The Magic Mountain

Philip Coppens.com by Philip Coppens

A mountain near Rennes-le-Château is becoming a focal point for unwanted 2012 hype. But the true mysteries and enigmas of Bugarach are fare more interesting, with a real-life Indiana Jones character who dug for the Ark of the Covenant!

On December 21, 2010, the English newspaper “The Daily Telegraph” drew attention to the tiny French village of Bugarach, population 200, and the saga of the end of the Mayan calendar which will occur on December 21, 2012. The mayor of Bugarach, Jean-Pierre Delord, announced that his tiny village was becoming a refuge for “esoterics” who believed that the village played an important role in the 2012 scenario, maybe as a place of salvation, or where the apocalypse might be played out, where alien beings might intervene or even rescue those present. He and the locals were unhappy with this development, which was upsetting the villagers’ tranquillity. As France has a sad past of cults committing mass suicide, Delord felt people should hear his warning that these “esoterics” might do something similar in the near future.

Bugarach is indeed a tiny village, sitting in the shadow of the “Pic de Bugarach”, rising 1230 metres above sea-level and the highest mountain in the Corbières region – though dwarfed by the Pyrenees that rise to the south. The earliest recorded mention of the mountain was as Burgaragio in 889 AD, which is also known as Pech de Thauze. From a geological perspective, Bugarach is an oddity, an “upside down mountain”, as its tops layers are millions of years older than the lower strata. It is as if someone shot the mountain in the air, flipped it around, and then it landed again.
Today, the village that sits on its slopes is somewhat quaint – the French school system has statistics which reveal that the suicide rate amongst teachers in the village is the highest in France! – and on a rainy day, Bugarach does exude an energy that can be hard to take. However, when the sun is out, it is lovely and the castle that is almost collapsing and the multi-coloured church make it apparent that this village has existed for hundreds of years.

The mountain has always inspired the imagination of so many, including the French father of science fiction, Jules Verne. The mountain is made of limestone, which means it has several caves and galleries, which are rife with local legends and also provide the perfect backdrop to let one’s imagination veer off. And that is what has happened, on numerous occasions. If you leave the local folklore behind and go on the Internet, as “The Daily Telegraph” reported, it “abounds with tales of the late President François Mitterrand being curiously heliported onto the peak, of mysterious digs conducted by the Nazis and later Mossad, the Israeli secret services. There is talk of the area, near to the Cathar castles, holding the Holy Grail or the treasure of the Templars. A visit to Bugarach is said to have inspired Steven Spielberg in his film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The locals will indeed confirm that they believe strongly that Spielberg in his search for an enigmatic mountain to host the finale of his movie considered Bugarach as a film location, but in the end opted for Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. His choice might seem quite logical, knowing that many locals report many enigmatic UFO sightings around the mountain – though few of these have been properly investigated.

The story of Bugarach and 2012 was picked up and expanded by “The New York Times” in their January 31, 2011 edition, making it a story that brought it to the attention of the world’s media. But despite Bugarach’s recent somewhat-fame, it will no doubt always play second fiddle to the nearby village of Rennes-le-Château, which went on to inspire so many, including the likes of Dan Brown, who wrote “The Da Vinci Code”. Indeed, the man who put Rennes-le-Château on the map, Noël Corbu, lived in Bugarach when he learned of the estate of the enigmatic priest Bérenger Saunière. He sold his home in Bugarach and moved his family to the nearby village, where he began to promote the mystery of the “billion dollar priest”.
For Franck Marie, an “esoteric” writer who has lived in the region for many years, Bugarach has a “natural cave system which without a doubt was occupied by our earliest ancestors, in the Magdalene Era”. He also proposes that there was a link between the mystery of Saunière and Bugarach, seeing it as a “spiritual treasure” that was linked with “primitive Mankind” – some type of esoteric knowledge that has been passed down over time. Marie believes that the site was placed under the protection of certain initiates that kept part of the cave system secret.

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