Fulcanelli Master Alchemist – The Dwellings of the Philosophers, Archive Press, Boulder, CO 1999.
In 1930, “Fulcanelli” published his sequel to Les Mysteres des Cathedrals. The designation of Fulcanelli himself as “Master Alchemist” is prominent on the front of both books. Fulcanelli sharply challenges our modern view of the Middle Ages as a wretched and miserable time. Modern historians, he notes, tend to “depict this…period in the darkest colors.” The actual buildings still standing from those centuries, he counters, “much to the contrary appear to have been built in the enthusiasm of a powerful inspiration of ideal and faith by people happy to live in the midst of a flourishing and strongly organized society.” For Fulcanelli, it is “undeniable that all the Gothic buildings without exception reflect a serenity and expansiveness, a nobility without equal.”
In The Dwellings of the Philosophers, Fulcanelli’s focus is on dwellings of the late 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. It was during these years, he informs us, “that the richest buildings of our flamboyant style were built.” For Fulcanelli, this time was the “culminating point, the apogee of form and boldness, the marvelous phase where spirit, the divine flame, imposes its signature on the last creations of Gothic thought.” Surviving art and architecture, he maintains, tell us much about the true character of that bygone time. During the 12th century heart of the Middle Ages, according to Fulcanelli, “society was already reaching a high degree of civilization and splendor.”
He cites John of Salisbury’s account of his visit to Paris in 1176. Later John of Salisbury would become head of the School of Chartres.
“When I saw the abundance of sustenance, the cheerfulness of the people, the good conduct of the clergy, the majesty and glory of the entire Church, the diverse occupations of men dedicated to the study of philosophy; it seemed to me that I saw Jacob’s ladder whose top reached heaven and which angels ascended and descended. I was compelled to admit that truly the Lord was in this place and that I did not know it. This sentence from a poet also comes to mind: ‘Happy is he who is sentenced to this place in exile!’”
Later John of Salisbury would become head of the School of Chartres. To Fulcanelli, medieval France “took pleasure in deep meditations and profound research; it exposed…sublime truths and subtle hypotheses and produced a singularly philosophical literature.” The Middle Ages was, for Fulcanelli, “a time suffused with spirit and with the magnificent outpouring of this same spirit into the world.”
Among these pursuits, alchemy occupied a central place. Alchemy allowed the practitioner to “catch a glimpse of God through the darkness of substance.” There is, he wrote, a “grave error that dominates all of modern science and which prevents it from recognizing the universal principle which animates substance.” The scientists of our own time, Fulcanelli maintained, were “mistaken about the constitution and profound qualities of matter, though they believe they have fathomed all its mysteries.”
Fulcanelli focuses on particular dwellings from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries whose ornamentation indicates that they had been the abodes of alchemists. The Dwellings of the Philosophers is rich in its descriptions of these houses and their elaborate iconography, the figures, and the designs emblazoned upon them. Fulcanelli includes numerous photographs that illustrate this legacy. The late Middle Ages, according to Fulcanelli, was peopled by more than a few “hermetic philosophers.” He mentions the home of Master Arnold of Villanova and his disciple Raymond Lully. The entrance to Lully’s house, he records, was “decorated with hieroglyphic figures pertaining to the science.”
Fulcanelli cites too the “houses, churches, and hospitals built by Nicholas Flamel”, the most legendary of all alchemists, that were also rich with “images of the sacred Art.” Flamel’s dwelling in Paris was “all beautified with painted and gilded stories and mottos.” He describes in especially close detail the great elaborate fireplace constructed for one Louis d’Estissac, whom he reports was a “man of high birth…a practicing alchemist and one of the best-instructed Adepts in the hermetic secrets.” This fireplace still survives.
His most important focus, however, is alchemy itself. He refers to the philosopher’s stone as the “powder of projection” as well as the “universal Medicine” that can be a “precious auxiliary to the treatment of grave and incurable ailments.” This mysterious substance is, moreover, “capable of shining in darkness with a soft, red phosphorescent light”. This is, Fulcanelli informs us, no ordinary glow but rather the legendary “inextinguishable light, the light-giving product of those perpetual lamps” found in ancient tales. The true philosopher’s stone, he adds, is actually “soul, spirit, or fire assembled, concentrated, and coagulated in the purest, the most resistant, and the most perfect of earthly matter.” Fulcanelli speaks of the “vital agent, the metallic soul, the first matter”, which according to alchemical teachings, “dwells in the womb of the undefiled Virgin.”
An Islamic recounting of the birth of Jesus states that:
“When the moment of Mary’s delivery approached, she walked out of Jerusalem. She saw a dried up palm tree; and when Mary sat at the foot of this tree, it immediately bloomed anew and was covered with leaves and greenery, and it bore a great abundance of fruit through the operation of God’s power. And God called forth a spring of living water next to it.”
This allegory, Fulcanelli adds, reveals much about the nature and operation of the philosopher’s stone which is more soul and spirit than matter. This “higher or spiritual force,” he explains, “acting mysteriously amidst concrete substance, compels as well crystal to take its form and its immutable characteristics; it is this force which is its pivot, its axis, its generating energy, its geometric will.” This action of spirit or soul within matter, according to Fulcanelli, is fundamental to the promulgation of the forms of the “physical” world and the workings of alchemy.
Alchemy does not, Fulcanelli reminds us, take place only on the level of the physical, “Meditation, study, and above all a strong unshakable faith will finally bring upon this work Heaven’s blessing…Nothing shall be impossible to you.’” He is effusive in describing the powerful result of actually achieving generation of the philosopher’s stone, also referred to as the Elixir:
“The very elaboration of the Elixir demonstrates to the alchemist that death, a necessary transformation, albeit not a real annihilation, must not distress him. Much to the contrary, the soul, freed from the burden of the body, enjoys in full flight a marvelous independence totally bathed in this ineffable light only accessible to pure spirits…The soul leaves its earthly body only to animate a new one. Yesterday’s old man is tomorrow’s child. The vanished are met again, the lost ones are found, the dead are reborn…These certainties, materially controlled through the labor of the Work, assure the initiate an indefectible moral serenity, a calm amidst human excitements, a contempt for mundane pleasures, a resolute stoicism, and, above all, this powerful comfort granted him by the secret knowledge of his origins and destiny.”
By “dwellings of the philosophers”, Fulcanelli refers not only to their sometimes extraordinarily embellished physical homes but also to the interior realms rich in venerable wisdom and knowledge that they inhabited.
Next: Alchemist’s Handbook