Great cathedrals were built on sites known to have been sacred to ancient goddesses. The prime group who was behind the building of Chartres Cathedral, was the Knights Templar. The symbolism of their decoration and design is encoded esoteric knowledge, with the labyrinth drawn on the floor referring to the female mysteries, and the building itself designed with the high ideals of sacred geometry.

Features such as the rose windows and Gothic arches represent intimate female anatomy; the arch, the opening into the body of the Mother Church, suggests the vulva, and the rose was an anagram for eros, or sexual love used by the Troubadours and alchemists. The tiny protrusion celebrated as the rosebud a top the Gothic arch, and it’s implications, are, and always have been enormous, and are at the heart of all patriarchal suppression on one hand, and all mystical sex rites on another.

-- Picknett, Lynn and Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998. Pages 110-111, 115, 159, 256-257,ill.