There is a real, existing mountain in the south of France which is rumored to house the Holy Grail...

There is a real, existing mountain in the south of France which is  rumored to house the Holy Grail. In fact, local legend says that the Grail has always been there, ever since a dove from Heaven descended upon the mountain, split it open with its beak, and dropped the Grail inside. This is the mountain of Montsegur, which was the last Cathari stronghold defeated by the Albigensian Crusade. (This was the only crusade waged by Christiandom against people who were Christians themselves.) The term “Cathar” was a catch-all term used by the Catholic Church for the numerous Gnostic Christian cults that proliferated across the Languedoc region of France during the Middle Ages. As they grew in numbers, they gradually became a threat to orthodox Christianity. Finally, in 1208, the Pope declared war on any Cathar who would not immediately repent and convert to the True Faith. Most of the Cathars held to their convictions and many of the local townspeople protected them from the crusading soldiers, for the Cathars were seen by the general public to be eccentric but essentially good and moral people. Even the famous crusaders, the Knights Templar, refused to fight in this battle, and some say they actually assisted the Cathars secretly. The term “Cathari” means “the Pure Ones”, as so they were also called Albigensians, purity being traditionally associated with the color white. Finally, the enemy was cornered, holed up in the mountain fortress of Montsegur, which eventually capitulated on March 1, 1244. The Cathars were immediately put to death. The leader of the Crusades, Simon de Montfort, issued the now famous order, “Kill them all. God will know His own.” Thus, the Albigensian Crusade has been called the first genocide in history. But the night before Montsegur fell, a group of Cathar knights disappeared over the walls with the so-called Cathar treasure of Holy Grail, which they deposited, according to rumor, inside one of the many caves in Montsegur.

Now fast forward to WWII, in which France is occupied by the Nazis, and a young German author, researcher and S.S. Lt. named Otto Rahn is sent by the Nazis to Southern France to look for the Holy Grail, which many in the Nazi hierarchy are eager to possess. The Nazis, it will be recalled, also believed whole-heartedly in the theory of the Hollow Earth, and sent expeditions down to Antarctica looking for the entrance. Furthermore, the Nazis had great admiration for the Cathars, especially their disciplined lifestyle, vegetarian diet, and sophisticated Gnostic theology. In fact, there were elements within the Nazi hierarchy who were hoping to resurrect the Cathar religion. So it was only natural that Otto Rahn would go looking for the Holy Grail at the place where the Cathars were said to have left it - Montsegur. He also knew that in the Grail romances of the Middle Ages, the Grail is said to reside in a castle at the top of Mount Salvat, which Rahn believed to be the same as Montsegur. So he stayed for a number of years, off and on between 1928 and 1931, exploring the caves of Montsegur and the tunnels of the surrounding Languedoc, even the village of Rennes-le-Chateau.

The information comes from a remarkable book by Col. Howard Buechner called Emerald Cup - Ark of Gold: The Quest of S.S. Lt. Otto Rahn of the Third Reich. According to Buechner, Otto Rahn did discover something in the caves around Montsegur, just as Parzival had discovered the Holy Grail in a cave near Montsalvat. Buechner says that Rahn found that the landscape paralleled exactly that of Mount Salvat in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, and writes that:

The grotto and certain other rock formations in the story bear the same names as those in a massive cave near Montsegur.

It was the clues in this book which, according to Buechner, led him to make his first awesome discovery. Writes Buechner:

 He explored the grottoes of an area known as Sabarthez, notably the grottoes of Ornolac and the massive cavern of Lombrives. Here he found a huge chamber which was known to the local mountain people as the ‘Cathedral’ because it had served as a meeting place for the ancient Cathars. In the main hall was a great stalagmite known as the ‘Tomb of Hercules.’ In a third grotto, that of Fontenet, was a stalagmite which was white as snow. It was called the ‘Altar’… Deep within the grottoes of the Sabarthez he found chambers in which the walls were covered with characteristic symbols of the Knights Templar, side by side with the well-known emblems of the Cathars… One very interesting image which had been carved into the stone wall of a grotto was clearly a drawing of a lance. This depiction immediately suggested the bleeding lance which appears over and over again in Arthurian legends, and which is, of course, the Holy Lance which pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion.

Rahn must have discovered something which caused him to espouse a strange theory. He came to the conclusion that the Emerald Cup was only one Holy Grail, while in fact there was another… The second Grail, according to Rahn, was a Stone, or more specifically, a collection of stone tablets… on which was written the wisdom of the ages or the ultimate truth, but in a language that no one could decipher (the mountain covered with symbols?) …In ancient times, the word ‘Gorr’ meant ‘Precious Stone’, and ‘Al’ meant ‘a splinter’ or ‘stylus’ with which to write. Hence came the contraction to Gorral or Graal, meaning Precious Engraved Stone.

Sadly, according to Buechner, Rahn was not destined to discover his first Grail, the Emerald Cup. He died under mysterious circumstances before he was able to, some say with the complicity of the Nazi hierarchy. To replace him they sent the swashbuckling Otto Skorzensky, “Chief of Germany’s Special Troops”, who allegedly found the Grail with little difficulty on March 16, a day sacred to the Cathars. Buechner relates the story in which “the local descendants of the Cathars” happened to be on top of the mountain celebrating some mystical rite when the S.S. helicopter came down to scoop up Otto Skorzensky and his treasure.

At exactly high noon on March 16, 1944, a small German aircraft appeared. In flew over Montsegur several times, dipping its wings it salute. Then it used skywriting equipment and formed a huge Celtic cross in the sky. The Celtic Cross was a sacred emblem of the Cathars.

 The entirety of the treasure actually consisted of several things, including: “Items which were believed to have come from the Temple of Solomon which included the gold plates and fragments of wood which had once made up the Ark of Moses… Twelve stone tablets bearing pre-Runic inscriptions, which none of the experts were able to read… and a beautiful silvery cup with an emerald-like base made of what appeared to be jasper. Three gold plaques on the Cup were inscribed with cuneiform script in an ancient language.” Much of this treasure, he writes, was, “buried deep beneath the castle wall of Heinrich Himmler’s Grail fortress, Wewelsburg…. According to persistent rumors, at least part of the treasure was sent to the ‘Externsteine’, where it was sealed off in one of the many grottoes which pock-mark the great rock formation”

 As to what happened to the Grail afterwards, Buechner relates that after a time spent at Wewelsburg in which it “is believed to have been exhibited to Himmler’s innermost circle of senior Knights of the Holy Lance on several occasions”, the cup was then removed, for safety reasons, and “was then carried by submarine (U-530) to Antarctica where it found repose in a cave of ice in the Muhlig Hoffman mountains.” This cave thereafter became known as “the Emerald Cave.” And supposedly this cave lead into a secret tunnel that went all the way down into the inner Earth. A stone obelisk about one meter high and “made of polished black basalt” was placed at the entrance to this cave and bore the inscription: “There are truly more things in heaven and ‘in’ Earth than man has dreamt. (Beyond this point is Agartha)” This was prepared by Professor Karl Haushofer. Inside this obelisk was supposed to be placed the Emerald Cup itself. But instead Haushofer wrote a note onto a piece of parchment detailing the actual location of the Cup, and put that inside the obelisk instead. Perhaps the Cup itself was actually placed somewhere amongst the kingdoms of the Earth’s interior.