One of the reasons that this topic might seem to be appropriate within a discussion of the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau is that the most blatant roots that can represent the planet Mars seem to either show up in considerable numbers or in conspicuous places, through the story and its spurs. This isn't even yet to consider, of course, the many ways in which Mars seems to symbolically enter the picture. Some of them have been mentioned, of course, and a great many more remain to be identified within the complex web of symbolism that surrounds Rennes-le-Chateau and the Priory of Sion.

We could, admittedly, quickly move on in directions such as those which works on the subject suggest, particularly Crowley and Pollock's "Return to Mars", and should do just that, we have a more reasonable beginning in looking at the closest roots to our most familiar ones first.

"Mars" derives, of course, from the Roman God of War. "Ares", which shares the root with our astrological "Aries", provides a readily obvious (apparently a very close variant or semi-anagram) second. Already these two provide us with a lot of ground to cover. We can however, make a simpler beginning just by searching for these hopefully tell-tale root syllables close to the areas that in have other ways already been associated with Mars. (Eventually, we may astonished at seeing where the roots may later branch out...)

Previous mention has been made of an interesting spur in the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau that implicates a very Martian Lichfield, in spite of passing over much of the very Martian trivia that surrounds the areas history. There seems nothing to tuly contraindicate a manner of inquiry not unlike this, and particularly not unlike that into the esoteric etymological significance of place names that we find so masterfully attended in John Mitchell's classic work, "The View Over Atlantis".

(Eventually, Michell will come sufficiently close to presenting us with "Lich" as a Martian root, although it is yet to be seen where this pointer will lead.)

Let's start, in fact, if only for dramatic impact, with "Rennes-le-Chateau" itself, courtesy of the fact on pg. 121 of "Refuge of the Apolcalypse", Elizabeth Van Buren has opted to explore the etymology herself, to which we are greatly indebted.

"The anceint name for Rennes-le-Chateau was Aereda, becoming later Rheddae or Rhedae, said to have been derived from Aer Red, the Wandering Snake. Others believe that the name came from Rheda, the Visigothic word for chariot.

"The derivation of the name itself can certainly be traced back to the fourth century B.C. when... inhabited by a tribe which called itself the Redu (Latin: Redones). They had originated from Belgians, whose name, according to Gerard de Sade, signified shepherds"

How bland, quaint and innocuous this almost sounds... and easily dismissed as something far remote from anything interesting enough to import into our workaday worlds... almost. It isn't. In fact, it's almost a major handful in itself...

One thing we must face is that numbers, not just singular ones, but numbers of correct rationale for place names tend to commemorate a myriad of significant connections. There is likely no wrong answer here that can be supported.

For starters, both "Areda" and "Aer Red" can be indicted as having the "Ares" root signifying Mars. The "Wandering Snake" can be suspected as being of the nature of the perfectly typical reptilian reference which denotes the "dragon paths" or "dragon currents" of the "serpent power"... in other words, the geography and local knowledge of the ley lines. We can also consider the frequency with which the expansive force associated with Ares has taken on forms beginning to approach something at times vacillating between a serpent and a battering ram, and ram-headed serpents are no surprise to find.

While this sounds as if ready to cloud the issue, Rennes-le-Chateau has never, during it recent rediscovery, been anywhere else but at the junction between the concerns of the leys and the concerns of a connection to Mars. If anything, it helps underscore with greater clarity how his connection, in retrospect, has been upheld through centuries, and how perhaps also illustrates further how the pagan concerns had been preserved through assimilation rather than eradication, however peculiar this policy may begin to sound.

The cluster of words having a root similar to "Red" aren't out of place as peripheral references to the so-called "Red Planet", either. In fact, Mars has been symbolically or sentimentally connected here for longer than the mainstream would care to admit these connections actually having some informed basis in fact.

What is interesting here is that Martian roots of this third kind have been connected to a Visigothic word for chariot. If we have to skip ahead to mention that "Return to Mars" will provide us with a remarkable basis for supporting this connection, we will do so. We may also mention that even in light Mesoamerican studies referring to possible signs of Martian references, the idea has come to light that the distant place and the means of travel may begin to become synonymous!

There is one other thing perhaps worth mentioning, however, that may have yet to be suggested about the reference to shepherds, a reference which effectively permeates the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery. It has been suggested, of course, that the icons of the Bible's New Testament indicate the appropros of the astrological age, Pisces- the references to fish are ubiquitious throughout. The Old Testament, on the other hand, is full of references appropriate to its own alledged age, the age of Aries, the Ram, ruled by Mars. While we observe here that the "ram" root, largely another "Mars" anagram, is our forth Martian root syllable that can be found without significant departure from out present term for the fourth planet, we must note that the very mention of, or reference to, shepherd, sheep, flocks, wool, ewes, or rams, can be considered to be Martian allusions- at least, provided that their context affords additional support.

Finding the Martian pentagram superimposed over Poussin's "Shepherds of Arcadia" clearly seems to qualify as one of the blatant examples of such an instance.

A small roster of characters whose names possess the "Mars" root, stretched to cover variations, can be extracted from the indices of the works of Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, any and all of whom might prove to be interesting leads (not ironically, this very approach has often been applied to decoding mythological allusions by way of the "apropos" or the "pun value" of proper names, with some remarkable results). Perhaps the several most important:

Mar, Isabelle (wife of Robert the Bruce)

Merovee

Notice who must appear on such a list, none other than the name Merovee itself. This central thread of the Rennes-le-Chateau may be an elaborate canard, or an accidental diversion, either of which could result from the inclusion of references to Merovingian matters in the Rennes mystery intended purely to serve as an etymological invocation of that resounding theme in the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, namely Mars. This mystery, of course, is also fraught with a probably inordinate number of persons named "Mary", just as many of the intriguing idiosyncrasies of Sauniere, as previously mentioned in this series and the works it addresses, seem to revolve around Biblical characters of this name. It was already one of the most obvious efforts of this etymology to observe that the nomenclature of Sauniere's tower may be a Martian reference by this very means. This pattern isn't limited to Sauniere, of course. We have discussed before the suspected relationship of the Inklings to the Priory of Sion in this series.

What has not been pointed out before here, is that within yet another of their work, C.S. Lewis' third part of the Perelandra trilogy in fact (whose wonderful cache of idiosyncrasies probably warrants a whole work devoted to their exploration. Not only is Lewis in many ways continuing his habit perhaps more than ever, of being incredibly pagan for a Christian minister, but there are some blatant allusions here that may assure us that the possible synonymy of Arthur with Artemis may have a central value in the Priory's Martian mysteries.

One does not even quite know for certain here whether the presentation of Arthur's tale as a tragedy, i.e. Le Morte de Arthur, hasn't as soon as the title appears, made another deliberate Martian reference), the story seems to resolve most of all around Merlin (whose name is a remarkably powerful reservoir of Martian root and connotation, as well as serving as same for the related earth mysteries), Ransom (whose appearance earlier in the trilogy as an arrival on Mars has already precipitated identification of the name as an obvious anagram of "On Mars"), and somewhat curiously, one Mark Studdock, whose inherent insignificance and wholly disagreeable nature makes a remarkable idiosyncracy out of his insertion into the story into a central role where a hero should have gone.

It is if Mark Studdock, or at least his name, is found in this central role in Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" simply because he is one of the later personages to appear in the picture for the sake of his name alone, being he is the third of three central characters in the work to bear a blatantly Martian name. This pattern, one easily suspects, seems to lead back from this point if recognized no sooner, and clear back through a rather indeterminate stretch of history.

As indicated above, the most direct appearance of the "Mars" root, we note, occurs around the pivotal figure of Robert the Bruce, who is of no shortage of significance to the story of the Templars in the very work that illustrates their later evolution into Templars, Baigent and Leigh's "The Temple and the Lodge".

The mysterious applications of the Mars name or root may have, like the layout of Cydonia found its way into America and into the Masonic design of Washington D. C., followed into America. There seems to be something of a challenging puzzle involving this matter, and a mysterious shortage of background information to be easily found. The mystery does not therefore easily dispel, and in fact has not even begun to be explored.

There is, not incidentally another, more distant spur that somehow leads us directly to the same sort of places. In the pioneering scientific work by DiPietro, Molenaar, and Brandenburg, which largely solidified the premise of a Martian face at Cydonia, and suggested a few other possible Martian anomalies, "Unusual Surface Features of Mars", 4th. Ed., pg. 92, fig. 55, we find, rather paradoxically, an image of Mont Saint Michel in France. While we can consider it a sign that even this formidable scientific work began to hint at possible Terrestial Connections, which Richard Hoagland has expanded on, brilliantly, it's still a very curious thing to find here.

Pg. 89's text informs us: "And finally, the man-made island fortress the Gothic abbey, Mont-Saint-Michel, France (fig 55), located one mile off the coast of Normandy coast is considered... The location and size of Mont-Saint-Michel nearly parallels the location and size of the Cydonia face on Mars". (Regrettably, we have, after all this time, yet to be informed whether it has any Cydonia-like relationship to other sites.) Surely we almost have to wonder if such a seemingly whimsical comparison would be put here, even for the sake of comparison, were someone not wondering if such a premise were not at least on the verge of getting at something?

We will take no surprise, then, to find something that is not included in that work, there is some hint of further "coincidence", beginning with the etymology. We have simply to pick up a copy of National Geographic, (June 1977, pp. 820-830) if nothing else, to "discover" that the Gothic monastery is named "Le Mervielle"- "the Marvel"- whose possible etymological connection to the "Mars" root should require no further emphasis. Either a correspondent geography or a coincidental nomenclature alone might seem unworthy of harboring suspicions toward. Together, they form a seemingly less coincidental, and more intriguing occurrence...

And of course, we will thereby not be uninformed that the history of establishing the Mont Saint Michel monastery, according to popular legend, not only involves first eradicating the local pagan monument, but doing so in a way that is full of enough travesty to prick up our ears and make us quite curious whether someone has yet again taken some priceless clues and strapped them across the vehicle of preposterous popular lore. Unless we actually believe that the pagan marker was toppled with some divine kick from the foot of the newborn youngest of sixteen children, rather than believing such an anecdote is riddled with the usual false fronts and hidden passages of symbolism (we might muse in passing that had such a child not apparently had some divine endowment for the moment, that we might be meeting with yet another limping analog of the Fisher King for his efforts, and perhaps the inference is enough).

The mere mention of a pagan menhir being usurped by a Christian structure, of course, is enough to send us rummaging back through the copies of "The View Over Atlantis" that we could only hope that each and every household possesses, where we will instantly find that the invocation of St. Michael is not trivial thing in these esoteric matters of sacred sites and earth mysteries.

However, with the Martian context in mind, we may not pass the first two pages of the article before we might realize for the first time, if never before, that the blatant and uncomfortably paradox of St. Michael, the "Warrior Angel", might be best resolved the same way as the Lichfield Cathedral's paradoxical references to war are resolved, that quite simply, they are an invocation of the so-called war-god, Ares, or Mars.

In other words, for the second time, the selection of a "Martian" name "Le Mervielle", for this near-correspondent feature to Cydonia's famous face, by no means appears to be mere incident.

Exactly what new etymological root a Martian connection to St. Michael provides us with through this interesting spur, if any, is not yet know. It is interesting to note in passing, however, that it take appreciably little mutilation of "Michael" before arriving at variations which may lead to "moxa", which can be found in Greek mythology, but more importantly in Asian medicine... there seems little distance between herbs entitled to bear this name, and those entitled to be said to possess close relationship to the maror, the bitter herbs such as pertain to the Passover, and elsewhere. The bitter herb horehound, for example, seems to still bear this out in its genus, "Marrubium", but it is the Artemisias even more so may fall immediately into both of these groups.

(It has perhaps yet to be observed specifically in the study of extraterrestial and extraterrestial related art which requires the use of the mirror-halfed technique of symmetry assessment to fully understand and appreciate, that these characteristically Martian works may have in the word mirror itself an "Martian" etymological cognate! The emphasis on roots in this category with aquatic meanings [words like meerschaum, marine, or mermaid all contain the root in this usage] should not be overlooked; diluvean mythos, for example, may have strong and intimate connections to Martian history.)

As we have previously mentioned here, Crowley and Pollock provide us with some other possibilities of Martian etymology ("Return to Mars", pg. 49). Details of "Martian Language" attributed to unpublished work of Frances Yule include Kar-een-e-veth, Karevath, and Karavenrath as Martian names for Mars. As dubious as it could sound at first though, right out of the starting gate, Crowly and Pollock successfully connect these words to none other than Kerridwen, and furthermore do so through the highly corroborative context of details of a space voyage, appearing in The Book of Taliesin itself!

It has been mentioned here before, because, independently of the work of the aforementioned persons, it has entered into the exploration of the etymology of Rennes-le-Chateau itself, in the form of the word chariot.

I will, without further hesitation also take the opportunity to suggest what I have often mentioned before, of the possibilities of ancient ancestral spacecraft still concealed on the earth, surviving and being treated as the treasure of the legends, and of the possible workings of these craft that their energies may bear a remarkable interconnectedness with the forces of "water witching" or dowsing. This time, however, I will try to place it in a more concise, if more amazing context- that of a sizable amount of work exploring whether the concept of flying "witches' broom" should ever have been debased into the realm of any "delusional" parts of the supernatural, or whether instead they should have been taken as further evidence of an ancient advanced civilization, going back to at least the most amazing and technical looking examples of these possible personal transportation devices, which appear amongst the treasures of Tutanhkamen. The nebris has yet to be subject to analysis by any outspoken engineering types, but the possibilities seem blatant enough even to those with the faintest familiarity with the intricacies of electronics.

It is quite possible that a legacy of flying brooms and of mere whispers of "magical horseless chariots" is the direct lineage of the space propulsion knowledge brought here by immigrants or refugees of a Martian race... and has been underscored before, Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, which is one of the more blatant "picture books" of Martian history and Martian matters, itself contains the astonishing yet reassuring passage that "the force that moves the dowsing rod will one day take man to the stars". We have only but to apply this statement retroactively in our context to observe that in all likelihood, it did, before the apparently diminished human population left no more immediate need for vehicles of the former size or power. The most direct way of explaining the ancient craft is that their appearance, as they appear in countless examples of space image data and photos, is that their dowsing-fork-like structure is the most direct consequence of their dowsing-fork-like nature.

This is to say, that the Tarot and its magical "symbolic chariot" the ancient ships of our predecessors, and the flying brooms of legends are one in the same, and real remnants of an ancient science. In our etymological context, it is rationale why the root words for Mars and for vehicles would be one and the same, because of the direct connection to Mars, but because the technology is the same as well. Though it has taken many forms over the centuries, it is essentially the ancient Martian technology, as far as it is possible to determine through careful consideration. (Much greater depth will be applied to these questions if and when the "Good Ship Kidd" site, Solar System Anomalies 5, is completed; some details for now have been left at the Enterprise Mission's BBS "Crop Circles" thread, early on in the discussion, because of the relevance to that subject also.)

This does something else, however, allows us to take the "car" root, which itself we use today to describe our motor vehicles, and trace its migration elsewhere somewhat. It occurs in many Goddess names, including Carya, who we can consider, easily to be a form of Artemis. There is obviously something Martian, or Martial, about any "Amazon-like" portrayal of Artemis... and yet, she has always appeared to be a Virgin Goddess, in fact to the extent that her attributes were effortlessly appropriated and "pasted onto" the Virgin Mary of Christendom. We would tend to associate her with Mercury, if any planet, which is quite a different matter.

Yet, when we look at her sacred herbs, for example, we find Martian themes, and shouldn't be surprised when classical herbalist Nicholas Culpepper attributed even her namesake herbs, the Artemisias, to Mars for many compelling reasons. We find traces of a patroness of self-protective combat if we look close at her positioning, and her attributes as a Goddess of the hunt are in fact Martian qualities. In the end, if we take Carya, or many related forms, to bear a meaningful Martian root syllable, it's really not quite out of place at all (even if we are quite unfamiliar with, for example, such works as DeAnna Emerson's "Mars/Earth Engima", a formidable and extensive work designed to support association between the very Cydonia face on Mars with the terrestrial traditions of the Goddess themselves).

The invocation, in the sense of the pertinence of the Arthurian mysteries themselves to the Martian matters, or the role of the possible synonym of the characters Artemis and later Arthur (connectable, for example, through the Celtic bear goddess, Artio). The matter of Arthur and his iconography most often seems to pertain to the ancestral craft themselves, as does the use of the "pregnant goddess" as euphemism for a ship and its passengers.

Not only can we suspect that Arthur's sword itself has been used as a euphemism for the form and qualities, and above all, the predicaments, of the possible surviving ships that brought the last people to earth, but this too is a case for etymological support. What we have been nearly conditioned to think of only "Excalibur", we are readily reminded by Harold Bayley ("The Lost Language of Symbolism, Vol II, pg. 75) Arthur's sword was known by yet another name with a markedly Martian root, "Mirandosa"!

(Bayley here also easily observes a possible linguistic predecessor for the name Excalibur occurring in Mexican mythology; perhaps none of the suspicions that the ancient vessels were entombed the world over according to universally-decreed methods has been misplaced. Bayle's work may serve as a valuable tool for tracking down further inferences of ancient Martian matters in literature some of which may already be greatly familiar.)

There is still much to explore by following this Martian root, "Car", and some of it may yet prove quite surprising (even the for vessels we have been using here, "craft", may contain this root also). There are no doubt a great number of Martian etymological spurs, some of which that we might find from the pointers here. For now, though we will consider this enough to think on for a moment. No doubt there is still a great deal more to come...