Translator s Foreword: Prolegomenon 00 Prologue: The Journey Begins 00 R. Part one

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1 Lucifer s Court By Otto Rahn C ontents Translator s Foreword: Prolegomenon 00 Prologue: The Journey Begins 00 R Part one Bingen am Rhein 00 Paris 00 Toulouse 00 Pamiers 00 Foix 00 Lavelanet 00 Montségur in the Pyrenees 00 Again, Lavelanet 00 Castle L. in the Toulouse Region 00 Carcassonne 00 Saint-Germain-en-Laye 00 Cahors 00 Ornolac in Fuxean Country 00 Mirepoix 00 Port Vendres, Roussillon 00 Marseille 00 Puigcerda in Catalonia 00 Lourdes 00 Part two Night Journey 00 Genoa 00 Milan 00 Rome 00 Verona 00

2 Meran 00 Bolzano Rose Garden 00 On the Freienbühl above Brixen 00 Brixen 00 Gossensass 00 Geneva 00 On a Southern German Roadside 00 Worms 00 Michelstadt in the Odenwald 00 Amorsbrünn 00 Amorbach 00 Part three With Relatives in Hesse 00 Mellnau in the Burgwald 00 Marburg am Lahn 00 Giessen 00 Siegen 00 Runkel am Lahn 00 Cologne 00 Heisterbach Monastery Ruins 00 Bonn 00 Asbach in the Westerwald 00 Goslar 00 Halberstadt 00 Berlin 00 Warnemünde-Gjedser 00 Edinburgh 00 In the Pentland Sea 00 In the North Atlantic 00 Reykjavik 00 Laugarvatn 00 Reykholt 00 Back Home 00 R Bibliography 00 Index 00

3 Prologue The Journey Begins R Who loves his homeland, must understand it; Who wants to understand it, must search earnestly in its history. Jakob Grimm Lucifer s Court is based on travel diaries begun in Germany, continued in southern Europe, and completed in Iceland. Like an artist working on a mosaic who piles up small stones of a particular color to arrange them later in a preconceived plan, I collected ideas and knowledge under foreign skies and in lands far from home. The sum total has produced this pageant. Either through revisions, adding details, or underscoring not to mention rearranging I have prepared those chosen pages from my diary in such a way that others may scrutinize, understand, and love them. My hand shall be a lucky one! I wrote these lines in a small town in Upper Hesse. As I looked out from my desk, spreading out before me was a countryside that is very precious so much so that as my curiosity pushed me through difficult places in foreign lands, I was often homesick. My father is from a town that sits on a densely wooded peak that closes off the district to the south and where, as far back as anyone can recall, men and their womenfolk have cultivated the land, stood before the anvil, milled grain to flour, and sat in front of the spinning wheel in low-ceilinged rooms. Their homeland is stony, and the sky is often filled with clouds. Only a few of them became wealthy.

4 Prologue My mother s family hailed from the Odenwald, where they had it much easier. The sun and the climate are milder there, and the earth means well for those who love it. The ruined walls of a castle dominate the Upper Hessian town where I now live, and where I wrote this book. Not far from the castle door (the castle that still stands) is a very old linden tree where St. Boniface first preached Roman Christianity to the Chatten. When I stood under it and looked north, my eyes fell upon an amazing basalt mass. There on its summit, the Apostle of the Germans constructed a cloister-fortress: the Amöneburg. My ancestors did not love St. Boniface, who preached the gospel of love. In a letter he sent to the pope in 742 CE, he described these ancestors as idiotic. A few hours separate my hometown from Marburg-am-Lahn. A son of this town, the fright of Germany, also preached for Rome. The magister and inquisitor Konrad von Marburg crisscrossed his homeland on the back of a donkey, collecting Rosenwunder* for the beatification of his enlightened confessor, Countess Elizabeth of Thuringia and collecting heretics for execution. He had them burned at a place in his hometown that is still called Ketzerbach, or heretic ditch. My ancestors were pagans, and my forebears were heretics. *[Rahn is referring to St. Elizabeth of Hungary (who was Landgravine Elizabeth of Thuringia). She was known for the miraculous transformation of bread into roses. In German, Rosenwunder are also sea roses, rosa rugosa. Trans.]

5 p Halberstadt p Part Three It is Christmas. Before visiting my friends who invited me to Christmas Eve, I decided to wander through the town. Through the windows of the old town I saw some beautifully decorated Christmas trees glowing in candlelight. I could hear the happy laughter of children and feel the passion of the fathers and mothers. Both sadness and happiness overwhelmed me. The bells began to announce the celebration, the ancient festival of light of the middle of winter. The sun god Helios-Apollo, Mithra, and even Chronos, the father of Zeus, were all born on this day, and time again they are born of a virgin mother. At midnight in the church of this old town, the choir will resound: Today is born the lord, who is Christ the Lord, in the City of David! Lucifer could easily complain that mankind has turned its back on him, for long ago, his birthday was celebrated on this date. The Light Bringer suffered and nobody remembers him except I! Some twelve paces beyond the entrance to the town s cathedral, I will touch a stone that fell from the heavens. According to legend, the devil was so upset over the construction that with this stone he bombed the half-finished church in order to destroy it. He just missed, goes the story. The stone is called teufelstein.* Oddly, the devil threw it from the heavens! How contradictory are Christians! In Cologne, they had burned at the stake heretics who should ascend to hell, while Isaiah placed hell at the bottom of all. And here in Halberstadt, the devil supposedly threw a stone from the heavens when, as we all know, he is the lord of the depths of hell. When I stand before the mild irradiance of the teufelstein, which found its way, undisturbed, through the stars in their divine firmament, I am forced to think of the Grâl, the stone that fell from Lucifer s crown and was won by Parzival. Further, I cannot forget the Grâl messenger Lohengrin, whom some called the Light Bringer Helias, which means Helios. In the depositions of the Inquisition, I read that the Cathars were awaiting an apparition, and according to the fifteenth-century Halberstädter Sachsenchronik, the chroniclers believe that this youth, *[Devil s stone. Trans.]

6 Part Three p Halberstadt Helias the swan knight, came from the mountain where Lady Venus resided with the Grâl. When I visit the devil s stone, I will also think of Apollo, that light bringer who is born to a virgin every winter solstice in the land of the Hyperboreans and is carried to mortal men by swans in order to bring the law to mankind. Names are more smoke and thunder when they belong to divinities. After all, it is Christmas.

GRAIL HAVEN RETREATS SOUTH OF FRANCE MAY - JULY 2018

GRAIL HAVEN RETREATS SOUTH OF FRANCE MAY - JULY 2018 The mysteries and ancient wisdoms encoded in the Languedoc, South of France is our focus for these retreats. Here within spectacular scenery and enigmatic