Patrick Bernauw

3 days of mysteries with Kathleen McGowan

May 30, 2009 |  1 comment
Image Credit: embee.be I've just spend three days in Belgium with Kathleen McGowan, author of "The Expected One" and "The Book of Love", in some mystery places in Belgium: Bruges, Ghent and Orval. Here are some notes about these three days "into the mystic"…

I guess the novels written by McGowan are as much "standard religious thrillers" as the Kamasutra is. She makes you read the gospels and look at the history books with other eyes, with the eyes of Mary Magdalene and medieval Matilde of Tuscany, with "her" eyes, and from the point of view of the women Time forgot. But Time returns, especially now you have been given ears to hear what all too long was being silenced. And you simply know Kathleen has a point when she claims history was written by men who didn't want women in their chronicles. Where are they now? Who were they really? If you really want to know that, you will not find an answer in the mainstream history books. Maybe you can make a start here: The Magdalene Line of Kathleen McGowan.

"Jesus taught through parables," McGowan's modern heroine Maureen Paschal says in "The Book of Love". So, these books are not about fact or fiction or even historical faction. This is about history coming to us through myths and legends and teaching with parables, or: "Storytelling with symbolism". In the Notre Dame of Bruges we found this mysterious painting by Quellinus. Usually the infant Jesus places a ring on the finger of Saint Catherine, but here it's a grown up Jesus and on his side seems to be Mary Magdalene. Here is the painting and the poem inspired by the painting: The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine.

In Ghent we asked ourselves why the Ghent Altarpiece is not the most famous and visited piece of art in the world. According to the Dutch scholar and artist Peter Voorn, this Mystic Lamb, painted by Flemish Primitives Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, is filled with crypto-iconography. Instead of a portion Catholic mysticism, the panels of the Ghent Altarpiece give us an idea of what was going on at the Council of Constance (1414-1418). Peter Voorn's theory dates from 1999 and was partly published in the "Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft" (Germany). He works on a book on the subject, but here are some significant aspects of this new interpretation: The Van Eyck Cryptogram.In 1840 the French magazine L'Oracle published a story told by the baron of Manonville in his diary. During the Revolution, in May 1793, he and some other royalists were in the abbey of Orval, that belonged to the Austrian Netherlands and was situated on the border with France. There was a war between Austria and France, and the republican troops of general Loison had sacked the abbey, but where chased by the Austrian army. An old monk showed the baron a booklet, written in 16th century French, which for centuries had gathered dust in the archives of the abbey. The booklet was titled "Sure Prophecies revealed by the Lord to a Solitary for the Consolation of God's children" and was printed in 1544, in Luxembourg. The baron of Manonville copied the prophecies in his diary, because they seemed to predict a restoration of the monarchy in France.

We wondered if Nostradamus was the Solitary of Orval and which part of the prophecy was fake, and when this was faked, and where. Maybe some parts of the prophecy were inspired by ancient and arcane volumes given to Nostradamus in the abbey of Orval, where they were hidden for many ages? Nostradamus presented them to Vulcan, "and as the fire kindled them, the flame, licking the air, shot forth an unaccustomed brightness, clearer than the light is of natural flame, resembling more the explosion of powder, casting a subtle illumination over the house as if the whole were wrapped in sudden conflagration", as he described it in the Preface to his Prophecies, in the letter to his son Caesar.

Here is the full story of The Prophecy of Orval. And here is the Prophecy itself, as it was published in 1875, with some interesting politically inspired notes.

Copyright by Patrick Bernauw, The Lost Dutchman's Historical Mysteries & A Haunted World. Comments (1)

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