Crusade Against the Grail - Rennes-le-Chateau Research and ...

82 PART TWO
and shall dissipate in the intense flow of time, when the entire testimony of
Jesus will disappear, the God-Man will be the nucleus, the luminous heart
of all the worlds.
LENAU, "THE CAVE'" FROM THE ALBIGENSES
Occitan Catharism aspired to be at the same time a philosophy, a religion, a
metaphysical creed, and a cult. As a philosophy, it was the result of speculation on
the relations between God and the World, between good and bad. From this
philosophic system, the Cathar troubadours fashioned a real mythology. According
to Albigensian dualism, the confrontation between good and bad was not eternal.
There would be a Last Day when God's victory over Lucifer would be
consummated as the final victory of spirit over matter. Then Luzbel, as the
repentant prodigal son, would return to his creator and Lord. All the souls of
mankind would convert back into angels, and the situation would be reestablished
exactly as it was before the fall of the angels. Good fortune would be as eternal as
the Kingdom of God. As all souls would reen-counter God, eternal condemnation
would not exist, because it would be in contradiction with the absolute love of
God. 16
As we can see, Cathar dualism was linked to metaphysical and religious
mysteries of Pythagorianism, Orphism, and Mazdaism. Despite everything, the
Occitan heretics never stopped insisting that they were Christians. And they were,
because they followed the supreme commandment of Christ:
These things I command you, that you love one another. By this shall all men
know that you are My disciples: if you have love one for another.
JOHN 15:17; 13:35
The abyss that separated Catharism from the Christianity of Wittenberg and
Geneva was considerable; although not expressly dual-istic, neither was it
monotheistic. As we have already seen, the Cathars rejected the Old Testament,
and regarding Jesus Christ, they said that he was not the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth
and Bethlehem, but instead the hero of a mythology transformed by a divine halo.
Cathar morality, as pure and rigorous as it was, was not the same