by Jay Weidner
Therefore, why should we, on the basis of Canseliet’s prejudice, associate anything else with Fulcanelli’s kabbalistic image pattern? Fulcanelli also instructs us that language is a reflection of the universal Idea, a clear reference to the Word/World Tree. The kabbalistic origins of the art of light, Fulcanelli reminds us, are but a reflection of the divine light.
Fulcanelli is not only making use of this kabbalistic Tree of Life pattern, but he is a master of its symbolic subtleties as well. As he unfolds his array of images and concepts, we see the guiding matrix of the ancient Word, the verbum dismissum or lost word of Western esotericism, revealed as the divine World/Word Tree.
NINE
FULCANELLI’S TREE OF LIFE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CATHEDRALS
LE MYSTÈRE AS THE TREE OF LIFE
Fulcanelli informs us that the images on the cathedrals speak more clearly than words and books. They are “simple in expression, naïve and picturesque in interpretation; a sense purged of subtleties, of allusions, of literary ambiguities.”1 The Gothic, he implies, is like Gregorian chants, many voices coming together in a single note. This is important guidance for understanding the book as a whole. Fulcanelli combines images or voices all juxtaposed on a single note or theme in such a way that every voice is related to the theme as a whole. As in music, the structure that allows this interrelatedness is based on geometry and mathematics. It is nothing less than the hermetic Grand Theme, the music of the spheres, which is depicted within the Gothic cathedrals.
Fulcanelli introduces the Grand Theme with the arrangement of sections in his first chapter, called “Le Mystère des cathédrales.” From its title we may suppose that it was meant to impart an overall viewpoint from which the rest of the book, the details of the pattern, is to be understood. These nine sections can be seen as the lightning flash of creation from the Sefer Yetzirah, with each section’s images and subjects attributed to one of the sefirot, from Kether, the Crown, to Yesod, the Foundation. The pattern can also be seen as another interesting symbol: the sword in the stone. The first three sections of the book make up the hilt of the subject, and the blade of the sword, whose basic theme, the hermetic wisdom of the Gothic cathedrals, continues through a stone of five interrelated symbols within the cathedrals and on into the foundation “stone” of Notre-Dame-de-Paris
The next three chapters replicate this initial Tree. “Paris,” the second chapter of Le Mystère, gives us the most complete rendition of the Grand Theme of ten spheres and twenty-two paths, including the Gnostic Path of Return, in the arrangement of the twenty-two images from the basement register of Notre Dame’s Porch of Judgment (plates 4–25 in Le Mystère). “Amiens,” the third chapter, fills in another Tree by giving the reader a deeper understanding of the planetary influences with images from the lower register of the cathedral of Amiens’ Porch of Judgment. The fourth chapter, “Bourges,” juxtaposes a series of mythological images on the planetary spheres, thus creating a fourth Tree. Therefore, each of the “locations,” or sefirot, is attributed to multiple images from which a composite meaning of the sefirot can be derived. (See appendix D.)
The crowning experience, the personal gnosis in the first chapter, is the starting point of a flash of illumination that Fulcanelli uses to reveal the essential pattern of the alchemical Tree of Life. To the kabbalist, the lightning flash, the creative sequence of the unfolding Light, reveals the underlying structure of reality in the ten sefirot. In the same way, Fulcanelli uses his experience of the cathedrals, his gnosis, to reveal the pattern at the heart of the mystery. In the symbolic Kabbalah, this lightning flash becomes the flaming sword, which protects the Garden of Eden from human rehabitation. In Fulcanelli’s hands, the image becomes the sword in the stone (see fig. 9.1), the alchemical extraction of knowledge from the Stone of the Wise, which initiates the Golden Age, a new Camelot, here on earth.
The pattern emerges clearly in the first three sections of the first chapter. Following the path of the lightning flash, if section 1 is the point of light, Kether, then section 2 is the light’s expansion into the world of space-time, Chokmah. And so in that section, Fulcanelli tells us of the medical school and the Saturday meetings of alchemists at “the little Porte-Rouge,” clues to those who knew and made use of the cathedral’s secrets. He quotes Victor Hugo to direct us—if we haven’t made the connection yet—to his works, particularly his Notre-Dame de Paris. Section 2 concludes with another glimpse of Fulcanelli’s motivation. “Indeed I shall consider myself satisfied and amply rewarded if I have been able to awaken the curiosity of the reader, to hold the attention of the shrewd observer and to show to lovers of the occult that it is not impossible even now to rediscover the meaning of the secrets hidden under the petrified exterior of this wondrous book of magic.”2
Figure 9.1. The sword-in-the-stone pattern of the sefirot on the Tree of Life applied to the nine sections of the first chapter of Le Mystère des cathédrales.
Section 3 of Fulcanelli’s first chapter, whose subject is the secret language, was discussed in chapter 1. As we noted there, this section is the key to understanding Fulcanelli’s method, which is appropriate for the sefirah Binah, or Understanding. Together with the first two sections, it completes the supernal triad at the top of the Tree of Life. We can also think of the triad as the hilt of a sword, which comprises a pommel, a grip, and a crossguard, and whose blade is the extension of the idea through the stone of symbolism into the reality of Notre Dame, the Philosophers’ Church.
To pull the sword from the stone, it is necessary to grip, or grasp, the ideas supplied by the hilt. The first three stages of the lightning flash form a pattern from which the rest of its path unfolds. Fulcanelli combines these ideas with his subject, the cathedrals, in such a way as to compel us to look deeper and more closely at the symbols expressed within those cathedrals. In the remaining sections of chapter 1 of Le Mystère des cathédrals, Fulcanelli suggests that the symbolic components of those “books in stone” are fivefold and that they form, within themselves, the Stone of the Wise.
The lightning flash cuts across the abyss as it passes from Binah to Chesed, from Understanding to Mercy. Thus the flash creates its own reflection, and the reflection of the upper three stages in the sequence, as it travels down toward matter. Fulcanelli follows this pattern, and his fourth chapter focuses on the literal symbolism of the cross as the basic plan for all Gothic churches. The shift from theoretical discussions of the language of the birds to the literality of a cathedral’s ground plan is sharp enough to suggest the pathless spark of transmission from Binah to Chesed, while the subject of section 4, the cross, directs our attention to life itself.
According to Fulcanelli, all Gothic churches, with rare exceptions, are laid out in the form of a Latin cross, which he tells us “is the alchemical hieroglyph of the crucible,” since crucible and cross are derived from the same Latin root. And here, Fulcanelli begins to play his symbolic shell game: “It is indeed in the crucible that the first matter suffers the Passion, like Christ himself.”3
Unless we understand the need to connect the cross to the idea of Mercy as conveyed by the fourth sefirah or stage in the unfolding sequence, we shall not quite follow Fulcanelli’s sudden shifts of tone and meaning. His Christian take is somewhat surprising here until we realize that it is the “mercy” brought by the experience of the cross that he is trying to convey. The Passover lamb roasted on a cross of transformation makes a good literal symbol of God’s mercy. But Fulcanelli, of course, is taking the obvious one step further.
“Remember too, my brother alchemists, that the cross bears the imprint of the three nails used to sacrifice the Christ-body,” Fulcanelli reminds us, like a carnival barker pointing to the pea. These three nails are the anchor points of the three axes of the Galaxy, the clue to understanding the true ancient nature of the cross. After shuffling with Saint Augustine and the Paschal lamb, Fulcanelli comes to the point:. “The cross is a very ancient symbol, used in all ages, in all religions, by all
peoples, and one would be wrong to consider it as a special emblem of Christianity.” Here’s the pitch: Can you find the pea of truth under all the Christian special pleading?
He gives us a hint. “We say further that the ground plan of the great religious buildings of the Middle Ages, by the addition of a semicircular or elliptical apse joined to the choir [see fig. 9.2], assumes the shape of the Egyptian hieratic sign of the crux ansata, the ankh, which signifies universal life hidden in matter.” He points to an example of this from the “crypts of St. Honoré at Arles,” a sarcophagus lid from the first century that echoes the rose-cross ankhs of the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Figure 9.2. The Tree of Life and the ankh superimposed on the floor plan of Notre-Dame-de-Paris.
To make sure we grasp his point, he adds that the ankh is also the sign of Venus in astrology and of copper in alchemy. Traditionally, as shown in figure 9.3, the ankh sign in the shape of the glyph for Venus is the only form of the cross to contain the complete Tree of Life.
The first six sefirot, from Kether to Tiferet, form the loop; Hod and Netzach are the cross arms; and Yesod and Malkuth complete the lower arm. Fulcanelli emphasizes the completeness and ubiquity of this symbol and then begins to shuffle metaphors once more.
The cross metamorphoses into a stone: “It is thus that the ground plan of a Christian building reveals to us the qualities of the first matter, and its preparation by the sign of the cross, which points the way for the alchemist to obtain the First Stone—the corner stone of the philosophers’ Great Work.” Fulcanelli raises the stakes by telling us that “[i]t is on this stone that Jesus built his church” and by insisting that the medieval Freemasons did the same symbolically, giving the undressed, rough stone the image of the devil.
Figure. 9.3. The ankhshaped symbol of Venus contains the Tree of Life.
Fulcanelli tells us that once just such a “hieroglyph” could be found within Notre-Dame-de-Paris. This “figure of the devil,” called Master Peter of the Corner, was located at the corner of the choir rail, under the rood screen, and this smudged and blackened stone was used by the congregation to snuff their candles. Fulcanelli instructs us that this stone, which “was intended to represent the first matter of the Work, personified under the aspect of Lucifer (the morning star), was the symbol of our corner stone, the headstone of the corner.” He cites a seventeenth-century reference about the stone the builders rejected and then directs us to the very first specific image from Notre Dame mentioned in the book, a bas-relief of Jesus blessing an oddly shaped stone in the arch of an apsidal chapel on the north side of the cathedral.
Somehow the cross, the ankh, became a stone, and not just any stone, but the rejected stone that became the headstone of the corner, the support on which Jesus built his church. And somehow this is “the first matter,” “the First Stone,” the cornerstone of the alchemical Great Work? Just how does a tree—the ankh contains the entire Tree of Life and the cross is a component of the World Tree—become a stone?
Herein are revealed great mysteries, to echo our occult carnival barker. Fulcanelli has presented us with the first part of a conundrum, the unraveling of which will take us into deep waters indeed.
The answer seems to lie with the ancient myths of the World Tree, at whose feet, in many if not most of the very ancient myths, there can be found a stone or cube that is somehow plugging up the torrent of the deluge. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend uncovered this motif as part of their epic examination of the transmission of precessional information through the medium of mythology in Hamlet’s Mill.4 Their scholarship suggests a connection between the Ark, which in Sumerian myth is a perfect cube, and the foundation stone that stops the flood. In another version of the ancient Sumerian Noah/ Utnapishtim myths, there is no ark at all, just a cubic stone with a pillar on top that stretches from earth to heaven and plugs the entrance to the watery abyss.
This idea is also found in Jewish mythology. The Eben Shetiyyaah, the foundation stone uncovered by King David on Mount Zion, was thought to cap the watery abyss beneath the Holy of Holies. The idea of a stone, the white altar of tradition, holding back the flood of chaos and catastrophe survived within Christianity. In addition to Fulcanelli’s Master Peter of the Corner, similar images are found in Russian and Germanic prayers, where the fire-blackened stone, Christ’s throne and the habitation of the Devil, symbolized the entrance to hell, whose fires are safely contained by its bulk. A German prayer, quoted in Hamlet’s Mill, seems even more explicit: “In Christ’s Garden, there is a well, in the well there is a stone, under the stone lies a golden scorpion.”
The first of our five symbolic components, the stone from which the sword of wisdom is extracted, is the cross/stone of space-time itself, the Cube of Space formed from the three axes of the Galaxy. Fulcanelli seems to understand this in a way that is even more comprehensive than that of Santillana and von Dechend’s scholarship. And with that deep and ancient understanding, Fulcanelli is pointing us toward the truth about the alchemical and transformative nature of Christianity.
The Tree can also become a stone when the lightning flash from which it is formed strikes the ground. These Zebedee stones, so-called from the sons of thunder, John and James, in the New Testament, are crystallizations of a subtle energy, electricity, lightning, grounded into matter. Along with meteorites, these thunderstones, called fulgurites after the thunderbolts forged by Vulcan, have always been considered sacred, as in the Kaaba of Mecca and the ben-ben of Heliopolis.
In many ways, Fulcanelli validates our reading of his pattern with this chapter, so filled with cubes and fours, just as one would expect from the fourth sefirah. (Kether, as a zero point, has no dimensions. Chokmah, as two or a line, has one; while Binah, three, a plane surface, has two dimensions. Only with Chesed, four, do we arrive at three dimensions, hence the cube.) The section also points to the overall pattern of the stone or cube formed by the middle five sections of this first chapter, reinforcing our supposition about the sword-and-stone design. Fulcanelli is forcing the reader to look for deeper patterns of meaning within ideas that are themselves almost bottomless. At the end of this section, we may not know exactly what the First Matter of the alchemist truly is, but we do know that it is far more comprehensive, and downright cosmic, than we could otherwise have imagined.
Continuing the lightning flash from one side of the Tree to the other, we jump from Chesed to Gevurah, from Mercy to Strength. Again, the discussion in this fifth section, while it focuses on the labyrinth, circles around the attributions of Gevurah—strength, power, Mars, iron, and so on. On the surface, it seems that the labyrinth has little to do with ideas of strength and power. And yet, as we dig deeper into Fulcanelli’s clues, we find that the metaphor is very apt indeed.
Fulcanelli tells us that church labyrinths were placed at the intersection of the nave and the transept, and gives us a list of the remaining church labyrinths. He notes the golden rising-sun motif at the center of the Amiens labyrinth in former days, then turns to Chartres. Here he emphasizes the similarity between what is “called in the common tongue La Lieue (the league),” and “Le Lieu (the place),” leaving open the suggestion of far travel in one place, and moves on to the no-longer-extant illustration of Theseus and the Minotaur that occupied the center of the labyrinth. This, he assures us, is “yet another proof of the infiltration of pagan themes into Christian iconography and consequently of an evident mytho-hermetic meaning.”
Fine, says the reader, but what meaning?
Fulcanelli sidesteps this by declaring that the whole issue is moot because “it is not a matter of establishing any connection between these images and those famous constructions of antiquity, the labyrinths of Greece and Rome.” Why not?
The theme of the Minotaur fits rather well into the concept of Gevurah, Strength and Power, so outright avoidance isn’t the answer. It must be that Fulcanelli wants us to focus on a specific kind of labyrinth, not just the broader myths associated with the concept
. It is not just Gevurah, but rather one specific aspect of Gevurah, the thread of strength that leads to the rising sun, to which Fulcanelli draws our attention.
He does this by quoting Berthelot’s Grande Encyclopédie on “the Labyrinth of Solomon . . . a cabalistic figure found at the head of certain alchemical manuscripts and which is part of the magic tradition associated with the name of Solomon.” This magic image is none other than the ancient seven-turn maze known to humanity in one form or another for thousands of years and that has come to be called the Cretan labyrinth. Fulcanelli declares that this labyrinth is “emblematic of the whole labour of the Work,” and, after a long linguistic digression on the meaning of spiders and Ariadne’s thread, openly admits that this form of the labyrinth is a version of the philosopher’s stone.
The effect of this rather unexpected explication is stunning, for both its directness and its unusually specific focus. Just what is it about this labyrinth that could lead Fulcanelli to make such a pronouncement?
For one thing, the classical seven-turn labyrinth is mankind’s oldest complex symbol. We have specific examples that are more than six thousand years old, and, if we accept that the Greek meander is one form of the classic labyrinth, then examples can be found that are almost ten thousand years old. Perhaps the best single-volume work on the labyrinth, Sig Lonegren’s Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses,5 suggests that the original use of all labyrinth forms was as a kind of space-time location tool.