by Jay Weidner
Fulcanelli revealed to all who could see that once there was a great and glorious tradition in Europe that rivaled the traditions of the East. This tradition understood and practiced the science of light, and this tradition understood how to communicate with the living spirit, or the intelligence, that lives inside matter. In no uncertain terms Fulcanelli reveals that the secret tradition of ancient “Freemasonry” is exactly the same, at its core, as the traditions of the East. Western culture dictated a different style of initiation and communication, however—one that was more active in nature and more scientific in outlook.
In 1926, that secret was about to be lost forever. If it hadn’t been for Fulcanelli and his book, it is possible that the true nature of this initiatory tradition would have disappeared in the West, perhaps never to be realized again. The shell of academic studies, and perhaps the isolated alchemist, might preserve the core of the meme like a spore, waiting for a riper moment to sprout again, but the living current would have died away. In many ways, Le Mystère is like a message in a bottle from the last adept, dropped on his way out in the hopes that someone might follow behind.
THE THREEFOLD TRANSFORMATION
But what is alchemy? So far we have traced a channel of transmission from the Company of the Widow’s Son to the Rosicrucians and Freemasons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The question then becomes: What were they transmitting?
The “Isis the Prophetess” fragment is in many ways the origin point of alchemy in its modern sense. It is the first text in which mysticism becomes confused with some type of laboratory procedures. In the text, though, it is clear that Isis first imparts a philosophical understanding, and then she conducts a physical operation, supposedly along with Horus, in order to demonstrate the principle and illustrate her mastery of the process of transmutation. We might even think of this as the alchemical method: revelation, demonstration, and transmutation. The key, then, becomes the source of the revelation; where is the information coming from?
In the Isis fragment, the knowledge comes from a higher order of angel, implying that the higher realm from which it comes is at least at a planetary level. The higher angel Amnael who instructs Isis bears the signs of Nut and Khonsu (fig. 2.8) and appears nowhere else in Hebrew angelology. There is a faint resemblance to the name of the angel of Venus, Hanael or Anael, but this line of conjecture quickly comes to a dead end, for if Isis is the morning star, is she learning from herself? It doesn’t seem possible.
An easier solution is to take the name as it is, Amn-el, or the angel of Amon. Amon’s name means “the hidden one,” and Amon-Re is the name of the sun god of Egypt. This meaning makes sense within the fragment’s Egyptian background, and the angel’s name provides us with another deity to complete the divine triad of ancient Thebes. Thus, Isis learned the secrets of alchemy from a complex angelic being who combined the aspects of the star (the sky goddess, Nut), the moon (Khonsu), and the sun, Amon-Re. We have already seen this trio on the pedestal of the Hendaye cross.
Figure 2.8. Amnael is a complex angelic being combining aspects of the sun, moon, and stars, here the Egyptian Khonsu, Amon, and Nut. (Drawing by Darlene from images on the Karnak Temple at Luxor)
The Hebrew spelling of Amnael’s name gives us a clue to the nature of its composite being. Using Hebrew gematria, the letters in the name add up to 123, the number of the three-part name of God, AHH YHVH ELOHIM. As shown in figure 2.9, these three names are also associated with the top three sefirot on the Tree of Life—Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. If we break the name into Amn and ael, we get the numbers 91 and 32. These are both references to the Tree of Life as a whole; 32 is the total number of paths and sefirot on the Tree and 91 is the number of the Hebrew word amen, AMN, and the word for “tree,” AYLN.
The angel Amnael, a composite being, can be seen as the sum of all the knowledge in the revealed tradition. But before the angel will share the secret of alchemy with Isis, it swears her to a great oath. The first part of the oath illustrates the creation of the Cube of Space. As we shall see, in ancient and occult sources the Cube of Space serves as a matrix for reality by organizing, geometrically, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And then the great angel says: “I conjure you in the name of Hermes and Anubis, the howling of Kerkoros and the guardian dragon; I conjure you in the name of the boat and its ferryman, Acharontos; and I conjure you in the name of the three necessities and the whip and the sword.”16
Figure 2.9 The three-part name of God corresponds to the top three sefirot on the Tree of Life.
Hermes and Anubis are plain enough. Hermes is Thoth, or Tehuti, the god of science and magic, and Anubis is the jackal-headed god associated with death and funereal rites. These two are also the gods who preside over the act of judgment at the end of the world. The “howling of Kerkoros” suggests the Keres, the dog-faced Furies of Demeter, the Valkyries of Greek myth. Ker is “fear” or “malice” and koros can be rendered as “cross.” This means that the oath is conjured by the “evil cross” and the “guardian dragon.” The boat and ferryman are the vehicle and the guide, respectively, and “the three necessities,” along with the whip and the sword, suggest Masonic initiations. The whip is one of the royal scepters, the nekhakha, which, according to Schwaller du Lubicz in his Sacred Science, is an alchemical symbol for the three-part stream of being.17
After this oath, or initiation, the great being tells Isis the secret: “Only Nature can overcome Nature.” Isis later demonstrates this to Horus by means of a physical process. The transmutation is successful, and she produces “the drug, the elixir of the widow.” From this, the pattern of revelation, demonstration, and transmutation, we can determine that the alchemical secret is threefold or, rather, that there are three transformations in one. The inner transmutation, revelation, involves the refining of the cerebrospinal energies and fluids so that more light may be absorbed and transmitted to the DNA. In the Isis fragment this is symbolized by the sexual component. The outer transmutation, the demonstration, is the ability to use those energies to effect transmutations of physical states, including the elements. The third transmutation is that of the quality of time itself, from the darkness of the Iron Age to the splendor of the Golden Age. Remember that Isis could not begin the process until the stars were in the proper place; time and timing are all important. All three transmutations are aspects of the same process, “as above so below,” as the Emerald Tablet puts it, and are interconnected by the metaphor of “light.”
TRANSFORMATIONS AND TRANSCENDENCE
We are now prepared to see the nature of the transmutation at the core of alchemy. It is not only a transmutation involving a personal or local effect to our environment, but it is also global and universal, involving the nature and quality of time, and the times, in a unique way. Our earliest alchemical text confirms this perspective. A big part of the secret involved time, not just the timing of astrology, but time in the cosmological sense.
As the alchemical meme was passed down through the centuries by various secret societies, such as the Company of the Widow’s Son, the information fragmented. In this way, some initiates received only the internal and transformational processes without a full understanding of how the parts related to the whole of the ancient science. This lack of a cosmological component meant that what success was attained happened apparently randomly and without any guarantee of repeatability. The most guarded secret was that of time itself and its secret qualities. The secret of all secrets involved an experience of gnosis that included the beginning and end of “time.” It is this revelation, this transformative insight, that is demonstrated in the act of transmutation.
Alchemy, the art of transmutation, is based on an understanding of the unified field of matter, energy, and information involving an interlocking series of transformations that demonstrates the identity of these three components of the field. The key to these transformations is the ability to communicate—that is, exchange information—directly with matter. The mec
hanism of this communication is the phenomenon of photon emission and absorption. Light, particularly coherent light, can cause chemical reactions, and on the organic level it can cause profound effects, such as the process of photosynthesis, where the energy of light is used to build proteins and sugars.
For the last twenty years, various molecular biologists have proposed and experimentally demonstrated that all living cells emit a very weak photon pulse generated by each cell’s DNA. This pulse is regular enough to be considered a form of coherent light, and some researchers have speculated that bio-photon activity is a form of language, a medium of communication. Fritz-Albert Popp and Mae-Wan Ho speculated in a 1993 paper that this phenomenon “points to the existence of [an] amplifying mechanism in the organisms receiving the information [and acting on it]. Specifically, the living system itself must also be organized by intrinsic electromagnetic fields, capable of receiving, amplifying and possibly transmitting electromagnetic information in a wide range of frequencies.”18
This idea is similar to the notion of morphogenetic fields first elucidated by biologist Rupert Sheldrake. According to Sheldrake, biological entities have a memory that forms a field surrounding each entity. This field acts as a blueprint for both the species and the individual’s development, and is sensitive to actions at a distance through both space and time. One aspect of alchemy might be the ability to communicate with another entity’s morphogenetic field. The alchemists believed that minerals were also living entities and therefore they too had auras, or souls, that act much like morphogenetic fields.
Such transformational communication was achieved in various ways depending on the understanding of the operator. Success in creating the “philosopher’s stone” guaranteed success in the whole process. But the “Stone of the Wise” was not the end result of the alchemical process; it was merely a tool, or instrument, required to achieve completion of the process.
The prima materia was likewise not just any matter, but matter that had been enlivened enough so that it could retain the charge of memory required to effect transformation. When this prima materia, this enlivened matter, is programmed or charged by a communication from the philosopher’s stone, it becomes capable of producing a transmutation when activated. This transmutation, on one level, appears to be a geometric rearrangement of the elemental structure of the substance upon which it is acting. The geometrical arrangement that makes a substance lead is transmuted by a morphogenetic communication from the alchemist’s philosopher’s stone into the geometrical arrangement that makes it gold.
Could the alchemy of cosmological time be a geometrical arrangement of planets and alignments to the fixed stars? The book Cymatics, by Hans Jenny, demonstrates the concept of how natural structures can be created and changed by the wave patterns of sound. Jenny placed fine powder on a piece of material that was suspended in front of a stereo speaker. The videotape of the experiments shows that the powder forms itself into different and intricate geometrical shapes based on the volume and pitch of a sound. When Jenny changed the frequencies, the powders magically re-formed themselves into other geometric patterns. Interestingly enough, Jenny found that there is an “in-between” state where the geometrical figure is reduced to chaos before it forms into a new pattern.
But this is only one level of transformation in the alchemical series. There is also the transformation of the alchemist as the body’s matter absorbs the energy/information of the transmutation. Absorbing the light given off by a transmutation may have a direct effect on the operator’s DNA through the long sequences of nongenetic coding it contains. This so called junk DNA, which constitutes the majority of our genetic code, is divided between introns and extrons. From the research done so far, it appears that the extrons are very good laser pulsers, giving off a weak burst of coherent light several times a second. Introns seem to be reading incoming light, even on the skin, and adjusting indirectly various internal processes, such as the circadian rhythms. Indeed, changes within the operator are necessary to produce both the prima materia and the “stone.” In other words, both the alchemist and his prima materia are altered by the experiment.19
These are not the only transmutations involved. There are changes in the fabric of space-time itself as the elemental structure is collapsed and fused into a new geometrical configuration. These changes also affect society and the human condition, promising a new Golden Age. At the heart of the secret is the possibility of planetary transmutation. The final secret of alchemy lies in an approaching moment of planetary crisis that is—perhaps—as Fulcanelli said, the end of the world.
Finally, in the Ave Regina, the Virgin is properly called the root (salve radix) to show that she is the principle and the beginning of all things. “Hail, root by which the Light has shone on the world.”
In this connection, Notre Dame of Paris, the Philosophers’ church, is indisputably one of the most perfect specimens and, as Victor Hugo said, “the most satisfying summary of the hermetic science . . .”
—LE MYSTÈRE DES CATHÉDRALES
THREE
GNOSTIC ESCHATOLOGY
THE GNOSTIC RETURN: ISIS AND MARY THE ALCHEMIST
In what is perhaps our earliest alchemical text, “Isis the Prophetess,” we find a glimpse of an ancient science. At the core of this science is something we can recognize as alchemy, which emerged from the intellectual and spiritual ferment of Alexandria in the first three centuries of the modern era.1 As it developed, it became part of the spiritual tradition of Gnostic, as opposed to orthodox and apostolic, Christianity.
The word gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means “knowledge.” In a spiritual sense, gnosis implies a direct mystical experience of the divine, and such experiences were the province of many mystery religions. Indeed, early Christianity first appeared as a type of Hebrew mystery school. The Hebrew reputation in the classical world for possessing magical powers helped fuel Christianity’s expansion. In Egypt, Christianity was accepted as another form of the old Isis/Horus religious meme that swept through the ancient world two thousand years ago.
As we saw in the “Isis the Prophetess” fragment, Gnostic ideas, alchemy among them, developed contemporaneously with Christianity. The earliest version of the Emerald Tablet, the brief second-century B.C.E. textbook of magic and alchemy (see appendix B), was found buried with its anonymous owner at Thebes, in upper Egypt. It is a fragment of a basically “Gnostic” magical text. Alchemy represents a specific perspective on the ancient creative science, that of the triple transmutation. In its broadest sense, Gnosticism represents the worldview that allows these transformations to occur.
Alchemy texts of all eras show that time and timing are crucially important components in the alchemical process, but they do not openly link alchemy and eschatology, the end of the world. The link is there, provided as subtext, by the Gnostic framework from which the idea of alchemy emerged. Only Fulcanelli revealed the secret: The old Gnostics were alchemists, and the alchemists have always been Gnostics.
At the core of Gnosticism lies a vision of the end of the world. Even before Christianity supplied it with a brand-new mythos, Gnosticism had developed its own unique eschatological flavor. In a sense, like modern Christian fundamentalists, the Gnostics yearned for the end of this world.
Almost every culture has some kind of catastrophe myth. Tracing these myths and stories, one finds similar motifs of cataclysm in such different cultures as Inuit Siberia, Aboriginal Australia, Druid Ireland, and the Shumash tribes in North America. In many traditions, the disaster represents the fall from a Golden Age; in a few, the disaster represents the punishment by God for mankind’s evil ways. Gnosticism’s peculiar blend of Persian Zoroastrianism, Hebrew eschatology, and Egyptian cosmology with Greek philosophical methods can be seen as an attempt to synthesize all the ancient catastrophe perspectives into an apocalyptic unity.
While keeping in mind that the label “Gnosticism” covers an enormous number of different and often contradicto
ry belief systems, it is possible to sort through its spiritual kaleidoscope and arrive at an overview of a basic Gnostic cosmology at the core of the meme. Gnosticism’s main tenets contain both good and evil gods, and its basic approach is radically dualistic. The real force driving Gnostic philosophy was its sophisticated and experiential vision of the end of the world.2
According to the Gnostic myth, at the creation of the world the spirit of Light was imprisoned by the powers of Darkness. This light, the essence of God, was trapped in human bodies as separate sparks of light, our souls. Gnostic sects held that the goal of human existence was to travel the path of return, the journey of the individual sparks back to union with the original Light through the process of redemption. According to the Gnostics, this world and its history are the works of the evil Demiurge. This is the false god, or the evil one, who built this world as a trap for souls, or the light.
As each soul is redeemed, it travels back to the source of the divine Light, which slowly, as more and more souls return to it, becomes whole again. Eventually, when all souls have returned, the physical universe, being now completely without Light, will end. Given modern biology’s understanding of the light-emitting and information-carrying ability of DNA, and such a system’s implication for the kind of holographic reality described by the Gnostics, such an eschatology of light gains a new and more “scientific” meaning. In this sense, we can think of DNA as the small fragments of the hologram, containing the information of the whole but constrained by matter, which it must animate in order to return to the Great Light.