Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A BIG Piece of the Rennes Puzzle..., March 15, 1999
Too bad ALL of the "Rennes-les-Chateau Addicts" don't have this book... they might then have a CLUE!This is a MARVELOUS compendium of arcane lore, compared and listed alongside details of that most interesting mystery of Southern France which makes clear the absolute ANCIENT nature of it, and makes irrelevant all the silly conjectures about the "Tomb of God" or the "Horse of God" or buried "treasure" of the 3 dimensional ilk. Ms. Van Buren's conclusions are VERY deep and complex, but entirely in keeping with the demonstrated complexity of this phenomenon. It has proven over and over again to "shift and move" with the assumptions and expectations of the "seeker," showing us that there is not a simple nor cut-and-dried answer as so many expect to find. It is TRULY an alchemical work... The SERIOUS Rennes-les-Chateau and "Shepherds of Arcadia" aficionado cannot afford to NOT buy this book!
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fantastic Journey to Hidden Dimensions, August 15, 2001
I couldn't agree more with the previous review. This book is a rare jewel. It is far more poetic than factual, and many of the statements and assertions it contains will irritate and infuriate the skeptic and the cynic. On the other hand, this is the real deal...this book does a superb job of crystallizing the intangible spiritual forces and dimensions that make Rhedae such an unforgettable flower of eternity. It is a haunting and ultimately nonverbal book, and I'd have to say it's one of my all-time favorites. Every page is packed with awesome and nebulous mysteries. You'll either give it five stars or you'll think it's the worst piece of gibberish you've ever seen....sheer poetry from beginning to end. Vive le Cardou!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A stream of consciousness of symbollic transpositions, September 19, 2009
Most people interested in the Rennes-le-Chateau puzzle recognize that it has to involve multiple layers and levels, and interlinking spheres of concealed agendas. This book touches on many but not all of them (it's not concerned with anything so mundane and concrete as how Sauniere got his wealth and what's buried where) but in an inchoate, ultimately uninformative way. It's a swirling stew of alchemy, mythology, gnosticism, symbollism, biblical quotations, Jules Verne, the Merovingians, and a hundred other things. In places the author seems to begin to describe or explain something, but it always unravels into a sort of stream-of-consciousness hall-of-mirrors of symbollic or esoteric equivalences and associations and transpositions. This represents that, and A is of course B which is also C (or maybe X or Y) -- but the "decoded" or hidden meaning is even more symbollic/allegorical/obscure than the original.
A great deal of the "encoded secret knowledge", at least as presented here, is essentially declarations of religious beliefs and doctrines: it's as if you take a misspelled Latin inscription, translate it into Provencal and then into "phonetic French", rearrange the words and come up with the mystery-religion equivalent of "Jesus Is Lord".
Well, if I didn't get much out of the text, I could at least look at the pictures. The book has many illustrations, including stone carvings and paintings mentioned but not reproduced in other books. For example, both of Leonardo da Vinci's "Virgin of the Rocks" paintings are shown, in color, and Van Buren discovers many hidden shapes and figures in them, although she has nothing to say about the most evident hidden image, a giant stone phallus in the central background. Maybe it's a test -- if you see THAT, you're not pure of heart?
One of the most interesting series of illustrations is the complete Stations of the Cross from Sauniere's church at Rennes, a full-page color print of each. Again in these, Van Buren describes hidden/subliminal figures, shapes and symbols in profusion. I do see the dragon's head, and the Golden Fleece on a pole, in the background of Station XIV -- you could hardly even call them hidden -- but for much of the rest of it, maybe it's the relatively small size of the reproductions (the book is about 5 1/2" x 8 3/4", so even a full page illustration isn't all that big) or something about the printing process that keeps me from seeing all that Van Buren does; but I'm kind of inclined to think that if you showed this woman any Rorschach blot or cloud shape, she would quickly find a dragon, a hare, a bear, a giant, several faces, and a St. Anthony's cross in it.
One of the longest sustained topics is a "terrestrial zodiac" surrounding Rennes, and here again the author's propensity (or ability) to see shapes popping out is exercised (though possibly the zodiac was first described in another writer's work? if so, I couldn't find the reference a second time). Here, by studying the map and using ridgelines, streams, paths, village boundaries and the like, one discovers figures outlined on the terrain. Some are huge, some are small, some overlap or are even entirely contained by others; and to my eye almost none of them bear a credible resemblance to what they're supposed to be. I'm not persuaded by the fancy fold-out map and individual color illustrations. These are nothing like, for example, the Nazca lines; they're essentially inkblots on the map with (so far as it's explained) arbitrarily chosen boundaries. Two (supposedly) depict Hercules (or Sagittarius/Hercules/Arthur).. The larger of these (p. 198) actually does resemble a bizarrely distorted human figure -- Hercules looks like he's been run over by a truck (and, strikingly, both his hands are cut off, about which Van Buren has no comment). The second, smaller Hercules "grasping a golden apple" is an amorphous blob, most resembling -- to me ... a beached plesiosaur, maybe, or a plucked turkey scratching itself. Look at Figure 106, page 281, and tell me any different.
This zodiac differs interestingly from the modern/conventional one. Taurus is a reindeer, Libra is a phoenix, there's "the Goddess as Mother Goose", and the hidden thirteenth sign is the Hare. (In Sauniere's Stations of the Cross, the secret 13th is Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.)
Partly overlapping (on the map) but distinct from the terrestrial zodiac is a "Temple of the Stars" reproducing 24 constellations, to the east of Rennes, but even though it gets another foldout map and a chapter title, it's barely discussed in the text; Van Buren doesn't even bother to tell us whether the stars are marked on the ground by rocks, or structures, or what.
A recurring theme is that at least some names, words or syllables that look or sound similar -- whatever language they're in -- are equivalents; the meanings swap back and forth, but the final meaning tends to lie in English, hence for example "ay", "ai", "aie" are all codes for the English "eye". Actually, this idea of a "phonetic Cabala" is the closest thing I've seen to an explanation for the Abbe Boudet's weird book "La Vraie Langue Celtique...."
And that intriguing title, the "Refuge" and "Other Dimensions"? Somewhere in the Rennes area is a portal "...by which one might enter other dimensions without dying. A doorway into the invisible can be found at Rennes, but never by one who is arrogant or egotistical." "'X' marks the spot in the Aude, but it is invisible to all who are not pure in heart." Only the pure of heart can find the refuge, or, presumably, make head or tail of this book. Does Van Buren reveal in plain language any more about the doorway's location, or how one might pass through? Are you kidding?
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