I'm not sure why the name Fulcanelli was in my dream last night - and I was searching for his book in a used bookstore. Pretty sure the name Fulcanelli flashed on yt to me last night - maybe in one of those "Folk Horror" genre vids...
https://costisnet.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/7/7/5477582/fulcanelli_-_the_dwellings_of_the_philosophers.pdf
Could we possibly be facing the dwelling of some affiliate of the sets of the Illuminati or
of the Rosicrucians, descendants of the old Templars? The cyclical theory, concurrent
with the doctrine of Hermes, is so clearly exposed here, that except for ignorance or
dishonesty we could not suspect the knowledge of our Adept. As for us, our conviction is
firm; we are certain not to be mistaken in front of so many categorical assertions: we
indeed have before our eyes a baphomet, renewed from the one of the Templars. This
image, about which we possess but vague indications or simple hypotheses, never was an
idol, as some believed, but rather a complete emblem of the secret traditions of the Order,
especially used outwardly as an esoteric paradigm, a seal of chivalry, and a sign of
recognition. It was composed of an isosceles triangle, its apex pointed down, hieroglyph
for water, first created element, according to Thales of Miletus, who maintained that
"God is the Spirit which has formed all things from water" (1). A second similar triangle,
inverted in relationship to the first, but smaller, was inscribed in its center and seemed to
occupy the position reserved for the nose on the human face. It symbolized fire and more
precisely, fire enclosed in water, or the divine spark, soul incarnate, life infused in matter.
On the inverted base of the large triangle of water, there was a graphic sign similar to the
Latin letter H or Greek [*158-1] (eta), but wider whose central bar was cut with a median
circle. This sign in hermetic steganographiy indicates the universal Spirit, the Creative
Spirit, God. Inside the large triangle, slightly above and on each side of the triangle of
fire, one could see on the left the lunar circle with an inscribed crescent and on the right
the solar circle with a visible center. These small circles were arranged in the manner of
eyes. Finally, welded to the base of the small inner triangle, the cross, placed on the
globe, thus realized the double hieroglyph of sulphur, active principle, associated to
mercury, passive principle and solvent of all metals. A longer or shorter segment often
located at the apex of the triangle was carved with lines of a vertical tendency where the
layman could recognize not the expression of luminous radiation but a sort of goatee.
Thus presented, the baphomet assumed a gross animal form, imprecise and uneasy to
identify. This would probably explain the diversity of descriptions it inspired, where the
baphomet is seen as a haloed death head or a bucrane, sometimes the head of the
Egyptian Hapi, of a goat, and, even better, the horrifying face of Satan himself! Simple
impressions, far removed from reality, but images so unorthodox that they, alas,
contributed to spread the accusation of demonology and sorcery upon the learned Knights
Templar and became one of the foundations of their trial, one of the causes of their
condemnation.....
Everyone knows that in the
ancient Germanic legend Titurel raises a temple to the Holy Grail at Montsalvat and
entrusts its guard to twelve Knights Templar. Monsieur de Hammer would like to
recognize in it the symbol of gnostic Wisdom, a very vague conclusion after having
burned (4) for so long. Forgive us of we dare to suggest another point of view. The Grail -
-- who doubts it today? --- is the most elevated mystery of mystical Chivalry and of
Masonry which degenerated from it; it is the veil of the Fire creator, the Deus
absconditus (5) in the word INRI, engraved above Jesus’ head on the cross. When Titurel
erected his mystical temple, it was to light the sacred fire of the Vestals, of the
Mazadaens, and even of the Hebrews, for the Jews kept a perpetual fire in the temple of
Jerusalem. The twelve custodians recall the twelve signs of the Zodiac annually crossed
by the sun, a symbol of living fire. The vase of Baron de Hammer’s idol is identical with
the pyrogenous vase of the Parsees, which is represented full of flames. The Egyptians
also possessed this attribute: On the banks of the Nile, Serapis is often represented with
the same object on his head, named Gardal. In this Gardal the priests kept the material
fire, while the priestesses kept therein the celestial fire of Ptah. For the initiates of Isis,
the Gardal was the hieroglyph of divine fire. And this Fire-god, this Love-God eternally
incarnates into each being since everything in the universe contains his vital spark.
...............
Rosicrucian 12 keys talk of internal alchemy vid
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/twelve_keys.html
“In
the esoteric tradition, the Templar Baphomet signifies the 'Baptism of
Light' (Baph-Metis), an initiation into the hidden Gnosis that the Order
supposedly discovered beneath the Temple of Solomon.” ― Pike, A.
(1871). Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of
Freemasonry. Charleston: L.H. Jenkins. Page 818.
Published originally in 1929, "Dwellings of the Philosophers"
is the second and final masterpiece by the enigmatic alchemist known as
Fulcanelli. Issued in France as two exclusive volumes in a limited-run
edition, this faithful translation brings Fulcanelli's mystical insights
to modern readers.
Legends whisper that Fulcanelli
succeeded in discovering the philosopher’s stone shortly before his
mysterious disappearance around 1930, fueling speculation about his true
identity. While some believe he was the artist Julien Champagne or
perhaps Eugene Canseliet, who provided numerous introductions to this
influential work, the true identity of Fulcanelli remains shrouded in
secrecy and intrigue.
"Dwellings of the Philosophers"
stands as an essential resource for alchemical scholars, providing a
profound general treatise enriched by illuminating commentaries on
foundational texts of traditional hermetic authors. Fulcanelli
masterfully decodes hermetic symbolism found within civil architecture,
unlocking the profound alchemical wisdom hidden in plain sight.
Fulcanelli, operative alchemist and author of The Mystery of the Cathedrals and The Dwellings of the Philosophers--two
of the most important esoteric works of the twentieth century--remains
himself a mystery. The true identity of the man who allegedly succeeded
in creating the philosopher’s stone has never been discovered, despite
ardent searches by many--even the OSS (the wartime U.S. intelligence
agency, later to become the CIA) claimed to have looked for him
following the end of World War II. Geneviève Dubois looks at the
esoteric milieu of Paris at the turn of the century, a time that....witnessed a great revival of the alchemical tradition
the German academician Nicolai concludes in the same sense and adds that the famous baphomet, which he derives from the Greek word [*159-7] (Baphometos), was a Pythagorean symbol. ... [*160-1](Baphe Meteos), which could be
translated as "baptism of Mete". Precisely a rite of this name has been established among
the Ophites. Mete was an androgynous divinity representing naturing Nature. Proclus
says verbatim that Metis, also called [*160-2] (Erikarpaios) or Germinating Nature, was
the hermaphroditic god of the Snake worshippers. We also know that the Greeks
venerated Prudence, designated by the word Metis, as Jupiter’s wife. In a word, this
philological discussion indisputably confirms that the Baphomet was the pagan
expression of Pan. And like the Templars, the Ophites had two baptisms: one, exoteric,
the baptism of water, the other esoteric, that of the spirit, or fire. The latter was called the
Baptism of Mete. St Justin and St Irenaeus called it illumination. It is the Freemasons’
baptism of Light.
AI says:
The Mark Master Mason ritual revolves around the biblical allegory of "the stone which the builders rejected". The ritual does not intentionally "reject Jesus"; instead, to accommodate members of all faiths, the lodge adapts biblical verses by omitting specific mentions of Jesus Christ to maintain a universally inclusive fraternity...
Masonry draws heavily from the biblical metaphor found in Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles:
"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone." — Psalm 118:22 (NIV)
Original Scripture: "...to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:5)Ritual Omission: The final words, "by Jesus Christ," are omitted to avoid excluding non-Christian members
https://skirret.com/papers/mark_master_degree.html
United States and Canada: The Mark degree is typically the first step in the York Rite appendant body known as the Capitular Masons (or Royal Arch Chapter)...The Mark Master Mason degree is an appendant degree in Freemasonry that expands upon the moral and practical lessons of the Fellowcraft (Second) Degree. Often referred to as "the friendly degree,"
According to the Pythagorean Philolaus (5th century BC), ancient philosophers said that
the soul was buried in the body as in a tomb, in punishment for some sin. Plato also
testified that such was the doctrine of the Orphics, and he himself professed it. But as
people also recognized that man had come out of the hands of God and that he had lived
in a state of purity and innocence (according to Dicaearchus and Plato), one had to admit
that the crime for which he was being punished occurred after his creation. The golden
age of Greek and Roman mythologies is evidently a memory of man’s first state when
coming out of God’s hands.
The monuments and traditions of Hinduism confirm the history of Adam and his Fall.
This tradition also exists among the Buddhists of Tibet; it was taught by the Druids as
well as by the Chinese and the ancient Persians. According to the books of Zoroaster, the
first man and the first woman were created pure and submissive to Orzmund, their
creator; Ahriman saw them and became jealous of their happiness; he approached them
assuming the form of a grass snake, presented them with fruit and persuaded them that he
was himself the creator of the entire universe. They believed him, and their nature then
became corrupted, and this corruption infected their posterity. The mother of our flesh, or
the serpent woman, is famous in Mexican tradition, which represents her, fallen from her
primitive state of happiness and innocence. In Yucatan, in Peru, in the Canary Islands,
etc., the tradition of the downfall also existed among the natives when the Europeans
discovered these countries. ..............
Philosophers have described it in the
image of the black dragon covered with scales, which the Chinese call Loung, whose
analogy with the hermetic monster is perfect. Like the monster it is a kind of winged
serpent with a horned head, emitting fire and flame through its nostrils, with a black and
scaly body borne on four stocky legs, each armed with five claws. The gigantic dragon on
Scythian banners was called Apophis. The Greek word [*213-3] (apophysis), which
means execresence, offspring, has for its root [*213-4] (apophuo) with the meaning to
put forth, grow, produce, be born from. The vegetative power, indicated by the
fructifications of the symbolic vase is therefore expressly confirmed in the mythical
dragon which divides into common mercury or solvent, Later the primitive mercury,
joined to some fixed body, renders it volatile, living, vegetative, and fructifying. ....
It is first of all the stick
that Mercury throws between the grass snake and the serpent (Rhea and Jupiter), around
which they curl crating the Caduceus, emblem of peace and reconciliation. All hermetic
authors speak of a terrible fight between two dragons and Mythology teaches us that such
was the origin of the attribute of Hermes who provoked their agreement by putting his
stick between them. It is the sign of union and of concord which one must be capable of
realizing between fire and water. And fire being represented by a triangle hieroglyph
Delta and water by the same, but inverted triangle, the two superimposed signs form the
image of the star sure mark of union, pacification and procreation, because the star
(stella) means fixation of the sun (6). And as a matter of fact the sign can only be seen
after the fight when everything has become calm and when the first effervescences have
stopped. The Seal of Solomon, geometric figure, resulting from the assembly of the
triangles of fire and water confirm the union of the sky and earth. It is the messianic star
announcing the birth of the King of Kings; moreover the Greek [*221-3] (kerukeion),
caduceus, derived from [*221-4] (kerukeuo), to publish, to announce reveals that the
distinctive emblem of Mercury is the sign of the good news. ...
(Salamandra) in Greek seems formed of [*367-2]
(sal), the anagram for [*367-3] (als), salt, and of [*367-4] (mandra), stable; it is the salt
of the stable, the salt of urine of the artificial saltpeter bed, the saltpeter of the old
spagyrists --- sal petri, salt of stone --- which they still designate under the name of
Dragon. The Remora, in Greek [*367-5] (echeneis), is this famous fish which was
supposed to stop (according to some) or to direct (according to others) ships sailing in
northern seas, subject to the influence of the North Star. It is the echeneis of which the
Cosmopolite speaks, the royal dolphin which the characters of the Mutus Liber exert
themselves to capture, the same one which accompanied and pilots, on the bas-relief
ornamenting the fountain of Vertbois, the ship loaded with an enormous hewn stone. The
echeneis if the pilot of the running waters, our mercury, the faithful friend of the
alchemist, the one which has to absorb the secret fire, the igneous energy of the
Salamander and finally, remains stable, permanent, always victorious, under the
safekeeping and protection of his master. These two principles, of opposite natures and
tendencies, of contrary disposition exhibit a relentless antipathy against each other, and
an irreducible aversion for one another.
................
Many philosophers took up this
mode of expression and veiled under funereal or macabre topics, the putrefaction
specifically applied to the second Work, that is to say the operation charged with
decomposition and liquefying the philosophical sulphur, issuing from the first labor, into
a perfect Elixir. Basil Valentine shows us a skeleton standing in its own coffin, in one of
his Twelve Keys and he depicts a burial scene in another. Flamel not only illustrated the
humanized symbols of the Great Art in the Cemetery of the Innocents, but he also
decorated his tombstone that is now exhibited in the Chapel of the Museum of Cluny
with a corpse eaten by worms, and this inscription:
From the earth have I come and unto the earth I return.
It is acknowledged as a
mineral because it is born from the primary mercurial substance, the unique source of all
metals; and sulphurous because this fire during the extraction of the metallic sulphur has
taken on the specific qualities "of the father of metals". It is therefore a twofold fire ---
the twofold fiery man of Basil Valentine --- who contains at once the attractive,
agglutinating, and organizing virtues of mercury and the drying, coagulating, and fixative
properties of sulphur. Whoever has at all any smatterings of philosophy, will easily
understand that this twofold fire, the animating agent of the rebis, as it only needs heat to
go from potentiality to actuality and to make its power effective, could not be the one of
the furnace although it metaphorically represents our Athanor, that is to say the topos of
energy, of the principle of immortality enclosed in the philosophical compound. This
twofold fore is the pivot of the art, and according to Philalethes expression, the first agent
which causes the wheel to turn and the axle to move", and so it is often called fire of the
wheel, because it seems to develop its action according to a circular fashion, whose aim
is the conversion of the molecular structure, a rotation symbolized by the wheel of
fortune and by the Ouroboros.
"Then you will find the All-in-All, which is the styptic force of all metals and minerals derived from salt and sulphur, and twice born of Mercury", writes Basil Valentine in the book of the Twelve Keys.
Basil Valentine, by using the expression of the twofold fiery man,
means to speak of a secondary principle resulting from the combination of two agent of
hot and ardent disposition, consequently being of the nature of metallic sulphurs. Hence
we can conclude that under the simple name of sulphur, the Adepts, at a given time in the
progress of the work conceive two conceived bodies, of similar properties, but of
different specificity, conventionally taken to be a single one. This being proposed, what
would the substances capable of yielding these two products be? Such a question has
never received an answer. However, if we consider that the emblematic representatives of
metals are figured by mythological deities, now masculine, now feminine; that they owe
these particular attributions to the sulphurous qualities proven by experiment, the
symbolism the fable will likely shed some light on these dark matters....
The main part of the Word is raised by 6
feet from the ground with 6 niches, each 2 feet high, with their back parts made of finely
carved porphyry, ornamented all around with pillars of white marble, in the proper
proportions and rules of architecture, enriched with very delicately worked moresques
(arabesques): and all the 12 niches are filled with the white marble figure of the 12
apostles, each having a different posture and the instruments of his martyrdom. Both ends
of the main building are ornamented with a similar architecture, and each is divided into
2 niches similar to the others. At the end, towards the master altar of the church,
the word [*414-1] (pontios) specifically expresses all that which inhabits the sea;
it calls to mind the hidden fish which the mercury has caught and kept in the mesh of its
net, the one that the ancient custom of the celebration of the Twelfth Night offers us in its
own form (sole, dolphin) or sometimes in the shape of the "bather" (6) or the bean hidden
in the layers of the flaky Twelfth Night cake ....Translator’s Note: Literally, a "swimmer", a small china doll included in the Twelfth Night cake. Whoever finds it becomes the king or queen
the Twelfth Night cake, to which the Greeks gave the same
name as to the Moon, Selena: [*458-1] (selene); this word formed from the Greek roots
[*458-2] (selas), brightness, and [*458-3] (ele), solar light, had been chosen by the
initiates to show that the philosophical mercury drew its brightness from sulphur just as
the moon receives its light from the sun. An analogous reason caused the name [*458-4]
(seiren), siren to be attributed to the mythical monster resulting from the combination of
a woman and a fish; serein, a contraction of [*458-5] (seir), sun and [*458-6] (mene),
moon, also indicates the mercurial lunar matter combined with the sulphurous solar
substance. Therefore it is a translation identical to that of the Twelfth Night cake,
adorned with the sign of light and spirituality: the cross, evidence of the real incarnation
, the two Vs joined in the Roman cipher X for the number ten. The number
is the foundation of the Pythagorean Cabala, or of the universal language, whose curious
paradigm can be seen on the last page of a little alchemy book
the same immense ideal cross divides the 24 centuries of the
cyclic year ([*201-1] --- Chiliarmos), and separates the 24 elders of the Apocalypse into
four groups of ages, of whom twelve sing the praises of God, while the other twelve
bemoan the downfall of man........
"The wind bore it in its belly". Wind or air are names pertaining to
living water which, in the fire, its volatility causes to vanish without any residues. Since
this water --- our hermetic moon --- penetrates the fixed nature of the philosophical sun,
which it holds back, assembling its most noble particles, the philosopher is right to affirm
tha the wind is the matrix of our mercury, quintessence of the gold of the sages and pure
mineral seed
..............
Such is the chemical composition of the Kohl of oriental women, used by
the ancient alchemists as a term of comparison to teach the secret preparation of their
antimony. It is the solar eye Egyptians called oudja, which also figure among the
Masonic emblems, surrounded by a halo, in the center of a triangle (28). This symbol
offers the same meaning as the letter G, seventh of the alphabet, initial of the common
name of the Subject of the sages, represented in the middle of a radiating star [N.B. ---
gold, gur, galena, graphite, gabbro, granite, gypsum, gneiss, garnet]. This matter is
Artephius’ Saturnine Antimony, Tollius’ regulus of antimony, and the true and only
stibium of Michael Maier and all the Adepts. As for mineral stibnite, it possesses none of
the required qualities, and whatever the manner in which we want to treat it, neither the
secret solvent nor the philosophical mercury will ever be obtained from it. If Basil
Valentine gives philosophical mercury the nickname of pilgrim or traveler ([*235-1] ---
stibeus) (29), because it must, says he, go through six celestial cities before fixing its
residence in the seventh; if Philalethes affirms it is our only path ([*235-2] --- stibia), this
is not sufficient to invoke that these masters claimed to designate common antimony as
the regenerator of philosophical mercury.
