• Traces the journey of Otto Rahn, the occultist and one-time SS member who sought the Holy Grail and traveled widely throughout Europe as a researcher until his mysterious death in 1939

• Explores the modern legacy of the officially heretical Christian sect known as the Cathars

• Follows the author’s own investigations into the location of the Grail and Rahn’s legacy, taking readers on a journey through occult Europe

Meticulously following controversial 20th-century occultist, historian, and partially Jewish SS member Otto Rahn’s research and investigations into the Holy Grail and Catharism, author and filmmaker Richard Stanley enters into the occult world of Europe, encountering esoteric traditions that have survived since the Crusades and the Inquisition and ultimately finding a new spiritual path in his own life. At Rahn’s family home in the Black Forest of Germany, Stanley unearths a cache of maps, photographs, and unpublished manuscripts. His journey in pursuit of Rahn’s legacy then takes him to Montsegur, in southern France, mystical stronghold and one-time home of the Cathars, the esoteric and Gnostic Christian sect that was decimated in the medieval Albigensian Crusade. There he sees the extraordinary summer solstice light phenomenon that reveals the fortress’s mystical past as well as encounters witnesses who insist Rahn is still alive. Methodically visiting every site his research unearthed, from France to Iceland, the author untangles conspiracy from truth as he looks at the connections between the Cathars, the Rosicrucians, Julius Evola, neo-Cathar and Freemason Dèodat Roché, the mystical bleeding stones known as Lapis exilis, and Otto Rahn’s esoteric path. He also examines the prophecy of the return of the Cathars’ medieval priestess Esclarmonde de Foix, the White Lady, who appeared to Rahn during his search for the Grail.

Richard Stanley is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose films include Dust Devil, Hardware, and Color Out of Space. As a journalist and documentarian, he has covered events in Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Haiti. A frequent contributor to publications including Fortean Times and the Sauniére Society Journal, he lives in Rennes les Bains, Occitanie, France.