Canberra Group
Meets third Saturday of each month from 2 to 4pm
Coordinator: Gordon Herbert
Mobile: 0466 464 064
Postal Address: 9 Backhouse Street, Latham, ACT 2615
Email: [email protected]
Bulletins: Current and previous Bulletins from the Canberra Group can be viewed at: Canberra Group Bulletins
Meeting place: Friends' Meeting House, 17 Bent Steet, Turner (on the corner of Bent and Condamine Streets)
Meet: 2 - 4 pm 3rd Saturday each month.
2024 Programme
2.00pm Saturday 16 November
Topic: The Cathar Wars: Power and Privilege
Presenter: Elayne Strahan
About the presenter:
Elayne is a retired commonwealth public servant with twenty-five years’ experience in social work practice, commonwealth social research, policy development and program implementation for the Australian government. She has a social policy research masters from the Australian Demographic Social Research Institute (ADSRI) at the Australian National University (ANU).
Elayne has always had an interest in esoteric matters and has been involved in the spiritualist movement for forty years not just in Canberra but elsewhere in Australia. She is currently completing private research on the Cathars with the view of making her findings available to a wider audience by publication of a book that she is planning. Elayne is married and lives in Canberra.
About the presentation:
Elayne has presented a number of times to the Theosophical Society on the Cathar Wars, also known as the Albigensian Crusade of 1209 - 1229. These talks outlined a number of interesting facets to do with the crusade, in particular, the innocence of Raymond 6th, Count of Toulouse who was accused of the assassination of the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau. These early presentations further discussed the traditional historical explanations of the triggers for war and the papacy’s strategic decision to totally destroy heresy. Elayne does not hold the same dominant and traditional accounts of modern historians and their interpretations of the Cathar Wars. In this presentation, Elayne wishes to strengthen her hypothesis about who was behind the murder of Pierre de Castelnau and why. Included in this, is the exploration of some of the forgeries and fraud perpetrated by various Popes to gain power and privilege and ultimately the prize of both temporal and spiritual power on Earth. These frauds were a direct consequence of Rome’s conversion to Christianity from paganism during the reign of Emperor Constantine and the fierce competition between paganism and early Christianity to force one creed thereafter. This contest became a festering sore for centuries and would result in ‘the investiture controversy’ also known as ‘the Gregorian reforms’ of the 11th century. The issue seemed finally settled when the Cathar wars gave victory to orthodoxy and Catholicism and the winner wrote the history of the contest.
