This article investigates La Bergère (“The Shepherdess”), one of the central polysemic symbols in the pseudo-esoteric literature produced by Pierre Plantard and Philippe de Chérisey. Far from being a pastoral or Marian emblem alone, the Shepherdess is a meta-symbol that operates simultaneously across four domains: (1) Tarot polarity and Hermetic gendered symbolism; (2) cryptographic methodology derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold-Bug; (3) the authors’ technique of semiotic misdirection; and (4) geo-locational symbolism, wherein the Shepherdess is mapped onto a real geological feature known as Le Fauteuil du Diable (“The Devil’s Armchair”). By analysing these layers together, the article demonstrates that La Bergère is not a character but a hermeneutic operator—a device that instructs the reader to treat symbols as functional coordinates within a landscape-based cryptographic system. The Shepherdess thus exemplifies Chérisey’s core insight: that the “secret” is not a hidden content but the procedural form by which concealment is staged.
The Priory of Sion corpus—an elaborate blend of hoax, pastiche, esoteric parody, and satirical mystique—employs a symbolic lexicon that imitates the grammar of traditional occult literature while subverting it. Among these symbols, La Bergère stands at the centre: a figure deceptively simple yet systematically positioned to destabilize interpretation.
At first glance she resembles the archetypal Christian shepherdess, a pastoral and virginal figure. Yet when traced through the layered symbolic architecture Plantard and de Chérisey construct, she becomes instead a multi-tiered cipher whose meaning emerges through interaction with Tarot, Hermetic polarity, Poe’s cryptographic method, and the landscape itself.
In classical and Christian literature, shepherdesses embody purity, humility, and guidance. This conventional reading is intentionally exploited and inverted by de Chérisey, whose symbolic style depends on the principle of:
“Hide the secret in what looks too innocent to matter.”
The Shepherdess thus becomes the Bergère–décalage, the symbol that is underestimated precisely because its simplicity disarms the reader. This is consistent with the technique Poe outlines in The Gold-Bug, where the treasure’s clue appears in a casual scrap of writing misunderstood as decorative.
In the Tarot, Le Bateleur (the Magician) is the initiating figure: the active, solar, manifesting archetype. His table is the site of disclosure and deliberate manipulation. La Bergère, by contrast, represents:
She embodies the lunar polarity, the hidden, the receptive matrix.
Hermetically, she is materia prima to the Magician’s artifex.
This polarity is essential to understanding why she becomes a crucial cryptographic indicator.
Throughout esoteric tradition, the veiled feminine (Isis, Sophia, Shekinah) is not merely a figure of wisdom but a structuring absence—a symbol whose meaning lies in its ability to conceal.
La Bergère fulfills this function:
In this sense, she is a meta-symbol: the form of concealment rather than its content.
Philippe de Chérisey explicitly drew inspiration from Poe’s The Gold-Bug, whose plot revolves around:
This text is the direct ancestor of Chérisey’s cryptographic games.
In The Gold-Bug, the discovery hinges on identifying the most common letter.
La Bergère is the Priory system’s version of “E”:
This is a deliberate design:
the reader is taught to search in the foreground, not the background.
In Poe’s story, cryptography transforms into topography: decoding a cipher leads the protagonists to follow angles, distances, and coordinates through physical space.
Chérisey adopts this exactly.
The Shepherdess is mapped onto Le Fauteuil du Diable—a natural stone formation resembling a throne overlooking the valley. In European folklore, “Devil’s Chairs” denote liminal sites, boundary points, or geomantic nodes.Chérisey uses the formation not as a symbol but as a topographic tool.
Placing a pastoral virgin in a demonic throne performs a deliberate Hermetic inversion:
This inversion signals to the reader that geography is being used alchemically: the land becomes the stage for symbolic operations.
In Poe’s tale, a skull in a tree becomes a coordinate marker.
In Chérisey’s landscape, the Devil’s Armchair performs the same function.The Shepherdess is therefore:
She is not about the Devil’s Armchair — she is the functional name of that coordinate.
Opposite the Shepherdess sits Cap de l’Homme, a stark masculine-coded geological feature, forming a natural dyad of:
This pair mirrors Hermetic duality:
The region’s topography becomes a Tarot tableau.
Le Bateleur stands before his table — a flat surface.
The Shepherdess sits in a chair — a receptive surface.
Cap de l’Homme becomes the vertical axis, analogous to the Magician’s raised wand. Thus the geography replicates the Tarot’s geometry.
Chérisey’s work frequently employs:
When the Shepherdess is placed in the Devil’s Armchair, she occupies the zero-point of sight-line generation.
From her “seat,” the landscape can be read like a giant cryptogram. This is not metaphorical — it is the Gold-Bug method applied to mountains.
With all symbolic layers assembled, the Shepherdess resolves not into a doctrine but a procedure:
She instructs the reader:
She is the cipher of meta-interpretation.
La Bergère is not a pastoral symbol nor a historical key, but a symbolic machine. Her presence across Tarot, Hermetic polarity, literature, landscape, and geometry reveals the guiding principle behind all of Chérisey’s work:
“The treasure is not in the symbol, but in the method by which symbols are treated.”
Through the Shepherdess, the reader learns that the Priory system is not an esoteric revelation but an exercise in perception. The land becomes a cipher; the symbols become procedural cues; and the Shepherdess, enthroned paradoxically in the Devil’s Armchair, becomes the quiet, reflective axis of a grand symbolic joke disguised as mysticism.
In a later article - this understanding of Plantard and Cherisey and all their wild literature leads to a specific location in the village of Rennes-les-Bains. Why?