The Portal: An Initiate's Journey into the Secret of Rennes-le-Chateau »

The true-life memoir Patrice Chaplin began in City of Secrets continues here in the story of her spiritual initiation into the Kabbalistic tradition preserved since the Middle Ages by a secret society in the pre-Roman city of Girona, Spain. Salvador Dalí was a member of that society, as was the renowned author Umberto Eco, the filmmaker Jean Cocteau, and Jancint Verdeguer, one of the most celebrated Catalan poets. Importantly, so was the mysterious Berenger Sauniere, the priest who in the late 1800s built Rennes-le-Château in southern France, with the Tour Magdala, a tower that is twin to the neo-gothic tower in Girona. In this gripping story that reads like the adventures of a female Castenada, Chaplin is led through a series of initiatory stages which correspond to the magical square of Venus, containing the constellation of the Great Bear.

Publishers Weekly

Chaplin's latest continues the Grail mysteries and New Age practices explored in her City of Secrets memoir. This time the author, daughter-in-law of legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin, and a guide traverse cities and landmarks in southern France and northern Spain that fall on energy-rich ley lines--geographic locations that resonate with mystical force. One stop is Rennes-le-Château, the small French church popular with speculative historians of the Holy Grail. Chaplin's journey is an initiation into a secret order charged with protecting esoteric information and involves fasting, chanting, and a psychic baptism. The Dan Brown-meets-On the Road journey culminates with an experience at the summit of Mt. Canigou in southern France, in which the author's life, and lives past, flash before her. Heaped onto the Grail mythos are references to Cabala, numerology, astrology, chakras, and astral travel that are rattled off much too quickly for clarity. Chaplin is an able writer but repeatedly falls into lengthy reveries about a lost lover and her bohemian youth, slowing momentum and diverting focus from the spiritual narrative. While some may enjoy this, most Grail researchers and occult specialists will find the author's claims unsupported and unlikely. (Sept.)