Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion

Taken from the 'Dossiers Secret' of the Priory of Sion as recounted by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln.

"...It would seem that Sion's Grand Mastership has recurrently shifted between two essentially distinct groups of individuals. On the one hand there are figures of monumental stature who - through esoterica, the arts or sciences - have produced some impact on Western tradition, history and culture. On the other hand, there are members of a specific and interlinked network of families - noble, and sometimes royal." - Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"...The first Grand Master, the twelfth-century Norman knight Jean de Gisors, took the name Jean II and pose the question: 'Who, then was Jean I?' They offer a few suggestions - John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and John the Divine - before dropping the subject." - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

"This succession was clearly intended to imply an esoteric and Hermetic papacy based on John, in contrast (and perhaps opposition) to the exoteric one based on Peter." - Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

It has been alleged that Hughes de Payens, first Grand Master of the Knights Templar, had been inducted into the Johannites, a sect which chose John the Baptist as their prophet. According to the dossiers secrets, each of the alleged Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion took the name Jean in succession (supposedly influencing the name chosen by Pope John XXIII). One of the Grand Masters on the list, Leonardo da Vinci, displayed a strong interest in John the Baptist. Another, Sir Isaac Newton, became preoccupied with the writings of the Apocalypse, then attributed to John the Evangelist.

According to the dossiers secrets, the following individuals were amongst the Grand Masters:

Rene d'Anjou (1418-80) - a major impetus behind the Renaissance through his literacy and influence on Cosimo de'Medici setting up bastions of esoteric, Hermetic principles - the 'underground stream'.

"Through his patronage of art, literature and the advancement of knowledge Rene is one of the most important figures of the formative years of the Renaissance....It was directly as a result of Rene's influence that Cosimo de Medici sent agents out to look for ancient texts, which resulted in the revival of Neoplatonic and Hermetic thought..." - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Nicholas Flamel (1330-1418) - Most famous of the alchemists, "the Paris notary Nicolas Flamel...claimed that he dreamed of an occult book, subsequently found it, and succeeded in deciphering it with the aid of a Jewish scholar learned in the mystic Hebrew writings known as the Kabbala. In 1382 Flamel claimed to have succeeded in the 'Great Work' (gold making); certainly he became rich and made donations to churches." - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"...One alchemical symbol that is widely acknowledged by modern scholars is that of an old bearded man, the back of whose head shows a young woman looking into a mirror. A statue with this image graces the exterior of Nantes cathedral, as does a bearded king with the body of a woman, in the porch at Chartres that depicts the Queen of Sheba." "The hermaphrodite is a pure alchemical symbol, representing the perfect balance achieved in the Great Work, and the perfect being, in which the alchemist himself is transformed and transmuted spiritually - and, as many believe, physically as well. It was a 'consummation devoutly to be wished' and had little, if anything, to do with sexuality as we understand it today. The Great Work was an explosion of the potential into the actual, where they mystical quest takes on concrete form. As the alchemists said, 'as above, so below' - this process was believed to make spirit into matter and transmute one sort of matter into another. It made a man into a god." - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Revered by men like Newton, Flamel was the discoverer of 'The Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher to that Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the Gauls' which became one of the most famous works in Western esoteric tradition.

Sandro Filipepi (1483-1510) - better known as Botticelli, the renowned Renaissance painter.

Leonardo da Vinci  (1510-19) - "Having little formal education, Leonardo enthusiastically accepted Nicholas's [of Cusa] new worldview [of an universe with no limits in space, no beginning or ending in time] as a justification for rejecting the outmoded authority of the 'Pharisees - the 'holy friars' and of his 'adversaries' Plato and Aristotole." "For the first time since the Ionians, he put forward a conception of science that was wholly secular, in no way based on religious doctrines or philosophy....In Leonardo the craftsman, scientist, and inventor are merged into one." - Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened

"Leonardo was left-handed; he was a strict vegetarian; he dissected dead bodies, he sought the company of alchemists and necromancers; he worked on a Sunday and only attended Mass when at court." "The only surviving sculpture that involved Leonardo in its making is the statue of John the Baptist in the Baptistry in Florence, on which he collaborated with the utmost secrecy with Giovan Francesco Rustici, a known necromancer and alchemist. And Leonardo's last painting was 'John the Baptist', showing him with the same half-smile as 'The Mona Lisa', and pointing straight upwards with the index finger of his right hand. This in Leonardo's work is a sign always associated with John: in the 'Adoration of the Magi' a person stands by the elevated roots of a carob tree - John's tree, symbol of sacrificial blood - while making this gesture. In his famous cartoon of St. Anne the subject also does this, warning an oblivious Virgin...The disciple whose face is perhaps accusingly close to Jesus' in 'The Last Supper' is also making this gesture. All these gestures are saying 'remember John'." - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled

Robert Fludd (1595-1637) - "inherited John Dee's mantle as England's leading exponent of esoteric thought" who consorted with Andrea, amongst others involved in the 'Rosicrucian' movement. "Historian Frances Yates, in her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, in a chapter entitled 'Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry', quotes one De Quincey, who states, 'Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it in England, whence it was re-exported to the other countries of Europe.' De Quincey states that Robert Fludd was the person most responsible for bringing Rosicrucianism to England and giving it its new name." - Gerry Rose ,"The Venetian Takeover of England and Its Creation of Freemasonry"

Johann Valenin Andrea (1637-54) - "the creator of the semi-secret Christian unions and author of the Rosicrucian manifestos, a Hermetic allegory which also evokes resonances with the Grail Romances and the Knights Templar. At this time, with the eclipse of the House of Lorraine, the Priory transferred its allegiance to the more influential Stuarts after Frederick of the Palatinate married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England. Frederick "created a culture, a 'Rosicrucian' state with its court cantered on Heidelberg." [Francis Yates] - Baigent & Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"Through the historical detective work of Frances Yates, we now know that this era was a time when many 'Rosicrucian' ideas were moving to the Continent, and esoteric thinkers were confluencing around Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate of Bohemia, as the figure who would usher in the reforms of Church and State many expected." - Steve Mizrach, "The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Prieure du Sion"

Robert Boyle (1654-91) - part of the "Invisible College" of dynamic English and European minds which became the Royal Society after the restoration of the monarch in 1160 with the Stuart ruler, Charles II as its patron and sponsor. His two closest friends were Isaac Newton and John Locke who met regularly with him to study alchemical works.

"In the ancient world alchemy was referred to simply as 'the sacred art'. It flourished in the first three centuries A.D. in Alexandria, where it was the combined product of glass and metal technology, a Hellenistic philosophy of the unity of all things through the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), and 'occult' religion and astrology....The essential principle was that all things, both animate and inanimate, were permeated by spirit, and that the substances of the lower world could, through a synthesis of chemical operations and imaginative reasoning, be transmuted into higher things of the spiritual world - things not subject to decay." - David Maybury-Lewis, Millenium

"The central idea of Gnosticism is that the material of which 'soul and true being' is composed is trapped through a series of cosmic misfortunes in a low-level universe that is alien to it. And the alchemists literalized these ideas to suggest that the spirit could somehow be distilled or coaxed from the dense matrix of matter." - Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival

Isaac Newton (1691-1727) - "believed alchemy might enable human beings to shape and control the world by understanding and participating in its God-given vitality. He conducted alchemical experiments with great secrecy at Trinity College, Cambridge, working alone, even building his own furnaces without the aid of a bricklayer. He made a pact with the chemist John Boyle not to communicate their shared alchemical knowledge to others, because the 'subtle' and 'noble' powers of matter and the means of controlling them should be kept secret by those chosen by God to be entrusted with them." - David Maybury Lewis, Millenium

"He had been obsessed...with the notion that a secret wisdom lay concealed within the pages of the Scriptures: Daniel of the Old Testament and John of the New particularly attracted him because 'the language of the prophetic writings was symbolic and hieroglyphical and their comprehension required a radically different method of interpretation'." "He had learned Hebrew to do the job properly and had then carried out a...meticulous exercise on the book of Ezekiel...to produce a painstaking reconstruction of the floor plan of the Temple of Solomon...He had been convinced that the great edifice built to house the Ark of the Covenant had been a kind of cryptogram of the universe; if he could decipher this cryptogram, he had believed, then he would know the mind of God." - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than ten thousand years ago." Newton "saw the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had hid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements, but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation." - John Maynard Keynes, Newton the Man

"Just as the world was created from dark chaos through the bringing forth of the light and through the separation of the aery firmament and of the waters from the earth, so our work brings forth the beginning out of black chaos and its first matter through the separation of the elements and the illumination of matter." - Sir Isaac Newton

Charles Radclyffe (1727-46) - personal secretary to Bonnie Prince Charlie; promulgated, if not devised the "Scottish Rite" Freemasonry. Radclyffe worked through Chevalier Andrew Ramsay, a member of a quasi Masonic, quasi-"Rosicrucian" society called the Philadelphians. Ramsay, a close friend of Isaac Newton, was prominent in disseminating Freemasonry to the continent.

Charles de Lorraine (1746-80) - the brother of Francois, Duke of Lorraine who was the Holy Roman emperor who married Maria Theresa of Austria in 1735. The first European prince to become a mason, Francois' court at Vienna became Europe's Masonic capital.

Charles Nodier (1801-44) - the flamboyant mentor for an entire generation including young Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dalcroix, Dumas pere, Lamartine, Musset, Theophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval and Alfred de Vigny - all who drew upon esoteric and Hermetic tradition. "Around 1793 he created another group - or perhaps an inner circle of the first [the Philadephes]- which included one of the subsequent plotters against Napoleon." - William T. Still, New World Order

Victor Hugo (1844-85) "prophesied that in the Twentieth Century, war would die, frontier boundaries would die, dogma would die...and Man would live. 'He will possess something higher than these...a great country, the Whole Earth...and a great hope, the Whole Heaven'." - Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy

Claude Debussy (1885-1918)- an integral member of the symbolist circles which included Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Stefan George, Paul Valery, the young Andre Gide and Marcel Proust. He also consorted with the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita, founder of the so-called Cabalistic Order of the Rose-Croix, and Jules Boise, a notorious Satanist who prompted MacGregor Mathers to found the Order of the Golden Dawn.

Jean Cocteau (1918-) - an associate of Jacques Maritain and Andre Malraux, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (for his quiet work in the Resistance?). Although associated with royalist Catholic circles, Cocteau's Catholicism was highly unorthodox and his redecorations of churches reflected Rosicrucian themes.

- List from Baigent & Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail