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Fulcanelli: Master Alchemist: Le Mystere des Cathedrales, Esoteric Intrepretation of the Hermetic Symbols of The Great Work (Le Mystere Des ... of the Hermetic Symbols of Great Work)

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Many years ago, an artist friend of mine said "I'm not interested in Gothic stuff. Its been 'done.' I want to explore new things. " True - not everyone thinks like that, but it does underscore a serious illusion - that we know what 'Gothic' is - that we have somehow quantified it. In truth, we haven't. Gothic cathedrals are as mysterious as the pyramids. We all know that a cathedral is a religious centre or 'seat.' But the@emergence of gothic cathedrals - all over Europe, with their soaring architectural forms and rhythmns, quite unlike anything around them - enshrines a great and rich mystery. This book explores something of that mystery.

Until of late, an appreciation of Fulcanelli's 'The Mystery of the Cathredals' has been restricted to a few estoric circles. Fulcanellihimself - remains something of an enigma. Born Paris, 1877, Fulcanelli's manum opus was first published in 1926 in a limited edition of 300 copies. It has attracted interest ever since - even though viewed askance by the more orthodox interpreters of Church history/architecture. Basically, Fulcanelli's book celebrates the 'hermetic' or 'masonic' mysteries enshrined in the great European cathedrals, the presence of a truly 'catholic' i.e. universal)and dynamic mystery tradition - at once concealed and revealed -within the very facade of 'stone' orthodoxy.

Fulcanelli devotes much attention to the facade of the Notre Dame de Paris, but what he had to say is true of all great European cathedrals, designed and built by master-masons who had access to the hermetic tradition. This makes 'Dan Brown' stuff look tame and provincial. Look at any genuine Gothic church architecture - carefully, and you will dis-cover what Fulcanelli was hinting at. The dynamic symbolism involved flows
like liquid - through every authentic Gothic edifice.

Taking its 'verticality' into account - more than a few art historians have condemned Gothic as 'artificial' and unnatural- compared to the earthy distribution of weight and horizontality of Graeco-Roman forms. But this is shallow. The secret of Gothic architecture lies in its emergence and unfoldment from a single pointless-point, and its regathering therein. It celebrates a two-way flow, from formlessness into form, and form into formlessness. The 'Gothic' primarily celebrates the mystery of spaceless-space, the space where mind, form and the divine energeia interact. Read this book, digest what it has to say - and you will rediscover the mystery enshrined in every form and the cathedral of life.

This book is very well researched and written and is an absolute classic in esoteric circles.

Fulcanelli introduces us to the art of reading the secrets of the gothis cathedrals. That the cathedrals themselves were repositories for Hermetic Science, specifically that of alchemy.

The first twelve chapters are relatively short and provide information about the "Green language" and the "Feast of the Fools".

The remaining chapters are much longer and go into extreme detail about specific alchemical engravings at Notre Dame and Amiens. There are photographs of the specific carvings along the way so that you know what Fulcanelli is refering to.

The final chapter is a very brief sketch of the symbolism of the Great Cross at hendaye, and there is some speculation as to whether the chapter was written by Fulcanelli, but it is an enlightening chapter and much more forthright in it's divulgence of secrets.

But be warned. This is not a book for the beginner in the area of alchemy as it dips into some extreme esoterica and at times can be frustratingly difficult to understand, due to the "density" of the text. But that being said, it does yield up some real rewards for those who are willing to make the time and effort.

Like the alchemical process itself, digestion of this book is slow and methodical but can lead to enlightening results.

Alchemy and Hermeticism, along with the Qaballah and numerous other esoteric disciplines are all part of the "Great Work". This great work is the ongoing study of the ancient philosophy of Egypt which they received at the hands of the Celtic Bards and Druids. This ancient philosophy sought to train the mind so that the conscious mind could interact freely with the subconscious mind. The purpose of this discipline was for the aspirant to gain mental abilities which today are seen only in autistic savants. The process of acomplishing this is not easy. The adept discussed the various steps in the process by using symbolic code which they referred to as Cant, the Green Language, the Language of the Birds, the True Celtic Language, etc. Interpreting this code is very similar to dream interpretation except that the masters further confused its images by using sometimes hundreds of different sumbols to refer to one single item. Herein lies the basic problem with Fulcanelli's book.

I rated this book five stars becuase of the rarity of modern Alchemical treatises. The style of writing is very easy to read but sadly, not very informative. All Hermetic authors subscribed to the requirement for secrecy. This is where the term: "Hermetically sealed" comes from. However, Fulcanelli takes this ancient admonition to greater lenghts than did even most of the ancient authors. His use of the Green Language is so abstruse that it took me some time to actually convince myself that he was the real deal and not just a wanna-be pretending to understand the code.

In spite of their propensity for obsfuscation most authors would bend the rules of secrecy in one or two specific areas thus being able to add some insight into the "Great Work" without revealing too much of the whole. A good example of this is in Eudoxus' "Six Keys" where he emphasizes the sequence of events prior to the Rite and the necessity of understanding the Fire symbol. Fulcanelli does this also in two areas. The first is when he mentions that the rule of secrecy is strictly enforced because Alchemists did not wish to disrupt the cause-effect flow of world destiny by revealing too much too soon and thereby negating the prophecies predicted for the end of the age. I have not seen this explanation in any other Hermetic document. The second revelation he makes is in emphasizing that there are two forms of the Rite, a damp method and a dry method. The Damp Method is a voluntary induction into the Lucid Dreaming state to break down the barrier (symbolized by Fire) between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind while the Dry Method was a forced induction that was a short cut that did not require the dedication and long years of study to understand the profound philosophy of the ancients.

All in all it is a valuable book but i would rather recommend Mary Atwood's "Suggestive Inquiry" which is a more difficult read but emminantly more informative and promises far more insight if seriously studied.

An alchemist Master, Fulcanelli, was a mysterious figure of early 20th century. His name became known to the world when his first work, "Le Mystere des Cathedrales," became published in 1926, only few years after Fulcanelli disappeared. This remarkable book revealed the purpose of phonetic cabala within the alchemistic works as well as the process of the Great Work. It showed the alchemical tradition and techniques as hidden yet seen on the very walls of Cathedrals, including the famous Auch Cathedral. When one reads this book, one will experience either a strong difficulty in understanding the words or one will find the greatest secrets that lie within.

In the early 1920s, Fulcanelli embarked a task upon his only disciple, Eugene Canseliet, to publish his three works, "Le Mystere des Cathedrales," The Dwellings of the Philosophers, and "Finis Gloria Mundi." However, "Finis Gloria Mundi" was later withdrawn by the Master due to its untimely nature and millennialic content.

If one wishes to seek the true identity of Fulcanelli himself, one would only seek out the ground-breaking work by Patrick Riviere, who was the student of Eugene Canseliet, who was a mentioned disciple of Fulcanelli himself. Riviere holds a strong credence to his work, which is Fulcanelli - His True Identity Revealed.

Finally, it would be my honor to recommend "Le Mystere des Cathedrales" to those who heed the calling and to those who are seeking the hidden meanings, either in mystery or alchemy, that lie within the ancient stones of the cathedrals. Even to those who are just simply curious about the gothic works. There is more to this book than meets the eye.

There are certain ideas which have persisted for many centuries as myths and legends although these subjects remain obscure, misunderstood, and maybe even feared by the vast majority of people today.

For example there's the idea that throughout history spiritually advanced people were initiated into great mysteries and then sent out to serve and enlighten mankind. Often they were misunderstood and persecuted. Nobody exemplifies this idea better than Jesus Christ who I believe was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries.

According to the legends alchemy was one of these great secrets.

There's also the legend that people in ancient Egypt and on Atlantis could prolong their physical lives indefinitely and live forever.

I bring all of this up because Fulcanelli appears to have been one of these mysterious people.

Fulcanelli left the material for this book with a student and then disappeared. But the student claims he saw Fulcanelli 30 years later and he looked younger than when he disappeared.

That's all part of the legend about the Philosophers' Stone:

"It is an absolute metallic synthesis and assures for the fortunate owner of this treasure the triple endowment of knowledge, fortune, and health."

As this book points out the term 'alchemy' is today usually associated with the idea of transforming lead or other metals into gold. But this is only one aspect of alchemy which also involves a spiritual transformation.

Gold is a mysterious substance in any case and is the only metal which never rusts.

This book demonstrates Fulcanelli's knowledge about many subjects such as history, the sciences, philosophy, and architecture, not to mention other more mysterious and arcane areas.

He felt alchemy is a purer form of science than what we associate with science today.

The book is very eloquently written as Fulcanelli explains how the spooky carved images in the Gothic cathedrals reveal the secrets of alchemy for those who can interpret them. He said between the 13th and 17th centuries there were thousands of real alchemists who knew the secret. Maybe there still are who knows.

Fulcanelli believed in and understood the deep and mystical relationships between mythology, Christianity, and the bible. Not only did he believe that the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Virgin Mary are the same person, he also says this goddess is the mother of Zeus and the other mythological gods.

He talks about the 'language of the birds' which is I believe a sort of radiation that the plants and animals can understand. Human beings understood this language at one time but lost this ability as is indicated by the Tower Of Babel event in the bible.

It could just be my imagination but as I sat in a quiet place reviewing what I had highlighted in this book I started to feel that the book was giving off some sort of energy, almost as if the book itself is alive in some way.

For Fulcanelli all matter is alive. He felt God is an alchemist who created matter from energy. Then I guess the sun converts matter back into energy, a nuclear reaction being an alchemical process.

There's an interesting unraveling of a strange word puzzle written on a chapel. A series of letters appears three times together with the trident which symbolizes the sea god Neptune who is always associated with the number 3.

Jeff Marzano

The Philosopher's Stone: Alchemy and the Secret Research for Exotic Matter

Egyptian Heritage: Based on the Edgar Cayce Readings

Initiation

The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Reader's Edition)

The Giza Death Star Destroyed: The Ancient War For Future Science (Giza Death Star Trilogy)

The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls: Unlocking the Secrets of the Past, Present, and Future

Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization

The Giza Power Plant : Technologies of Ancient Egypt

Initiation in the Great Pyramid (Astara's Library of Mystical Classics)

Edgar Cayce's Atlantis and Lemuria: The Lost Civilizations in the Light of Modern Discoveries

I got this from Adventures Unlimited several years ago, and actually read it. The main problem I had with the book is that it is extremely cryptic, i. e. I had great difficulty understanding what Fulcanelli was talking about. This difficulty was in fact so great that I still don't understand most of it. I think that this book would be highly useful to someone who had spent a great deal of time studying alchemy, but for those (like me) with only a passing (or less) familiarity with the subject, it amounts to an exercise in mystification. If I knew more about alchemy, I might give this a higher rating; I give it the rating I did, because I have the feeling that Fulcanelli is giving an accurate account, but this rating is no higher because of the sheer incomprehensibility of the text. Also, the publication of this work may have had some purpose other than that of informing the reader; if so, I haven't divined this purpose, and thus cannot tell if the book was successful in it. My rating is therefore in the middle of the road.

The Fulcanelli book lifts a heavy lid covering the deep mysterious world of the builders of great gothic cathedrals in Europe to shed some light on what can be hidden from a profane eye, but is open book to the one who posesses a certain knowledge. Fulcanelli is very cautious not to lift the cover too high, he always stops himself at certain point, saying that he is not at liberty to say more. Fulcanelli, a full fledged alchemist, respected and admired by many, and no question feared by many more, had an access to the knowledge so serious that even one millionth of that whole could in the hands of a profane lead to the destruction of the world. Very few can even imagine what is hidden in that vault to which door Fulcanelly and his colleagues whose names we would never know. They keep their secrets well guarded. In comparison to their world, the fictional world of Brown's "Da Vinic Code" is as a speck of dust to the mount Everest.
Such people as Fulcanelli have been hunted throughout the ages, as late as during the last world war. They, however, managed to escape the sweeping search by the Nazis who spared no money and resources to find them. Lucky we, the Nazis weren't successful, otherwise we would be living today in a completely different world.
Now, when you know what kind of people Fulcanelli belonged to, and will appreciate a token of that great knowledge revealed to us by him when he leads us step by step to his humble but nevertheless powerful revelation.
In conclusion I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in obtaining at least some understanding how one should read a great books written in stone and become hungry for more knowledge without which no man can consider himself a complete person. Good luck, and enjoy the book.

This is a very interesting book. Shipped quickly by seller. Definitely recommended to gain further insight into history and gothic cathedrals.

To a student of esoteric learning this translation is excellent. It provides insight into the symbols and figures used by the master masons to convey hermetic thoughts to those inclined to consider the meaning of these curious stone carvings, windows and overall design in cathedrals.

As an initiate my review of this book is for the Birds; my lips would speak but Cant. Like The Cathars I retired into my man cave and read with rivetting and intense interest, this book; and like The Magi, my praise must be kept silent. For I am in awe of the great sign of the work.


Lamar McNabb

White Plains, New York