THE MYSTERY OF CATHEDRALS

BY

FULCANELLI

AND ESOTERIC INTERPRETATION
HERMETIC SYMBOLS
OF THE GREAT WORK

Original plates by Julien Champagne

1926


CONTENTS


1. THE MYSTERY OF THE CATHEDRALS (I - II - III -IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX)

2. PARIS (I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII)

3. AMIENS

4. BOURGES (I - II)

5. THE CYCLIC CROSS OF HENDAYE

6. CONCLUSION

THE MYSTERY OF CATHEDRALS

I

The strongest impression of our early youth – we were seven years old – of which we still remember vividly, was the emotion aroused in our child's soul by the sight of a Gothic cathedral. We were immediately transported, ecstatic, struck with admiration, unable to tear ourselves away from the attraction of the marvellous, the magic of the splendid, the immense, the dizzying that this work more divine than human emanated.

Since then, the vision has changed, but the impression remains. And if habituation has modified the impulsive and pathetic character of the first contact, we have never been able to resist a kind of delight in front of these beautiful picture books erected on our squares, and which develop their carved stone sheets up to the sky.

In what language, by what means could we express our admiration to them, show them our gratitude, all the feelings of gratitude with which our hearts are full, for all that they have taught us to taste, to recognize, even to discover, these silent masterpieces, these masters without words and voiceless?

Without words and without voice? – What are we saying! If these lapidary books have their letters sculpted – phrases in bas-reliefs and thoughts in warheads – they nevertheless speak of them through the imperishable spirit which exhales from their pages. Clearer than their younger brothers – manuscripts and printed matter – they have the advantage over them of only translating a single, absolute meaning, of simple expression, of naive and picturesque interpretation, a meaning purged of subtleties, allusions, literary ambiguities.

“The language of stones that this new art speaks, says JF Golfs very truthfully, is both clear and sublime. Also, it speaks to the soul of the humblest as well as to that of the most cultured. What a pathetic language is Stone Gothic! A language so pathetic, indeed, that the chants of an Orlande de Lassus or a Palestrina, the organ works of a Handel or a Frescobaldi, the orchestration of a Beethoven or a Cherubini, and, what is greater than all that, the simple and severe Gregorian chant, the only real chant perhaps, only add more to the emotions that the cathedral itself causes. Woe to those who dislike Gothic architecture, or at least pity them as the heartbroken. » [JF Golfs, The Genealogical Filiation of all the Gothic Schools. Paris, Baudry, 1884.]

Sanctuary of Tradition, Science and Art, the Gothic cathedral should not be seen as a work solely dedicated to the glory of Christianity, but rather as a vast concretion of ideas, tendencies, popular faith, a perfect whole to which one can refer without fear as soon as it is a question of penetrating the thought of the ancestors, in any field whatsoever: religious, secular, philosophical or social.

The bold vaults, the nobility of the vessels, the scale of the proportions and the beauty of the execution make the cathedral an original work, of incomparable harmony, but which the exercise of worship does not seem to have to occupy entirely.

If contemplation, under the spectral and polychrome light of the high windows, if the silence invite to prayer, predispose to meditation, on the other hand the apparatus, the structure, the ornamentation release and reflect, in their extraordinary power, feelings less edifying, a more secular spirit and, let us say the word, almost pagan. One can discern there, in addition to the ardent inspiration born of a robust faith, the thousand preoccupations of the great popular soul, the affirmation of its conscience, of its own will, the image of its thought in all that is complex, abstract, essential, sovereign.

If one comes to the building to attend the divine offices, if one enters it following the funeral processions or among the joyful procession of the chimed feasts, one also rushes there in many other circumstances. Political assemblies are held there under the presidency of the bishop; the price of grain and cattle is discussed there; the drapers set the course of the fabrics there; people run there to seek comfort, seek advice, implore forgiveness. And there are hardly any corporations that do not have the masterpiece of the new companion blessed there and do not meet there, once a year, under the protection of their patron saint.

Other ceremonies, very attractive to the crowd, continued there during the beautiful medieval period. It was the Feast of the Fools, – or of the Sages, – hermetic processional fair, which left the church with its pope, its dignitaries, its devotees, its people, – the people of the Middle Ages, noisy, mischievous, facetious, overflowing with vitality, enthusiasm and ardour, – and spread through the city… Hilarious satire of an ignorant clergy, subject to the authority of disguised Science, crushed under the weight of indisputable superiority. Ah! the Feast of Fools, with its chariot of the Triumph of Bacchus, drawn by a centaur and a centauress, naked like the god himself, accompanied by the great Pan; obscene carnival taking possession of the ogival naves! Nymphs and naiads emerging from the bath; deities of Olympus, without clouds and without a tutu: Juno, Diana, Venus, Latona meet at the cathedral to hear mass! And what a mass! Composed by the initiate Pierre de Corbeil, Archbishop of Sens, according to a pagan ritual, and where the flock of the year 1220 uttered the cry of joy of the bacchanalia: Évohé! Évohé! – And the delirious schoolboys answer:

Haec is clara dies clararum clara dierum!
Haec is festa dies festarum festa dierum!

[ This day is famous among famous days!
This day is a feast day among feast days! ]

It was again the Feast of the Donkey, almost as sumptuous as the preceding one, with the triumphal entry, under the sacred arches, of Master Aliboron, whose hoof formerly trod the Jewish pavement of Jerusalem. Our glorious Christophorus was celebrated there in a special office where, after the Epistle, they exalted that donkey power which has won the Church gold from Arabia, frankincense and myrrh from the land of Sheba. A grotesque parody which the priest, unable to understand, accepted in silence, his brow bent under ridicule, poured out in full brim, by these mystifiers of the country of Sheba, or Caba, the cabalists in person! And it is the very chisel of the master image-makers of the time that confirms these curious festivities for us. Indeed, in the nave of Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, writes Witkowski, "The bas-relief of one of the capitals of the large pillars reproduces a satirical procession in which we can see a pig, carrying a holy water font, followed by donkeys dressed in priestly clothes and monkeys with various religious attributes, as well as a fox locked in a shrine. It is the Procession of the Fox or the Festival of the Donkey”. [GJ Witkowski, The Art of the Layman in the Church . Foreign. Paris, Schemit, 1908, p. 35.] Let us add that an identical scene, illuminated, appears on folio 40 of manuscript no. 5055 of the National Library.

There were, finally, those bizarre customs in which an often very pure hermetic sense shines through, which were renewed each year and had the Gothic church as their theatre, like the Flagellation of the Alleluia, in which the choirboys chased away their clogs with great blows of the whip [Toupie au profil de Tau or Croix. In cabal, sabot is equivalent to cabot or chabot, the puss in boots of the Tales of my mother the Goose. The Epiphany cake sometimes contains a sabot instead of a bean.] Rumbling out of the naves of Langres Cathedral; the Carême-Prenant Convoy; the Diablerie de Chaumont; the processions and banquets of the Dijon infantry, the latest echo of the Fête des Foulle, with its Mad Mother, its Rabelaisian diplomas, its handlebars where two brothers, head to toe, take pleasure in baring their buttocks; the unique Game of Pelota, who disputed in the ship of Saint-Étienne, cathedral of Auxerre, and disappeared around 1538; etc


II (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

The cathedral is the hospitable refuge of all misfortunes. The sick who came to Notre-Dame de Paris to implore God for the relief of their sufferings remained there until their complete recovery. A chapel was assigned to them, situated towards the second door, and which was lighted by six lamps. They spent the nights there. The doctors gave their consultations there, at the very entrance of the basilica, around the stoup. It is still there that the Faculty of Medicine, leaving the University in the 13th century to live independently, came to establish its foundations there and remained there until 1454, the time of its last meeting, provoked by Jacques Desparts.

It is the inviolable asylum of the persecuted and the sepulcher of the illustrious deceased. It is the city within the city, the intellectual and moral core of the agglomeration, the heart of public activity, the apotheosis of thought, knowledge and art.

By the abundant flowering of its ornamentation, by the variety of subjects and scenes adorning it, the cathedral appears as a very complete and varied encyclopedia, sometimes naive, sometimes noble, still alive, of all medieval knowledge. These stone sphinxes are thus educators, initiators in the first place.

This people of bristling chimeras, grotesques, marmosets, masks, threatening gargoyles – dragons, stryges and Tarasques – are the age-old guardians of the ancestral heritage. Art and science, formerly concentrated in the great monasteries, escape from the pharmacy, rush to the building, cling to the steeples, pinnacles, flying buttresses, hang from the arches, populate the niches, transform the windows into precious gems, the brass into sound vibrations and flourish on the portals in a joyful flight of freedom and expression. Nothing is more secular than the exotericism of this teaching; nothing more human than this profusion of original images, alive, free, animated, picturesque, sometimes disordered, always interesting; nothing is more moving than these multiple testimonies of the daily existence, of the taste, of the ideal, of the instincts of our fathers; nothing more captivating, above all, than the symbolism of the old alchemists, skilfully translated by the modest medieval statuary. In this respect, Notre-Dame de Paris, Philosopher's Church, is unquestionably one of the most perfect specimens, and, as Victor Hugo said, "the most satisfactory epitome of hermetic science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie was such a complete hieroglyph".

The alchemists of the 14th century met there, weekly, on the day of Saturn, either at the large porch, or at the Saint-Marcel portal, or even at the small Red Door, all decorated with salamanders. Denys Zachaire tells us that the custom was still maintained there in the year 1539, "on Sundays and holidays", and Noël du Fail says that "the great meeting place of such academics was at Nostre-Dame de Paris". [Noël du Fail, Rustic talk, nonsense, tales and speeches by Eutrapel (ch. X). Paris, Gosselin, 1842.]

There, in the dazzle of the painted and gilded warheads (*), the cords of arches, the eardrums with multicolored figures, everyone exhibited the results of their work, developed the order of their research. Probabilities were given there; the possibilities were discussed there; the allegory of the beautiful book was studied on the spot, and it was not the least animated part of these meetings that the abstruse exegesis of the mysterious symbols.

* [In the cathedrals, everything was gilded and painted in bright colors. We have the text of Martyrius, Armenian bishop and traveler of the 15th century, which proves it. This author says that the porch of Notre-Dame de Paris shone like the entrance to paradise. You could see purple, pink, azure, silver and gold. You can still see traces of gilding at the top of the tympanum of the main portal. That of the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois has preserved its paintings, its azure vault studded with gold.]

After Gobineau de Montluisant, Cambriel and tutti quanti, we will undertake the pious pilgrimage, talk to the stones and question them. Alas! it is very late. Soufflot's vandalism largely destroyed what in the 16th century the blower could admire. And, if art owes some recognition to the eminent architects Toussaint, Geffroy Dechaume, Boeswillwald, Viollet-le-Duc and de Lassus who restored the basilica, odiously profaned by the School, Science will never find what it lost.

Be that as it may, and despite these regrettable mutilations, the reasons that still remain are numerous enough to not have to regret the time and trouble of a visit. We will therefore consider ourselves satisfied and largely paid for our effort, if we have been able to arouse the curiosity of the reader, hold the attention of the sagacious observer and show to lovers of the occult that it is not impossible to find the meaning of the arcane hidden under the petrified bark of the prodigious grimoire.


III (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

Beforehand, we must say a word about the term gothic, applied to French art which imposed its directives on all the productions of the Middle Ages, and whose influence extended from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.

Some have claimed, wrongly, that it came from the Goths, an ancient people of Germany; others have believed that this form of art, whose originality and extreme singularity caused a scandal in the 17th and 18th centuries, was called this, out of derision, by imposing on it the meaning of barbarian: such is the opinion of the classical school, imbued with the decadent principles of the Renaissance.

The truth, which comes from the mouths of the people, has nevertheless maintained and preserved the expression of Gothic art, in spite of the efforts of the Academy to substitute for it that of ogival art. There is an obscure reason there which should have brought our linguistics to reflection, always on the lookout for etymologies. How does it come about that so few lexicologists have found the right answer? – From this very simple fact that the explanation must be sought in the cabalistic origin of the word rather than in its literal root.

Some perceptive and less superficial authors, struck by the similarity which exists between Gothic and Gothic, have thought that there must be a close relationship between Gothic Art and Gothic or magical Art.

For us, Gothic art is only a spelling deformation of the slang word, whose assonance is perfect, in accordance with the phonetic law which governs, in all languages ​​and regardless of spelling, the traditional Kabbalah. The cathedral is a work of goth or slang art. However, dictionaries define slang as being “a language specific to all individuals who have an interest in communicating their thoughts to each other without being understood by those around them”. It is therefore indeed a spoken cabala. The argotiers, those who use this language, are hermetic descendants of the argo-nauts, who rode the ship Argo, spoke the slang language – our green language – while sailing towards the fortunate shores of Colchos to conquer the famous Golden Fleece. It is still said today of a very intelligent man, but also very cunning: he knows everything, he understands slang. All the Initiates expressed themselves in slang, both the crooks of the Court of Miracles – the poet Villon at their head – and the Frimasons, or Freemasons of the Middle Ages, “lodgers of the good Lord”, who built the slang masterpieces that we admire today. Themselves, these nautical builders, knew the route to the Garden of the Hesperides...

Even today, the humble, the wretched, the despised, the rebellious, eager for freedom and independence, the outlaws, the wanderers and the nomads speak slang, this cursed dialect, banished from high society, from the nobles who are so few, from the well-fed and well-meaning bourgeois, wallowing in the ermine of their ignorance and their fatuity. Slang remains the language of a minority of individuals living outside accepted laws, conventions, customs, protocol, to whom we apply the epithet of hoodlums, that is to say of seers, and that, even more expressive, of Sons or Children of the Sun. Gothic art is, in fact, got or cot (Χο) art, the art of Light or of the Spirit.

These are, you will think, mere puns. We readily agree. The main thing is that they guide our faith towards certainty, towards positive and scientific truth, the key to religious mystery, and not keep it wandering in the capricious maze of the imagination. There is, here below, neither chance, nor coincidence, nor fortuitous relationship; everything is planned, ordered, regulated, and it is not up to us to modify as we please the imperscrutable will of Destiny. If the usual meaning of the words does not allow us any discovery capable of elevating us, of instructing us, of bringing us closer to the Creator, the vocabulary becomes useless. The word, which assures man of the indisputable superiority, the sovereignty he possesses over all that lives, loses its nobility, its grandeur, its beauty and is nothing more than a distressing vanity. However, the language instrument of the spirit, lives by itself, although it is only the reflection of the universal Idea. We don't invent anything, we don't create anything. Everything is in everything. Our microcosm is only a tiny, animated, thinking, more or less imperfect particle of the macrocosm. What we think we can find by the sole effort of our intelligence already exists somewhere. It is faith that makes us sense what is; it is revelation that gives us the absolute proof. We often rub shoulders with the phenomenon, even the miracle, without noticing it, blind and deaf. What marvels, what unsuspected things would we not discover if we knew how to dissect words, break their bark and liberate the spirit, divine light they contain! Jesus spoke only in parables; can we deny the truth they teach? And,

Finally, let us add that slang is one of the forms derived from the Language of the Birds, mother and oldest of all the others, the language of philosophers and diplomats. It is she whose knowledge Jesus reveals to his apostles, by sending them his spirit, the Holy Spirit. It is she who teaches the mystery of things and reveals the most hidden truths. The ancient Incas called it Court language, because it was familiar to diplomats, to whom it gave the key to a double science: sacred science and profane science. In the Middle Ages, it was called Gay Science or Gay Knowledge, Language of the Gods, Dive-Bouteille. [ The Lives of Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, is an esoteric work, a slang novel. The good priest of Meudon reveals himself there as a great initiate coupled with a cabalist of the first order.] Tradition assures us that men spoke it before the construction of the Tower of Babel [The turn, the turn b used for bel.], cause of its perversion and, for the greatest number, of the total forgetfulness of this sacred idiom. Today, apart from slang, we find its character in a few local languages ​​such as Picard, Provençal, etc., and in the dialect of the gypsies.

Mythology has it that the famous seer Tiresias had a perfect knowledge of the Language of the Birds, taught to him by Minerva, goddess of Wisdom. [Tiresias was said to have lost his sight for revealing to mortals the secrets of Olympus. He nevertheless lived "seven, eight or nine ages of man" and would have been successively man and woman!] He shared it, it is said, with Thales of Miletus, Melampus and Apollonios of Tyana (*), fictitious characters whose names speak eloquently, in the science which concerns us, and clearly enough for us to need to analyze them in these pages.

* [Philosopher whose life, stuffed with legends, miracles, prodigious facts, seems very hypothetical. The name of this quasi-fabulous character seems to us to be only a mytho-hermetic image of the compost, or philosophical rebis, produced by the union of brother and sister, of Gabritius and Beya, of Apollo and Diana. Therefore, the marvels told by Philostratus, being of a chemical order, cannot surprise us.]


IV (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

With rare exceptions, the plan of Gothic churches – cathedrals, abbeys or collegiates – takes the form of a Latin cross extended on the ground. However, the cross is the alchemical hieroglyph of the crucible, which was formerly called cruzol, crucible and croiset (in low Latinity, crucibulum, crucible, has for root crux, crucis, cross, after Ducange).

It is indeed in the crucible that the first matter, like Christ himself, suffers the Passion; it is in the crucible that it dies in order to resuscitate afterwards, purified, spiritualized, already transformed. Besides, do not the people, faithful guardian of oral traditions, express the earthly human trial by religious parables and hermetic similarities? – Carrying one's cross, climbing one's ordeal, passing through the crucible of existence are all common expressions where we find the same meaning under the same symbolism.

Let us not forget that around the luminous cross seen in a dream by Constantine appeared these prophetic words which he had painted on his labarum: In hoc signo vinces : you will conquer by this sign. Remember also, alchemists my brothers, that the cross bears the imprint of the three nails which were used to immolate the Christ-matter, image of the three purifications by iron and by fire. Meditate likewise on this clear passage of Saint Augustine, in his Disputation with Trypho (Dialogus cum Tryphone, 40): “The mystery of the lamb which God had commanded to be immolated at Passover, he says, was the figure of Christ, with whom those who believe tint their dwellings, that is to say themselves, by the faith they have in him. Now, this lamb, which the law prescribed to roast whole, was the symbol of the cross that Christ had to endure. For the lamb, to be roasted, is arranged in such a way as to represent a cross: one of the branches crosses it right through, from the lower extremity to the head; the other crosses his shoulders, and the front feet of the lamb are attached to it (the Greek is: the hands, Χειρες). »

The cross is a very ancient symbol, used at all times, in all religions, among all peoples, and it would be wrong to consider it as an emblem specific to Christianity, as Abbé Ansault [M. Father Ansault, The Cross before Jesus Christ. Paris, V. Rétaux, 1894.]. We would even say that the plan of the great religious buildings of the Middle Ages, by adding a semi-circular or elliptical apse welded to the choir, follows the shape of the Egyptian hieratic sign of the ansated cross, which is read ank, and designates the universal Life hidden in things. An example can be seen in the museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on a Christian sarcophagus from the Arles crypts of Saint-Honorat. On the other hand, the Hermetic equivalent of the sign ank is the emblem of Venus or Cypris (in Greek Κύπρος, the impure), the vulgar copper that some, to further veil the meaning, have translated as bronze and brass. "Whiten the brass and burn your books", all the good authors tell us. Κύπρος is the same word as Σουϕρος, sulphur, which has the meaning of manure, dung, manure, filth. “The wise will find our stone even in the manure, writes the Cosmopolite, while the ignorant will not be able to believe that it is in gold. »

And it is thus that the plan of the Christian building reveals to us the qualities of the raw material, and its preparation, by the sign of the Cross; which results, for the alchemists, in obtaining the First Stone, the cornerstone of the great philosophical work. It is on this rock that Jesus built his Church; and the medieval Freemasons symbolically followed the divine example. But before being carved to serve as a base for the Gothic work of art as well as for the philosophical work of art, the rough, impure, material and coarse stone was often given the image of the devil.

Notre-Dame de Paris had a similar hieroglyph, which was under the rood screen, at the corner of the enclosure of the choir. It was a figure of a devil, opening an enormous mouth, and in which the faithful came to extinguish their candles; so that the carved block appeared stained with smudges of wax and lampblack. The people called this image Maistre Pierre du Coignet, which did not fail to embarrass archaeologists. Now, this figure, intended to represent the initial matter of the Work, humanized under the aspect of Lucifer (who bears the light, – the morning star), was the symbol of our cornerstone, the corner stone, the master stone of the coignet. “The stone which the builders rejected, writes Amyraut, was made the mistress stone of the corner, on which rests the whole structure of the building; but which is a stumbling block and a stone of scandal, against which they come up against their ruin. » [Mr. Amyraut, Paraphrase of the First Epistle of St. Peter (ch. II, v. 7). Saumur, Jean Lesnier, 1646, p. 27.] As for the size of this cornerstone, - we mean its preparation, - we can see it translated into a very pretty bas-relief of the time, sculpted outside the building, on an apsidal chapel, on the side of the rue du Cloître-Notre-Dame.


V (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

While the decoration of the projecting parts was reserved for the image cutter, the ceramist was assigned the ornamentation of the floors of cathedrals. This was usually paved, or tiled with painted terracotta plates covered with lead enamel. This art had acquired in the Middle Ages enough perfection to assure to the historiated subjects a sufficient variety of drawing and coloring. Small multicolored marble cubes were also used, in the style of Byzantine mosaicists. Among the most frequently used motifs, mention should be made of the labyrinths, which were traced on the ground, at the point of intersection of the nave and the transepts. The churches of Sens, Reims, Auxerre, Saint-Quentin, Poitiers and Bayeux have preserved their labyrinths. In that of Amiens, we noticed, in the center, a large slab inlaid with a bar of gold and a semi-circle of the same metal, depicting the sunrise above the horizon. The golden sun was later replaced by a copper sun, and the latter disappeared in its turn without ever being replaced. As for the labyrinth of Chartres, vulgarly called the league (for the place), and drawn on the pavement of the nave, it consists of a large series of concentric circles which fold into each other with an infinite variety. In the center of this figure was once seen the fight between Theseus and the Minotaur. This is yet another proof of the infiltration of pagan subjects into Christian iconography and, consequently, of an obvious mytho-hermetic meaning. However, there can be no question of establishing any relationship between these images and the famous constructions of antiquity,

The labyrinth of cathedrals, or Solomon's labyrinth, is, Marcellin Berthelot tells us, "a cabalistic figure which is found at the head of certain alchemical manuscripts, and which is part of the magical traditions attributed to the name of Solomon. It is a series of concentric circles, interrupted at certain points, so as to form a bizarre and inextricable path”. [ The Great Encyclopedia. Art. Labyrinth . T. XXI, p. 703.]

The image of the labyrinth is therefore offered to us as emblematic of the entire work of the Work, with its two major difficulties: that of the path that must be followed to reach the center, – where the hard fight of the two natures takes place, – the other, of the path that the artist must take to get out of it. It is here that Ariadne's thread becomes necessary to him, if he does not want to wander among the meanders of the work without succeeding in discovering the outcome.

Our intention is not to write, as Batsdorff did, a special treatise to teach what Ariadne's thread is, which enabled Theseus to accomplish his purpose. But, relying on the Kabbalah, we hope to provide discerning investigators with some clarification of the symbolic value of the famous myth.

Ariadne is a form of Aragne (spider), by metathesis of i. In Spanish, ñ is pronounced gn; ἀράχνη (spider, spider) can therefore be read arahné, arahni, arahgne. Isn't our soul the spider that weaves our own body? But this word still claims other formations. The verb αἴρω means to take, seize, lead, attract; whence αιρην, that which takes, seizes, attracts. Therefore, αιρην is the magnet, the virtue contained in the body which the Sages call their magnesia. Let's continue. In Provençal, iron is called aran and iran, depending on the different dialects. It is the Masonic Hiram, the divine Aries, the architect of the Temple of Solomon. The spider, among the Felibres, is called aragno and iragno, airagno; in Picard aregni. Bring all this closer to the Greek Σίδηρος, iron and magnet. This word has two meanings. That's not all. The verb ἀρύω expresses the rising of a star that comes out of the sea: whence αρυαν (Aryan), the star that comes out of the sea, rises; αρυαν, or ariane is therefore the Orient, by permutation of vowels. Moreover, ἀρύω also has the meaning of attracting; so αρυαν is also the magnet. If now we bring together Σίδηρος, which gave the Latin sidus, sideris, star, we will recognize our aran, iran, Provençal airan, the Greek αρυαν, the rising sun.

Ariane, the mystical spider, escaped from Amiens, only left the trace of her web on the pavement of the choir...

Let us recall, in passing, that the most famous of the ancient labyrinths, that of Knossos in Crete, which was discovered in 1902 by Doctor Evans, of Oxford, was called Absolum. However, we will point out that this term is close to Absolute, which is the name by which the ancient alchemists designated the philosopher's stone.


VI (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

All the churches have their apse turned towards the south-east, their facade towards the north-west, while the transepts, forming the arms of the cross, are directed from the north-east to the south-west. This is an invariable orientation, desired in such a way that the faithful and the profane, entering the temple from the west, walk straight to the sanctuary, the face carried on the side where the sun rises, towards the East, Palestine, cradle of Christianity. They leave the darkness and go towards the light.

As a result of this arrangement, of the three roses which adorn the transepts and the large porch, one is never lit by the sun; it is the northern rose, which radiates from the facade of the left transept. The second blazes in the midday sun; it is the southern rose open at the end of the right transept. The last is illuminated by the colored rays of the setting sun; it is the large rose window, that of the portal, which surpasses in surface and brilliance its lateral sisters. Thus develop, on the pediment of Gothic cathedrals, the colors of the Work, according to a circular process going from darkness – represented by the absence of light and the color black – to the perfection of rubicund light, passing through the color white, considered to be “medium between black and red”.

In the Middle Ages, the central rose of the porches was called Rota, the wheel. Now, the wheel is the alchemical hieroglyph of the time necessary for the coction of the philosophical matter and, consequently, of the coction itself. The sustained, constant and even fire which the artist maintains day and night during this operation is called, for this reason, wheel fire. However, in addition to the heat necessary for the liquefaction of the stone of the philosophers, it is necessary, in addition, a second agent, called secret or philosophical fire. It is this last fire, excited by vulgar heat, which turns the wheel and causes the various phenomena which the artist observes in his vessel:

To go this way, nowhere else, I confess;
Note only the tracks of my wheel.
And to give equal warmth everywhere,
Too soon to earth and the sky neither rises nor falls.
Because by climbing too high the sky you will burn,
And descending too low the earth will destroy.
But if through the middle your career remains,
The race is more united and the way safer.

[From Nuysement, Philosophical Poem of the Truth of Mineral Physics , in Traittez de l'Harmonie et Constitution generalle du Vray Sel . Paris, Périer and Buisard, 1620 and 1621, p. 254.]

The rose therefore alone represents the action of fire and its duration. This is why medieval decorators sought to translate, in their rosettes, the movements of matter excited by elemental fire, as can be seen on the north portal of Chartres Cathedral, at the roses of Toul (Saint-Gengoult), of Saint-Antoine de Compiègne, etc. In the architecture of the 14th and 15th centuries, the preponderance of the igneous symbol, which clearly characterizes the last period of medieval art, caused the style of this period to be given the name of Flamboyant Gothic.

Some roses, emblematic of the compound, have a special meaning that further emphasizes the properties of this substance that the Creator signed with his own hand. This magic seal reveals to the artist that he has followed the right path, and that the philosopher's mixture has been canonically prepared. It is a radiated figure, with six points (digamma), called the Star of the Magi, which shines on the surface of the compost, that is to say above the manger where Jesus, the Child-King, rests.

Among the buildings that offer us starry roses with six petals, – reproduction of the traditional Seal of Solomon [The polygonal convallaire, vulgarly Seal of Solomon, owes its name to its stem, the section of which is starred like the magic sign attributed to the king of the Israelites, son of David.], – let us mention the Saint-Jean cathedral and the Saint-Bonnaventure church in Lyon (roses and portals); the Saint-Gengoult church in Toul; the two roses of Saint-Vulfran d'Abbeville; the Calende portal at Rouen Cathedral; the splendid blue rose of the Sainte-Chapelle, etc.

This sign being of the highest interest for the alchemist, – is it not the star which guides him and announces to him the birth of the Saviour? – we will be grateful to bring together here certain texts which relate, describe, explain its appearance. We will leave it to the reader to establish all useful comparisons, to coordinate the versions, to isolate the positive truth combined with the legendary allegory in these enigmatic fragments.


VII (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

Varro, in his Antiquitates rerum humanarum , recalls the legend of Aeneas, rescuing his father and his penates from the flames of Troy, and ending up, after long peregrinations, in the fields of Laurentus [Cabalistically, gold enté, grafted.], the end of his journey. He gives the following reason:

Ex quo de Troja est egressus Aeneas, Veneris eum per diem quotidie stellam vidisse, donec ad agrum Laurentum venuset, in quo eam non vidit ulterius; qua recognizes terras esse fatales . (Since his departure from Troy, he saw every day and during the day, the star of Venus, until he arrived at the Laurentian fields, where he ceased to see it, which made him know that these were the lands designated by Destiny.) [Varro, in Servius, Æneid, t . III, p. 386.]

Here is a legend taken from a work entitled the Book of Seth, which an author of the sixth century relates in these terms:

“I have heard a few people speak of a scripture which, though uncertain, is not contrary to the faith and is rather pleasant to hear. We read there that there existed a people in the Far East, on the shores of the Ocean, among whom there was a Book attributed to Seth, which spoke of the future appearance of this star and of the presents which were to be brought to the Child, which prediction was given as transmitted by the generations of the Sages, from father to son.

“They chose twelve among them among the most learned and most fond of the mysteries of the heavens and constituted themselves for the expectation of this star. If one of them died, his son or the close relative who was in the same expectation, was chosen to replace him.

“They were called, in their language, Magi, because they glorified God in silence and in low voices.

“Every year, these men, after the harvest, climbed a mountain which, in their language, was called Mount Victory, which contained a cave cut in the rock, and pleasant by the streams and the trees which surrounded it. Arrived on this mountain, they washed, prayed and praised God in silence for three days; this is what they practiced during each generation, always waiting if, by chance, this star of happiness would not appear during their generation. But in the end, she appeared on this Mount of Victory, in the form of a little child, presenting the figure of a cross; she spoke to them, instructed them and ordered them to leave for Judea.

“The star thus preceded them for two years, and bread and water were never lacking in their journeys.

“What they did next is abbreviated in the Gospel. [ Opus imperfectum in Mattheum. Hom . II, attached to the Works of Saint John Chrysostom, Patr. Greek , t. LVI, p. 637.]

The figure of the star would be different, according to this other legend, of unknown period:

“During the journey, which lasted thirteen days, the Magi took neither rest nor food; there was no need for it, and this period seemed to them to last only a day. The nearer they approached Bethlehem, the brighter the star shone; it had the form of an eagle, flying through the air and flapping its wings; above was a cross. » [ Apocrypha , t. II, p. 469.]

The following legend, which is titled Things that happened in Persia , during the birth of Christ, is attributed to Jules Africain, a 3rd century chronograph, although it is not known to what period it actually belongs:

“The scene takes place in Persia, in a temple of Juno (Ηρης), built by Cyrus. A priest announces that Juno has conceived. – All the statues of the gods dance and sing at this news. – A star descends and announces the birth of a Principle and End Child. – All the statues fall face down. – The Magi announce that this Child was born in Bethlehem and advise the king to send ambassadors. – Then appears Bacchus (Διόνυσος), who predicts that this Child will drive out all the false gods. – Departure of the Magi, guided by the star. Arriving in Jerusalem, they announce to the priests the birth of the Messiah. – In Bethlehem, they greet Mary, have a skilled slave paint her portrait with the Child and place it in their main temple with this inscription: To Jupiter Mithras (Διι Ηλιω, – to the sun god), to the great God, to King Jesus, the Persian Empire makes this dedication. [Julius Africanus, in patr. Greek , t. X, p. 97 and 107.]

“The light of this star, wrote Saint Ignatius, surpassed that of all the others; its brilliance was ineffable, and its novelty caused those who looked at it to be amazed. The sun, the moon and the other stars formed the chorus of this star. [Epistle to the Ephesians, c. XIX.]

Huginus à Barma, in the Practice of his work , uses the same terms to express the matter of the Great Work on which the star appears: “Take real earth, he says, well impregnated with the rays of the sun, the moon and the other stars. [Huginus to Barma, The Reign of Saturn Changed to the Golden Age . Paris, Derieu, 1780.]

In the fourth century, the philosopher Chalcidius, who, as Mullachius, the last of his editors, says, professed that one should worship the gods of Greece, the gods of Rome and foreign gods, preserved the mention of the star of the Magi and the explanation that scholars gave of it. After having spoken of a star called Ahc by the Egyptians, and which announces misfortunes, he adds:

"There is another holier and more venerable history, which testifies that by the rising of a certain star was announced, not diseases nor deaths, but the descent of a venerable God, for the grace of conversation with man and for the advantage of mortal things. The most learned of the Chaldeans, having seen this star while traveling by night, like men perfectly exercised in the contemplation of celestial things, sought, so it is said, the recent birth of a God, and having found the majesty of this Child, they returned to him the vows which befitted so great a God. Which is much better known to you than to others. [ Chalcidius, Comm. in Timæum Platonis , c. 125; in the Frags. philosophorum graecorum by Didot, t. II, p. 210. – Chalcidius is obviously addressing an initiate.]

Diodorus of Tarsus is even more positive when he affirms that "this star was not one of those which populate the sky, but a certain virtue or force (δύναμις) urano-diurnal (θειοτεραν), having taken the form of a star to announce the birth of the Lord of all". [Diodorus of Tarsus, Of Destiny , in Photius, cod. 233; Patr. Greek , t. CIII, p. 878.]

Gospel according to Saint Luke , II, c. 8 to 14:

“Now, in the same country, there were shepherds who spent the night in the fields, taking turns watching over their flocks. Behold, an Angel of the Lord appeared before them, and a divine light surrounded them, and they were seized with great fear; but the Angel said to them:

“Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all the people; it is because a Savior has been born to you today in the city of David, who is Christ the Lord; and this will be the sign for you: you will find a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

“At the same time joined the Angel a multitude of the heavenly militia, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. »

Gospel according to Saint Matthew , II, c. 1 to 11:

"So when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of King Herod, behold the Magi came from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him?

“…Then Herod, the Magi secretly summoned, inquired carefully of them when the star had appeared to them, and sending them to Bethlehem, he said:

“Go, find out exactly about the Child, and when you have found him, let me know so that I, too, will worship him.

“So these, after having heard the king, departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East preceded them, until it came and rested above the place where the Child was.

“Now, seeing the star, they rejoiced with great joy, and entering the house, they found the Child with Mary his mother, and bowing down, they adored him; then, their treasures opened, they offered him their gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. »

About such strange facts and faced with the impossibility of attributing the cause to some celestial phenomenon, A. Bonnetty, struck by the mystery that surrounds these narrations, questions:

“Who are these Magi, and what should we think of this star? This is what rationalist and other critics are asking themselves right now. It is difficult to answer these questions, because ancient and modern Rationalism and Ontologism, drawing all their knowledge from themselves, have caused all the means by which the ancient peoples of the East preserved primitive traditions to be forgotten. " [AT. Bonnetty, Historical Documents on the Religion of the Romans , t. II, p. 564.]

We find the first mention of the star in Balaam's mouth. This one, who was born in the city of Pethor, on the Euphrates, lived, it is said, around the year 1477 BC. J.-C., in the middle of the Assyrian empire at its beginnings. Prophet or Magus in Mesopotamia, Balaam exclaims:

“How can I curse the one whose God does not curse? How, then, shall I threaten the one whom Jehovah does not threaten? Listen!... I see her, but not now; I contemplate it, but not near… A star rises from Jacob and the scepter goes out from Israel…” ( Num ., XXIII, 8, XXIV, 17).

In symbolic iconography, the star is used to designate both conception and birth. The Virgin is often depicted wreathed in stars. That of Larmor (Morbihan), which is part of a very pretty triptych interpreting the death of Christ and the suffering of Mary, – Mater dolorosa, – where one can notice, in the sky of the central composition, the sun, the moon, the stars and the scarf of Iris, holds in her right hand a large star, – maris stella, – epithet given to the Virgin in a Catholic hymn.

GJ Witkowski describes a very curious stained glass window, which was near the sacristy, in the old church of Saint-Jean in Rouen, now destroyed. This stained glass depicted the Conception of Saint Roman. “His father, Benoît, adviser to Clotaire II, and his mother Félicité, were lying in a bed, completely naked, according to the custom which lasted until the middle of the 16th century. The design was represented by a star which shone on the cover in contact with the belly of the woman… The edges of this pane, already singular by its main motif, were decorated with medallions where one could distinguish, not without surprise, the figures of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc., and so that there was no doubt about their identity, the figure of each deity was accompanied by its name. » [GJ Witkowski, Secular Art in the Church. France. Paris, Schemit, 1908, p. 382.]


VIII (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

Just as the human soul has its secret recesses, so the cathedral has its hidden corridors. Their whole, which extends under the floor of the church, constitutes the crypt (from the Greek Κρυπτός, hidden).

In this low, humid and cold place, the observer experiences a singular sensation that imposes silence: that of power united with darkness. We are here in the asylum of the dead, as in the basilica of Saint-Denis, necropolis of the illustrious, as in the Roman Catacombs, cemetery of Christians. Stone slabs; marble mausoleums; tombs; historical debris, fragments of the past. A gloomy and heavy silence fills the vaulted spaces. The thousand noises from outside, those vain echoes of the world, no longer reach us. Are we going to emerge into the caves of the Cyclops? Are we on the threshold of a Dantesque hell, or under the underground galleries, so welcoming, so hospitable to the first martyrs? – All is mystery, anguish and fear in this dark lair…

Around us, many, huge, massive pillars, sometimes twinned, erected on their wide and chamfered bases. Short capitals, slightly protruding, sober, stocky. Rough and unrefined shapes, where elegance and richness give way to solidity. Thick muscles, contracted under the effort, which share without failure the formidable weight of the whole edifice. Nocturnal will, mute, rigid, tense in a perpetual resistance to crushing. Material force that the builder knew how to order and distribute, giving all these members the archaic appearance of a herd of fossil pachyderms, welded together, rounding their bony backs, hollowing out their petrified stomachs under the pressure of an excessive load. Real but occult force, which is exercised in secret, develops in the shadows, acts ceaselessly in the depth of the work's substructures. Such is the dominant impression experienced by the visitor when walking through the galleries of the Gothic crypts.

Formerly, the subterranean chambers of the temples served as dwellings for the statues of Isis, which became, during the introduction of Christianity in Gaul, those Black Virgins that the people, nowadays, surrounds with a very particular veneration. Their symbolism is, moreover, identical; both show, on their base, the famous inscription: Virgini parituræ : the Virgin who must give birth. Ch. Bigarne tells us about several statues of Isis designated under the same name. “Already, says the scholar Pierre Dujols, in his General Bibliography of the Occult , the learned Elias Schadius had pointed out, in his book De dictis Germanicis , an analogous inscription: Isidi, seu Virgini ex qua filius proditurus est [To Isis, or to the Virgin from whom the Son will be born.]. These icons would therefore not have the Christian meaning attributed to them, at least exoterically. Isis, before conception, is, says Bigarne, in astronomical theogony, the attribute of the Virgin that several monuments, well before Christianity, designate under the name of Virgo paritura, that is to say the earth before its fertilization, and that the rays of the sun will soon animate . She is also the mother of the gods, as evidenced by a stone from Die: Matri Deum Magnæ ideæ . » [Ch. Bigarne, Considerations on the Cult of Isis among the Aedui. Beaune, 1862.] The esoteric meaning of our Black Virgins cannot be better defined. They represent, in hermetic symbolism, the primitive earth, the one that the artist must choose as the subject of his great work. It is the raw material in the state of ore, as it comes out of the metalliferous deposits, deeply buried under the rock mass. It is, the texts tell us, "a black substance, heavy, brittle, friable, which has the appearance of a stone and can be crushed into tiny pieces like a stone". It therefore appears regular that the humanized hieroglyph of this mineral has its specific color and that it is reserved for its habitat in the underground places of the temples.

Today, Black Madonnas are few. We will cite a few of them, all of which enjoy great celebrity. The cathedral of Chartres is the best shared in this respect; it has two, one, designated by the expressive term of Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, in the crypt, is seated on a throne whose base bears the inscription already noted: Virgini parituræ ; the other, exterior, called Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, occupies the center of a niche filled with ex voto in the form of burning hearts. The latter, Witkowski tells us, is the object of the devotion of a large number of pilgrims. “Primarily, adds this author, the stone column which serves as its support was “cavated” by the licks and teeth of its fiery worshippers, like the foot of Saint Peter in Rome, or the knee of Hercules that the pagans adored in Sicily; but, to protect it from too ardent kisses, it was surrounded by a paneling in 1831.” With its underground Virgin, Chartres is said to be the oldest of all pilgrimages. At first it was only an ancient statuette of Isis "sculpted before Jesus Christ", as told by old local chronicles. Nevertheless,

As for the Black Virgin of Notre-Dame du Puy, – whose limbs are not visible, – she affects the figure of a triangle, by her dress which girds her at the collar and flares without a fold to the foot. The fabric is decorated with vines and ears of wheat – allegorical of Eucharistic bread and wine – and allows the Child's head to pass through the umbilicus, as sumptuously crowned as that of his mother.

Notre-Dame-de-Confession, the famous Black Virgin of the Saint-Victor crypts in Marseilles, offers us a fine specimen of ancient statuary, supple, large and fat. This figure, full of nobility, holds a scepter in his right hand and has his forehead surrounded by a crown with triple florets (pl. I).



NOTRE-DAME-DE-CONFESSION
Black Madonna from the crypts
of Saint-Victor in Marseilles
Plate I


Our Lady of Rocamadour, the goal of a famous pilgrimage, already frequented in the year 1166, is a miraculous Madonna whose origins are traditionally traced to the Jew Zacchaeus, head of the publicans of Jericho, and which dominates the altar of the chapel of the Virgin built in 1479. It is a wooden statuette, blackened by time, wrapped in a robe of silver slats which consolidates the worm-eaten debris. “The fame of Rocamadour goes back to the legendary hermit, Saint Amateur or Amadour, who carved a wooden statuette of the Virgin to which many miracles were attributed. It is said that Amateur was the pseudonym of the publican Zacchaeus, converted by Jesus Christ; came to Gaul, he would have propagated the cult of the Virgin. This is very old in Rocamadour; however, the great vogue for pilgrimage only dates from the 12th century. » [The Great Encyclopedia , vol. XXVIII, p. 761.]

In Vichy, the Black Virgin of the Saint-Blaise church is venerated there "from all antiquity", as Antoine Gravier, a communalist priest in the 17th century, said. Archaeologists date this sculpture to the 14th century, and, as the Saint-Blaise church, where it is deposited, was not built, in its oldest parts, until the 15th century, Abbé Allot, who pointed out this statue to us, thinks that it once appeared in the Saint-Nicolas chapel, founded in 1372 by Guillaume de Hames.

The church of Guéodet, also called Notre-Dame-de-la-Cité, in Quimper, also has a black Madonna.

Camille Flammarion tells us about a similar statue that he saw in the cellars of the Observatory, on September 24, 1871, two centuries after the first thermometric observation which was made there in 1671. “The colossal building of Louis XIV, he writes, which raises the balustrade of its terrace to twenty-eight meters above the ground, descends below in foundations which have the same depth: twenty-eight meters. At the corner of one of the underground galleries, one notices a statuette of the Virgin, placed there that same year 1671, and which verses engraved at her feet invoke under the name of Our Lady of Below Earth. » [Camille Flammarion, The Atmosphere. Paris, Hachette, 1888, p. 362.] This little-known Parisian Virgin, who in the capital personifies the mysterious subject of Hermes, appears to be a replica of that of Chartres, the Benoist Lady Underground.

One more detail, useful for the hermetist. In the ceremonial prescribed for the processions of Black Virgins, only green candles were burned.

As for the statuettes of Isis – we are talking about those which escaped Christianity – they are even rarer than the Black Virgins. Perhaps it would be appropriate to look for the cause in the high antiquity of these icons. Witkowski mentions one that was housed in the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Metz. “This stone figure of Isis, writes the author, measuring 0m43 high by 0m29 wide, came from the old cloister. The projection of this high relief was 0m18; it represented the naked bust of a woman, but so thin that, to use a pictorial expression of the Abbé Brantôme, "she could show nothing but the building"; her head was covered with a veil. Two dry breasts hung from her chest like those of the Dianas of Ephesus. The skin was stained red, and the drapery that circled the waist in black… A similar statue existed in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Saint-Étienne in Lyon. » [Cf. Secular Art in the Church . Stranger, Op. cit., p. 26.]

However, what remains for us is that the cult of Isis, the Egyptian Ceres, was very mysterious. We only know that the goddess was solemnly celebrated each year in the town of Busiris, and that an ox was sacrificed to her. "After the sacrifices," says Herodotus, "the men and women, numbering several myriads, deal great blows to each other. For what god they strike each other, I think it would be ungodly of me to say. The Greeks, like the Egyptians, kept absolute silence on the mysteries of the cult of Ceres, and historians have taught us nothing that could satisfy our curiosity. Revealing the secret of these practices to the profane was punishable by death. It was even considered a crime to listen to disclosure. The entrance to the Temple of Ceres, following the example of the Egyptian sanctuaries of Isis, was strictly forbidden to all those who had not received initiation. However, the information that has been transmitted to us on the hierarchy of the high priests authorizes us to think that the mysteries of Ceres must have been of the same order as those of Hermetic Science. Indeed, we know that the ministers of worship were divided into four degrees: the Hierophant, charged with instructing the neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. was strictly forbidden to all those who had not received initiation. However, the information that has been transmitted to us on the hierarchy of the high priests authorizes us to think that the mysteries of Ceres must have been of the same order as those of Hermetic Science. Indeed, we know that the ministers of worship were divided into four degrees: the Hierophant, charged with instructing the neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. was strictly forbidden to all those who had not received initiation. However, the information that has been transmitted to us on the hierarchy of the high priests authorizes us to think that the mysteries of Ceres must have been of the same order as those of Hermetic Science. Indeed, we know that the ministers of worship were divided into four degrees: the Hierophant, charged with instructing the neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. the information that has been transmitted to us on the hierarchy of the high priests authorizes us to think that the mysteries of Ceres must have been of the same order as those of Hermetic Science. Indeed, we know that the ministers of worship were divided into four degrees: the Hierophant, charged with instructing the neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. the information that has been transmitted to us on the hierarchy of the high priests authorizes us to think that the mysteries of Ceres must have been of the same order as those of Hermetic Science. Indeed, we know that the ministers of worship were divided into four degrees: the Hierophant, charged with instructing the neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. responsible for instructing neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it. responsible for instructing neophytes; the Torchbearer, which represented the Sun; the Hérault, which represented Mercury; the Minister of the Altar, who represented the Moon. In Rome, the Cereals were celebrated on April 12 and lasted eight days. In processions, an egg, symbol of the world, was carried and pigs were sacrificed to it.

We said above that a stone of Die, representing Isis, designated her as being the mother of the gods. The same epithet applied to Rhea or Cybele. The two divinities thus prove to be close relatives, and we would tend to consider them only as different expressions of one and the same principle. Mr. Charles Vincens confirms this opinion by the description he gives of a bas-relief depicting Cybele, which has been seen for centuries outside the parish church of Pennes (Bouches-du-Rhône), with its inscription: Matri Deum . "This curious piece, he tells us, only disappeared around 1610, but it is engraved in the Collection of Grosson (p. 20). » Singular hermetic analogy: Cybele was adored at Pessinontes, in Phrygia, in the form of a black stone which was said to have fallen from the sky. Phidias represents the goddess seated on a throne between two lions, having on her head a mural crown from which descends a veil. Sometimes she is shown holding a key and appearing to pull back her veil. Isis, Ceres, Cybele, three heads under the same veil.


IX (The Mystery of the Cathedrals)

These preliminaries completed, we must now undertake the hermetic study of the cathedral, and, to limit our investigations, we will take as a model the Christian temple of the capital, Notre-Dame de Paris.

Our task, of course, is difficult. We no longer live in the time of Sir Bernard, Count of Treviso, Zachaire or Flamel. The centuries have left their deep mark on the front of the building, the bad weather has dug it wide wrinkles, but the ravages of time count for little compared to those that human fury imprinted there. The revolutions engraved their imprint there, a regrettable testimony to the plebeian anger; vandalism, the enemy of beauty, satisfies its hatred there by dreadful mutilations, and the restorers themselves, although carried with the best intentions, did not always know how to respect what the iconoclasts had spared.

Notre-Dame de Paris once raised its majesty on a perron of eleven steps. Barely isolated, by a narrow square, wooden houses, pointed gables set in corbelled steps, it gained in boldness and elegance what it lost in mass. Today, and thanks to hindsight, it seems all the more massive as it is more open, and as its porches, its pillars and its buttresses bear directly on the ground; successive embankments gradually filled in its steps and ended up absorbing them to the very last.

In the middle of the space limited, on the one hand, by the imposing basilica, and, on the other, by the picturesque agglomeration of small hotels adorned with spiers, ears of corn, weather vanes, pierced with shops painted with carved beams, with burlesque signs, carved into their corners with niches decorated with Madonnas or saints, flanked by turrets, watchtowers with pepper pots, bretèches , in the middle of this space, we say, stood a stone statue, tall and narrow, which held a book in one hand and a serpent in the other. This statue was part of a monumental fountain where this couplet read:

Qui sitis, huc tendas: desunt si forte liquores,
Pergredere, æternas diva paravit aquas.

[ You who are thirsty, come here: If by chance the waves are missing,
By degree, the Goddess prepared the eternal waters. ]

The people sometimes called him Monsieur Legris, sometimes Gray Seller, Grand Jeûneur or Jeûneur de Notre-Dame.

Many interpretations have been given to these strange expressions, applied by the vulgar to an image that archaeologists could not identify. The best explanation is that provided by Amédée de Ponthieu, and it seems to us all the more worthy of interest since the author, who was not a hermetist, judges without bias and pronounces without preconceived idea:

“In front of this temple, he told us, speaking of Notre-Dame, stood a sacred monolith that time had made shapeless. The ancients called him Phoebigene [Begotten of the sun or of gold.], son of Apollo; the people later named him Master Stone, meaning Master Stone, Stone of Power [This is the cornerstone we have been talking about.]; he was also called Messire Legris, while gray meant fire, and particularly firedamp, will-o'-the-wisp...

“According to some, these shapeless features recalled those of Aesculapius, or of Mercury, or of the god Terme [The terms were busts of Hermes (Mercury).]; according to others, those of Archambaud, mayor of the Palace under Clovis II, who had donated the funds on which the Hôtel-Dieu was built; others saw in it the features of Guillaume de Paris, who had erected it at the same time as the portal of Notre-Dame; Abbé Leboeuf sees in it the figure of Jesus Christ; others, that of Saint Geneviève, patroness of Paris.
“This stone was removed in 1748, when the Place du Parvis-de-Notre-Dame was enlarged. [Amédée de Ponthieu, Legends of Old Paris . Paris, Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1867, p. 91.]

Around the same time, the chapter of Notre-Dame received the order to remove the statue of Saint Christopher. The colossus, painted grey, leaned against the first pillar on the right, when entering the nave. It had been erected in 1413 by Antoine des Essarts, chamberlain of King Charles VI. They wanted to remove it in 1772, but Christophe de Beaumont, then Archbishop of Paris, formally opposed it. It was not until his death in 1781 that he was dragged out of the metropolis and broken. Notre-Dame d'Amiens still has the good Christian giant carrying the Child Jesus, but it must have escaped destruction only because it is one with the wall: it is a bas-relief sculpture. The cathedral of Seville also preserves a colossal Saint Christopher painted in fresco. That of the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie perished with the building,

To motivate such acts, it is obvious that powerful reasons were needed. Although they seem to us unjustified, we nevertheless find the cause in the symbolic expression drawn from the legend and condensed – too clearly no doubt – by the image. Saint Christopher, whose primitive name Jacques de Voragine reveals to us: Offerus, means, for the mass, the one who carries Christ (from the Greek Χριστοϕος); but the phonetic cabala discovers another meaning, adequate and in conformity with the hermetic doctrine. Christophe is put for Chrysophus: who carries the gold (gr. Χρυσοϕορος). From then on, we better understand the high importance of the symbol, so telling, of Saint Christopher. It is the hieroglyph of solar sulfur (Jesus), or nascent gold, raised on the mercurial waves and then carried, by the own energy of this Mercury, to the degree of power possessed by the Elixir. According to Aristotle, Mercury's emblematic color is gray or purple, which suffices to explain why the statues of Saint Christopher were coated with a coating of the same tone. A certain number of old engravings kept in the Cabinet des Estampes of the National Library, and representing the colossus, are executed in a single line and in a bistre tint. The oldest dates from 1418.

In Rocamadour (Lot), there is still a gigantic statue of Saint Christopher, erected on the Saint-Michel plateau, which precedes the church. Next to it, we notice an old iron chest, above which is stuck in the rock, and held by a chain, a coarse section of a sword. Legend has it that this fragment belonged to the famous Durandal, the sword that the paladin Roland broke while opening the Roncesvalles breach. Be that as it may, the truth that emerges from these attributes is very transparent. The sword which opens the rock, the rod of Moses which makes water spring from the stone of Horeb, the scepter of the goddess Rhea, with which she strikes Mount Dyndime, the javelin of Atalanta are one and the same hieroglyph of this hidden material of the Philosophers, of which Saint Christopher indicates the nature and the iron chest the result.

We regret not being able to say more about the magnificent emblem to which the first place was reserved in the ogival basilicas. There remains to us no precise and detailed description of these great figures, groups admirable for their teaching, but which a superficial and decadent era made disappear without having the excuse of an indisputable necessity.

The 18th century, reign of the aristocracy and the wit, of the court abbots, of the powdered marquises, of the gentlemen in wigs, blessed time of the dancing masters, of the madrigals and the shepherdesses of Watteau, the brilliant and perverse century, frivolous and mannered which was to sink in blood, was particularly harmful to Gothic works of art.

Driven by the great current of decadence that Francis I generated under the paradoxical name of Renaissance, incapable of an effort equivalent to that of their ancestors, completely ignorant of medieval symbolism, artists preferred to reproduce bastard works, without taste, without character, without esoteric thought, rather than pursuing and developing the admirable and healthy French creation.

Architects, painters, sculptors, preferring their own glory to that of Art, turned to the antique models counterfeited in Italy.

The builders of the Middle Ages had the prerogative of faith and modesty. Anonymous craftsmen of pure masterpieces, they built for the Truth, for the affirmation of their ideal, for the propagation and the nobility of their science. Those of the Renaissance, preoccupied above all with their personality, jealous of their value, built their name for posterity. The Middle Ages owed their splendor to the originality of their creations; the Renaissance owed its vogue to the servile fidelity of its copies. Here, a thought; a fashion there. On the one hand, genius; on the other, talent. In the Gothic work, the craftsmanship remains subject to the Idea; in the resurgent work, it dominates and effaces it. One speaks to the heart, to the brain, to the soul: it is the triumph of the spirit; the other addresses the senses: it is the glorification of matter. From the twelfth to the fifteenth century, poverty of means but richness of expression; from the 16th century, plastic beauty, mediocrity of invention. The medieval masters knew how to animate the common limestone; Renaissance artists left the marble inert and cold.

It is the antagonism of these two periods, born of opposing concepts, which explains the contempt of the Renaissance and its deep repugnance for everything Gothic.

Such a state of mind was to be fatal to the work of the Middle Ages; and it is to him, in fact, that we must attribute the numberless mutilations that we deplore today.


PARIS

I

The Cathedral of Paris, as well as most metropolitan basilicas, is placed under the invocation of the Benedict Virgin Mary or Virgin-Mother. In France, the popular call these churches Notre-Dame. In Sicily, they bear an even more expressive name, that of Matrices. These are therefore many temples dedicated to the Mother (lat. mater, matri), to the Matrona in the primitive sense, a word which, by corruption, has become the Madonna (ital. ma donna), my Lady, and, by extension, Our Lady.

Let's go through the gate of the porch, and begin the study of the facade with the large portal, called the central or Judgment porch.

The trumeau pillar which divides the entrance bay in two offers a series of allegorical representations of medieval sciences. Facing the forecourt – and the place of honor – alchemy is represented by a woman whose forehead touches the clouds. Seated on a throne, she holds a scepter in her left hand – an insignia of sovereignty – while the right supports two books, one closed (esotericism), the other open (exotericism). Held between his knees and leaning against his chest stands the nine-step ladder, – scala philosophorum, – hieroglyph of the patience that his faithful must have, during the nine successive operations of hermetic labor (pl. II). “Patience is the ladder of the Philosophers, Valois tells us, and humility is the door to their garden; for whoever perseveres without pride and envy, God will have mercy on him. » [ Works by Nicolas Grosparmy and Nicolas Valois . Mss. library de l'Arsenal, no. 2516 (166 SAF), p. 176.]




ALCHEMY
Bas-relief from the great porch of Notre-Dame de Paris
Plate II


Such is the title of the philosophical chapter of this mutus Liber which is the Gothic temple; the frontispiece of this occult Bible with massive sheets of stone; the imprint, the seal of the secular Great Work on the forehead of the Christian Great Work. It could not be better located than at the very threshold of the main entrance.

Thus, the cathedral appears to us to be based on alchemical science, investigating the transformations of the original substance, of Elementary Matter (lat. materea, root mater, mother). For the Virgin-Mother, stripped of her symbolic veil, is nothing other than the personification of the primitive substance which the creative Principle of all that is used to realize its designs. Such is the meaning, moreover very luminous, of this singular epistle which is read at the Mass of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and of which here is the text:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his ways. I was before he formed any creature. I was from all eternity before the earth was created. The abysses were not yet, and already I was conceived. The fountains had not yet come out of the ground; the heavy mass of the mountains was not yet formed; I was born before the hills. He had created neither the earth, nor the rivers, nor established the world on its poles. When he prepared the Heavens, I was present; when he surrounded the abysses with their bounds and prescribed an inviolable law; when he made the air firm above the earth; when he gave their balance to the waters of the fountains; when he confined the sea within his limits and when he imposed a law on the waters so that they did not pass their bounds; when he laid the foundations of the earth, I was with him, and I regulated all things. »

This is obviously the very essence of things. And, in fact, the Litanies teach us that the Virgin is the Vase which contains the Spirit of things: Vas spirituale . “On a table, at chest height of the Magi, Etteilla tells us, was, on one side, a book or a series of sheets or blades of gold (the book of Thoth) and, on the other side, a vase full of a celestial-astral liquor, composed of a third of wild honey, a part of terrestrial water and a part of celestial water… The secret, the mystery was therefore in the vase. » [Etteilla, Le Dennier du Pauvre , in the Seven Shades of the Philosophical Work , slnd (1786), p. 57.]

This singular Virgin, – Virgo singularis, as the Church expressly designates it – is, moreover, glorified under epithets which sufficiently denote its positive origin. Isn't it also called the Palm of Patience (Palma patientiæ); the Lily between thorns (Lilium inter spinas) [This is the title of mss. famous alchemicals of Agricola and Ticinensis. See library. from Rennes (159); from Bordeaux (533); from Lyons (154); of Cambrai (919).]; Samson's Symbolic Honey; Gideon's Fleece; the Mystical Rose; the Gate of Heaven; the House of Gold; etc ? The same texts also call Mary the Seat of Wisdom, in other words the Subject of Hermetic Science, of universal sapience. In the symbolism of planetary metals, it is the Moon, which receives the rays of the Sun and keeps them secretly in its bosom. She is the dispenser of the passive substance, that the solar spirit comes to animate. Mary, Virgin and Mother, therefore represents the form; Elijah, the Sun, God the Father is the emblem of the vital spirit. From the union of these two principles results living matter, subject to the vicissitudes of the laws of mutation and progression. It is then Jesus, the spirit incarnate, the fire embodied in things as we know them here below:

AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DID Dwell AMONG US.

On the other hand, the Bible teaches us that Mary, mother of Jesus, was of the stem of Jesse. Now, the Hebrew word Jes means fire, sun, divinity. To be of the stem of Jesse is therefore to be of the race of the sun, of fire. As matter derives its origin from solar fire, as we have just seen, the same name of Jesus appears to us in its original and celestial splendour: fire, sun, God.

Finally, in the Ave Regina, the Virgin is properly called Root (Salve, radix) to mark that she is the principle and the beginning of the Whole. “Hail, root by which Light shone upon the world. »

These are the reflections suggested by the expressive bas-relief which welcomes the visitor under the porch of the basilica. Hermetic Philosophy, old Spagyrics welcome him to the Gothic temple, the alchemical temple par excellence. Because the whole cathedral is only a mute, but pictorial glorification of the ancient science of Hermes, of which it has managed, moreover, to preserve one of the ancient craftsmen. Notre-Dame de Paris, in fact, keeps its alchemist.

If, prompted by curiosity, or to give some pleasure to a stroll on a summer day, you climb the spiral staircase which reaches the upper parts of the building, slowly walk the path, dug like a channel, at the top of the second gallery. Arrived near the central axis of the majestic building, at the re-entrant angle of the northern tower, you will see, in the middle of the procession of chimeras, the striking relief of a large stone old man. It's him, it's the alchemist of Notre-Dame (pl. III).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
The Alchemist
Plate III


Wearing the Phrygian cap, an attribute of Adeptship (*), negligently placed on the long hair with thick curls, the scientist, tight in the light cape of the laboratory, leans with one hand on the balustrade, while he caresses, with the other, his abundant and silky beard. He does not meditate, he observes. The eye is fixed; the look, of a strange acuity. Everything in the Philosopher's attitude reveals extreme emotion. The curvature of the shoulders, the forward projection of the head and the bust betray, in fact, the strongest surprise. In truth, this petrified hand comes to life. Is it an illusion? It looks like she's shaking...

* [The Phrygian cap, which covered the sans-culottes and constituted a kind of protective talisman, in the midst of the revolutionary hecatombs, was the distinctive sign of the Initiates. In his analysis of a work by Lombard (de Langres), entitled: History of the Jacobins, from 1789 to this day, or State of Europe in November 1820 (Paris, 1820), the scholar Pierre Dujols writes that at the rank of Epopt (in the Mysteries of Eleusis) “the recipient was asked if he felt the strength, the will and the devotion required to get his hands on the GREAT WORK. So they put a red cap on his head, pronouncing this formula: "Cover yourself with this cap, it is worth more than a king's crown." We were far from suspecting that this kind of petasus, called liberia in the Mithraics, and which formerly designated freed slaves, was a Masonic symbol and the supreme mark of Initiation. We will therefore no longer be surprised to see it appear on our coins and our public monuments. »]

What a splendid figure that of the old master who scrutinizes, questions, anxious and attentive, the evolution of mineral life, then finally contemplates, dazzled, the prodigy that his faith alone allowed him to glimpse!

And how poor are the modern statues of our scholars—whether cast in bronze or carved in marble—compared to this venerable image, so powerfully realistic in its simplicity!


II (Paris)

The stylobate of the facade, which develops and extends under the three porches, is entirely devoted to our science; and it is a real treat for the decipherer of hermetic enigmas that this set of images as curious as they are instructive.

It is there that we will find the pithy name of the subject of the Sages; there we will witness the elaboration of the secret solvent; there, finally, that we will follow the work of the Elixir step by step, from its first calcination to its ultimate coction.

But in order to keep some method in this study, we will always observe the order of succession of the figures, going from the outside towards the vents of the porch, as would a faithful entering the building.

On the side faces of the buttresses that limit the large portal, we will find, at eye level, two small bas-reliefs each embedded in an ogive. That of the pillar on the left presents the alchemist discovering the mysterious Fountain that Trevisan describes in the final Parable of his book on the Natural Philosophy of Metals [Cf. J. Mangin de Richebourg, Library of Chemical Philosophers . Paris, 1741, vol. II, treatise VII.].

The artist has traveled a long time; he wandered in wrong ways and doubtful paths; but his joy finally breaks out! The stream of living water flows at his feet; it wells up, bubbling, from the hollow old oak [“Note this oak,” says Flamel simply in the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures .]. Our Adept hit the goal. Also, disdaining the bow and arrows with which, like Cadmus, he pierced the dragon, he watches the limpid spring flow, whose dissolving virtue and volatile essence are attested to by a bird perched on the tree (pl. IV).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
JUDGMENT PORTAL
The mysterious fountain at the foot
of the Old Oak
Plate IV


But what is this occult Fountain? Of what nature is this powerful solvent capable of penetrating all metals – gold in particular – and of accomplishing, with the help of the dissolved body, the great work in its entirety? – These are enigmas so profound that they have repelled a considerable number of researchers; all, or almost, have broken their foreheads against this impenetrable wall, erected by the Philosophers to serve as an enclosure for their citadel.

Mythology calls her Libethra [Cf Noël, Dictionnaire de la Fable. Paris, Le Normant, 1801.] and tells us that it was a fountain of Magnesia, which had, in its vicinity, another source called La Roche. Both emerged from a large rock, the shape of which imitated a woman's breast; so that the water seemed to flow from two breasts like milk. However, we know that the ancient authors call the material of the Work our Magnesia and that the liquor extracted from this magnesia is called Milk of the Virgin. There is a hint there. As for the allegory of the mixture or combination of this primitive water from the Chaos of the Sages, with a second water of a different nature (although of the same kind), it is quite clear and sufficiently expressive. From this combination results a third water which does not wet the hands, and which the Philosophers have sometimes called Mercury, sometimes Sulphur,

In the treatise on Azoth, attributed to the famous monk of Erfurth, Basil Valentine, and which would rather be the work of Senior Zadith, we notice a figure on wood representing a nymph or crowned siren, swimming on the sea and spouting from her breasts two jets of milk which mix with the waves. [ Azoth or Means of Making the Philosophers' Hidden Gold , by Brother Basile Valentin. Paris, Pierre Moët, 1659, p.51.]

Among Arab authors, this Fountain bears the name of Holmat; they teach us, moreover, that its waters gave immortality to the prophet Elijah (Ηλιος, sun). They place the famous source in Modhallan, a term whose root means dark and tenebrous Sea, which clearly marks the elementary confusion that the Sages attribute to their Chaos or prime matter.

A painted replica of the fable we have just quoted was in the small church of Brixen (Tyrol). This curious picture, described by Misson and pointed out by Witkowski, appears to be the religious version of the same chemical theme. “Jesus causes the blood to flow from his side into a large basin, opened by the spear of Longinus; the Virgin squeezes her breasts, and the milk which gushes out falls into the same receptacle. The overflow flows into a second basin and is lost at the bottom of a chasm of flames, where the souls of Purgatory, of both sexes, in bare busts, hasten to receive this precious liquor which consoles and refreshes them. » [GJ Witkowski, Secular Art in the Church . Stranger, p. 63.]

At the bottom of this old painting, we read the Latin inscription of the sacristy:

Dum fluit e Christi benedicto Vulnere sanguis,
And dum Virgineum lake pia Virgo premit,
Lake flees and sanguis, sanguis conjungitur and lake
And sit Fons Vitæ, Fons and Origo boni.

[“ As the blood flows from the blessed wound of Christ, and the holy Virgin presses her virginal breast, the milk and the blood spurt out and mingle, and become the Fountain of Life and the Source of Good. »]

Among the descriptions which accompany the Symbolic Figures of Abraham the Jew , whose book, it is said, belonged to Nicolas Flamel, and which this Adept kept exhibited in his writer's shop, we will highlight two which relate to the Mysterious Fountain and its components. Here are the original texts of these two descriptions [ Collection of Seven Painted Figures . Bible. de l'Arsenal, n° 3047 (153 SAF).]:

“Third figure. – Is depicted and represented an enclosed garden of hayes, where there are several squares. In the middle, there is an old oak hollow, at the foot of which, at the side, there is a rosebush with gold leaves and white and red roses, which surrounds the said oak to the top, close to its branches. And at the foot of the aforesaid hollow in the oak bubbles a fountain clear as silver, which loses itself in the ground; and among many who seek it, were four blind men who hoe it, and four others who seek it without digging, being the said fountain before them, and cannot find it, except one who weighs it in his hand. »

It is this last character that forms the subject of the sculpted motif of Notre-Dame de Paris. The preparation of the solvent in question is related in the explanation that accompanies the following image:
“Fourth figure. – Is depicted a field, in which there is a crowned king, dressed in Jewish red, holding a naked sword; two soldiers who kill the children of two mothers, who are seated on the ground, mourning their children; and two other soldiers who throw the blood into a large tub full of the said blood, where the sun and the moon, descending from the sky or the clouds, come to bathe. And there are six soldiers armed with white armor, and the king makes the seventh, and seven innocent dead, and two mothers, one dressed in blue, who is crying, wiping her face with a handkerchief, and the other who is also crying, dressed in red. »

Let us also point out a figure from the book of Trismosin, which is very nearly similar to the third of Abraham. We see an oak whose foot, surrounded by a golden crown, gives birth to the occult stream that flows through the countryside. In the foliage of the tree, white birds frolic, with the exception of a crow, which seems asleep, and which a man, poorly dressed, standing on a ladder, is about to seize. In the foreground of this rustic scene, two sophists, elegantly dressed in sumptuous fabrics, discuss and argue on this point of science, without noticing the oak tree placed behind them, nor seeing the fountain flowing at their feet… [Cf. Trismosin, The Golden Toyson . Paris, Ch. Sevestre, 1612, p. 52.]

Finally, let us say that the esoteric tradition of the Fountain of Life or Fountain of Youth finds itself materialized in the sacred wells that most Gothic churches possessed in the Middle Ages. The water drawn from it was most often said to have curative properties, and it was used in the treatment of certain illnesses. Abbo, in his poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans, reports several features which attest to the marvelous properties of the water from the well of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was drilled at the bottom of the sanctuary of the famous abbey. Similarly, the water from the well of Saint-Marcel, in Paris, dug in the church, near the tombstone of the venerable bishop, revealed itself, according to Grégoire de Tours, as a powerful specific for several affections. It still exists today, inside the ogival basilica of Notre-Dame de Lépine (Marne), a miraculous well, known as the Puits de la Sainte-Vierge, and, in the middle of the choir of Notre-Dame de Limoux (Aude), a similar well whose water is said to cure all illnesses; it bears this inscription:

Omnis qui bibit hanc aquam, si fidem addit, savus erit.

[ Whoever drinks this water, if he joins it in faith, will be well. ]

We shall soon have occasion to return to this Pontic water, to which the Philosophers have given a host of more or less suggestive epithets.

Opposite the sculpted motif reflecting the properties and nature of the secret agent, we will witness, on the opposite buttress, the cooking of the philosopher's compost. The artist, this time, watches over the product of his labor. Clad in armour, his legs lined with greaves and the shield on his arm, our knight is encamped on the terrace of a fortress, if we judge by the battlements which surround him. In a defensive movement, he threatens with the javelin an imprecise form (some ray? a sheaf of flames?), which it is unfortunately impossible to identify, so much the relief is mutilated. Behind the fighter, a strange little building, formed of a curved, crenellated base supported on four pillars, is covered with a segmented dome with a spherical key. Under the lower arch, an aculeiform and flamed mass comes to specify its destination. This curious dungeon, burg in miniature, is the instrument of the Great Work, the Athanor, the occult oven with two flames – potential and virtual – that all disciples know and that a number of descriptions and engravings have helped to popularize (pl. V).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
PORTAL OF JUDGMENT
The Alchemist protects the Athanor
against external influences
Plate V


Immediately above these figures are reproduced two subjects which seem to form the complement. But, as esotericism is hidden here under sacred exteriors and biblical scenes, we will avoid speaking of it, so as not to incur the reproach of an arbitrary interpretation. Great scholars, among the old masters, were not afraid to explain alchemically the parables of the Holy Scriptures, so much the meaning is susceptible of various versions. The Hermetic Philosophy frequently invokes the testimony of Genesis to serve as an analogy to the first work of the Work; a number of allegories from the Old and New Testaments take on unexpected relief through alchemical contact. Such precedents should both encourage and excuse us; however, we prefer to confine ourselves exclusively to motives whose profane character is indisputable, leaving to benevolent instigators the faculty of exercising their sagacity on others.


III (Paris)

The hermetic subjects of the stylobate develop in two superimposed rows, to the right and to the left of the porch. The lower row has twelve medallions, and the upper row twelve figures. The latter represent figures seated on pedestals adorned with grooves with a profile that is sometimes concave, sometimes angular, and placed in the inter-columns of trefoil arcades. All present discs adorned with various emblems related to alchemical work.

If we start with the upper row, left side, the first bas-relief will show us the image of the crow, symbol of the color black. The woman holding him on her lap symbolizes Putrefaction (pl. VI).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Raven - Putrefaction
Plate VI


Let us dwell for a moment on the hieroglyph of the Raven, because it hides an important point of our science. It expresses, in fact, in the cooking of the philosophical Rebis, the color black, the first appearance of decomposition following the perfect mixing of the materials of the Egg. It is, according to the Philosophers, the certain mark of future success, the evident sign of the exact preparation of the compost. The Raven is, in a way, the canonical seal of the Work, just as the star is the signature of the initial subject.

But this darkness that the artist hopes for, that he anxiously awaits, the appearance of which fulfills his wishes and fills him with joy, does not manifest itself only during the coction. The black bird appears on several occasions, and this frequency allows the authors to confuse the order of operations.

According to Le Breton, “there are four putrefactions in the Philosophical Work. The first, in the first separation; the second, in the first conjunction; the third in the second conjunction, which becomes heavy water with its salt; the fourth, finally, in the fixation of sulphur. In each of these putrefactions, darkness arrives. » [Le Breton, Keys to Spagyric Philosophy . Paris, Jombert, 1722, p. 282.]

Our old masters therefore had a good game of covering the mystery with a thick veil, by mixing the specific qualities of the various substances, during the four operations which manifest the color black. Also it becomes very laborious to separate them and to distinguish clearly what belongs to each of them.

Here are a few quotes that may enlighten the investigator and allow him to recognize his way through this dark labyrinth.

“In the second operation, writes the Unknown Knight, the prudent artist fixes the general soul of the world in common gold and purifies the earthly and immobile soul. In this so-called operation, the putrefaction, which they call the Raven's Head, is very long. This is followed by a third multiplication by adding the philosophical matter or the general soul of the world. » [ Nature uncovered , by the Unknown Knight. Aix, 1669.]

There are, clearly indicated, two successive operations, of which the first ends and the second begins after the appearance of the black coloration, which is not the case with coction.

A precious anonymous manuscript from the 18th century thus speaks of this first putrefaction, which should not be confused with the others:

“If matter is not corrupted and mortified, says this work, you will not be able to extract our elements and our principles; and to help you in this difficulty, I will give you signs to know it. Some Philosophers have also marked it. Morien says: there must be some acidity in it, and some smell of sepulchre. Philalethes says that it must appear like fish eyes, that is to say little bottles on the surface, and that it appears to foam; for it is a mark that matter is fermenting and boiling. This fermentation is very long and you must have great patience, because it is done by our secret fire, which is the only agent that can open, sublimate and putrefy. » [ The Key to the Hermetic Cabinet. Mss. of the 18th century. Anon., slnd]

But, of all these descriptions, those relating to the Raven (or black color) of the coction are by far the most numerous and the most detailed, because they include all the characteristics of the other operations.

Bernard Trévisan expresses himself this way:

“Note, then, that when our compost begins to be watered with our permanent water, then all the compost has turned like molten pitch, and is all blackened like charcoal. And in this place is called our compost: black pitch, burnt salt, molten lead, unclean brass, Magnesia and John's Blackbird. For then was seen a black cloud, flying through the middle region of the ship, in a beautiful and beautiful manner, to be lifted above the ship; and at the bottom of iceluy is the matter melted like pitch, and remains totally dissolved. Of which nuë speaks Jacques du bourg S. Saturnin, saying: O benoiste nuë who flies away by our ship! There is the eclipse of the sun, of which Raymond speaks. [The author, under this first name alone, hears of Raymod Lully (Doctor Illuminatus).] And when this mass is thus blackened, then it is said to be dead and deprived of its form… Then the humidity is manifested in the color of black and stinking quick silver, which was first dry, white, very fragrant, ardent, purified of sulfur by the first operation, and now to be purified by this second operation. And for this, this body is deprived of its soul, which it has lost, and of its splendor and marvelous lucidity which it had first, and is now black and ugly… This mass thus black or blackened is the key, the beginning and the sign of the perfect invention of the way of working of the second regime of our precious stone. [The name Key is given to any radical (i.e. irreducible) alchemical dissolution, and this term is sometimes extended to menstruation or solvents capable of effecting it.] Why, says Hermès, veuë la noirceur, believe that you have been on the right path and kept on the right path. » [Bernard Trevisan, The Forsaken Word . Paris, Jean Sara, 1618, p. 39.]

Batsdorff, presumed author of a classic work, which others attribute to Gaston de Claves, teaches that putrefaction is declared when darkness appears, and that this is the sign of regular work conforming to nature. He adds: “The Philosophers have given it various names and have called it West, Darkness, Eclypse, Leprosy, Raven's Test, Death, Mortification of Mercury… It therefore appears that by this putrefaction one makes the separation of the pure and the impure. Now, the signs of a good and true putrefaction are a very black or very deep blackness, a stinking, bad and foul odor, called toxicum et venenum of the Philosophers, which odor is not sensitive to the sense of smell, but only to the understanding. » [ The Net of Ariadne . Paris, Houry, 1695, p. 99.]

Let us stop here with these quotations, which we could multiply without further profit for the student, and return to the hermetic figures of Our Lady.

The second bas-relief offers us the effigy of the philosophical Mercury: a coiled serpent on the goldenrod. Abraham the Jew, also known as Eleazar, used it in the book that fell to Flamel – which is not surprising, since we encounter this symbol throughout the medieval period (pl. VII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Philosophical Mercury
Plate VII


The serpent indicates the incisive and dissolving nature of Mercury, which eagerly absorbs metallic sulfur and retains it so strongly that the cohesion cannot be subsequently overcome. This is that "poisonous worm which infects everything with its venom", of which the Ancient War of the Knights speaks . [Republished by Limojon de Saint-Didier, in the Hermetic Triumph or the Victorious Philosopher's Stone. Amsterdam, Weitsten, 1699, and Desbordes, 1710.] This reptile is the type of Mercury in its first state, and the goldenrod, the corporeal sulfur added to it. The dissolution of sulphur, or, in other words, its absorption by mercury, has furnished the pretext for very diverse emblems; but the resulting body, homogeneous and perfectly prepared, retains the name of philosophical Mercury and the image of the caduceus. It is matter or compound of the first order, the vitriolated egg which only requires gradual cooking to be transformed first into red sulphur, then into Elixir, then, in the third period, into Universal Medicine. “In our Work, say the Philosophers, Mercury alone suffices. »

A woman, with long hair moving like flames, comes next. Personifying Calcination, she presses to her breast the disc of the Salamander “who lives in the fire and feeds on the fire” (pl. VIII). This fabulous lizard designates nothing other than the central, incombustible and fixed salt, which retains its nature even in the ashes of calcined metals, and which the Ancients called Metallic Seed. In the violence of the igneous action, the adustible portions of the body are destroyed; only the pure, unalterable parts resist and, although very fixed, can be extracted by leaching.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Salamander - Calcination
Plate VIII


Such is, at least, the spagyric expression of calcination, a similarity used by the Authors to serve as an example of the general idea that one must have of hermetic work. However, our masters in the Art are careful to draw the reader's attention to the fundamental difference existing between vulgar calcination, such as it is carried out in chemical laboratories, and that which the Initiate operates in the cabinet of philosophers. This is not done by any vulgar fire, does not require the help of the lamppost, but requires the aid of an occult agent, of a secret fire, which, to give an idea of ​​its form, resembles more water than a flame. This fire, or this ardent water, is the vital spark communicated by the Creator to inert matter; it is the spirit enclosed in things, the igneous, imperishable ray, enclosed in the depths of obscure substance, formless and frigid. We touch here on the highest secret of the Work; and we would be happy to cut this Gordian knot in favor of the aspirants to our Science, – remembering, alas! that we ourselves were stopped by this difficulty for more than twenty years, - if we were allowed to profane a mystery whose revelation depends on the Father of Lights. To our great regret, we can only point out the pitfall and advise, with the most eminent philosophers, the careful reading of Artephius [ – if we were allowed to profane a mystery whose revelation depends on the Father of Lights. To our great regret, we can only point out the pitfall and advise, with the most eminent philosophers, the careful reading of Artephius [ – if we were allowed to profane a mystery whose revelation depends on the Father of Lights. To our great regret, we can only point out the pitfall and advise, with the most eminent philosophers, the careful reading of Artephius [The Secret Book of Artephius , in Three Treatises of Natural Philosophy . Paris, Marette, 1612.], de Pontanus [Pontanus, De Lapide Philosphico . Francofurti, 1614.] and the small work entitled: Epistola de Igne Philosophorum [Manuscript of the National Library, 19969.]. One will find there precious indications on the nature and the characteristics of this aqueous fire or this igneous water, teachings which one will be able to supplement by the two following texts.

The anonymous author of the Precepts of Father Abraham says: "We must draw this primitive and celestial water from the body where it is, and which is expressed by seven letters according to us, signifying the first seed of all beings, and not specified nor determined in the house of Aries to engender his son. It is to this water that the Philosophers have given so many names, and it is the universal solvent, the life and health of all things. The Philosophers say that it is in this water that the sun and the moon bathe, and that they resolve themselves into water, their first origin. It is by this resolution that it is said that they die, but their spirits are carried on the waters of this sea where they were buried. because I knew it by experience and as our Elders transmitted it to us. »

Limojon de Saint-Didier writes in the same way: “… The secret fire of the Sages is a fire which the artist prepares according to the Art, or at least which he can have prepared by those who have a perfect knowledge of chemistry. This fire is not actually hot, but it is an igneous spirit introduced into a subject of the same nature as the Stone; and, being moderately excited by the external fire, calcines it, dissolves it, sublimes it, and resolves it into dry water, as the Cosmopolitan says. »

Moreover, we shall soon discover other figures relating either to the manufacture or to the qualities of this secret fire enclosed in water, which constitutes the universal solvent. However, the material used to prepare it is precisely the subject of the fourth motif: a man exposes the image of Aries and holds, in the dexter, an object which it is unfortunately impossible to determine today (pl. IX). Is it a mineral, a fragment of an attribute, a utensil or even some piece of fabric? We do not know. Time and vandalism have passed by. However, Aries remains, and man, hieroglyph of the male metallic principle, presents its figure. This helps us to understand the words of Pernety: “The Adepts say that they draw their steel from the belly of Ariès, and they also call this steel their magnet. »




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCHE
Preparation of the Universal Solvent
Plate IX


The Evolution succeeds and shows the oriflamme to the three pennons, triplicity of the Colors of the Work, which one finds described in all the classical works (pl. X).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Evolution
of Colors and Regimes of the Great Work
Plate X


These colors, three in number, develop according to the invariable order which goes from black to red passing through white. But, like nature, as the old saying goes, – Natura non fecit saltus, – does nothing abruptly, there are many other intermediaries that appear between these three main ones. The artist pays little attention to them because they are superficial and fleeting. They only bear witness to the continuity and progression of internal changes. As for the essential colors, they last longer than these transitory nuances and deeply affect the matter itself, by marking a change of state in its chemical constitution. These are not fugitive tints, more or less brilliant, which play on the surface of the bath, but rather colorings in the mass which are translated outside and absorb all the others. It was good, we believe, to clarify this important point.

These colored phases, specific to coction in the practice of the Great Work, have always served as a symbolic prototype; to each of them was attributed a precise meaning, and often enough extended, to express under their veil certain concrete truths. Thus there has always existed a language of colors, intimately linked to religion, as Portal says, and which reappears in the Middle Ages in the stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals. [Frédéric Portal, Symbolic Colors . Paris, Treuttel and Würtz, 1857, p. 2.]

The color black was given to Saturn, which became, in spagyrics, the hieroglyph of lead, in astrology an evil planet, in hermetics the black dragon or Lead of the Philosophers, in magic the black Hen, etc. In the temples of Egypt, when the recipient was about to pass the initiation tests, a priest approached him and whispered in his ear this mysterious sentence: “Remember that Osiris is a black god! It is the symbolic color of Cimmerian Darkness and Shadows, that of Satan, to whom black roses were offered, and also that of primitive Chaos, where the seeds of all things are confused and mixed; it is the sand of the heraldic coat of arms and the emblem of the earth element, of night and of death.

Just as day, in Genesis, follows night, so light follows darkness. Its signature is white. Having reached this degree, the Sages ensure that their matter is freed from all impurity, perfectly washed and very precisely purified. It then appears as solid granules or shiny corpuscles, with adamantine reflections and dazzling whiteness. Also, white has been applied to purity, simplicity, innocence. The white color is that of the Initiates, because the man who abandons darkness to follow the light passes from the profane state to that of Initiate, of pure. He is, spiritually, renewed. “This term of White, says Pierre Dujols, had been chosen for very deep philosophical reasons. The color white, – most languages ​​attest to this, – has always designated nobility, candor, purity. Following the famous Hebrew and Chaldean Dictionary-Manual from Genesius, hur, heur, means to be white; hurim, heurim, designates the nobles, the whites, the pure. This transcription of more or less variable Hebrew (hur, heur, hurim, heurim) leads us to the word happy. The blessed, - those who have been regenerated and washed clean by the blood of the Lamb, - are always represented with white robes. Everyone knows that blessed is still the equivalent, the synonym of Initiate, of noble, of pure. Now, the Initiates were in white. The nobles dressed the same. In Egypt, the Manes were also dressed in white. Phtah, the Regenerator, was likewise sheathed in white, to indicate the new birth of the Pure or White. The Cathars, a sect to which the Whites of Florence belonged, were the Pure (from the Greek Καθαρός). In Latin, in German, in English, the words Weiss, White, mean white, happy, witty, wise. On the other hand, in Hebrew, schher characterizes a black color of transition, that is to say the profane seeking initiation. “The black Osiris, which appears at the beginning of the Funeral Ritual, says Portal, represents this state of the soul which passes from night to day, from death to life. »

As for red, symbol of fire, it marks exaltation, the predominance of spirit over matter, sovereignty, power and apostolate. Obtained in the form of crystal or red powder, volatile and fusible, the philosopher's stone becomes penetrating and capable of curing lepers, that is to say of transmuting into gold the vulgar metals that their oxidizability renders inferior, imperfect, "sick or infirm".

Paracelsus, in the Book of Images, speaks thus of the successive colorings of the Work: “Although there are, he says, some elementary colors – because the azure color belongs more particularly to earth, green to water, yellow to air, red to fire – however, the colors white and black relate directly to spagyric art, in which we also find the four primitive colors, namely black, white, yellow and red. . Now, black is the root and the origin of the other colors; for all black matter can be reverberated for the time necessary for it, so that the three other colors will appear successively and each in turn. The color white follows black, yellow follows white and red follows yellow. Gold, all matter arrived at the fourth color by means of reverberation is the tincture of things of its kind, that is to say of its nature. »

To give some idea of ​​the extension taken by the symbolism of the colors – and especially of the three major ones of the Work – let us note that the Virgin is always represented draped in blue (corresponding to black, as we will say later), God in white and Christ in red. These are the national colors of the French flag, which, moreover, was composed by the scribble mason Louis David. In this, dark blue or black represents the bourgeoisie; the white is reserved for the people, the pierrots or peasants, and the red for the baillie or royalty. In Chaldea, the Ziguras, which were usually three-storey towers, and to the category of which the famous Tower of Babel belonged, are covered with three colors: black, white and red-purple.

We have hitherto spoken of colors as a theoretician, and, as the Masters have done before us, in order to obey philosophical doctrine and traditional expression. Perhaps it would be appropriate now to write, in favor of the Sons of Science, rather as a practitioner than as a speculative, and thus discover what differentiates similarity from reality.

Few Philosophers have dared to venture on this slippery slope. Ettilla [Cf. The Denarius of the Poor or the Perfection of Metals . Paris (around 1785), p. 58.], pointing out to us a hermetic painting [This painting would have been painted around the middle of the 17th century.] that he would have had in his possession, we have preserved some legends placed below; among these, we read, not without surprise, this advice worthy of being followed: Don't rely too much on color. – What does that mean? Did the old authors deliberately deceive their readers? And what indication should the disciples of Hermes substitute for the failing colors to recognize and follow the straight path?

Seek, brothers, without being discouraged, because here as in other obscure points you must make a great effort. You are not without having read, in several places in your works, that the Philosophers only speak clearly when they want to exclude the profane from their Round Table. The descriptions they give of their diets, to which they attribute emblematic colorations, are perfectly clear. Now, you must conclude that these observations so well described are false and chimerical. Your books are closed, like that of the Apocalypse, by cabalistic seals. You have to break them one by one. The task is hard, we recognize it, but to conquer without danger one triumphs without glory.

So learn, not how one color differs from another, but rather how one diet differs from the next. First of all, what is a diet? – Quite simply the way to vegetate, maintain and increase the life that your stone received from birth. So it's a modus operandi, which does not necessarily result in a succession of various colors. “Whoever knows the Regime, writes Philalethes, will be honored by the princes and great men of the earth. And the same author adds: "We are hiding nothing from you but the Regime." Now, in order not to draw upon our heads the curse of the Philosophers, by revealing what they thought they should leave in the dark, we will content ourselves with warning that the Diet of the Stone, that is to say its coction, contains several others, hear several repetitions of the same way of operating. Reflect, use analogy and, above all, never stray from natural simplicity. Think that you must eat every day in order to maintain your vitality; that rest is essential to you because it promotes, on the one hand, the digestion and assimilation of food, and on the other hand, the renewal of cells worn down by daily work. Moreover, do you not have to frequently expel certain heterogeneous products, waste or non-assimilable residues?

Likewise, your stone needs food to increase its power, and this food must be graduated or even changed at certain times. First give milk; the meat diet, more substantial, will come next. And do not omit, after each digestion, to separate the excrements, because your stone could be infected with it… So follow nature and obey her as faithfully as possible. And you will understand how to perform the coction when you have acquired perfect knowledge of the Regime. Thus, you will better understand the apostrophe that Tollius addresses to prompters, slaves of the letter. "Go, and retire now, you who seek with extreme diligence your various colors in your vessels of glass. You who tire my ears with your black raven, you are as mad as that man of antiquity who used to applaud at the theater, although he was there alone, because he always imagined that he had some new spectacle before his eyes. So do you when, shedding tears of joy, you imagine yourself seeing in your vessels your white dove, your yellow eagle, and your red pheasant! Go, I tell you, and withdraw far from me, if you seek the philosopher's stone in a fixed thing; for it will not penetrate metallic bodies any more than the body of a man would penetrate the most solid walls… you imagine seeing in your vessels your white dove, your yellow eagle, and your red pheasant! Go, I tell you, and withdraw far from me, if you seek the philosopher's stone in a fixed thing; for it will not penetrate metallic bodies any more than the body of a man would penetrate the most solid walls… you imagine seeing in your vessels your white dove, your yellow eagle, and your red pheasant! Go, I tell you, and withdraw far from me, if you seek the philosopher's stone in a fixed thing; for it will not penetrate metallic bodies any more than the body of a man would penetrate the most solid walls…

“This is what I had to tell you about colors, so that in future you quit your useless work; to which I will add a word concerning the smell.

“Earth is black, Water is white; the air, the closer it approaches the Sun, the more yellow it becomes; the aether is quite red. Death likewise, as it is said, is black, life is full of light; the purer the light, the closer it approaches to the angelic nature, and angels are pure fiery spirits. Now, isn't the smell of a dead person or a corpse annoying and unpleasant to the sense of smell? Thus, the stinking odor, among the Philosophers, denotes fixation; on the contrary, the pleasant smell marks volatility, because it approaches life and warmth. » [J. Tollius, The Way to the Chemical Heaven . Transl. from the Manuductio ad Coelum Chemicum . Amstelaedami, Janss. Waesbergios, 1688.]

Returning to the base of Notre-Dame, we will find, in sixth place, the Philosophy, whose disc bears the imprint of a cross. This is the expression of the quaternary of the elements and the manifesto of the two metallic principles, sun and moon, – the latter, hammered, – or sulfur and mercury, parents of stone, according to Hermes (pl. XI).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The four Elements
and the two Natures
Plate XI


IV (Paris)

The motifs adorning the right side are harder to read; blackened and corroded, they owe their deterioration above all to the orientation of this part of the porch. Swept by the westerly winds, seven centuries of gusts have crumbled them to the point of reducing some of them to the state of foamy and blurred silhouettes.

On the seventh bas-relief of this series, - the first on the right, - we will notice a longitudinal section of the Athanor and the internal apparatus intended to support the philosophical egg; in the right hand, the character holds a stone (pl. XII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Athanor and the Stone
Plate XII


It is a griffin that we see inscribed in the following circle. The mythological monster whose head and chest are those of the eagle, and which borrows the rest of the body from the lion, initiates the investigator into the contrary qualities which must necessarily be brought together in philosophical matter (pl. XIII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
Conjunction of Sulfur and Mercury
Plate XIII


We find in this image the hieroglyph of the first conjunction, which takes place only little by little, as the painful and tedious work that the Philosophers have called their eagles. The series of operations, the whole of which results in the intimate union of sulfur and mercury, also bears the name of Sublimation. It is by the reiteration of the Eagles or philosophical Sublimations that the exalted mercury strips itself of its gross and earthly parts, of its superfluous humidity, and seizes a portion of the fixed body, which it dissolves, absorbs and assimilates. To make the eagle fly, according to the hermetic expression, is to bring out the light from the tomb and bring it to the surface, which is the characteristic of all true sublimation. This is what the fable of Theseus and Ariadne teaches us. In this case, Theseus is θεσ-ειος, the organized, manifested light which separates from Ariadne, the spider which is at the center of its web, the pebble, the empty shell, the cocoon, the remains of the butterfly (Psyche). “Know, my brother, writes Philalethes, that the exact preparation of the Flying Eagles is the first degree of perfection, and to know it requires an industrious and skilful genius… To achieve this, we have sweated and worked a lot; we even spent sleepless nights. So, you who are just beginning, be convinced that you will not succeed in the first operation without a great deal of work... that the exact preparation of the Flying Eagles is the first degree of perfection, and to know it requires an industrious and skilful genius… To achieve this, we have sweated and worked a lot; we even spent sleepless nights. So, you who are just beginning, be convinced that you will not succeed in the first operation without a great deal of work... that the exact preparation of the Flying Eagles is the first degree of perfection, and to know it requires an industrious and skilful genius… To achieve this, we have sweated and worked a lot; we even spent sleepless nights. So, you who are just beginning, be convinced that you will not succeed in the first operation without a great deal of work...

“Understand then, my brother, what the Sages say, noting that they lead their eagles to devour the lion; and the fewer eagles employed, the more severe the combat and the greater the difficulty in gaining victory. But to perfect our Work, we need no less than seven eagles, and we should even use up to nine. And our philosophical Mercury is the bird of Hermes, to which we also give the name of Goose or Swan, and sometimes that of Faysan. [Lenglet-Dufresnoy, History of Hermetic Philosophy . – The Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King, t. II, p. 35. Paris, Coustelier, 1742.]

It is these sublimations that Callimachus describes, in the Hymn to Delos (v. 250, 255), when he says, speaking of swans:

… εχυχλωσαντο λιποντες
Εβδοµαχις περι ∆ηλον…
Ογδοον ουχ ετ αεισαν, ο δ'εχθορεν.

“(The Swans) circled around Delos seven times…and they had not yet sung the eighth time, when Apollo was born. »

It is a variant of the procession that Joshua made seven times around Jericho, the walls of which fell before the eighth turn (Joshua, c. VI, 15).

In order to mark the violence of the combat which precedes our conjunction, the Sages symbolized the two natures by the Eagle and the Lion, of equal power, but of opposite complexion. The lion translates the terrestrial and fixed force, while the eagle expresses the aerial and volatile force. Placed face to face, the two champions attack each other, repel each other, tear each other apart with energy until finally the eagle having lost its wings, and the lion its leader, the antagonists no longer form a single body, of average quality and homogeneous substance, the animated Mercury.

In the already distant time when, students of the sublime Science, we bent over the mystery filled with heavy enigmas, we remember having seen the construction of a beautiful building whose decoration, reflecting our hermetic preoccupations, never failed to surprise us. Above the front door, two young children, boy and girl, entwined, part and lift a veil that covered them. Their busts emerge from a heap of flowers, leaves and fruits. On the corner crowning, a high bas-relief dominates; it offers the symbolic combat of the eagle and the lion, of which we have just spoken, and one can easily guess that the architect had some difficulty in accommodating the cumbersome emblem, imposed by an intransigent and superior will...

[This building, built of freestone and six storeys high, is located in the 17th arrondissement, at the corner of boulevard Péreire and rue de Monbel. Similarly, at Tousson, near Malesherbe (Seine-et-Oise), an old 18th century house, with a fairly large air, bears on its facade, engraved in characters of the time, the following inscription, whose layout and spelling we respect:

By a plowman
I was built.
without interest and with a zealous gift,
he named me PIERRE BELLE.
1762.

(Alchemy still bore the name of Celestial Agriculture, and its Adepts that of Tillers.)

The ninth subject allows us to further penetrate the manufacturing secret of the Universal Solvent. A woman there designates – allegorically – the materials necessary for the construction of the hermetic vessel; it raises a wooden board, having some appearance of the stave of a barrel, the essence of which is revealed to us by the branch of oak which bears the escutcheon. We find here the mysterious source, sculpted on the buttress of the porch, but the gesture of our character betrays the spirituality of this substance, of this fire of nature without which nothing can grow or vegetate here below (pl. XIV). It is this spirit, spread over the surface of the globe, that the subtle and ingenious artist must capture as it materializes. We will further add that it is necessary for a particular body serving as a receptacle, of an attractive earth where he can find a principle capable of receiving and "corporifying" him. “The root of our bodies is in the air, say the Sages, and their leaders in the ground. This is the magnet locked in the belly of Ariès, which must be taken at the moment of his birth, with as much address as skill.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCHE
The Materials needed to
prepare the Solvent
Plate XIV


“The water we use, writes the anonymous author of La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique, is water that contains all the virtues of heaven and earth; this is why it is the general Solvent of all Nature; it is she who opens the doors of our hermetic and royal cabinet; in it are contained our King and our Queen, so it is their bath… It is the Trevisan Fountain where the King strips off his purple coat to dress in a black coat… It is true that this water is difficult to obtain; this is what makes the Cosmopolitan say, in his Enigma, that it was rare on the island… This author marks it for us more particularly with these words: it is not similar to the water of the cloud, but it has all the appearance of it. In another place, he describes it to us under the name of steel and magnet, because it is truly a magnet which attracts to itself all the influences of the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars, to communicate them to the earth. He says that this steel is found in Aries, which still marks the beginning of Spring, when the sun crosses the sign of Aries… Flamel gives us a fairly accurate picture of it, in the Figures of Abraham the Jew ; he depicts an old hollow oak [Vide supra, p. 96.], from which issues a fountain, and with the same water a gardener waters the plants and flowers of a flowerbed. The old oak, which is hollow, marks the barrel which is made of oak wood, in which it is necessary to corrupt the water which it reserves to water the plants, and which is much better than raw water... Now, this is the place to discover one of the great secrets of this Art, which the Philosophers have hidden, without which vessel you will not be able to carry out this putrefaction and purification of our elements, just as one would not know how to make wine without it boiled in the barrel. Now, as the barrel is made of oak wood, so the vessel must be of old oak wood, turned in a circle inside, like a half-globe, whose edges are very thick in square; otherwise, a barrel, another like it to cover it. Almost all the Philosophers have spoken of this ship absolutely necessary for this operation. Philalethes describes it by the fable of the snake Python, which Cadmus pierced furthermore against an oak tree. There is a figure in the Book of Twelve Keys [Cf. The Twelve Keys to Philosophy by Brother Basil Valentin . Paris, Moët, 1659, key 12 Grand-Œuvre (Republished by Éditions de Minuit (1956)).] which represents this same operation and the vessel where it takes place, from which a great smoke comes out, which marks the fermentation and boiling of this water; and this smoke ends at a window, where we see the sky, where the sun and the moon are depicted, which mark the origin of this water and the virtues it contains. It is our mercury vinegar that descends from heaven to earth and rises from earth to heaven. »

We have given this text because it can be useful, on the condition, however, that we know how to read it with caution and understand it wisely. This is the case to repeat again the maxim dear to the Adepts: the spirit vivifies, but the letter kills.

We are now faced with a very complex symbol, that of the Lion. Complex, because we cannot, faced with the current nudity of the stone, content ourselves with a single explanation. The Sages added various qualifiers to the lion, either to express the aspect of the substances they were working with, or to designate a special and preponderant quality. In the emblem of the Griffin (eighth motif), we have seen that the Lion, king of terrestrial animals, represented the fixed, basic part of a compound, a fixity which lost, in contact with adverse volatility, the best part of itself, that which characterized its form, that is to say, in hieroglyphic language, the head. This time we have to study the animal alone, and we do not know what color it was originally coated. In general, Leo is the sign of gold, both alchemical and natural; it therefore translates the physico-chemical properties of these bodies. But the texts give the same name to the receptive matter of the universal Spirit, of the secret fire in the elaboration of the solvent. In these two cases, it is always an interpretation of power, incorruptibility, perfection, as is sufficiently indicated, moreover, by the valiant with the high sword, the knight covered with the hauberk of mail, who represents him (pl. XV).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCHE
The Fixed Body
Plate XV


The first magnetic agent used to prepare the solvent - which some have called Alkaest - is called Green Lion, not so much because it has a green color, as because it has not acquired the mineral characteristics which chemically distinguish the adult state from the nascent state. It is a green and acerbic fruit, compared to the red and ripe fruit. It is the metallic youth, on which Evolution has not worked, but which contains the latent germ of a real energy, called later to develop. It is arsenic and lead with respect to silver and gold. It is the present imperfection from which will come the greatest future perfection; the rudiment of our embryo, the embryo of our stone, the stone of our Elixir. Some Adepts, Basile Valentin is one of those, have named him Green Vitriol, to reveal his warm nature, fiery and saline; others, Emerald of the Philosophers, May Dew, Saturnian Grass, Vegetal Stone, etc. "Our water takes the names of the leaves of all trees, trees themselves, and everything that takes on a green color, in order to deceive the foolish", says Maître Arnaud de Villeneuve.

As for the Red Lion, it is nothing else, according to the Philosophers, than the same matter, or Green Lion, brought by certain processes to that special quality which characterizes the hermetic gold or Red Lion. This is what induced Basil Valentine to give this advice: "Dissolve and nourish the true Lion with the blood of the Green Lion, for the fixed blood of the Red Lion is made of the volatile blood of the green, whereby they are both of the same nature. »

Of these interpretations, which is the true one? – This is a question that we admit we cannot answer. The symbolic lion was, no doubt, painted or gilded. A few traces of cinnabar, malachite or metal would immediately get us out of trouble. But nothing remains, only the corroded, grayish and rough limestone. The stone lion keeps his secret!

The extraction of red and incombustible Sulfur is manifested by the figure of a monster resembling both a rooster and a fox. It is the same symbol that Basil Valentine used in the third of his Twelve Keys. “It is this superb cloak with the Salt of the Stars, says the Adept, who follows this celestial sulphur, carefully guarded lest it spoil, and makes them fly like a bird, as long as it is necessary, and the cock will eat the fox, and will drown and suffocate in the water, then, coming back to life by the fire, will be (in order to play each in turn) devoured by the fox” (pl. XVI).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
Union of the Fixed and the Volatile
Plate XVI


The fox-rooster is succeeded by the Bull (pl. XVII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Philosophical Sulfur
Plate XVII


Considered as a zodiac sign, it is the second month of the preparatory operations in the first work, and the first regime of elementary fire in the second. As a figure of practice, the bull and the ox being consecrated to the sun, just as the cow is to the moon, it represents Sulphur, the male principle, since the sun is said metaphorically, by Hermes, the Father of the stone. The bull and the cow, the sun and the moon, sulfur and mercury are therefore hieroglyphs of identical meaning and designate the contrary primitive natures, before their conjunction, natures that Art extracts from imperfect mixtures.


V (Paris)

Of the twelve medallions adorning the lower row of the base, ten will hold our attention; two subjects have, in fact, suffered from mutilations too profound for it to be possible to reestablish their meaning. We will therefore pass, with regret, in front of the shapeless remains of the fifth medallion (left side) and the eleventh (right side).

Near the buttress which separates the central porch from the north portal, the first motif shows us a disarmed horseman clinging to the mane of a fiery horse (pl. XVIII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Cohobation
Plate XVIII


This allegory relates to the extraction of the fixed, central and pure parts, by the volatile or ethereal in the philosophical Dissolution. It is properly the rectification of the spirit obtained and the cohobation of this spirit on grave matter. The courier, symbol of speed and lightness, marks the spiritual substance; its rider indicates the weightiness of the coarse metallic body. At each cohobation, the horse throws down its rider, the volatile leaves the fixed; but the squire immediately resumes his rights, and this as long as the animal, exhausted, defeated and submissive, agrees to carry this obstinate burden and can no longer extricate himself from it. The absorption of the fixed by the volatile takes place slowly and with difficulty. To succeed in this, one must use a lot of patience and perseverance and often repeat the affusion of water on the earth, of mind over body. And it is only by this technique – long and tedious indeed – that one succeeds in extracting the occult salt from the Red Lion with the help of the spirit of the Green Lion. The courier of Notre-Dame is the same as the winged Pegasus of the fable (root πηγη, source). Like him, he throws his riders to the ground, whether they are called Perseus or Bellerophon. It is he again who transports Perseus, through the air, to the Hesperides, and makes spring, with a kick, the Hippocrene fountain, on Mount Helicon, which was, it is said, discovered by Cadmos. The courier of Notre-Dame is the same as the winged Pegasus of the fable (root πηγη, source). Like him, he throws his riders to the ground, whether they are called Perseus or Bellerophon. It is he again who transports Perseus, through the air, to the Hesperides, and makes spring, with a kick, the Hippocrene fountain, on Mount Helicon, which was, it is said, discovered by Cadmus. The courier of Notre-Dame is the same as the winged Pegasus of the fable (root πηγη, source). Like him, he throws his riders to the ground, whether they are called Perseus or Bellerophon. It is he again who transports Perseus, through the air, to the Hesperides, and makes spring, with a kick, the Hippocrene fountain, on Mount Helicon, which was, it is said, discovered by Cadmus.

In the second medallion, the Initiator presents us with a mirror with one hand, while with the other he raises the horn of Amalthea; beside it is the Tree of Life (pl. XIX). The mirror symbolizes the beginning of the work, the Tree of Life marks the end, and the cornucopia the result.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCHE
Origin and result of the Stone
Plate XIX


Alchemically, the raw material, the one that the artist must choose to begin the Work, is called Mirror of Art. “Commonly among the Philosophers, says Moras de Respour, it is understood by the Mirror of Art, because it is mainly through it that we learned the composition of the metals in the veins of the earth… Also it is said that the only indication of nature can instruct us. » [De Respour, Rare Experiments on the Mineral Spirit. Paris, Langlois and Barbin, 1668.] This is also what the Cosmopolite teaches, when, speaking of Sulphur, he says: “In his kingdom, there is a mirror in which we see everyone. Whoever looks into this mirror can see and learn the three parts of the Wisdom of everyone, and in this way he will become very knowledgeable in these three kingdoms, as were Aristotle, Avicenna and many others, who, as well as their predecessors, saw in this mirror how the world was created. » [ New Chemical Light. Treatise on Sulphur , p. 78. Paris, d'Houry, 1649.] Basile Valentin, in his Testamentum, writes in the same way: "The whole body of Vitriol must only be recognized for a Mirror of philosophical Science... It is a Mirror where we see our Mercury, our Sun and Moon shine and appear, by which we can show in an instant, and prove to the incredulous Thomas the blindness of his crass ignorance. » Pernety, in his Mytho-Hermetic Dictionary, did not mention this term, either because he did not know it, or because he deliberately omitted it. This subject, so vulgar and despised, later becomes the Tree of Life, Elixir or Philosopher's Stone, a masterpiece of nature aided by human industry, the pure and rich alchemical jewel. An absolute metallic synthesis, it assures the lucky owner of this treasure of the triple prerogative of knowledge, fortune and health. It is the cornucopia, an inexhaustible source of the material bliss of our earthly world. Finally, remember that the mirror is the attribute of Truth, Prudence and Science among all Greek poets and mythologists.

Here is now the allegory of the weight of nature: the alchemist removes the veil that enveloped the balance (pl. XX).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Knowledge of Weights
Plate XX


Not all philosophers have been verbose about the secret of weights. Basile Valentin contented himself with saying that it was necessary to "gait a white swan to the double igneous man", which would correspond to the Sigillum Sapientum of Huginus at Barma, where the artist holds a balance, one pan of which drags the other according to the apparent ratio of two to one. The Cosmopolitan, in his Treatise on Salt , is even less precise: “The weight of water, he says, must be plural, and that of white or red leafy earth must be singular. » The author of the Basilian Aphorisms, or Hermetic Canons of Spirit and Soul, writes in canon XVI: “We begin our hermetic work by the conjunction of the three principles prepared in a certain proportion, which consists of the weight of the body, which must equal the spirit and the soul almost by its half. » [Printed following both Medicinal and Chemical Works, of the RP of Castaigne. Paris, de la Nove, 1681.] If Raymond Lully and Philalèthe spoke about it, many preferred to be silent; some have claimed that nature alone distributed quantities according to a mysterious harmony unknown to Art. These contradictions hardly stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, we know that philosophical mercury results from the absorption of a certain part of sulfur by a determined quantity of mercury; it is therefore essential to know exactly the reciprocal proportions of the components, if one operates by the old way. We need not add that these proportions are enveloped in similarities and covered with obscurity, even in the most sincere authors. But we must remark, on the other hand, that it is possible to substitute common gold for metallic sulphur; in this case, the excess solvent can always be separated by distillation, the weight is reduced to a simple appreciation of consistency. The balance, it is seen, constitutes a precious index for the determination of the old way, from which gold seems to have to be excluded. We hear of vulgar gold which has suffered neither exaltation nor transfusion, operations which, by modifying its properties and physical characteristics, render it fit for work.

A particular and little used dissolution is expressed to us by one of the cartridges that we are studying. It is that of vulgar quicksilver, in order to obtain from it the common mercury of the Philosophers, which they call "our" mercury, to differentiate it from the fluid metal from which it comes. Although one can frequently come across quite extensive descriptions on this subject, we will not hide the fact that such an operation seems hazardous, if not sophistical, to us. In the minds of the authors who have spoken of it, ordinary mercury, stripped of all impurity and perfectly exalted, would take on an igneous quality which it does not possess, and would be capable of becoming solvent in its turn. A queen, seated on a throne, kicks down the valet who, cup in hand, comes to offer her services (pl. XXI).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Queen strikes down the Mercury
Servus Fugitivus
Plate XXI


We must therefore see in this technique, assuming that it can provide the expected solvent, only a modification of the old way, and not a special practice, since the agent always remains the same. Now, we do not see what advantage one could derive from a solution of mercury obtained by means of the philosophical solvent, this being the major and secret agent par excellence. Yet this is what Sabine Stuart de Chevalier claims. “To have the philosophical mercury, writes this author, it is necessary to dissolve the vulgar mercury without diminishing any of its weight, because all its substance must be converted into philosophical water. The Philosophers know a natural fire which penetrates to the heart of mercury and which extinguishes it internally; they also know a solvent which converts it into pure and natural Argentine water; it does not contain and must not contain any corrosive. As soon as mercury is freed from its bonds, and overcome by heat, it assumes the form of water, and this same water is the most precious thing in the world. It takes very little time to make common mercury assume this form. [Sabine Stuart de Chevalier, Philosophical Discourse on the Three Principles, or the Key to the Philosophical Sanctuary . Paris, Quillau, 1781.] We will be forgiven for not being of the same opinion, having good reasons, based on experience, to believe that common mercury, devoid of its own agent, could become useful water for the Work. The servus fugitivus we need is a mineral and metallic water, solid, brittle, having the appearance of a stone and very easy to liquefy. It is this water coagulated in the form of a stony mass which is the Alkaest and the Universal Solvent. If the Philosophers should be read - as Philalethes advises - with a grain of salt, the whole saltcellar should be used in the study of Stuart de Chevalier.

An old man shivering with cold, and bent under the arch of the next medallion, leans, weary and weak, on a block of stone; a kind of sleeve wraps around his left hand (pl. XXII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Regime of Saturn
Plate XXII


It is easy to recognize here the first phase of the second Work, when the hermetic Rebis, enclosed in the center of the Athanor, suffers the dislocation of its parts and tends to mortify itself. It is the beginning, active and gentle, of the fire of the wheel symbolized by the cold and by winter, an embryonic period when the seeds, enclosed within the philosopher's earth, undergo the fermentative influence of humidity. It is the reign of Saturn which is about to appear, emblem of radical dissolution, of decomposition and of the color black. “I am old, weak and ill,” Basile Valentin makes him say; for this cause I am shut up in a pit… Fire torments me greatly, and death breaks my flesh and my bones. “A certain Demetrius, a traveler quoted by Plutarch – the Greeks have surpassed everything, even in the Gasconade – seriously relates that, in one of the islands he visited on the coast of England, Saturn finds himself imprisoned there and buried in a deep sleep. The giant Briarée (Égéon) is the jailer of his prison. And here is how, with the help of hermetic fables, famous authors have written history!

The sixth medallion is only a fragmentary repetition of the second. The Adept finds himself there, hands joined, in the attitude of prayer, and seems to address thanksgiving to Nature, represented in the guise of a female bust reflected in a mirror. We recognize here the hieroglyph of the subject of the Sages, a mirror in which "one sees all nature uncovered" (pl. XXIII).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Subject of the Sages
Plate XXIII


To the right of the porch, the seventh medallion shows us an old man ready to cross the threshold of the mysterious Palace. He has just torn down the awning which concealed the entrance from profane eyes. This is the first step accomplished in practice, the discovery of the agent capable of bringing about the reduction of the fixed body, of reincorporating it, according to the accepted expression, into a form analogous to that of its prime substance (pl. XXIV).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Entrance to the Sanctuary
Plate XXIV


The alchemists allude to this operation when they speak of reanimating corporifications, that is, making dead metals alive. It is the Entrance to the closed Palace of the King, of Philalethes, the first door of Ripley and Basil Valentine, which one must know how to open. The old man is none other than our Mercury, a secret agent whose nature, mode of action, materials and preparation time have been revealed to us by several bas-reliefs. As for the Palace, it represents living or philosophical gold, base gold, despised by the ignorant, and hidden under rags which hide it from view, although it is very precious to those who know its value. We must see in this motif a variant of the allegory of the green and red Lions, of the solvent and of the body to be dissolved. Indeed, the old man, whom the texts identify with Saturn, - who, it is said, devoured his children, - was formerly painted in green, while the visible interior of the Palace offered a purple coloring. We will say later to which source we can refer to restore, thanks to the original coloring, the meaning of all these figures. It should also be noted that the hieroglyph of Saturn, seen as a solvent, is very old. On a sarcophagus of the Louvre, having contained the mummy of a hierogrammatic priest of Thebes, named Poéris, one can observe on the left side the god Sôou, supporting the sky by the help of the god Chnouphis (the soul of the world), while at their feet is the god Sèr (Saturn), lying, and whose flesh is of green color.

The following circle allows us to witness the meeting of the old man and the crowned king, of the solvent and the body, of the volatile principle and the fixed, incombustible and pure metallic salt. The allegory is very close to the parabolic text of Bernard Trévisan, where the "old and old priest" shows himself so well informed of the properties of the occult fountain, of its action on the "king of the country" whom it loves, attracts and swallows up. In this way, and during the animation of mercury, the gold or king is dissolved little by little and without violence; it is not the same in the second where, contrary to ordinary amalgamation, the hermetic mercury seems to attack the metal with a characteristic vigor which bears a resemblance to chemical effervescence. The sages have said in this connection that in the Conjunction there arose violent storms, great storms, and that the waves of their sea presented the spectacle of a "bitter fight". Some have represented this reaction by the excessive struggle of dissimilar animals: eagle and lion (Nicolas Flamel); rooster and fox (Basil Valentine), etc. But, in our opinion, the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is the one left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the terrible duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. and that the waves of their sea offered the spectacle of a "sour combat." Some have represented this reaction by the excessive struggle of dissimilar animals: eagle and lion (Nicolas Flamel); rooster and fox (Basil Valentine), etc. But, in our opinion, the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is the one left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the terrible duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. and that the waves of their sea offered the spectacle of a "sour combat." Some have represented this reaction by the excessive struggle of dissimilar animals: eagle and lion (Nicolas Flamel); rooster and fox (Basil Valentine), etc. But, in our opinion, the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is the one left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the terrible duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. Some have represented this reaction by the excessive struggle of dissimilar animals: eagle and lion (Nicolas Flamel); rooster and fox (Basil Valentine), etc. But, in our opinion, the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is the one left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the terrible duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. Some have represented this reaction by the excessive struggle of dissimilar animals: eagle and lion (Nicolas Flamel); rooster and fox (Basil Valentine), etc. But, in our opinion, the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is the one left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the terrible duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is that left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the appalling duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. the prettiest description – especially the most initiatory – is that left to us by the great philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac of the appalling duel that the Rémore and the Salamandre fought under his eyes. Others, and these are the most numerous, drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth. drew the elements of their figures from the primary and traditional genesis of Creation; those have described the formation of the philosophical compound by likening it to that of earthly chaos, resulting from the upheavals and reactions of fire and water, air and earth.

To be more human and more familiar, the style of Notre-Dame is neither less noble nor less expressive. The two natures are represented there by aggressive and quarrelsome children who, in coming to blows, do not spare their blows. At the height of the fight, one of them drops a pot, the other a stone (pl. XXV).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
CENTRAL PORCH
The Dissolution
Combat of the Two Natures
Plate XXV


It is hardly possible to write with more clarity or simplicity the action of pontine water on grave matter, and this medallion does great honor to the master who designed it.

In this series of subjects with which we will end the description of the figures of the great porch, it clearly appears that the leading idea had as its objective the grouping of the variable points in the practice of the Solution. It alone suffices, in fact, to identify the path followed. The dissolution of alchemical gold by the Dissolvent Alkaest characterizes the first way; that of common gold by our mercury indicates the second. By this one realizes the animated mercury.

Finally, a second solution, that of Sulphur, red or white, by philosophical water, is the subject of the twelfth and last bas-relief. A warrior drops his sword and stops, bewildered, in front of a tree at the foot of which a ram appears; the tree bears three enormous fruits in balls, and one sees emerging from its branches the silhouette of a bird. We find here the solar tree described by the Cosmopolitan in the Parable of the Treatise on Nature, a tree from which water must be extracted. As for the warrior, he represents the artist who has just accomplished the work of Hercules which is our preparation. The ram testifies that he knew how to choose the favorable season and the proper substance; the bird specifies the volatile nature of the compound "more celestial than terrestrial". From now on, it will only have to imitate Saturn, which, says the Cosmopolitan, “draw ten parts of this water, and immediately took the fruit of the solar tree and put it in this water… For this water is the Water of Life, which has power to improve the fruit of this tree, so that henceforth there will be no need to plant or bury it; because it will be able, by its very smell, to make all the other six trees of the same nature as it is”. Moreover, this image is a replica of the famous expedition of the Argonauts; we see Jason with the ram with the golden fleece and the tree with the precious fruits of the Garden of the Hesperides. make all the other six trees of the same nature as she is”. Moreover, this image is a replica of the famous expedition of the Argonauts; we see Jason with the ram with the golden fleece and the tree with the precious fruits of the Garden of the Hesperides. make all the other six trees of the same nature as she is”. Moreover, this image is a replica of the famous expedition of the Argonauts; we see Jason with the ram with the golden fleece and the tree with the precious fruits of the Garden of the Hesperides.

During this study, we had the opportunity to regret, and the deterioration of stupid iconoclasts, and the complete disappearance of the polychrome coating that our admirable cathedral once possessed. There remains to us no bibliographical document capable of helping the investigator and of remedying, even in part, the outrage of the centuries. However, it is not necessary to peruse old parchments, nor to leaf through old prints in vain: Notre-Dame itself retains the original coloring of the figures in its large porch.

Guillaume de Paris, whose insight we must bless, knew how to foresee the considerable damage that time would do to his work. As a wise master, he carefully reproduced the motifs of the medallions on the stained glass windows of the central rose window. The glass thus completes the stone and, thanks to the help of fragile matter, esotericism regains its primitive purity.

We will discover there the intelligence of the doubtful points of the statuary. The stained-glass window, for example, in the allegory of Cohobation (first medallion), shows us, not an ordinary horseman, but a prince crowned in gold, in a white jacket and red stockings; of the two fighting children, one is green, the other purple-grey; the queen slaying the Mercury wears a white crown, green shirt and purple cloak. We will even be surprised to find certain images that have disappeared from the facade, witness this craftsman, seated at a red table and extracting large pieces of gold from a bag; this woman, with a green bodice and dressed in a scarlet blouse, smoothing her hair in front of a mirror; those Geminis, of the lower zodiac, one of which is ruby ​​and the other emerald, etc.

In its harmony, in its unity, what a profound subject for meditation the ancestral Hermetic Idea offers us! Petrified on the facade, vitrified in the enormous orb of the rose, it passes from silence to revelation, from gravity to enthusiasm, from inertia to living expression. Rough, material and cold under the raw light from outside, it emerges from the crystal in colored beams and penetrates under the naves, vibrant, warm, diaphanous and pure as Truth itself.

And the mind cannot defend itself from some disturbance in the presence of this other antithesis, even more paradoxical: the torch of alchemical thought illuminating the temple of Christian thought!


VI (Paris)

Let's leave the large porch and come to the north portal or the Virgin.

In the center of the tympanum, on the median cornice, look at the sarcophagus, accessory to an episode in the life of Christ; you will see seven circles there: these are the symbols of the seven planetary metals (pl. XXVI):

The sun marks gold, quick silver Mercury;
What Saturn is to lead, Venus is to brass;
The Moon of silver, Jupiter of tin,
And Mars of iron are the figure.

[ The Intelligence Cabal . Mss. from the library. de l'Arsenal, S. and A. 72, p. 15.]




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN
Planetary Metals
Plate XXVI


The central circle is decorated in a particular way, while the six others are repeated two by two – which never occurs in the purely decorative motifs of ogival art. Moreover, this symmetry extends from the center towards the extremities, as the Cosmopolite teaches. “Look at the sky and the spheres of the planets, says this author, you see that Saturn is the highest of all, followed by Jupiter, then Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and finally the Moon. Consider now that the virtues of the planets do not rise, but that they descend; even experience teaches us that Mars is easily converted into Venus, and not Venus into Mars, as the lowest of a sphere. Thus Jupiter is easily transmuted into Mercury, because Jupiter is higher than Mercury; that one is the second after the firmament, celuy-cy the second above the earth; and the highest Saturn, the lowest Moon; the Sun mixes with all, but is never improved by the lower ones. Now you will note that there is a great correspondence between Saturn and the Moon, in the middle of which is the Sun, as if between Mercury and Jupiter, Mars and Venus, all of which have the Sun in the middle. » [New Chemical Light. Treatise on Mercury , chap. IX, p. 41. Paris, Jean d'Houry, 1649.]

The concordance of mutation of the metallic planets between them is therefore indicated, on the porch of Notre-Dame, in the most formal way. The central motif symbolizes the Sun; the rosettes at the ends indicate Saturn and the Moon; then come respectively Jupiter and Mercury; finally, on each side of the Sun, Mars and Venus.

But there is better. If we analyze this bizarre line which seems to connect the circumferences of the roses, we will see it formed by a succession of four crosses and three crooks, one of which has a single spiral and the other two have a double volute. Note, in passing, that if it were still a question here of an ornamental will, it would necessarily require six or eight attributes, always in order to preserve a perfect symmetry; this is not the case, and what completes the proof that the symbolic meaning is wanted is that a space, that on the left, remains free.

The four crosses, as in spagyric notation, represent the imperfect metals; the double spiral butts, the two perfect, and the simple butt, the mercury, half-metal or semi-perfect.
But if, leaving the tympanum, we lower our gaze towards the left part of the base, divided into five niches, we will notice between the extrados of each arcade some curious figurines.

Behold, going from the outside towards the right foot, the dog and the two doves (pl. XXVII), which we meet described in the animation of the exalted mercury; this dog of Corascene, of which Artephius and Philalethes speak, which one must know how to separate from the compost in the state of black powder, and these Doves of Diana, another despairing enigma, under which the spiritualization and sublimation of the philosopher's mercury are hidden.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN
The Dog and the Doves
Plate XXVII


The lamb, emblem of the sweetening of the arsenical principle of Matter; the turned man, which best translates the alchemical apothegm solve et coagula, which teaches to carry out the elementary conversion by volatilizing the fixed and fixing the volatile (pl. XXVIII):

If the fix you know how to dissolve
And the dissolved make it fly,
Then the steering wheel fix in powder,
You have something to console yourself with.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN
"Solve and Coagula"
Plate XXVIII


It is in this part of the porch that the major hieroglyph of our practice was once carved: the Raven.

Main figure of the hermetic coat of arms, the crow of Notre-Dame had, at all times, exerted a very strong attraction on the peat of the blowers; it is that an old legend designated it as the only mark of a sacred deposit. It is said, in fact, that Guillaume de Paris, "who, says Victor Hugo, was undoubtedly damned for having attached such an infernal frontispiece to the holy poem that the rest of the building sings eternally", would have hidden the philosopher's stone in one of the pillars of the immense nave. And the exact point of this mysterious cubicle was precisely determined by the visual angle of the crow...

Thus, according to legend, the symbolic bird once stared, from outside, at the unknown place of the secret pillar where the treasure would be sealed.

On the external face of the pillars without impost which support the lintel and the birth of the voussoirs, the signs of the zodiac are represented. We meet first, and from bottom to top, Aries, then Taurus, and, above, Gemini. These are the spring months indicating the start of labor and the time for operations.

We will no doubt be objected that the zodiac may not have an occult significance and simply represent the area of ​​the constellations. It is possible. But, in this case, we would have to rediscover the astronomical order, the cosmic succession of zodiacal figures which our Ancients were not unaware of. However, Gemini is succeeded by Leo, who usurps the place of Cancer, rejected on the opposite pillar. The image maker therefore wanted to indicate, by this skilful transposition, the conjunction of the philosophical ferment, – or Leo, – with the mercurial compound, a union which must be accomplished towards the end of the fourth month of the first Work.

One still notices, under this porch, a small quadrangular bas-relief really curious. It synthesizes and expresses the condensation of the Universal Spirit, which forms, immediately materialized, the famous Bath of the Stars where the chemical sun and moon must bathe, change nature and rejuvenate. We see a child falling from a crucible, the size of a jar, held by an archangel standing, haloed, his wing extended, and who seems to strike the innocent. The whole background of the composition is taken up by a starry night sky (pl. XXIX). We recognize in this subject the very simplified allegory, dear to Nicolas Flamel, of the Massacre of the Innocents, which we will soon see on a stained glass window in the Sainte-Chapelle.




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN
The Bath of the Stars
Condensation of the Universal Spirit
Plate XXIX


Without going into detail on the operative technique – which no Author has dared to do – we will nevertheless say that the Universal Spirit, embodied in minerals under the alchemical name of Sulphur, constitutes the principle and the effective agent of all metallic tinctures. But one can only obtain this Spirit, this red blood of children by breaking down what nature had first assembled in them. It is therefore necessary that the body perish, that it be crucified and that it die if one extracts the soul, metallic life and celestial Dew, which it held locked up. And this quintessence, transfused into a pure, fixed, perfectly digested body, will give birth to a new creature, more resplendent than any of those from which it comes. The bodies have no action on each other; the mind alone is active and active.

This is why the Sages, knowing that the mineral blood they needed to animate the fixed and inert body of gold was only a condensation of the universal Spirit, soul of all things; that this condensation in the humid form, capable of penetrating and rendering the sublunary mixtures vegetative, was only accomplished at night, under cover of darkness, a pure sky and calm air; that finally the season during which it manifested its activity with the most activity and abundance corresponded to the terrestrial spring, the Sages, for these combined reasons, gave it the name of May Dew. Also, Thomas Corneille does not surprise us when he asserts that the Grand Masters of the Rose-Croix were called Brothers of the Rosée-Cuite, meaning that they themselves gave to the initials of their order: FRC [Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , art. Rose-Cross . Paris, Coignart, 1731.]

We would like to be able to say more about this subject of extreme importance and show how the Dew of May (Maïa was mother of Hermes), – invigorating humidity of the month of Mary, the Virgin mother, – is easily extracted from a particular body, abject and despised, whose characteristics we have already described, if there were not impassable limits… We are touching the highest secret of the Work and wish to keep our oath. This is the Verbum demissum of Trévisan, the lost Word of the medieval Freemasons, that which all the Hermetic Fraternities hoped to find, and which made this research the goal of their work and the raison d'être of their existence.

[Among the most famous centers of initiation of this kind, we will cite the orders of the Illuminated, of the Knights of the Black Eagle, of the Two Eagles, of the Apocalypse; the Initiated Brothers of Asia, Palestine, the Zodiac; the Societies of the Black Brothers, the Elus Coëns, the Mopses, the Seven Swords, the Invisibles, the Princes of Death; the Knights of the Swan, instituted by Elijah, the Knights of the Dog and the Rooster, the Knights of the Round Table, of the Genet, of the Thistle, of the Bath, of the Dead Beast, of the Amaranth, etc.]

Post tenebras lux . Let's not forget that. Light comes out of darkness; it is diffused in the darkness, in the dark, as the day is in the night. It was from the obscure Chaos that the light was extracted and its radiations assembled, and if, on the day of Creation, the divine Spirit moved on the waters of the Abyss, – Spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquas, – this invisible spirit could not at first be distinguished from the watery mass and was confounded with it .

Finally, remember that God used six days to perfect his Great Work; that the light was separated on the first day and that the following days were determined, like ours, by regular and alternating intervals of darkness and light:

At midnight, a Virgin mother,
Produces this luminous star;
In this miraculous moment
We call God our brother.


VII (Paris)

Let's retrace our steps and stop at the south portal, also called the porch of Sainte-Anne. It offers us only one motif, but its interest is considerable, because it describes the shortest practice of our Science and deserves to be, in this respect, ranked in the first rank of lapidary paradigms.

"Look," says Grillot de Givry, "sculpted on the right portal of Notre-Dame de Paris, the bishop perched on the aludel where the philosopher's mercury is sublime, chained in limbo. He teaches you where the sacred fire comes from; and the chapter leaving, by a secular tradition, this door closed all the year, indicates to you that it is here the not vulgar way, unknown with the crowd, and reserved for the small number of the elected officials of Sapience. [Grillot de Givry, The Great Work . Paris, Chacornac, 1907, p. 27.]

[At Saint Peter's in Rome, the same door, named Holy or Jubilee Door, is gilded and walled up; the pope opens it with hammer blows every twenty-five years, that is four years per century.]

Few alchemists agree to admit the possibility of two paths, one short and easy, called the dry path, the other longer and more thankless, called the wet path. This may be due to the fact that many authors deal exclusively with the longest process, either because they ignore the other, or because they prefer to remain silent rather than teach its principles. Pernety refuses to believe in this duplicity of means, while Huginus at Barma asserts, on the contrary, that the old masters, the Gebers, the Lullies, the Paracelses, each had their own process.

Chemically, nothing prevents a method, using the wet process, from being replaced by another using dry reactions to achieve the same result. Hermetically, the emblem that concerns us is proof of this. We find a second in the 18th century Encyclopedia , where it is asserted that the Great Work can be accomplished by two ways, one called the wet way, longer but more in honor, and the other, or the dry way, much less appreciated. In it, it is necessary to “cook the celestial Salt, which is the mercury of the Philosophers, with an earthly metallic body, in a crucible and over an open fire, for four days”.

In the second part of a work attributed to Basile Valentin, but which would rather be the work of Senior Zadith, the author seems to be considering the dry way, when he writes that, "to achieve this Art, neither great work nor pain is required, and the costs are small, the instruments of little value. Because this Art can be learned in less than twelve hours, and the space of eight days brought to perfection, when there is in itself its own principle”. [ Azoth, or Means of Making the Hidden Gold of the Philosophers . Paris, Pierre Moet, 1659, p. 140.]

Philalethes, in chapter XIX of the Introitus , says, after speaking of the long way, which he assures boring and clean only for wealthy people: “But, by our way, it does not take more than a week; God has reserved this rare and easy way for the despised poor and his despicable saints. Moreover, in his Remarks on this chapter, Lenglet-Dufresnoy thinks that “this way is made by the philosophical double mercury. In this way, he adds, the Work is accomplished in eight days, instead of nearly eighteen months for the first way.

This abbreviated way, but covered with a thick veil, was named by the Sages the Diet of Saturn. The firing of the Work, instead of requiring the use of a glass vase, requires only the help of a simple crucible. “I will confuse your body in an earthen vase where I will bury it,” writes a famous author, who says even further: “Make a fire in your glass, that is to say in the earth which keeps it enclosed. This brief method, of which we have liberally instructed you, seems to me the shortest way and the true philosophical sublimation to arrive at the perfection of this serious labor. » [Salomon Trismosin, The Golden Toyson. Paris, Ch. Sevestre, 1612, p. 72 and 110.] This is how one could explain this fundamental maxim of Science: a single vessel, a single material, a single furnace.

Cyliani, in the Preface of his book, relates the two processes in these terms:

“I think I warn here never to forget that you only need two materials of the same origin, one volatile, the other fixed; that there are two ways, the dry way and the wet way. I am the latter, preferably, out of duty, although the former is very familiar to me: it is made with a single material. [Cyliani, Hermès unveiled . Paris, F. Locquin, 1832.]

Henri de Linthaut also brings a testimony favorable to the dry way when he writes: "This secret here surpasses all the secrets of the world, because you could in a short time, without great care or work, achieve a great projection, of which see Isaac Hollandois who speaks amply about it. » [H. by Lintaut, L'Aurore . Mss. bible. de l'Arsenal, SAF 169, n° 3020.] Our author, unfortunately, is not more prolific than his colleagues.

“When I think,” writes Henckel [J.-F. Henckel, Treatise on Appropriation. Paris, Thomas Herissant, 1760, p. 375, § 416.], that the artist Elias, quoted by Helvetius, claims that the preparation of the philosopher's stone begins and ends in four days' time, and that he has indeed shown this stone still adherent to the shards of the crucible, it seems to me that it would not be so absurd to question whether what the alchymists call great months would not be so many days, which would be a space of very limited time; and if there would not be a method in which the whole operation consists only in keeping the materials for a long time in the greatest degree of fluidity, which would be obtained by a violent fire, maintained by the action of the bellows; but this method cannot be carried out in all laboratories, and perhaps even everyone would not find it practicable. »

The hermetic emblem of Notre-Dame, which had already, in the seventeenth century, fixed the attention of the sagacious de Laborde, occupies the trumeau of the porch, from the stylobate to the architrave, and is there carved by detail on the three sides of the engaged pillar. [De Laborde, Explanations of the Enigma found at a pillar of the Church of Notre-Dame in Paris . Paris, 1636.] It is a high and noble statue of Saint Marcel, with a mitred head, surmounted by a canopy with turrets and devoid, in our opinion, of any secret meaning. The bishop stands on a finely excavated oblong dice, decorated with four small columns and an admirable Byzantine dragon, all supported by a plinth bordered by a frieze and connected to the base by a molding with an inverted heel. Dice and base alone have a real hermetic value (pl. XXX).




NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
SAINT-ANNE
PORTAL SAINT MARCEL PILLAR
(CLUNY MUSEUM)
The Philosophical Mercury and the Great Work
Plate XXX


Unfortunately this pillar, so magnificently decorated, is almost new: barely twelve chandeliers separate us from its restoration, because it has been redone and... modified.

We do not have to discuss here the advisability of such repairs, and do not claim to support that it is necessary to let grow, without care, the leprosy of time on a splendid body; however, and as a philosopher, we can only regret the carelessness that restorers affect with ogival creations. If it was necessary to replace the blackened bishop and rebuild his ruined base, the thing was easy; it was enough to copy the model, to transcribe it faithfully. That it contained a hidden meaning mattered little: servile imitation would have preserved it. We wanted to do even better and, if we stuck to the lines of the holy bishop and the pretty dragon, on the other hand we ornamented the base with scrolls and Romanesque interlacing, instead of the bezants and the flowers that used to be seen there.

This second edition, revised, corrected and enlarged, is certainly richer than the first, but the symbol is truncated, the science mutilated, the key lost, the esotericism extinguished. Time corrodes, wears out, disintegrates, crumbles limestone; the sharpness suffers, but the meaning remains. The restorer, the healer of stones appears; with a few chisel strokes he amputates, trims, obliterates, transforms, transforms an authentic ruin into an artificial and brilliant archaism, wounds and heals, cuts off and overloads, prunes and counterfeits in the name of Art, Form or Symmetry, without the slightest concern for creative thought. Thanks to this modern prosthesis, our venerable ladies will always be young!

Alas! by touching the envelope one has let the soul exhale.

Disciples of Hermes, go to the cathedral recognize the place and order of the new pillar, and then take the path followed by the original. Cross the Seine, enter the Cluny museum and you will have the satisfaction of finding it there, near the access staircase to the frigidarium of the Thermes de Julien. This is where the beautiful fragment ran aground.

[The itinerary is no longer valid, since, for some six years, the symbolic pillar, the object of such justified veneration, has returned to Notre-Dame, not far from the place which was its place for more than five hundred years. Indeed, we will find it, in a room, with a high ceiling and a cross of lowered warheads, of the north tower, which will, sooner or later, be arranged as a museum and has, to the south, its replica, on the same level and on the other side of the platform of the great organ.

For the time being, curiosity, whatever its nature, is no longer so easily satisfied, which, nevertheless, will push the visitor to the new refuge of initiatory sculpture. Alas! a surprise awaits him there, which will immediately sadden him and which resides in the infinitely regrettable amputation of almost the entire body of the dragon, now reduced to its front part still provided with its two legs.

The monstrous beast, with the grace of a large lizard, embraced the athanor, leaving there in the flames the little triple-crowned king, who is the son of his violent works on the adulterous dead. Only the face of the mineral child is apparent, undergoing the “igneous washes” of which Nicolas Flamel speaks. He is here swaddled and tied up, according to the medieval fashion, as we still find him under the porcelain figure of the very small "bather" who is included in the cake of the day of the feast of the Kings. (Conf. Alchimie , op. cit., p. 89.)]

This enigma of the alchemical work, solved in an exact way, - at least in part, - by François Cambriel, earned him to be quoted by Champfleury in his Eccentrics , and by Tcherpakoff in his Literary Fools . Will we be given the same honor?

On the cubic base you will notice, on the right side, two bezants in relief, massive and circular; these are the materials or metallic natures – subject and solvent – ​​with which one must begin the Work. On the main face, these substances, modified by the preliminary operations, are no longer represented in the form of discs, but as rosettes with welded petals. It is appropriate, in passing, to admire without reserve the skill with which the artist knew how to translate the transformation of the occult products, released from the external accidents and the heterogeneous materials which coated them in the mine. On the left side, the bezants, which have become rosettes, this time take the form of decorative flowers with fused petals, but with a visible calyx. Although well gnawed and almost obliterated, it is however easy to find the trace of the central disc there. They always represent the same subjects having acquired other qualities; the chalice graph indicates that the metallic roots have been opened and are ready to manifest their seminal principle. Such is the esoteric translation of the small motifs on the base. The dice will provide us with the additional explanation.

The materials prepared and united into a single compound must undergo the sublimation or final igneous purification. In this operation, the combustible parts are destroyed, the earthy matters lose their cohesion and disintegrate, while the pure, incombustible principles rise in a form very different from that affected by the compound. This is the Salt of the Philosophers, the King crowned with glory, who takes birth in the fire and must rejoice in the subsequent marriage, in order, says Hermes, that occult things may become manifest. Rex ab igne veniet, ac conjugio gaudebit et occulta patebunt. Of this king, the die shows only the leader, emerging from the purifying flames. It would not be certain, at the present time, that the forehead band engraved on the human head belongs to a crown; one might as well discern there, according to the volume and the aspect of the skull, a sort of bascinet or berruier. But we have, fortunately, the text of Esprit Gobineau de Montluisant, whose book was written "on Wednesday 20 May 1640, the eve of the glorious Ascension of Our Savior Jesus Christ", and which teaches us positively that the king wears a triple crown. [ Very curious explanation of the Riddles and Hieroglyphic Figures, Physics, which are on the main portal of the Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of Notre-Dame de Paris. ]

After the elevation of the pure and colored principles of the philosophical compound, the residue is then ready to furnish the mercurial salt, volatile and fusible, to which the old authors have often given the epithet of Babylonian Dragon.

The artist who created the emblematic monster has produced a true masterpiece, and although mutilated – the left pennage is broken – it is nonetheless a remarkable piece of statuary. The fabulous animal emerges from the flames and its tail seems to come out of the human being whose head it surrounds, as it were. Then, in a twisting movement that arches it on the arch, it hugs the athanor with its powerful claws.

If we examine the ornamentation of the thimble, we will notice grouped grooves, slightly hollow, with a curvilinear top and a flat base. Those on the left wall are accompanied by a flower with four exposed petals, expressing universal matter, quaternary of the first elements, according to Aristotle's doctrine widespread in the Middle Ages. Directly below, the duo of natures that the alchemist works on and whose union provides the Saturn of the Sages, an anagrammatic designation of natures. In the between-columns of the face, four grooves, decreasing, according to the obliqueness of the flamed ramp, symbolize the quaternary of the secondary elements; finally, on each side of the athanor, and under the very claws of the dragon, the five units of the quintessence, comprising the three principles and the two natures,

L.-P. François Cambriel claims that the multiplication of Sulphur, – white or red, – is not indicated in the studied hieroglyph; we would not dare to pronounce ourselves so categorically. [L.-P. François Cambriel, Course of Hermetic Philosophy or Alchemy in nineteen lessons . Paris, Lacour and Maistrasse, 1843.] Multiplication, in fact, can only be achieved with the help of mercury, which plays the role of patient in the Work, and by successive coctions or fixations. It is therefore on the dragon, image of mercury, that we should look for the representative symbol of the nutrition and the progression of the Sulfur or the Elixir. However, if the author had taken more care in examining the decorative details, he would certainly have noticed:

1° A longitudinal band starting from the head and following the line of the vertebrae to the end of the tail;

2. Two similar bands, placed obliquely, one on each wing;

3° Two wider bands, transverse, encircling the tail of the dragon, the first at the level of the pennage, the other above the head of the king. All these bands are adorned with solid circles touching at one point on their circumference.

As for their significance, it will be furnished to us by the circles of the caudal bands: the center is very clearly indicated on each of them. Now, the hermetists know that the king of metals is represented by the solar sign, that is to say a circumference with or without a central point. It therefore seems likely to us to think that, if the dragon is covered in profusion with the auric symbol – he wears it even on the claws of his right paw – it is because he is capable of transmuting in quantity; but it can acquire this power only by a series of subsequent firings with Sulfur or philosophical Gold, which constitutes the multiplications.

Such is, as clearly exposed as possible, the esoteric meaning that we thought we recognized on the pretty pillar of the Sainte-Anne gate. Others, more erudite or more knowledgeable, will perhaps give a better interpretation, because we do not claim to impose on anyone the thesis developed here. Suffice it to say that it agrees in general with that of Cambriel. But, on the other hand, we do not share the opinion of this author, who wanted to extend, without proof, the symbolism of the dice to the statue itself.

Certainly, it is always painful to have to reproach a manifest error, and more distressing still to raise certain affirmations to destroy them altogether. We must, however, however regretful we may be. The science we study is as positive, as real, as exact as optics, geometry or mechanics; its results as tangible as those of chemistry. If enthusiasm, intimate faith are stimulants, precious auxiliaries; if they enter in part into the conduct and orientation of our research, we must however avoid deviations from them, subordinate them to logic, to reasoning, subject them to the criterion of experience. Let us remember that these are the trickery of greedy prompters, the foolish practices of charlatans, the nonsense of ignorant and unscrupulous writers who have discredited hermetic truth. We must see correctly and speak well. Not a word that is not weighed, not a thought that has not been sifted through judgment and reflection. Alchemy demands to be purified; let us extricate it from the stains with which its very partisans have sometimes soiled it: it will emerge more robust and healthier, without losing any of its charm or its mysterious attraction.

François Cambriel, on the thirty-third page of his book, expresses himself thus: "From this mercury, there results the Life represented by the bishop who is above the said dragon... This bishop puts a finger to his mouth, to say to those who see him and who come to learn about what he represents... shut up, say nothing about it!..."

The text is accompanied by an engraved plate, a very bad drawing, - which is not much, - but notoriously faked, - which is serious. Saint Marcel holds a crosier there, short as a gatekeeper's flag; the head is topped with a miter with cruciform decoration, and, a superb anachronism, Prudence's pupil is bearded! Interesting detail: in the face drawing, the dragon has its mouth in profile and gnaws the foot of the poor bishop who seems, moreover, to care very little about it. Calm and smiling, he applies his index finger to close his lips in a gesture of commanded silence. (pl. XXXa)




Cambriel's Lectures in Hermetic Philosophy
Plate XXXa
(Added LAT)


The control is easy, since we have the original work, and the trickery bursts with the first glance. Our saint is, according to medieval custom, absolutely hairless; his miter, very simple, offers no ornamentation; the stick which he supports with his left hand, is applied by its lower extremity to the mouth of the dragon. As for the famous gesture of the characters of Mutus Liber and Harpocrates, it sprang entirely from the excessive imagination of Cambriel. Saint Marcel is represented blessing, in an attitude full of nobility, the inclined forehead, the folded forearm, the hand at the level of the shoulder, the index and the middle finger raised. (pl.XXXb)




SAINT-MARCEL PILLAR
Plate XXXb
(Added LAT)


It is hard to believe that two observers could have been the playthings of the same illusion. Does this fantasy come from the artist or was it imposed by the text? The description and the graph have such agreement between them that one will allow us to grant little credence to the qualities of observation manifested in this other fragment by the same author.

“Passing one day in front of the Notre-Dame de Paris church, I examined with great attention the beautiful sculptures with which the three doors are adorned, and I saw at one of these three doors a hieroglyph of the most beautiful, of which I had never noticed, and for several days in a row I went to consult it to be able to give the detail of all that it represented, at which I succeeded. By what follows, the reader will be convinced of this, and better still by transporting himself to the scene. »

This, in truth, lacks neither boldness nor impudence. If the reader of Cambriel accepts his invitation, he will find on the trumeau of the Porte Sainte-Anne only the legendary exotericism of Saint Marcel. He will see there the bishop killing the dragon by touching it with his crosier, as the tradition relates. That it symbolizes, moreover, the life of matter is a personal opinion which the author is free to express; but that he in fact realizes the tacere of Zoroaster, that is not and never was.

Such pranks are regrettable and unworthy of a sincere, upright and upright mind.


VIII (Paris)

Built by the medieval Frimasons to ensure the transmission of Hermetic symbols and doctrine, our great cathedrals exercised, from their appearance, a marked influence on a number of more modest specimens of civil or religious architecture.

Flamel took pleasure in covering with emblems and hieroglyphics the constructions which he erected on all sides. Abbé Villain informs us that the small portal of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, which the Adept commissioned in 1389, was covered with figures. “On the western jamb of the portal,” he says, “we see a little sculptured angel holding a circle of stone in his hands; Flamel had had a circle of black marble enclosed in it with a fine gold thread in the shape of a cross…” [Abbé Villain, Histoire critique de Nicolas Flamel. Paris, Desprez, 1761.] The poor also owed two houses to his generosity, which he had built for them in the rue du Cimetière-de-Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, the first in 1407, the other in 1410. These buildings presented, says Salomon, "a quantity of figures engraved in the stones, with a Gothic N and F on each side". The chapel of the Saint-Gervais hospital, rebuilt at his expense, was in no way inferior to the other foundations. “The facade and the portal of the new chapel, writes Albert Poisson, were covered with figures and legends in the ordinary manner of Flamel. » [Albert Poisson, History of Alchemy. Nicholas Flamel. Paris, Chacornac, 1893.] The portal of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents, located rue de la Tixeranderie, retained its interesting symbolism until the middle of the 18th century; at this time, the church was converted into a house and the ornaments of the facade destroyed. Flamel erected two more decorative arcades at the charnel house of the Innocents, one in 1389, the second in 1407. Poisson tells us that one saw on the first, among other hieroglyphic plaques, an escutcheon which the Adept "seems to have imitated from another attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas". The famous occultist adds that it appears at the end of Lagneau's Harmonie Chymique. Here is his description of it:

“The crest is divided into four by a cross; this one wears in the middle a crown of thorns containing in its center a bleeding heart from which rises a reed. In one of the quarters, we see IEVE in Hebrew characters, in the middle of a crowd of luminous rays, below a black cloud; in the second quarter, a crown; in the third, the earth is laden with an ample harvest, and the fourth is occupied by orbs of fire. »

This relationship, consistent with Lagneau's engraving, allows us to conclude that he had his image copied from the arcade of the mass grave. There is nothing impossible here, since, out of four plates, there remained three in the time of Gohorry – that is to say around 1572 – and the Harmonie Chymique appeared with Claude Morel in 1601. However, it would have been preferable to use the standard crest, quite different from that of Flamel and much less obscure . It still existed at the time of the Revolution, on a glass roof illuminating the chapel of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, in the convent of the Jacobins. The church of the Dominicans – who lived there and had settled there around the year 1217 – owed its foundation to Louis IX. It was located rue Saint-Jacques and placed under the name of Saint-Jacques le Majeur. The Curiosites of Paris , published in 1716 by Saugrain the Elder, add that next to the church were the schools of the Angelic Doctor.

The escutcheon, said to be of Saint Thomas Aquinas, was very exactly drawn and painted in 1787, and according to the stained-glass window itself, by a hermetist named Chaudet. It is this drawing that allows us to describe it (pl. XXXI).




SYMBOLIC ESCUTCHEON
(13th century)
Plate XXXI


The French shield, quartered, holds by its head to a rounded segment which dominates it. This additional piece shows an overturned matrass of gold, surrounded by a crown of thorns vert on a field of sand. The gold cross bears three azure globes in point, dexter and sinister arm, with a heart gules with a branch vert in the center. On this heart, silver tears falling from the matrass gather and settle. To the canton of the dexter chief, bipartisan of gold with three stars of purple, and of azure with the seven rays of gold, is opposite in sinister point a land of sand with ears of gold on a tanned field. In the canton of the sinistral chief, a violet cloud on a field of silver, and three arrows of the same, pinnate of gold, dart towards the abyss. In dexter point, three serpents argent on field vert.

This beautiful emblem is all the more important for us as it reveals the secrets relating to the extraction of mercury and its conjunction with sulphur, obscure points of the practice on which all the authors have preferred to keep a religious silence.

The Sainte-Chapelle, Pierre de Montereau's masterpiece, a marvelous stone shrine erected from 1245 to 1248 to receive the relics of the Passion, also presented a very remarkable alchemical ensemble. Even today, if we deeply regret the restoration of the primitive portal, where the Parisians of 1830 could admire with Victor Hugo "two angels, one of which has his hand in a vase, and the other in a cloud", we have, despite everything, the joy of possessing intact the southern windows of the splendid building. It seems difficult to find elsewhere a more considerable collection, on the formulas of alchemical esotericism, than that of the Sainte-Chapelle. To undertake, sheet by sheet, the description of such a forest of glass, would be an enormous task, capable of furnishing the substance of several volumes. We will therefore limit ourselves to offering a specimen taken from the fifth bay, first mullion, and which relates to the Massacre of the Innocents, the meaning of which we have given above (pl. XXXII). We cannot recommend enough to amateurs of our old science, as well as to those curious about the occult, the study of the symbolic stained glass windows of the upper chapel; they will find plenty to glean there, as well as those of the great rose, an incomparable creation of color and harmony.




SAINTE-CHAPELLE DE PARIS
VERRIERE SOUTH
The Massacre of the Innocents
Plate XXXII



AMIENS

Like Paris, Amiens offers us a remarkable set of hermetic bas-reliefs. The singular fact, and which should be noted, is that the central porch of Notre-Dame d'Amiens - porch of the Savior - is an almost faithful reproduction, not only of the motifs that adorn the portal of Paris, but also of the succession that they affect there. Only slight details differentiate them; in Paris, the characters hold discs, here they are crowns; the mercury emblem is presented by a woman in Amiens, while it is presented by a man in Paris. On both buildings, same symbols, same attributes, similar movements and costumes. There is no doubt that the hermetic work of Guillaume le Parisien had a real influence on the decoration of the great porch of Amiens.

Moreover, the Picardy masterpiece, magnificent among all, remains one of the purest documents that the Middle Ages have bequeathed to us. Its conservation, moreover, allowed the restorers to respect most of the subjects; also, the admirable temple due to the genius of Robert de Luzarches, Thomas and Renault de Cormont, remains today in its original splendor.

Among the allegories specific to the style of Amiens, we will cite in the first place the ingenious translation of the fire of the wheel. The philosopher, seated and leaning on his right knee, seems to be meditating or watching (pl. XXXIII).




CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS
PORTAL OF THE SAVIOR
The Wheel Fire
Plate XXXIII


This four-leaf, very characteristic from our point of view, has however received from some authors an entirely different interpretation. Jourdain and Duval, Ruskin ( The Bible of Amiens ), the Abbé Roze and, after them, Georges Durand, discovered its meaning in the prophecy of Ezekiel, who, says G. Durand, “saw four winged animals, like Saint John later, then wheels one inside the other. It is the vision of the wheels that is represented here. Naively taking the text at face value, the artist has reduced the vision to its simplest expression. The prophet is seated on a rock and seems asleep on his right knee. In front of him appear two car wheels and that's it. [G. Durand, Monograph of the Cathedral Church of Amiens . Paris, A. Picard, 1901.]

This version contains two errors. The first testifies to an incomplete study of the traditional technique, of the formulas that the latomi respected in the execution of their symbols. The second, more cumbersome, stems from faulty observation.

Indeed, our image-makers used to isolate, or at least to underline their supernatural attributes with the help of a cord of clouds. We find evident proof of this on the face of three buttresses of the porch; nothing like it here. On the other hand, our character has his eyes open; he is therefore not asleep, but seems to be awake, while the slow action of the wheel fire is exercised near him. Moreover, it is notorious that, in all the Gothic scenes depicting apparitions, the illuminated is always represented facing the phenomenon; his attitude, his expression invariably show surprise or ecstasy, anxiety or bliss. This is not the case in the subject which concerns us. The two wheels are therefore and can only be an image, of obscure meaning to the layman, placed expressly with the intention of veiling something very well known, both to the initiate and to our character. So we do not see him absorbed by any preoccupation of this kind. He watches and watches, patient but a little weary. The painful labors of Hercules completed, his labor is reduced to ludus puerorum of the texts, that is to say, to the maintenance of the fire, which a woman spinning distaff can easily undertake and carry out.

As for the double image of the hieroglyph, we must interpret it as the sign of two revolutions which must act successively on the compound to assure it a first degree of perfection. Unless one prefers to see there the indication of the two natures in the conversion, which is also accomplished by a gentle and regular cooking. This last thesis is adopted by Pernety.

In fact, the linear and continuous coction requires the double rotation of the same wheel, movement impossible to translate on the stone and which justified the need for the two wheels entangled so as to form only one of them. The first wheel corresponds to the wet phase of the operation, – called elixation, – where the compound remains molten, until the formation of a light film, which, gradually increasing in thickness, gains in depth. The second period, characterized by dryness, – or assation, – then begins, with a second turn of the wheel, is completed and ends when the contents of the egg, calcined, appear granular or powdery, in the form of crystals, sand or ash.

The anonymous commentator of a classic work says about this operation, which is truly the seal of the Great Work, that the "philosopher cooks in a gentle and solar heat, and in a single vessel, a single vapor which thickens little by little". [ The Light emerging by itself from the Darkness . Paris, d'Houry, 1687, c. III, p. 30.] But what can be the temperature of the external fire suitable for this coction? According to modern authors, the heat of the beginning should not exceed the temperature of the human body. Albert Poisson gives the base of 50° with a progressive increase up to around 300° centigrade. Philalethes, in his Rules, affirms that "the degree of heat which can hold lead (327°) or molten tin (232°), and even stronger, that is to say such that the vessels can suffer it without breaking, must be estimated as temperate heat. By this, he says, you will begin your own degree of warmth for the reign where nature has left you. In his fifteenth rule, Philalethes returns again to this important question; after pointing out that the artist must operate on mineral bodies and not on organic substances, he speaks thus:

“The water of our lake must boil with the ashes of the tree of Hermes; I urge you to boil night and day without ceasing, that in the works of our tempestuous sea the celestial nature may ascend and the terrestrial descend. For I assure you that if we do not boil, we can never call our work a cooking, but a digestion. » [ Rules of the Philalethes for conduct in the Hermetic Work , in History of Hermetic Philosophy , by Lenglet-Dufresnoy. Paris, Coustelier, 1742, vol. II.]

Next to the wheel light, we will point out a small subject, carved on the right of the same porch and which G. Durand claims to be a replica of the seventh medallion of Paris. Here is what the author says (t. I, p. 336):

“MM. Jourdain and Duval had called this vice opposed to Perseverance Inconstancy; but it seems to us that the word Apostasy proposed by Abbé Roze is better suited to the subject represented. He is a bareheaded, beardless and tonsured character, cleric or monk, dressed in a robe descending to mid-leg, provided with a hood, and which differs from that which we have seen worn by the cleric of the group of Anger only by the belt with which it is tightened. Throwing aside his breeches and his shoes, sort of half-boots, he seems to be moving away from a pretty little church with long, narrow windows, a cylindrical and cantilevered steeple, which can be seen in the distance” (pl. XXXIV).




CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS
PORTAL OF THE SAVIOR
The Philosophical Coction
Board XXXIV


In a reference, Durand adds: “At the great portal of Notre-Dame de Paris, it is in the very church that the Apostate leaves his clothes; in the stained glass window of the same church, he is outside and makes the gesture of a man running away. At Chartres, he stripped himself completely and is now covered only by his shirt. Ruskin remarks that the infidel fool is always, in the miniatures of the 12th and 13th centuries, represented barefoot. »

As for us, we find no correlation between the motif of Paris and that of Amiens. While the former symbolizes the beginning of the Work, the latter, on the contrary, translates its completion. The church is rather an athanor, and its steeple raised despite the most elementary rules of architecture, the secret oven containing the philosopher's egg. This oven is equipped with openings through which the craftsman observes the phases of the work. An important and very characteristic detail has been forgotten: we are talking about the hollow hanger in the base. However, it is difficult to admit that a church can be built on visible vaults and thus seems to rest on four legs. It is no less risky to liken the supple mass that the artist points to as clothing. ad hoc. The alchemist points with his right hand to the bag of coal, and the abandonment of his shoes shows how far prudence and concern for silence must be pushed in this hidden task. As for the light clothing worn by the craftsman in the Chartres motif, it is justified by the heat given off by the oven. At the fourth degree of fire, by operating by the dry process, it becomes necessary to maintain a temperature close to 1200°, which is also essential in projection. Our modern workers in the metallurgical industry are dressed in the summary fashion of the Chartres blower. We would certainly be happy to know the reason why apostates would feel the need to take off their clothes when leaving the temple. It is precisely this reason that we should have been given,

We have seen that at Notre-Dame de Paris the athanor also takes the form of a turret raised on vaults. It goes without saying that one could not, esoterically, reproduce it as it existed in the laboratory. We will therefore limit ourselves to giving it an architectonic form, without however abolishing its characteristics, likely to reveal its true destination. It contains the constituent parts of the alchemical furnace: ashtray, tower and dome. Moreover, those who have consulted the old prints – and in particular the woodcuts of Pyrotechnics that Jean Liébaut included in his treatise – will not be mistaken. The ovens are depicted as dungeons with their glacis, their battlements, their loopholes. Certain combinations of these devices go so far as to take on the appearance of buildings or small fortresses from which escape the spouts of stills or the necks of retorts. [See Jean Liébaut, Four Books of Secrets of Medicine and Chemical Philosophy. Paris, Jacques du Puys, p. 17a and 19a.]

Against the right foot of the large porch, we find, in an engaged four-sheet, the allegory of the rooster and the fox, dear to Basile Valentin. The rooster is perched on an oak branch which the fox is trying to reach (pl. XXXV).




AMIENS CATHEDRAL
CENTRAL
PORCH The Rooster and the Fox
Plate XXXV


The profane discover there the subject of a fable popular in the Middle Ages, which, according to Jourdain and Duval, would be the prototype of the crow and the fox. “We do not see, adds G. Durand, the dog or dogs that are the complement of the fable. This typical detail does not seem to have awakened the authors' attention to the occult meaning of the symbol. And yet, our ancestors, exact and meticulous translators, would not have neglected to feature these actors if it had been a question of a known scene of fabliau.

Perhaps it would be appropriate in this place to develop the meaning of the image in favor of the sons of science, our brothers, a little more than we thought we should do in connection with the same emblem carved on the porch of Paris. We will probably explain later the close relationship that exists between the rooster and the oak, and would find its analogy in the family bond; for the son is united to his father as the rooster is to his tree. For the moment, we will only say that the rooster and the fox are only the same hieroglyph covering two distinct physical states of the same matter. What appears first is the rooster or the volatile portion, consequently alive, active, full of movement, extracted from the subject, which has the oak as its emblem. This is our famous source whose clear wave flows at the base of the sacred tree, so venerated by the Druids, and which the ancient philosophers named Mercury, though it has no appearance of vulgar quicksilver. For the water we need is dry, does not wet the hands and springs from the rock under the shock of Aaron's rod. This is the alchemical meaning of the rooster, emblem of Mercury among pagans and of the resurrection among Christians. This rooster, however volatile it may be, can become the Phoenix. However, he must first assume the state of temporary fixity that characterizes the symbol of the pin, our hermetic fox. It is important, before undertaking the practice, to know that mercury contains in itself all that is necessary for the work. “Blessed be the Most High, exclaims Geber, who created this Mercury and gave it a nature that nothing can resist! Because without him, the alchemists would have done in vain, all their labor would become useless. This is the only material we need. Indeed, this dry water, although entirely volatile, can, if we discover the means of retaining it for a long time in the fire, become sufficiently fixed to resist the degree of heat which would have sufficed to evaporate it entirely. She then changes her emblem, and her endurance to fire, her weighty quality make her attribute the fox as the sign of her new nature. The water became earth and the mercury sulfur. This earth, however, in spite of the beautiful coloring it has taken on long contact with the fire, would be of no use in its dry form; an old axiom teaches us that any dry dye is useless in its dryness; it is therefore appropriate to redissolve this earth or this salt in the same water which gave birth to it, or, what comes to the same thing, in its own blood, so that it becomes a second time volatile, and that the fox takes on the complexion, the wings and the tail of the rooster. By a second operation similar to the preceding one, the compound will coagulate again, it will again struggle against the tyranny of fire, but this time in the fusion itself and no longer because of its dry quality. Thus will be born the first stone, not absolutely fixed nor absolutely volatile, however quite permanent in the fire, very penetrating and very fusible, properties which you will have to increase with the help of a third repetition of the same technique. Then the rooster, attribute of Saint Peter, real and flowing stone on which rests the Christian edifice, the rooster will have crowed three times. For it is he, the first Apostle, who holds the two intertwined keys of solution and coagulation; it's him, eternal symbol of the volatile stone, which the fire makes fixed and dense by precipitating it. Saint Peter, everyone knows, was crucified upside down...

In the pretty grounds of the north portal, or of Saint-Firmin, almost entirely occupied by the zodiac and the rural or domestic scenes which correspond to it, we will point out two interesting bas-reliefs. The first represents a citadel whose door, massive and locked, is flanked by crenellated towers between which rise two floors of constructions; a grilled basement adorns the base.

Is this the symbol of the philosophical, social, moral and religious esotericism which is revealed and developed throughout the hundred and fifteen other quatrefoils? Or should we see, in this motif of the year 1225, the mother idea of ​​the Alchemical Fortress, taken up and modified by Khunrath in 1609? Could it rather be the Palace, mysterious and closed, of the king of our Art, of which Basil Valentin and Philalethes speak? Be that as it may, citadel or royal residence, the building, imposing and forbidding in appearance, produces a real impression of strength and impenetrability. Built to preserve some treasure or conceal some important secret, it seems that one can only enter it by possessing the key to the powerful locks which guarantee it against any break-in. It feels like a prison and a cave, and the door releases this something sinister,

You who enter here leave all hope behind.

The second four-leaf, placed immediately below this one, shows dead trees, twisting and intertwining their gnarled branches under a degraded firmament, but where one can still discern the images of the sun, the moon and a few stars (pl. XXXVI).




AMIENS
CATHEDRAL SAINT-FIRMIN PORTAL
The Raw Materials
Plate XXXVI


This subject relates to the raw materials of the great Art, metallic planets whose fire, the Philosophers tell us, has caused death, and which fusion has rendered inert, without vegetative power, as trees are during winter.

This is why the Masters have so often recommended to us to reincrust them by supplying them, with the fluid form, with the proper agent which they have lost in metallurgical reduction. But where to find this agent? This is the great mystery that we have frequently touched upon during this study, by breaking it up at random into emblems, so that only the perceptive investigator can know its qualities and identify its substance. We did not want to follow the old method of giving a truth, parabolically expressed, accompanied by one or more specious or adulterated claims, to mislead the reader unable to separate the wheat from the chaff. Certainly, one can discuss and criticize this work, more ungrateful than one might think; we don't think we'll ever be criticized for writing a single lie. All the truths, we are assured, are not good to say; we believe, in spite of the proverb, that it is possible to make them understood by employing some subtlety of language. “Our Art, Artephius once said, is entirely cabalistic”; the cabal, in fact, has always been of great use to us. It allowed us, without faking the truth, without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that we would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. All the truths, we are assured, are not good to say; we believe, in spite of the proverb, that it is possible to make them understood by employing some subtlety of language. “Our Art, Artephius once said, is entirely cabalistic”; the cabal, in fact, has always been of great use to us. It allowed us, without faking the truth, without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that we would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. All the truths, we are assured, are not good to say; we believe, in spite of the proverb, that it is possible to make them understood by employing some subtlety of language. “Our Art, Artephius once said, is entirely cabalistic”; the cabal, in fact, has always been of great use to us. It allowed us, without faking the truth, without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that we would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. that it is possible to make them understood by employing some subtlety of language. “Our Art, Artephius once said, is entirely cabalistic”; the cabal, in fact, has always been of great use to us. It allowed us, without faking the truth, without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that we would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. that it is possible to make them understood by employing some subtlety of language. “Our Art, Artephius once said, is entirely cabalistic”; the cabal, in fact, has always been of great use to us. It allowed us, without faking the truth, without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that we would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that one would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust. without distorting the expression, without falsifying Science or perjuring ourselves, to say several things that one would seek in vain in the books of our predecessors. Sometimes, faced with the impossibility in which we found ourselves to go further without violating our oath, we preferred silence to disappointing allusions, silence to abuse of trust.

What can we therefore say here, faced with the Secret of Secrets, before this Verbum demissum which we have already mentioned, and which Jesus entrusted to his Apostles, as Saint Paul testifies:

“I was made a minister of the Church by the will of God, who sent me to you to fulfill HIS WORD. That is to say, the SECRET which has been hidden from all times and from all ages, but which he now manifests to those whom he deems worthy. [Saint Paul, Epistle to the Colossians , chap. I, v. 25 and 26.]

What can we say, if not allege the testimony of the great masters who have also sought to explain it?

“The metallic Chaos produced by the hands of nature contains in itself all the metals and is not metal. It contains gold, silver and mercury; yet it is neither gold, nor silver, nor mercury. [ The Psalter of Hermpohile , in Treatises on the Transmutation of Metals . Mss. anon. from the 18th century, stanza XXV.] – This text is clear; do we prefer symbolic language? Haymon gives us an example of this when he says:

“To get the first agent, you have to go to the rear part of the world, where you hear the thunder rumble, the wind blow, the hail and the rain fall; that's where you'll find the thing if you look for it. [Haymon, Epistola de Lapidis Philosophicis . Treaty 192, t. VI of the Theatrum Chimicum. Argentorati , 1613.]

All the descriptions which the Philosophers have left us of their subject, or prime matter which contains the indispensable agent, are very confused and very mysterious. Here are a few, chosen from the best.

The author of the commentary on the Light coming out of Darkness writes, page 108: “The essence in which dwells the spirit we seek is engrafted and engraved in it, though with imperfect strokes and lineaments; the same is said by Ripleus Anglois at the beginning of his Twelve Gates  ; and Aegidius of Vadis, in his Dialogue of Nature, shows clearly and as in letters of gold that there remained, in this world, a portion of this first Chaos, known, but despised by everyone, and which is sold publicly. The same author also says, page 263, that “this subject is found in several places and in each of the three kingdoms; but if we look at the possibility of nature, it is certain that metallic nature alone must be aided by nature and by nature; it is therefore only in the mineral kingdom, where the metallic seed resides, that we must seek the subject proper to our art”.

“It is a stone of great virtue, says Nicolas Valois in turn, and is called stone and is not stone, and is mineral, vegetable and animal, which is found in all places and all times, and in all people. » [ Works by N. Grosparmy and Nicolas Valois , ms. cited above, p. 140.]

Flamel similarly writes: “There is an occult stone, abstruse and buried deep within a fountain, which is vile, abject and by no means prized; and if is covered with feces and excrement; to which, however much she is but one, we give her all names. Wherefore, says the wise Morien, this stone not stone is animated, having virtue to procreate and engender. This stone is soft, taking its beginning, origin and race from Saturn or Mars, Sun and Venus; and if it is Mars, Sun and Venus…” [Nicolas Flamel, Original of Desired Desire , or Thresor of Philosophy . Paris, Hulpeau, 1629, p. 144.]

“There is, says Le Breton, a mineral known to true Sçavans who hide it in their writings under various names, which contains abundantly the fixed and the volatile. » [Le Breton, Keys to Spagyric Philosophy . Paris, Jombert, 1722, p. 240.]

“The Philosophers were right, writes an anonymous author, to hide this mystery from the eyes of those who value things only by the uses they have given them; for if they knew, or if matter was openly revealed to them, which God has taken pleasure in hiding in the things which appear useful to them, they would no longer have esteem for it. [ The Key to the Hermetic Cabinet , ms. cited above, p. 10.] This is a thought analogous to that of the Imitation, with which we will end these abstruse quotations: “He who esteems things what they are worth, and does not judge them according to the merit or esteem of men, possesses true Wisdom. [ Imitation of Jesus Christ , book. II, c. 1, v. 6.]

Let's go back to the facade of Amiens.

The anonymous master who carved the medallions of the porch of the Virgin-Mother very curiously interpreted the condensation of the universal spirit; an Adept contemplates the stream of celestial dew falling on a mass that many authors have taken for a fleece. Without invalidating this opinion, it is just as likely to suspect a different body there, such as the mineral designated by the name of Magnesia or philosophical magnet. It will be noted that this water does not fall elsewhere than on the subject considered, which confirms the expression of an attractive virtue hidden in this body, and which it would not be without importance to seek to establish (pl. XXXVII).




AMIENS CATHEDRAL
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER
The Dew of the Philosophers
Plate XXXVII


This is, we believe, the place to rectify certain errors committed in connection with a symbolic plant, which, taken literally by ignorant prompters, strongly contributed to discrediting alchemy and ridiculing its supporters. We want to talk about Nostoc. This cryptogam, known to all peasants, is found everywhere in the countryside, sometimes on the grass, sometimes on the bare ground, in the fields, at the edge of the roads, at the edge of the woods. Early in the morning, in spring, we find voluminous ones, swollen with night dew. Gelatinous and quivering – hence their name tremella – they are most often greenish and dry out so quickly under the action of the sun's rays that it becomes impossible to find any trace of them in the very place where they were spread out a few hours earlier. All these characters combined, – sudden appearance, absorption of water and swelling, green coloring, soft and sticky consistency – allowed the Philosophers to take this algae as the hieroglyphic type of their matter. Now, it is very certainly a heap of this kind, symbol of the mineral Magnesia of the Sages, that one sees, in the four-leaf of Amiens, absorbing the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. green coloring, soft and sticky consistency, – enabled the Philosophers to take this algae as the hieroglyphic type of their matter. Now, it is very certainly a heap of this kind, symbol of the mineral Magnesia of the Sages, that one sees, in the four-leaf of Amiens, absorbing the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. green coloring, soft and sticky consistency, – enabled the Philosophers to take this algae as the hieroglyphic type of their matter. Now, it is very certainly a heap of this kind, symbol of the mineral Magnesia of the Sages, that one sees, in the four-leaf of Amiens, absorbing the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. – enabled the Philosophers to take this seaweed as the hieroglyphic type of their matter. Now, it is very certainly a heap of this kind, symbol of the mineral Magnesia of the Sages, that one sees, in the four-leaf of Amiens, absorbing the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. – enabled the Philosophers to take this seaweed as the hieroglyphic type of their matter. Now, it is very certainly a heap of this kind, symbol of the mineral Magnesia of the Sages, that one sees, in the four-leaf of Amiens, absorbing the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. absorb the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air. absorb the celestial dew. We will quickly pass over the multiple names applied to nostoc and which, in the minds of the Masters, designated only their mineral principle: Celestial Archaea, Moon Spit, Earth Butter, Dew Grease, Vegetable Vitriol, Flos Cœli, etc., according to whether they regarded it as a receptacle of the Universal Spirit, or as terrestrial matter exhaled from the center in the state of vapor, then coagulated by cooling in contact with the air.

These strange terms, which nevertheless have their raison d'être, have made us forget the real and initiatic meaning of Nostoc. This word comes from the Greek νύξ, νυκτός corresponding to the Latin nox, noctis, night. It is therefore something that is born at night, needs the night to develop and can only be worked at night. Our subject, therefore, is admirably concealed from profane gaze, though it may easily be distinguished and worked upon by those who have an exact knowledge of natural laws. But how little, alas! take the trouble to reflect and remain simple in their reasoning!

Let's see, tell us, you who have already plowed so much, what do you claim to be doing with your lighted stoves, with your numerous, varied, useless utensils? Do you hope to accomplish a real creation from scratch? – Certainly not, since the ability to create belongs only to God, the unique Creator. It is therefore a generation that you want to provoke within your materials. But you need, in this case, the help of nature, and you can believe that this help will be refused to you, if by misfortune or ignorance, you do not put nature in a position to apply its laws. What then is the primordial, essential condition for any generation to be manifested? We will answer for you: the total absence of any sunlight, even diffused or subdued. Look around you, question your own nature. Do you not see that, in man and animals, fertilization and generation take place, thanks to a certain arrangement of the organs, in complete darkness, maintained until the day of birth? – Is it on the surface of the ground – in full light – or in the earth itself – in the dark – that vegetable seeds can germinate and reproduce? Is it day or night that the fertilizing dew falls that nourishes and vitalizes them? See the mushrooms; is it not at night that they are born, grow and develop? And you yourself, isn't it also at night, in nocturnal sleep, that your organism repairs its losses, eliminates its waste, reforms new cells, new tissues instead of those that the light of day has burned, worn out and destroyed? It is not up to the work of digestion, of assimilation, of the transformation of food into blood and organic substance which does not take place in darkness. Do you want to try an experiment? – Take fertilized eggs, hatch them in a well-lit room; at the end of the incubation all your eggs will contain dead embryos, more or less decomposed. If any chick is born, it will be blind, weak and will not live. Such is the harmful influence of the sun, not on the vitality of constituted individuals, but on generation. And do not believe that the effects of a fundamental law in created nature should be limited to the organic kingdoms alone. Even minerals, despite their less visible reaction, are subject to it like animals and plants. It is well known that the production of the photographic image is based on the property possessed by silver salts of decomposing in the light. These salts thus resume their inert metallic state, whereas they had acquired, in the black laboratory, an active, living and sensitive quality. Two mixed gases, chlorine and hydrogen, retain their integrity as long as they are kept in the dark; they combine slowly in diffused light and with sudden explosion if the sun intervenes. A large number of metal salts in solution transform or precipitate in more or less time in daylight. Ferrous sulphate is thus rapidly changed into ferric sulphate, &c. an active, living and sensitive quality. Two mixed gases, chlorine and hydrogen, retain their integrity as long as they are kept in the dark; they combine slowly in diffused light and with sudden explosion if the sun intervenes. A large number of metal salts in solution transform or precipitate in more or less time in daylight. Ferrous sulphate is thus rapidly changed into ferric sulphate, &c. an active, living and sensitive quality. Two mixed gases, chlorine and hydrogen, retain their integrity as long as they are kept in the dark; they combine slowly in diffused light and with sudden explosion if the sun intervenes. A large number of metal salts in solution transform or precipitate in more or less time in daylight. Ferrous sulphate is thus rapidly changed into ferric sulphate, &c.

It is therefore important to remember that the sun is the destroyer par excellence of all substances that are too young, too weak to resist its igneous power. And this is so real that a therapeutic method has been based on this special action for the healing of external ailments, the rapid healing of wounds and wounds. It is the deadly power of the star on the microbial cells first, and then the organic cells, which made it possible to institute the phototherapeutic treatment.

And now work the day if you like; but don't accuse us if your efforts only end in failure. We know, as for us, that the goddess Isis is the mother of all things, that she carries them all in her womb, and that she alone is the dispenser of Revelation and Initiation. Profans who have eyes not to see and ears not to hear, to whom will you address your prayers? Are you unaware that Jesus can only be reached through the intercession of his Mother: sancta Maria ora pro nobis  ? And the Virgin is represented, for your instruction, with her feet resting on the lunar crescent, always dressed in blue, the symbolic color of the night star. We could say a lot more, but we think we have said enough.

Let us therefore finish the study of the original hermetic types of the cathedral of Amiens, by noting, on the left of the same porch of the Virgin-Mother, a small corner motif offering a scene of initiation. The master points out to three disciples the hermetic star on which we have already dwelt for a long time, the traditional star which serves as a guide to the Philosophers and indicates to them the birth of the son of the sun (pl. XXXVIII).




CATHEDRAL OF AMIENS
PORTAL OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER
The Star of Seven Rays
Plate XXXVIII


Let us recall here, in connection with this star, the motto of Nicolas Rollin, chancellor of Philippe le Bon, which was painted in 1477 on the tiling of the Beaune hospital, of which he was the founder. This motto, presented like a rebus, – Sole ✮, – showed the knowledge of its owner by the characteristic sign of the Work, the unique, the only star.


BOURGES

I

Bourges, old city of Berry, silent, collected, calm and gray like a monastic cloister, already justly proud of an admirable cathedral, still offers other equally remarkable buildings to lovers of the past. Among these, the Jacques-Coeur palace and the Lallemant hotel are the purest jewels of its marvelous crown.

Of the first, which was once a veritable museum of Hermetic emblems, we will say very little. Vandalism passed over him. Its successive assignments have ruined the interior decoration, and, if the facade were not preserved for us in its primitive state, it would be impossible for us to imagine today, in front of the bare walls, the dilapidated rooms, the high galleries vaulted in hull, the original magnificence of this sumptuous residence.

Jacques Coeur, grand treasurer of Charles VII, who had it built in the 15th century, had the reputation of a proven Adept. David de Planis-Campy quotes him, in fact, as possessing "the precious gift of white stone", in other words of the transmutation of base metals into silver. Hence, perhaps, his title of treasurer. Be that as it may, we must recognize that Jacques Coeur made every effort to accredit, by a profusion of chosen symbols, his true or supposed quality of philosopher by fire.

Everyone knows the coat of arms and the motto of this high character: three hearts forming the center of this legend, presented as a rebus, A vaillans cuers riens impossible . Proud maxim, overflowing with energy, which, if we study it according to the cabalistic rules, takes on a rather singular meaning. Indeed, if we read cuer with the spelling of the time, we will obtain both: 1° the statement of the universal Spirit (ray of light); 2° the vulgar name of the wrought basic material (iron); 3° the three reiterations indispensable to the total perfection of the two Magisteries (the three cuers). Our conviction is therefore that Jacques Coeur practiced alchemy himself, or at least that he saw the white stone being worked out before his eyes by "essicified" and three times baked iron.

Among the favorite hieroglyphs of our treasurer, the scallop shell holds, with the heart, a dominating place. The two images are always coupled or arranged symmetrically, as can be seen in the central motifs of the quadrilobed circles of the fenestration, the balustrades, the panels and the door knocker, etc. No doubt there is, in this duality of the shell and the heart, a rebus imposed on the name of the owner, or his steganographic signature. However, shells of the comb genus (Pecten Jacobæus of naturalists) have always served as a badge for pilgrims to Santiago. They were worn either on the hat (as can be seen on a statue of Saint James in Westminster Abbey), or around the collar, or finally stapled to the chest, always very clearly. The Merelle of Compostela (pl. XXXIX), on which we would have many things to notice, serves, in the secret symbolism, to designate the Mercury principle, also called Traveler or Pilgrim. [Mercury is the holy water of the Philosophers. The large shells were once used to hold holy water; they are still frequently encountered in many rural churches.] It is carried mystically by all those who undertake the work and seek to obtain the star (compos stella).




HOTEL JACQUES-COEUR IN BOURGES
FACADE
La Mérelle de Compostela
Plate XXXIX


It is therefore not surprising that Jacques Cœur had the icon peregrini , so popular among the prompters of the Middle Ages , reproduced at the entrance to his palace . Doesn't Nicolas Flamel describe in the same way, in his Hieroglyphic Figures, the parabolic journey he undertook in order, he says, to ask "Monsieur Jacques de Galice" for help, light and protection? All alchemists at their beginning are there. They must complete this long and dangerous journey, half of which is by land and the other by sea, with the bumblebee as their guide and the blackbird as their sign. First pilgrims, then pilots.

The chapel, restored, entirely painted, is of little interest. If we except the ceiling, on a crossroads of warheads, where twenty too new angels carry the globe on their foreheads and unroll phylacteries, and an Annunciation sculpted on the tympanum of the door, nothing remains of the symbolism of yesteryear. So let's come to the most curious and original room in the Palace.

It is a pretty group, sculpted on a cul-de-lampe, which adorns the so-called Treasury room. It is said to represent the meeting of Tristan and Yseult. We will not contradict this, the subject changing nothing, moreover, in the symbolic expression that it releases. The beautiful medieval poem is part of the cycle of Round Table novels, traditional hermetic legends renewed from Greek fables. It relates directly to the transmission of ancient scientific knowledge, under the veil of ingenious fictions popularized by the genius of our Picard troubadours (pl. XL).




HOTEL JACQUES-COEUR IN BOURGES
TREASURY CHAMBER
Group of Tristan and Yseult
Plate XL


In the center of the motif, a hollow, cubic casket protrudes from the foot of a leafy tree whose foliage conceals the crowned head of King Mark. On either side appear Tristan de Léonois and Yseult, the former wearing a cap with a bead, the latter a crown which she secures with her right hand. Our characters are depicted in the forest of Morois, on a carpet of tall grass and flowers, and both fix their gaze on the mysterious hollow stone that separates them.

The myth of Tristan de Léonois is a replica of that of Theseus. Tristan fights and kills the Morhout, Theseus the Minotaur. We find here the manufacturing hieroglyph of the Green Lion, – hence the name of Léonois or Léonnais borne by Tristan, – which is taught by Basile Valentin under the struggle of the two champions, the eagle and the dragon. This singular combat of the chemical bodies, the combination of which provides the secret solvent (and the vase of the compound), has furnished the subject of a number of profane fables and sacred allegories. It is Cadmus piercing the serpent against an oak tree; Apollo killing with arrows the monster Python and Jason the dragon of Colchis; it is Horus fighting the Typhon of the Osirian myth; Hercules cutting off the heads of the Hydra and Perseus that of the Gorgon; Saint Michael, Saint George, Saint Marcel slaying the Dragon, Christian replicas of Perseus, slaying the guardian monster of Andromeda, mounted on his horse Pegasus; it is again the combat of the fox and the rooster, of which we spoke when describing the medallions of Paris; that of the alchemist and the dragon (Cyliani), of the remore and the salamander (Cyrano de Bergerac), of the red snake and the green snake, etc.

This unusual solvent allows the reincrudation of natural gold, its softening and the return to its first state in the saline, friable and very fusible form. [Hermetic technical term which means to make raw, that is to say to return to a state prior to that which characterizes maturity, to demote.] This is the rejuvenation of the king, which all the authors point out, the beginning of a new evolutionary phase, personified, in the motif which concerns us, by Tristan, nephew of King Mark. In fact, uncle and nephew are, chemically speaking, the same thing, of the same kind and of similar origin. Gold loses its crown - by losing its color - for a certain period of time, and is deprived of it until it has reached the degree of superiority to which art and nature can carry it. He then inherits a second, “infinitely more noble than the first”, as Limojon de Saint-Didier assures us. Also, we see the silhouettes of Tristan and Queen Yseult stand out clearly, while the old king remains hidden in the foliage of the central tree, which emerges from the stone like the tree of Jesse emerges from the chest of the Patriarch. Note again that the queen is the wife of both the old man and the young hero, in order to maintain the hermetic tradition which makes the king, the queen and the lover the mineral triad of the Great Work. Finally, let us point out a detail of some value for the analysis of the symbol. The tree behind Tristan is laden with enormous fruit – giant pears or figs – in such abundance that the foliage disappears under their mass. Strange forest, indeed, that of Mort-Roi,


II (Bourges)

Even more than the Palais Jacques-Coeur, the Hôtel Lallemant will hold our attention. A bourgeois residence, of modest dimensions and of a less ancient style, it offers the rare advantage of presenting itself to us in a state of perfect preservation. No restoration, no mutilation has taken away from it the beautiful symbolic character that emerges from an abundant decoration with delicate and meticulous themes.

The main building, built on the side of an embankment, shows the foot of its facade down about one floor from the level of the courtyard. This arrangement requires the use of a staircase built under a semicircular ascending vault. An ingenious and original system, which allows access to the interior courtyard, where the entrance to the apartments opens.

On the vaulted landing, at the threshold of the stairs, the guardian – whose exquisite affability we must praise – pushes open a small door on our right. “Here, he tells us, is the kitchen. – Quite a large room, hollowed out in the basement, but with a low ceiling, barely lit by a single window, wide open and cut by a stone mullion. Tiny fireplace without depth: such is the "kitchen". In support of his assertion, our cicerone designates a cul-de-lamp of fallout of arcs, which represents a cleric who embraces the handle of a pestle. Is this really the image of a 16th century cake maker? We remain skeptical. Our gaze goes from the small fireplace – where you could barely roast a turkey, but which would be enough to contain the tower of an athanor – to the marmoset promoted to cook, then back to the kitchen itself, so sad, so dark on this bright summer day…

The more we reflect, the less likely the guide's explanation seems to us. This low, dark room, far from the dining room by a staircase and an open-air courtyard, with no other device than a narrow, insufficient fireplace, without a cast iron hearth and rack attachment, could not logically be suitable for the slightest culinary office. On the other hand, it seems to us admirably suited to alchemical work, from which the solar light, enemy of all generation, must be excluded. As for the scullion, we know enough about the awareness, the care, the scruple of accuracy that the image makers of yesteryear brought to the translation of their thoughts to qualify the instrument he presents to the visitor as a pestle. We cannot believe that the artist would have neglected to also depict the mortar, its indispensable counterpart. Moreover, the shape of the utensil is characteristic; what the marmoset in question is holding is in reality a long-necked matrass, similar to those used by our chemists, and which they still call balloons, because of their spherical belly. Finally, the end of the handle of this supposed pestle is hollowed out and shaped like a whistle, which proves that we are dealing with a hollow utensil, vase or flask (pl. XLI).




HOTEL LALLEMANT IN BOURGES
CUL-DE-LAMPE
The Vessel of the Great Work
Plate XLI


This indispensable and very secret vessel has received various names, chosen in such a way as to distract the profane, not only from its true destination, but also from its composition. The Initiates will understand us and know what ship we mean. Generally it is called Philosophical Egg and Green Lion. By the term egg, the Sages understand their compound, placed in its own vase, and ready to undergo the transformations that the action of fire will cause there. It is, in this sense, positively an egg, since its envelope, or its shell, contains the philosopher's rebis, formed of white and red in a proportion analogous to that of the egg of birds. As for the second epithet, its interpretation has never been indicated in the texts. Batsdorff, in his Fillet of Ariadne, says that the Philosophers called the vessel used for coction Green Lion, but without giving any reason for it. The Cosmopolitan, insisting more on the quality of the vase and its necessity in the work, affirms that in the Work "there is that single green Lion which closes and opens the seven indissoluble seals of the seven metallic spirits, and which torments the bodies until it has entirely perfected them, by means of a long and firm patience of the artist". The manuscript of G. Aurach shows a glass matrass, half filled with a green liquor, and adds that all art rests on the acquisition of this single green Lion and that its very name indicates its color. [ The Most Precious Gift of God . Manuscript by Georges Aurach, of Strasbourg, written and painted with his own hand, the year of the Salvation of Redeemed Humanity , 1415.] This is the vitriol of Basil Valentin. The third figure of the Golden Fleece is almost identical to the image of G. Aurach. We see a philosopher dressed in red, under a purple coat, and wearing a green cap, who shows with his right hand a glass matrass containing a green liquid. Ripley comes nearer to the truth when he says, “Only one filthy body enters our magisterium; the Philosophers commonly call it Green Lion. It is the middle or medium for joining the tinctures between the sun and the moon. »

According to this information, it appears that the vase is doubly envisaged, and in its material and in its form, on the one hand in the state of a vase of nature, on the other as a vase of art. The descriptions – few and not very clear – that we have just translated relate to the nature of the vase; many texts shed light on the shape of the egg. This can, at will, be spherical or ovoid, provided that it is in clear, transparent glass, without blisters. Its walls require a certain thickness, in order to resist internal pressures, and some authors recommend choosing Lorraine glass for this purpose. [The term Lorraine glass was once used to distinguish molded glass from blown glass. Thanks to molding, Lorraine glass could have very thick and regular walls.] Finally, the neck is long or short, according to the intention of the artist or his convenience; the main thing is that it can easily be soldered with an enameller's lamp. But these details of practices are sufficiently known to dispense us with further explanations.

As for us, we especially want to remember that the laboratory and the vase of the Work, the place where the Adept works and the place where nature acts, are the two certainties that strike the initiate at the beginning of his visit and make the Hôtel Lallemant one of the most attractive and rarest philosopher's residences.

Preceded by the guide, here we are now on the pavement of the courtyard. A few steps bring us to the entrance of a loggia largely lit by a portico formed by three arched bays. It is a large room, with a striped ceiling of thick joists. Monoliths, stelae and other ancient debris find their place there and give it the appearance of a local archeology museum. For us, the interest is not there, but on the back wall, where there is a magnificent bas-relief of painted stone. It represents Saint Christopher depositing the little Jesus on the rocky bank of the legendary torrent which he has just made him cross. In the background, a hermit, with his lantern ready – for the scene takes place at night – comes out of his hut and walks towards the Child-King (pl. XLII).




HOTEL LALLEMANT IN BOURGES
The Legend of Saint Christopher
Plate XLII


We have often come across beautiful old representations of Saint Christopher; none, however, have hugged the legend as closely as this one. It therefore seems beyond doubt that the subject of this masterpiece and the text of Jacques de Voragine contain the same hermetic meaning, with, in addition, certain detail that cannot be found elsewhere. Saint Christopher therefore takes on capital importance in relation to the analogy existing between this giant, which carries Christ, and the matter which carries gold (Χρυσοφορος) by playing the same role in the Work. As our intention is to be useful to the sincere and bona fide student, we will soon develop its esotericism, which we reserved when speaking of the statues of Saint Christopher and the monolith erected on the Parvis Notre-Dame, in Paris. But, Wishing to make ourselves better understood, we will first transcribe the legendary story reported by Amédée de Ponthieu after Jacques de Voragine. We purposely underline passages and names that relate directly to work, conditions and materials, so that they can be paused, thought about and benefited from.

“Before being a Christian, Christophe was called Offerus; he was a kind of giant, very thick-witted. When he was of the age of reason, he began to travel saying that he wanted to serve the greatest king on earth. He was sent to the court of a powerful king who was glad to have such a strong servant. One day, the king, hearing a singer pronounce the name of the devil, made the sign of the cross in terror. " Why that ? asked Christophe immediately. “Because I fear the devil,” replied the king. "If you fear him, then you are not as powerful as he is?" So I want to serve the devil. And thereupon Offerus departed.

“After a long march in search of this powerful monarch, he saw coming towards him a great troop of horsemen dressed in red; their leader was black and said to him, “What are you looking for? – I seek the devil to serve him. – I am the devil, follow me. And here we have Offerus enlisted among the servants of Satan. One day, in a great race, the infernal troop encounters a cross by the side of the road; the devil orders to turn around. " Why that ? said Offerus, always curious to learn. – Because I fear the image of Christ. – If you fear the image of Christ, it is because you are less powerful than him; so I want to enter the service of Christ. Offerus passed the cross alone and continued on his way. He met a good hermit and asked him where the Christ could be seen. “Everywhere,” replied the hermit. - I don't understand, said Offerus; but if you tell the truth, what service can a robust and alert fellow like me render him? “We serve him,” replied the hermit, “by prayer, fasts and vigils. Offerus grimaced. "Isn't there another way to please him?" he asked. The solitary understood with whom he had to deal, and, taking him by the hand, led him to the edge of a fiery torrent, which descended from a high mountain, and said to him: “The poor people who have crossed this water have drowned; stay here, and carry to the other side, on your strong shoulders, those who ask you. If you do this for the love of Christ, he will recognize you as his servant. “I will do it well for Christ's sake,” replied Offerus. So he built himself a hut on the shore and transported travelers night and day who asked for it.

“One night, overwhelmed with fatigue, he slept soundly; a knock at his door awoke him, and he heard the voice of a child calling his name three times! He got up, took the child on his broad shoulders and entered the torrent. Arrived in the middle, he suddenly sees the torrent become furious, the waves swell and rush on his nervous legs to overthrow him. He resisted as best he could, but the child weighed like a heavy burden; it was then that, fearing to let the little traveler fall, he uprooted a tree to lean on; but the waves continued to increase, and the child grew heavier and heavier. Offerus, fearing to drown him, looked up at him and said, “Child, why are you so heavy? It seems to me that I carry the world. The child answered: “Not only do you carry the world, but the one who made the world. I am Christ, your God and your master. As a reward for your good services, I baptize you in the name of my Father, in my own name and in that of the Holy Spirit; henceforth, your name will be Christophe. Since that day, Christophe traveled the earth to teach the word of Christ. » [Amédée de Ponthieu, Legends of Old Paris . Paris, Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1867, p. 106.]

This narration suffices to show with what fidelity the artist observed and rendered the smallest details of the legend. But he did even better. Under the inspiration of the hermetic scholar who had commissioned the work from him, he placed the giant with his feet in the water, dressing him in a light fabric tied on the shoulder and tightened by a wide belt at the level of the abdomen. It is this belt which gives Saint Christopher its true esoteric character. [From certain documents preserved in the archives of the Hôtel Lallemant, we know that Jean Lallemant belonged to the Alchemical Brotherhood of the Knights of the Round Table.] What we are going to say about it here cannot be taught. But, in addition to the fact that, for many, the science thus revealed remains no less dark, we also believe that a book that teaches nothing is useless and vain.

The belt of Offerus is dotted with intersecting lines similar to those which the surface of the solvent presents when it has been canonically prepared. Such is the Sign, which all Philosophers recognize to mark, outwardly, the virtue, the perfection, the extreme intrinsic purity of their mercurial substance. We have already said several times, and we repeat it again, that all the work of art consists in straining this mercury until it is clothed with the sign indicated. And this sign, the old authors called it Seal of Hermes, Sel des Sages (Sel put for Scel), – which confuses the minds of researchers, – the mark and imprint of the Almighty, his signature, then again Star of the Magi, Polar Star, etc. This geometric arrangement subsists and appears more clearly when the gold has been dissolved in mercury to bring it back to its first state, that of young or rejuvenated gold, in a word, child gold. This is the reason why Mercury, - loyal servant and Seal of the earth, - is called Fountain of Youth. The Philosophers therefore speak clearly when they teach that the mercury, as soon as the dissolution is effected, bears the child, the Son of the Sun, the Little King (Wren), like a true mother, since indeed the gold is reborn in her womb. “The wind – which is the winged and volatile mercury – carried it in its belly,” Hermes tells us in his Emerald Tablet. However, we find the secret version of this positive truth in the Cake of the Kings, which it is customary to share with the family on the day of Epiphany, famous feast which recalls the manifestation of the child Jesus Christ to the Magi and the Gentiles. Tradition has it that the Magi were guided to the cradle of the Savior by a star, which was, for them, the harbinger, the Good News of his birth. Our cake is signed like the material itself and contains in its dough the little child popularly called bather. It is the Child Jesus carried by Offerus, the servant or the traveller; it is the gold in its bath, the bather; it is the bean, the hoof, the cradle or the cross of honour, and it is also the fish "which swims in our philosophical sea", according to the very expression of the Cosmopolitan. [ for them, the harbinger, the Good News of his birth. Our cake is signed like the material itself and contains in its dough the little child popularly called bather. It is the Child Jesus carried by Offerus, the servant or the traveller; it is the gold in its bath, the bather; it is the bean, the hoof, the cradle or the cross of honour, and it is also the fish "which swims in our philosophical sea", according to the very expression of the Cosmopolitan. [ for them, the harbinger, the Good News of his birth. Our cake is signed like the material itself and contains in its dough the little child popularly called bather. It is the Child Jesus carried by Offerus, the servant or the traveller; it is the gold in its bath, the bather; it is the bean, the hoof, the cradle or the cross of honour, and it is also the fish "which swims in our philosophical sea", according to the very expression of the Cosmopolitan. [ and it is also the fish "which swims in our philosophical sea", according to the very expression of the Cosmopolitan. [ and it is also the fish "which swims in our philosophical sea", according to the very expression of the Cosmopolitan. [Cosmopolitan or New Chemical Light. Salt Treaty, p. 76. Paris, J. d'Houry, 1669.] Note that, in Byzantine basilicas, Christ was sometimes represented as the Sirens, with a fish tail. We see it thus figured on a capital of the Saint-Brice church, in Saint-Brisson-sur-Loire (Loiret). The fish is the hieroglyph of the stone of the Philosophers in its first state, because the stone, like the fish, is born in water and lives in water. Among the paintings of the alchemical stove executed in 1702 by P.-H. Pfau, we see an angler coming out of the water and a beautiful fish. [Preserved in the museum of Winthertur (Switzerland).] Other allegories recommend to seize it using a net or an untied net, which is an exact image of the meshes, formed of intersecting threads, schematized on our Epiphany cakes. [The popular expression have cake equals being wealthy. Whoever is lucky enough to find the bean in the cake no longer needs anything; the money will never fail him. He will be doubly king, by science and fortune.] Let us point out, however, another emblematic form that is rarer, but no less luminous. In a family friend where we were invited to share the cake, we saw on the crust, not without some surprise, an oak developing its branches, instead of the diamond marks which usually appear there. For the bather, a porcelain fish had been substituted, and this fish was a sole (lat. sol, solis, the sun). We will soon give the hermetic significance of the oak when speaking of the Golden Fleece. Let us add further that the famous fish of the Cosmopolitan, which he calls Echineis, is the sea urchin (echinus), the bear cub, the little bear, constellation in which the pole star is located. Fossil sea urchin tests, found in abundance in all terrains, exhibit a star-shaped radiated face. This is why Limojon de Saint-Didier recommends that investigators set their course "by the sight of the northern star".

This mysterious fish is the royal fish par excellence; whoever discovers it in his slice of cake is adorned with the title of king and celebrated as such. Now, the name of royal fish was formerly given to the dolphin, the sturgeon, the salmon and the trout, because these species were reserved, it was said, for the royal table. In fact, this denomination had only a symbolic character, since the eldest son of kings, the one who was to gird the crown, always bore the title of Dauphin, the name of a fish, and, what is better, of a royal fish. It is, moreover, a dolphin that the fishermen in the boat of the Mutus Liber seek to capture with nets and hooks. They are also dolphins that can be seen on various decorative motifs of the Hôtel Lallemant: in the middle window of the corner turret, on the capital of a pillar, as well as on the crowning of the small credenza, in the chapel. The Greek Ichtus of the Roman Catacombs has no other origin. Martigny reproduces, in fact, a curious painting of the Catacombs which represents a fish, swimming in the waves and carrying on its back a basket in which are breads and a red object, of elongated shape, which is perhaps a vase full of wine. [Martigny, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities , art. Eucharist, 2nd ed., p. 291.] The basket that the fish carries is the same hieroglyph as the pancake; its texture also comes from intersecting strands. In order not to extend these comparisons further, let us content ourselves with drawing the attention of the curious to the basket of Bacchus, called Cista, which the Cistophors carried to the processions of the bacchanals and "in which, Fr. Noel tells us, was contained what was most mysterious". [Fr. Noel, Dictionary of Fable . Paris, Le Normant, 1801.]

Even the dough of the galette obeys the laws of traditional symbolism. This dough is puff, and our little bather is included in it like a bookmark. There is an interesting confirmation of the material represented by the cake of the Kings. Sendivogius teaches us that prepared mercury has the appearance and form of a stony, crumbly, and flaky mass. “If you look at it carefully,” he said, “you will notice that it is all flaky. The crystalline layers which compose its substance are, in fact, superimposed like the leaves of a book; for this reason it has received the epithet leafy earth, earth of leaves, book of leaves, etc. Also, we see the first material of the Work expressed symbolically by a book sometimes open, sometimes closed, depending on whether it was worked or only extracted from the mine. Sometimes, when this book is shown closed – which indicates the raw mineral substance – it is not uncommon to see it sealed with seven bands; these are the marks of the seven successive operations which make it possible to open it, each of them breaking one of the closing seals. Such is the Great Book of Nature, which contains in its pages the revelation of the profane sciences and that of the sacred mysteries. It is simple in style, easy to read, provided, however, that one knows where to find it – which is very difficult – and above all that one can open it – which is even more laborious. – it is not uncommon to see it sealed with seven bands; these are the marks of the seven successive operations which make it possible to open it, each of them breaking one of the closing seals. Such is the Great Book of Nature, which contains in its pages the revelation of the profane sciences and that of the sacred mysteries. It is simple in style, easy to read, provided, however, that one knows where to find it – which is very difficult – and above all that one can open it – which is even more laborious. – it is not uncommon to see it sealed with seven bands; these are the marks of the seven successive operations which make it possible to open it, each of them breaking one of the closing seals. Such is the Great Book of Nature, which contains in its pages the revelation of the profane sciences and that of the sacred mysteries. It is simple in style, easy to read, provided, however, that one knows where to find it – which is very difficult – and above all that one can open it – which is even more laborious.

Let us now visit the interior of the Hotel. At the back of the courtyard opens the door, in a low arch, which gives access to the apartments. There are some very fine things there, and the dilettanti of our Renaissance would find there plenty to satisfy their taste. Let's cross the dining room, whose partitioned ceiling and high fireplace, bearing the arms of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany, are marvels, and cross the threshold of the chapel.

A real gem, lovingly chiseled and guilloché by admirable artists, this long room, if we except the window with its three ribbed arches designed in the ogival style, is hardly a chapel. All the ornamentation is profane, all the motifs which decorate it are borrowed from hermetic science. A superb painted bas-relief, executed in the manner of Saint Christopher in the loggia, has as its subject the pagan myth of the Golden Fleece. The coffered ceiling serves as a frame for many hieroglyphic figures. A pretty 16th century credenza offers an alchemical enigma. Not a religious scene, not a verse from a psalm, not a Gospel parable, nothing but the mysterious verb of priestly art... Could it be that one officiated in this cabinet of adornment so unorthodox, but, on the other hand, so propitious, in its mystical intimacy, to the meditations, to the readings, even to the prayer of the Philosopher? – Chapel, studio or oratory? We pose the question without solving it.

The bas-relief of the Golden Fleece, which one notices first on entering, is a very beautiful landscape on stone, enhanced with color, but dimly lit, filled with curious details which the patina of time makes difficult to study. In the center of a circle of mossy rocks, with vertical walls, a forest, of which the oak forms the main species, erects its rough trunks and develops its foliage. Clearings reveal various animals that are difficult to identify – dromedary, ox or cow, frog on top of a rock, etc. – which bring to life the wild and uninviting aspect of the site. On the grassy ground grow flowers and reeds of the Phragmites genus. On the right, the remains of the ram are placed on a projecting piece of rock, and guarded by a dragon whose threatening silhouette can be seen silhouetted against the sky. Jason himself was figured at the foot of an oak tree, but this part of the composition, no doubt not very adherent, has become detached from the whole (pl. XLIII).




CHAPEL OF THE HOTEL LALLEMANT IN BOURGES
La Toison d'Or
Plate XLIII


The fable of the Golden Fleece is a complete enigma of the hermetic work which must culminate in the philosopher's stone. [Conf. Alchemy, op. cit.] In the language of the Adepts, the material prepared for the Work, as well as the final result, is called the Golden Fleece. Which is very exact, since these substances differ only in purity, fixity and maturity. The Philosophers' Stone and the Philosopher's Stone are therefore two similar things, in kind and in origin, but the first is raw, while the second, which derives from it, is perfectly cooked and digested. The Greek poets tell us that "Zeus was so pleased with the sacrifice made in his honor by Phryxos, that he wanted those with whom this fleece was to live in abundance as long as they kept it, and that everyone was nevertheless allowed to try to conquer it". It can be assured, without risk of error, that there are not many of those who use authorization. It is not that the task is impossible or even extremely perilous – for anyone who knows the dragon also knows how to defeat it – but the great difficulty lies in the interpretation of the symbolism. How to establish a satisfactory concordance between so many diverse images, contradictory texts? It is however the only way we have to recognize the right road among all these dead ends, these impassable dead ends, which are proposed to us and tempt the neophyte impatient to walk. Moreover, we shall never tire of exhorting the disciples to direct their efforts towards the solution of this obscure point, although material and tangible, the pivot around which revolve all the symbolic combinations which we are studying. – for anyone who knows the dragon also knows how to defeat it, – but the big difficulty lies in the interpretation of the symbolism. How to establish a satisfactory concordance between so many diverse images, contradictory texts? It is however the only way we have to recognize the right road among all these dead ends, these impassable dead ends, which are proposed to us and tempt the neophyte impatient to walk. Moreover, we shall never tire of exhorting the disciples to direct their efforts towards the solution of this obscure point, although material and tangible, the pivot around which revolve all the symbolic combinations which we are studying. – for anyone who knows the dragon also knows how to defeat it, – but the big difficulty lies in the interpretation of the symbolism. How to establish a satisfactory concordance between so many diverse images, contradictory texts? It is however the only way we have to recognize the right road among all these dead ends, these impassable dead ends, which are proposed to us and tempt the neophyte impatient to walk. Moreover, we shall never tire of exhorting the disciples to direct their efforts towards the solution of this obscure point, although material and tangible, the pivot around which revolve all the symbolic combinations which we are studying. contradictory texts? It is however the only way we have to recognize the right road among all these dead ends, these impassable dead ends, which are proposed to us and tempt the neophyte impatient to walk. Moreover, we shall never tire of exhorting the disciples to direct their efforts towards the solution of this obscure point, although material and tangible, the pivot around which revolve all the symbolic combinations which we are studying. contradictory texts? It is however the only way we have to recognize the right road among all these dead ends, these impassable dead ends, which are proposed to us and tempt the neophyte impatient to walk. Moreover, we shall never tire of exhorting the disciples to direct their efforts towards the solution of this obscure point, although material and tangible, the pivot around which revolve all the symbolic combinations which we are studying.

Here, the truth appears veiled under two distinct images, that of the oak tree and that of the ram, which represent, as we have just said, only the same thing under two different aspects. Indeed, the oak has always been taken, by the old authors, to designate the vulgar name of the initial subject, such as one meets it in the mine. And it is by an approximation, the equivalent of which corresponds to oak, that the Philosophers inform us about this matter. The phrase we are using may seem equivocal; we regret it, but one could not speak better without exceeding certain limits. Only those initiated into the language of the gods will understand without any difficulty, because they possess the keys that open all the doors, whether those of the sciences or those of the religions. But, for some would-be cabalists, Jews or Christians, richer in pretension than in knowledge, how many Tiresias, Thales or Melampus are there capable of understanding these things? No, certainly, it is not for those, whose illusory combinations do not lead to anything solid, positive or scientific, that we take the trouble to write. So let's leave these Kabbalah doctors in their ignorance and return to our subject, hermetically characterized by the oak tree.

Everyone knows that the oak often bears on its leaves small round rough growths, sometimes pierced with a hole, called gallnuts (lat. galla). Now, if we combine three words from the same Latin family: galla, Gallia, gallus, we get galle, Gaule, coq. The rooster is the emblem of Gaul and the attribute of Mercury, as Jacob Tollius expressly says; it crowns the steeples of French churches, and it is not without reason that France is called the eldest daughter of the Church. [ Manuductio ad Caelum chemicum. Amstelodami, ap. J. Waesbergios, 1688.] There is only one more step to take to discover what the masters of the art have hidden with so much care. Let's continue. Not only does the oak provide the gall, but it also gives the Kermès, which has, in the Gaye Science, the same meaning as Hermès, the initial consonants being permutable. Both terms have an identical meaning, that of Mercury. However, while the gall gives the name of the raw mercurial matter, the kermes (in Arabic girmiz, which dyes scarlet) characterizes the prepared substance. It is important not to confuse these things so as not to get lost when we pass to the tests. Remember then that the mercury of the Philosophers, that is to say their prepared matter, must possess the virtue of dyeing, and that it acquires this virtue only with the aid of primary preparations.

As for the coarse subject of the Work, some call it Magnesia lunarii; others, more sincere, call it Lead of the Sages, vegetable Saturnia. Philalethes, Basil Valentine, the Cosmopolitan call him Son or Child of Saturn. In these various denominations, they consider sometimes its magnetic and attractive property of sulfur, sometimes its fusible quality, its easy liquefaction. For all, it is the Holy Land ( Terra sancta ); finally, this mineral has for celestial hieroglyph the astronomical sign of Aries (Aries). Gala, in Greek, means milk, and mercury is also called Virgin's Milk ( lac virginis). If then, brothers, you pay attention to what we have said about the galette des Rois, and if you know why the Egyptians deified the cat, you will no longer have any reason to doubt the subject you must choose: its vulgar name will be clearly known to you. You will then possess this Chaos of the Sages "in which all the hidden secrets are found in potency", as Philalethes asserts, and which the skilful artist does not take long to make active. Open, that is to say decompose this matter, try to isolate its pure portion, or its metallic soul, according to the consecrated expression, and you will have the Kermes, the Hermes, the tinging mercury which bears within itself the mystical gold, just as Saint Christopher bears Jesus and the ram his own fleece. You will understand why the Golden Fleece hangs on the oak, like gall and kermes, and you will be able to say, without offending the truth, that the old hermetic oak serves as a mother to the secret mercury. By bringing together legends and symbols, the light will shine in your mind and you will know the close affinity that unites the oak to the ram, Saint Christopher to the Child-King, the Good Shepherd to the sheep, Christian replica of Hermes criophore, etc.

Leave the threshold of the chapel and stand in the middle; look up then and you will be able to admire the most marvelous collection of emblems that one can meet. The ceiling, made up of coffers arranged in three longitudinal rows, is supported, towards the middle of its span, by two square pillars leaning against the walls and dug on their face with four grooves.

The one on the right, looking at the only window that gives light to this small room, carries between its scrolls a human skull, placed on a console of oak leaves and flanked by two wings. Expressive translation of a new generation, resulting from this putrefaction, following death, which occurs to mixed people when they have lost their vital and volatile soul. The death of the body reveals a dark blue or black coloring, assigned to the Raven, hieroglyph of the caput mortuum of the Work. Such is the sign and the first manifestation of the dissolution, the separation of the elements and the future generation of sulphur, the coloring and fixed principle of metals. The two wings are placed there to teach that, by abandoning the volatile and aqueous part, the dislocation of the parts takes place, the cohesion is broken. The body, mortified, falls into black ash having the appearance of coal dust. Then, under the action of the intrinsic fire developed by this disintegration, the ash, calcined, abandons its coarse and edible impurities; a pure salt is then born, which cooking colors little by little and takes on the occult power of fire (pl. XLIV).




CHAPEL OF THE HOTEL LALLEMANT IN BOURGES
Capital of the pillar. Right side
Plate XLIV


The capital on the left shows a decorative vase whose mouth is flanked by two dolphins. A flower, which seems to come out of the vase, blooms in a form reminiscent of that of heraldic lilies. All these symbols relate to the solvent, or common mercury of the Philosophers, a principle contrary to sulphur, of which we have seen the emblematic elaboration on the other capital.

At the base of these two supports, a large crown of oak leaves, crossed vertically by a beam decorated with the same foliage, reproduces the graphic sign corresponding, in spagyric art, to the vulgar name of the subject. Crown and capital thus realize the complete symbol of the raw material, this globe that God, Jesus and some great monarchs are represented holding in their hands.

Our intention is not to analyze in detail all the images that decorate the coffers of this unique ceiling. The subject, very extensive, would require a special study and would oblige us to repeat it frequently. We will therefore confine ourselves to giving a rapid description and to summarizing what the most original express. Among these, we will first point out the symbol of sulfur and its extraction from the raw material, the graph of which is fixed, as we have just learned, on each of the engaged pillars. It is an armillary sphere, placed on a burning hearth, and which bears the greatest resemblance to one of the engravings of the treatise on Azoth. Here, the brazier takes the place of Atlas, and this image of our practice, very instructive in itself, exempts us from any comment. Not far from here, a common hive, made of straw, is depicted surrounded by its bees, a subject frequently reproduced, particularly on the alchemical stove of Winthertur. Behold – what a singular motive for a chapel! – a young child urinating heavily into his hoof. There, the same toddler, kneeling near a pile of flat ingots, holds an open book, while at his feet lies a dead snake. – Should we stop or continue? - We hesitate. A detail located in the semi-darkness of the moldings determines the direction of the small bas-relief; on the highest piece of the cluster is the starred seal of King Solomon the Magus. Below, mercury; above, the Absolute. Simple and complete process which comprises only one way, requires only one matter, claims only one operation. “He who knows how to do the Work with mercury alone has found everything that is most perfect. Such, at least, is what the most famous authors affirm. It is the union of the two triangles of fire and water, or sulfur and mercury assembled in a single body, which generates the six-pointed star, hieroglyph of the Work par excellence and of the realized philosopher's stone. Next to this image, another presents us with an inflamed forearm whose hand seizes large chestnuts or chestnuts; further on the same hieroglyph, emerging from the rock, holds a lighted torch; here, it is the horn of Amalthea, overflowing with flowers and fruits, which serves as a perch for the geline or partridge, – the bird in question being little characterized; but, whether the emblem is the black hen or the red partridge, that does not alter the hermetic significance which it expresses. Here is now an overturned vase, escaped, by breaking the link, of the mouth of a decorative lion which held it in balance: it is an original version of the solve and coagula of Notre-Dame de Paris; a second subject, unorthodox and rather irreverent, follows closely: it is a child trying to break a rosary on his knee; farther on, a large shell, our merelle, shows a mass attached to it and bound by means of spiral phylacteries. The bottom of the box which carries this image repeats fifteen times the graphic symbol allowing the exact identification of the contents of the shell. The same sign – substituted for the name of matter – appears in the neighborhood, this time large, and in the center of a fiery furnace. In another figure, we find the child – who seems to us to be playing the role of the artist – with his feet resting in the concavity of the famous merelle, and throwing in front of him tiny shells from, it seems, the big one. We also notice the open book, devoured by the fire; the haloed, radiant and flamboyant dove, emblem of the Spirit; the igneous crow, perched on the skull which it pecks, assembled figures of death and putrefaction; the angel "who makes the world go round" like a top, a subject taken up and developed in a small book entitled: Typus Mundi, work of some Jesuit Fathers [ Typus Mundi in quo ejus Calamitates et Pericula nec non Divini, humanique Amoris antipathia . Emblematice proposal to RR. CSIA Antuerpiae. Apud Joan. Cnobbaert, 1627.]; philosophical calcination, symbolized by a pomegranate subjected to the action of fire in a goldsmith's vase; above the calcined body, we distinguish the number 3 followed by the letter R, which indicate to the artist the necessity of the three reiterations of the same process, on which we have already insisted several times. Finally, the following image represents the commented ludus puerorum in the Golden Fleece of Trismosin and depicted in an identical manner: a child makes his wooden horse prance, the whip raised and a cheerful countenance (pl. XLV).




HOTEL LALLEMANT IN BOURGES
CEILING OF THE CHAPEL
(Fragment)
Plate XLV


We have finished with the nomenclature of the principal hermetic emblems carved on the ceiling of the chapel; Let's end this study with the analysis of a very curious and singularly rare piece.

Carved into the wall, near the window, a small 16th century credenza attracts the eye as much by the prettiness of its decoration as by the mystery of an enigma considered as indecipherable. Never, according to our cicerone, no visitor was able to provide an explanation. This lacuna doubtless stems from the fact that no one understood to what end the symbolism of all the decoration was directed, nor what science was concealed under its multiple hieroglyphs. The beautiful bas-relief of the Golden Fleece, which could have served as a guide, has not been considered in its true meaning; it has remained, for everyone, a mythological work in which the oriental imagination gives free rein. Our credence, however, itself bears the alchemical imprint of which we have only described the particularities in this work (pl. XLVI).




CHAPEL OF THE HOTEL LALLEMANT
Enigma of the Credenza
Plate XLVI


Indeed, on the engaged pillars which support the architrave of this miniature temple, we discover directly below the capitals the emblems dedicated to the philosopher's mercury; the merelle, scallop shell or stoup, surmounted by wings and the trident, attribute of the sea god Neptune. It is always the same indication of the aqueous and volatile principle. The pediment consists of a large decorative shell serving as a seat for two symmetrical dolphins linked axially at their end. Three flaming grenades complete the ornamentation of this symbolic credenza.

The riddle itself has two terms: RERE, RER, which seem to have no meaning and are both repeated three times on the concave bottom of the niche.

We already discover, thanks to this simple arrangement, a precious indication, that of the three repetitions of one and the same technique veiled under the mysterious expression RERE, RER. Now, the three igneous pomegranates of the pediment confirm this triple action of a single process, and, as they represent the fire embodied in this red salt which is the philosopher's sulfur, we will easily understand that it is necessary to reiterate three times the calcination of this body to carry out the three philosophical works, according to the doctrine of Geber. The first operation leads first to Sulphur, or medicine of the first order; the second operation, absolutely similar to the first, furnishes the Elixir, or medicine of the second order, which is different from Sulfur only in quality and not in kind; finally, the third operation, performed like the first two, gives the Philosopher's Stone, medicine of the third order, which contains all the virtues, qualities and perfections of the Sulfur and the Elixir multiplied in power and extent. If one asks, moreover, in what consists and how is carried out the triple operation of which we expose the results, we will refer the investigator to the bas-relief of the ceiling where one sees a pomegranate roasting in a certain vase.

But how to decipher the enigma of meaningless words? – In a very simple way. RE, Latin ablative of res, signifies the thing, considered in its matter; since the word RERE is the assembly of RE, one thing, and RE, another thing, we will translate two things into one, or else a double thing, and RERE will thus be equivalent to RE BIS. Open a hermetic dictionary, leaf through any alchemy work and you will find that the word REBIS, frequently used by the Philosophers, characterizes their compost, or compound ready to undergo successive metamorphoses under the influence of fire. Let's summarize. RE, a dry matter, philosophical gold; RE, a wet matter, philosophical mercury; RERE or REBIS, a double material, both wet and dry, an amalgam of philosophical gold and mercury,

We would like to be as clear in the explanation of the second term RER, but we are not allowed to tear the veil of mystery that it covers. Nevertheless, in order to satisfy as far as possible the legitimate curiosity of children of art, we will say that these three letters contain a secret of capital importance which relates to the vessel of the Work. RER is used to cook, to unite radically and indissolubly, to provoke the transformations of the RERE compost. How to give sufficient indications without becoming perjured? – Do not trust what Basil Valentin says in his Twelve Keys, and be careful not to take his words literally when he claims that “he who has the material will find a pot to cook it”. We affirm, on the contrary, - and one can have faith in our sincerity, – that it will be impossible to obtain the slightest success in the Work if one does not have a perfect knowledge of what the Vase of the Philosophers is nor with what material it must be made. Pontanus confesses that before knowing this secret vessel he had begun the same work over two hundred times without success, although he labored on clean and suitable materials, and according to the regular method. The artist must make his vessel himself; it is a maxim of art. Take no action, therefore, until you have received all the light on this qualified eggshell. more than two hundred times the same work, although it worked on clean and suitable materials, and according to the regular method. The artist must make his vessel himself; it is a maxim of art. Take no action, therefore, until you have received all the light on this qualified eggshell. more than two hundred times the same work, although it worked on clean and suitable materials, and according to the regular method. The artist must make his vessel himself; it is a maxim of art. Take no action, therefore, until you have received all the light on this qualified eggshell.ecretum secretorum among the masters of the Middle Ages.

So what is RER? – We have seen that RE means a thing, a material; R, which is half of RE, will signify half of thing, of matter. RER is therefore equivalent to a matter increased by half of another or of its own. Note that it is not a question here of proportions, but of a chemical combination independent of relative quantities. To make ourselves better understood, let us take an example and suppose that the matter represented by RE is realgar or natural sulphide of arsenic. R, half of RE, could therefore be the sulfur of the realgar or its arsenic, which are similar or different, depending on whether the sulfur and the arsenic are considered separately or combined in the realgar. So that RER will be obtained by realgar augmented with sulphur, which is considered to form half of realgar, or arsenic,

A few more tips; first look for RER, that is to say the vessel. RERE will then be easily recognizable to you. The Sibyl, questioned on what a Philosopher was, answered: "He is the one who knows how to make glass." » Apply yourself to making it according to our art, without taking too much account of glassmaking processes. The potter's trade would be more instructive to you; see the boards of Piccolpassi, you will find one which represents a dove whose legs are attached to a stone. [Claudius Popelin, The Three Books of the Potter's Art, of rider Cyprian Piccolpassi. Paris, Librairie Internationale, 1861.] Shouldn't you, according to the excellent advice of Tollius, seek and find the magisterium in a volatile thing? But if you have no vase to hold it, how will you prevent it from evaporating, dissipating without leaving the slightest residue? So make a vase, then your compound; seal carefully so that no spirit can escape; heat the whole according to the art until complete calcination. Put the pure portion of the powder obtained back into your compound, which you will seal in the same vase. Repeat for the third time, and do not thank us. Your thanksgiving should go to the Creator alone. For us, who are only a milestone set on the great path of the esoteric Tradition, we do not claim anything,

Our visit is over. Once again, pensive, our mute admiration questions these marvelous and surprising paradigms, the author of which has remained so long unknown to us. Is there a book written by him somewhere? – Nothing seems to indicate it. No doubt, following the example of the great Adepts of the Middle Ages, he preferred to entrust to stone, rather than to vellum, the irrefutable testimony of an immense science of which he possessed all the secrets. It is therefore just, it is fair that his memory lives on among us, that his name finally emerges from obscurity and shines, like a star of the first magnitude, in the hermetic firmament.

Jean Lallemant, alchemist and Knight of the Round Table, deserves to take his place around the Holy Grail, to commune there with Geber (Magister magistrorum), with Roger Bacon (Doctor admirabilis). Equal, for the extent of knowledge, to the powerful Basil Valentin, to the charitable Flamel, he is superior to them by the expression of two qualities, eminently scientific and philosophical, which he carried to the highest degree of perfection: modesty and sincerity.


THE CYCLIC CROSS OF HENDAYE

This chapter and its plates do not appear in the original edition of 1926, by Jean Schemit. They will be introduced in the 1957 edition, at the Omnium Littéraire, and maintained in subsequent editions. The text is by Fulcanelli and the plates by Julien Champagne. These documents were in the possession of Eugène Canseliet, who, in his preface to the 1957 edition, remains more than discreet about this insertion.

LAT


Small border town of the Basque country, Hendaye groups its houses at the foot of the first Pyrenean foothills. The green ocean, the wide, brilliant and rapid Bidassoa, the grassy mountains frame it. The first impression, in contact with this harsh and rough ground, is quite painful, almost hostile. On the marine horizon, the tip of Fontarabie, ocher under the harsh light, sinks into the glaucous and shimmering waters of the gulf, barely breaking the natural austerity of a wild site. Except for the Spanish character of its houses, the type and idiom of its inhabitants, the very special attraction of a recent beach, bristling with proud palaces, Hendaye has nothing that can retain the attention of the tourist, the archaeologist or the artist.

Leaving the station, a rural path runs along the railway line and leads to the parish church, located in the center of the town. Its bare walls, flanked by a massive, quadrangular and truncated tower, stand on a square raised by a few steps and bordered by trees with thick foliage. Vulgar building, heavy, remodeled, without interest. Near the southern transept, however, a humble stone cross, as simple as it is curious, hides under the green masses of the forecourt. It once adorned the communal cemetery, and it was only in 1842 that it was moved near the church, to the place it occupies today. Such, at least, is the assurance given to us by an old Basque man, who for many years had fulfilled the functions of sacristan. As to the origin of this cross, it is unknown and it was impossible for us to obtain any information about the time of its erection. However, taking as a basis of calculation the shape of the base and that of the column, we think that it could not be prior to the end of the 17th century or the beginning of the 18th century. Whatever its antiquity, the cross of Hendaye, by the decoration of its pedestal, is indeed the most singular monument of primitive millenarianism, the rarest symbolic translation of chiliasm, that we have ever encountered. We know that this doctrine, first accepted and then opposed by Origen, Saint Dionysius of Alexandria and Saint Jerome, although the Church did not condemn it, was part of the esoteric traditions of the ancient philosophy of Hermes. The naivety of the bas-reliefs, their clumsy execution leads one to think that these lapidary emblems are not the work of a professional chisel and chisel; but, apart from aesthetics, we must recognize that the obscure craftsman of these images embodied a deep science and real cosmographic knowledge.

On the transverse arm of the cross—a Greek cross—there is the common inscription, strangely cut projecting on two parallel lines, with the words almost welded together, and whose arrangement we respect:

OCRUXAVES
PESUNICA

Certainly, the sentence is easy to restore and the meaning well known: O crux ave spes unica. However, if we were translating like an apprentice, we would hardly understand what it would be necessary to desire, from the foot or from the cross, and such an invocation would be surprising. We ought, indeed, to go so casually and ignorantly as to disregard the elementary rules of grammar; pes, in the masculine nominative, calls for the adjective unicus, which is of the same gender, and not the feminine unica. It would therefore seem that the deformation of the word spes, hope, into pes, foot, by ablation of the initial consonant, is the involuntary result of an absolute lack of practice in our lapicide. But does inexperience really justify such strangeness? We cannot admit it. Indeed, the comparison of the patterns executed by the same hand and in the same way, demonstrates the obvious concern for a normal set-up, the care taken in their arrangement and balance. Why would the registration have been treated with less scruple? A careful examination of it shows that the characters are clear, if not elegant, and do not overlap (pl. XLVII).




HENDAYE (Basses-Pyrénées)
Cyclic cross
Plate XLVII


Our craftsman probably traced them with chalk or charcoal, and this sketch must necessarily rule out any idea of ​​an error occurring during the carving. Now, since it exists, it is therefore necessary that this apparent error was actually intended. The only reason that we can cite is that of a sign put on purpose, veiled under the aspect of an inexplicable poor workmanship and intended to pique the curiosity of the observer. We will therefore say that, in our opinion, it was knowingly and voluntarily that the author thus arranged the epigraph of his disturbing work.

The study of the pedestal had already enlightened us, and we knew in what way, using what key, it was appropriate to read the Christian inscription of the monument; but we wanted to show the investigators what help can bring, in the resolution of hidden things, simple common sense, logic and reasoning.

The letter S, which borrows the sinuous form of the serpent, corresponds to the chi (X) of the Greek language and takes on its esoteric meaning. It is the helical trace of the sun having reached the zenith of its curve through space, during the cyclical catastrophe. It is a theoretical image of the beast of the Apocalypse, of the dragon which vomits, in the days of Judgment, the fire and the sulfur on the macrocosmic creation. Thanks to the symbolic value of the letter S, moved on purpose, we understand that the inscription must be translated into a secret language, that is to say into the language of the gods or that of the birds, and that its meaning must be discovered with the help of the rules of Diplomacy. Some authors, and particularly Grasset d'Orcet, in the analysis of the Songe de Polyphile, published by the Revue Britannique, have given them clearly enough to exempt us from speaking about them after them. We will therefore read, in French, the language of diplomats, Latin as it is written, then using the permuting vowels, we will obtain the assonance of new words composing another sentence of which we will restore the spelling and the order of the words, as well as the literary meaning. Thus, we receive this singular warning: It is written that life takes refuge in a single space [Latin spatium, with the meaning of place, place, location, given to it by Tacitus. Corresponds to Greek Cirjon , root Cira, country, country, territory.], and we learn that there is a country where death will not reach man, at the terrible time of the double cataclysm. As for the geographical location of this promised land, from where the elect will witness the return of the golden age, it is up to us to find it. For the elect, children of Elijah, will be saved according to the word of Scripture. Because their deep faith, their tireless perseverance in the effort will have earned them to be elevated to the rank of disciples of Christ-Light. They will bear the sign of it and will receive from him the mission of reconnecting to regenerated humanity the chain of traditions of vanished humanity.

The front face of the cross—the one that received the three horrible nails fixing to the accursed wood the painful body of the Redeemer—is determined by the inscription INRI, engraved on its transverse arm. It corresponds to the schematic image of the cycle carried by the basement (pl. XLVIII).




CYCLIC CROSS OF HENDAYE
The four sides of the pedestal
Plate XLVIII


Here, then, we have two symbolic crosses, instruments of the same torture: at the top, the divine cross, an example of the means chosen for expiation; below, the cross of the globe, determining the pole of the northern hemisphere, and situating in time the fatal epoch of this expiation. God the Father holds in his hand this globe surmounted by the igneous sign and the four great centuries — historical figures of the four ages of the world — have their sovereigns represented with the same attribute: Alexander, Augustus, Charlemagne, Louis XIV [The first three are emperors; the fourth is only king, the Sun King, thus marking the decline of the star and its ultimate radiance. It is the twilight harbinger of the long cyclical night, full of horror and dread, "the abomination of desolation".] This is what the epigraph INRI teaches, Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum , but which borrows its secret meaning from the cross: Igne Natura Renovatur Integra . For it is with the help of fire and in fire itself that our hemisphere will soon be tested. And just as gold is separated by fire from impure metals, so says the Scripture, the good will be separated from the wicked on the great day of judgment.

On each of the four sides of the pedestal, there is a different symbol. One bears the image of the sun, the other that of the moon; the third shows a large star and the last a geometric figure which, as we have just said, is none other than the diagram adopted by the initiates to characterize the solar cycle. It is a simple circle which two diameters, intersecting at right angles, divide into four sectors. These are charged with an A which designates them as the four ages of the world, in this complete hieroglyph of the universe, formed of the conventional signs of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and the temporal, of the macrocosm and the microcosm, where we find, associated, the major emblems of redemption (cross) and of the world (circle).

In medieval times, these four phases of the great cyclic period, whose continuous rotation was expressed in antiquity by means of a circle divided by two perpendicular diameters, are generally represented by the four evangelists or by the symbolic letter which was the Greek alpha, and, more often still, by the four evangelical animals surrounding Christ, a living human figure on the cross. This is the traditional formula frequently encountered on the eardrums of Romanesque porches. Jesus is exhibited there seated, his left hand resting on a book, his right raised in a gesture of blessing, and separated from the four animals which form his procession by the ellipse known as Mystical Almond. These groups, generally isolated from the other scenes by a garland of clouds, have their figures always placed in the same order, as can be seen at the cathedrals of Chartres (royal portal) and Le Mans (western porch), at the Templar church of Luz (Hautes-Pyrénées), at that of Civray (Vienne), at the porch of Saint Trophine at Arles, etc. (pl. XLIX).




ARLES - SAINT-TROPHIME CHURCH
Tympanum of the porch (12th century)
Plate XLIX


“There was also before the throne, writes Saint John, a sea of ​​glass similar to crystal; and in the middle of the throne and around the throne there were four animals full of eyes before and behind. The first animal looked like a lion; the second looked like a calf; the third had a face like that of a man, and the fourth looked like a flying eagle. » [ Revelation. Ch. IV, v. 6 and 7.] Relationship conforms to that of Ezekiel: “I saw then… a great cloud and a fire which surrounded it, and a splendor all around, in the middle of which one saw like a metal which comes out of the fire; and in the midst of this fire was seen a likeness of four animals… And the likeness of their faces was the face of a man; and all four had a lion's face on the right; and all four had an ox-face on the left; and all four had an eagle's face above. [ Revelation , Ch. I, v. 4, 5, 10 and 11].

In Hindu mythology, the four equal sectors of the circle shared by the cross served as the basis for a rather singular mystical conception. The entire cycle of human evolution is embodied there in the form of a cow symbolizing Virtue, whose four feet each rest on one of the sectors representing the four ages of the world. In the first age, which corresponds to the golden age of the Greeks and which is called Crédayougam or age of innocence, Virtue stands firm on the earth: the cow stands fully on its four feet. In the Trédayougam or second age, which corresponds to the silver age, it weakens and only stands on three feet. During the duration of the Tuvabarayougam, or third age, which is that of brass, it is reduced to two feet. Finally, in the iron age, which is ours, the cyclical cow or human Virtue touches the supreme degree of weakness and senility: it supports itself with difficulty, in balance on only one foot. This is the fourth and final age, the Calyougam, an age of misery, misfortune and decay.

The Iron Age has no other seal than that of Death. Its hieroglyph is the skeleton provided with the attributes of Saturn: the empty hourglass, figure of bygone times, and the scythe, reproduced in the number seven, which is the number of transformation, destruction, annihilation. The Gospel of this inauspicious time is that which was written under the inspiration of Saint Matthew. Matthæus, in Greek Matqajow , comes from Maqhma, Maqhmatow , which means science. This word gave Maqhsjw, maqhseiw , study, knowledge, from manqanejn , to learn, to learn. It is the Gospel according to Science, the last of all, but the first for us, because it teaches us that, except a chosen few, we must collectively perish. Also the angel was attributed to Saint Matthew, because science, alone capable of penetrating the mystery of things, that of beings and their destiny, can give man wings so that he can rise to the knowledge of the highest truths and reach God.


CONCLUSION

Saw. Potere. Audere. Tacere.
Zoroaster.

Nature does not open the door of the sanctuary to everyone indiscriminately.

In these pages the layman will perhaps discover some evidence of true and positive science. We cannot, however, flatter ourselves that we will convert him, for we are not unaware of how tenacious prejudices are, how great the force of prejudices. The disciple will derive more benefit from it, provided, however, that he does not despise the works of the old Philosophers, that he studies the classical texts with care and penetration, until he has acquired enough clairvoyance to discern the obscure points of the operating manual.

No one can claim possession of the great Secret if he does not grant its existence in tune with the research undertaken.

It is not enough to be studious, active and persevering, if one lacks a solid principle, a concrete basis, if immoderate enthusiasm blinds reason, if pride tyrannizes judgment, if greed flourishes in the wild light of a golden star.

Mysterious Science demands a great deal of correctness, exactness, perspicacity in the observation of facts, a sound, logical and balanced mind, a lively imagination without exaltation, an ardent and pure heart. It demands, moreover, the greatest simplicity and absolute indifference vis-à-vis the theories, systems, hypotheses which, on the faith of books or the reputation of their authors, we generally admit without control. She wants her aspirants to learn to think more with their brains, less with those of others. Finally, it wants them to demand the truth of its principles, the knowledge of its doctrine and the practice of its labors from Nature, our common mother.

By the constant exercise of the faculties of observation and reasoning, by meditation, the neophyte will climb the steps which lead to

KNOW.

The naïve imitation of natural processes, skill combined with ingenuity, the enlightenment of long experience will assure him the

POWER.

Director, he will still need patience, constancy, unshakeable will. Bold and resolute, the certainty and confidence born of a robust faith will enable him to

TO DARE.

Finally, when success will have consecrated so many laborious years, when his desires will be fulfilled, the Sage, despising the vanities of the world, will approach the humble, the disinherited, all who work, suffer, struggle, despair and cry here below. Anonymous and mute disciple of eternal Nature, apostle of eternal Charity, he will remain faithful to his vow of silence.

In Science, in Good, the Adept must forever


TO SHUT UP.




CONTENTS


THE MYSTERY OF CATHEDRALS

I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX


PARIS

I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII


AMIENS


BOURGES

I-II


THE CYCLIC CROSS OF HENDAYE


CONCLUSION