, they are linked.  Perillos is only a few minutes from Tautavel, and Galamus, and Limoux.  Find the connections, run with it, speculate a bit, write a colorful account....good for tourism, good for making money on the flourishing trade in esoterica of all sorts.  That said, Perillos is worth looking into and the Societé Perillos has a good website that I've consulted more than once during the course of this post to verify my impressions of what I'd seen.  A lot of the information seems deliberately cryptic, but the Societé itself has mentioned they want to discourage the kind of treasure hunters who dug up the area around RLC looking for buried treasure.

This page sums up the Perillos "mystery"pretty well:

Apparently in 1995, one André Douzet found a model, allegedly made by or made for the priest Bérenger Saunière, of the areas associated with the passion of Christ, including the location of the tomb of Jesus and his uncle Joseph.  Thing is, it didn't match Jerusalem.  Douzet then recognized one of the features as a rock formation near Perillos.  The Seigneurs of Perillos were an illustrious family among whose number was once counted the Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta.  Our man Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, once directed the parish.  Saunière himself was known to have visited the area to have a look at local families' archives.  Douzet also came across a reference in local archives to a piece of land which prohibited anyone, including the Lords of Perillos, from collecting rocks, cutting wood or otherwise molesting it; it could not be sold, transferred or divided.  It was within the lands of the Lords, but they didn't own it, they merely guarded it.  Furthermore, cartographer Jacques Cassini, whose family made the first general maps of France, was known to have spent a year and a half there, yet his maps leave the site of the tombs blank.  Which means they either aren't there or he was looking for them and then kept it secret.  There are a lot of other details, but that's the general story.  Douzet claims to have found the tombs and some artifacts inside, yet in 2008 another researcher pronounced it was all a hoax.  Hoax or not, it is a lovely and wild spot and I loved it not for being the site of Jesus's tomb, but merely for the fact many believe it's true!

The rest of my journey was for the kids.  A human labyrinth in Trouillas, burro riding in Castelnou (another amazing village), a visit to the beach in Spain.  The last LoSian aspect of the trip was in Thuir, where there is yet another Vierge Noire, but alas!  This church too was closed.

Notre Dame de la Victoire

According to Ean Begg, Notre Dame de la Victoire is 50cm tall and made of lead, which accounts for her dark hue.  She dates from the late 12th century.  Apparently four statues were made from the same mould, two of which went to Spanish Catalonia and two to the Massif Central; both regions have dense concentrations of Black Virgins.  This statue replaced an earlier one, mentioned in the 10th c.  Like Notre Dame de Sabart, She helped Charlemagne defeat the Saracens; in this case by providing his exhausted troops with water.  Charlemagne apparently brought an image of the Virgin to a dry river bed and thrust his sword into the earth and a spring gushed up from the spot, which sounds very sexual to these ears.  A sword is planted and the earth gets wet, thus sustaining and bringing life to his troops.  This sexual/birth motif may be why, like Notre Dame de la Daurade, she is a patroness of childbirth.  Pieces of her robe, or a birthing belt are placed on the bellyof a woman in labor.  If I understand correctly, her feast day, October 7th, predates the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto on the same day in 1571.  Like a lot of info from Begg, however, I'm careful about repeating that as fact.  For another example of a battle with Saracens which involves planting a phallic object in the ground, causing a spring to spurt out on the spot, see my discussion of St. Fris.

Castelnou

The conclusion of my voyage was a jaunt to the beach in Spain, then the long-ish drive home.  But there are any number of alternatives.  One could strike north for the arid beauty of the Corbières wine country, with a stop in Carcassonne on the road back to Toulouse.  The route between Perpignan and Andorra is magnificent, with two fortified cities I've yet to explore.  You get the picture.  I chose our route for it's convenience and it's mixture of history and pop-esoterica, sites never more than a half an hour or 45 minutes apart.  Drive a bit, explore a bit.  None of these places takes up too much time to explore.  I plan to return to Tautavel very soon, just camp and enjoy the river.  If I don't see the Saintes Puelles due to some reason or other, I'll only be able to conclude that there is a conspiracy of silence to keep me from seeing the chapel and exposing its secrets to the world!

But seriously, I do hope to explore Perillos a bit more, as there's talk in the air that it might be made off limits to protect it from treasure-seekers, even perhaps put under the control of the military!  This isn't as ominous as it sounds, as there is a large military base nearby which may in fact be contiguous with the abandoned town.

Bottom line is that if you want to travel in France, you've got something for everyone in this little itinerary, a logistically perfect little nugget.  I went to see many of the thing I've previously discussed on LoS, such as the sarcophagus of St. Sernin or the statue of the Saintes Puelles.  On that front it was something of a failure.  But I made a lot of little discoveries and connections to other areas of interest, all the while spending some good times with the kids, teaching them some proper camping skills and a little about history.  Cathars, UFOs, esoteric sects, what could be better?

I'm also going to look into this Boudet character.  His book is full of wordplay and puns.  Given that de Sède was involved in surrealist and Oulipo groups, this makes me wonder if de Sède had read this book and it influenced him to write his own book.  RLC research is rife with mystical toponymy, puns, double-entendre and decoding ciphers.  In 1991 a Flemish researcher decoded some of Boudet's book and was led to Limoux, more specifically the basilica of Notre Dame de Marceille, where he discovered secret vault by the river.  Some have speculated that an entire underground complex exists beyond a blocked-up tunnel from the vaults.  So that underground treasure people are looking for around RLC may just be slightly farther afield than thought.  If we think back to the legend of this particular Black Virgin, we recall that She was dug up from the ground.  Is it possible that this is the vault where She was found, and that the vault is the original chapel built to house Her?  Or, if it is indeed far older, could it have been a pagan temple or shrine and that the Virgin found there was in fact a pre-Christian idol?

Further inquiries in my library reveal that Saillens (Nos Vierges Noires) says the locals called her "our sibyl" and believes that to be the case, the pagan prototype being Cybele.  Cybele is a mother of the gods and is often associated with Attis, whose myth has many features later ascribed to the birth, life and death of Jesus.  In Vierges Noires, Cassagnes-Brousset notes that a nearby (how near?) archaeological dig uncovered a figurine of Belisama, a Celtic goddess the Gallo-Romans identified with Minerva/Athena.  This goddess was both warrior and healer, associated among other things with lakes and rivers.

Marceille is an ancient place with Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze age articles found in the vicinity; a Gallo-Roman villa was located nearby.  Perhaps the vault was related to the villa, its location near the church coincidental, unless the basilica replaced a pre-Christian temple.  The current statue is a reproduction of the decapitated version dating back to the 11th c., yet the basilica was begun in the 14th.  Was the vault its original shrine?  Tradition holds that like so many other Vierges Noires, this wooden sculpture replaced an even older version.  As it turns out, this theory is discussed in some detail by the Societé Perillos.  I urge you to read that essay, if only for this curious detail:  She was originally inscribed with the words "Do not look at me, because I became brown." according to a text entitled Hommage au Baron Podenas.

Became?  Very curious, but we must be cautious, for I can find the Hommage au Baron Podenas  referenced anywhere else....bear that in mind as you read what follows.

There seem to be some curious traditions about eyes of this statue, which are indeed quite large.  The imperative to "avert your eyes" made me think of the blindfolded figure at Galamus and another curious detail popped up: both figures are smiling....tradition even has it that "he who sees the statue [ND de Marceille] smiling at him, is certain to obtain the grace which he came to beseech.”  A pal suggests the blindfolded figure is Synagoga, a figure usually paired with Ecclesia  to represent the replacement of Judaism by Christianity; the Jews cannot "see" that Jesus was the Christ.

Confirmation is to be found at the site itself, I'd neglected to read the sign.  This sign states that the group depicts Ascension of Christ and is called Christ and Humanity.  The woman standing represents hope for salvation, whereas the seated woman is blind to this opportunity.  Thus my friend is right, she is essentially Synagoga and the other woman, Ecclesia.  My friend also points out this page with a picture of the group, but it appears to be in white marble; a caption says the photos were taken at an unused church some years ago but the sculpture is now at the hermitage.  So the red version we see is either a copy, or it has been painted.  This latter possibility seems odd to me, but is is possible  One would then wonder why such a dark, earth-red hue was chosen.

Perhaps any explicit reference to Synagoga has been removed due to some interpretations of the figures as essentially anti-Semitic, although recent scholarship is apparently more nuanced.

The ensemble was a gift of local sculptor G.A. Grouille, not an especially common name and not usual for this area.  The verb grouiller, which I came across looking for the name, means to be full of something or to swarm.  Thinking I might have a pseudonym, I looked for clues in the name, but it doesn't help much.  It is a real name though, I just can't seem to find any other references to the artist.

I also recall that there was a Sator Square carved into a stone in a chapel at the hermitage.  This kind of word square is pre-Christian and consists of a series of five words written on a grid.  It is a palindromic acrostic.  Best thing is to follow the link and see it for yourself.  Needless to say, this kind of wordplay would have appealed to Boudet, or to de Sède.  Ostensibly it is Latin, but one of the words, "Arepo", may be Celtic in origin.  That would certainly have interested Boudet.  Could he have placed it there?  The possible translations that have been proposed include "The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough]" and "The sower holds the works and wheels by means of water."  This seems to relate to elements of the Marceille legend, and the Sator Square is believed to have magical uses, including putting out fires, which just happens to be one of the properties of Notre dame de Marceille.

Leaving that question aside, I should also report that She was also stolen during the Revolution; the records of the case do imply a kind of conspiracy involving people who knew about, and used, the secret vaults.  Again, curious details.  Secret vaults, a theft, a later decapitation.  Little wonder she has excited so much interest.

There's certainly more to investigate here, but that may best be left for time and serendipity to work out.  My inquiries keep leading me to the same unique sources, which is a good enough reason to pause and look for other angles.

But for the moment, Daurade is tired out.  I'm sure I'll come across more in my further readings and travels that will lead me back to these speculations, but for now, I feel this is the post I was looking for, hopefully a return to productivity, if not form!

Staff of Life

It should come as no surprise that sometimes, various breads and bread-like treats should be invested with spiritual meaning. After all, John 6:35 (KJV) says:

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

John 6:48-58 goes even further, explaining in metaphor what Jesus would later make concrete at the Last Supper: this is My body, this is My blood.

As we all know, Catholics and some mainline Protestants remember this every Sunday when they take Communion. Indeed, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation has it that the bread (host) given during this rite is literally the same as the body of Christ.

While this cannibalistic theophagy may turn you off, you certainly like snacking on tasty little cakes, no?

Unsurprisingly, France has plenty of those to offer.

The Madeleine (Magdalene) is one such cake. It's biggest claim to fame is that it kicks off Proust's ten-volume In Search of Lost Time, where he describes it as having the form of "a pilgrim's shell". In one traditional form it is indeed scallop-shaped. The pilgrims Proust refers to are those on their way to Santiago de Compostela, who affix this scallop to their staves as they make their way towards the holy destination. The scallop, as we have discussed, is associated with Aphrodite and its vaguely feminine forms may evoke a woman's sex; one often sees stoups for Holy Water in the form of a scallop (in France, at least). The origin of the Madeleine is in dispute, but most agree the name comes from inventor Madeleine Paulmier. Whether she was an 18th or 19th century figure is uncertain, but in either case they are native to the Lorraine region of France.

Another cookie with more direct religious overtones is the so-called "navette", which among other things means "barque" or "little boat". This hard cake is associated with Provence, especially Marseilles, and there are several theories as to its origin. Ean Begg speculates that it comes from the little cakes offered to Isis and that the barque here refers to the barque of Isis. Another speculation is that it recalls the legend that has the three Marys (including Magdalene) landing in France at what is now Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer; in a similar vein the boat is said to be a metaphor for the word of Christ landing on the shores of France. Others still say it commemorates the founding of Marseilles by Phoenicians.

The navette is associated with the Saint Victor Abbey, especially its Candlemas celebrations. There is a legend that a polychrome, wooden statue of the Virgin, crowned and slightly battered, washed up on the shores of a lake near the abbey sometime towards the end of the 13th century. Some took her to be a protectress of people who plied the waves, sailors, fishermen, etc. To commemorate this legend, one Monsieur Aveyrous decided to give his biscuit the form of a boat. Finally, the metal container that is used to carry incense in the Catholic liturgy is in French referred to as a "navette". Come to think of it, the scallop shell form used for stoups is also used in Western iconography as a kind of boat (think of Botticelli's Bith of Venus), bringing us back to Madeleine, or Magdalene, who arrived in Provence in a tiny little boat....

Whatever the case, most of these theories give spiritual origins; not so shocking when we consider again that the "main man" of Western Civ is metaphorically referred to as bread and consumed in bread form in the Communion rite.


There are other cakes that come to mind. For a long time I was a great devotee of the "galette St. Michel", a small buttery cookie, not especially delicious. I liked it because it was the only cookie I'd ever seen which featured such a striking design: St Michael standing on the Devil's neck, thrusting a lance into the vanquished rebel. This cookie is from Brittany and may recall a Breton legend where the Devil, jealous of St. Michael, challenges the latter to....a jumping contest. Ready, set, go! The Devil plummeted into a canyon, but Michael, borne by pinions of air, floated safely across, coming to land on a mountaintop that still bears his footprint (shades of the Dome of the Rock, said to bear Mohammed's footprint). Devil, as Jack Black said so wisely, You can't win!

This was all triggered by a recent random encounter with an Oreo. A Canadian colleague was eating some and I wondered where she'd gotten them (being in France and all) and apparently, our office vending machine, um, vends them. So I bought myself a packet and before consuming it, looked at it closely in nostalgia. Lo and behold, I noticed that the Oreo name was surmounted by a Cross of Lorraine and what appeared to be 12 Maltese crosses. Those latter are in fact four-leafed clovers but the Cross of Lorraine is just that. It's a copy of the Nabisco logo, in fact. Maybe I've read too many of Boyd Rice's esoteric writings, but that Cross of Lorraine always geeks me out on the Merovingian mythos.

Funny that these symbols have also stoked the paranoid fantasies of the truly deluded. Researching this symbolism I came across people calling this the "Illuminati cookie" because the Cross of Lorraine is the symbol of the 33rd degree Mason or because the Nabisco logo could be seen as an eye in a pyramid. Trouble is, the Cross of Lorraine is not a Masonic symbol. It is symbol associated with Joan of Arc though. Maybe food companies have a thing for her. We recently posted about Joan of Arc beans made by Underwood.

Finally, I was at a wedding in Barcelona in June and at a dinner hosted by the bride's parents, the mother told us of a festival in her village in honor of Saint Agatha. It involved quite a few things, but what stands out is that the people of the village baked cakes shaped like breasts, brought them to the church to be blessed, then distributed them afterwards. Agatha, patron of bakers, among other things, is often pictured holding her own breasts on a platter, which were sliced off in her martyrdom.

So, sometimes cigar is just a cigar, but a loaf of bread can be something else...


Another coincidence is that the only Jack Chick cartoon tract I own is called "The Death Cookie" and relates how the Devil has tricked Catholics into worshipping the host instead of Jesus himself. Aside from the literal Devil thing, he may have a valid theological point, but since I'd just as soon not promote Jack Chick, let's just leave it at that.

Coming back to France, how could I forget the galette des rois? This cake is consumed on and around Epiphany to honor the Three Wise Men. It can be like a large donut or a disc, but inside there is always a "fève", or bean, which is now not literally a bean but a small porcelain figure that could be anything from a soccer ball to a Smurf, or even a religious figure such as a shepherd or a Wise Man.

The person who receives the slice of galette with the fève then gets to wear a crown and is "king for a day". I'm too afraid to peep into my copy of The Golden Bough to cite the many pre-Christian precedents for this idea of the temporary king, they're far too plentiful. The festival I mentioned earlier about the bread breasts of Saint Agatha also featured electing two young girls as queens of the festival. It occurs to me that Miss America pageants, where a young beauty is crowned as the queen, as well as the whole homecoming/prom king and queen business, certainly have forgotten roots in these pagan festivals. The king for a day idea can also be traced back to the Roman Saturnalia via the Medieval Feast of Fools.

Bon appetit!

Les Saintes Puelles

Lately, I have been working on a longish inventory of representations of women, both secular and religious, in the south of France and especially Toulouse. Originally meant to be a series of brief sketches, it has become something a bit more. What follows was originally just a smidgeon of the whole but has since taken on a life of its own. So, I've decided to break it off into a separate post. It touches on some profound issues which revolve around the conflation of saints and other syncretic processes, but I haven't quite gotten to exploring this as fully as I'd like. For now, I'm working with particularities and intend to work my way towards a more general approach.

It's certainly not intented to be my final word; this is more of an initial survey.

This post deals with the martyrdom of the Patron Saint of Toulouse and more specifically, the two women who gathered up his remains after the deed was done.

Let's go.

Saint Saturninus of Toulouse is variously known as Saturnin, Sernin, Cernin, Sanzornín, Sadurní, etc. according to what language you speak. His cult is centered in the south of France and the North of Spain, from Catalonia over to Asturias and even into northern Portugal. Although not the most wildly popular or well-known figure, several places in Spain and France bear his name and he is connected with the evangelists of the early Christianization of the area.

The legends around his life are taken from the Acts of Saturninus, which have been lost to time. Briefly, they state that Sernin (I use the local appellation) was the son of a king and the grandson of another on his mother's side. He was said to have been one of the 72 disciples of Christ (Luke 10:1-24) and present at the Last Supper. Furthermore, he was ordained by no less than Saint Peter himself.

This legend is historically impossible as it is most likely he was one one of the seven bishops Pope Saint Fabian (236-250 CE) sent out to Christianize Gaul. His lifetime was certainly well after the events portrayed in the Acts.

It is said that Sernin had to frequently pass before the pagan altars of the Toulouse to and from the Christian church. It so happened that oracles located there fell silent as he passed. This understandably pissed off the pagan priests, who blamed him and his sermons characterizing their gods as devils. They seized him, brought him to their altars and gave him an ultimatum: "sacrifice to our gods, or else." He apparently said something like "Why should I, when my very presence makes them mute?" Then came the "or else". He was tied to a bull and dragged until he died. Or, as one version has it they

"bound him to the feet of a bull and drew him unto the highest place of the capitol and cast him down the degrees and steps to the ground, so that his head was all to-broken and the brain sprang out, and so he accomplished his martyrdom."

What seems to be a minor detail is that two pious young Christian women known as "les Puelles" (from the Latin puellae, "young girl"), then buried his body. Not much is know about the Puelles, but they have, like innumerable other minor figures in the vast history of Christendom, inspired a small cult in their own right.

Later legend relates that Sernin had met the Puelles in Spain and that they were daughters of the King of Huesca. (Interesting in that Sernin too was the son of a king). Legend also relates these pious women gathered up the remains and buried them in a "deep ditch." For this they were punished. They were stripped, whipped and driven out of town. They found refuge in a place called Ricaud (in the Aude département); or maybe not. "Ricaud" or "Recaud" merely means a "safe-haven." In any event, the place is now called Mas-Saintes Puelles in their honor. In the town, one can find a monument to the women and in the church, a painting depicts the women being driven out of town, their torsos naked and their backs whipped.

I'd like to examine the Puelles story in more detail in connection with other legends from the South of France. First, though, I'd like to say a few words about the bull. The bull is still an important symbol in Toulouse, which until not so long ago continued the tradition of bullfighting. There is a Rue du Taur, where Sernin was apparently dragged to his death, a station Matabiau (Kill Bull), and the big bell in a Toulouse carillion is called the Bull, etc.

Some have speculated that the bull imagery somehow refers to Mithraism. The Occitan cross, symbol of Toulouse and of Occitania in general (where all of our events take place), is configured so that there are twelve points which some speculate refer to the signs of the zodiac, and a lot of Mithraic symbolism was based on the zodiac. This site notes that a bas-relief at St. Sernin Basilica in Toulouse depicts the Puelles with a lion and a lamb and goes on to a very detailed explanation of the astrological symbolism in the church. It may be Sernin was battling Mithraists. Other sources mention that the oracle who Sernin offended was in fact that of Jupiter.

Sarcophagus of St. Sernin; St. Hilaire Abbey

The cult of the Puelles in France seems to be located principally around the Aude. The Abbey of Saint Hilaire (Aude) holds the sarcopahgous of Saint Sernin, a white marble masterpiece depicting the arrest, martyrdom and burial of Saint Sernin. In addition to depicting the Puelles, Saints Papulus and Honestus are depicted. Papulus was beheaded in Toulouse, while Honestus was martyred in Pampluna; variants of the same legend have conflicting accounts of whether or not Sernin or Papulous (Papoul) converted and baptized Saint Fermin, patron of Pamplona. The martyrdom of Sernin is sometimes transferred onto Fermin. That is say that while some accounts have Fermin beheaded in Amiens, others have him being dragged to his death behind a bull.

Interesting that many of the cities associated with these three saints--Honestus was born in Nîmes and martyred at Pampluna, for example, also have very strong bullfighting traditions. Some have speculated that bullfighting is an echo of the central rites of Mithraism. In any event, the reversal of a man killing a bull, may indicate that Sernin was killed by Mithraists. Many scholars have noted the two sects share many features in common: virgin births, baptisms, last suppers, the 25th of December, blood symbolism, etc. Others have speculated that the deep-ditch into which Sernin remains were place may have been a Mithraeum (although why this would be so is a mystery if in fact his quarrel was with Mithraists). Whatever similarities the two sects share, there is a chicken or egg situation here. Some believe the Christians borrowed elements from Mithraism to broaden its appeal; Justin Martyr, writing in the 2nd century, claimed the Mithraists were perverting Christianity.

Was there some kind of syncretism going on between the two, reflected in Toulouse in the imagery we have described? We may never know the answers to this question but the parallels and associations are striking indeed. I would like to here mention, with the intention of elaborating at a later date, that the link of bulls with Christian imagery in the south of France is not limited to San Sernin. The phenomenon of the Black Madonnas, most highly concentrated in Auvergne and the Pyrenées, is also connected with the animal. Indeed, there is now a church on the Rue du Taur called Notre Dame du Taur, and the statue itself may or may not be a bona fide Black Virgin. I have never seen it identified as such, despite is markedly dusky hue, but it is certainly very close in style to other examples. (For more about Black Virgins please see Notre Dame de la Daurade and Notre Dame du Taur).

One of Sernin's disciples was Saint Fermin. According to tradition, the place where Saint Fermin was baptized by Sernin was at the Pocico de San Cernin, the "Small Well of San Cernin" across from a temple dedicated to the latter and built upon a pagan temple. There is evidence that Fermin had a cult in Anglo-Saxon England. A monastery bearing his name was also said to have a sacred well. "Unofficial" pilgrimages to this place were halted in 1298. Three towns in England (North Crawley, Thurlby and Thorney) have churches bearing his name.

The Saintes Puelles; Tautavel

Again, I'm in the early stages of this project, but the recurrence of sacred wells bears interest for this story because they too are associated with the phenomenon of the Black Virgins.

Another veneration of the Puelles, after Mas-Saintes-Puelles and St. Hilaire, occurs in Tautavel (Pyrénées-Orientales, a stone's throw from Aude), where there is a chapel dedicated to them. This chapel dates from the era when many chapels were erected to various Black Virgins and, like many of these, is located outside of town in an isolated spot.

In this chapel one can find a strange sculpture, about which there is an interesting discussion here. Visitors have noticed striking similarities to a painting on the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, called "the Holy Hermits", where two figures are said to be Mary Magdalene and the Egyptian Maria (Maria Aegyptica).

Maria's legend is that she ran away as a child to Alexandria and lived the life of a sexual profligate, buying her way to Jerusalem with sexual favors. Once there, she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sephulchre but was prevented from doing so by an unseen hand; she promised to reform her ways andafterwards was able to enter the church. She then went off to live as a hermit in the desert.

One description of the altarpiece:

Mary Magdalen and Mary of Egypt;

 Ghent Altarpiece

Upon the nearer of the two panels to the left are the Holy Hermits HEREMITE SANCTI the foremost is Saint Paul, with at his left, leaning on a staff, Saint Anthony, and close to him another, bald-headed and bare-footed, these two telling their beads ; on their right, seven more ascetics, mostly dark- complexioned, with beards and tangled hair, are followed from behind some rocks by Saint Mary Magdalene, bearing her pot of ointment, and Saint Mary of Egypt.

These two Mary's were often conflated into one figure, as some legends state without scriptural basis that Magdalene fled into the desert after the Ascension of Christ and lived as a penitent. In the 11th century this desert was relocated to Provence. Given the prominence of their association, penitents who had been harlots, it is interesting that the legend of the Puelles has grown up with similar iconography at least in this case, such as the pot of ointment for anointing the dead. Mary of Egypt usually holds three loaves of bread and this one holds a book. Which is, in fact, another symbol commonly used for Magdalene. You can even find images of Magdalene with a small pot or jar, resting on a book. Our statue of the Puelles at Tautavel depicts one carrying the jar and the other, a book.

There is more than one conflation going on here. Mary Magdalene is never in fact described in the Bible as either a harlot or a whore, but the association of Mary of Egypt shows that by the Medieval period this was a widespread belief. One reason for this is that Mary Magdalene, in the Latin church, is considered to be the same person as Mary of Bethany, described as a "sinner." But this identification is not at all clear, and there is confusion here, as with other Marys, as to exactly how many Marys there were:

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) states, "The Greek Fathers, as a whole, distinguish the three persons: the "sinner" of Luke 7:36-50; the sister of Martha and Lazarus, Luke 10:38-42 and John 11; and Mary Magdalen. On the other hand most of the Latins hold that these three were one and the same. Protestant critics, however, believe there were two, if not three, distinct persons."

Odd that in both Van Eyck's painting and the Tautavel sculpture, the women seem to rise out of the same dress, like a pair of Siamese twins, or two manifestations of one principle, perhaps?

Robert Graves speculates in The White Goddess (1948) that Mary of Egypt can be identified with "Mary Gipsy", a virgin with a blue robe and a pearl necklace. Otherwise known as Marina, Marian or "Maria Stellis". She is supposedly a remote descendant of Aphrodite, the love goddess from the sea.

The Myrrhbearers

This is exactly what I thought when I considered the legends associated with Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer; a town which, for those already familiar with it, cannot but spring to mind given the context of our discussion. It helps that the famous feast days described below were taking place at the very moment I was beginning this post. This town is named after the three Marys, that is to say the women who first saw the empty tomb after the crucifixion. These three Marys are often depicted with the same kind of Jar as we see in the van Eyck painting and the curious sculpture of the Puelles.

On May 24 the Roma (Gypsies, so named because they were commonly though to descent from Egyptians) population of France descend upon Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in order to venerate their patron saint, Saint Sarah, like Mary of Egypt, a dark-skinned Egyptian. According to legend, Saint Sarah and the three Marys either set sail or were cast adrift from Alexandria (further shades of Maria Aegyptica) before arriving at the place now bearing their name.

Again, it seems that just as Magdalen and Mary of Egypt are sometimes taken as one figure, there is a link between Mary of Egypt and Sarah; indeed, some recent writers have it that Saint Sarah was in fact Mary Magdalen's daughter. Older legends place her at the empty tomb. Not all the legends accord with another.

Incidentally, Sarah's crypt in the Church of St Michael at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer contains an old altar that may be the remnants of a Mithraic altar and a sacred spring:

Once a sacred site of the Celtic threefold water goddess, the holy spring was known as Oppidum Priscum Ra. Superseded by a Roman temple dedicated to Mithras in the 4th century BC, the site was later taken over by the Christians.

Mary Salome and Mary Jacob

The crypt has all the trappings of a fervent cult typical of potent saints: notes, trinkets, photos, abandoned crutches, etc. The church has altars to only two of the Marys: Mary Salome and Mary Jacob; these were the only people from the "landing party' who remained in the village, eventually becoming venerated. Every year in the annual pilgrimage of Gypsies, the statue of Saint Sara is brought down to the ocean to reenact her arrival. The next day the statues of the two Marys are likewise brought to the sea. They seem, like the Puelles and the other two Mary's in the van Eyck painting, to be joined together; one carries the pot of oil.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer has been a sacred spot since prehistory; archeological evidence reveals this veneration focused on a sacred spring.

What is clear is that the iconography of Magdalen and the two Marys is also found in the sculpture of the Puelles: jars of oil for anointing and a book. I would like to investigate this further and see if the theory that the Puelles are merely a local copy of the two Marys who rested at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is plausible. Or if it reflects that of Mary Magdalene and Mary Aegyptica. For the Puelles and Magdalene, their stories also tell us they were women who had a special role in caring for the body of a martyred holy figure. They played the same role and the connection in this regards goes far in explaining why they intersect with other legends of early Christian women.

A poster on the thread linked to above also excerpts a passage from the oddly-named Come Carpenter, which is worth re-quoting here:

For the Hermetic arcanes, Egypt has remained the threshold of the occidental realms of death and resurrection, the kingdom where the worship of the departed reigns supreme, the "land of western exile", the Khemi: the black earth where the seed of life is buried before rebirth and where the soul sinks into the afterlife. The land of the Nile is called Misr in semitic languages, a word which may well bear a relation to the latin word miseria. The world Saviour, according to various hermetic and gnostic traditions in the Middle East that reappear in certain alchemical texts, is the son of Maria Aegyptiaca, the black virgin or black stone that fell from heaven.

I have no idea where Mr. Carpenter gets his information, but it is interesting that he calls Maria Aegyptiaca the Black Virgin; other traditions hold that it is Mary Magdalene; still others say the Black Virgin is Sarah!

In the course of my research I experienced a strange coincidence. While I know that there is some foundation to the notions of sacred topography, I'm highly skeptical of many attempts to impose this upon the Languedoc. I believe it's Henry Lincoln who breaks out a ruler and compass and begins drawing lines between various "significant" places until he comes up with a suggestive form which then proves that the Cathars or Templars or Merovingians or what have you founded towns and erected castles in order to conform to a sacred geometry.

That said, when I put a thumbtack on the three places where there seem to be significant references to the Puelles, I first marked Mas-Saintes-Puelles and Tautavel, then pegged the Saint Hilaire Abbey. This was in order to get an idea of the distances involved in order to plan a day trip. I was amused to see that they are almost perfectly aligned and almost equidistant. I ascribe no intention to this; it was merely unexpected, and amusing.

Google Earth Image of Puelles-related sites

I came across another potential veneration of the Puelles in Barcelona. One of the oldest churches in Barcelona is all that remains of a nunnery known as the Sant Pere de les Puel·les. The "puelles" in the name refers to the nuns themselves. These nuns has the reputation of being beautiful young women of noble families and, as this site recounts "was the setting for some of medieval Barcelona's most tragic stories of impossible love."

"Legend has it that the puellae, when threatened with rape and murder by the invading Moors under Al-Mansur in 986, disfigured themselves by slicing off their own ears and noses in an (apparently futile) attempt to save themselves."

Another version has it that the facial disfigurement was a more general phenomenon; that the woman did this in order to avoid being forced into loveless arranged marriages. Whatever the case, it evokes another theme of my larger survey: the suffering young woman.

What is even more curious is that this convent was built on the site of an even older church dedicated to San Sadurní, or as they say in Occitan, San Sernin. The convent dates from 945 and was founded by one count Suñer in order to honor his wife, Riquilda de Tolosa.

So you have a monastery dedicated the "puelles" on the site of a church dedicated to a Saint Sernin by a count whose wife hailed from Toulouse, (the Spanish city Tolosa was not founded until 1256). This would seem to indicate that in fact we are dealing with the puelles from the martyrdom of San Sernin.

But all is not so clear. Apparently, the church is dedicated to a Saint Saturninus martyred in Zaragoza, Spain in 303 A.D.) This Saturninus was one of 18 companions of Saint Engratia who were beheaded for being Christians. Apparently, there were four men with this name among the 18. A rather common name in the area, evidently, thus making it less surprising that this church in Barcelona shares the name of that in Toulouse. Still, although what I've dug up so far makes no mention of a connection with the Toulouse legend, it's a lead I'd like to follow.

The French connection is more prominent in many regards than the Spanish. The church that

"originally stood here, [was] located just outside the old Roman walls of the city, as early as 801 A.D. according to some preserved inscriptions. It was expanded under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious (known as Lluís El Piadós in Catalonia), King of France from 814-840, who was the son of the Emperor Charlemagne. At that time Catalonia was, in a sense, a part of France, as the Counts of Barcelona were vassals of the King of the Franks, who ruled the city in the King's name. It was only later that the Counts of Barcelona asserted their independence, beginning in 985, and began to build their own empire and royal dynastic traditions without deference to the Frankish throne."

In Lérida, not too far from Barcelona, there is a place calles "Les Puelles" but I haven't found out the provenance of the name. Might be tough going. Only 21 people live there! There is also a town in the area called Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. This doesn't necessarily imply that this is our Sernin and Puelles; it may be coincidence stemming from the Catalan family name of Puelles.

In Asturias, on the other hand, there is also a place called Puelles and nearby is San Saturnino.

Here one can find a church of San Bartolomé de Puelles which was remodelled at some point "se usaron elementos de la capilla de San Saturnino (Sanzornín), que parece que era un monumento de gran interés y belleza, a juzgar por lo que de él se conserva." I will be there in August, as it turns out, and will definitely be paying this place a visit.

Catalan Wikipedia lists several places bearing the name Sadurní and one Sant Serni. This latter is definitely named after our man, but the others may come from the martyrs of Zaragoza.

North of the Pyrenees, many towns in France bear his name; but only one for the Puelles.

In conclusion....

Well, there is no conclusion yet. What I've done above is make some observations and connections and raised more questions than answers. Without some more traditional and serious research, I risk blathering. So, quite arbitrarily, I'm stopping here in hopes of returning to this topic in better detail as soon as I have some.

In the meantime, I welcome any thoughts or comments or rebuttals of the semi-theories I've presented above.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention this book by Mary Ange Tibot: Les Saintes Puelles Ou la destinée de Saturne (The Saint Puelles or the Destiny of Saturn). I haven't read it yet, but it appears to be an examination of the diffusion of the cult of Sernin and especially the Puelles. Tibot examines the astrological significance of Puelles symbolism, but until I've read it that's all I can say for now. II