by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

A sounding board on the ceiling at Notre Dame Basilica is at the root of a major local mystery. Sounding boards are common in churches as they amplify the voice from the pulpit. They're often painted gold with a triangle surrounded by a cloud and sunrays and the Hebrew name of God, "YHVH." Francine Bernier noticed that the one in Notre Dame, which probably dates to around 1672, is missing a letter. She rented a long-lensed camera and took a close-up. The Y is missing.

"I sent the photo to religious experts in Israel, England and Rome. I didn't say where it came from. They all came back saying it was a mistake. Then I showed it to the monks at St-Benoît-du-Lac, to theologians, historians and Hebrew experts. They looked and fell off their chair." It says HVH. "That's what the Torah calls the first woman (aka Eve), so it says, ‘God is a woman.'"

High-ranking clergy initially asked Bernier to keep it quiet but have since offered a puzzled confirmation of the lettering. "I don't want to harm the Sulpicians. They're wonderful people but they don't know what happened 300 years ago."

Bernier suggests the ancient lettering tells volumes about the birth of this city, which she details in her recently released 404-page book, The Templars' Legacy in Montreal: the New Jerusalem. "HVH is the inner-meaning of the sacred Name. It's a purely Gnostic and kabbalistic concept of God. It suggests that what made God react and create the world was feminine."

Bernier notes another intriguing anomaly: rather than the traditional dozen, only nine Jerusalem crosses adorn the church. Bernier notes there were nine founding Knights Templar, the mystical, heretical Catholic army known for its role in the crusades and the search for the Holy Grail.

Take, for example Jeanne Mance's coat of arms. Mance, a direct descendant of the last leader of the Knights Templar, has heraldry featuring a golden tree surrounded by 12 blue apples. It's on permanent display at the Hôtel Dieu museum at St-Urbain and Pine. Bernier is confounded by this because women did not have coats of arms.

Mance's beautiful ceramic five-inch-tall virgin is also on display. It's dark brown, which suggests a link to the pagan-oriented Black Madonna cult. "They say it went through fire so many times it turned black. If you ask religious congregations, they always say these things turned black because of fire," she notes skeptically.

Bernier also questions why, in 1672, the first settlers chose to build an early church at Pointe-a-Callières, two kilometres away from the fortifications. "They'd take chances with their lives just to go to mass. Something doesn't make sense." She speculates that they were spiritually drawn to the site at the dangerous spot because of its proximity to a 75-foot-high Indian burial mound shaped like a pyramid.

When planning Montreal, Jean-Jacques Olier - who died before he could move here - chose 57 handpicked settlers (called "illuminati"). None were trained in religion and they included Protestant Huguenots. "The philosophy was to go back to the primitive church as Christ had created it, way before all the councils had decided it was a heresy."

Bernier also questions other behaviour, such as Paul de Maisonneuve's climbing halfway up the south side of Mount Royal with a cross on his back on January 6, 1643, in response to floods. She says the ritual hearkens back to "the crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. They copied the chivalric model of the first crusades and they put that right here."

Europe was awash with utopianism when the New World was discovered and the founding of our city was a particularly mystical mission to create a new Avalon. "They all believed in finding a beautiful island where they could establish, or at least put the seed of, a new perfect world of Christian peace and harmony.

"I have understood that there's an interior church and an exterior church. There are secrets meant only for those who are in. Montreal was meant to be that inner church," she says.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca