Fulcanelli - The Mystery Of The Cathedrals

Science, to be fair, does not exactly say this but it is very happy to see the implication accepted. The situation is really the Plato's cave allegory one stage up. In Plato's cave, the shadow men live in a seemingly logical world. To them, a more solid world, and one inhabited by men with real eyesight, is a hypothesis unnecessary to explain the shadow world they live in. The shadow men say in effect: 'We know nothing of this superior world you talk about and we don't want to know. We have our own terms of reference and we find them satisfactory. Please go away. Therefore we have no hesitation in asserting with complete confidence that your ideas are delusional. I ~ I 21 In effect: 'No case, abuse the plaintiff's counsel. For some thousands of years, some of the best intellects of all cultures have been occupied with the ideas of alchemy. Weighed solely on statistical probability, does it seem likely that an entirely imaginary philosophy should attract ceaseless generations of men?

The impasse is worse than it need be because of an almost accidental factor. Alchemy, so far as science has heard, is concerned with making gold and such an activity is so associated with human credulity, cupidity and unscience generally that ordinary philosophy begs to be excused from involvement in anything so obviously puerile. Is alchemy concerned with making gold? Only in a specific case within a total situation. Alchemists are concerned with gold in much the same way that Mesmer was concerned with hypnotism. The twentieth century took a single aspect of 'Mesmerism', truncated even that, and used the fragment for its own egoistic ends. It declared that it had investigated Mesmerism, exposed its ridiculous pretentions and rendered what was left 'scientific'. Goethe has a word for this process : Wer will was Lebendiges beschreiben und erkennen, Sucht erst den Geist hinaus zu treiben. Dann hat er, mar, die Teile in der Hand, Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.

Dead, all dead. If alchemy isn't gold making, what is it? Wilmshurst has defined it as 'the exact science of the regeneration of the human soul from its present senseimmersed state into the perfection and nobility of that divine condition in which it was originally created'. However, he immediately goes on to offer a second definition which clearly implies that, as with gold making, soul-making is again only a specific case. By inference, a general theory of alchemy might be ventured. Alchemy is a total science of energy transformution. Introduction Introduction The action of an Absolute in differentiating a prime-source substance into a phenomenal universe is an operation in alchemy. The creation of galactic matter from energy and the creating of energy from matter is alchemy. God is an alchemist. The decay of radium into lead with the release of radioactivity is alchemy. Nature is an alchemist. The explosion of a nuclear bomb is alchemy.

The scientist is now an alchemist. All such energy transformations are fraught with great danger and the secrecy which has always surrounded Hermeticism is concerned with this aspect among others. Nuclear energy was undoubtedly foreseen thousands of years ago. Chinese alchemists are said to have told their pupils that not even a fly on the wall should be allowed to witness an operation. But if it has taken Western technology so long to uncover a single aspect of the subject, how is it that Bronze Age Egypt and Pythagorean Greece reputedly knew the whole science? Here even the most guarded speculation must seem outrageous. Materialist science is content-or was until very recently-to suppose that life began as an accident and that once the accident happened, all subsequent steps in evolution would, or at any rate could, follow as the mechanical consequence of the factors initially and subsequently present. Perhaps the process was improbable but it was possible.

Recent consideration however, appears to show that by its intrinsic nature, chance expressly excludes such a possibility. For evolution to take place, there is required at every step a shift away from less-organization towards moreorganization. The mechanistic view asserts that this enhancement of organization, this negative entropy, could be progressively established from the mechanical consolidation of 'favourable' variations. Recent work in applying mathematical theory to biology suggests that there is a very big hole indeed in this particular bucket. Even if an increase in order arises fortuitously, this accidental shift must survive if it is to be built upon by the next similar accident. But its survival is by no means assured. Indeed it appears to be vulnerable to collapse in proportion to its achievement. Even in the case of primitive life forms and certainly in higher life forms, the number of possible combinations present at every stage is enormous-so enormous as to require that entropy must always increase at the expense of chance arisings in the contrary direction.

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As it demonstrably did happen, it must have done so not merely against probability but actually against the possibilities present in a closed system. The conclusion seems unavoidable: the evolutionary process was not a closed system. By extension, evolution and its present end-product, man, must have been contrived by forces outside the system the biosphere in which it occurred. Such an operation, involving the conscious manipulation of energy levels, may be taken as an operation in alchemy. Whether the 'artist' who accomplished this great work was a single Intelligence or a consortium of Intelligences seems immaterial: but the myths and classical traditions of demigods is in the highest degree suggestive. If it is an acceptable proposition that man was the result of a carefully contrived alchemical operation by Higher Powers is it not at least possible that he was given, in addition to consciousness, an insight into the transformation technique that produced him?

On 22 23 The difficulties inherent in any theory of 'fortuitous' evolution have been indicated by a number of distinguished specialists, among them Professor H. The mathematical and philosophical arguments against the arising of man by the accumulation of accidental increases in order-that is, by mechanical evolution-are developed with great power by J. Bennett in The Dramatic Universe London These arguments contribute to his unified theory in which man is seen as the work of high but limited Intelligences, 25 Introduction Introduction this assumption, modern man might have, in his own subconscious, fragmentary data which exceptional individuals could recover and assemble into a technology of alchemy. Inevitably such men would be aware of other men who had made the same immense leap and such groups would combine to create schools of alchemy. One of the most arcane of human traditions suggests that the humanity of our Adam was not the earth's first human race.

Some very advanced alchemists have hinted at a range of previous humanities in excess of thirty. If this is the true but wholly unsuspected history of our planet, much knowledge may have been selectively accumulated in a span of existence which imagination is inadequate even to visualize. At each successive apocalypse, an ark would go out, encapsuling not only the germ plasm necessary to found the next humanity but with it also, some vehicle, some psychological micro-dot, containing the totality of accumulated knowledge. On this assumption the technique of alchemy would have reached us as a transmission from ancestors whose existence we do not even suspect. A third possibility is that the Master Alchemists who made man in a solar laboratory have an interest in yet another transformation : the alchernization of man into planetary spirit. Their work may not yet be done. On this assumption, isolated scraps of suitable material would from time to time be selected for further processing in a solar alembic.

The base metal in this case would consist of exceptional human beings and since they would be at the level of incipient conscious energy, they would co-operate in their own transformation. Whether any, or a combination of all these possibilities is the explanation of the presence of alchemy throughout human history, it is clear that alchemy existed at the dawn of the human story we know. The material of the Egyptian Book of the Dead was said to be old already when it was assembled by Semti in the First Dynasty some five thousand years ago. Perhaps due to the second law of thermodynamics which may be as relevant in biology and psychology as it is in dynamics the evolutionary ferment of Egyptian alchemy began to involve. Maybe the mechanism of its degeneration was a shift in the level of will from which it proceeded. An evolutionary technique would thus become increasingly enlisted for involutionary ends. Alchemy, Godorientated, would become magic, self-dedicated.

Such would be the dying Egypt against which Moses inveighed. As always, however, knowledge of the technique was compressed; a torch was lit; an ark was launched. Before Egypt became totally submerged in idolatry the Great Secret was transmitted. The seeds of alchemy were scattered. Some fell on good ground and flourished; some fell on stony ground and died. Egypt seems to have sown chiefly in Greece and Israel, perhaps also in China. Strange as the idea may be, Greece appears to have made less of her chances than she might. Also, Greece stood to Rome as parent to offspring, and Rome proved to be a delinquent child and a degenerate adult in the community of human cultures. The plant of alchemy flowered only briefly in Greece and the seeds that blew to Rome never germinated at all. The transmission from Egypt to Israel was initially one of great promise but again the promise was not realized. Whether wilting of the plant in Israel was due to the Dispersion or whether the Dispersion was a consequence of the Jewish failure to manage their alchemical inheritance, is not known.

The Elders of Jewry at any rate were unable to find conditions within which their inheritance could be brought to its full actualization. To ensure its survival in some measure, they were obliged to compromise dangerously. They externalized some of it in the Zohar and maintained a small initiated inner circle. It may be that this circle, very greatly depleted, survived in Europe in isolated pockets like Cracow until the thirties of the present century. While Greece sowed abortively in Rome during her lifetime, she also sowed posthumously-and successfully in Arabia. Here the alchemical energy chanelled through the esoteric schools of Islam and through exceptional individuals like Jabir externalized in the 24 26 Introduction Introduction veritable explosion of Mohammedan art and science of the eighth to twelfth centuries. The wave of Islam's expansion reached Spain where two streams appear to have joined up. In Seville and Granada there were initiated Jews who carried the Egyptian transmission.

They met Arab initiates who carried the Greek transmission and the latter were perhaps reinforced from a permanent powerhouse from which all evolutionary operations are directed. If it is true that some 'beads of mercury' were reunited through Mohammed, two more were reunited in Spain. Out of this confluence grew a very large part of the whole of Western civilization which we have inherited and whose origin hardly one man in a million has ever suspected in seven centuries. The current which flowed from the beads of mercury which were reunited in Spain flowed into an immense invisible force field over Europe. The nature of this noumenal structure can never be glimpsed and its functions in a higher dimension cannot even be imagined. It externalized into the common life in a series of culture components which in aggregate constitute a large part of Western civilization. A selection of these factors at random would include the Christian pilgrimage based on the form established by the Cluniacs to St.

James of Compostella ; the Crusades; Heraldry; the orders of chivalry cheval-ry: from the horse as a glyph of the alchemical 'volatile'? Thomas Aquinas; the cosmology of Bacon; the devotional systems of St. Francis, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa; the Wandering Players, Jester, harlequinades and Mystery Plays; specialized dancing; falconry and certain ball games; Free masonry and Rosicrucianism; gardening the Spanish Gardens ; playing cards; the Language of the Birds concept; the Craft Guilds; archery; some medicine like immunology Paracelsus and homoeopathy; and cybernetics Raymond Lully. All the foregoing were the externalized forms of a major alchemical operation at an invisible level. Only one aspect however, that of chemical alchemy, used the terminology which has been subsequently identified with the word. For some hundreds of years alchemy existed in Europe as a real science of transformation at many levels. At one level it was conoerned with the ultimate transformation of human souls.

Precisely because orthodox religion was defective in the wisdom component, any modality which contained it was, ipso facto, heresy. The genuine Christian alchemist~stimated to number four thousand between and readopted a chemical code which had served in similar circumstances in the past. A certain principle of nature rendered in the codex attributed to Hermes, 'as above, so below' ensured that the alchemical process at its hidden level could be represented with full integrity by the terminology of a lower discipline. This lower discipline-metallic chemistry-was all that the common life of Europe ever understood by the word alchemy. Since Jung's work in alchemy began to infiltrate modern psychology, alchemy as a 'mental' or at any rate a non-physical process, has become a fashionable acceptance. Typical of the 'reductionist' attitudes of the twentieth century is the current belief that alchemy has now been explained. It is 'nothing but' an early and crude study of psychology and perhaps of ESP.

Dazzled by the success of science in providing a label for eve-ng, few have bothered to inquire whether the aphorism of Hermes 'as above, so below' might not require a process valid at mental level to be equally valid at physical level. A label has been affixed, and therefore the mystery is no more. No-one, it seems, notices any conflict between the Jungian 'psychological interpretation' and the documented historical record of men like Helvetius and the Cosmopolite Alexander Seton? Throughout the whole European record of Alchemy, its genuine practitioners appear to have been under certain obligations which may in fact apply to 'artists' in the Work of every age. It seems that they are required to leave behind them some thread which those who come after may use as a guide line across the web of Ariadne. The indications provided must be in code and the code must be self cancelling; that is, an inquirer who does not possess the first secret must be infallibly prevented from discovering the second.

Given that the inquirer knows the first secret, search and unceasing labour may wrest from the code, the next step following but the searcher will need to have made progress in his own personal practice before he is able to unravel a further step. Thus the secret protects itself. In the course of his work the alchemist may come to understand that certain familiar legends have a wholly new, practical and unsuspected meaning. He may suddenly discover what Abraham was required to sacrifice and why; what the star in the East really heralds; what the Cross may symbolize; and why the veil of the Temple was rent. The strictly alchemical aspect of The Great Work has been quiescent in Europe for about three centuries but rare and exceptional individuals still find their way through the maze-perhaps by making contact with a source outside Europe-and achieve one or other of the degrees of the Magnum Opus. Few such instances come to the knowledge of the outside world but one exception to the general rule is the case of the modem alchemist who has come to be known as Fulcanelli.

In the early 'twenties, a French student of alchemy, Eugene Canseliet was studying under the man now known as Fulcanelli. One day the latter charged Canseliet with the task of publishing a manuscript-and then disappeared. The manuscript was the now famous Myst2re des Cathddrales and its publication caused a sensation in esoteric circles in Europe. From internal evidence the author was a man who had either completed, or was on the brink of completing, the Magnum Opus. Interest in such an individual, among those who knew what was involved, was enormous. For nearly half a century, painstaking research has gone on in an effort to trace the vanished Master. Repeated attempts by private individuals to pick up the trail-and on at least one occasion by an international Intelligence agency-have all ended in a blank wall of silence. To most, the conclusion seemed inescapable: Fulcanelli, if he ever existed, must be dead. One man knew better-Fulcanelli's former pupil Canseliet.

After a lapse of many years, Canseliet received a message from the alchemist and met him at a pre-arranged rendezvous. The reunion was brief for Fulcanelli once again severed contact and once again disappeared without leaving a trace of his whereabouts. One circumstance of the reunion was very remarkable-and in an alchemical sense of the highest significance. Fulcanelli had grown younger. Canseliet has told the present writer: 'The Master' when Canseliet had worked with him 'was already a very old man but he carried his eighty years lightly. Thirty years later, I was to see him again, as I have mentioned, and he appeared to be a man of fifty. That is to say, he appeared to be no older than I was myself'. One other possible appearance of the mysterious master alchemist is reported by the French researcher Jacques Bergier. While working as assistant to Andrt5 Helbronner, the noted physicist who was later to be killed by the Nazis, Bergier was approached one day by an impressive individual who asked Bergier to pass on to Helbronner a strange-and highly knowledgeablewarning.

This was to the effect that orthodox science was on the brink of manipulating nuclear energy. The stranger said it was his duty to warn that this same abyss had been crossed by humanity in the past with disastrous consequences. Knowing human nature, he had no hope that such a warning would have any effect but it was his duty to give it. The mysterious stranger then left. Bergier is convinced to this day that he was in the presence of Fulcanelli. Not a few were driven to the conclusion that Fulcanelli was a myth and that no such person had ever existed. This theory is a little difficult to sustain in view of the existence of Myst2re des Cathbdrales. This work is authoritatively accepted as the work of a man who had gone far-very far-in the practice of alchemy. The myth theory is also untenable against the testimony of Canseliet. In September , in a laboratory at Sarcelles and in the presence of the painter Julien Champagne and the chemist Gaston Sauvage, Canseliet himself made an alchemical transmutation of gramrnes of gold using a minute quantity of the Powder of Projection given to him by his teacher.

Thus there is a European, alive at the present time, who personally testifies not only to the existence of Fulcanelli but to the veridical nature of an event which modern science regards as an absurd myth. Legend has it that this transmutation took place 'in a gasworks'. The account seems the plainest possible statement of a purely physical event. Alchemist however, warn repeatedly that when their descriptions seem plainest the camouflage factor is highest. The alerted reader will certainly consider here that a gasworks is a site where a volatile substance is produced from a heavy mineral and will recall that alchemy is a process of 'separating the fine from the gross'. In being allowed to perform an alchemical operation with energy lent him by another, Canseliet thus joins a remarkable band of privileged-and perhaps bewildered-people who through history have recorded the same experience. But for all practical purposes Fulcanelli has vanished as though he never existed.

Only his contributions to the literature of alchemy remains, Mystbre des Cathidrales. It has long been believed that the Gothic cathedrals were secret textbooks of some hidden knowledge; that behind the gargoyles 31 and the glyphs, the rose windows and the flying buttresses, a mighty secret lay, all but openly displayed. This is no longer a theory. Given that the reader of Mystbre des Cathidrules has even begun to suspect the first secret, Fulcanelli's legacy is at once seen as an exposition of an incredible fact: that, wholly unsuspected by the profane, the Gothic cathedrals have for seven hundred years offered European man a. About one thing it seems impossible to have any doubt. Fulcanelli speaks as one having authority. By pointing to a glyph in Notre Dame or a statue in Amiens and relating an unknown sculptor's work to some ancient or modem text, Fulcanelli is indicating the steps in a process he has himself been through.

Like all who truly KNEW, from Hermes through Geber and the Greek and Arab artists to Lully, Paracelsus and Flamel, Fulcanelli masks and reveals in equal measure and like all before him, he is wholly silent on the initial step of the practice. But in his method of repeatedly underlining certain words and perhaps in some curious sentences on the rose windows, he suggests, as explicitly as he dares, the mightiest secret that man may ever discover. I was immediately enraptured by it. I was in an ecstasy, struck with wonder, unable to tear myself away from the attraction of the marvellous, from the magic of such splendour, such immensity, such intoxication expressed by this more divine than human work. Since then, the vision has been transformed, but the original impression remains. In what language, by what means, could I express my adrniration? How could I show my gratitude to those silent masterpieces, those masters without words and without voice?

How could I show the thankfulness which fills my heart for everything they have taught me to appreciate, to recognize and to discover? Without words and without voice? What am I saying! If those stone books have their sculptured letters-their phrases in basrelief and their thoughts in pointed arches-nevertheless they speak also through the imperishable spirit which breathes from their pages. They are clearer than their younger brothers-the manuscripts and printed books.

Fulcanelli: Master Alchemist [PDF/TEXT]

They have the advantage over them in being translateable only in a single, absolute sense. It is simple in expression, nayve and picturesque in interpretation; a sense purged of subtleties, of allusions, of literary ambiguities. Colfsl says with much truth 'is at the same time clear and sublime, speaking alike to the humblest and to the most cultured heart. A language so moving, indeed, that the songs of Orlando, de Lassus or Palestrina, the organ music of Handel or Frescobaldi, the orchestral works of Beethoven or Cherubini, or, which is greater than all these, the simple and severe Gregorian chant, perhaps the only real chant there is, do nothing but add to the emotions, which the cathedral itself has already aroused. Woe to those who do not like gothic architecture, or at least let us pity them as those who are without heart. The gothic cathedral, that sanctuary of the Tradition, Science and Art, should not be regardkd as a work dedicated solely to the glory of Christianity, but rather as a vast concretion of ideas, of tendencies, of popular beliefs; a perfect whole, to which we can refer without fear, whenever we would penetrate the religious, secular, philosophic or social thoughts of our ancestors.

The bold vaulting, the nobility of form, the grandeur of the proportions and the beauty of the execution combine to make a cathedral an original work of incomparable harmony; but not one, it seems, concerned entirely with religious observance. If the tranquility in the ghostly, multi-coloured light from the tall stained-glass windows and the silence combine as an invitation to prayer, predisposing us to meditation; the trappings, on the other hand, the structure and the ornamentation, in their extraordinary power, release and reflect less edifying sensations, a more secular and, quite bluntly, an almost pagan spirit. Beside the fervent inspiration, born of a strong faith, the thousand and one preoccupations of the great heart of the people can be discerned there, the declaration of its conscience, of its will, the reflection of its thought at its most complex, abstract, essential and autocratic. If people go to the building to take part in religious services, if they enter it following a funeral corthge or the joyful procession of a high festival, they also throng there in many other circumstances.

Political meetings are held there under the aegis of the bishop; the price of grain and livestock is discussed there; the drapers fix the price of their cloth there; people hurry there to seek comfort, to ask for advice, to beg for pardon. There is scarcely a guild which does not use the cathedral for the passing-out ceremony of its new journeyman, scarcely a guild which does not meet there once a year under the protection of its patron saint. During the great medieval period it was the scene of other ceremonies, very popular with the masses. What a comedy it all was, with an ignorant clergy thus subjected to the authority of the disguised Science and crushed under the weight of undeniable superiority. Colfs, La Filiation gknkalogique de toutes les Ecoles gothiques. Paris, Baudry, And what a Mass! It was composed by the initiate Pierre de Corbeil, Archbishop of Sens, and modelled on a pagan rite. Here a congregation of the year uttered the bacchanal cry of joy: Evoe!

Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum! The latter was the last echo of the Feast of Fools, with its Mad Mother, its bawdy diplomas, its banner on which two brothers, head to foot, delighted in uncovering their buttocks. Until , when the custom died out, a strange Ball Game was played inside Saint-Etienne, the cathedral of Auxerre. There was also the Feast of the Donkey, almost as gaudy as the one just mentioned, with the triumphal entry under the sacred archway of Master Aliboron, whose hoof sabot once trod the streets of Jerusalem. Thus our glorious Christ-bearer was celebrated in a special service, which praised him, in words recalling the epistle, as this asinine power, which was worth to the Church the gold of Arabia, the incense and the myrrh of the land of Saba. The priest, being unable to understand this grotesque parody, had to accept it in silence, his head bent under the ridicule poured out by these mystifiers of the land of Saba or Cuba, that is the cabalists themselves.

Confirmation of these curious celebrations is to be found graven by the chisels of the master image-makers of the time. Indeed Witkowskia writes that in the nave of NotreDame of Strasbourg 'the bas-relief on one of the capitals of the great pillars represents a satirical procession, in which a pig may be seen carrying a holy stoup, followed by donkeys dressed in priestly clothes and monkeys bearing various religious attributes, together with a fox enclosed in a shrine. It is the Procession of the Fox or the Feast of the Donkey. We may add that an identical scene is illuminated in folio 40 of manuscript no. Finally there were some bizarre events in which a hermetic meaning, often a very precise one, was discernible. These were held every year, with the Gothic church as their theatre. Examples The cathedral was the hospitable refuge of all unfortunates. The sick, who came to Notre-Dame in Paris to pray to God for relief from their sufferings, used to stay on till they were cured.

They were allotted a chapel lit by six lamps near the second door and there they spent the night. There the doctors would give their consultations round the holy-water stoup at the very entrance to the basilica. It was there too that the Faculty of Medicine, which left the University in the thirteenth century to continue independently, gave lectures. This continued to be the custom until , when its last meeting took place, presided over by Jacques Desparts. The cathedral is the inviolable sanctuary of the hunted and the burial place of the illustrious dead. It is the city within a city, the intellectual and moral centre, the heart of public activity, the apotheosis of thought, knowledge and art. This host of bristling monsters, of grotesques and comic figures, of masks, of menacing gargoyles, dragons, vampires and tarasques, all these were the secular guardians of an ancestral patrimony. Here This day is the celebrated day of celebrated days!

This day is the feast day of feast days! Witkowski, L'Art profane h I'Eglise. Paris, Schemit. Top with the outline of a Tau or Cross. In cabalistic language, sabot is the equivalent of cabot or chabot, the chat bottk Puss-in-Boots of the Tales of Mother Goose. The Epiphany cake sometimes contains a sabot instead of a bean. They cling to the steeples, to the pinnacles, to the flying buttresses. They hang from the coving, fill the niches. They transform the windows into precious stones and endow the bells with sonorous vibrations. They expand on the church front into a glorious explosion of liberty and expression. Nothing could be more secular than the exotericism of this teaching; nothing more human than this profusion of quaint images, alive, free, animated and picturesque, sometimes in disorder but always vivid with interest. There is nothing more moving than these multiple witnesses to the daily life, the taste, the ideals, the instincts of our fathers.

Above all there is nothing more captivating than the sybolism of the ancient alchemists, so ably translated by these modest medieval statues. In this connection Notre Dame of Paris, the Philosophers' church, is indisputably one of the most perfect specimens and, as Victor Hugo said, 'the most satisfying summary of the hermetic science, of which the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucheriewas such a complete hieroglyph. Marcel or else at the little PorteRouge, all decorated with salamanders. Denys Zachaire tells us that this custom was followed until the year 'on sundays and feast days'. Noel du Fail says that 'the great place for those academy meetings was Notre-Dame of P a r i ~. It was there that they assessed probabilities and discussed possibilities and studied on the spot the allegory of the Great Book. Not the least animated part of these gatherings was the abstruse explanation of the mysterious symbols all around them. In the steps of Gobineau de Montluisant, Cambriel and all the rest, we shall undertake the pious pilgrimage, speak to the stones and question them.

It is almost too late. The vandalism of Soufflot has to a large extent destroyed what the SoufFleurs7 could admire in the sixteenth century. And if art owes some gratitude to those eminent architects Toussaint, Geffroy Dechaume, Boeswillwald, Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus, who restored the basilica so odiously profaned, Science will never again find what it has lost. However that may be, and in spite of these regrettable mutilations, the motifs still extant are sufficiently numerous to repay the time and trouble of a visit. Indeed I shall consider myself satisfied and amply rewarded if I have been able to awaken the curiosity of the reader, to hold the attention of the shrewd observer and to show to lovers of the occult that it is not impossible even now to rediscover the meaning of the secrets hidden under the petrified exterior of this wondrous book of magic. Paris, Gosselin, As proof of this we have the words of Martyrius, the fifteenth century Armenian bishop and traveller.

This author says that the porch of Notre-Dame of Paris was as resplendent as the gates of Paradise. Purple, rose, azure, silver and gold were to be seen there. Traces of gilding may still be seen at the top of the tympanum of the great portal. The one at the church of Saint-Germain-I'Auxerrois has preserved its painting and its blue vault, starred with gold. Some have claimed-wrongly-that it came from the Goths, the ancient Germanic people. Le Myst2re des Cathkdrales Le Mysi2re des Cathkdrales whose originality and extreme peculiarity were shocking to the despised, the rebels, calling for liberty and independence, the outlaws, the tramps and the wanderers. Cant is the cursed dialect, banned by high society, by the nobility who are really so little noble , the well-fed and self-satisfied middle class, luxuriating in the ermine of their ignorance and fatuity. It remains the language of a minority of individuals living outside accepted laws, conventions, customs and etiquette.

The term voyous street-arabs that is to say voyants seers is applied to them and the even more expressive term sons or children of the sun. Gothic art is in fact the art got or cot ~0 -the art of light or of the spirit. People think that such things are merely a play on words. I agree. The important thing is that such word-play should guide our faith towards certainty, towards positive and scientific truth, which is the key to the religious mystery, and should not leave us wandering in the capricious maze of our imagination. The fact is that there is neither chance nor coincidence nor accidental correspondence here below. All is foreseen, preordained, regulated; and it is not for us to bend to our pleasure the inscrutable will of Destiny.

Fulcanelli - Master Alchemist - The Mystery Of The Cathedrals.pdf

If the usual sense of words does not allow us any discovery capable of elevating and instructing us, of bringing us nearer to our Creator, then words become useless. The spoken word, which gives man his indisputable superiority, his dominion over every living thing, loses its nobility, its greatness, its beauty. It becomes no more than a distressing vanity. Besides, language, the instrument of the spirit, has a life of its owneven though it is only a reflection of the universal Idea. We do not invent anything, we do not create anything. All is in everything. Our microcosm is only an infinitesimal, animated, thinking and more or less imperfect particle of the macrocosm. What we believe we have ourselves discovered by an effort of our intelligence, exists already elsewhere. Faith gives us a presentiment of what this is. Revelation gives us absolute proof. Often we pass by a phenomenon-or a miracle even-without noticing it, like men blind and deaf.

What unsuspected marvels we should find, if we knew how to dissect words, to strip them of their bark and liberate the spirit, the divine light which is within! Jesus expressed himself only in parables; can we deny the truth which the parables teach? In present-day conconversation is it not the ambiguities, the approximations, the puns 42 people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such is the opinion of the classical school, imbued with the decadent principles of the Renaissance. But truth, preserved in the speech of the common people, has ensured the continued use of the expression gothic art, in spite of the efforts of the Academy to substitute the term ogival art. There was an obscure reason for this, which should have made our linguists ponder, since they are always on the look-out for the derivation of words. How does it come about that so few compilers of dictionaries have lighted upon the right one? The simple fact is that the explanation must be sought in the cabalistic origin of the word and not in its literal root.

Some discerning and less superficial authors, struck by the similarity between gothic gothique and goetic goetique have thought that there must be a close connection between gothic art and goetic art, i. For me, gothic art art gothique is simply a corruption of the word argotique cant , which sounds exactly the same. This is in conformity with the phonetic law, which governs the traditional cabala in every language and does not pay any attention to spelling. The cathedral is a work of art goth gothic art or of argot, i. Moreover, dictionaries define argot as 'a language peculiar to all individuals who wish to communicate their thoughts without being understood by outsiders'. Thus it certainly is a spoken cabala. The argotiers, those who use this language, are the hermetic descendants of the argonauts, who manned the ship Argo. They spoke the langue argotique-our langue verte 'green language' or slang while they were sailing towards the felicitious shores of Colchos to win the famous Golden Fleece.

People still say about a very intelligent, but rather sly, man: 'he knows everything, he understands cant. Those constructional sailors nautes also knew the route to the Garden of the Hesperides. In our day, cant is spoken by the humble people, the poor, the 43 44 Le Myst2re des Cathe? Finally I would add that argot cant is one of the forms derived from the Language of the Birds, parent and doyen of all other languages-the one spoken by philosophers and diplomats. It was knowledge of this language which Jesus revealed to his Apostles, by sending them his spirit, the Holy Ghost. This is the language which teaches the mystery of things and unveils the most hidden truths. The ancient Incas called it the Court Language, because it was used by diplomats. To them it was the key to the double science, sacred and profane. Today, apart from cant, we find its character in a few local dialects, such as Picard, Provenpl, etc. Mythology would have it that the famous soothsayer, Tiresiasg had perfect knowledge of the Language of the Birds, which Minerva, goddess of Wisdom, revealed to him.

He shared it, they say, with Thales of Miletus, Melampus and Appolonius of Tyana,'O legendary personages, whose names, in the science we are considering, ring eloquently enough to require no analysis from me. The good cur6 of Meudon reveals himself in it as a great initiate, as well as a first-classcabalist. It is said that Tiresias was deprived of his sight for revealing to mortals the secrets of Olympus. However he lived 'for seven, eight or nine ages of man' and is supposed to have been successively man and woman. Philosopher, whose life, crammed full of legends, miracles and prodigious deeds, seems to be extremely hypothetical. The name of this semi-fabulouspersonage seems to me to be just a mytho-hermetic image of the compost or philosophic rebis, realized by the union of brother and sister, of Gabritius and Beya, of Apollo and Diana. In that case the marvels recounted by Philostratus, being chemical in character, should not surprise us.

Le Myst2re des CathMrales With rare exceptions, the ground plan of the gothic churchescathedrals, abbey and collegiate churches-takes the form of a Latin cross laid on the ground. Now, the cross is the alchemical hieroglyph o f the crucible, which used to be called in French cruzol, crucible and croiset according to Ducange, the vulgar Latin crucibulum, crucible, has as its root crux, crucis, a cross. It is indeed in the crucible that the first matter suffers the Passion, like Christ himself. It is in the crucible that it dies to be revived, purified, spiritualized and transformed. Further, do not the common people, those faithful guardians of the oral tradition, express the human ordeal on earth by religious parables and hermetic similes? Let us not forget that around the luminous cross, seen in a vision by Constantine, appeared those prophetic words, which he adopted on his standard: In this sign thou shalt conquer. Remember too, my brother alchemists, that the cross bears the imprint of three nails used to sacrifice the Christ-body: an image of the three purifcations by sword and fire.

Meditate similarly on that clear passage of St. Augustine in his Dispute with Tryphon Dialogus cum Tryphone 40 : 'The mystery of the Lamb which God had ordered to be sacrificed at Easter,' he says, 'was the figure of Christ, with which those who believe stain their abodes, that is to say themselves, by the faith which they have in him. Further, this lamb, which the Law prescribed to have roasted whole, was the symbol of the cross which Christ had to endure, since the lamb to be roasted is disposed in such a way as to represent a cross. One of the arms of the cross pierces it through and through, from the hind quarters to the head. The other pierces its shoulders and the forefeet the Greek says: the hands, X~~C,Pi of the lamb are tied to it. We say further that the ground plan of the great religious buildings of the Middle Ages, by the addition of a semi-circular or elliptical apse joined to the choir, assumes the shape of the Egyptian hieratic sign of the crux ansata, the ankh, which signifies universal life hidden in matter.

An example of this may be seen at the museum of St. Germainen-Laye, on a Christian sarcophagus from the crypts of St. Honor6 at Arles. On the other hand, the hermetic equivalent of the ankh symbol is the emblem of Venus or Cypris in Greek KuxplS,the impure i. It is on this stone that Jesus built his Church; and the medieval freemasons have symbolically followed the divine example. But before being dressed to serve as a base for the work of gothic art, as well as for the philosophical work of art, the rough, impure, gross and unpolished stone was often given the image of the devil. Notre Dame of Paris possessed a similar hieroglyph, situated under the rood-screen, at the corner of the choir rail. It was a figure of the devil, opening an enormous mouth in which the faithful extinguished their candles. Thus the sculptured block of stone was marked with streaks of candle-grease and blackened with smoke. The common people called this image Maistre Pierre du Coignet Master Peter stone of the Corner , which was a continual embarrasment to the archaeologists.

RCtaux, Le Myst2re des Cathkdrales 47 of Lucifer {the morning star , was the symbol of our corner stone, the headstone of the corner. The stone which the builders rejected,' writes Amyraut,12 'has been made the headstone of the corner, on which rests the whole structure of the building; but which is a stumbling-block and stone of shame, against which they dash themselves to their ruin. Whilst the decoration of the salient parts was reserved for the tailleur d'imaiges sculptor , the ornamentation of the floor of the cathedrals was assigned to the worker in ceramics. The floor was normally flagged or tiled with baked clay tiles, painted and covered with a lead glaze. In the Middle Ages this art had reached such perfection that historical subjects could be assured of a sufficient variety of design and colour. Use was also made of little cubes of multi-coloured marble, in the manner of the Byzantine mosaics. Among the motifs most frequently employed, one should note the labyrinths, which were traced on the ground at the point of intersection of the nave and the transepts.

The churches of Sens, Rheims, Auxerre, St. Quentin, Poitiers and Bayeux have preserved their labyrinths. We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Search the history of over billion web pages on the Internet. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Uploaded by TheFashyBookworm on June 29, Internet Archive logo A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs.