Ariadne thread of rennes!
During my testing pilgrimage I tried to clear a path with a sword ...
When you set out on your quest for the truth about the Rennes-le-Château Affair be warned - you will face a long and arduous journey. To undertake the quest is to find oneself deep within a jungle no map had ever charted—the inextricable vegetation described by the poet in Le Serpent Rouge is not just botanical but epistemological: you will met with a tangle of assumptions, biases, half-truths, and forgotten knowledge. Every step forward requires not just endurance, but discernment. Clearing the path with a sword is not just an allusion to a physical steel cutting edge, but also the sharpened blade of inquiry—discipline honed by skepticism, precision, and courage. With the sword hack through layers of overgrowth—clearing a path where none existed, revealing patterns in the chaos and light in the underbrush. This is not only a journey over mountains or across deserts, but through the thicket of one’s own unknowing, where every bramble is a question, every root a paradox, and every clearing a hard-won insight. Geography thus becomes epistemology. The map you make only in retrospect is traced in sweat and insight. This jungle does not yield easily—but in the act of forging a way through it, you, the traveler, becomes something new: a thinker, a cartographer of the unseen in the mystery of the Affair of the Two Rennes!.
Thus your quest will demand courage, discipline, dedication — and imagination. It will be a moral and spiritual pilgrimage through history, archaeology, esoterica, theology, palaeography, manuscript tradition, mathematics, puns and poetry. The harder the intellectual and physical challenges you face, the more you become an initiated researcher. Both physical harsh terrain and tangled mental thickets you encounter will consist of those layered riddles, deliberate traps and misleading landmarks that can make a route seem impassable. The riddles and puzzles will overwhelm & trap you until your route is virtually impassable like a fortress that has foiled one invader after another over hundreds of centuries! You will need resilience and clear thinking to disentangle it.
Clear your two paths: — build an internal map from visual markers (landmarks, tracks, hills) — and an intellectual map — decode puns, phonetic jokes and deliberate wordplay. Wordplay is central to the Rennes Affair; it forces you beyond literal readings to search for the hidden meanings. Break each clue into components, consider multiple interpretations, and use recurring themes as contextual keys. Keep a methodical record of leads, alternatives and dead ends. Treat the Parchments as your Ariadne thread — the red line that lets you trace and retrace your steps. Assemble puzzle pieces logically, test hypotheses, backtrack where necessary, and log every avenue so false trails are exposed and discarded. Adopt a “science of deciphering”: a disciplined, symbolic method that moves you from ignorance to illumination. You will soon discover that you prefer puzzle-solving to blind trial-and-error — puzzle solving seeks all plausible solutions, while trial-and-error often assumes a single right answer and can miss the 'big-picture'.
If you persevere, the poet promises you will reach the sepulchre of Sleeping Beauty — the Queen of a bygone realm — whose concealed knowledge must not be violated. You will experience 'a sweet perfume rising towards you as it permeates the sepulchre"! You are inside a very important tomb. This past Queen, this female, this Sleeping Beauty with a sweet perfume - who is she? Literal or symbolic? This sacred knowledge is certainly not to be violated or tampered with!
Remember the admonishment from Philippe de Chérisey’ — “Dear Reader, to whom we tell everything, but who does not listen” — listen to the words as well as read them. Remember the phonetic play - clew/clue - for this is also part of the Ariadne thread. Use intuition and rigour to separate genuine markers from red herrings, and let the parchment-thread keep you on course.
Therefore proceed with courage, patience and care.
We therefore invite you to rediscover with a fresh eye the mystery of Rennes-le-Château!
Thus your quest will demand courage, discipline, dedication — and imagination. It will be a moral and spiritual pilgrimage through history, archaeology, esoterica, theology, palaeography, manuscript tradition, mathematics, puns and poetry. The harder the intellectual and physical challenges you face, the more you become an initiated researcher. Both physical harsh terrain and tangled mental thickets you encounter will consist of those layered riddles, deliberate traps and misleading landmarks that can make a route seem impassable. The riddles and puzzles will overwhelm & trap you until your route is virtually impassable like a fortress that has foiled one invader after another over hundreds of centuries! You will need resilience and clear thinking to disentangle it.
Clear your two paths: — build an internal map from visual markers (landmarks, tracks, hills) — and an intellectual map — decode puns, phonetic jokes and deliberate wordplay. Wordplay is central to the Rennes Affair; it forces you beyond literal readings to search for the hidden meanings. Break each clue into components, consider multiple interpretations, and use recurring themes as contextual keys. Keep a methodical record of leads, alternatives and dead ends. Treat the Parchments as your Ariadne thread — the red line that lets you trace and retrace your steps. Assemble puzzle pieces logically, test hypotheses, backtrack where necessary, and log every avenue so false trails are exposed and discarded. Adopt a “science of deciphering”: a disciplined, symbolic method that moves you from ignorance to illumination. You will soon discover that you prefer puzzle-solving to blind trial-and-error — puzzle solving seeks all plausible solutions, while trial-and-error often assumes a single right answer and can miss the 'big-picture'.
If you persevere, the poet promises you will reach the sepulchre of Sleeping Beauty — the Queen of a bygone realm — whose concealed knowledge must not be violated. You will experience 'a sweet perfume rising towards you as it permeates the sepulchre"! You are inside a very important tomb. This past Queen, this female, this Sleeping Beauty with a sweet perfume - who is she? Literal or symbolic? This sacred knowledge is certainly not to be violated or tampered with!
Remember the admonishment from Philippe de Chérisey’ — “Dear Reader, to whom we tell everything, but who does not listen” — listen to the words as well as read them. Remember the phonetic play - clew/clue - for this is also part of the Ariadne thread. Use intuition and rigour to separate genuine markers from red herrings, and let the parchment-thread keep you on course.
Therefore proceed with courage, patience and care.
We therefore invite you to rediscover with a fresh eye the mystery of Rennes-le-Château!