The Cathars, keepers of an ancient wisdom, were wiped from the face of the Earth in a horrendous act of ethnic cleansing carried out on the orders of the Pope in the 12th century. Centuries later their wisdom is still available if we read the great legends of the Holy Grail written by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chretien de Troyes correctly.         

Crusade Against the Grail unveils the hidden keys in the Grail legends and reveals that it was the ancient wisdom and beliefs of the Cathars themselves which was, in fact, the Holy Grail.

This brilliant book, which traces the history of the Cathars, was instrumental in rebirthing the deeper and more mysterious truth of the Holy Grail in the middle of the last century. The first edition appeared in Germany in 1933, and at last it has been translated into English and republished by Inner Traditions.

Although the book takes us on a beautiful journey from ancient times and the formation of many schools of thought, it might be that author Otto Rahn's own journey through the caves and hidden crevices of Provence is just as riveting.            

Otto Rahn was influenced by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann who used Homer’s Iliad to locate ancient Troy. In this case, Rahn used von Eschenbach’s medieval epic Parzival in a similar fashion.            

Otto Rahn felt that the keys to the Holy Grail were hidden within the story and that all he needed to do was investigate the area of southern France, where the Cathars lived.            

n this revealing book, we take a journey back over seven centuries to a time when the Cathar church rivalled Rome and blossomed at a tremendous rate, with many converts joining their ranks.            

In his introduction, Rahn points out that the word Cathar came from the Greek Katharos, which means pure. He also felt the Cathars could easily be called “the Mahatma Gandhi’s of the west in the Middle Ages” because they lived a simple life of pondering the essence of creativity whilst engaged in humble acts, such as weaving and spinning.            

However, much of their wisdom has been lost because the church not only destroyed every member of the sect but also their entire library. Rahn considered the Cathars as “western Buddhists” and historians such as Jean Guiraud agree.            

Using von Eschenbach’s prose as a guide, Rahn climbed the many mountains of southern France. He was accompanied by his mentor, Antonin Gadal, and together they conducted extensive explorations of the Montsegur area.            

They discovered a huge cavern called “the Cathedral” by locals. In it they came upon a large stalagmite called “The Altar” and another known as “The Tomb of Hercules.” Through extensive research, Rahn proclaimed the fortress castle of Montsegur in the French Pyrenees as the Temple of the Grail, and that mystical Cathar Christianity based on the veneration of the Holy Spirit was the Church of the Holy Grail, thus this book.            

Crusade Against the Holy Grail soon came to the attention of the leaders of the Third Reich. Rahn was offered a large sum of money to write a sequel to this book under the provision that he return to Germany. When he returned home he was shocked to discover that the money had actually been sent to him by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.            

Rahn was pressured into staying and produced a second book, yet he yearned for the golden renaissance of Cathar beliefs and was opposed to the Nazi intolerance which he believed was influenced by the Old Testament. There is indeed a strange symmetry between Hitler’s war, which resulted in the holocaust, and the Papal crusade against the Cathars, and this was not lost on Rahn.              

Trapped and suppressed by what felt like a malicious culture, Otto Wilhelm Rahn died in the snows of Wilderkaiser in 1939, an apparent suicide, ending his life in the style of the ritual Cathar adherents who preferred death over temptation.            

But through this meticulously researched book, Otto Rahn’s work lives on. He delves deep into the Cathar psyche and comes up with some amazing discoveries and strange “coincidences.”            

He points out there is much evidence the Cathars were influenced by the Iranian Mazdaist doctrine. As with the Cathars, the Mazdaists believes that there are two conflicting principles governing the Earth and they have been at logger heads since the beginning of time. One is the energy of life-fertility and the other death and destruction. The first is symbolised by the Sun and is the effusion of spiritual light, truth, and generosity, epitomised by Ahura Mazda, the omniscient god.              

The second is symbolised by the darkness of night, contains error, evil and lies and is epitomised by the incarnation of Ahriman, the devastator. As with the Cathars, they believed Ahura Mazda created the sky and the Earth, but this creation remains incomplete because of the intervention of Ahriman. Mankind has the moral obligation to fight in favour of “good” rather than “evil.”            

Although the Cathars used different terminology, their belief system is almost identical. Rahn uses evidence such as the discovery of a stone head of the Buddha, probably of Iberian origin, which was discovered in one of the Cathar burial chambers in the south of France. This was dated to the first millennium before Christ, and Rahn believed that it probably belonged to an Iberian, or Celt-Iberian Abellio or priest. Rahn also discovered the use of the Swastika in the Pyrenees. The Swastika has long been a Buddhist symbol, predating the Nazis who commandeered it for their own use.            

Rahn makes a strong connection between the Cathar belief system and Celtic traditions. He points out that the name Ahriman is Dyaus Pitar in Sanskit, Zeus Pater in Greek and Jupiter in Latin, which probably puts a whole new slant on astrology too.            

Essentially, says Rahn, the Cathars or the “Pure Ones,” saw Jesus as a manifestation of the pure God or the God of light and all they were trying to do was live simple and pure lives dedicated to that light. They saw this world as a place of opposition between imperfect matter and God’s perfection; between a world of mystery and a God who is love itself.

The Cathars came to the conclusion that an incompatibility exists between what is perfect and what is not. They did not adhere to most of the New Testament, or to the Letters of St. Paul, but rather to the Book of St. John. They believed that Lucifer, whom they also called Luzbel, created everything visible, material and perishable. They also believed that he was also called Jehovah and point to the passages in the Old Testament that speak of the vengeance and anger of Jehovah, particularly the anger of Jehovah when Adam ate from the tree of science. They could not believe that a loving God could punish Adam for merely investigating wisdom and truth.            

Rahn points out that it can hardly be a coincidence the famous Grail legends were written shortly after the destruction of the Cathars. He supplies copious evidence and cross-references to von Eschenbach’s epic tales. When read from this point of view, it does indeed become clear that the Holy Grail is in fact the secret wisdom of the Cathars, hidden in legend, to protect those who still believed and to protect the wisdom until such time we have hearts that are open and minds that are less fearful.            

– Reviewed by Lesley Crossingham in New Dawn No. 102