Mystery “Mont Order” Sect
This essay explains my possible family connection to a sect I have failed to identify in any history books or search engines, yet is described in memos sealed by my grandfather together with his autobiographical manuscript I was asked to type up.
Because of respect for privacy, I do not feel entitled to leak the exact contents of the memos in this essay, but I do have permission to disclose what I have read about the sect alleged to exist in the memos, and I am sure this will have informative value. If the sect really existed in some actual historical sense, I might be one of the only witnesses to its existence by possessing the testimony in the memos, and this is why I am compelled to publish at least some mention of the sect for people to find. If I am mistaken and there is a more prosaic answer to this peculiar story, I apologize. The rest of my family does not recognize anything significant or sensitive about the memos, making it my choice to discuss their contents.
The memos refer to “Mont” and later to the “Mont Order”. [1] This sounds much like the name of a French Medieval Christian order. In addition, two of the memos are noted as being translated from literature originally kept in a French chapel. [2] The closest historical approximations I can find are an alias of the Benedictine Williamites called the Order of “Monte Vergine”, [3] or a possible alias of the extinct French knights of the Order of Saint Michael who were based at Mont Saint Michael in Normandy. [4] The sect described in the memos could possibly be related to either one of these definitely real monastic orders, although I have no family connections to France or Italy. To my knowledge, all my family’s ancestors are Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon in their names and origins, and those on my grandfather’s line seem to have always lived in Lancashire, England. Our family name, Bentham, is common in this area. [5] This gulf between my own family and distant foreign sects is a discrepancy, and other details in the memos make me suspect the Mont Order possibly indicates some forgotten sect not mentioned in current scholarship.
Perhaps one of the reasons I cannot accept that the Mont Order sect is already discovered is the extraordinary nature of its beliefs. One memo, which successfully captured my attention, described its very own creation-myth in which a character called “the holy thief” stole from heaven for the sake of enlightening humankind. [6] Another memo even presented a prayer offered to this figure. [7] The story may be a distortion from other mythologies, which teach a similar creation event, [8] but what astonished me is how the memos assert that the Mont Order organization was literally present when the mythic creation event came to pass. In fact, the “holy thief” mentioned in the memos’ account of the story is praised as the first member of the organization. [9]
The memos claim earnestly that the Mont Order existed for centuries, and carefully protected its secrecy, although it finally broke up and effectively ceased to exist in relatively modern times, with 1999 being given as the year when the sect was finally disbanded. [10] This would suggest an esoteric group of such secrecy that it successfully evaded all scholarship or mention throughout history. In view of this, I believe background on this alleged sect calling itself the Mont Order would be an excellent target for archaeological research and scholarship of the Medieval period, even if I can offer up no more substantive evidence than I have already given.
Perhaps more significantly, the memos seem to testify that the Mont Order’s origins date back several millennia, throughout numerous historical and even mythical events. Obviously, prudent skepticism demands that this extraordinary claim not be accepted based purely on the contents of memos themselves. There is nothing particularly convincing about the notes that would make them applicable as historical evidence, other than lack of any motive for forging them. Nevertheless, the manner in which the memos try to assert the claim of the organization’s ancient origins as true should be astonishing enough. It suggests a deep belief, on the part of members of the sect at least, that the claims of the sect’s own age and significance were totally accurate.
Until qualified historical evidence is forthcoming, the memos themselves can be discounted as insufficient proof, and I must be in serious doubt about the accuracy of saying my family was linked to the claimed Mont Order or that the alleged esoteric sect even existed. It would be ideal if independently verifiable material revealing something about this alleged sect was produced by others, but currently I possess only the still guarded remnants of the sect in my grandfather’s memos, together with a few family teachings that resemble the memos in terms of ideology. As for the origins of those teachings, information dries up in my attempts to link our family teachings to the memos or to any religious sect.
A persuasive factor that compelled me to consider the possible reality of the alleged Mont sect is the way in which my upbringing had a lot of unusual practices and beliefs with some religious characteristics, such as the way my elder brother and I were rigorously home-schooled by our parents in addition to going to school, and the deliberate lack of technology during our upbringing. We were only watching a small black-and-white television even in the 1990s. Though each of us assumed that these practices were merely suggested down through the wisdom of our family itself, after reflecting on the memos I feel a need to suspect the sect’s involvement in engraining these practices. The idea of working from humble beginnings and succeeding based purely on merit is strong both in my family teachings and in the memos, although I assume this is quite a familiar notion among all poor people.
No-one in my family has any idea about the sect described in the memos, and my grandfather himself does not recall the significance of the memos except that they were originally letters from other sources requesting that he preserve them. This means there is absolutely no way to get any testimonial offering proof of the existence of the sect and my link to it. All I am able to discern is that the alleged esoteric Mont sect is a mystery to me, and there is nothing available in the form of archaeological or historical interest or expertise to indicate an answer as to whether the organization existed, or what its activities may have been if indeed it did exist. For me, no leads are available except the jotted memos themselves, which I may eventually publish with time if sufficient interest in them has accumulated.
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