The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs and Practices

by Andrew Phillip Smith

A deep-dive into the history, culture, and legacy of the medieval Christian dualist movement, Catharism—as seen in popular novels by Dan Brown and Kate Mosse

Centuries after the brutal slaughter of the Cathars by papally endorsed Northern French forces, and their suppression by the Inquisition, the medieval Cathars continue to exert a powerful influence on both popular culture and spiritual seekers. Yet few people know anything of the beliefs of the Cathars beyond vague notions that they believed in reincarnation, were vegetarians, were somehow Gnostic, and had some relation to Mary Magdalene. The Lost Teachings of the Cathars explores the history of this Christian dualist movement between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, offering a sympathetic yet critical examination of its beliefs and practices.

In addition to investigating the Cathars’ origin, their relationship to Gnosticism, and their possible survival of the Inquisition, author Andrew Philip Smith also addresses theories and figures from the Cathars’ recent past. Eccentric esotericists initiated a neo-Cathar revival in the Languedoc which inspired the philosopher Simone Weil. The German Otto Rahn—the real-life Indiana Jones—believed that the Cathars were protectors of the Holy Grail and received support from Heinrich Himmler. Meanwhile, English psychiatrist Arthur Guirdham became convinced that he and a circle of patients had all been Cathars in previous lives.

Tourists flock to the Languedoc to visit Cathar country. Bestsellers such as Kate Mosse’ timeslip novel Labyrinth continue to fascinate readers. But what did the Cathars really believe and practice?

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Theology, Gnosticism

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2015

Reviews

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cathars left no churches or cathedrals of their own, left no art, and wrote only one book.

Most of what is known comes from their opponents, the Inquisitors and people who took part in the Albigensian Crusade.

This book does an amazing service for us on providing the reasons why The Cathars stood in opposition to the teachings of the medieval church, and outlining the day-to-day beliefs and activities of their meetings and rites.

The book investigates their spiritual lineage (does it go all the way back to Jesus Christ?) and the strange divergence between their opposition to marriage while believing that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married.

Fascinating information.

[John Szalasny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history of the Cathars in popular culture begins and ends with the 4th Crusade - the only one fought in the heartlands of Europe. The extermination of the believers of a sect who believed in Jesus and his message in the New Testament (primarily the book of John) serves as the template for the religious cleansing of the Nazis as well as the ethnic cleansing of the Serbians in the 20th century. This book dig deeper into the beliefs of the Good Men and Women, those we know today as the Cathars and it is a good starter history on the subject.

The author starts at the end, with the massacres in the Languedoc region of France through to the beginnings of the Inquisition and its round up of Perfects and other believers. The author then goes back to explain the beliefs and the origins of the sect. Done without records of the believers, information on this sect is gathered through the "confessions" recorded by the Inquisition. Even discounting the fact that this history is written through the eyes of the victors, it gives insights to a belief system much different than Roman Catholicism. Bodies are not resurrected. Lives are reincarnated. The creator and god of the earth is Satan (the evil god - the good god is in heaven).

My only quibble about the book is the addition of the last three chapters on the modern revival of Catharism. Most of the figures of this revival have no historical basis for their version of what is and how to be a believer, and the efforts of these people are either based on romantic or nationalistic notions. This would be fine as an afterward, but as written, gives the modern revival the same legitimacy as the historical Cathars and brings down my rating to 3.5 stars.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read a few Cathar-related books already (e.g. The Perfect Heresy by Stephen O'Shea) I was already partly familiar with the Cathar movement in the Languedoc and its tragic demise at the hands of Crusaders and Inquisition. However, the focus of this work on the actual teachings and their origins provided detail that I wasn't previously familiar with. In particular the author's focus on the connections between the Cathars and other dualist groups like the Bogomils of Bulgaria and the earlier Paulicians was of great interest to me. The links to other sources and representations of the Cathar story in both written and film fiction was also useful to the reader.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A historic analysis of the Cathars and the Albigensian crusade, a genocide.

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting part of history that I didn't know about. I won it in a contest and it was a good read.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a religion that we know very little about because its adherents were mostly murdered by the Inquisitors and the Crusaders. What we do know is circumspect because it comes mostly from the records of the Inquisition, and is therefore tainted with the bias of cultic narrow-mindedness. Just as the Catholics destroyed the Mayan codices, denying science so much intricate detail about an ancient civilization, so they similarly conducted religious genocide against the Cathars. As a result, the best modern scholars can do is piece together some semblance of Catharism from the prejudicial records of those who deemed their orthodoxy more important than the Ten Commandments, choosing to not only murder, but also to torture and burn alive any who would refuse to bow to their ridiculous assertions.

It’s easy for anyone who will take the time to read history to immediately recognize that the Cathars were obviously correct when they labeled the Catholics of the time satanic. The chronology of the Catholic church is filled with murder, oppression, war-mongering, exploitation, and extermination of anything standing against the arrogance of its evil hierarchy and superstitious doctrines. The message of Jesus is totally contrary to the historical dogma of the Catholic Church. The message of Jesus is a message of nonviolence, of turning the other cheek, of loving one’s neighbor, and of sacrificing oneself for the good of others. Think how much the teachings of Jesus had to be twisted and corrupted to be transformed from a gospel of love into the deviant horror of orthodox totalitarianism that manifested in the vicious Catholic hierarchy.

Like the Romans and the Pharisees, the Catholics responded to Jesus’s call for nonviolence with its extreme opposite: violence, murder, torture, and persecution. One wonders how anyone who avails themselves to read the history of the Catholic Church would acquiesce to call themselves Catholic. The fact is that many of them don’t avail themselves, don’t read for themselves, don’t know the violent history of their religion, else they would forego it all together. For the history of Catholicism reveals it to be a religion founded upon the shedding of blood, the damning of souls, the torturous burning of its enemies, the seizing of lands, and the general kindling of evils, like the sale of indulgences. The effect of Jesus’ time on Earth was taken for granted by this violent hierarchy. Catholicism has never been able to digest the effect of Christ’s grace upon sin. Instead, there is a seething hatred of nonconformists and persistent attempts to soothe their self-loathing with superstitious rituals.

Much of the violent Catholic activity is pushing a millennial in age. The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar’s began in 1209 and the Inquisition was founded in 1231. The horror of these events equates to the more modern holocaust (1941-1945). Many Catholics will find it shocking to know that a Jewish ghetto existed right outside of the Vatican during WWII; or that Pope Pius XII excommunicated many communists but never Hitler, who died a member of the Catholic Church that baptized him. Pope Pius XII insisted on Vatican neutrality during WWII and avoided directly naming the Nazis as evildoers. Catholicism has a long history of persecuting Jews, as well as Muslims, Protestants, and anyone else they can frame as heretical.

The crusades are vivid examples of evil run amuck upon the earth, as the Catholics moved about in murderous frenzies of terror. This author reports all this violence: The Albigensian crusade invaded Beziers in 1209 and had no way of distinguishing the small percentage of Cathars from the Catholic inhabitants so they killed them all, even those who retreated into Catholic cathedrals for sanctuary. An estimated 15,000 were murdered by knife and clubs, even Catholic priests, and the town itself was burned. From there the crusaders moved on to Bram where they cut off the noses and upper lips of all the men and blinded them. In Minerva, 140 Cathars were burned alive as the demonic Catholic army looked on. In Lavaur, 400 Cathars were burnt at the stake. In 1239, 180 heretics were burned in Mont Aime, Champagne. In 1244, there were 225 people burnt to death at Montsegur. In 1278, 200 Cathars were burnt to death in the amphitheater at Verona. In 1252, Pope Innocent IV gave papal approval to the use of torture by the Inquisition. The form of torture known as water boarding, still practiced in the west today, was developed by the Inquisition in the 15th century. Believers in reincarnation assert the extreme violence and agony suffered accounts for so many reporting vivid memories of past lives as Cathars.

Heterodox Cathar Beliefs



The graphic above depicts Cathar Country in the South of France. Many have gained interest in the Cathars and a desire to visit Cathar County through the popular fictional work of Kate Mossee, known as Labyrinth .

This author explores the connections between the Cathars and the ancient Gnostics. The mythology of Gnosticism asserts that the Demiurge (a lesser, evil creator) was the issue of Sophia (wisdom). Today one can sense an implication in this symbology that the Demiurge is in fact man himself. It is man himself that creates disastrous consequences and evil in the world with his ridiculous hierarchies, caste systems, slavery, exploitation, inequality, pedophilia, wars, lies, greed, pornography, pathological accumulation, environmental degradation, and many other deviate practices. Many are misled into greedily embracing these extant forms of being that often possess human forms.

I was interested to learn that the Cathars relied most heavily on the Gospel of John, which has always been my favorite book of the Bible. Key beliefs of the Cathars include the distinguishing of its adherents into two groups: the Perfects and the Believers. The Believers were those destined into future reincarnations with hope of becoming a Perfect in future lives. The Perfects were those in their final life stage before gaining heaven. The Perfects were like a small priesthood entrusted with the esoteric secrets of the religion while a large outer circle of lay people had little knowledge of the religion beyond a few standard practices. To this day, there are religions in the Middle East that employ a similar model, such as The Druze .

The Believers supported the Perfects in their endeavors in the present life. A ritual called the consolamentum was performed on Perfects who succumbed to sin, restoring them to the state of heavenly ascendance. Another Cathar process, termed the endura, was the practice of a Perfect fasting to death after a consolamentum to avoid corrupting themselves again. The Inquisitors believed the consolamentum involved actual rejection of the Catholic Church, requiring the Perfect to specifically reject baptismal water, the sign of the cross, and other Catholic rituals. The Cathars believed the cross was a sign of the beast in Revelation.

The Cathars believed in the power of the “laying on of hands”, and that the Spirit descends upon Perfects during a consolamentum. The Perfects had to be celibate and were not permitted to touch a member of the opposite sex. They were vegetarians and fasted three days a week. They refused to swear oaths of any kind. Some believed that Christ had returned into the world in spiritual form and possessed the body of Paul.

Conclusion

As a student of religions, I find it amazing what human beings will allow themselves to believe. Certainly, indoctrination from childhood is very powerful, especially the kind of intimidation that comes with superstitious threats of hellfire; but at some stage in the maturity of a human being, one should gain sufficient recognition of the absurdities that accompany mythological and cultic persuasion.

Any religion that tells its adherents to murder other people is wrong. Any religion that spreads itself by intimidation, coercion, and indoctrination is wrong. Any religion that shuns others just because they choose not to embrace its theology is wrong. Any religion that manifests by any means other than the free awareness and acquiescence of its practitioners is wrong. Unfortunately, this pertains to most organized religions of today.

The mere fact that orthodoxy required the persecution of heretics and non-believers in order to flourish is proof enough of this. Religious truth transcends dogma, doctrine, definition, or any ability to catalogue it into permanence. Jesus left no writings. God is ineffable, manifests internally, and is beyond the ability of humans to define. Quite frankly, anyone who subscribes wholeheartedly and literally to religious fundamentalism that has been handed to them externally, has clearly been duped.

-End-

Vocab

Legate - representative of the Pope, cardinal or governor of ancient Rome.
Necromancy - practice of communicating with the dead, especially to predict the future
Geomancy - divination from configurations in a handful of earth thrown on the ground
Magna Carta - 1215 - placed limits on Royal authority by establishing law as a power in and of itself - agreed to by King John of England.
Itinerantly - traveling from place to place
Poignant - sadness or regret, touching, moving
Ontology - the metaphysics of being, the nature of existence
Absolute dualism - regards good and evil as eternally co-existing
Moderate dualism - sees evil as something that was not there at the beginning but emerged as a result of rebellion, ignorance, or disaster.
Theodicy - explanation of the existence of evil -
Polemical - strong critical attack or controversial opinion
Exegesis - critical explanation or interpretation of text
Credulously - too great a readiness to believe things
Malign - evil in nature or affect - malevolent
Profligates - recklessly extravagant- wasteful
Paraclete - the Holy Spirit
Genuflections - bending to the knee in worship or as a sign of respect
Theosophy - philosophies maintaining that knowledge of God can occur through ecstasy, intuition, or special individual relations.
Banal - lacking originality, boring, obvious
Euphemism - polite term substituted for one considered too harsh
Heterodox - not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs
Adoptionism - denies the eternal pre-existence of Christ - sees Jesus as a man who recognized his divinity and was essentially adopted into divinity
Docetic - idea that Jesus was only spiritual without true reality or body - an illusion - that He only seemed to be human
Veracity - conformity to facts, accuracy
Perennialism - holds perspective that religions share a single, metaphysical truth or origin - idea of the one from which all existence emerges
Evocative - bringing to mind
Spurious - false, fake, not what it is purported to be

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Before picking up this book, I knew that the Cathars were a religious sect who were persecuted and wiped out during the Inquisition. After reading (about a third) of this book, I know that the Cathars were a religious sect who were persecuted and wiped out during the Inquisition. To be fair to the author, it's likely this book is meant for persons who are already familiar with the history of the Cathars, and not people like me who think they may have heard the word used one time in that terrible Antonio Banderas movie set during the Inquisition. If you already have an interest in history, and you already have some familiarity with the history expanded on here, this book is for you. If you know nothing, this is not a dummy's guide.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Joseph Schrock · Rating 3 out of 5]

As for me, as an interested reader of books on various diverse spiritual/religious traditions, I confess to having found “The Lost Teachings of the Cathars” a bit disappointing. Why so? Primarily because of the fact that I was quite interested in learning more about the Cathars and their brutal extermination by the Catholic Inquisition. I was especially interested in the Cathars’ apparent belief in reincarnation – a belief that I share. However, what I found in this book seemed to me more of a rather frivolous historical discussion of numerous political and religious conflicts, all sorts of superstitious obsessions by both Cathars and Catholics, and far more of a literary-historical account of how the Inquisition silenced the Cathars than any deep or meaningful discussions of the principal beliefs of the Cathars, their moral values, etc.

I, personally, became seriously disenchanted with the book’s seeming obsessions with literature and history about political and religious intrigues involving the history of the Cathars, their possible connections to the Gnostics, all sorts of supposed artifacts, including searches for the Holy Grail, etc. In other words, by my reckoning, the book was more a historical discussion of religious and political in-fighting than a serious discussion of religiously vital matters – how one should live, what happens when we die, who believes in reincarnation and why, as well as discussions concerning true spirituality more than political fighting and power struggles.

I am usually rather generous with the number of stars I grant a book after I’ve read it, but this book will be a rare occasion on which I restrict the rating to 3 stars. Given my estimation of the book and what I’d hoped to get from reading it, that’s a fairly generous rating.

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books regarding Catharism retell what is now well known about the Albigensian Crusade: that inquisitorial campaign that burned that religious movement to the ground. What is vaguely known, and just from inquisitorial records, is what they believed. Mr. Smith goes deep into the probable Bogomil beginnings and beyond, the books that may have influenced Cathar thought, their rituals, and modern day manifestations. So far, one of the best books I've read about this mysterious branch of christianity, very well researched, truthful, plenty of insight. A must for those interested in this tragic and beautiful subject.

[Helena Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, very well-written and researched, beyond my expectations.

Must-read for anyone wanting to understand the Knights Templar, Cathars and the history of the Langue D'Oc region of France as well as Gnosticism. My heart goes out to the Cathars and all persecuted under the church. Montsegur and the Albigensian Crusade shall never be forgotten, as well as the unjust persecution of the Knights Templar. My heart hurts...

[Mary-Lou Stephenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was a little disappointed. The book focused on historical "battles" and events and not much detail on the beliefs and practices.

[Laura Valdes Jost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Title doesn’t exactly encompass the contents if the book. It is more about the Cathars in general with a fair chunk of what they believed/practiced.

[Κίρκη · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pseudo historia.

Falta de fuentes.

Más fe que estudio. Fe en el sentido new age, batiburrillo desorganizado de creencias fuera de su contexto.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a goodreads.com free.. now that that's out of the way. This book is very good research material for authors .. shows religious strife , Centuries after the brutal slaughter of the Cathars by papally endorsed Northern French forces,and their suppression by the Inquisiton. The German Otto Rahn, who has been called the real-life Indiana Jones, believed that the Cathars were protectors of the Holy Grai

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 4 out of 5]

So interesting to this old history buff.