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Latest Work - Rosicrucians & Alchemists of la Belle Epoque
Sample Pages below ......
Rosicrucians & Alchemists
of La Belle Époque
Steven Ashe
Warburg-Maple 2011
Sample Pages - Coming soon 14th July 2011
Hermetic Alchemy has experienced something of a rough ride in terms of the history of the past one hundred years. Entering the Atomic Age, an epoch of startling discoveries in the physical sciences, demonstrated the possibility of the transmutation of elements; albeit in a volatile radioactive form. Since then, it seems the materialist school of Alchemy has provided the general focus of attention to the Western audience.
Any truly philosophical interest seems to have become entangled in the embryonic pseudo-jargon of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century psychologists such as Freud, Jung, Adler, Reich and Leary.
However, what we might somewhat amusingly refer to as the ‘Heavy Metal’ school of Alchemy and its more speculative philosophical counterpoint are far from being the only examples of Alchemy practiced today. Amongst the more interesting derivations from the image of practical Alchemy conjured up by the mundane imagination number approaches embracing sexual Tantra, the cultivation of narcotics, disciplines of Yogic abstinence and other quite diverse preoccupations.
As bizarre as many of these devotions may seem, a common thread runs through each of them. That is the realisation that, no matter the approach, the end towards which these quite diverse means are seen to be directed is one closely bound up with the issue of the expansion of Human Consciousness.
Even the materialism of the Heavy Metal school of Alchemy enshrines an innate belief in the essential transformation of the Alchemist as a pre-requisite to the transformation of metals. Other approaches, such as the Sexual Alchemy of Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Tantra, as expounded by Kenneth Grant - a personal friend and disciple of the self styled Great Beast - are more directly concerned with the issue of consciousness change. Here, brazenly orgiastic rites of sexual ecstasy and the intoxication of wine and strange drugs induce hormonal stimulation of states of altered consciousness.
Timothy Leary’s LSD inspired visionary initiatives of the 1960s provided a slightly less cult like expansion of Crowley’s Tantric Alchemy, although these devotions paid to the new gods of Sex and Drugs were more culturally sensitive; bringing a rising awareness of the place of sensuality within the urge towards spirituality.
Although Leary quickly fell from grace and academic respectability, the work of other researchers into the chemical nature of consciousness such as Dr John Lilly, famous for his researches into neural meta-programming employing psychotropic agents within sensory deprivation tanks, proved more lasting in the domain of orthodox research.
Eastern schools of Alchemy similarly focus upon the hormonal processes as being the tools of transformation within the physical laboratory of the human body. Whereas some of these alchemic methods involve the stimulation of altered states of awareness through strict self denial, others utilise explicit sexual stimulation and taboo breaking practices of sexual congress designed to exhaust the everyday consciousness and thus allow the free flow of supra-mundane energies to rise through the Chakras. These latter mentioned rites of orgiastic yoga are clearly depicted within the temple sculptures of the temples of southern India.
At first glance, all of these widely differing practices might seem so far removed from accepted traditional notions of the alchemical art that any attempt to link them appears fanciful. However, from the mid Nineteenth Century until just prior to the Second World War, embryonic aspects of every one of these alternatives to the heavy-metal school of Alchemy were the subject of intense investigation amongst the occult underground of Parisian salon society.
Indeed, it is most revealing that the patrons of three Parisian Bookstores - L’Art Independant, the Vega bookstore and The Bookstore of the Marvellous - and the esoteric societies using these well-springs of philosophical literary treasure seem to have provided the catalyst for the explosion of interest in Alchemy from the dawn of the Twentieth Century to the present day.
The importance of the influence of the Continental School in the development of western hermetic lore has been much overlooked by the English speaking audience. Yet it is from the crucible of esoteric culture emanating from the above mentioned three esoteric bookshops that a melting pot of experimentation with alchemic metallurgy, sexual tantra and even psychedelic drug use has emerged to inform the occult tradition.
On June 5th 1926 an Alchemic work entitled ‘The Mystery of the Cathedrals’ was published by Jean Schemit, Paris, under the authorship of the pseudonymous Fulcanelli.
This was a collaborative work purporting to reveal an alchemic interpretation of symbolic codes enshrined in Gothic Cathedral architectural design. The core of the work was based upon detailed notes entrusted to the book’s illustrator Jean Julien Champagne by Rene Schwaller, whose more detailed later investigations of the architecture of early Egyptian monolithic design brought him fame.
Unbeknown to Schwaller, who was amazed and taken by surprise by the appearance of The Mystery of the Cathedrals, Champagne had incorporated material pertaining to the ‘Language of the Birds’ (the jargon of the Hermetic Adepts) from the pen of Pierre Dujols; the proprietor of the Bookstore of the Marvellous.
Dujols was well connected in Freemasonic and pseudo-Rosicrucian circles and was the associate and confidant of incredibly wealthy and influential patrons of Parisian esoteric society.
The children of Ferdinand de Lesseps who had supervised the building of the Suez canal, occult illustrator of the Tarot Oswald Wirth, Freemasonic mastermind and, later, convert to Sufi Islam Rene Guenon and the Occult Master known as Papus: all numbered amongst the close circle surrounding him.
Dujols was a scholar of Greek literature and a fanatic proponent of the notion that ancient Greek and not Latin provided the linguistic origins of the French language.
These Greek roots provided Dujols with an etymology of Alchemic jargon which he termed Hermetic Cabala. This system provided an interpretive language of puns and Cant which became known alternately as the Green Language or the Language of the Birds.
This unorthodox approach to Alchemic linguistics proved popular as a focus of debate amongst the esoteric intelligentsia frequenting the classes held weekly at the Bookstore of the Marvellous. Dujols became a close associate of Jean Julien Champagne and later became an active member of his mystic society known as the Brotherhood of Heliopolis.
It was Dujols’ death in April 1926 that cleared the way for Champagne to incorporate the notes assembled by his friend into the body of The Mystery of the Cathedrals. This was something of a final straw for Dujols’ widow Yvonne, who had been previously quite friendly and sympathetic to the alchemic illustrator. She withdrew from all contact with Champagne and his circle at this point and passed his personal alchemic research journals to Champagne’s pupil Eugene Canseliet.
An example of the Green Language system, so characteristic of Pierre Dujols, contained in the text of The Mystery of the Cathedrals,intuited in Fulcanelli’s treatment of the alchemic term Sel- more ordinarily translated as ‘Salt’ in English. Here we find the terma homophone of Scel translates as Seal.
Pierre Dujols’ health had deteriorated some thirty years prior to his death and he had become sporadically bed ridden, sometimes previously for years on end.
During these periods he came to rely upon Champagne as the courier of charitable gifts of money from admirers. Champagne, a talented and classically trained Artist, was also an alcoholic who sometimes spent the money en route.
The bed-ridden scholar would however devote endless hours in the company of Champagne to discussing the finer points of the alchemic method. In 1914 he had assembled and published the Mutus Liber, regarded as a classic of Alchemic erudition. Dujols shared a passion for the medieval period with Champagne and also an abiding fascination with the Alchemic lore surrounding Basil Valentine and France’s most legendary Alchemist Nicholas Flamel.
Champagne had gained quite a reputation amongst the Hermetic intelligentsia of the day. His extraordinary talent for visionary draftsmanship combined with his evident artistic talents led to his gaining lucrative design contracts for the de Lesseps family. He was placed in charge of the revolutionary high-tech design of a turbo powered propeller system intended for a polar sled. He also undertook the developmental design of a future model farm built with the de Lesseps’ money.
Champagne’s renowned skill in the material science of Metallurgic Alchemy lay behind his initial introduction to the de Lesseps who also frequented the esoteric gatherings organised by Dujols’ at the Bookstore of the Marvellous.
The canal builder’s sons offered Champagne the regular use of a chemical laboratory and in 1911 even hosted Champagne in the de Lesseps mansion as a house guest whilst he continued his experimental alchemic spagyrics and work upon the polar sled, on a stipend of 500 Francs per month. On this income, Champagne lived the high life of Salon society amidst the sunset years of La Belle Époque.
In 1913, whilst wining and dining at Closerie Delilas cafe in Montparnasse, Champagne by chance met with Rene Schwaller, a young man nine years his junior and a fellow artist of sober disposition.
The two were as different as chalk and cheese and although relations between them were friendly, they were never friends. Schwaller had been a pupil of the Artist Matisse and it is likely that a certain rivalry stood between the Bohemian Champagne and the quietly erudite Schwaller.
Champagne had taken on professional responsibilities as a book-valuer and archivist for the Chacornac brothers’ bookstore, having been recommended for this post by his friend Dujols. It was whilst performing these duties that he came upon a six page document inserted into a rare and collectable volume dealing with Alchemy, written by Isaac Newton.
This partially coded manuscript alleged to be the journal of an Alchemist who had successfully discovered the methods of producing the red and blue stained glass of the Rose window of Chatres Cathedral; a mysterious process which had resisted the study of the the great minds of the ages.
The wily alchemist had clandestinely appropriated the manuscript and spent fruitless years in experimental frustration attempting to uncover its secrets.
At the time of their fateful meeting, Schwaller’s reputation was waxing: his first book A Study of Numbers was in pre-production by the Press associated with L’Art Independent Bookshop.
René Schwaller’s studies had led him to a deep study of the symbolism of the Gothic Cathedrals; especially Notre Dame, which he visited regularly. His work A Study of Numbers the geometric harmony of the medieval masterpieces in stone.
Champagne, knowing of Schwaller’s reputed brilliance in chemistry, and no doubt aware of his fortune and business success, arranged to show the younger man sample pages from the manuscript.
Schwaller had gained financial independence from rewards gained through his shrewd handling of the financial affairs of Louis Allainguillaume, a wealthy coal merchant. Generous dividends were granted to Schwaller allowing him to provide the opportunistic Champagne with a stipend similar to that obtained from the de Lesseps and which would continue to be paid for the next seventeen years.
The partnership would, at the agreement of both parties, remain completely secret. Schwaller took possession of the manuscript and agreed to decode its secrets. Champagne agreed to perform the laboratory work using medieval alchemic methods.
The outbreak of World War in 1914 saw René Schwaller mobilised into research science on behalf of the military. His scientific background led to a wartime career engaged in nutritional research, whilst he maintained a correspondence with Champagne in which he revealed piecemeal the secrets of the processes discussed in the manuscript. Champagne laboured in the de Lesseps laboratory, testing Schwaller’s theories.
René Schwaller continued to be active in Parisian occult circles, frequenting meetings of the Theosophical Society between 1913 and 1916. It was whilst attending these meetings that he closely befriended the Lithuanian nobleman and poet Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (1877 - 1939).
Both men were deeply fascinated by the symbolism of heraldry referred to each other as ‘Brothers in Arms’. The French Chemist introduced Milosz to the metaphorical treasures of Alchemy and, in turn, Milosz bestowed a knighthood and the right to bear his family’s Coat of Arms on the re-christened René Schwaller de Lubicz.
Whilst spending his leisure hours intensely studying the mathematical, geometric and sculptural mysteries of Notre Dame, Schwaller focused his incredible mind upon the task of bringing together some of the esoteric elite of the Parisian underground.
Jean Germaine would eventually marry Schwaller, some ten years later upon the death of her husband. She became known as a mediumistic spiritual seer and visionary who published many books upon the spiritual lore of ancient Egypt under the mystical name of Isha.
Schwaller had hijacked the cream of the Theosophical Society’s elite, even enticing the editor of Le Theosophe to change the name of this journal to Le Veilleur. The name was taken from the title of an unpublished novel Les Veilleurs de la Nuit (The Watchers of the Night) by Nicolas Beaudoin.
Les Veilleurs met at a house once owned by Balzac and articles published by the order were signed in the name ‘Aor’, Schwaller’s initiatory name which translates as Light. He was able to focus upon his spiritual interests thanks to the benevolence of his employer Allainguillaume and still amass considerable savings whilst paying a stipend to Champagne who had maintained a detailed and regular correspondence on the subject of their secret collaboration throughout the war years.
Champagne was a regular guest at the meetings held by Les Veilleurs and also at a number of other gatherings hosted by rival Hermetic bodies. After 1915, he was almost continually accompanied by the then sixteen year old scholar of Greek literature Eugene Canseliet who had attached himself to the master as an apprentice.
Canseliet would prove to be central to the Fulcanelli affair, and a major catalyst to the historical mystification of the identity of Fulcanelli throughout the twentieth century.
He was introduced to the opulent high society who met at the home of the de Lesseps, and to the circle who attended Pierre Dujols to study the Green Language of Cabala. A keen student of Alchemic symbolism and something of a genius in the disciplines of artistic calligraphy, Eugene Canseliet gained great respect amongst his peer
END OF SAMPLE PAGES
of La Belle Époque
Steven Ashe
Warburg-Maple 2011
Sample Pages - Coming soon 14th July 2011
Hermetic Alchemy has experienced something of a rough ride in terms of the history of the past one hundred years. Entering the Atomic Age, an epoch of startling discoveries in the physical sciences, demonstrated the possibility of the transmutation of elements; albeit in a volatile radioactive form. Since then, it seems the materialist school of Alchemy has provided the general focus of attention to the Western audience.
Any truly philosophical interest seems to have become entangled in the embryonic pseudo-jargon of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century psychologists such as Freud, Jung, Adler, Reich and Leary.
However, what we might somewhat amusingly refer to as the ‘Heavy Metal’ school of Alchemy and its more speculative philosophical counterpoint are far from being the only examples of Alchemy practiced today. Amongst the more interesting derivations from the image of practical Alchemy conjured up by the mundane imagination number approaches embracing sexual Tantra, the cultivation of narcotics, disciplines of Yogic abstinence and other quite diverse preoccupations.
As bizarre as many of these devotions may seem, a common thread runs through each of them. That is the realisation that, no matter the approach, the end towards which these quite diverse means are seen to be directed is one closely bound up with the issue of the expansion of Human Consciousness.
Even the materialism of the Heavy Metal school of Alchemy enshrines an innate belief in the essential transformation of the Alchemist as a pre-requisite to the transformation of metals. Other approaches, such as the Sexual Alchemy of Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Tantra, as expounded by Kenneth Grant - a personal friend and disciple of the self styled Great Beast - are more directly concerned with the issue of consciousness change. Here, brazenly orgiastic rites of sexual ecstasy and the intoxication of wine and strange drugs induce hormonal stimulation of states of altered consciousness.
Timothy Leary’s LSD inspired visionary initiatives of the 1960s provided a slightly less cult like expansion of Crowley’s Tantric Alchemy, although these devotions paid to the new gods of Sex and Drugs were more culturally sensitive; bringing a rising awareness of the place of sensuality within the urge towards spirituality.
Although Leary quickly fell from grace and academic respectability, the work of other researchers into the chemical nature of consciousness such as Dr John Lilly, famous for his researches into neural meta-programming employing psychotropic agents within sensory deprivation tanks, proved more lasting in the domain of orthodox research.
Eastern schools of Alchemy similarly focus upon the hormonal processes as being the tools of transformation within the physical laboratory of the human body. Whereas some of these alchemic methods involve the stimulation of altered states of awareness through strict self denial, others utilise explicit sexual stimulation and taboo breaking practices of sexual congress designed to exhaust the everyday consciousness and thus allow the free flow of supra-mundane energies to rise through the Chakras. These latter mentioned rites of orgiastic yoga are clearly depicted within the temple sculptures of the temples of southern India.
At first glance, all of these widely differing practices might seem so far removed from accepted traditional notions of the alchemical art that any attempt to link them appears fanciful. However, from the mid Nineteenth Century until just prior to the Second World War, embryonic aspects of every one of these alternatives to the heavy-metal school of Alchemy were the subject of intense investigation amongst the occult underground of Parisian salon society.
Indeed, it is most revealing that the patrons of three Parisian Bookstores - L’Art Independant, the Vega bookstore and The Bookstore of the Marvellous - and the esoteric societies using these well-springs of philosophical literary treasure seem to have provided the catalyst for the explosion of interest in Alchemy from the dawn of the Twentieth Century to the present day.
The importance of the influence of the Continental School in the development of western hermetic lore has been much overlooked by the English speaking audience. Yet it is from the crucible of esoteric culture emanating from the above mentioned three esoteric bookshops that a melting pot of experimentation with alchemic metallurgy, sexual tantra and even psychedelic drug use has emerged to inform the occult tradition.
On June 5th 1926 an Alchemic work entitled ‘The Mystery of the Cathedrals’ was published by Jean Schemit, Paris, under the authorship of the pseudonymous Fulcanelli.
This was a collaborative work purporting to reveal an alchemic interpretation of symbolic codes enshrined in Gothic Cathedral architectural design. The core of the work was based upon detailed notes entrusted to the book’s illustrator Jean Julien Champagne by Rene Schwaller, whose more detailed later investigations of the architecture of early Egyptian monolithic design brought him fame.
Unbeknown to Schwaller, who was amazed and taken by surprise by the appearance of The Mystery of the Cathedrals, Champagne had incorporated material pertaining to the ‘Language of the Birds’ (the jargon of the Hermetic Adepts) from the pen of Pierre Dujols; the proprietor of the Bookstore of the Marvellous.
Dujols was well connected in Freemasonic and pseudo-Rosicrucian circles and was the associate and confidant of incredibly wealthy and influential patrons of Parisian esoteric society.
The children of Ferdinand de Lesseps who had supervised the building of the Suez canal, occult illustrator of the Tarot Oswald Wirth, Freemasonic mastermind and, later, convert to Sufi Islam Rene Guenon and the Occult Master known as Papus: all numbered amongst the close circle surrounding him.
Dujols was a scholar of Greek literature and a fanatic proponent of the notion that ancient Greek and not Latin provided the linguistic origins of the French language.
These Greek roots provided Dujols with an etymology of Alchemic jargon which he termed Hermetic Cabala. This system provided an interpretive language of puns and Cant which became known alternately as the Green Language or the Language of the Birds.
This unorthodox approach to Alchemic linguistics proved popular as a focus of debate amongst the esoteric intelligentsia frequenting the classes held weekly at the Bookstore of the Marvellous. Dujols became a close associate of Jean Julien Champagne and later became an active member of his mystic society known as the Brotherhood of Heliopolis.
It was Dujols’ death in April 1926 that cleared the way for Champagne to incorporate the notes assembled by his friend into the body of The Mystery of the Cathedrals. This was something of a final straw for Dujols’ widow Yvonne, who had been previously quite friendly and sympathetic to the alchemic illustrator. She withdrew from all contact with Champagne and his circle at this point and passed his personal alchemic research journals to Champagne’s pupil Eugene Canseliet.
An example of the Green Language system, so characteristic of Pierre Dujols, contained in the text of The Mystery of the Cathedrals,intuited in Fulcanelli’s treatment of the alchemic term Sel- more ordinarily translated as ‘Salt’ in English. Here we find the terma homophone of Scel translates as Seal.
Pierre Dujols’ health had deteriorated some thirty years prior to his death and he had become sporadically bed ridden, sometimes previously for years on end.
During these periods he came to rely upon Champagne as the courier of charitable gifts of money from admirers. Champagne, a talented and classically trained Artist, was also an alcoholic who sometimes spent the money en route.
The bed-ridden scholar would however devote endless hours in the company of Champagne to discussing the finer points of the alchemic method. In 1914 he had assembled and published the Mutus Liber, regarded as a classic of Alchemic erudition. Dujols shared a passion for the medieval period with Champagne and also an abiding fascination with the Alchemic lore surrounding Basil Valentine and France’s most legendary Alchemist Nicholas Flamel.
Champagne had gained quite a reputation amongst the Hermetic intelligentsia of the day. His extraordinary talent for visionary draftsmanship combined with his evident artistic talents led to his gaining lucrative design contracts for the de Lesseps family. He was placed in charge of the revolutionary high-tech design of a turbo powered propeller system intended for a polar sled. He also undertook the developmental design of a future model farm built with the de Lesseps’ money.
Champagne’s renowned skill in the material science of Metallurgic Alchemy lay behind his initial introduction to the de Lesseps who also frequented the esoteric gatherings organised by Dujols’ at the Bookstore of the Marvellous.
The canal builder’s sons offered Champagne the regular use of a chemical laboratory and in 1911 even hosted Champagne in the de Lesseps mansion as a house guest whilst he continued his experimental alchemic spagyrics and work upon the polar sled, on a stipend of 500 Francs per month. On this income, Champagne lived the high life of Salon society amidst the sunset years of La Belle Époque.
In 1913, whilst wining and dining at Closerie Delilas cafe in Montparnasse, Champagne by chance met with Rene Schwaller, a young man nine years his junior and a fellow artist of sober disposition.
The two were as different as chalk and cheese and although relations between them were friendly, they were never friends. Schwaller had been a pupil of the Artist Matisse and it is likely that a certain rivalry stood between the Bohemian Champagne and the quietly erudite Schwaller.
Champagne had taken on professional responsibilities as a book-valuer and archivist for the Chacornac brothers’ bookstore, having been recommended for this post by his friend Dujols. It was whilst performing these duties that he came upon a six page document inserted into a rare and collectable volume dealing with Alchemy, written by Isaac Newton.
This partially coded manuscript alleged to be the journal of an Alchemist who had successfully discovered the methods of producing the red and blue stained glass of the Rose window of Chatres Cathedral; a mysterious process which had resisted the study of the the great minds of the ages.
The wily alchemist had clandestinely appropriated the manuscript and spent fruitless years in experimental frustration attempting to uncover its secrets.
At the time of their fateful meeting, Schwaller’s reputation was waxing: his first book A Study of Numbers was in pre-production by the Press associated with L’Art Independent Bookshop.
René Schwaller’s studies had led him to a deep study of the symbolism of the Gothic Cathedrals; especially Notre Dame, which he visited regularly. His work A Study of Numbers the geometric harmony of the medieval masterpieces in stone.
Champagne, knowing of Schwaller’s reputed brilliance in chemistry, and no doubt aware of his fortune and business success, arranged to show the younger man sample pages from the manuscript.
Schwaller had gained financial independence from rewards gained through his shrewd handling of the financial affairs of Louis Allainguillaume, a wealthy coal merchant. Generous dividends were granted to Schwaller allowing him to provide the opportunistic Champagne with a stipend similar to that obtained from the de Lesseps and which would continue to be paid for the next seventeen years.
The partnership would, at the agreement of both parties, remain completely secret. Schwaller took possession of the manuscript and agreed to decode its secrets. Champagne agreed to perform the laboratory work using medieval alchemic methods.
The outbreak of World War in 1914 saw René Schwaller mobilised into research science on behalf of the military. His scientific background led to a wartime career engaged in nutritional research, whilst he maintained a correspondence with Champagne in which he revealed piecemeal the secrets of the processes discussed in the manuscript. Champagne laboured in the de Lesseps laboratory, testing Schwaller’s theories.
René Schwaller continued to be active in Parisian occult circles, frequenting meetings of the Theosophical Society between 1913 and 1916. It was whilst attending these meetings that he closely befriended the Lithuanian nobleman and poet Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (1877 - 1939).
Both men were deeply fascinated by the symbolism of heraldry referred to each other as ‘Brothers in Arms’. The French Chemist introduced Milosz to the metaphorical treasures of Alchemy and, in turn, Milosz bestowed a knighthood and the right to bear his family’s Coat of Arms on the re-christened René Schwaller de Lubicz.
Whilst spending his leisure hours intensely studying the mathematical, geometric and sculptural mysteries of Notre Dame, Schwaller focused his incredible mind upon the task of bringing together some of the esoteric elite of the Parisian underground.
Jean Germaine would eventually marry Schwaller, some ten years later upon the death of her husband. She became known as a mediumistic spiritual seer and visionary who published many books upon the spiritual lore of ancient Egypt under the mystical name of Isha.
Schwaller had hijacked the cream of the Theosophical Society’s elite, even enticing the editor of Le Theosophe to change the name of this journal to Le Veilleur. The name was taken from the title of an unpublished novel Les Veilleurs de la Nuit (The Watchers of the Night) by Nicolas Beaudoin.
Les Veilleurs met at a house once owned by Balzac and articles published by the order were signed in the name ‘Aor’, Schwaller’s initiatory name which translates as Light. He was able to focus upon his spiritual interests thanks to the benevolence of his employer Allainguillaume and still amass considerable savings whilst paying a stipend to Champagne who had maintained a detailed and regular correspondence on the subject of their secret collaboration throughout the war years.
Champagne was a regular guest at the meetings held by Les Veilleurs and also at a number of other gatherings hosted by rival Hermetic bodies. After 1915, he was almost continually accompanied by the then sixteen year old scholar of Greek literature Eugene Canseliet who had attached himself to the master as an apprentice.
Canseliet would prove to be central to the Fulcanelli affair, and a major catalyst to the historical mystification of the identity of Fulcanelli throughout the twentieth century.
He was introduced to the opulent high society who met at the home of the de Lesseps, and to the circle who attended Pierre Dujols to study the Green Language of Cabala. A keen student of Alchemic symbolism and something of a genius in the disciplines of artistic calligraphy, Eugene Canseliet gained great respect amongst his peer
END OF SAMPLE PAGES
