November 9, 2025 • 54 mins
After receiving such wonderful feedback on our Gnostic show, we decided to dig into some research on the Cathars. Who were they? Why did the Catholic church see them as such a threat? Where did their wealth come from? Were they really the keepers of the Holy Grail?
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For more information on us, check out our websites: debbowen.com and samanthafey.com.
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You can find our eCourses on crystals, tarot, manifesting and moon magic. Plus we both offer wonderful guided meditations and you can find signed copies of our books.
Be sure to check out Samantha’s other podcast Enlightened Empaths.
Have a great week. Be the Light!
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend, subscribe, rate and leave us a kind review.
Don't forget to join our community on Facebook by searching Psychic Teachers.
If you have a question or story to share with us, send us an email at psychicteachers@gmail.com.
For more information on us, check out our websites: debbowen.com and samanthafey.com.
You can also find Samantha on Instagram @samanthaofey.
You can find our eCourses on crystals, tarot, manifesting and moon magic. Plus we both offer wonderful guided meditations and you can find signed copies of our books.
Be sure to check out Samantha’s other podcast Enlightened Empaths.
Have a great week. Be the Light!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to Psychic Teachers. I'm your host, Deb Bowen.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Samantha Fay, and we are.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So excited to talk to you. This week we aired
an episode about gnosticism, and we've got a lot of
emails from you asking us to do a similar episode
on the Cauthers. I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing it correctly,
but we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, I see Cathars.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Cathars, Okay, I don't. We'll go with that, all right. Cathars.
What a rabbit hole. Even now, after considerable research, I'm
not sure who or what the Kafars were. I understand
that some stuff about who they were and how they
were persecuted and executed, and it makes my heart hurt. However,
(01:00):
there are many aspects of their stories to be considered,
so here we go.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
There's just one problem in discussing the Cathars and their
horrific fate at the hands of the Catholic Church. They
might not have existed as we now conceive them. The
Church may have invented an entire sect of peoples who
were in fact devout Catholics whose practices were just outside
the norm of the Church. At the time, and whose
(01:26):
annihilation was a precursor to the even more horrific Crusades
to come. This could be because the word Cathar is
actually a general term referring to a bunch of different sects.
They didn't have one unified leader, or even one unified
doctrine of teaching.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So Chris O'Brien, who wrote in the Los Angeles Times
in twenty eighteen, says this, The Cathar defenders pose a
question to the skeptics. If the Crusades was not about
quashing this religious movement, then what motivated so many Christians
to take up arms and kill thousands of other Christians?
(02:08):
So at first blush, Cathars make for unlikely modern day heroes.
They are said to have been fundamentalists who believed there
were two gods, a good one who presided over the
spiritual world and an evil one who ruled the physical world.
Cathars viewed even sex within marriage and reproduction as evil,
(02:31):
and so lived strict lives of abstinction.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
But is even that true? In a book devid I
Love called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the authors write that
while the Cathars condemned procreation mainly because they believed anything
that was made in the material world was from the
evil God, meaning anything made materially had a spark of
(02:57):
that evil in them. So they were again procreation, but
they did not condemn sex. According to the research done
in that book. They did have a sacrament for chastity,
but this was usually performed on one's deathbed. They write,
sexuality was tolerated, if not explicitly sanctioned. So how do
(03:18):
you condemn procreation while condoning sexuality. Well, supposedly, there is
evidence to suggest that the Cathars practice both birth control
and abortion, So when Rome charged the Cathars with unnatural
sexual practices, it may well have referred to these various
methods of birth control.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
For the sake of our discussion today, let's assume that
the Cathars were a real group of people with a
real set of beliefs and practices. So here's who they were.
In a nutshell, the word Catharism comes from ancient Greek
and means quote the pure ones. This Christian group considered
(04:03):
pseudo gnostic and quasi dualistic. Will explain that in a minute,
lived in areas of northern Italy and southern France, being
between the twelfth and fourteenth century, the Catholic Church denounced
the group as a heretical sect, and by thirteen fifty
about one million Cathars were slaughtered, hanged, or burned at
(04:29):
the stake, essentially eradicating them.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So where did these Cathars begin? What did their people believe?
Most of our focus in this episode will be on
the Cathars of France, notably the city of Albi, where
the movement began. The Cathars called themselves good Christians. They
did believe in a kind of dualism based on Gnosticism.
(04:53):
They maintained that there were two, not one, but two gods,
the Good God of heaven and the evil God of
the age. They believe that the Good God was the
New Testament God who created a spiritual realm. So that
is really similar to what we were discussing on our
show on gnosticism. The Catherine's taught that this God was
totally disincarnate. He was a being of total and pure love.
(05:17):
But since love has no interest in power and material
creation is the result of power, they believe that the second,
lesser God created the material world. And you know what
I find interesting about this deb Almost every ancient religion
has a belief like this. I mean, if you look
(05:39):
at even the myth of how Rome began with the
fighting twins, or if you look at the ancient Sumerians
who talked about Enlil and Enki, don't you find that
interesting that this theme continues over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Well, I do exactly as you're saying. You see it
in almost any world belief in some way form or another.
And we're going to talk about this in a minute.
This second god, the language they use as may have
been what their problem was, because they also said that
was satan, right, and that's basic Christianity one oh one, right,
I mean, it really is. They called this satan god
(06:17):
the usurper God or Rex Monday, meaning the King of
the World. I think this is really important to focus on.
In all major world religions today, the blame for why
there's evil in the world resides solely on us humans.
It's our fault. We screwed up God's perfect world and
(06:39):
have to pay for it. But with the Gnostics and
the Cathars, the problem of evil was blamed on this
usurper God. So to the Cathars, you've got a good
guy and a bad guy and we're like the kids
in the divorce parents are fighting over.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Interesting to think about, isn't it, Because that shifts everything.
I mean, rather than sitting in church on Sunday and
having a priest, a pastor, or a minister yelling at
you because you know you're evil in its original sin
and all of that, that changes the whole theme, thesis,
dynamic of your relationship to your higher power.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, it does. And when that shift occurs, then it
becomes this duality of thinking which extends to all members
of the group, including men and women, who were treated
fairly equally, being the women were being allowed to serve
(07:39):
as preachers and teachers. So, like the Gnostics, they rejected
blind faith and instead relied on nosis, a direct connection
and experience with God, a knowing.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And you know that the Roman Church did not like
that because if you don't need an intermediary, then what
do they have to sell you? Where are you going
to go to tithe or to pay for your indulgence?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Exactly?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Problem number one now that Cathers believe that people were
human souls, spirits of angels trapped in the material realm
of the evil God. They believed souls would repeatedly incarnate
until they achieved salvation through something called consolamentum, a kind
of baptism performed when death was near. Immediately after death,
(08:34):
when salvation was achieved, the soul would return to the
Good God. There was a connection here to Buddhism in
their belief in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Wait, Samitha, it also feels to me when I was
researching this that really we were talking almost as our
last rites and absolution death.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, it does sound very similar, except the last rites
isn't about absolving you of sin. I think with the Cathars,
I think it was more about preparing you for the
next incarnation. Oh I see, But I could be wrong
about that. Like we said, there's different groups, and there
(09:12):
wasn't a unifying organization overseeing all the different sects of
the Cathar faith. Gotcha, Okay, But that's the only branch
of Christianity I'm aware of that believed in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, me too.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I mean that must have been shocking. That would be
shocking today. We have a lot of friends who are
Christian and are very surprised that I believe in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Oh I bet you do. Yeah, I probably do. Too.
We just don't talk about it.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But it means that's interesting to think about, to be
that ahead of the time. We're talking a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, exactly. Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Remember from our episode a Gnosticism that the Gnostics and
then the Cathars value personal spiritual knowledge above the authority, traditions,
and teachings of organized religious institutions. Gnostics believed in the
notion of dualistic deities, one of them was uncorrupted and
good and one who was flawed and evil. They believed
that rather than us being condemned for sin, what we
(10:18):
really needed was to become enlightened. Catholicism also had its
roots in Asceticism, whose leaders set almost no rules and
fewer guidelines. So this led to the actual practices of
the group to vary over location and time. And we
don't even really know when they began, do we.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
No, we do know that the movement had grown enough
to attract the attention of Pope Innocent the Third around
eleven forty seven. The Catholic Church particularly opposed the consolimentum ritual,
and the Pope set missionaries to dissuade the practice. He
also pressed local authorities to act against the Cathars. So
(11:04):
in eleven forty five the church sent Saint Bernard, it
was like, the spokesperson for Orthodox Christianity, to preach against
these Cathar heretics. But when he got to know them,
he was actually impressed and wrote to Rome, no sermons
are more Christian than theirs, and their morals are pure.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well you know that made them mad.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, Pope Bennison probably did not like that. No backfired.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So then in twelve oh eight, the Pope's papal legate,
Pierre de Castelnoe, traveled at Toulouse to excommunicate Count Remond
the Six for being too lenient with the Cathars. Now,
this papal legate was murdered as he returned to Rome
by anti clerical radicals who had no connection to the Cathars.
(11:56):
That didn't matter. The Church had the smoking gun they
needed to art their war. Pope Innocent martyred him and
launched a twenty year crusade against the Cathars. Many, as
we've said, were killed, and the medieval inquisition that followed
eradicated the rest of them. But let's back up a
minute and explore how the Cathars reached a point that
(12:19):
the Catholic Church sought to destroy them all. Where did
these beliefs originate? What were they? Trade routes from the
Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, the Netherlands, Armenia and other
points east brought new thought to rural southern France. Certainly
they were heavily influenced by Gnosticism, but by other beliefs
(12:39):
as well, most of which were deemed heretical by Catholicism.
For example, Saint Augustine noted in the fourth century that
a group called Catharistas practiced in ways the Church saw as.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Unclue man that work against them had been going on
for a long time. And as they were on that
trade route from folks from various countries heading from east
to west, they were certainly exposed to so many different
world beliefs and cultures and ways of thinking that influenced
(13:15):
and melded in with what had probably been very early
early Catholicism. Because remember the Church, and I use that
word with the capital C. The Church hadn't been around
very long at all, three or four hundred years for
all of this stuff to still be solidifying, like the Apostles,
(13:36):
Creed and the Nicene Creed and the beliefs of the Gnostics.
I mean, all this stuff was different in trying to
sort itself out all over the globe at that point,
all over Europe in any case. So those early centuries
of what happened to the Cathars that I'm talking about
were really shrouded in mysteries. None of this began to
(13:57):
coalesce into something that drew the attention of the church
until about eleven forty three. There is a record of
a Cathart council in eleven sixty seven attended by high,
high ranking members of this organization. So there was this
(14:18):
I feel like spying to me when I was reading it,
But certainly this way of trying to figure out the church,
trying to figure out what to do with this belief
system that did not fit very nice and neatly into
what had become the Catholic box.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It must have been so upsetting to them, because according
to all the records that survived, the Cathars were very wealthy,
and we're going to talk about where this wealth came
from towards the end of the show. Some legends and
myths and mystical things connected to that, but they were
also really really well liked. I mean everyone liked them,
(14:54):
even as we said, the emissaries that the Pope's end
who eradicate them or convince other people not to join them,
were totally charmed by them. And I think all of
that says a lot about who they were as a
group of people. Now, we do need to talk about
how their relationship to Jesus was and how they viewed
(15:17):
his life and his birth. But let's take a very
quick break and we'll be right back. Hey, guys, I
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let's get back to the show. Welcome back, deb Do
you want to tell us about how the Cathars viewed
(17:04):
Jesus and his connection to them.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
They saw him as extraordinarily mystical. They believed and followed
what they considered to be Jesus's true teachings. However, they
did not believe his presence on earth was a physical incarnation,
and therefore his resurrection was not real in the physical sense. Instead,
(17:30):
they believed Jesus's human form to be that of an
angel whose body was only an illusion rather than corporeal.
They also believed this to be true of the Virgin Mary.
And while Cathar's believed in reincarnation, they rejected the resurrection
of Jesus and saw the cross as a torture instrument
(17:53):
rather than the symbol of Christianity that it has become.
They believed that John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah
from the Old Testament or the same person, both of
whom were evil sent to hinder Jesus's teachings with the
false need for baptism of him and his followers.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I've never heard that point of view of Elijah and
John the Baptist.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I know, there's that famous scene where they're looking at
John the Baptist and they say, is that the prophet
Elijah come again? And a lot of people have used
that as a reference to the early Church's belief in reincarnation.
But I've never heard or read any writings that they
were mean.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
That was new information for me.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That must have been shocking to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Right, it may have just been one sect of the Carsons.
We don't write, right, I just don't know, because other
sects of the authors held a belief in monotheism, meaning
that the Christian Trinity whoop did not exist, although it
is unclear how they viewed Jesus. See, we've got a
lot of mixed messages going on here. They believe that
(19:04):
the Holy Spirit was actually a collective of angels who
had not fallen prey to Satan in his rebellion against
the Good God.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I like that idea. Do you remember being in Sunday
School trying to learn the Holy Trinity?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I was so confused by that, And to be honest,
I kind of still am because I would have some
teachers who would tell me, you know, you got God
and you got Jesus. That I understood, right, God the Father,
Jesus the Son, and then you got the Holy Spirit.
Well what's the Holy Spirit? And teachers would tell me
different things. Oh, it's the energy of Christ's love in
(19:41):
the world. Oh, it's the energy of the white dove
bringing peace to the world. Well, that dove needs to
fly a little harder around this world then, right. I
just was always so confused about what the Holy Spirit was.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Let me throw in another one to the mix, because
some theories are that the if you read the Book
of Acts, where on the day of Pentecost the Holy
Spirit comes to the people after Jesus has died and
comes into the room as a wind. The Holy Spirit
comes into the room as if a strong wind. The
(20:15):
Hebrew word for wind is rush. In that context, it
is also the word that means the divine feminine.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Oh see, doesn't that make sense if they weren't so
afraid of woman. If someone had explained it to me,
as you've got a mother God and a father God
and their son Jesus, I would have been like, yeah,
that's the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Now, I'm not saying that it's true. So I don't
want to say you emails from folks about this. I'm
just saying that as you had another perspective, but something
to give a thought to, and I would agree with you, Samantha.
Had I had another way of looking at divine femininity,
it would have been an interesting shift in consciousness. I
(20:59):
think up. Well.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I always liked Saint Patrick's teaching of the Shamrock, how it's,
you know, three separate things but all one. I loved that.
But I would look at that third little leaf of
the Shamrock and go, what are you? Are you a spirit?
Are you a rush of wind?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
What are you?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So I loved that the Cathar's taught that it was
a group of angels.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I think that's an interesting perspective. Maybe we should do
a whole other episode at some point next year on
looking at various perspectives of what is the Holy Spirit?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That sounds great? Okay, So, for centuries before the Protestant Reformation,
Cathars did not adhere to the Catholic views concerning trans substantiation,
the Eucharist, baptism by water, purgatory, and the need for
prayers for the dead. Now that's really really big. And
(21:52):
so for any non Catholics or Christians out there, I
don't know if Protestants believe this two debths, so you'll
have to educate me. But the Catholic Church teaches that
when the Communion, the Holy Host is brought out of
its little home in the back of the altar, and
(22:14):
the priest blesses that host, that it is Jesus.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I know that that's what Catholicism believes. Most traditional mainstream
Protestant churches believe that it is symbolic, that it is
not the actual, that there is actually not that miracle,
that magical thing of it becoming Jesus's body and blood.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yes, okay, so that is just a Catholic thing, all right.
So that's a big thing that the Cathars are like, yeah, no,
we don't get that. Baptism by water. They don't believe
in that either. The Catharist did not, right, which I
mean that's a big thing because I think every variety
of Christianity believes in baptism by water.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Correct, well, they do, but there is lots of controversy
about how much water.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Oh right, a little sprinkle or a dunk in the pool. Yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
There's all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And then purgatory, which is kind of like that way station.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That's a totally Catholic thing.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
That's a totally Catholic thing, yes, And then the need
for prayers for the dead. I know that's a Catholic
thing that I personally strongly believe in. I do think
that we should always pray for our loved ones who
have gone on and just pray that they're doing well
and having fun in heaven.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And I've gotten so attached to doing that that I'm
not really sure what the Protestant answer to that piece
of the puzzle is.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But I guess if you believed that we reincarnated instantly,
there'd be no need for purgatory and no need for
prayers for the dead because they're already back on the earth.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Oh well, that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
But the baptism by water, I guess they didn't like
that because John the Baptist started that and they don't
like him.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Well, there is that, I don't know. I don't know either.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
They believed that sacred text should be studied and read
in the everyday language of the people. And think about that,
because we didn't have that. Our first Bible came out
in the what's sixteen hundreds, people didn't you know that
everyone could read? People didn't have that back then, So
that was way above their time. In fact, the Catharts
(24:22):
followed no rights as prescribed by Catholicism, except for the
rights offered to a person as death was imminent. Now,
much of the sacred Text of the Cathars contained elements
of Gnostic literature were not certain, but scholars believe that
other than the New Testament, the following were Cathar sacred works,
(24:43):
The Gospel of the Secret Supper, which is a modified
version of the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Book of
Two Principles, which possibly was written by John Lucio Bergamo,
an Italian Cathar. And the Book of Two Principles is
the only Cathart text still in existence.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I wonder if you can get a copy of there,
we know.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I'll look it up, okay.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And The Cathars were firmly opposed to killing, war and
capital punishment were condemned, which was of course rare in
medieval Europe. They were Pascatarians, meaning they only ate fish, fruit,
and vegetables. They believed fish procreated by what they called
spontaneous generation. Cheese, eggs, meat, and milk were not eaten
(25:32):
because they believed they were all the products of sexual intercourse.
The Cathars held interesting views about relationships and sexual behaviors.
Their views on procreation was, to say the least extreme.
To the Cathars, reproduction was a moral evil to be
(25:53):
avoided as it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering
in the material world. Such was the situation that a
charge of heresy leveled against a suspected cauth was usually
dismissed if the accused could show that he was legally married.
(26:16):
So I'm confused. I know me too, So six and
for procreation is bad, but sex otherwise might be okay.
As I was working on this episode and researching, thinking
of the Shakers, those lovely people from the northeast of
(26:37):
the United States in the early days of this country,
and how they were opposed to procreation, which of course
they died out they're gone.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Well because they were also opposed to sex, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I'm not quite sure about what the Cathars really thought
about sex and reproduction.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think it sounds to me like they were okay
with sex because you're in a material body, and material
bodies are going to have their own wants and needs and.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Desires as long as you're legally married.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
But they didn't want to contribute to the material evil
God's kingdom on earth Rex Monday, so they didn't want
to add children to that.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
But didn't they know that was going to be the
end of them.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Then, I think they got a lot of converts. But
I've read other In doing research for this, I read
other things that said certain women were allowed to have
children to continue the Cathars. So it was very confusing.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Ooh, that sounds kind.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Of hand made detail.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, exactly was rare, but I could.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Have misread it or misinterpreted that. I'm not really sure
how they viewed that. I just know that they didn't
come down as hard on sex as most religions do.
I mean, gosh, even today, in a lot of Catholic
churches you can take classes on natural family planning because
they still believe that sex should be for procreation. So
(28:05):
that was a big, big switch.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
All right, let's just talk a minute more here about
this whole sex thing, and then we'll move on. You
might think that a group of people who condemned reproduction
would simply die out, like I said, but no. In fact,
their population grew to a point in southern France that
many towns Provence, for example, were almost completely populated by them.
(28:29):
I didn't know that. When Bishop Folk of Toulouse chastised
the church's knights for not pursuing the Cathars, deemed heretics
by the Church. Of course, as we said, he received
this reply from the knights, quote, we cannot. We have
been reared in their midst We have relatives among them,
(28:50):
and we see them living lives of perfection. So if
the Pope's own knights are not going to do anything
about these people who are not behaving according to Kropolicism, now.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
What Yeah, Now you got to do some pr spinning
to make the Cathars look bad. Now, As we said,
despite the fact that the Cathars stemmed from patriarchal societies
and did have a fairly narrow view of women from
Antiquity to the Middle Ages, they also were pretty liberal
concerning the place of women in the world. For example,
(29:24):
as we said, they were able to preach and teach
and administer the sacrament of the consolimentum. They saw your
spirit as being genderless, so men could reincarnate as women
and vice versa, just as the Gnostics before them did.
The Cathars assigned great importance to the role of Mary Magdalene,
(29:46):
particularly in her role in spreading Christianity. Catherine saw her
as a teacher and therefore women were qualified to be
spiritual leaders. They saw Mary Magdalene as being perhaps even
more important than the apostle. So Peter, This, of course,
was another thorn in the side of the Catholic Church.
(30:06):
We know how Peter felt about women, right.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, don't get restarted and Paul, I.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Mean really, go on. Oh that's right. It was Paul
who said all that stuff about women being quiet, not Peter.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
That's right. So the role of prefect in Catherism also
was open to women. This group required a strict and
aesthetic lifestyle, but allowed for members to live in their
own houses, although communal living was common. However, equality for
(30:37):
women had its limits, of course it did. Catharist believed
that the last incarnation one has must be as a
man in order to break the cycle of reincarnation, and
that a woman must be reincarnated as a man in
order to break that cycle. Interestingly, thel dee Garde Bingam
(31:00):
in eleven sixty three condemned the Cathars, saying that Cathars
risk eternal damnation from God.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That is interesting because she was such an advocate for
women as an anchoress for so many years, and she
finally got free of that, you know, being locked in
that room to just pray for the world. She advocated
for women's rights. Oh, well, you can't. Everyone can't be perfect, right, deb.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I guess even Hildegarde.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
All right, let's talk about their downfall and how they
were eradicated. After our last quick break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Hey, y'all, I'm so excited to offer so many opportunities
for us to connect and services that will make your
holiday shopping and your wish list a breeze. Here's a
short list of what I've got coming up. Registration is
open now for the Crafting the Wheel of the Year
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(32:04):
teaches you new craft ideas. Registration is also open now
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in January. Folks are already registering, so don't miss out.
There's an afternoon and an evening section available. Again, this
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(32:26):
sale for my Animal Guide's Reports and my Numerology Reports.
The sale begins November twenty fourth, for a limited time only.
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(32:47):
November later. If you order directly for me a mule
cross stitch pattern and a bell the reindeer crochet pattern
will be emailed to you when your orderships. And there's
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all of this about details and registration and so forth
(33:08):
on my website at deboen dot com and in my newsletter,
which really is the best way to keep up with
my offerings. The subscribe button is at the bottom of
my website homepage. I so hope you'll join me for
some of these great events. Happy holidays everyone.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Welcome back. So in eleven forty three, the movement within
the Catholic Church's hierarchy began to coalesce against the Cathars,
and eleven forty seven Pope Eugene IID sent a legate
to the Cathar district of France in order to arrest
the progress of the growing numbers. The mission failed and
(33:48):
thus began a siege against this group that lasted in
some form until at least thirteen twenty one. That's insane.
That means that generations grew up knowing nothing but this
threat and this risk to their safety. Interwoven among the
attacks against the Cathars were fighting amongst various factions of
(34:10):
the Catholic Church, and of course fighting among royalty of
several countries. As we mentioned earlier, things really came to
a head in twelve oh eight when Rome sent a
massive army to eradicate the Cathars. Now here's a little
interesting fact. The army was led by Simon de Montfort,
father of the famous crusader of the same name, who
(34:32):
also led the rebellion against King Henry the Third, and
de Montfort himself was aided by a Spanish priest named
Dominic Gusman, who would just a decade later create the
Dominican Order, And is the Dominicans in twelve thirty three,
who are the ones who started the Holy Inquisition. So
(34:53):
that should give us a better idea of what the
Cathars were facing. So first you have Simon to from Montfort,
father of the famous crusader, which means he himself was
probably a really good strategist, army type general, and you've
got him being assisted by this fairly radical, devout priest
(35:15):
who was the one who initiated the Holy Inquisition, which
we know is a terrifying time for many.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Wow, I'm still processing the fact that the Inquisition was
begun by the Dominicans. I know Dominican priests today.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
They're wonderful and peaceful.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah. I've known some very nice Dominican.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Priest Yeah, me too. I would have thought it was
started maybe by the Benedictines, because they're kind of rigid,
But I don't know it was them.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Truly at all. Cathartes, men, women, children were ripped from
their homes and their land tortured. They were drawn and quartered,
burned at the stake, hanged and murdered in other horrific ways.
The time was that their heretical beliefs were not those
of Catholicism. The Catharis were killed by soldiers, by crusaders,
(36:09):
and sometimes by their non Cathar neighbors. Conversely, there also
were occasions when their neighbors stood beside them, facing the
flames and the gallows, in solidarity with them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Because this was an inquisition, it was a genocide of
a people. It was massacre after massacre. It also was
a time of struggles for lands and fiefdoms. Among the
royal houses of Europe. There are so many important dates
and events during these years, but here's one that stands out.
(36:45):
On Friday May thirteenth, twelve thirty nine, in the Champagne
region of France, one hundred and eighty three men and
women convicted of Catharicism were burned at the stake for heresy.
Sixty eight years later, at dawn on Friday October thirteenth,
thirteen oh seven, King Philip fourth had Jackes de Molay,
(37:07):
grand master of the Knights Templar, and scores of other
French templars arrested, and most of them were tortured and
executed horribly. So while we couldn't find any evidence of
the Knights Templars being involved in the genocide of the Cathars,
it is interesting to compare those two dates. Both were
Friday the thirteenth. By twelve forty three, all major Cathar
(37:33):
sects had fallen, except for one, the mountain citadel of
Mont Seigneur. They stood ten months of this siege before falling.
They were all fored generous compensations to give up their
beliefs and convert, and they all refused. Of course, there
is a lot of speculation about some of the Cathars escaping,
(37:55):
taking with them items more valuable than even money. They
are said to have a map.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Some say that they had hidden sacred Gnostic texts somewhere.
Other theories say that they had the Holy Grail hidden away.
Why history does seem to know is that in the
autumn of thirteen twenty one, the last known cauthor, prefect
Guillemin Billy based Belisee de Bay, was executed. Today, since
(38:25):
around the nineteen nineties, historians have been questioning whether or
not the Cathars actually existed. The French historians Monique Zerner
and Yue Brunn, for example, argue that Carthaism was born
of men in the Catholic Church and, rather than springing
from ancient Eastern thought, were part of a spiritual revival.
(38:48):
Might the panic against the Cathars developed just as the
witch hunts did at about the same time across Europe.
Since there is no clear evidence from the persecution persecuted
people themselves, is there any way to really assess what
brought on such a large scale slaughter of a group
(39:10):
of people, whoever they may have been, and just what
is heresy and does it even really exist? Or is
the controversy really about the concept of dualistic thinking. We
will probably never know. O'Brien in that La Times article
(39:31):
I mentioned earlier, comes to this conclusion. Quote. More appealing
to day, however, is the idea that the Cathars mounted
the first major rebellion against the Catholic Church. They saw
Rome as corrupt, rejected the church's hierarchy, and did not
build cathedrals, but rather worshiped outdoors. This lack of structure
(39:57):
gave women more prominence and freedom, and because they were
pacifists who repudiated all killing, they were vegetarians. There is
no dispute that in twelve oh nine, at the urging
of Pope Innocent the Third, a band of northern French
nobles rallied an army that swept into the South, where
(40:19):
they unleashed a crusade so bloody it would make Game
of Thrones look contained by comparison. This included sackings in
July twelve oh nine by an army under papal authority,
and just before the attack, which would kill as many
as twenty thousand men, women and children, the pope's man
(40:43):
on the scene, a man named Arnaud almcric, is reported
to have uttered one of history's most famous orders kill
them all. God will know his own Now.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
After the majority of the fighting was done, church leaders
began a grand inquisition in Toulouse. Suspects were rounded up,
forced to confess, and then sometimes burned at the stake.
This became the blueprint for the much larger inquisitions carried
out in the centuries to come. And because of the
Cathar's bravery through all of this and their refusal to
(41:18):
relinquish their faith, a mystique has emerged around the Cathars.
For one thing, they had considerable wealth. Since they weren't
allowed to bear arms, they hired mercenaries to work for them.
So where did this wealth come from? During the ten
month siege on Montsigour, two Kathar men escaped with actual
(41:39):
treasure loads of gold, silver, and coin that were taken
to a cave and then moved again. These men were
able to escape because there were some weak spots in
the ring of ten thousand men surrounding the base of
the mountain. But a few months later this army holding
the Cathar's hostage at the top of the mountain got
(41:59):
eased even stronger, making escape impossible. Still, four men risked
their lives to repel down the side of the mountain
right before Easter Sunday, you know, right when Lent ends
and everyone can eat, drink and be merry once more.
Why would these men risk their lives in such a
(42:20):
dramatic fashion. What were they trying to take off that mountain?
It wasn't money that had already been secreted away. So
from one of our favorite books that deb and I
had mentioned on the show a lot, it's called the
Book of English Magic, we learn of the story called
the wooden Book of Monsigor, which was discovered in the
foundations of the old Castle. They write it proves to
(42:44):
be part of a system of astrology to link past, present,
and future lives practiced by an Indian magical sect called
the Natis. But no one knows how this book ended
up in Monsigor. And here's another strange nugget we've mentioned
before on a prior show about the weird fascination the
Nazis had with many of these legends, starting with Hitler's
(43:07):
search for the Spear of Destiny. Well, Himmler was fascinated
by these legends of the Holy Grail being kept in France,
so he sent ottos Guerrenzi, Hitler's personal pilot to search
for it. Otto sent a telegram that simply read Eureka.
After his trip to Monsigor, he was then ordered by
Himmler to fly back over Montsagour and Skywright a Celtic
(43:31):
cross over the area. There are even stories about Germany
sending two U boats shortly after this to the North
Pole carrying seven bronze boxes of artifacts, which were then
secretly stored there. If you're thinking, okay, Smantha, hold on,
we know you love all the weird Nazi colt shit
(43:52):
in World War two, but that's a bit too far. Well,
hold on. Those two U boats surfaced in Argentina and
the crews were captured by Americans and interrogated for months.
Shortly after the war ended, we then sent a four
star general and forty thousand troops to the North Pole,
(44:13):
supposedly to drill for oil. What do you make of that?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Deb Oh? I can love a good conspiracy theory and
a skinny minute, me.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Too, But I mean, really think about it. According to
letters and people's diaries and things like that, we do
have pretty good reports that these two men were able
to slip through some of the strongholds and bring out
(44:43):
these treasures that were actual treasures, were physical things of
gold and silver and money and coins. The rumors have
persisted and have been written about for centuries that later on.
And I find the timing interesting because it means that
they were really thinking about this and planning it, like,
you know, first, let's get the money out, Let's get
the treasure out, because if we go down, we don't
(45:04):
want them to get the money. So you guys go
hide that.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
But if they did have something like secret books or
the Holy Grail, that they would have wanted to hold
on to as much as they could and made sure
it was really safely out. And so they would have
picked a weekend like that first time when lent is over,
forty days of you know, not being able to eat
what you want and all that stuff. Even the soldiers
(45:32):
who were guarding the mountain would have been probably drunk
that night, right, and so that would have been a
good time to repel down that mountain and smuggle this
thing away. What was that?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, what did they get out of there? I mean,
was it a book or whatever? And then of course
the whole World War two thing and the Holy Grail story.
People have listened to me this podcast for a while
now that one of the things that I often say
is that when I do, I want to take a
piece of paper and a pen with me because I
got questions. And on my list of questions, one of
(46:06):
the top questions is, well, actually two questions, why is
the Holy Grail? And two where is it? I really
would love to know that enduring legend and why it
is so important to so many people. Why does it
speak to us in so many ways? And we'll never know.
(46:27):
It never crossed my mind as I was working on
this that I didn't believe in the Cauthars. I firmly
believe they existed, and there's all sorts of pieces of
evidence that they did. But what we do know is
that those legends about them continue to live on today
(46:47):
in the stories of the troubadours and the street musicians,
the jugglers, the storytellers and more. And perhaps there's a
weaving of their story with that of the Knight's Templar,
and thus with the story of Mary Magdalene that might
not be so far fetched. At least that's the possibility
(47:09):
presented to us in books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail,
and might it be that the magician tells us truths
from the cauthars that are hidden in plain sight something
to ponder.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, help me ponder that. You mean the magician card
from the tureau.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I mean two things with that. One, yes, the magician
card interrow, and two just the magician as a symbol
in general. Think back to those days of when it
was not safe to hold a belief in public, not
just with the cauthars, but with other beliefs as well,
if you differed from the mainstream of your township or
(47:50):
your community or village, or your country or the church,
and so you had to find other ways of finding
folks who might believe as you do, are finding ways
of hiding and protecting the knowledge that you have. And
so one of the things that happened was all of
this was done in plain sight and hidden under the
(48:12):
noses of folks who probably would have executed you had
you known. And so that's the street vendors and the
jugglers and the storytellers and the magicians and so forth
on the streets.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Okay, well, that's making me think about how magicians stock
in trade is illusion. I have a new thought now
that just came to me if the Cathars were not
into procreation, and they believed that everything material was evil,
so they looked at Jesus's they believed he was real,
(48:46):
but he thought he was like a spirit, almost an illusion,
that people were seeing and interacting with right or an
angel or an angel right exactly, And that the reason
why he was able to preach and teach love and
perform miracles is because he had come directly from this
good God. He was not from the lesser, mean God.
(49:07):
So why then would they care about the Holy Grail.
They wouldn't have any belief in the transmutation of his
body into the blood, the wine, or the host, so
it wouldn't be a cop And would they really believe
if Mary Magdalene had his child? Would they believe that
(49:30):
was a good thing if they were against procreation.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
You do know that one of the most pervasive legends
of the story of Mary Magdalene's life is that she
spent her last years in the south of France. Yes,
and that her daughter Sarah became known as Sarah Colly
or the Black Madonna. Even though they made the cow
(49:55):
thirst by the time we see them a thousand years later,
are opposed to procreation and so forth. That is not
to preclude the idea that they don't also respect a
lot about how and what this woman did and that
she in fact was the grail that carried on the
work of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
No, I completely understand that, but do you see where
I'm confused thinking about how it does contradict with their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
I think that a lot of belief systems have pieces
of their beliefs that contradict other parts. I don't disagree
with you in any way. I just think that's one
of the things that we do today and historically too,
but certainly today, is that we think, well, there's one
way in one set of beliefs, and there's no variation
(50:46):
from that, and that if folks are different than that,
then we got a problem. And that isn't necessarily true.
That's why we have so many different Christian denominations. I mean,
think about the differing areas of Catholicism. Even within the
Catholic Church, there are different kinds of Catholics. And that
(51:10):
is certainly true in the Protestant denominations, where you've got
Southern Baptist and Northern Baptist and Evangelical. Because everybody sees
the puzzle in a slightly different.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Way, and that's okay. But I have one more thing
to add before we wrap up, and I might be
struck by lightning as soon as I say it. So
if I drop off, come check on me. Okay, What
if the Holy Grail is something negative that they're protecting?
Speaker 1 (51:43):
That thought has never crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
It's never crossed my mind either till just now, because
I was just thinking, if they look at procreation as
a product of the evil God, would they have looked
at Mary Magdalene as like Rosemary's baby?
Speaker 1 (52:00):
I don't think they saw. Well, I'm putting words in
Cauthorae's mouths that I don't know the truth about. But
I wonder if their perspective on the history of how
they perceived their version of Christianity became different over time
for some other reason because they respected Jesus, did they
(52:20):
not also still respect the Virgin Mary perhaps? And Mary
Magdalene perhaps, and Apostles. We don't know their take on
all those guys, No, we know we don't, And we
don't also know how much access they had to some
of this still existent above ground, not hidden away, not
(52:43):
a gnostic text we don't know that either.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
No, there's a lot we don't know, that's right, But
there's a lot that we have been able to at
least shed light on and make people think. And that's
really why we love to do these shows.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
We love rabbit holes, y'all.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Yeah, just give us something, just a new way to
think about how we encounter and engage with religions and
faiths in our belief system. It's absolutely fascinating to me.
And I did look up that book, The Two Principles.
It is on noses dot org, the whole thing. You
can read it, but I couldn't find a print copy.
Oh okay, you can read it online.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
Thank you. This has been great and we hope our
listeners have enjoyed it. Remember to check us out on
Facebook Psychic Teachers, and you can also reach out to
us Psychic Teachers at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed
this episode, we'd really appreciate you showing your love and
support by sharing it with a friend or taking a
minute in your day to leave us a review on
(53:46):
Apple or Spotify. We hope you have a great week. Remember,
as always, to be the light for yourself and others.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Take care everyone.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Thank you for listening to Psychic Teachers, your podcast for seekers,
light workers, mystics, and magical thinkers. If you like the show,
please tell a friend or leave us a review wherever
you listen to your podcast. For more information, check out
our Facebook page Psychic Teachers, or our websites Samantha Fay
dot com and Deb Bowen dot com. Thanks for listening
and have a great week.
Hello, and welcome to Psychic Teachers. I'm your host, Deb Bowen.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I'm Samantha Fay, and we are.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So excited to talk to you. This week we aired
an episode about gnosticism, and we've got a lot of
emails from you asking us to do a similar episode
on the Cauthers. I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing it correctly,
but we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, I see Cathars.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Cathars, Okay, I don't. We'll go with that, all right. Cathars.
What a rabbit hole. Even now, after considerable research, I'm
not sure who or what the Kafars were. I understand
that some stuff about who they were and how they
were persecuted and executed, and it makes my heart hurt. However,
(01:00):
there are many aspects of their stories to be considered,
so here we go.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
There's just one problem in discussing the Cathars and their
horrific fate at the hands of the Catholic Church. They
might not have existed as we now conceive them. The
Church may have invented an entire sect of peoples who
were in fact devout Catholics whose practices were just outside
the norm of the Church. At the time, and whose
(01:26):
annihilation was a precursor to the even more horrific Crusades
to come. This could be because the word Cathar is
actually a general term referring to a bunch of different sects.
They didn't have one unified leader, or even one unified
doctrine of teaching.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So Chris O'Brien, who wrote in the Los Angeles Times
in twenty eighteen, says this, The Cathar defenders pose a
question to the skeptics. If the Crusades was not about
quashing this religious movement, then what motivated so many Christians
to take up arms and kill thousands of other Christians?
(02:08):
So at first blush, Cathars make for unlikely modern day heroes.
They are said to have been fundamentalists who believed there
were two gods, a good one who presided over the
spiritual world and an evil one who ruled the physical world.
Cathars viewed even sex within marriage and reproduction as evil,
(02:31):
and so lived strict lives of abstinction.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
But is even that true? In a book devid I
Love called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the authors write that
while the Cathars condemned procreation mainly because they believed anything
that was made in the material world was from the
evil God, meaning anything made materially had a spark of
(02:57):
that evil in them. So they were again procreation, but
they did not condemn sex. According to the research done
in that book. They did have a sacrament for chastity,
but this was usually performed on one's deathbed. They write,
sexuality was tolerated, if not explicitly sanctioned. So how do
(03:18):
you condemn procreation while condoning sexuality. Well, supposedly, there is
evidence to suggest that the Cathars practice both birth control
and abortion, So when Rome charged the Cathars with unnatural
sexual practices, it may well have referred to these various
methods of birth control.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
For the sake of our discussion today, let's assume that
the Cathars were a real group of people with a
real set of beliefs and practices. So here's who they were.
In a nutshell, the word Catharism comes from ancient Greek
and means quote the pure ones. This Christian group considered
(04:03):
pseudo gnostic and quasi dualistic. Will explain that in a minute,
lived in areas of northern Italy and southern France, being
between the twelfth and fourteenth century, the Catholic Church denounced
the group as a heretical sect, and by thirteen fifty
about one million Cathars were slaughtered, hanged, or burned at
(04:29):
the stake, essentially eradicating them.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
So where did these Cathars begin? What did their people believe?
Most of our focus in this episode will be on
the Cathars of France, notably the city of Albi, where
the movement began. The Cathars called themselves good Christians. They
did believe in a kind of dualism based on Gnosticism.
(04:53):
They maintained that there were two, not one, but two gods,
the Good God of heaven and the evil God of
the age. They believe that the Good God was the
New Testament God who created a spiritual realm. So that
is really similar to what we were discussing on our
show on gnosticism. The Catherine's taught that this God was
totally disincarnate. He was a being of total and pure love.
(05:17):
But since love has no interest in power and material
creation is the result of power, they believe that the second,
lesser God created the material world. And you know what
I find interesting about this deb Almost every ancient religion
has a belief like this. I mean, if you look
(05:39):
at even the myth of how Rome began with the
fighting twins, or if you look at the ancient Sumerians
who talked about Enlil and Enki, don't you find that
interesting that this theme continues over and over and over.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Well, I do exactly as you're saying. You see it
in almost any world belief in some way form or another.
And we're going to talk about this in a minute.
This second god, the language they use as may have
been what their problem was, because they also said that
was satan, right, and that's basic Christianity one oh one, right,
I mean, it really is. They called this satan god
(06:17):
the usurper God or Rex Monday, meaning the King of
the World. I think this is really important to focus on.
In all major world religions today, the blame for why
there's evil in the world resides solely on us humans.
It's our fault. We screwed up God's perfect world and
(06:39):
have to pay for it. But with the Gnostics and
the Cathars, the problem of evil was blamed on this
usurper God. So to the Cathars, you've got a good
guy and a bad guy and we're like the kids
in the divorce parents are fighting over.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Interesting to think about, isn't it, Because that shifts everything.
I mean, rather than sitting in church on Sunday and
having a priest, a pastor, or a minister yelling at
you because you know you're evil in its original sin
and all of that, that changes the whole theme, thesis,
dynamic of your relationship to your higher power.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, it does. And when that shift occurs, then it
becomes this duality of thinking which extends to all members
of the group, including men and women, who were treated
fairly equally, being the women were being allowed to serve
(07:39):
as preachers and teachers. So, like the Gnostics, they rejected
blind faith and instead relied on nosis, a direct connection
and experience with God, a knowing.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And you know that the Roman Church did not like
that because if you don't need an intermediary, then what
do they have to sell you? Where are you going
to go to tithe or to pay for your indulgence?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Exactly?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Problem number one now that Cathers believe that people were
human souls, spirits of angels trapped in the material realm
of the evil God. They believed souls would repeatedly incarnate
until they achieved salvation through something called consolamentum, a kind
of baptism performed when death was near. Immediately after death,
(08:34):
when salvation was achieved, the soul would return to the
Good God. There was a connection here to Buddhism in
their belief in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Wait, Samitha, it also feels to me when I was
researching this that really we were talking almost as our
last rites and absolution death.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, it does sound very similar, except the last rites
isn't about absolving you of sin. I think with the Cathars,
I think it was more about preparing you for the
next incarnation. Oh I see, But I could be wrong
about that. Like we said, there's different groups, and there
(09:12):
wasn't a unifying organization overseeing all the different sects of
the Cathar faith. Gotcha, Okay, But that's the only branch
of Christianity I'm aware of that believed in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, me too.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I mean that must have been shocking. That would be
shocking today. We have a lot of friends who are
Christian and are very surprised that I believe in reincarnation.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Oh I bet you do. Yeah, I probably do. Too.
We just don't talk about it.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But it means that's interesting to think about, to be
that ahead of the time. We're talking a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, exactly. Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Remember from our episode a Gnosticism that the Gnostics and
then the Cathars value personal spiritual knowledge above the authority, traditions,
and teachings of organized religious institutions. Gnostics believed in the
notion of dualistic deities, one of them was uncorrupted and
good and one who was flawed and evil. They believed
that rather than us being condemned for sin, what we
(10:18):
really needed was to become enlightened. Catholicism also had its
roots in Asceticism, whose leaders set almost no rules and
fewer guidelines. So this led to the actual practices of
the group to vary over location and time. And we
don't even really know when they began, do we.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
No, we do know that the movement had grown enough
to attract the attention of Pope Innocent the Third around
eleven forty seven. The Catholic Church particularly opposed the consolimentum ritual,
and the Pope set missionaries to dissuade the practice. He
also pressed local authorities to act against the Cathars. So
(11:04):
in eleven forty five the church sent Saint Bernard, it
was like, the spokesperson for Orthodox Christianity, to preach against
these Cathar heretics. But when he got to know them,
he was actually impressed and wrote to Rome, no sermons
are more Christian than theirs, and their morals are pure.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well you know that made them mad.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, Pope Bennison probably did not like that. No backfired.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So then in twelve oh eight, the Pope's papal legate,
Pierre de Castelnoe, traveled at Toulouse to excommunicate Count Remond
the Six for being too lenient with the Cathars. Now,
this papal legate was murdered as he returned to Rome
by anti clerical radicals who had no connection to the Cathars.
(11:56):
That didn't matter. The Church had the smoking gun they
needed to art their war. Pope Innocent martyred him and
launched a twenty year crusade against the Cathars. Many, as
we've said, were killed, and the medieval inquisition that followed
eradicated the rest of them. But let's back up a
minute and explore how the Cathars reached a point that
(12:19):
the Catholic Church sought to destroy them all. Where did
these beliefs originate? What were they? Trade routes from the
Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, the Netherlands, Armenia and other
points east brought new thought to rural southern France. Certainly
they were heavily influenced by Gnosticism, but by other beliefs
(12:39):
as well, most of which were deemed heretical by Catholicism.
For example, Saint Augustine noted in the fourth century that
a group called Catharistas practiced in ways the Church saw as.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Unclue man that work against them had been going on
for a long time. And as they were on that
trade route from folks from various countries heading from east
to west, they were certainly exposed to so many different
world beliefs and cultures and ways of thinking that influenced
(13:15):
and melded in with what had probably been very early
early Catholicism. Because remember the Church, and I use that
word with the capital C. The Church hadn't been around
very long at all, three or four hundred years for
all of this stuff to still be solidifying, like the Apostles,
(13:36):
Creed and the Nicene Creed and the beliefs of the Gnostics.
I mean, all this stuff was different in trying to
sort itself out all over the globe at that point,
all over Europe in any case. So those early centuries
of what happened to the Cathars that I'm talking about
were really shrouded in mysteries. None of this began to
(13:57):
coalesce into something that drew the attention of the church
until about eleven forty three. There is a record of
a Cathart council in eleven sixty seven attended by high,
high ranking members of this organization. So there was this
(14:18):
I feel like spying to me when I was reading it,
But certainly this way of trying to figure out the church,
trying to figure out what to do with this belief
system that did not fit very nice and neatly into
what had become the Catholic box.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It must have been so upsetting to them, because according
to all the records that survived, the Cathars were very wealthy,
and we're going to talk about where this wealth came
from towards the end of the show. Some legends and
myths and mystical things connected to that, but they were
also really really well liked. I mean everyone liked them,
(14:54):
even as we said, the emissaries that the Pope's end
who eradicate them or convince other people not to join them,
were totally charmed by them. And I think all of
that says a lot about who they were as a
group of people. Now, we do need to talk about
how their relationship to Jesus was and how they viewed
(15:17):
his life and his birth. But let's take a very
quick break and we'll be right back. Hey, guys, I
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This month, I wrote all about my wedding with the
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sure to check it out at Samanthafay dot com. Okay,
let's get back to the show. Welcome back, deb Do
you want to tell us about how the Cathars viewed
(17:04):
Jesus and his connection to them.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
They saw him as extraordinarily mystical. They believed and followed
what they considered to be Jesus's true teachings. However, they
did not believe his presence on earth was a physical incarnation,
and therefore his resurrection was not real in the physical sense. Instead,
(17:30):
they believed Jesus's human form to be that of an
angel whose body was only an illusion rather than corporeal.
They also believed this to be true of the Virgin Mary.
And while Cathar's believed in reincarnation, they rejected the resurrection
of Jesus and saw the cross as a torture instrument
(17:53):
rather than the symbol of Christianity that it has become.
They believed that John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah
from the Old Testament or the same person, both of
whom were evil sent to hinder Jesus's teachings with the
false need for baptism of him and his followers.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I've never heard that point of view of Elijah and
John the Baptist.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I know, there's that famous scene where they're looking at
John the Baptist and they say, is that the prophet
Elijah come again? And a lot of people have used
that as a reference to the early Church's belief in reincarnation.
But I've never heard or read any writings that they
were mean.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
That was new information for me.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That must have been shocking to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Right, it may have just been one sect of the Carsons.
We don't write, right, I just don't know, because other
sects of the authors held a belief in monotheism, meaning
that the Christian Trinity whoop did not exist, although it
is unclear how they viewed Jesus. See, we've got a
lot of mixed messages going on here. They believe that
(19:04):
the Holy Spirit was actually a collective of angels who
had not fallen prey to Satan in his rebellion against
the Good God.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I like that idea. Do you remember being in Sunday
School trying to learn the Holy Trinity?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I was so confused by that, And to be honest,
I kind of still am because I would have some
teachers who would tell me, you know, you got God
and you got Jesus. That I understood, right, God the Father,
Jesus the Son, and then you got the Holy Spirit.
Well what's the Holy Spirit? And teachers would tell me
different things. Oh, it's the energy of Christ's love in
(19:41):
the world. Oh, it's the energy of the white dove
bringing peace to the world. Well, that dove needs to
fly a little harder around this world then, right. I
just was always so confused about what the Holy Spirit was.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Let me throw in another one to the mix, because
some theories are that the if you read the Book
of Acts, where on the day of Pentecost the Holy
Spirit comes to the people after Jesus has died and
comes into the room as a wind. The Holy Spirit
comes into the room as if a strong wind. The
(20:15):
Hebrew word for wind is rush. In that context, it
is also the word that means the divine feminine.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Oh see, doesn't that make sense if they weren't so
afraid of woman. If someone had explained it to me,
as you've got a mother God and a father God
and their son Jesus, I would have been like, yeah,
that's the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Now, I'm not saying that it's true. So I don't
want to say you emails from folks about this. I'm
just saying that as you had another perspective, but something
to give a thought to, and I would agree with you, Samantha.
Had I had another way of looking at divine femininity,
it would have been an interesting shift in consciousness. I
(20:59):
think up. Well.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I always liked Saint Patrick's teaching of the Shamrock, how it's,
you know, three separate things but all one. I loved that.
But I would look at that third little leaf of
the Shamrock and go, what are you? Are you a spirit?
Are you a rush of wind?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
What are you?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So I loved that the Cathar's taught that it was
a group of angels.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I think that's an interesting perspective. Maybe we should do
a whole other episode at some point next year on
looking at various perspectives of what is the Holy Spirit?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
That sounds great? Okay, So, for centuries before the Protestant Reformation,
Cathars did not adhere to the Catholic views concerning trans substantiation,
the Eucharist, baptism by water, purgatory, and the need for
prayers for the dead. Now that's really really big. And
(21:52):
so for any non Catholics or Christians out there, I
don't know if Protestants believe this two debths, so you'll
have to educate me. But the Catholic Church teaches that
when the Communion, the Holy Host is brought out of
its little home in the back of the altar, and
(22:14):
the priest blesses that host, that it is Jesus.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I know that that's what Catholicism believes. Most traditional mainstream
Protestant churches believe that it is symbolic, that it is
not the actual, that there is actually not that miracle,
that magical thing of it becoming Jesus's body and blood.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yes, okay, so that is just a Catholic thing, all right.
So that's a big thing that the Cathars are like, yeah, no,
we don't get that. Baptism by water. They don't believe
in that either. The Catharist did not, right, which I
mean that's a big thing because I think every variety
of Christianity believes in baptism by water.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Correct, well, they do, but there is lots of controversy
about how much water.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Oh right, a little sprinkle or a dunk in the pool. Yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
There's all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And then purgatory, which is kind of like that way station.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
That's a totally Catholic thing.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
That's a totally Catholic thing, yes, And then the need
for prayers for the dead. I know that's a Catholic
thing that I personally strongly believe in. I do think
that we should always pray for our loved ones who
have gone on and just pray that they're doing well
and having fun in heaven.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And I've gotten so attached to doing that that I'm
not really sure what the Protestant answer to that piece
of the puzzle is.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But I guess if you believed that we reincarnated instantly,
there'd be no need for purgatory and no need for
prayers for the dead because they're already back on the earth.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Oh well, that's true.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
But the baptism by water, I guess they didn't like
that because John the Baptist started that and they don't
like him.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Well, there is that, I don't know. I don't know either.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
They believed that sacred text should be studied and read
in the everyday language of the people. And think about that,
because we didn't have that. Our first Bible came out
in the what's sixteen hundreds, people didn't you know that
everyone could read? People didn't have that back then, So
that was way above their time. In fact, the Catharts
(24:22):
followed no rights as prescribed by Catholicism, except for the
rights offered to a person as death was imminent. Now,
much of the sacred Text of the Cathars contained elements
of Gnostic literature were not certain, but scholars believe that
other than the New Testament, the following were Cathar sacred works,
(24:43):
The Gospel of the Secret Supper, which is a modified
version of the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Book of
Two Principles, which possibly was written by John Lucio Bergamo,
an Italian Cathar. And the Book of Two Principles is
the only Cathart text still in existence.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I wonder if you can get a copy of there,
we know.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I'll look it up, okay.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And The Cathars were firmly opposed to killing, war and
capital punishment were condemned, which was of course rare in
medieval Europe. They were Pascatarians, meaning they only ate fish, fruit,
and vegetables. They believed fish procreated by what they called
spontaneous generation. Cheese, eggs, meat, and milk were not eaten
(25:32):
because they believed they were all the products of sexual intercourse.
The Cathars held interesting views about relationships and sexual behaviors.
Their views on procreation was, to say the least extreme.
To the Cathars, reproduction was a moral evil to be
(25:53):
avoided as it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering
in the material world. Such was the situation that a
charge of heresy leveled against a suspected cauth was usually
dismissed if the accused could show that he was legally married.
(26:16):
So I'm confused. I know me too, So six and
for procreation is bad, but sex otherwise might be okay.
As I was working on this episode and researching, thinking
of the Shakers, those lovely people from the northeast of
(26:37):
the United States in the early days of this country,
and how they were opposed to procreation, which of course
they died out they're gone.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Well because they were also opposed to sex, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I'm not quite sure about what the Cathars really thought
about sex and reproduction.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I think it sounds to me like they were okay
with sex because you're in a material body, and material
bodies are going to have their own wants and needs and.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Desires as long as you're legally married.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
But they didn't want to contribute to the material evil
God's kingdom on earth Rex Monday, so they didn't want
to add children to that.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
But didn't they know that was going to be the
end of them.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Then, I think they got a lot of converts. But
I've read other In doing research for this, I read
other things that said certain women were allowed to have
children to continue the Cathars. So it was very confusing.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Ooh, that sounds kind.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Of hand made detail.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, exactly was rare, but I could.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Have misread it or misinterpreted that. I'm not really sure
how they viewed that. I just know that they didn't
come down as hard on sex as most religions do.
I mean, gosh, even today, in a lot of Catholic
churches you can take classes on natural family planning because
they still believe that sex should be for procreation. So
(28:05):
that was a big, big switch.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
All right, let's just talk a minute more here about
this whole sex thing, and then we'll move on. You
might think that a group of people who condemned reproduction
would simply die out, like I said, but no. In fact,
their population grew to a point in southern France that
many towns Provence, for example, were almost completely populated by them.
(28:29):
I didn't know that. When Bishop Folk of Toulouse chastised
the church's knights for not pursuing the Cathars, deemed heretics
by the Church. Of course, as we said, he received
this reply from the knights, quote, we cannot. We have
been reared in their midst We have relatives among them,
(28:50):
and we see them living lives of perfection. So if
the Pope's own knights are not going to do anything
about these people who are not behaving according to Kropolicism, now.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
What Yeah, Now you got to do some pr spinning
to make the Cathars look bad. Now, As we said,
despite the fact that the Cathars stemmed from patriarchal societies
and did have a fairly narrow view of women from
Antiquity to the Middle Ages, they also were pretty liberal
concerning the place of women in the world. For example,
(29:24):
as we said, they were able to preach and teach
and administer the sacrament of the consolimentum. They saw your
spirit as being genderless, so men could reincarnate as women
and vice versa, just as the Gnostics before them did.
The Cathars assigned great importance to the role of Mary Magdalene,
(29:46):
particularly in her role in spreading Christianity. Catherine saw her
as a teacher and therefore women were qualified to be
spiritual leaders. They saw Mary Magdalene as being perhaps even
more important than the apostle. So Peter, This, of course,
was another thorn in the side of the Catholic Church.
(30:06):
We know how Peter felt about women, right.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, don't get restarted and Paul, I.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Mean really, go on. Oh that's right. It was Paul
who said all that stuff about women being quiet, not Peter.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
That's right. So the role of prefect in Catherism also
was open to women. This group required a strict and
aesthetic lifestyle, but allowed for members to live in their
own houses, although communal living was common. However, equality for
(30:37):
women had its limits, of course it did. Catharist believed
that the last incarnation one has must be as a
man in order to break the cycle of reincarnation, and
that a woman must be reincarnated as a man in
order to break that cycle. Interestingly, thel dee Garde Bingam
(31:00):
in eleven sixty three condemned the Cathars, saying that Cathars
risk eternal damnation from God.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That is interesting because she was such an advocate for
women as an anchoress for so many years, and she
finally got free of that, you know, being locked in
that room to just pray for the world. She advocated
for women's rights. Oh, well, you can't. Everyone can't be perfect, right, deb.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I guess even Hildegarde.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
All right, let's talk about their downfall and how they
were eradicated. After our last quick break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
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Speaker 2 (33:28):
Welcome back. So in eleven forty three, the movement within
the Catholic Church's hierarchy began to coalesce against the Cathars,
and eleven forty seven Pope Eugene IID sent a legate
to the Cathar district of France in order to arrest
the progress of the growing numbers. The mission failed and
(33:48):
thus began a siege against this group that lasted in
some form until at least thirteen twenty one. That's insane.
That means that generations grew up knowing nothing but this
threat and this risk to their safety. Interwoven among the
attacks against the Cathars were fighting amongst various factions of
(34:10):
the Catholic Church, and of course fighting among royalty of
several countries. As we mentioned earlier, things really came to
a head in twelve oh eight when Rome sent a
massive army to eradicate the Cathars. Now here's a little
interesting fact. The army was led by Simon de Montfort,
father of the famous crusader of the same name, who
(34:32):
also led the rebellion against King Henry the Third, and
de Montfort himself was aided by a Spanish priest named
Dominic Gusman, who would just a decade later create the
Dominican Order, And is the Dominicans in twelve thirty three,
who are the ones who started the Holy Inquisition. So
(34:53):
that should give us a better idea of what the
Cathars were facing. So first you have Simon to from Montfort,
father of the famous crusader, which means he himself was
probably a really good strategist, army type general, and you've
got him being assisted by this fairly radical, devout priest
(35:15):
who was the one who initiated the Holy Inquisition, which
we know is a terrifying time for many.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Wow, I'm still processing the fact that the Inquisition was
begun by the Dominicans. I know Dominican priests today.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
They're wonderful and peaceful.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah. I've known some very nice Dominican.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Priest Yeah, me too. I would have thought it was
started maybe by the Benedictines, because they're kind of rigid,
But I don't know it was them.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Truly at all. Cathartes, men, women, children were ripped from
their homes and their land tortured. They were drawn and quartered,
burned at the stake, hanged and murdered in other horrific ways.
The time was that their heretical beliefs were not those
of Catholicism. The Catharis were killed by soldiers, by crusaders,
(36:09):
and sometimes by their non Cathar neighbors. Conversely, there also
were occasions when their neighbors stood beside them, facing the
flames and the gallows, in solidarity with them.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Because this was an inquisition, it was a genocide of
a people. It was massacre after massacre. It also was
a time of struggles for lands and fiefdoms. Among the
royal houses of Europe. There are so many important dates
and events during these years, but here's one that stands out.
(36:45):
On Friday May thirteenth, twelve thirty nine, in the Champagne
region of France, one hundred and eighty three men and
women convicted of Catharicism were burned at the stake for heresy.
Sixty eight years later, at dawn on Friday October thirteenth,
thirteen oh seven, King Philip fourth had Jackes de Molay,
(37:07):
grand master of the Knights Templar, and scores of other
French templars arrested, and most of them were tortured and
executed horribly. So while we couldn't find any evidence of
the Knights Templars being involved in the genocide of the Cathars,
it is interesting to compare those two dates. Both were
Friday the thirteenth. By twelve forty three, all major Cathar
(37:33):
sects had fallen, except for one, the mountain citadel of
Mont Seigneur. They stood ten months of this siege before falling.
They were all fored generous compensations to give up their
beliefs and convert, and they all refused. Of course, there
is a lot of speculation about some of the Cathars escaping,
(37:55):
taking with them items more valuable than even money. They
are said to have a map.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Some say that they had hidden sacred Gnostic texts somewhere.
Other theories say that they had the Holy Grail hidden away.
Why history does seem to know is that in the
autumn of thirteen twenty one, the last known cauthor, prefect
Guillemin Billy based Belisee de Bay, was executed. Today, since
(38:25):
around the nineteen nineties, historians have been questioning whether or
not the Cathars actually existed. The French historians Monique Zerner
and Yue Brunn, for example, argue that Carthaism was born
of men in the Catholic Church and, rather than springing
from ancient Eastern thought, were part of a spiritual revival.
(38:48):
Might the panic against the Cathars developed just as the
witch hunts did at about the same time across Europe.
Since there is no clear evidence from the persecution persecuted
people themselves, is there any way to really assess what
brought on such a large scale slaughter of a group
(39:10):
of people, whoever they may have been, and just what
is heresy and does it even really exist? Or is
the controversy really about the concept of dualistic thinking. We
will probably never know. O'Brien in that La Times article
(39:31):
I mentioned earlier, comes to this conclusion. Quote. More appealing
to day, however, is the idea that the Cathars mounted
the first major rebellion against the Catholic Church. They saw
Rome as corrupt, rejected the church's hierarchy, and did not
build cathedrals, but rather worshiped outdoors. This lack of structure
(39:57):
gave women more prominence and freedom, and because they were
pacifists who repudiated all killing, they were vegetarians. There is
no dispute that in twelve oh nine, at the urging
of Pope Innocent the Third, a band of northern French
nobles rallied an army that swept into the South, where
(40:19):
they unleashed a crusade so bloody it would make Game
of Thrones look contained by comparison. This included sackings in
July twelve oh nine by an army under papal authority,
and just before the attack, which would kill as many
as twenty thousand men, women and children, the pope's man
(40:43):
on the scene, a man named Arnaud almcric, is reported
to have uttered one of history's most famous orders kill
them all. God will know his own Now.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
After the majority of the fighting was done, church leaders
began a grand inquisition in Toulouse. Suspects were rounded up,
forced to confess, and then sometimes burned at the stake.
This became the blueprint for the much larger inquisitions carried
out in the centuries to come. And because of the
Cathar's bravery through all of this and their refusal to
(41:18):
relinquish their faith, a mystique has emerged around the Cathars.
For one thing, they had considerable wealth. Since they weren't
allowed to bear arms, they hired mercenaries to work for them.
So where did this wealth come from? During the ten
month siege on Montsigour, two Kathar men escaped with actual
(41:39):
treasure loads of gold, silver, and coin that were taken
to a cave and then moved again. These men were
able to escape because there were some weak spots in
the ring of ten thousand men surrounding the base of
the mountain. But a few months later this army holding
the Cathar's hostage at the top of the mountain got
(41:59):
eased even stronger, making escape impossible. Still, four men risked
their lives to repel down the side of the mountain
right before Easter Sunday, you know, right when Lent ends
and everyone can eat, drink and be merry once more.
Why would these men risk their lives in such a
(42:20):
dramatic fashion. What were they trying to take off that mountain?
It wasn't money that had already been secreted away. So
from one of our favorite books that deb and I
had mentioned on the show a lot, it's called the
Book of English Magic, we learn of the story called
the wooden Book of Monsigor, which was discovered in the
foundations of the old Castle. They write it proves to
(42:44):
be part of a system of astrology to link past, present,
and future lives practiced by an Indian magical sect called
the Natis. But no one knows how this book ended
up in Monsigor. And here's another strange nugget we've mentioned
before on a prior show about the weird fascination the
Nazis had with many of these legends, starting with Hitler's
(43:07):
search for the Spear of Destiny. Well, Himmler was fascinated
by these legends of the Holy Grail being kept in France,
so he sent ottos Guerrenzi, Hitler's personal pilot to search
for it. Otto sent a telegram that simply read Eureka.
After his trip to Monsigor, he was then ordered by
Himmler to fly back over Montsagour and Skywright a Celtic
(43:31):
cross over the area. There are even stories about Germany
sending two U boats shortly after this to the North
Pole carrying seven bronze boxes of artifacts, which were then
secretly stored there. If you're thinking, okay, Smantha, hold on,
we know you love all the weird Nazi colt shit
(43:52):
in World War two, but that's a bit too far. Well,
hold on. Those two U boats surfaced in Argentina and
the crews were captured by Americans and interrogated for months.
Shortly after the war ended, we then sent a four
star general and forty thousand troops to the North Pole,
(44:13):
supposedly to drill for oil. What do you make of that?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Deb Oh? I can love a good conspiracy theory and
a skinny minute, me.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Too, But I mean, really think about it. According to
letters and people's diaries and things like that, we do
have pretty good reports that these two men were able
to slip through some of the strongholds and bring out
(44:43):
these treasures that were actual treasures, were physical things of
gold and silver and money and coins. The rumors have
persisted and have been written about for centuries that later on.
And I find the timing interesting because it means that
they were really thinking about this and planning it, like,
you know, first, let's get the money out, Let's get
the treasure out, because if we go down, we don't
(45:04):
want them to get the money. So you guys go
hide that.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
But if they did have something like secret books or
the Holy Grail, that they would have wanted to hold
on to as much as they could and made sure
it was really safely out. And so they would have
picked a weekend like that first time when lent is over,
forty days of you know, not being able to eat
what you want and all that stuff. Even the soldiers
(45:32):
who were guarding the mountain would have been probably drunk
that night, right, and so that would have been a
good time to repel down that mountain and smuggle this
thing away. What was that?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, what did they get out of there? I mean,
was it a book or whatever? And then of course
the whole World War two thing and the Holy Grail story.
People have listened to me this podcast for a while
now that one of the things that I often say
is that when I do, I want to take a
piece of paper and a pen with me because I
got questions. And on my list of questions, one of
(46:06):
the top questions is, well, actually two questions, why is
the Holy Grail? And two where is it? I really
would love to know that enduring legend and why it
is so important to so many people. Why does it
speak to us in so many ways? And we'll never know.
(46:27):
It never crossed my mind as I was working on
this that I didn't believe in the Cauthars. I firmly
believe they existed, and there's all sorts of pieces of
evidence that they did. But what we do know is
that those legends about them continue to live on today
(46:47):
in the stories of the troubadours and the street musicians,
the jugglers, the storytellers and more. And perhaps there's a
weaving of their story with that of the Knight's Templar,
and thus with the story of Mary Magdalene that might
not be so far fetched. At least that's the possibility
(47:09):
presented to us in books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail,
and might it be that the magician tells us truths
from the cauthars that are hidden in plain sight something
to ponder.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, help me ponder that. You mean the magician card
from the tureau.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I mean two things with that. One, yes, the magician
card interrow, and two just the magician as a symbol
in general. Think back to those days of when it
was not safe to hold a belief in public, not
just with the cauthars, but with other beliefs as well,
if you differed from the mainstream of your township or
(47:50):
your community or village, or your country or the church,
and so you had to find other ways of finding
folks who might believe as you do, are finding ways
of hiding and protecting the knowledge that you have. And
so one of the things that happened was all of
this was done in plain sight and hidden under the
(48:12):
noses of folks who probably would have executed you had
you known. And so that's the street vendors and the
jugglers and the storytellers and the magicians and so forth
on the streets.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Okay, well, that's making me think about how magicians stock
in trade is illusion. I have a new thought now
that just came to me if the Cathars were not
into procreation, and they believed that everything material was evil,
so they looked at Jesus's they believed he was real,
(48:46):
but he thought he was like a spirit, almost an illusion,
that people were seeing and interacting with right or an
angel or an angel right exactly, And that the reason
why he was able to preach and teach love and
perform miracles is because he had come directly from this
good God. He was not from the lesser, mean God.
(49:07):
So why then would they care about the Holy Grail.
They wouldn't have any belief in the transmutation of his
body into the blood, the wine, or the host, so
it wouldn't be a cop And would they really believe
if Mary Magdalene had his child? Would they believe that
(49:30):
was a good thing if they were against procreation.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
You do know that one of the most pervasive legends
of the story of Mary Magdalene's life is that she
spent her last years in the south of France. Yes,
and that her daughter Sarah became known as Sarah Colly
or the Black Madonna. Even though they made the cow
(49:55):
thirst by the time we see them a thousand years later,
are opposed to procreation and so forth. That is not
to preclude the idea that they don't also respect a
lot about how and what this woman did and that
she in fact was the grail that carried on the
work of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
No, I completely understand that, but do you see where
I'm confused thinking about how it does contradict with their beliefs.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
I think that a lot of belief systems have pieces
of their beliefs that contradict other parts. I don't disagree
with you in any way. I just think that's one
of the things that we do today and historically too,
but certainly today, is that we think, well, there's one
way in one set of beliefs, and there's no variation
(50:46):
from that, and that if folks are different than that,
then we got a problem. And that isn't necessarily true.
That's why we have so many different Christian denominations. I mean,
think about the differing areas of Catholicism. Even within the
Catholic Church, there are different kinds of Catholics. And that
(51:10):
is certainly true in the Protestant denominations, where you've got
Southern Baptist and Northern Baptist and Evangelical. Because everybody sees
the puzzle in a slightly different.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Way, and that's okay. But I have one more thing
to add before we wrap up, and I might be
struck by lightning as soon as I say it. So
if I drop off, come check on me. Okay, What
if the Holy Grail is something negative that they're protecting?
Speaker 1 (51:43):
That thought has never crossed my mind.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
It's never crossed my mind either till just now, because
I was just thinking, if they look at procreation as
a product of the evil God, would they have looked
at Mary Magdalene as like Rosemary's baby?
Speaker 1 (52:00):
I don't think they saw. Well, I'm putting words in
Cauthorae's mouths that I don't know the truth about. But
I wonder if their perspective on the history of how
they perceived their version of Christianity became different over time
for some other reason because they respected Jesus, did they
(52:20):
not also still respect the Virgin Mary perhaps? And Mary
Magdalene perhaps, and Apostles. We don't know their take on
all those guys, No, we know we don't, And we
don't also know how much access they had to some
of this still existent above ground, not hidden away, not
(52:43):
a gnostic text we don't know that either.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
No, there's a lot we don't know, that's right, But
there's a lot that we have been able to at
least shed light on and make people think. And that's
really why we love to do these shows.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
We love rabbit holes, y'all.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
Yeah, just give us something, just a new way to
think about how we encounter and engage with religions and
faiths in our belief system. It's absolutely fascinating to me.
And I did look up that book, The Two Principles.
It is on noses dot org, the whole thing. You
can read it, but I couldn't find a print copy.
Oh okay, you can read it online.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
Thank you. This has been great and we hope our
listeners have enjoyed it. Remember to check us out on
Facebook Psychic Teachers, and you can also reach out to
us Psychic Teachers at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed
this episode, we'd really appreciate you showing your love and
support by sharing it with a friend or taking a
minute in your day to leave us a review on
(53:46):
Apple or Spotify. We hope you have a great week. Remember,
as always, to be the light for yourself and others.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Take care everyone.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Thank you for listening to Psychic Teachers, your podcast for seekers,
light workers, mystics, and magical thinkers. If you like the show,
please tell a friend or leave us a review wherever
you listen to your podcast. For more information, check out
our Facebook page Psychic Teachers, or our websites Samantha Fay
dot com and Deb Bowen dot com. Thanks for listening
and have a great week.
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