Lost Teachings of the Cathars Read online

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  The Lost Sayings Of Jesus: Teachings from Ancient Christian,

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  A Dictionary of Gnosticism

  The Gnostics: History Tradition Scriptures Influence

  The Secret History of the Gnostics

  The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Eroticism and Spirituality, 1-6 (editor)

  ANDREW PHILLIP SMITH

  THE LOST

  TEACHINGS OF THE

  CATHARS

  THEIR BELIEFS

  & PRACTICES

  Contents

  Foreword by Sean Martin

  Introduction

  Chapter 1The History of Crime: The Albigensian Crusade

  Chapter 2Hammer of the Heretics: The Inquisition

  Chapter 3A Good God, an Evil God: Dualism

  Chapter 4The Fall of the Angels: The Cathar Myth

  Chapter 5The Soul, the Spirit and Mary Magdalene: Other Cathar Beliefs

  Chapter 6A Baptism of Fire and Spirit: The Consolamentum and Other Practices

  Chapter 7‘When I Was a Horse, One Night I Lost My Shoe’: The Transmigration of Souls

  Chapter 8Thermopylae of the Gnostic Spirit: Montségur

  Chapter 9The Notary and the Murderer: The Autier Revival and Bélibaste, the Last Perfect of the Languedoc

  Chapter 10Secret Origins

  Chapter 11Surviving the Apocalypse

  Chapter 12Forty-One Cathar Bishops: The Modern Revival

  Chapter 13Otto Rahn: The Fate of the Holy Grail

  Chapter 14Arthur Guirdham and Modern Cathar Reincarnation

  Afterword

  Notes

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  For Lala Ashford-Brown, who unknowingly received a dream consolamentum in a French field in 1973

  ******

  Foreword

  In an apocryphal saying, Jesus said, ‘The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but build no house upon it.’ Logion 42 in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas echoes this: ‘Become passers-by.’ The Cathars, I am sure, would have been sympathetic to such a view. They left no churches or cathedrals of their own and, aside from a few crude sketches and graffiti, no art to attest to their presence. They did not, as a rule, write books, either. Consequently, we only have one major Cathar text, The Book of the Two Principles. (They were known to have also used a Bogomil tract, The Secret Supper, while a third book, The Vision of Isaiah, was used by the Cathars and the Bogomils, but actually predated both.)

  What we know about the Cathars comes mainly from Inquisitors and crusade apologists. If the world is a bridge, then the Cathars crossed over it leaving very little behind. In the centuries since, the void has been filled by historians with pronounced romantic overtones, conspiracy theorists, airport bestsellers, fervent Languedocian nationalists, singular English psychiatrists and German archaeologists with highly questionable politics. All of which has obscured who the Cathars were, what they did, and why they stood in opposition to the teachings of the mediaeval Church. It is an opposition to institutionalised power and lies, and a quest for purity; a message every bit as relevant today as it was in 1200.

  By focussing on their beliefs more than their history, The Lost Teachings of the Cathars restores what we could term ‘day-to-day’ Catharism to visibility. Aside from the drama, tragedy and atrocity of the Albigensian Crusade that almost wiped the faith out in the Languedoc in the thirteenth century, Andrew Phillip Smith draws our attention to the workaday side of Catharism: the melioramentum (ritual greeting) and apparellamentum (monthly meeting); the need for a second consolamentum, if the Perfect bestowing the first one had ‘made a bad end’ (and there were quite a few of those).

  This book also presents the Cathar faith with all its contradictions and foibles, not shying away from its confusions, obscurities and borrowings from folk magic traditions. The story of the Cathars is replete with all of these, from the mysteries of their origins (still unsolved); the spiritual lineage they claimed, stretching all the way back to the time of Christ (doubtful); to their hostility to marriage, while at the same time believing that Jesus and the Magdalene were married (an ancient belief of unknown provenance, but seemingly widespread in the Cathar homeland of the Languedoc). Then there is the issue of reincarnation, to which some Cathars adhered, while others did not. The whole issue of Cathar unity – both doctrinal and political – is still being debated by scholars, with some going so far as to suggest that it was not a coherent movement, more a collection of freethinkers, cranks and rabble-rousing preachers, with a fair smattering of village cunning women. By its very nature, however, Catharism could not and would not be centralised or organized like the ‘Church of Satan’ (as they dubbed Rome). A patchwork of beliefs and practices should be expected, even celebrated. The Gnostics of antiquity were derided by the emerging church for producing ‘a new gospel every day’, unaware that such was a strength of Gnosticism, rather than a weakness.

  Since the posthumous burning of Italian Cathars at Chieri in 1412 – a date that marks the very end of the faith in western
Europe – the movement’s ideas went underground. But with their emphasis on nonviolence, the equality of women, and their reputation for sanctity in the face of a corrupt and rapacious church, perhaps it would only be a matter of time before the ‘lost teachings’ found a new and receptive audience. Enter Languedocian nationalists, Rosicrucians, writers influenced by Buddhism and Druidry, and the German archaeologist Otto Rahn, allegedly the role model for Indiana Jones, among others. Amid such a thicket of heretical theology, free thinking, folk belief, to say nothing of their modern (sometimes wilful) reinterpretations, The Lost Teachings of the Cathars conveys the lingering and powerful appeal of the movement.

  Arthur Guirdham is perhaps the most interesting modern case of spiritual seeker drawn to the Great Heresy. Guirdham, an English psychiatrist, believed that he himself, and a number of his patients, were reincarnated Cathars. The subsequent books he produced are a fascinating mixture of case-study and spiritual autobiography, with varying degrees of fabrication, wish-fulfilment and self-deception. At the same time, it’s difficult to dismiss Guirdham. He was, after all, a sincere man, and one cannot fault him for being attracted, like so many, to the revolutionary – yet simple – message of a movement the church feared like no other.

  Perhaps this is as it should be. Just as the Cathars left very few tangible traces of their time on earth, they left very little proof of having returned to it in the bodies of Guirdham and his circle of patients. Perhaps to be a truly Good Christian – as the Cathars called themselves – really was to pass over the bridge of this world, building no house, leaving no memorial, other than the memory of goodness, and a determination to stand in eternal opposition to the corrupt powers of this world.

  Perhaps that was the real treasure smuggled out of Montségur. It is a treasure that lives still, and is one of which today we still have the profoundest need.

  Sean Martin, 2015

  Sean Martin is a writer based in Edinburgh. Among his books are The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics, The Cathars: The Rise & Fall of the Great Heresy, and The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order.

  Introduction

  I first heard of the Cathars in the late 1980s from a friend of mine who had tramped around Europe during his wild youth.1 He told me about a trip to the Languedoc in the south of France, bringing to life the fairytale castle of Carcassonne, but most memorably he told me about a strange experience he had in the area. He had slept out in a field – this was the 1970s! – and woke suddenly to a vision of a hand thrusting a black book towards him. Although he later heard a little about the Cathars and thought them fascinating he never found out what the book was. Recently, I was able to tell him that it was probably the Gospel of John, the book that was placed on the head of the initiate during the ritual, known as the consolamentum, that was at the heart of the Cathar faith.2

  It took me a long time to become interested in the Cathars. They were somehow off the beaten track of the esoteric material I was interested in. It was only during my research for The Secret History of the Gnostics, a new edition of which is the companion volume to this book, that they really fired my enthusiasm.

  In 1209 the pope launched the Albigensian Crusade specifically to attack the Cathars of southern France and their sympathizers. In 1231 the Inquisition was founded in order to root out and eliminate the Cathars and other heretics. These were such appalling developments that they have eclipsed the teachings and practices of the Cathars. If the teachings of the Cathars are even mentioned, they are something to be over and done with so that the genuine and dreadful horrors of the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition can be sifted through. But those teachings and practices were the reason that the Cathars endured the atrocities and why they preferred persecution and execution over recanting their faith. Victims of the medieval Church and politics, the Cathars are also great victims of history, known not for what they did and believed but for the violence that was done to them.

  Yet it has always been their teachings that have fascinated me. As a researcher into Gnosticism I knew that the Cathars are often classified as Gnostics. But a multitude of questions arise out of that statement. How could ancient Gnosticism, suppressed and squeezed out by the dominance of Catholic Christianity, have re-emerged in medieval France? How Gnostic were Cathar ideas? Was Catharism completely exterminated or did it survive beyond the 14th century? How close to the ancient Cathars, in letter or spirit, are modern neo-Cathar groups?3 What did they really believe?4 What did they actually do?

  Ongoing interest in the Cathars is still very much wedded to the Languedoc region. For decades it has been promoted as ‘Cathar country’, with attendant road signs pointing out significant sites. This is a double-edged sword, making the medieval sites available to casual visitors, but somewhat cheapening the experience, which blends natural beauty with the foreboding atmosphere of ruined hilltop castles. The significance of some locations is brought home through knowledge of the history of suffering in these places; others say that the psychic residue of the atrocities performed by the crusaders and the Inquisition needs no amplification.

  The initiated inner circle of the movement were known as Perfects, and those individuals followed a strict dietary code. They were almost vegan, but, in accordance with medieval conceptions, ate fish, which were believed not to breed sexually, and hence to be in a separate category to beasts and birds. Today, the restaurants of the Aude region are littered with special ‘Cathar’ menus, most of which contain large amounts of excellent beef. In Carcassonne citadel there is a restaurant named Le Chaudron Cathare – the Cathar Cauldron – that conjures up the image of a cauldron full of burning oil rather than cassoulet. During the sieges of the Albigensian Crusade starvation and dysentery were commonplace. In the decades that followed, Cathars sometimes chose the endura, a fast to the death undertaken by newly initiated Perfects, which allowed them to die in good standing – facing death by starvation being preferable to undergoing the attentions of the Inquisition. Like other tourists, when I visited I tucked into my beefsteak, monkfish, cassoulet, goat’s cheese, duck, gazpacho and crème brulée.

  Most of what we know about the beliefs of the Cathars is what has been preserved by their enemies – particularly the Inquisition, which was formed to combat and eliminate their heresy. Yet the following extract from Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, 13th-century Catholic author of The History of the Albigensian Crusade, paradoxically preserves an accurate epitome of their beliefs. It is a pattern we should get used to:

  ‘It should first be understood that the heretics postulated two creators, to wit, one of the invisible world, whom they called the benign God, and one of the visible world, or the malign God. They ascribed the New Testament to the benign God, the Old Testament to the malign one; the latter book they wholly rejected, except for a few passages which have found their way into the New Testament and which on this account they esteemed worthy of acceptance.’5

  Although Catharism is not a story of brilliant individuals, but of a largely decentralized movement that depended intensely on personal responsibility, some names are resonant even though their histories are lightly sketched: Guilhabert de Castres, Esclarmonde de Foix, Peter Autier and William Bélibaste.

  The chapters in this book fall into three sections. Chapters 1– 9 look at the history of the Cathars in the Middle Ages and what we know of their beliefs and practices. In these chapters most of what I have written draws upon the same sources that historians use. My focus, however, is not on the politics or social history of the medieval world, the social consequences of authority or the nature of heresy, but on the teaching of the historical Cathars as a form of Gnosticism – a spiritual path to which I am to some extent sympathetic.

  Chapters 12– 14 look at what people in recent centuries – esotericists, occultists, modern Gnostics and reincarnationists – have made of the Cathars. While I would hope that my scholarship in this section is sound, these people’s beliefs are often rooted in misinterp
retations of those of the original Cathars. Nevertheless, I find the range of responses fascinating, and I also have a lot of sympathy with those involved. I attempt simultaneously to understand the meaningfulness of, for example, connecting the Cathars with the Holy Grail, while acknowledging that there are many problems with the idea. I am at heart a romantic but critical thinking is very important to me too.

  Chapters 10 and 11 form a bridge between the other two sections; these chapters discuss the origins of the Cathars and how they may have survived beyond the 14th century. When I discuss their survival I examine arguments that the Cathars – or, more often, their beliefs – have endured in esoteric form.

  It has become a cliché to declare that history is written by the winners, yet this is particularly true for the story of the Cathars. All the historical accounts come from hostile sources, written by adherents of the Catholic Church. The most dedicated enemy of the Cathars was the Inquisition, which was stringent in its accuracy and attention to detail when recording its interrogations with heretics. Its bureaucratic methods may on the surface resemble modern standards of due process, but in the assumption of guilt and its belief that the accused were evil heretics, the entire edifice resembles the KGB or Stasi rather than the relative fairness of the systems of justice in modern Western democracy. The Inquisition used scribes, thus we have near-verbatim transcriptions of interviews with the accused. Obviously the subjects’ statements are likely to be distorted by fear, threats and (in later years) actual physical torture, but in the Inquisition’s records we do at least hear something of the other side of the story – and a very human side at that – even though it has been preserved by the Catholic Church.

  P. D. Ouspensky, esoteric writer and pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff, wrote that there are two histories:

  ‘One history passes by in full view and, strictly speaking, is the history of crime, for if there were no crimes there would be no history. All the most important turning-points and stages of this history are marked by crimes: murders, acts of violence, robberies, wars, rebellions, massacres, tortures, executions ... This is one history, the history which everybody knows, the history which is taught in schools. The other is the history which is known to very few.’6