The Seal
ADRIANA KOULIAS was born in Brazil and
migrated to Australia with her family when she was nine years old. She has a
passion for Philosophy, History and Esoteric Science, and lectures internationally
on these topics.
Also by Adriana Koulias:
Temple of the Grail
The Sixth Key
Fifth Gospel
– A Novel
THE
SEAL
ADRIANA KOULIAS
First edition 2006,
Second edition 2007, Third Edition (ebook 2008) in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia.
Fourth Edition published by Zuriel Press 2012.
Copyright © Adriana Koulias 2006.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the Zuriel Press.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Koulias, Adriana. The seal.
ISBN 978-0-9874620-1-5
11 The Pope and the Grandmaster
16
One Man's Funeral is Another Man's Lure
18
Light
in Dakness, Word in Silence
31 The Pope and
Charles of Valois
I dedicate this book to the great teachers Zarathustra, Manes,
Buddha, Scythianos, Christian Rosencreutz, Rudolf Steiner, and all those who
have shown humanity how to look at the world with the eyes of the spirit. And
to Etienne, wherever he may be now, for his inspiration.
Anyone who views life other than as an
illusion that consumes itself is still entangled in life. Life should not be a
novel given to us, but one written by us.
Novalis
In order for the word of the spirit to penetrate the flesh of man,
man must first be shaken to his depths by the great upheavals of history,
then
eternal truth bursts forth like a stream of light.
Eduard Shuré
Alphonse: Templar
scribe
Andrew of
Scotland: Templar knight
Aubert: Norman
mercenary
Ayme d’Oselier: Marshal
of the Order
Bartholomew: Commander
of Tomar
Charles of Valois:
Count of Romagne, Emperor Pretender to Constantinople and brother of Philip of
France
Delgado: Catalan
mercenary
Enguerrand de
Marigny: Royal Chamberlain, Co-adjutor and Rector of the Kingdom of France
Etienne de
Congost: Seneschal of the Templar Order and deputy to Jacques de Molay
Geoffrey de
Charney: Preceptor of Normandy
Gideon: Norman
mercenary
Gilles Aicelin: Archbishop
of Narbonne
Guillaume de
Baufet: Bishop of Paris, Julian’s guardian
Guillaume de
Nogaret: Royal lawyer, Secretary General and Keeper of the Royal Seals of the
Kingdom of France
Guillaume de
Plaisians: Counsellor and lawyer for the French Crown, de Nogaret’s aide and
protégé
Hugues de Pairaud
Visitor of the Order in France, head of the Temple bank
Iterius: Egyptian
sergeant of the Order; astrologer to the King of France
The wind comes
from the mountains today. It whistles and moans over the bay and enters the
house of the heart, and sings. It echoes the inevitable, the irreversible.
It speaks of
secrets.
There are always
secrets . . . locked in the resin of forgotten and distorted things, buried in
the silt of a thousand years, encrusted, lifeless in the substratum. These are
the secrets of the mountain, of the dreamless sleep of the will of nature. But
the secrets of the will of men lie hidden beneath the veil of Isis and they are
created in the form of surfaces, each more revealing than a fossil, more
brilliant than a diamond. To lift the veil, however, is to know both Paradise
and the Abyss, the child in the throat of a God and in the Beast.
Once you stretch
forth your hand, once you trace the signs in the air, all things are set into
motion and there is no turning back.
THE FIRST DAY
Therein lies a
tale which
I must
needs tell thee.
The Völsunga Saga, chapter XIII
Lockenhaus, July 2006
The old woman
said that clouds were moving in from the north bringing rain to dust the pollen
from the lime trees. Until then it would remain hot.
Her shop door
was open, from inside the smell of dust, mothballs, ashes and memories ventured
out to mingle with the breeze-borne scent of sunburnt flowers and warm grass.
She was now very
old and given to sitting in the shade of the portal outside her shop to watch,
with an indolent eye, the parade of tourists as they walked the flinted path to
the castle. Now and again one would pause to gaze at the little paper¬weights
in the shape of suits of armour with helmets that stapled paper, while another
would handle the time-dulled key rings, fridge magnets, assorted crosses,
little crystal cups and grail-like pewter mugs emblazoned with the red cross.
Day after day
they came and went, a never-ceasing number, preoccupied with their ritual of
inspection, herding past the maps, stencilled wooden boxes, baskets and
tablecloths, buying
this
and that, flicking through
ancient postcards and age-worn books piled up like obelisks on the floor.
‘Beauseant! ’
she
would yell at them when she felt like it, and then she
would raise her head with an arm extended to mimic a gravity-laden archangel.
The tourists would pause and smile, thinking her a sideshow for their
amusement.
Sometimes when
she had their attention, she would tell the story of the Templars of
Lockenhaus, the castle beyond her little shop. She would tell them of Philip
the Fair and Pope Clement V who together brought down the most valiant Order in
the known world. When she spoke thus she seemed to mislay her ritual of patient
disillusionment, her eyes would lose themselves in the distance of things and
she would smile with a knowing, no longer an old woman.
No one guessed,
however, that she was the keeper of secrets.
Not the
government officials who ran the castle, not the caretakers, not even the
residents of the little village, with its polite square bordered by flowers
where stood the steep church and the school. How could anyone have known that
this frail old woman kept the memory of this place stored up and sealed in her
heart like a box full of wonders? That she knew the meaning of the strange
symbols carved into the walls of the castle? That she knew the exact location
of the escape hatch in the well, or the history of the blood hall where the last
battle between the great knights of the Temple and its foes took place?
This woman knew
the accurate chronology of the families that had owned the great ‘Bourg’, and
what lay behind the symbolic devices on each shield that hung in the round room
of stone. She knew and so she smiled when tourists, scholars and professors,
doctors of this or that, came to Lockenhaus with their varied opinions.
No one asked
her, and she in turn told no one. You see
,
she was
waiting for me.
I met her on a
Friday in late July. I had been staying at the hotel adjoining the castle and
was paused browsing in her shop for a postcard to send to my family. This day
she was not sitting outside her shop but stood staring at me from behind the
counter. She wore a blue dress slightly torn at the collar and an intense
taciturn expression.
‘Are you a
musician?’ she asked. ‘Come to play at the concerts?’
I told her that
I was writing a book about the knights Templar and that the castle interested
me.
This didn’t seem
to impress her. ‘The knights interest everyone. I suppose you are writing
nonsense. That is all that is ever written about them these days.’
I told her that
I hoped to write the truth.