The Devil in Carcassonne

I have a picture of it in the day time too, but it doesn't look nearly as ominous & ghostly with the sun up.

Actually, if you go there, it really doesn't look that ominous & threatening at night either.  But then you hang outside, pass around a bottle of wine, & suddenly it hits you.  You know exactly where you are & you know exactly how bloody it was.

Mind you, the realization comes not because the name rings a bell so much as you've seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, realize that they filmed part of it here & that sort of brings the dawn of realization.  Yes, you know exactly what happened where they filmed Robin Hood.  Thank you Dr. Rosa for forever linking the two.

So then you sort of remove yourself from the group because Mark & Laura & Bryan & all of them seem to be having a really good time & you want to quietly wonder how much blood & bonemeal you are currently standing on.  Did they have to rebury a couple of hundred bodies when they made that parking lot or did they simply path over them?

Those really aren't the sort of thoughts that you want to bring up in a group of happy drunks.  That's just going to bring everyone down.

They stripped everyone naked before they marched them out to their deaths & you know they marched them out through that gate right over there.  Literally a stone's throw away.

Now this was back before personal hygiene & shaved legs but still, you have never, ever, been anywhere where a thousand women were naked all at the same time.  Unfortunately, that isn't a common thing in history.

Is that a thought you want to share with the group, Sam, or should you keep your mouth shut about that too.  That one might be disturbing.

"Hey! Guys!  Hey Guys!  Dude, about 1,000 naked women walked to their deaths right over this parking lot in like 1209 AD!  That is 2,000 naked boobies that once crossed over this very point!"

There were also about 2,000 naked wing-dings & things, but for some reason, my mind didn't focus on those.

Yeah, it's probably best to stay closed off & in my own little world.  Sharing might make my friends think I'm a bit odd.

I know, the painting looks a bit different, but you can still tell that's Cité de Carcassonne & yes, they made the wall a lot taller after that.  I mean obviously the painting is to scale & clearly the old walls didn't offer much of a defense...being only waist high & all.

You can sort of see the silhouette of  a trashcan in the foreground, inside that trashcan are two incredibly cheap bottles of wine.  Our contribution to French culture.

There was another feeling that came with that trip.  That sort of awe inspiring "this country is really old" sort of feeling.  It's a feeling that makes you not want to even set foot on the ground out of fear that you might fuck up the research.

We don't think about shit like that living in America, but it's really an awe inspiring thing.  You are standing on ground that has been inhabited before the first migration into America.

A place like Carcassonne is awful because you know exactly what horrible shit transpired there.  If you believe in ghosts, that's not a place you want to go for vacation...Europe as a whole might not be a great place to go on vacation.

It makes you wonder:

"How do people manage to live in Jerusalem, Baghdad, Thebes, Cairo?"

 
Because a part of you believes that even walking in a place like Carcassonne is VERY disrespectful.  Now imagine walking on Calvary Hill or the Giza Plateau.  The history Gods might well damn you for all eternity.

A part of you wants to instantly turn around & go home.  Fuck the wedding, you have only been alive a scarce few decades & that doesn't rate.  You're from a country that has only been around for a blink of an eye.  You don't deserve to be here.  It's too old, you are tainting it with modernity.  Every step you take is defiling antiquity.

All thoughts of boobies wash away & get replaced by guilt:

"It would be impossible for me to show the proper respect."

So today we are going to talk about the Cathars & hopefully wash away some of the Dan Brown utter bull shit that comes with them.

So, what the fuck is a Cathar?

Explanation #1 the Dan Brown Definition:

Well, if you read Dan Brown, a Cathar can be linked to a Templar, which can be linked to Mary Magdalene, who fucked Jesus, got knocked up, moved to France, had a daughter & for some unknown reason named her Seth.

Who would name their daughter Seth?

Anyway, Seth would later go on to found the Merovingian Dynasty who helped save Europe from the Muslim invaders that were pillaging & raping their way throughout the entire former Roman Empire.

Seth would also go on to befriend the great Joss Whedon & get a roll as Oz in everyone's favorite television show.

At least that is what Dan Brown says.

BUT, he also said that Mary went to France in order to hide from the Roman's who were Pagan & good because she was carrying Christ's child who was gnostic & good & she had to keep the child in hiding because the Catholic Church was going to form in about 200 hundred years in the future & become the official religion of Rome & want to subjugate women.

And for some reason people believe that.

Now if you take a moment to look at the map you will find Judea where Mary & Jesus lived on the far eastern edge of Rome.

You will find Gaul, where she went to hide from Roman Rule, in red on the western edge of the Roman Empire & still under Roman control...hence the red...& also much closer to Rome.

What I am saying is that if you believe the pseudo history Dan Brown bull shit on the Cathars & the Templars than you believe that Mary crossed the entirety of the Roman Empire to settle in a land still occupied by Rome in order to hide from Rome.

It makes you wonder: why didn't she go a few miles east into Persia where you know she was welcomed because the Zoroastrians sent three wise men to welcome her & her little baby Jesus?

Do you know what the three wise men said to Jesus?

"This is for your birthday & Christmas."

So, clearly Dan Brown is a theory made for idiots that have never read a map & made by idiots that have never read a map.

And that is cool, because Dan Brown gave us The Da Vinci Code & I know I'm supposed to hate it, but I can't.  It is formulaic & totally reminds me of what would happen if Dashiell Hammett met Alexander Dumas.

And it would have been an absolutely perfect & seamless merging if Brown didn't do a Mary Sue thing with Robert Langdon.

 So what the fuck is a Cathar?

Explanation #2 the Catholic Definition:

Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! SATAN!

It's actually almost that simple.  

The Cathars are a group of Stanists that follow the gnostic doctrines & worship Mary over Jesus in their effort to lay with the Devil himself & Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan! 

They eat human flesh & drink the blood of babies.  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  

They preform witchcraft & not the funny Harry Potter kind.   Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  

They give women near equal rights &  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan!  Satan! Satan!  

And you get the picture.

It's really hard to believe anything the Catholic Church says when they use the same line on the Cathars as they do the Templars as they do Miguel from the last post as they do John Calvin as they....

Well, they might have a point with Calvin.

At any rate

What the fuck is a Cathar?

Explanation #3 The Historical Definition:

It's super simple.  A Cathar is a Dualist.

A Duelist?

Excellent movie, but no.

A Cathar is a Dualist not a Duelist.

The yin & the yang...

But that's not Christian & the Cathars have never heard of that sooooo.....Christian dualism refers to the belief that God & creation are distinct, but interrelated through an indivisible bond.  There are two Gods...well, sort of.  There is an evil God that created the material world & a good God that created morality so we know how to treat one another on that evil world...but that could be the same God.

God could be Janus.  Or he might just be bi-polar.

At any rate, free will is key to the Cathars because it is free will that separates man from God & it is through that free will that we decide if we are going to be a good man or not & it is through that decision that we are either welcomed into the hereafter or condemned.

Fair enough, the second part isn't all that different from Catholicism, except that if you are Catholic God is entirely good & if you are a Cathar God is both good & evil.

It's amazing how religious wars start over really trivial things.

Whatever you do, do NOT mention "Filius" to a Greek Orthodox Christian, but that is a story for another day, & one that I have often lied about just to see if eventually my bull shit story will get back to me.

I'm telling the truth about the Cathars, I'm not going to knowingly put a lie in print.  In case you were wondering, at least not without the proper disclaimers.

So, to set the record straight we Catholics believe in the mind-body dualism, but not the God dualism.  Humans are capable of both good & evil because of free will, but God in omnipotent & not capable of evil.

Doesn't omnipotent mean that he can do anything thus making him also capable of evil?

Yes, but do yourself a favor & just don't think about it.

The entire thing starts to unravel if you think about it.  

Religion has never really been a Gordian Knot.  

That, or it is a Gordian Knot & we are all as smart as Alexander...well, most of us are.

Anywho..

It was called the Albigensian Crusade & because of it there aren't any Cathars left.

Al-big-in-see-ian?  I can't pronounce it.

It's a French word so you mumble off the last syllable, so "Al-big-in-see-aaaaaaayyyeeeaaa?"  Maybe?  I don't know.

It took 20 years & was started by Pope Innocent II in 1209 AD, which, by the way, for those of us in America, that puts it 200 years before the Aztec Empire & around the time of the Mayan collapse.

They did it to take out the Waldensians & the Cathars, the former later became Calvinists & rejected Christianity altogether.  The latter became extinct.

Savvy?

Massacres followed:

What the Crusaders are doing there is dropping a body into a well to poison the drinking supply.  Because germ warfare has been around for a very long time.

At any rate, they did see Mary as more important than Saint Peter, so Dan Brown had that correct, but they were also living in France & had a special reverence for the Gospel of John & had never heard of the Gospel of Mary.  The Gospel of Mary was lost almost a thousand years prior & only recently rediscovered.  So the Cathars could not have read it...despite what Dan Brown says.

No virgin me
For I have sinned
I sold my soul
For sex & gin
Go call a priest
All meek & mild
And tell him, "Mary
Is no more a child."

That reverence for Mary gave women an equal footing with the men in their community & that produced a very real problem for both the Catholic Church & French communities.

Because despite really kick ass women:

We are talking the 13th Century.  Women don't have the muscle mass that men do & you didn't have the money in most communities to own beasts of burden, a horse was about the same price as a Mc-Mansion today so you pulled the plows yourself...when you were working the communal farms, which are the farms that fed you.  You had beasts of burden when you worked on your Lord's farm, but the community didn't eat that food.

The gender roles were set in stone by necessity & the Cathars were taking over a lot of France & Italy & because of that, well, women started to demand the same things that men had which resulted in...

Starvation.

We can have gender equality today because of technology.  Back in the 13th Century the type of gender equality that the Cathars were pushing because of their reverence for Mary meant that not enough food was harvested to allow the community to make it through the winter.

The fact that Catharism was spreading meant that the winter famines were spreading as well, which made the religion more than just a spiritual threat, it made Catharism a threat to survival itself.

That's something that you won't hear many historian talk about in public, but gender inequality meant the difference between survival & death for a very long time.

But thanks to political correctness & a shift in attitude because of technology, you can't exactly say that today.

Like I said, don't think too hard about it because it's not exactly a Gordian Knot.  The Cathar's believed in the yin & the yang for humans & God, but didn't think of gender the same way & the spread of their beliefs meant a lack of food in the material world.

And if you are a feminist, sorry, but...FACT.  You are equal because of technology, but not muscle mass.

But because of that equality, it did gain a LOT of female followers & that did disrupt the food chain, so even though the Catholic Church did massacre the Cathars, they were already sort of dieing out by their own design.

The question wasn't if Catharism would last in the world of the Middle Ages as much as it was how many non Cathars would it take to the grave with it?

Savvy?

In order to combat the Cathars we burned them as Heretics.  We also focused a lot of that particular crusade against the Cathars & not so much the Waldensians, who are still alive today.  We did this because the Waldensians were every bit the heretics as the Cathars, but their system of belief didn't mean the potential death of, well, everyone else.

That isn't to say that there were not Waldensian massacres, there were, & there was a horrible one in 1545, but the threat they posed was only theological & not material so the complete annihilation of the Waldensians wasn't a necessity.

Which is why, today, we look at the Cathars as special & unique & make up stories about Seth & Mary's child & the Holy Grail & the Jesus bloodline.  It makes for a better story & their reverence for Mary helps to develop that conspiracy. 

That little starvation/survival thing is also the reason why they attacked the Cathars with far more vigor than the Waldensians, because the bottom line is, you aren't going to live without food.

It's really that simple.

I'll Leave you with this: