Part 1 Clock Shavings by Tracy Twyman ... Exordium: Ab Intio OLE ...Testament of Cocteau ... See the Sun

I came across a couple of works of Tracy Twyman, she passed under mysterious circumstances in 2019, and it has been suggested by some that it was her area of research that led to her untimely passing. I had read some of her articles before, but not her books, so this is new ground for me. If these two chapters are any indication of where her research took her, I can understand the concern that people had for her as 2018/19 unraveled around her.

Clock Shavings 

by Tracy R. Twyman 

Preface 

Anyone who asked me before about the Grail and took me to task for not telling him was very much in the wrong. Kyot asked me not to reveal this, for Adventure commanded him to give it no thought until she herself, Adventure, should invite the telling, and then one must speak of it, of course. 

– Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival 

The following is a true account of a series of deliberately invoked encounters with supernatural forces that took place from July 2001 until the present day. These events were experienced by both me, Tracy Twyman, and my husband, Brian Albert, along with other members of the occult group Ordo Lapsit Exillis, the secret order responsible for publishing Dagobert's Revenge Magazine. The details of the communications have been classified as sub rosa and solis sacerdotibus for many years now. Only recently, under influence from the spirit, has it been determined that it is proper now for a certain portion of this information to be shared with the general public. 

Few people know the truth about the praeterhuman influences that operated behind the scenes of the OLE. Many people, including even me, have in public discussion referred to it as merely a group of friends associated with this particular publishing venture. It did indeed start out that way. However, once certain powers were tapped into, a chain of events was initiated that was impossible to stop: a chain of events that initiated us into the Western occult tradition. But unlike most students of the occult, we learned the mysteries of the Art directly from spirits. 

Although I have alluded rather casually to these stories in several radio interviews I have conducted in recent years, the truth is that these are matters of utmost seriousness, and they deserve to be treated with respect. That is why I am presenting them with as much full context as I can with a delicate topic such as this, for the greatest understanding. 

In the pages which follow are many transcripts of Ouija board sessions, as well as quotations from such sessions. The transcripts are mainly presented in script format. There are places within the scripts where it was necessary to provide comments or narration. For the most part, these are written in paragraph form, set within the transcript segments at the appropriate places. 

In general, you will find that the words written by spirits have been put in all capital letters, especially in the transcript segments. Certain words or phrases that have been used by spirits when talking to us - the ones that are peculiar to these conversations - are also sometimes placed in all caps whenever they are repeated in the other segments of the book - at least in the first instance. Subsequent mentions are usually written in normal text format, depending on the context. 

Lines in the transcripts do not have periods at the end unless there is more than one sentence in a particular line. Question marks are used when necessary. Normal punctuation is used, however, when the words of the spirit are presented in other places in this book beyond the transcripts. 

In order to smooth the telling of the story, many portions of the transcripts are summarized or paraphrased in narrative form. I make it perfectly clear in the text when this is being done. It is obviously which parts are direct quotations, and which are summaries. 

I have written these scripts so that it appears that I am the one mainly asking the questions. This, for the most part, was the case. However, there were many times in which the partners I was working with engaged in the discussion as well. I have tried, to the best of my memory and records, to attribute words to these other people as accurately as possible. But since I cannot be certain about each instance, I have by default attributed everything said on the human side of the conversation to myself, unless otherwise noted, to save everyone else the bother caused by having someone else's words put into their own mouths. 

The word "we" generally refers to me and my late husband Brian Albert, although sometimes I use it more broadly to refer to the membership of the Ordo Lapsit Exillis, in particular the leadership. I made the assumption that most of the friends I worked with would not want their real names brought into this record, and therefore I have provided substitute names for these people. I have made an exception for those who are already public persons, as well as for Brian Albert. 

As I write this, it has been almost two years since Brian's passing in March of 2012. It is in his memory that I dedicate this revelatum. 

Also, I would like to give a special thanks to Chris Marchlewski for helping to make publication possible. 

Tempora patet occulta Veritas. 

Exordium: Ab Intio OLE 

...No man can ever win the Grail unless he is known in heaven and called by name to the Grail ... Hear now how those who are called to the Grail are made known. On the Stone, round the edge, appear letters inscribed, giving the name and the lineage of each one, maid or boy, who is to make the blessed journey. No one needs to rub out the inscription, for once he has read the name, it fades before his very eyes. 

- Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival 

It all started one May morning, in Portland, Oregon. The year was 1996, and I was almost 18 years old. I was studying for my final exam in my Calculus class that I took at Portland Community College. I had dropped out of high school at age 14 and enrolled at the college instead. Now I was about to graduate with a high school equivalency diploma and an Associate's Degree simultaneously. As long as I passed all my finals, that is. 

A few weeks earlier, a friend had lent me a copy of a nonfiction book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. There I had learnt about the Holy Grail as a symbol of the divine essence of the universe - the hidden truth that organized religions try to hide from the masses. I learned that the secrets of the Grail rested with members of a particular bloodline, allegedly descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. 

It appeared that the Catholic Church had attempted to exterminate this bloodline many times throughout history. But supposedly there was a secret society that had protected it, and the secrets of the Holy Grail, throughout the centuries: a group of mysterious Frenchmen called the Priory of Sion. This group was allegedly connected to a number of other secret societies with which I was already familiar, including the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. 

This bloodline of Christ – this "Grail bloodline" – had allegedly resulted in the Merovingian kings of France, a medieval dynasty whose descendants could be found in almost every royal house in Europe. In the Priory’s own literature it was strongly hinted that a king from this bloodline was destined to rule over a united European empire, and, perhaps, the world. This, the Priory's documents indicated, was the group's true agenda, in which many of the world's leading figures secretly conspired behind the scenes. 

The Grail, in the view of these secret societies, seemed to symbolize the primordial occult power which was said to result from the union of opposite energies: particularly those of good and evil, male and female, fire and water. In this way, it was similar to the Philosopher's Stone of the alchemists, and the "Kundalini power" of yoga. 

Those of the Grail bloodline, it was implied, had that power inherently in their blood. The Holy Grail was written of in the Grail romances of medieval times as either a cup or a stone. As a cup, it had held the blood of Christ after he was crucified. As a stone, it was a magical jewel that had purportedly been chipped out of Lucifer’s crown during his war with God's angels in Heaven. He who possessed the Grail had the power to rule the world. 

Integral to all of this was a tiny village in the south of France called Rennes-le-Château. In the late nineteenth century the parish priest there at the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, named Bérenger Saunière, had discovered some parchments underneath the altar of his church that were encoded with a hidden message. It was rumored that after having these parchments decoded, he had joined the Priory of Sion, and discovered a buried treasure somewhere in his environs that made him fabulously rich. 

Supposedly, Saunière then used some of his money to redecorate his church in such a way as to communicate the secret of what he had discovered for future initiates of the Grail mysteries to decode. Or, at least, that's what authors on the subject had speculated was the reason for his decorations. Unraveling the enigma of Rennes-le-Château would be key for anyone seeking to understand the Holy Grail, the Grail bloodline, and the Priory of Sion. This was something stated in the Priory's own published literature. 

I had been reading quite a lot of occult books in recent years about Freemasons, Aleister Crowley, conjuring spirits, Tantric sex magic, and the like. I found it all very fascinating. But this book about the Grail affected me like no other. I recall writing in my notebook that night that I felt "called to the service of the Grail." 

According to the legends I had read, the Grail was sometimes depicted in medieval romances as a sacred stone which was possessed with a living intelligence. As the stories go, certain people are destined to serve the Grail, and when the time comes for them to be called to service, their names appear on the surface of the Grail stone. For some reason, I suddenly felt that I was one of the lucky few who had been chosen to fulfill that destiny. But I didn't know exactly what it would entail. 

Later that morning, while studying for my final exam in Calculus, it came to me. It was like being struck on the head by lightning. I realized that I must create a magazine with the pretense of being published by the Priory of Sion. It would be called Dagobert's Revenge, after the last effective scion of the Merovingian kings of France, who was murdered in a coup orchestrated by the Catholic Church. I would fill the pages of Dagobert's Revenge with peculiar illustrations and curious sayings: occult shorthand meant to communicate to fellow initiates that I too knew the secret of the Grail. 

I would try to catch the attention of the secret society underground I had read so much about, with the hopes of being initiated into one of the elite groups that held the ancient secrets of the Holy Grail, perhaps even the Priory of Sion itself. My tactic was to pretend like I was already one of them. I knew that someday soon, I would be reporting directly to the unknown superiors, serving the order in whatever way required. Perhaps they would want to use Dagobert's Revenge as an organ of propaganda. It could be a signpost pointing towards illumination for those who were earnestly seeking it. In this way, I might be able to serve the Grail, I thought. 

So there I was at three o'clock in the morning, hunched over my notebook in bed, where I was supposed to be studying. But instead I was smoking cannabis and writing down ideas for this magazine I was going to create. I did not plan to make any money from it, nor did I have any idea how I would finance the publication of it. 

I had a bit of experience with the process of publishing, thanks to my work at the school newspaper. But in this publication I did not intend to put any real information – only inferences. I would embed subliminal messages into the background, and leave everything in the foreground inscrutably cryptic. It would communicate something instantly recognizable to initiates, and instantly hypnotizing to those who were not. 

As it got to be eight in the morning, I was still jotting down these thoughts. I knew that I had wasted my time and had not adequately studied. Now I had to get on the bus and head for school if I was going to make it in time for the test. But I was full of this pulsating energy. I could feel it burning like white light at the top of my head, then tingling through the rest of my body. 

I had been struck by something powerful. I felt possessed. I continued to stay in that mental zone throughout the ninety-minute ride to school, including the change of buses at Fremont Avenue. The whole ride through I was writing out my plans for the magazine in my notebook, and did not turn my attention to Calculus until the moment I arrived at school. 

Now here's the thing: I should have bombed that test. I hadn't studied, I hadn't gotten any sleep, and I was stoned out of my brain. But I still had that energy pulsating through my mind and body - the light of genius - and it was like the light took over for me so that I didn't have to think. I worked out the problems and wrote down the answers automatically, effortlessly, like I was folding laundry, or peeling a potato for dinner. 

About twenty minutes later, as I set the completed test on the teacher's desk and walked out the door, leaving behind the nervous energy of my struggling classmates all sweating feverishly onto their scratch paper, I was strangely certain in the knowledge that I had gotten every answer right. The hidden genius that now possessed me had taken the test for me. Furthermore, I recall, somewhat with awe, that the entire time I had been taking the test my mind had been solely set on the magazine I was going to create. 

The obsession with publishing Dagobert's Revenge continued as I finished off the school year. I learned that I did indeed pass the Calculus test with a score of 100%. At the school library I copied the pictures that I wanted to use from books, and I printed out the ones that I found on the internet (which was quite a different animal back in 1996). I also typed and printed out the key initiatory phrases I wanted to use throughout the document. Some of them were to be communicated subliminally, so I made pages onto which each phrase was printed in white, blurry text surrounded by a light gray fill. This made the words very difficult to read except at a certain distance. These pages then became the background on which the rest of the magazine's elements were to be laid. 

I went to the art supply store and found a can of spray-on sticky stuff, which I applied liberally to the backs of the papers with the pictures and phrases I wanted to use. Then I cut out the words and pictures, arranging them on the background pages according to the directions I received from my hidden genius. When the document was complete, I knew it was done because it shined, just like the shining in my mind of the light that inspired me. 

I went to Kinko's and had them print out one hundred copies of my publication. The guy behind the counter taught me how to arrange the pages I had (which were on 8 and 1/2" by 11" pages) into groups of four, each forming a double-sided 11" by 17" sheet. These would then be nested together and folded in the center with two staples going down the middle. While I was completing my layout, I noticed an elderly black lady and her five-year-old daughter leaning over, staring at my work. The lady had a flowery dress and the little girl's hair was braided with colorful animal-shaped barrettes. 

"Are you a Freemason?" the lady asked, noticing Masonic symbols on one of the pages. 

"No," I answered politely. "Only men are allowed to be Masons." 

"That's not true", the lady replied. "I'm a Freemason. And I'm the Secretary." She reached into her purse and handed me a business card, identifying herself as the Secretary of a lodge of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic ladies' auxiliary. 

"Oh," I said. I didn't want to be rude and tell her that this wasn't as good as being a real Mason (or so I thought at the time). So I just smiled at her and put the card in my pocket. But I thought it was a strange coincidence that someone connected to the Masons in that way just happened to be standing next to me at Kinko's. 

When my copies were done, they boxed them up, and I paid for them: one hundred copies for fifty dollars. That night when I got home, I folded the pages, collated them, and stapled them into booklets. 

The next day I went out and delivered about half of them. I decided I would just disperse them for free wherever I could, and let divine providence lead the people to it. I left some in the section of Powell's Books where free literature was distributed, as well as Django Records, Ozone Records, and Rocco's Pizza. I left it upside-down on the tables of coffee shops. I left it at Panurge Emporium, the occult shop run by the local lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis (the ritual magic group associated with Aleister Crowley). I slid it through the mail slot of several Masonic lodges. I left it at a place called Reading Frenzy that sold a lot of "'zines," as they were called, an underground industry that I was only vaguely aware of until I decided to create a 'zine myself. 

When I revisited all of my distribution points a week later, there were no copies left anywhere. I used all but a handful of my last copies to restock these locations. The lady at Reading Frenzy - Chloe - told me that my 'zine had been very well-received by her customers. She said that I should do more issues, and that I should consider charging a cover price. 

However, it took three more years before that initial effort was followed up by a new volume of Dagobert's Revenge Magazine. By that time, I was living in Union City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and preparing to study film at a local university. I was also in the mood to start some kind of business venture. 

Luckily, my best friend Brian Albert from back home in Oregon came for a visit. We had known each other since we were twelve, in junior high, back in a little town called Sherwood. There we had attended a bit of high school together, before dropping out within a year of each other, and then starting together at the local community college instead. 

Brian was tall, and heavy set, with dark hair. He usually wore black jeans and a black t-shirt every day. We both had gotten into Goth music around the same time as teenagers, and he was still into it. He was a bit shy when meeting new people, but a brilliant conversationalist once you got him going. 

He had always been just about the smartest person I knew. In addition to his encyclopedic knowledge of plant biology, he also had a great deal of tangential information on file in his head about all sorts of things. He had great listening skills and a lengthy attention span too. Therefore, I frequently shared my ideas with him, as I valued his input. 

I asked Brian if he was interested in starting some sort of business with me. Over the next few days, we passed a number of different ideas back and forth. We considered having a record company, and a band management company. It all seemed like too much work, and too risky. Finally, on the last day he was there, Brian convinced me that the most brilliant project I'd ever done was Dagobert's Revenge, and that I should do it again. 

I had not thought about the 'zine at all since putting out that first issue. However, Brian thought that if we filled it with actual articles on the subjects of the Holy Grail and secret societies, it could gain a real following. If we included reviews and interviews of Goth bands that utilized occult themes in their works, we could probably get record stores to carry it, and record companies might be willing to advertise too. 

To encourage me, he showed me a republished review of Dagobert's Revenge in a list of "'zine reviews" online from another 'zine called Ben is Dead. It seemed like the reviewer enjoyed it and found it rather enigmatic. That was all the ego stroking I needed. 

Brian pressured me to set up a meeting with my friend Fred Berger, who published the famous Goth magazine Propaganda. A while back, I had sent Fred some poetry, and he had asked me to write some record reviews for him. He agreed to meet us at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan, where he told us what he knew about independent magazine publishing. 

Fred gave us invaluable information about getting advertisers and distributors. He also tried to discourage us from wasting our money on what he felt was a dying industry where only the big players could ever turn a profit. When he heard what type of magazine we wanted to publish, he thought we were utterly insane. "How many people on Earth would ever want to read a magazine about such an obscure topic?" he wondered. 

I didn't blame him for his skepticism, but I wanted to venture forth anyway. He kindly offered me his best wishes, and a copy of a book called Guardians of the Grail, written by a Christian evangelist called J.R. Church. It was about how the author thought the "bloodline of the Holy Grail" was destined to bring forth the Anti-Christ. 

That summer, Brian and I decided to reignite Dagobert's Revenge together, this time as a serious commercial effort. It took me six months to write articles and layout the next issue. Then, with some Christmas money from my parents and one hundred dollars kicked in by Brian, I printed it at a Lazerquick in Secaucus, New Jersey. 

It ran over eighty pages this time, and included several articles written by me under pseudonyms. On Brian's advice, I included reviews of CDs and videos that had been sent to us upon request by various underground media companies. We started out distributing it ourselves. I walked on foot around Manhattan finding book stores, record stores, and occult shops that would take it on consignment. Brian did the same things back in Portland. The first one hundred copies sold out quickly. We printed another round, which sold even quicker. 

At this point, we started selling advertising so that we could print another issue, mostly to record companies. We made a deal with the Small Publisher's Co-Op so that we could print a thousand copies of the next one. We even got three magazine distributors who placed Dagobert's Revenge in stores all over the country, as well as some places in Europe and Canada. 

By the time the next issue came out, our website was getting several hundred hits a day. We were getting a continuous stream of gushing fan mail, as well as unsolicited guest submissions coming in from known occult authors. People reacted strongly to it because there was nothing else like it on Earth. Apparently the combination of subjects that we discussed appealed to an underserved segment of the reading public that had in fact been waiting for something just like this to come along. 

I was being invited to do radio interviews constantly. There was even an internet TV show based in Manhattan which asked to have me on as a guest. It was "The Infinity Factory," hosted by up-and-coming young media mogul Richard Metzger of the Disinformation Company. It seemed like I had found my niche as a writer, quite unexpectedly. 

Composing in-depth articles for the magazine really sped up the process of my initiation into the mysteries of Western occultism. I especially began to learn more about the topics of the Holy Grail, the Knights Templar, Freemasonry, the Priory of Sion, and the mystery of Rennes-leChâteau. I started to notice patterns in the details of these subjects that few others seemed to be pointing out. In fact, almost all the authors ignored these things. 

In my research I traced the imagery associated with the Grail symbol and bloodline beyond Jesus and Mary Magdalene (the standard stopping-point for most of the other writers at that time). Instead, I took it literally all the way back to the dawn of history. To me, it seemed to actually originate in the Garden of Eden, and with the god-kings of ancient Sumer, or even the lost kingdom of Atlantis. 

From what I could tell, both the legendary Grail stone and the Grail bloodline were most definitely related to the myths of Satan, Lucifer, or the Devil. Specifically, it seemed that the bloodline could be traced back to an ancient deified king recorded in the chronicles of ancient Mesopotamia, whom some historians had once believed to be the inspiration for the biblical figure of Cain. My research concurred with this analysis. There were also Jewish fables stating that Cain had been spawned not by Adam, but by the serpent that tempted Eve in the Garden. 

A related subject was the race of the Nephilim discussed briefly in The Book of Genesis, and more fully in apocryphal tomes like The Book of Enoch or The Book of the Cave of Treasures. As the story goes, in the beginning, angels defied God to come down from Heaven and mate with human females. The women then gave birth to a monstrous race of giants resulting from the hybridization of human and angelic blood. They were considered an abomination by God, who brought the Deluge upon the Earth to wipe them out, killing all mankind along with them. Then He punished the angels who had defied Him by imprisoning them beneath the Earth. 

The bloodline of Cain, then, was the same as the so-called "Grail bloodline" in my eyes. Furthermore, it seemed to me that it was really a dynasty of human monarchs alleged to be descended from the fallen angels. As I studied different creation myths from around the world, I found that they all told a similar story about the origin of their first kings, who were also worshiped as incarnate gods. 

These god-kings had civilized the Earth after the destruction of the Flood, teaching mankind how to farm, write, and build cities. They were remembered fondly because of it. But orthodox religions had apparently taken great pains to cover up these myths, perhaps because they did not want anyone to remember the royal bloodline that descended quite literally from the Devil himself. 

What was the ultimate meaning of this? I had no idea, but I wanted to find out. For that, I would have to take my studies to the next level, to bring this field of research to a place it had never been before. To this end, Brian and I talked about forming a real secret order of our own. 

In the very first issue of Dagobert's Revenge, I had identified myself as the "Exalted Grand Master." Of what, I did not specify. Now it seemed like we ought to come up with a structure to go with the title. The goal of this organization would be to further our esoteric studies into the mysteries of the Grail, and to disseminate this information via the magazine, as well as other organs. 

Some of our research would be understandable only by occult initiates, and we knew that. But we also wanted to inject these ideas into popular culture, and various subcultures, in a way that had never been done: to explode a "Grail bomb" in the minds of the masses. We hoped that by launching this organization, we would be put into contact with initiates of other secret societies that might be able to help us in our work. 

We called the group Ordo Lapsit Exillis, the incorrect Latin phrase used by the twelfth and thirteenth century German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach to refer to the Grail stone that "fell from Heaven." If the Latin were correct, it would translate to "the Stone of Exile." We decided to use the Cross of Lorraine, a symbol used by both the Knights Templar and the Grail-connected house of Lorraine, as our official insignia. 

Our efforts did get the attention of several very strange people. In fact, virtually everyone who wrote to us was some kind of weirdo. We got more than our fair share of mail from prison: mostly people begging for free reading material, with some sending in money for subscriptions. Whenever we sent a magazine to someone in prison, we would always get it back a few weeks later with a note saying that it had been rejected by the censorship board. 

Many of our fans wrote long, rambling, nonsensical letters about their ancestry, connecting themselves to the Grail bloodline. Many seemed to think that they were destined to fulfill some kind of grand purpose, and that we would somehow be able to help them with it. Some claimed to be members of various secret societies. Someone claiming to be the leader of the "American Priory of Sion" even contacted me and offered me membership. 

I didn't take any of this stuff seriously. Every time I read one of these letters, my instinct told me to stay far away from these people. I knew that Dagobert's Revenge would eventually bring me into contact with initiates of the highest order, who would instruct me on how to fulfill my own destiny. So I waited patiently for my unknown superiors to show themselves to me. 

But there was one crazy person with outrageous claims that I did pay attention to, because he really seemed to know what he was talking about. He was a man who called himself "Prince Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg." Despite the noble title, he had a decidedly unglamorous life. He lived in London, but he was from Wales. He was on the dole, and he had been diagnosed with severe mental illness, for which he was taking medication. But despite his personal drawbacks, I found the man extremely interesting. 

A good many of the conclusions that I had come to in my research were also found in the writings of Prince Nicholas de Vere, who claimed to be the head of a family descended from the Grail blood. He had written a book about his family history which he said could be traced back to Sumerian gods, and a super-human race that he termed “the Dragons." At one time, they had ruled the ancient world, and some day, he wrote, they would rule again. 

He said the people of this race possessed magical powers, which is why, in olden times, they were seen as the natural leaders of human societies. The stories of fairies, pixies, elves, vampires and witches from medieval times were really based on memories of this illustrious Dragon race. They had been largely exterminated, and viciously persecuted, by humans who had overthrown their kingdoms. Those that remained had retreated into hiding, in forests, mountaintops, and underground, leading to the rumors of fantastic creatures inhabiting these places. 

But the good news was that some of them had survived, and continued their royal bloodlines, with their own secret royal courts and witchcraft covens. The one he belonged to was called "the Dragon Court," and he of course was the head of it. More than that, he actually proclaimed himself heir to the title "King of the Dragons," and a lot of other, more mundane titles as well. To back this up he had hundreds of pages of genealogies, which he has compiled, along with a family history, into a voluminous text called From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells. 

Unfortunately, he said that a former associate of his named Laurence Gardner, who had been helping him gather the material, turned on him all of the sudden. The man then published De Vere's work as his own, robbing him of all credit and royalties. This was all the more painful because this associate's book had gone on to become an international bestseller, netting hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

I was familiar with the book, as I had already read it years before Nicholas contacted me. When I checked the book on my shelf, I found that it was dedicated to Mr. De Vere, and that Gardner thanked him in the acknowledgements for providing him with "privileged access to his household archives." 

De Vere claimed to possess a right recognized by the British government that permitted him to create a sovereign nation over which he could rule. If he could afford to buy a private island, in theory, he could proclaim it the kingdom of Drakenberg, and the Queen of England would recognize it. Then he and his friends could live by their own rules there. It was this right of sovereignty which, he now believed, others were trying to steal from him. 

A couple of years earlier, his Dragon Court had many more members, and had been operating out of London. But when Laurence Gardner left, many went with him, and formed their own Dragon Court, which had since then schismed even further. There were now no less than four "Dragon Courts" headed by former members of his own organization, all soliciting new recruits on the internet. They were also conferring royal titles within the principality of Drakenberg. This seemed to make him angrier than anything else they had done to him, for he said that he alone had the right to give these titles. 

But for whatever reason, De Vere had decided not to fight them on any of it. He frequently called Laurence Gardner a plagiarist and a liar on internet chat groups, but would never move against him legally. He never challenged the rival Dragon Courts legally either. He just asked one of his few remaining loyal friends to put the text of his book up on the internet for him, and then retreated to lick his wounds. 

Then Dagobert's Revenge magazine came around, and in one of our issues we published an interview I had done with representatives of a revived Scottish royal house. They were attempting to spearhead a pro-monarchist, secessionist movement. After running the interview, I had been bombarded with mail from people telling me that the interviewee, "Prince Michael Stewart of Albany," was making a false claim to the throne of Scotland. His genealogy and the organization that supported him were fake, these people all said. One of the letters was from De Vere. 

He said that Prince Michael's revived "House of Stewart" was the bastard son of his own Dragon Court, operating without permission. Prince Michael's royal titles had all been conferred by De Vere. But they were not meant to bolster a claim to the Scottish throne. They had been titles in the principality of Drakenberg. They had been rescinded when Michael left the Dragon Court, but he was continuing to use them anyway. 

This was how my relationship with De Vere had begun. We started exchanging emails, and he called me frequently on the phone. We found that our ideas on the subject of the Grail and Grail bloodline were almost identical: I, theorizing based on my research, and he, allegedly speaking from experience as the head of a prominent Grail family. We also found that we had a similar sense of humor and irreverent attitude towards societal norms. 

We spent hours on the phone lambasting culture. He would sometimes get drunk on his end, and become a foulmouthed sailor, spewing profanities. These insults he usually aimed at members of the modern Wicca movement, former Dragon Court members, or Tony Blair. His Queen's English morphed into a thick Welsh brogue that slurred more and more with every shot of whiskey. His writing was also in this voice, with the same type of humor, and that was part of why I liked it. 

I had De Vere write a few articles for Dagobert's Revenge. He told me I was the only person who truly understood his writing. He offered to let me have the rights to his book if I could find a proper publisher for it. He made me a "member" of the Dragon Court, and also conferred, without my ever asking for it, a royal title upon me: Baroness Renee von Drakenberg. He did these things through the mail and over the phone even though we had never met in person. 

I found it a bit embarrassing, because I didn't yet believe his wild claims were true. I also knew that he had always eschewed selling titles, because titles shouldn't be based on anything except ancestry, in his opinion. Was giving away a title to someone you like any better? He had asked me for a genealogy, to see if he could find proof of my "Dragon ancestry." 

In response, I told him I didn't even know the name of my great-grandfather, but that I was descended from European and American peasant stock. As far as I knew, I had no royal genes. Still, he asked for a sample of my blood, claiming that there was a college in England that was studying the Dragon DNA and knew how to test for it. I found the claim and the request so absurd that I chose to ignore it. 

Even though I had not spoken at all about these things in public, somehow the members of the rival Dragon Courts knew about my friendship with Nicholas De Vere. They also knew about the Baroness title and my membership in Court. I started receiving harassing emails from these various people. 

One woman, using the screen name “Star of the Sea,” implored me to stop talking to Nicholas because he was "a fraud," and implied some kind of physical harm could come to me if I didn't. When I told this woman to screw off, I was suddenly dropped from a Priory of Sion related email list where she was apparently influential. Another person – a man - threatened to sue my magazine into the ground because we had apparently printed without permission a few lines of his translation of a famous French poem. He would drop the suit, he claimed, if I disassociated myself with De Vere. In addition, other people lambasted me on internet chat groups for accepting a "fake" royal title, and implied that I had paid cash for it, or that De Vere and I were having sex. 

I told Brian about my experiences with De Vere. He agreed that he was a weirdo and thought that I should be cautious in dealing with him. But he also thought that De Vere's writing was interesting, and his claims about the history of the Grail bloodline matched up precisely the ideas we were promoting in the magazine. So in the end it was decided that I would try to keep my relationship with him low-key, and would not involve myself any further in the Dragon Court. But I would continue to be friendly with De Vere, just in case he became useful somehow later on. Besides, I liked him anyway, even if he was a crazy drunk with delusions of grandeur. 

It was around this point, sometime between the third and fourth issue of Dagobert's Revenge, that I became acquainted with another narcissistic alcoholic with severe mental problems. But this one's intentions were far more sinister. My decision to become involved with him was a fateful one. 

The third issue of the magazine included an interview with Douglas Pierce of the dark folk band Death in June, which had been a favorite with me and Brian for many years. To us it seemed that they rarely did interviews, and they rarely toured America. How amazing it was, then, when I wrote them a letter asking them to do an interview for the small magazine I had started, and received a personal, hand-typed letter in reply from Mr. Pierce. Not only would he do the interview, but he said my magazine was one of the most interesting things he had ever seen! 

Sometime shortly afterward I received a fan letter from a writer named Kevin Coogan. Within a couple of days of that, I coincidentally ran into a music 'zine at one of the stores that carried Dagobert's Revenge, containing an article by none other than Kevin Coogan! The article was about what he perceived as fascism and white power ideology in underground music. It traced the personal connections between a variety of musicians, artists, writers and publishers. It was almost a conspiracy theory. I began to research each individual mentioned in the article. 

One of those discussed was a sort of avant-garde “noise” artist named Boyd Rice. As it turned out, Rice had appeared as a guest on several albums by Death in June. I don't even think Death in June had been mentioned in Coogan's article at all. 

I was thunderstruck. I had never noticed Mr. Rice's name in the liner notes of the records before, but then again, I was just listening to the music. I wasn't, until then, someone who followed the details of who was in the band. So I just found it amazing that one of the people in Coogan's article was, coincidentally, connected to my favorite band. I wrote Mr. Rice a letter requesting an interview for Dagobert's Revenge. 

But then a funny thing happened. I very quickly received a letter from him in reply, saying that when my letter to him had arrived, he was already at the Post Office to send a letter to me. He was interested in the Grail and someone had recommended our magazine to him. It seemed like an extraordinary coincidence. We talked on the phone, and became fast friends. 

At this time, Brian and I decided to let him in on the secret of the Ordo Lapsit Exillis. He was very enthusiastic to become a member, and began mentioning his involvement with the Order in interviews he did with other magazines. He had previously been a High Priest of the Church of Satan, and one of their official spokesmen, as well as a close personal friend of Anton LaVey until his death. 

Boyd told me that, after joining the OLE, he had written a letter of resignation from the Church and dated it December 23, which was St. Dagobert's Day and a date important to the mystery of the Grail bloodline. He said that he had a reputation as a Satanist as well as a Nazi sympathizer (due to elements in his music and public persona), which he wanted to change. He openly told me that he wanted build a new image based on his involvement with the OLE and Dagobert's Revenge. He thought that then he would be taken more seriously and be able to move beyond underground music into a career as a writer. 

Boyd began calling me frequently, and conversing with me for long periods. In fact, I often had to avoid his calls just so that I could get my work done each day! He also sent me lots of letters and gifts in the mail. I was still living with my parents at the time, and I would frequently tell my mother to ignore the phone if the caller ID showed Boyd's number. Otherwise I would have had their phone line tied up all day. 

I told him I was planning on writing a book about the Holy Grail. I had some experience writing a full-length nonfiction book a couple of years earlier (although it remains unpublished to this day). Therefore I felt that I had the self-discipline and organizational skills necessary to complete such a task. He suggested that he and I should write the book together. He had submitted an article to me about his Plantagenet ancestry (connected to the Grail blood), which wasn't bad. I figured his following of loyal fans might help with the marketing of the book, so I agreed. 

A short while later, I received an email from the producers of a new Fox TV series that was in the works. It was going to be a revival of Leonard Nimoy's In Search of…, and they were going to do a segment on the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. They wanted to know if I would fly there with them to do an on-location interview about the subject. Of course I agreed. I also suggested they bring Boyd along, as he was going to be the co-author of my new book. 

So this was how I got to see Rennes-le-Château, the center of the world as far as my research was concerned, with my very own eyes without spending a dime. As the production crew's rented van pulled up into the village, right up next to Bérenger Saunière's famous church, I felt the weight of my destiny come upon me. I was aware once again that something - some outer entity - had tapped me to do a job pertaining to the Grail mystery. 

My being there at that moment was integral to the plan. I felt as if all of the details of my life since I'd started publishing Dagobert's Revenge had been arranged for me by someone unseen. It was all leading me to an unknown - but, I felt, important - destination. As I soaked up the details of the landmark for the first time with all of my senses awake, I knew that this was a mystery of historic proportions, and that somehow, I was a part of it. 

Chapter 1: 

Testament of Cocteau 

I remain with you. 

- Epitaph of Jean Cocteau at 

the Chapel of St. Blaise 

Within less than a year, Brian and I had moved in together in an apartment in Denver, Colorado, about three blocks from where Boyd Rice lived. It had been Boyd's suggestion, since he knew that I wanted to move in with Brian somewhere anyway, and he argued that it would help facilitate our book project. We had all been working on the research into the Grail mystery for a while now, sharing our discoveries and theories with each other. We knew that we were somehow involved in something important and even Boyd had reported that he had felt himself being guided in his research by an unseen hand since joining our mission.

For me personally, I was on fire intellectually. Whenever I decided to follow a particular line of inquiry, the information I needed would almost instantly come to me through no effort of my own. A book not considered to be relevant to the question at hand would fall off of a shelf and open to a particular page that contained just the clue I needed for what I was studying. A chance internet search about an unrelated topic could lead me there as well. I even discovered a key piece of information once in a magazine I found at the dentist's office. 

Those spiritual influences were felt acutely when the Ordo Lapsit Exillis held its first ritual shortly after we moved to Denver. Looking back, I realize that this was the OLE's first step to becoming something more than just an occult research and publishing society. The newest member of our order was Boyd's friend Vadge Moore (drummer for the punk band the Dwarves). He decided to get married to his new bride in the apartment that Brian and I shared, right there in my office. We made it an official OLE event. 

Boyd performed the service, since he had experience as a priest in the Church of Satan. He wore black pants, and a black shirt with a white priest's collar. We painted my office black for the occasion. Boyd brought over some decorations: a giant Cross of Lorraine, perhaps four feet tall, made out of five wooden planks spray-painted black; an antique sewing machine, folded up into a table that was used as an altar; a black alter cloth, a plastic silver-colored goblet with a real human skull resting inside of it; black candles; and a ceramic head of Bacchus, painted black and looking menacing, which was mounted to the closet door in my office. 

Our apartment was made from the basement of a house, and there were water pipes hanging from the ceiling throughout the whole place. So with the black walls and all of these other additions, the result was very foreboding. When the guests arrived (some of them known musicians) we made them wait on the patio outside, where drinks were served. When the ceremony was about to begin, we put on a Hildegard von Bingen CD, placed black hoods (dyed pillow cases) on the heads of the guests, and led them down, hoodwinked, into the ritual chamber. The room was charged with a certain spiritual energy, obvious to anyone with the eyes to see it, and the guests certainly picked up on it. 

Perhaps it was because we already thought ourselves subject to supernatural influence in our work that we felt inclined to seek even more. Therefore, Brian and I decided to use the Ouija board to contact one of the most misunderstood French artists of the 20th century: Jean Cocteau, who had died in 1963. He was alleged to have been a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. 

We hoped that he could illuminate some of the mysteries we were trying to solve about the Holy Grail. I had gotten the idea of using the Ouija board to contact him after reading about some of the table-rapping séances that Cocteau and his friends had famously performed. Perhaps, I thought, if he had talked to the dead while he was alive, he would be willing to talk to us now that he was dead. 

I had never been successful with the Ouija board before. The few times I had used it in high school with other teenage girls, it had just been stupid. Everybody asked about who they were going to marry and things like that. When the answers came you could tell someone was pushing the planchette. But this time I had a good feeling about it. 

So there I was with Brian, sitting in a blackened dungeon in Denver on a hot summer night in July 2001, choking on the smoke of incense, spooky music playing faintly in the background, with a Ouija board, a candle, and an empty jar of cumin on the table in front of us. We both took a deep breath and placed our hands on the jar. I cleared my throat and opened the séance: 

"Jean Cocteau, are you there?" 

Instantly, and much to our surprise, the bottle began to move. I could feel not only the bottle itself moving, but what seemed like a current of energy that pushed it in the direction it wanted to go. Because of its shape, the bottle wobbled awkwardly, but it did so quickly and purposefully. It stumbled directly up to the top of the board where the words "Ouija Board, by William Fuld" were written, and circled the first three letters, "OUI" The bottle circled these letters three times while Brian and I stared at each other, shocked. Then it wobbled over to the word "YES" written in the upper left-hand corner of the board, and stopped there. 

"Wow," said Brian. "I really felt it moving!" I was astonished too. It was unlike any previous Ouija board experience I had ever had. There was no question of whether the other person was pushing it. You could feel the force that was doing the pushing, and it definitely wasn't coming from either one of us. I was filled with wonder and amazement, but no fear. The air seemed to be full of electricity. 

"Well," I said, pulling myself together. "It seems to be working. I guess I should ask him some questions." 

We still had our hands on the bottle, and as soon as I said that, it wobbled back over to the first three letters in "Ouija." We laughed. He seemed to be agreeing with us, and speaking in French! I fumbled for the notebook where I had written down the planned questions, which was sitting on the floor next to the coffee table. Then we put our hands back on the bottle. 

"OK, Mr. Cocteau. Were you the Grand Master of…." Before I even finished the question, the bottle moved to the letter P. Then it went over to the number 0, the letter S, and the word YES. So he was able to anticipate my questions before I even spoke them! 

"POS - Priory of Sion. Yes," I said. "That's what I was about to ask. So what is the meaning of …." Then he did it again. The bottle began moving before I finished speaking. It wrote: 

"681681681681." 

I had been about to ask him about the meaning of the enigmatic code number 681, mentioned in the mysterious parchments Father Bérenger Saunière had discovered at Rennes-le Château. 

"Yes, 681. That's right. What does it mean?" His reply came swiftly: 

"DDDDDDDDD." 

Here was yet another strange code, this one specifically related to Cocteau's work. 

"Are you referring to the way you signed your painting of the Crucifixion at Leicester Square?" I asked. "With the initials DDD'?" 

His answer was very odd: "666NWO." 

We both took our hands off of the bottle. 

“That was weird” said Brian. “What do you think that meant?” 

I wrote the letters of his answer down in my notebook. Then I examined them carefully. 

"Well, NWO could stand for 'New World Order,' and '666' for the Anti-Christ. But I don't know why he would be talking about that." Brian shrugged, and we put our hands back on the bottle. 

"Jean, what can you tell us about the secrets of the Priory of Sion? What should we be looking for?" 

A minute passed, and the bottle didn't budge. So I rephrased the question. 

"What are the secrets of the Holy Grail?" I asked. Finally, the bottle wobbled slowly onto the letter C. Then it went to the sun symbol in the upper left-hand side of the board. It repeated this motion several times, moving in-between the C and the sun. I wasn't sure what this meant, so I asked for clarification: 

"Jean, are you actually saying the letter 'C' and the Sun? What does that mean?" 

He repeated it again several more times. 

"Are you saying 'See the sun,' like with your eyes?" I asked. He confirmed. 

"YES DO." He paused, and then continued, spelling out the words "LOOK C." Then he went to the sun again. 

"Are you talking about the sun in the sky?" I asked. "Or is it the Black Sun?" 

With the latter option, I was referring to the myth of the fiery dark orb that allegedly resides in the center of the Earth, according to the beliefs of certain German and Eastern mystics. 

"Or," I continued, "are you talking about a picture of the Sun in one of your drawings or paintings?" 

I thought of this last possibility, especially, because in more than one instance, Cocteau's work included pictures of people staring at the Sun with their eyeballs seemingly popping out of their heads. But he didn't answer. I repeatedly asked "What does 'See the sun' mean?" But all he could do was repeat that very phrase. 

Then the bottle jerked its way over to the bottom left and right corners of the board. In each corner there was an identical drawing of two people playing with a Ouija board, and a tiny spirit hovering over them in the air. The bottle went back and forth between these two corners several times, each time centering itself upon the depiction of the hovering spirit. Then it began wildly wobbling onto different letters and numbers with no apparent meaning. 

"ONACGSLNADNH316U8W9X9W82423UI3TOUHUD6UIWDKAW787STUVWXYZATUVRURURUNOQSUV756461723481748485748172381264848362381737823671278236 756D," he wrote. 

Afterwards the bottle returned to the center of the board. By the end of that spurt, our arms were aching. 

"What was the meaning of that?" I asked. 

"IAMBLCK04U," Cocteau replied. The bottle then seemed to actually slide rather than wobble down to the word "goodbye" at the bottom. It only stayed there for a second, where it appeared to levitate underneath our fingertips. Then it literally flew off to the left, zipping past the candle and falling onto the carpet. As it flew past, the flame on the candle suddenly became much brighter, and a sound like the zap of static electricity echoed through the air. 

"Jesus, did you see what just happened to the candle?" Brian shouted. "And the bottle just flew right off the board!" 

I was in a state of shock too. Throughout the entire event we had both maintained an eerie calm, not frightened in any way by our apparent encounter with the supernatural. I had always thought that I would flip out if I ever really saw a ghost or anything like that. But talking to the dead had put me in a state of wonder without fear. However, when the bottle flew off the board, I felt an electric surge up my spine, and my hair stood on end. 

"Should we try to talk to him again?" I asked. 

"I think he's done for now," Brian replied. "Let's try again when we can get a real planchette. I think he was pissed about the bottle." 

"Yeah," I said. “I think that's why he kept going to the little spirit hovering in the corner: to indicate that he was having a hard time communicating. And in the end I think he was trying to say ‘I am blocked for you.’” 

"I wonder what 'see the sun' means," said Brian. 

At three o'clock the morning after that first Cocteau séance, as I sat at my desk, staring at the sewing machine and the wooden cross (which were still there where Boyd had left them), I reflected on what had taken place in that very room a few weeks earlier. A (supposedly former) High Priest in the Church of Satan had performed a wedding right there, attended by well-known figures in the underground music scene, under the auspices of an organization that I Brian and I had created! Now, I realized, in the very same house, we had successfully contacted a famous dead artist, one of the former Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. I must not be easily spooked, because I could definitely feel a presence in the room, but it didn't scare me one bit. It actually made me feel less alone. But the Bacchus head on the wall, with its terrifying, demonic facial expression, did creep me out a little bit, so I tried not to look at it. 

I flipped through the notebook with the transcript of the séance. I couldn't believe it had really happened. We hadn't gotten any useful information, but Cocteau had definitely been trying to communicate. What did he really mean by "See the sun"? What about "666 NWO"? The term "New World Order" didn't become a buzz word for conspiracy theorists, and associated with the reign of the Anti-Christ, until well after Cocteau's time. 

I decided we would have to work it out in a later séance. I told Boyd about what we had done, which seemed to excite him. He said he had a Ouija board planchette we could borrow, and promised to bring it by the next day. We agreed that the three of us would try to contact Cocteau together. 

When he arrived the next day, I was sitting out on the patio by the table, on one of the white plastic chairs, sipping vodka and grape Kool-Aid. He was dressed as usual in black pants, a black Death in June t-shirt, and black slip-on shoes he had gotten out of the dollar bin at Walgreens. There were no socks. He was holding a plastic grocery bag with some stuff in it and he seemed to be in a good mood. He took a chair next to me and sat down. 

"I tried contacting Cocteau last night," he said, taking the planchette out of the bag and placing it on the table. 

"Oh, you mean you tried the Ouija board by yourself?" I asked. 

"Yeah, I sat there for a long time with my hands on the thingy, and it never moved," he said. "But I felt like he was trying to contact me. So I laid down on the couch and tried to relax so he could contact me through my mind. I went to sleep and had this fabulous dream that I was a student in a classroom all by myself. Cocteau was the professor. And he was teaching me all of the secrets of the cosmos." I recognized the dream as being inspired by a scene from Cocteau's film Testament of Orpheus, which we had all watched together at our apartment the week before. 

"Then when I woke up, I started flipping through this book about Cocteau again." He pulled a hardbound book out of his bag that he had shown me many times before. He opened it to a bookmarked page that showed detail on Cocteau's mural St. Peter Walking on Water at the Chapel of Saint Peter in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France. Then he pulled out a stack of papers from his bag, all of which showed a copy of that very same page in the book. 

On each copy he had drawn various geometric figures, by connecting dots and intersecting lines in the mural. There was a pentagram on one page, a hexagram on another, a square and compass on still another. He thought he had made a new discovery of another secret code embedded in Cocteau's artwork, just as Grail researcher Henry Lincoln had famously discovered a pentagram "encoded" into Cocteau's mural at Leicester Square in London. 

"Hmm," I said, not knowing what to make of it. I couldn't decide if it was meaningful, or if he was just projecting patterns onto a splatter of dots. It was interesting, but without an interpretation of a particular meaning for the code, I had no real use for it. I picked up the planchette. "Shall we begin?" 

We went inside and set everything up as we had before, with the candles and incense. We didn't play any music, though. I decided to get my video camera out to record the session. We strapped it to one of the pipes on the ceiling and pointed it down on the board. Then we all sat down and placed our hands on the planchette. Because there were three of us, there wasn't enough room for each set of hands, so we just put our two fingers on instead. When it seemed like everyone was ready, I started: 

"Jean Cocteau, are you there?" 

With a bit of hesitation this time, the planchette started to move. It slid over to the word "YES." But I could tell that the weight of all six hands was making it difficult. So I asked Brian to take his hands off, and take notes in the notebook instead. We resumed the session. 

"Boyd says you were visiting him in his dreams last night," I said. "Is that true, Mr. Cocteau?" 

The planchette started to move again, but as it did, the board itself started pivoting on its axis, until it turned all the way around. We straightened it out and repeated the question, but it happened again. It was strange, because we hadn't had this problem at all with the first séance. Finally, Brian got a towel and placed it underneath the board so that it wouldn't move anymore. Then we started again. 

"Jean, what secrets have you embedded into the mural of St. Peter Walking on Water?" 

This time, the planchette glided rather easily across the board. Boyd's eyes widened. You could tell he was shocked that it was actually working. He was feeling for the first time the sensation of the planchette being moved by an invisible force, with his hands just being dragged along. It zipped through the entire alphabet, from the ends to the middle, in this fashion: 

"AZBYCXDWEVFUGTHSIRJQKPLOMN." 

"What does that mean?" I asked. 

"C SUN C SUN C SUN," was the swift reply. 

"I think the 'sun' may be a reference to Cain," I said, alluding to the biblical figure that I had theorized was a king of the ancient world and progenitor of the Grail bloodline. I had also theorized that the myth of the Black Sun might be symbolic of Cain in the underworld. Furthermore, Jean Cocteau had placed an image of the Black Sun in his Crucifixion mural at Notre Dame de France in London (portraying when the sun went dark as Christ died). So I decided to go ahead and ask. 

"Cocteau, when you say 'c the sun,' are you referring to Cain?" 

"YES," Cocteau replied. "C SUN C SUN C SUN." 

"Is he the same as the Black Sun," I asked. The reply was the same: 

"YES. C SUN C SUN C SUN. AZBYCXDWEVFUGTHSIRJQKPLOMN." 

"What is that all about?" I questioned. "Are you trying to get us to look at the alphabet for some sort of clue?" All he said in reply was a repeat of the inverted alphabet sequence. He gave the same answer to the next few questions as well. Then he went into a long stream of seemingly random numbers and letters. 

Finally Boyd took his hands off the planchette, and reached into his pocket for the can of snuff he always carried with him. He dumped some of the brown powder onto his hand between his thumb and forefinger, then snorted it up his nose, making a loud snuckering noise as he did. He seemed frustrated. 

"Is everything OK?" I asked. 

"This whole thing just seems like bullshit," he said. "I've never been able to get the Ouija board to work." 

"But it's working now," I said. 

"He's not saying anything that makes any sense! 'See the sun'? What are we supposed to do with that information?" 

I didn't know how to react. The messages seemed at least as meaningful to me as the pictures Boyd had drawn on the copies of Cocteau's mural. Also, it's not every day that a dead French artist talks to you, even if you're not sure what he's saying. But I could tell that Boyd was choosing not to believe that the communication was real. Did he think that I was pushing the planchette? If so, why would I have made up answers like that? 

"I've got an idea," said Boyd, placing his hands back on the indicator. "Can I ask a question?" 

"Go ahead," I said, putting my hands back on as well. 

"Does your consciousness tell you what people are thinking?" he asked. Cocteau replied in the affirmative. 

"Then what letter am I thinking of." 

I couldn't believe it. Boyd actually had the audacity to test Jean Cocteau in this manner! How rude! I was totally embarrassed. But the planchette immediately moved to the letter E. Boyd laughed. 

"So why are you wrong?" he asked. 

He was being a total ass. Cocteau responded again with the letter E. Boyd pushed the planchette away and got up in disgust. 

"All right," he said. "You can keep the thingy. I'm going home." He picked up his book and his copies of the mural, excused himself swiftly. I locked the door behind him. I was surprised that things had gone so badly. 

"Sorry about that," I said to Cocteau. "We'll try this again later, and we won't bring him next time." 

I stopped the video camera and took the VHS-C tape out so that I could make sure it had recorded. I placed the tape in the converter case, which allowed it to be played on a regular VCR, then rewound it, and pushed play. I noticed something really interesting. 

"Look at this," I said to Brian. "The shot is upside-down. It was upside-down the entire time." 

"We'll have to remember to turn the board around the other way next time," he said. 

"But that's not what's significant," I said. I pointed to the video. It was the beginning of the séance, before we put the towel down, when the board kept turning around. 

"He was trying to turn the board around for us. He knew that the shot would be upside down, and he was trying to fix it." We stared at each other for a moment in wonder and disbelief. 

"Well, he is a filmmaker," Brian said. "He wanted us to get a good shot." 

Cocteau's emphasis on the inverted alphabet sequence got me thinking about the fact that there were 26 letters in the modern alphabet, which was a factor of 13. I knew that there was a book called Alphabet of the Sun, written by a French journalist named Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who was known for his work on the subject of the Priory of Sion. Also, the Priory had published papers pertaining to the subject of a zodiac with thirteen houses, including the insertion of "Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder" to the traditional twelve. Their writings indicated that they held some secret significance to this. 

I reread Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln looking for clues about these ideas. I came across information that the Priory had published about the structure of their order. Specifically it was about how many members there were in each grade, which was a set amount. 

There was one structure that existed, allegedly, prior to Jean Cocteau's Grand Mastership of the order. Then there was another set of numbers for the new structure after he "reformed" the Priory. I noticed patterns forming in both sets of numbers, particularly factors of 13. Of those, I noticed particularly the number 364, the total amount of members after the reforms. 

What I found out, which I was totally unaware of before, was that 364 is the number of days in a lunar calendar year, with thirteen months per year. Also, if, theoretically, you were able to measure the solar year with such a calendar (in other words, if the year was just a little more than a day shorter), then each month would have 28 days exactly. Each month would start out on the same day of the week. This led me to intuitive leaps of understanding about a possible hidden 13-based time measurement system that might have been encoded in these numbers found within the Priory of Sion's structure. 

I even realized that the same sets of numbers could be found in a traditional deck of playing cards. Originally this game had been used for divination, and it was the progenitor of Tarot cards. Was the calendar encoded in the playing cards too, maybe put there by occult initiates? 

Perhaps also, I thought, the 26-letter modern alphabet was a repository of cabalistic secrets, as the Hebrew alphabet is seen to be. Maybe groups like the Priory of Sion were aware of this. Given the title of Jean-Luc Chaumeil's book, Alphabet of the Sun, I wondered about possible solar and lunar calendrical connections to the alphabet as well. I wanted to ask Jean Cocteau about this, and decided to pressure Brian for another séance.

Chapter 2: 

See the Sun 

...It is desirable to note the distinction between good and evil Magic, between the Sanctuary of the Sons of Seth and the profanation of the science by the descendants of Cain. 

- Eliphas Levi, Magic: A History of 

Its Rites, Rituals, and Mysteries 

It wasn't until the end of October that we finally got around to using the Ouija board again. But then something happened that got our attention. We received in the mail what appeared to be a magazine almost identical in style and content to our own. The main difference was that it was in the German language, with Wolfzeit as the title. 

They had articles about the Priory of Sion, Rennes-le-Château, the Knights Templar, and the Holy Grail. There was a Gothic look to the design, and it contained interviews with the same kinds of bands that we were reviewing in Dagobert's Revenge. It even had the Cross of Lorraine as a logo, just like we did, and "Mythos, Mystik, Minnesang" as a subtitle, very similar to our own "Musick, Magick, Monarchism." 

Included in the package was a letter from the Editor, Peter Felsch. It stated that he had started his magazine a few months earlier (and thus much later than Dagobert's Revenge had started in 1996). But he was unaware of our existence until someone told him that his own magazine looked like "a German version of Dagobert's Revenge." He had researched the name and, sure enough, there was already an American publication very similar to his. 

Brian and I found this a shocking coincidence, since our magazine was indeed so very unique. So shortly after receiving the package, on October 31, we invoked the spirit of Jean Cocteau on the Ouija board. We asked him if he could explain why there was another magazine so similar to our own. 

In response, he repeatedly used the planchette to indicate the picture of people playing Ouija in the corner of the board, with the spirit hovering above. We took this to be a reference to mediumistic influence. Cocteau was saying that Peter Felsch was channeling the same muse that we were. 

I thought back to that night several years earlier, when I had come up with the idea for Dagobert's Revenge while studying calculus, under the influence of something other than myself. Had Felsch been charged with the same mission that I had been given? If so, were we meant to compete with each other, or would our efforts each complement those of the other? Were there others out there who were being similarly influenced? If so, by whom? Was it the spirit of Jean Cocteau who had been leading me all this time? 

I decided to ask this of Cocteau directly. What I got in reply was "C THE SUN." I wanted to know if "the sun" was Cain. He said "YES. OUI," and also repeatedly used the letters "BS." We inquired as to whether or not this stood for "Black Sun," and he answered in the affirmative. So we asked if this meant that we should try to talk to Cain on the Ouija board, and put our questions to him instead of Cocteau. We were given an emphatic "YES." We proceeded. 

"Cain," I said. "Are you there?" 

The response that we got was strong and swift, much more so than when we were talking to Cocteau. It was an incredible sensation. I felt this spirit very powerfully, and it immediately spelled out an ominous phrase. 

"YRUBIDDING." 

We were shocked, and a little bit scared. Why are you bidding? He seemed to be acting somewhat threatening and standoffish. The exchange that followed went thusly: 

Tracy: Are you asking us why we're calling upon you? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Because we want to figure out the mystery of the Holy Grail. Are we asking questions we shouldn't be asking? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Do you want us to stop asking you questions? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: Is someone else mad at us for asking these questions? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Who? 

Cain: BOPHOMET (sic) So there it was: the name of the demonic idol Baphomet, worshipped by the Templars, slightly misspelled. 

Now, you've got to understand: I was aware of the topic of Baphomet at this time, but just slightly. I had written an article on the subject for the magazine years earlier, but it was brief, and short on details. I knew that the Templars had worshipped a severed head or skull by that name (at least, according to their confessions when they were accused of blasphemy). At the time, the tortured Templars claimed that the head had spoken to them, protected them on the battlefield during the Crusades, and helped their organization to become fabulously wealthy. 

Seal of the Ordo Lapsit Exillis

I knew that later occultists had glommed onto the idea of Baphomet. Somehow it became, in occult iconography, an androgynous human with a goat's head. I knew the modern depiction of Satan enthroned was based on this image. I knew that conspiracy theorists thought that the Freemasons worship Baphomet. Beyond this through, I hadn't really thought about it much. However, the goaty Baphomet figure had been shown on one of the covers of Wolfszeit Magazine.

Why on Earth was Cain telling us that Baphomet didn't want us to ask him questions about the Holy Grail? I asked for clarification. 

Tracy: Baphomet? Baphomet is mad at us? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is it Baphomet who has been trying to influence us in this work all along? Is that who has been guiding my research this whole time? 

Cain: YES 

I thought about all of the supernatural help I seemed to have gotten with my work. However, I also thought about all the money problems we'd been having along the way. Bad financial luck that had repeatedly prevented us for being able to publish the magazine on time. It was also making it difficult for me to find time to research and write, as I was doing a lot of odd jobs now to try to get by. I wondered if maybe we weren't also being cursed for some reason, in addition to being influenced mentally. So I asked. 

Tracy: Is there a curse causing all of these money problems we're having? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Who has cursed us? 

Cain: BAPHOMET 

Tracy: What can we do so that Baphomet isn't angry at us anymore? 

Cain: AKNOWLEGE (sic) 

Tracy: Acknowledge what? 

Cain: BAPHOMET 

Tracy: How can we acknowledge Baphomet? 

Cain: PUBLISH A BOOK 

Was he talking about the book I was writing with Boyd? Or another book project I was also working on at the time? Or was it yet another one that hadn't been started yet? I didn't know, so I asked "Which book?" The response I got was totally unexpected. He answered: 

"DE VERE." 

I hadn't even thought about Nicholas De Vere in months. I had completely blown off the work he wanted me to do, finding a publisher for his work From Transylvania to Tunbridge Wells. But apparently, Baphomet wanted me to live up to my promise to Nick for some reason. 

Tracy: How should we publish De Vere's book? 

Cain: 1000 

Tracy: A thousand copies? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: How are we going to get the money to publish it? 

Cain: A PUBLISHER 

Tracy: Which publisher? 

Cain: OLE 

Another wave of shock came over me. Cain, as a spokesman for Baphomet, appeared to be endorsing the crazy but beautiful work of Nicholas de Vere (so much so that Baphomet was apparently punishing me for failing to help Nick publish it). Moreover, it seemed that he was explicitly endorsing our creation, the Ordo Lapsit Exillis, as a secret society, and wanted it to be publicly connected to the Dragon Court through the publishing of this book. 

Now, Dagobert's Revenge was officially listed as the organ of the OLE. But it was registered with the government as a for-profit partnership with Brian and me as owners. We used advertising and subscription revenue to come up with the money to publish each issue. I had no idea at that time how to raise money to publish a book. 

However, we had received a few unsolicited donations for Dagobert's Revenge, as well as letters from people who said they wanted to invest large money in the venture (but never followed through). We had thought about creating a website to receive donations for the OLE. So we asked about that. 

Tracy: Is someone going to donate the money we need for this book to the OLE? 

Cain: YES. 

Tracy: Who? 

Cain: BS 

Tracy: What does BS stand for? 

Cain: BAPHOMET SUN 

Earlier, it had been affirmed by Cocteau that "BS" meant "Black Sun," and that this was a reference to Cain himself. Now Cain was saying that it meant "Baphomet Sun." But understanding the nature of esoteric symbols, I knew they could have several meanings. Those multiple meanings were often connected to each other as well. 

He could have been saying that "Baphomet," "the Black Sun" and "Cain" were all somehow the same entity, or different aspects of some larger concept. In this specific context this evening, "Baphomet Sun" could even be a human being acting as an avatar or incarnation of this larger entity. How else would "Baphomet Sun" be able to donate money to us? I resumed the interrogation. 

Tracy: Is this a live person? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is "Baphomet Sun" his real name? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is this his given name? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: What's his given name? 

Cain: AKIDMAN 

A. Kidman? I thought. Or "A Kid-Man," like a man-child? Or maybe even a goat-man? I continued questioning. 

Tracy: Does he live in Europe? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Does he live in France? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: Does he live in Britain? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is he rich? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is he a businessman? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: What line of business is he in? 

Cain: ART 

Tracy: Is he an artist? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is he a famous artist? 

Cain: NO. LAWER (sic). 

Tracy: Is he a famous lawyer? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Does he donate money to artists? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: How much will he donate to the OLE? 

Cain: 100000 

We asked if all we needed to do was set up the apparatus on the internet for the OLE to take donations in order to receive something from this "A Kidman." Cain said "YES." So we asked if there was anything, such as a code word, that we needed to put on the OLE web page in order to ensure that it captured A. Kidman's attention. That's when it got really weird. Cain answered: "BUY NEW ON SALE CD NON AVAILABLE NOW." 

"Non" was the name of Boyd's ongoing "noise art" project. It was represented on Mute Records, and he put out a new record about once a year, usually with an accompanying tour of small venues in the US and Europe. I wasn't really that much of a fan. So what was this Cain was saying about Boyd's new CD? I inquired. 

Tracy: Are you saying we need to advertise Boyd's CD in order to get a donation? 

Cain: YES Tracy: 

Are there any alternative words we could use instead of "BUY NEW ON SALE CD NON AVAILABLE NOW"? 

Cain: NEW NON TRACK 

Tracy: Why is advertising Boyd's CD important to getting the donation? 

Cain: LOVE NON 

Tracy: Is Mr. Kidman a fan of Boyd? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: So in order to get the donation we need to publicize Non? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: But we do publicize Non 

Cain: NOT ENOUGH 

Tracy: Why is Baphomet interested in the success of Non? 

Cain: ANTON 

Tracy: Anton LaVey? 

Cain: YES 

Boyd had been friends with Anton LaVey, and a spokesman for the Church of Satan. The "Sigil of Baphomet," which featured the Goat-head of Baphomet inside of a pentagram, was used by the Church of Satan as its official insignia (although the symbol existed long before that). So, as Baphomet seemed to be a patron of the Church of Satan, I thought that maybe his loyalty to Anton was spilling over onto Boyd. I asked for more details. 

Tracy: This CD we're supposed to advertise: is it his current CD? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: Is it the next Non album? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: When will it come out? 

Cain: JANUARY 

Tracy: What will it be called? 

Cain: BLACKSUN RISING 

Boyd did indeed put out a record with this title, years after I showed him this prophecy. 

Tracy: Are we going to somehow be involved in the making of this CD? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: Will this CD be put out by Mute? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: Will it be put out by Tesco? This was an Australian label that was being used by Death in June at the time. 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is Boyd's contract with Mute about to end? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Why is Boyd's contract going to end? 

Cain: BIOGRAPHY OF BOYD 

Tracy: Is Mute going to cancel Boyd's contract because of something in Boyd's biography? At the time, there were no films or books about Boyd's life, but I have heard that such material was published years later. 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Why? 

Cain: BOYD IS NOT ON THE COUNSEL (sic) OF 9 

The "Council of Nine" is the name for the group of elders that runs the Church of Satan. Boyd used to always brag about being on the Council in interviews. 

Tracy: Does this have something to do with internal Church of Satan politics? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Is the Church of Satan somehow connected to Mute records? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: So is Boyd's contract going to end because of something he said about the Church of Satan? 

Cain: BIOGRAPHY OF BOYD GOING TO END MUTE. SOY NO VIVE. 

Tracy: Why did you just say that in Spanish? 

Cain: BECAUSE OF BRIAN 

Brian had taken a couple of years of Spanish in High School. He said that these last words translated to "I am not alive." Was Cain reminding us that he was a ghost, no longer living? Or was he speaking of someone else's death? This frightened me a little bit, and brought me back on point. 

Tracy: Why is Baphomet interested in publishing De Vere's book? 

Cain: BECAUSE SHE IS RELATED 

The word "she" reminded me that Baphomet was androgynous, having both a penis (wrapped with snakes) and paps (for nursing her kids, as she was called "the Goat with a Thousand Young.") I was also reminded that Nicholas traced his royal lineage back to figures that were god-kings or demi-gods of the ancient world: entities that were said to be more than human. Cain was one of his ancestors, he claimed, and in my research I had identified Cain as one of the first of these deified kings. It occurred to me that perhaps Cain was saying that Baphomet was such a being as well, and literally De Vere's blood ancestor. So I asked about that. 

Tracy: Is Baphomet related to De Vere? 

Cain: YES. AUDE IS NOW DE VERE. 

Aude is the department in France where Rennes-le-Château is located. 

Tracy: You mean that the region of Aude somehow belongs to De Vere now? 

Cain: YES 

Tracy: Who gave it to him? 

Cain: PLANTARD 

Pierre Plantard was one of the most recent Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion, and owned land in the Chapter Rennes-le-Château area. He also claimed to be the rightful King of France. So in some sense, I suppose, some might think that the whole region was "his," or that there was a title one could inherit from Plantard bestowing rulership over the realm. 

Tracy: Does De Vere know about it yet? 

Cain: NO 

Tracy: How will he find out? 

Cain: BOOK. ARC IS NOW DR. 

"Arques," pronounced just like "arc," is the name of the commune in the Aude department that includes the Languedoc-Roussillon region, within which Rennes-le-Château is found. Also, "Arc" could be a reference to the Ark of the Covenant or Noah's Ark. It could even denote Arcadia, the region of Greece that features in the Greek myths of Hermes, patron of Western occultism. 

"Arcadian" has come to symbolize, to Rosicrucians and other initiates of the esoteric, the source of the hidden wisdom associated with Hermes. The syllable "ark" or "arc," in so many different languages, indicates a vessel of some sort, usually a box, such as a coffin. In the realm of the occult, a repository of secret knowledge could be called an "Ark," and the word "arcane" is related to this idea. In Nicolas Poussin's famous painting The Shepherds of Arcadia (which many believe contains clues pertaining to the enigma of Rennes-le-Château), four shepherds are seen pointing at a tomb engraved with the words "Et in Arcadia Ego" ("I am in Arcadia"). 

So what was Cain saying here? First he told us that Nicholas de Vere was somehow going to inherit ownership or control of the department of Aude from Pierre Plantard. Then he appeared to say that "Arc," whatever that was, somehow belonged to "DR," which, he affirmed, stood for Dagobert's Revenge. 

We didn't know what to make of this, but several things had become clear that evening. For one thing, our divination efforts had just made a fantastic leap when we decided to contact Cain, a god-king of the ancient world, instead of Jean Cocteau, a mere dead human. Instead of meaningless codes, we were getting real answers spelled out in real words, even if they were still very cryptic at times. 

Furthermore, Cain and his accomplice Baphomet appeared to be taking an acute interest in me, the OLE, Nicholas de Vere, and even Boyd Rice. Also, Cain seemed to be admitting that Baphomet was using a system of punishment and reward, through curses and blessings, to try to get me to do what he wanted. Some of the blessings that were being promised now included six figure donations and possible property inheritance in France. 

As Brian and I discussed these matters, our mental clarity began to fade, and we noticed a strange amnesia falling over us. The more we talked, the more we found that we couldn't remember the details of what had just happened to us. Luckily we had recorded it all and taken notes. With foggy brains, we both went to bed and drifted off into oblivion.

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