Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62841 in Books
• Published on: 1987-07
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 238 pages

Customer Reviews

An interesting perspective on alchemical symbology
This book should be read by two categories of people. It will be of interest to anybody who wants to gain an understanding of what alchemy really represented, but also anybody with a wider interest in iconography through the ages.

In the first instance, the book takes the reader through the various symbols and representations to be found in and around some of the great French churches and the significance therein. With a few obvious ommissions, the transmutation process is outlined but also put into context within the wider alchemical objectives as perceived by the practitioners themselves. The reader feels that if they could only decipher some of the oblique allegory used in the book, then they too could make this process work.

Within the wider context of iconography in general this book presents a rather narrow perspective but that is perhaps as it should be. There are other works relating to da Vinci, Newton, the Templars etc that should be read in order to gain a fuller understanding of the gnostic tradition but this book is as good a starting place as any for the student of this particular branch of esoteric knowledge.

The mystery of the real identity of Fulcanelli is an interesting twist and I defy any reader not to speculate on who he might have been.

All in all, a valuable addition to the collection of those trying to gain an understanding of 'The Great Work'.

One of the Great Alchemist Works
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," "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.

stimulating speculative foray into medieval ecclesiastical art
Surveying the alleged alchemical content of stone-carvings in Notre Dasme, Fulcanelli muses thus: 'The spirit cannot but feel troubled in the presence of this even more paradoxical antithesis: the torch of alchemical thought illuminating the temple of Christian thought.' In a sense this proposed dichotomy highlights the shortcomings of Fulcanelli's method underlying this often brilliant and fascinating quest to uncover the hermetic symbolism of the gothic cathedrals. For in truth the antithesis which he purports to find between alchemical and Christian thought never really existed in the medieval mind. Nor is it actually that likely that any furtive agenda was afoot in the minds of the Guild craftsmen who built these great edifices of the Western spiritual tradition and ornamented them with such magnificent artistry. The iconography of Catholic eccelesiasticism in the High Middle Ages represents the emblematic expression of the conventions of perfectly orthodox faith on the one hand, but in accord with the anagogical principle of polysemous exegesis, these same emblems, the Creation, the Nativity, Crucifixion, the Last Judgement etc are also susceptible to deepening levels of esoteric interpretation and would have been regarded in such a light my the mystics and alchemists of the age. No antithesis, 'heretical' undercurrent or opposition is to be imputed, only deepening levels of meaning encapsulated within the traditional symbology. Nor need clandestine intent be imagined as regards the Cathedral builders, but our own modern mindset, trapped within a cumbrous straitjacket of surface literalism, consistently fails to appreciate a sacred art tradition that could simultaneously convey a whole spectrum of significance from the exoteric to the profoundly esoteric. A similar case can be made for medieval Tarot, whose outwardly conventional 'status mundi' and 'salvation cycle' is likewise susceptible to such an exercise in mystical hermeneutics, including alchemical arcana whilst Dante explicitly states that his 'Commedia Divina' was intentionally written along such lines. Again Fulcanelli's propositions about alleged 'pagan' symbolism misses the point because in the great artistic cultures of the European Middle Ages, the imagery and myths of the classical world had long been assimilated into the Christian world-view in an expression of a harmonic and integral tradition, so we need hardly be surprised to encounter planetary and zodiacal glyphs beside Biblical motifs. Again any furtive 'crypto-paganism' is revealed to be a projection of modern fantasies rather than an indication of medieval cultural and religious sensibilities. The Guilds of the Middle Ages were at one and the same time repositories of authentic ancient wisdom and bodies of perfectly sincere and believing Christians working for the greater glory of God. Having clarified some of these misapprehensions which fed into the writing of this book in the mid 1920s it has to be said that this is a truly wonderful book and a great read; Fulcanelli's emblematic meditations on the gothic Cathedrals as carven expositions of the Magnum Opus of the Alchemists are both unique and enchanting and even if one sometimes feels a little less than convinced by his 'decoding' of the images and carvings themselves 'Le Mystere des Cathedrales' is nonetheless a beguiling, dazzling and ludistic display of symbolic perception, alchemical erudition, cryptic paronomasia and word-play and intuitive analysis of medieval artforms. Read this book to see the faculty of Alchemical mytho-poesis in action and you will be charmed and illuminated: Fulcanelli's grasp of the essential symbology and modus operandi of Alchemy is inspiring and enlightening.(For an alternative take on these great temples of the Catholic Middle Ages, and one perhaps grounded in a more authentically traditional spiritual foundation, read Joris Karl Huysmans 'Le Cathedral', an encyclopaedic exploration of the ecclesiastical art of Chartres Cathedral thinly veiled as a novel.)