INTERVIEW WITH BEN HAMMOTT

- RSE Guest Speaker - Part 2

By Louise SaintOnge for MastersConnection LLC© 2009 All Rights Reserved

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Hidden clues, caves, scrolls, a tomb, lost treasures, a demon, mysterious deaths, sacred geometry,
a grisly murder, secret societies.

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray©

The mystery centers around a little hilltop village
in southwest France, called Rennes-le-Chateau; Berenger Saunière, the village priest in the late 1800’s; and a tiny church dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

The story goes that while doing essential repairs to the church, Saunière suddenly came into great wealth which changed him, the little church, and subsequently set off a smoldering fire of speculation and theories about what he found and the secret he was keeping that has lasted for over a century.

Decades of research and inquiry into that secret focus on whether Saunière had found the lost treasure of the Templars, or was being paid by the Vatican to keep what he found under wraps: that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and had children, and that Jesus may not have died on the cross after all.

Unlike the researchers, historians and treasure hunters before him, Ben successfully decoded clues left by Saunière, which led him to hard evidence, relics, and the discovery of a tomb, yet to be excavated. His extraordinary film footage of the tomb drives a remarkable story that continues to unfold.

Ben Hammott is standing on the precipice of what could be the cover up of the centuries, a cover up that, if revealed, would shake to the core the fundamental beliefs espoused by Christianity, loosening its long standing stranglehold on humanity.

Ben’s amazing journey can be read in his book Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar. His website is a must visit
Ben's Website

Ben was a guest speaker at RSE In July. His talk and film footage were captivating, and I was fortunate to interview him the next morning. To my utter amazement he brought the relics he discovered, and without any pomp or specialness, handed them to me and said, “Here, go ahead, hold them.” The simple beauty of his gesture and holding these ancient artifacts took my breath away.

An Interview With Ben Hammott - PART 2 -    
July 23, 2009

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray©

Louise: So, I want to go back a little bit, Ben, to how you have changed because of this. It has been 12 years of your life that has been totally redirected into this amazing, I don't know what you want to call it, it's not a treasure hunt, but a fact-finding, whatever. How have you changed?

BEN: How have I changed? Difficult question. I think now it has given me a thirst for knowledge, a thirst to know what really happened. Was Jesus crucified? Was it all a plan? Was he just following the prophecy in the Old Testament? Because he did follow it all to the letter, even riding on a donkey in Jerusalem. It was all prophesized. And then he was crucified on the day before the Passover, so he knew he would be on the cross a limited amount of time. But did he die on the cross or not? But I wouldn't like to be responsible for proving that that was the case.

Louise: Why?

BEN: Because I would be worried that people would be so upset by that, and it could be too hard. I don't want to be the cause of anyone's hurt or pain, but I think those who believe, who are strong in faith, will obviously disbelieve whatever is found or said against their faith. But there will be some which – Oh my God – so Jesus wasn’t resurrected! There’s no Christian faith!, which is based on that premise, that Jesus was resurrected, and there’s life after death, after we leave this earth... That's quite a scary thought for someone to prove that was not the case. Though, you could never prove 100% that if you find the body of a crucified person and say that's Jesus, unless there are the sort of documents that absolutely prove it to be so.

Louise: Well, this is a whole interesting conversation. We could go on with this, because the crucifixion was a means of death at that time, and then there was one of the documents shown in the film that had the tall cross with the two crosses, one on either side. When I first saw that, I thought, okay, there's the cross of Jesus and the two guys that were supposedly on either side of him, so perhaps there was some significance there. But in expanding the conversation about Jesus, whether he was crucified or not, or resurrected or not, is that we can't stop at saying, "All right. If he wasn't crucified on the cross, does that make him any less of a great man?” Yes, people will maybe freak out from the information, but if you open up the door to another reality and understanding, that may set people free from the enslavement that the Church has been so successful at doing for so many generations.

BEN: Yes.

Louise: So the initial freaking out, well look what happened with all the pedophilia being exposed in the Church. That blew things up. And things are blowing up for the Church. They can't hide things anymore.

BEN: Yes.

Louise: But does that mean that Jesus as a man, wasn't a great man, but that he was on another kind of mission?

BEN: Exactly.

Louise: It doesn't mean that there's no afterlife. We at the school (and elsewhere), have a clear understanding of other realities in life.

BEN: I believe there was a real person called Jesus, and I believe that he did preach a good word, that he was trying to get this message out, and that he even went so far as being crucified to get this message out. I believe that he was crucified, whether with nails or rope or whatever, is out there, but I believe he preached a good word, and the part of the resurrection was new. It hadn't happened before, the resurrection. And this is why Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb and removed his body, to push this resurrection. They thought the stone had been rolled to the side before Jesus, but that no one had been resurrected. It was resurrection which is the big thing, especially in those days. When the Christian Church started, people were living a hard life, and you know, there was death, and war, and famine, and so the thought of an afterlife, a better life after they left this earth, was great to them, and it was really big. It's not so big for us now. In those days, it was huge, and this is how the Church grew so big, because of this resurrection theory.

Louise: We are only able to ask the questions that we have knowledge about, so the greater questions only come with the more knowledge that one has. So as you said, your quest now is knowledge, which means you will have more questions, which will lead to more answers and more questions …

BEN: Exactly, yes, yes. If it is a crucified person, and these documents are saying it is Jesus, it could help to revamp the Catholic Church in a good way. It could improve their standards, and they need to do some changes. The way they are at the moment is just not working. And people are getting a bit disillusioned. I mean, I've talked to Catholics, and they know things aren't working, what they learn about, what happened in the past, why don't they just come clean, and so maybe something could happen, and it could make them strong, make people think, really, oh yeah, you don't need to be the Son of God. You know, he needn't have been the Son of God, he could have just been a normal person but doing special things, and this was his teaching, that we're all capable of being just like him, if only we would open our minds and be receptive.

Louise: It will be interesting, because I don't know how the Catholic Church will be able to pull out of this…

BEN: They will deny it.

Louise: What would they have to stand on? Like you said, what would they have to stand on if all of that was a lie? Because if people don't think they are divine, or that God is within, then you can control them really easily, you know.

BEN: The people we should fear the most of, rather than the Pope, are the people on the gravy train of the Vatican, people who earn money out of all this.
Last night I was talking to, I can't come up with his name, but he was an advisor for the Vatican, and he said "These are the people you need to look out for." These are the people that will come after you if anyone, if this starts to get a bit too serious. Which is why we have to keep the excavation and things a secret, and what’s happening and all that, just in case some blokes in black turn up, you know, and take everything – including our lives.

Louise: Well, I am curious in this day and age how you can keep it secret. Since the movie has come out, and your book, aren't there more people looking around? You have revealed so many of the steps that you've taken to come to this place, someone could follow those steps?

Photo Credit: Ben Hammott ©

BEN: Yeah. But as I said in the book, there are a couple of changes, details I've left out, so the location is not exactly revealed. But the methodology is exactly right. It's just that I've changed a couple of details. And you're right, someone could work it out like I did, but I think I was fated to find this, because, as I say, if you're standing in front of it, you wouldn't notice it. It's only something, the sun was just at the right angle to show me this blackness behind it, and I was looking for something hidden behind a bush because of the Fleury Tableau, you know, this bloke looking at this bush, and there seemed to be a dark mass at the center, and this is what I was looking for, and I found it.

Louise: Nicholas Haywood in the film Bloodline, as many people have said, was just a very interesting character, and he was someone that Bruce Burgess hooked up with. But you have not had any communication with him?

BEN: Yes. He has great on-screen presence. I have never met him… no.

Louise: What's their relationship, to the extent that you can speak about it? Tell me what you know about Nick.

BEN: Nick seems to have gone dark at the moment. No one's heard from him for a little while, so we don't know what's happened to him, whether he's been bumped off even, you know, for saying too much. But he is a very interesting guy. He's got that air about him that he knows more than he is saying, you know. He's just a very interesting guy, and I think he has revealed so much, hoping that you will pick up on it.

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray©

Like he may send you a photograph or something, and there will be something in the background of the photograph, which is revealing. He'll send you a photograph of his desk.
You're concentrating on it, and he has this lamp that he bought, and he sends a picture of the lamp, but there'll be a photograph next to it, just slightly out of focus, and you zoom in, and you'll see him sitting next to this place at Rennes-le-Chateau, and he wants you to focus, not on the lamp. He wants you to focus on this photograph, and it feels like he's testing you. If you see it, then there's a clue, but if you don't see it, you're not going to get the clue.
And this is how he speaks. When he says something, you’ve got to read between the lines of what he is saying to get what he is actually saying. And he's like that. But it's very frustrating at times.

Louise: I would imagine. So what I was saying, the day and age of our keeping a secret. How you do that? People have sophisticated means of tracking you. You're just not so concerned about that?

BEN: No, I mean I have my moments, like even now when I think someone's following me, and I'll go around a round-about. You know round-about? Yes. I'd go around a round-about, and I'll go to the next one and just see if they are following me, you know. But other times it doesn't bother me.

Photo Credit: Ben Hammott ©

I mean, I am very aware that even if I'm sitting in the garden at the Chateau, if someone moves by, you can tell they are listening. They have their ear cocked towards you, and sometimes Bruce and me are talking, and we talk about some complete nonsense and see what they do, see if they go off and search where we had been talking about.   (Laughter)

Louise: You’re visually becoming known, too. You're going to have to get a makeup artist or something!
You have these incredible artifacts that have been tested and proven to be authentic and ancient, and so how the heck did you get to keep them? How the heck did you get them through customs? And what a blessing that we are able to witness them!

BEN: I just put them in my campervan, and I just rode through customs.
That's sort of it. We had labeled them up as film props, just in case…

Louise: For here?

BEN: For here? No. I just carried it in my bag. It was a carry-on bag.

Louise: Going through x-rays, they didn't say, "What are these things?"

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray ©

BEN: Not at all.   (Ben opens the box with the artifacts he found)

Louise: So, this box is the box that Saunière used to put these things in.

BEN: Yes. This box only dates to the 1800s. It's not a Templar box or anything like that. We know he had a cabinet maker up at his place, doing his library, so maybe he knocked a box out, or maybe Saunière already had this.

Louise: So, what's interesting, is, you're not treating them special to the point where, you know…

BEN: Well, they've been in the chest for 100 years, and they have gotten all mildewed and everything. There's nothing my fingers are going to harm on them at all. Even when we took them to the British Museum, they handled them. They didn't put gloves on or anything. They said, "No. You're not going to harm them. It's pottery.” It's not like this piece of paper or an ancient document.

Louise: So, this is the alabaster jar, anointing jar, and this is the cup, perhaps, held wine or…

BEN: You can hold it if you want.

Louise: Oh my, thank you.

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray ©

BEN: It is just a symbolic cup, you know. I mean, you'd expect something to be used by Mary would be gold or silver, but they were simple people. You know, if it was gold or silver, it may have been more suspicious. It would have been a greater find.

Louise: So, the thought is that Mary and Jesus used these?

BEN: Yeah. That seems to be …

Louise: I'm so honored to hold them.

BEN: Yes, go on.

Louise: That's what's so fascinating about you, Ben. “Yeah go ahead, hold them.” Beautiful.

BEN: See, this is 2000 years old as well, and if you read in the Bible, it seems that there might have been 2 vessels.

Louise: That's glass.

BEN: Yeah, alabaster. Well, it's glass imitating alabaster. It's Roman, 2000 years old… She [Mary Magdalene] anointed Jesus’ hair by breaking a vial, and then you know, like shampoo, you wouldn't have a big bottle. And so, there could have been a separate one for the feet.

Photo Credit: Stephany Ray ©

But you wouldn't need that much, just a little bit on the feet, you know, to massage it in. It need not have been a big one. And this is what the parchment was in that Captier the bell ringer found. And that is what was inside (showing small parchment).

Louise: Oh, my God. Now, the air isn't going to dry this thing up?

BEN: It’s like a crisp, so it's not going to dry anymore.

Louise: I so appreciate your bringing these things.

BEN: But I love this. These two are my favorite things, because they are so directly linked to the history and the story about the Chateau; because this was found in a secret cavity in the wooden post in the church, and we took it to Antoine Captier, the grandson of the bell ringer who found it.
His exact words were: ‘It’s the one” that his grandfather found and gave to Sauniere.

Louise: All the lives you're touching through this. It's quite extraordinary, Ben.
I don't know if you ever contemplate on that.

BEN: I'm beginning to, after being here, actually.

Louise: After being here, why's that?

BEN: Well, the response that I got after the talk last night, and people were coming to the book signing, and coming up and saying thank you for getting this out. It's about time that this was revealed, and what a great story, and you know… because, I don't often get to talk to people about it, especially on this scale. I know it's interesting, but you know how some people never stop and they can bore you to death with all their stuff? It's of interest to you, but it is not necessarily interesting to them. But to tell it, and to get the feedback that it's great, that’s amazing!

Louise: We certainly have had many talks from Ramtha about Mary Magdalene and about Jesus and about the lies of the Church, and so on. You just fit right in! And then to get JZ's perspective as well.

BEN: Yes, yes. That’s something I've been wanting to do, to get hold of someone like JZ to see if there was any vibe there. So it was great. This was why I brought them [artifacts] originally. I wasn't going to bring them. I didn't know if she would or not, so I just mentioned this with JZ, would she be willing to hold them, and give me her opinion, and she did. I wish we'd filmed it, but ..

Louise: It must have been a wonderful thing for you.

BEN: It was, yeah.

Louise: Thank you. I didn't think that I'd see those that close, let alone hold them, that's for sure. So I'm thrilled … kind of throws me off a little bit. Whew. Okay.
So, what's a day in the life of Ben right now? Get up and …

BEN: Get up, go to work. I'm doing landscaping at the moment. I'm writing another book at the moment. I'm writing a novel version of this. It’s a three parter. The book is called The Tomb, The Temple, and The Treasure.
It starts off in Rosslyn Chapel and I'll extend out from there.

Louise: And then the movie will come …

BEN: It would make a great movie.

Louise: Well, absolutely. So did you ever think of yourself as a writer?

BEN: Not at all. English is not my forte, you know, writing, grammar, spelling. But no, when I first started writing the book, The Lost Tomb of the Knights of Templar, it was a serious book. There was no humor in it. There was none of my journeys from there. It was just simply going to be what I found, tell some clues. But it just didn't read right. I thought, well this isn't me, you know. So I put humor in it, and turned it into my story, from when I first heard of it, the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery, up to the time I finished the book. People like to hear about that. I am really pleased about that.

Louise: That's great. Just being yourself, and that's a big part of the intrigue and the interest. Your average person can relate to that. On your web site Ben's Website you’ve got the Lost Tomb of the Knights Templar book, which isn't really available here in the U.S., except for what you brought in for the talk last night.

BEN: The publisher has the manuscript now, so hopefully I'm getting a U.S. deal very soon. That's in the pipeline. Whether they take it or not. I wish of course they do. But you know, we sent off a few chapters first, and they read that and the synopsis, and they liked that, so they requested the whole manuscript. So hopefully they were interested enough to go that far.

Louise: And then you also have on the site these postcards from the priest Saunière. Those are all so beautiful.

Photo Credit: Ben Hammott © Old and tattered Album showing four Rennes-le-Chateau Postcards

BEN: They are. I love them, because they show his domain and the area around his time, just as he'd finished the domain there was just a few bits that he still hadn’t finished off, and it's always good, like, if you use the Celtic cross for example, and you work things out, use it to find something. Was it there? How did it look when Saunière put it there? These postcards allow you to do that, which is great.
All the way through, if I used something in my clue solving I tried to track it back as far as I could and get a photograph of it. I've got feelers out everywhere, and if any photos come up of Rennes-le-Chateau they contact me and they show it to me, do I want it? I love it.

Louise: That's beautiful. The web site has, The Illustrated guide to Rennes le Chateau Link Here, which is beautiful.

BEN: Yes, I wish this was around when I first started, because the pictures are of such good quality that you can actually see all the details. When you go in the church, you have to work from the photograph, because it's so gloomy in there. They’ve got lights, but a lot of the lights don't even have the bulbs in anymore. So you can't see anything. It's only by using a photo that you can see all the details that are there.

Louise: Did you take those photos?

BEN: I took the photos.

Louise: These are your photos? Awesome. So you are a writer, a photographer …who would have known… When do you think your novel will be ready?

BEN: In the next couple of months.

Louise: So you have got some major timelines happening here - within six months you think you'll have excavated, then published ….

BEN: That's a whole new book as well, you know, the excavation.

Louise: Sure. Where did the money come from?

BEN: My work. I haven't got a publisher yet, so everything I do is self-published.

Louise: And the excavation and all that, someone's got to get involved in that.

Rennes-le-Chateau

BEN: Yes, that's being financed privately. The DRAC will be paying some, but they're more after the excavation. That's where they come in in a major way, rather than digging the hole.
But it's even insurance. We have to get insurance, public liability insurance and all this. There are so many things. You think you just go out there and dig a hole, but it's not. They won't entertain it unless you've got all these things in place, you know.

Louise: But, how come they are allowing you to keep this? That was the question with these artifacts, that you're allowed to keep them rather than have some antiquity law that requires you to turn them over to the government.

BEN: Well, hopefully, eventually they will go back to the Saunière museum in Rennes-le-Chateau, when they're all finished doing their rounds. But when we were talking to the DRAC and telling them, we hadn’t actually emphasized it but they must have been on the web site, so they must know, and they haven't said anything about it. So the French are funny. If this was England, there would be a hoo-haw about this being moved or not. But the French are so blasé about their heritage, and they're more interested in stone age flint axes and that at the moment. Anything Medieval – Medieval was too new for them, so, you know, that's not history, that happened yesterday.

Louise: Oh, this is wonderful, wonderful.

BEN: See, that will go back to France. That's the plan. I'd love it to be in the Rennes-le-Chateau museum, ‘Discovered by Ben Hammott’ label, you know…

Louise: What is your dream of the outcome of all this, Ben? You've certainly alluded to some of them along the way in our conversation.

BEN: I think, apart from the tomb being excavated, that the stuff will go on display, and the documents and that will reveal stuff that will hopefully make people's life better. It will improve the knowledge that will be gleaned from it and will be helpful to mankind in some way. But just to be involved and recognize the discovery of all this stuff, that would be neat. The treasure trove law is 50/50, landowner and discoverer. I'm certainly not interested in that. I will be alright with my books after the excavation goes public. I’ll be okay money wise, so I'm not interested in that.

Louise: And the landowner now is…?

BEN:I'm not allowed to say.

Louise: Okay. But couldn’t one go to some public records and figure that out?

BEN: If you knew where the land was…

Louise: Oh, yeah, right. I understand. Beautiful. What is so remarkable is that you made a connection with the school here, Ben, and it's an obvious one on so many levels, that I really can't put it into words. It's just the beauty of how destiny seems to find its way.

BEN: It's amazing, isn't it? I'm glad I came. Before I came here, what the Ramtha school was really like I couldn't say… it's going to be like airy-fairy Marys, holding hands and chanting,   (Laughter)
…that's what I thought I was walking into, but it's completely not that… completely not that…

Louise: It sure is not that. Ramtha calls it a boot camp of the mind, and it really is. It's not for the weak of mind or heart, and it requires a lot of focus and devotion to the truth. That's really what it's about. It’s also called the School of Ancient Wisdom, and ancient wisdom as you know, has been grossly misinterpreted along the way.

BEN: I understand what she's [JZ] trying to do here. It's a great place, unique.

Louise: I'm so glad we had the time together Ben, and to be able to hold those beautiful artifacts is a great honor.

BEN: It's my pleasure…

Click Here For
Ben Hammott Interview Part 1

Photography by
Stephany Ray

Interview Transcribed by Eileen Messer
Ramtha®, The Tank® are trademarks and service marks
of JZ Knight and are used with permission.