Labyrinth reads like one of those books where the author is more worried about achieving the desired blockbuster pagination (700 pages) than how the story is told. But after 250 pages, the narrative begins to gather momentum as the threads of her parallel lives-Cathar Alais and modern-day volunteer archaeologist Alice Tanner-intersect compellingly. Mosse takes many themes associated with the Templars-the Grail, the Cathars, the implication of secret knowledge from the East-but only mentions the order in passing as she builds to a finale in which the Grail is revealed as a chalice, something that enables initiates to live for 800 years and ‘the love that is handed down from generation to generation’.
When she researched the novel, Mosse writes, she felt sure there would be a role for the Templars but decided ‘the connections people like to make between the Albigenslan heresy and the Knights Templar are based on nothing more than historical coincidence’. On her website vwmmosselabyrinth. co. uk she has published her notes on the man she refers to as ‘the great Jacques do Molay” and speculates that the Knights Templar may have been the ‘fair-headed people using the power of the covenant’ who, In Ethiopian tradition, raised the massive obelisk at Axum. While many rumours and legends link the Templars to Ethiopia (usually In connection with the Ark of the Covenant), the obelisk Is 1600-1700 years old. So not historical nor a coincidence.
Julia Navarro The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud
World History
