Fulcanelli, Master Alchemist: The Dwellings of the Philosophers
1999
Translated by Brigitte Donvez and Lionel Perrin

Published by Archive Press and Communication, Boulder, Colorado.


Review by John Major Jenkins / September 5, 1999

This is one of the mysterious hermetic books written by the enigmatic Fulcanelli, French alchemist extraordinaire, who influenced the surrealist movement in the 1920s. Fulcanelli is a master of symbology, and he offers in-depth readings of architectural features, designs, cornice grimoire, sundials and obelisks found in Europe, many of them over three hundred years old. Dwellings, available now for the first time in English, is a large book, deep in mystery and therefore occasionally inscrutible, but filled with diagrams and pictures to help one navigate through this amazing synthesis. Fulcanelli is at times obscure, and his esoteric nature allows him to be cryptic, for a great mystery is breached, carefully, in his books. As far as I can see into it, the mystery has several layers, all of which relate to each other. There is alchemy itself, and the ancient goal of producing the Philosopher’s Stone. Contrary to the Jungian psychological perspective, Fulcanelli implies that a real chemical substance is the intention of alchemy, which then confers enlightenment on the seeker. But the actual production of it seems intrinsically tied into the seeker’s spiritual readiness, and to astrological understanding and timing. Indeed, it has been said that the the nature of time is the great secret of alchemy.

In Dwellings, the Philosopher’s Stone and the mysteries of time are also closely related to a double catastrophe to occur at the "end of time." And, according to Fulcanelli’s reading of the hidden message, we are living in the end times. Fulcanelli’s words on this topic are brief but to the point. He offers a compelling interpretation of the symbology of an obelisk from Dommartin-sur-Tigeaux (Siene et Marne), which is reminiscent of his analysis of the Cyclic Cross at Hendaye in Mysteries of the Cathedrals. It has to do with a double catastrophe to occur at the end of the Great Solar Period, which is divided into four ages. We can deduct that he is referring to the 26,000-year precessional cycle, divided into four periods of 6500 years each. Following Weidner and Bridges’s decoding of the Cross at Hendaye in their recent book A Monument to the End of Time (1999) - which is a brilliant deductive revelation - the obelisk in Dwellings appears to be yet another monument that encodes an alignment in precession which looms on the horizon, and which will, according to Fulcanelli, result in Judgment Day - the purging of the northern hemisphere by fire, and the southern hemisphere by flood. The alignment in question is none othe rthan the solstice-galaxy alignment that the Maya Long Count calendar indicates with its end-date (see my book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, 1998). This alignment, following the equinox emphasis preferred my Fulcanelli, Weidner, and Bridges, can also be referred to as the equinox-galaxy Cross. The Cross or Alignment is most precise in 1998-1999. The intriguing information here involves Fulcanelli’s knowledge of the alignment, when writing in the 1920s. This Judgment Day alignment seems to be the alchemical secret coveted through the ages, passed down in elite groups of European esoteric circles to the 20th century -- right to the edge of the alignment itself! Bridges and Weidner suggest that this Year-2000 A.D. alignment, and these precessional alignment dynamics in general, involving our changing orientation to the galaxy, were central to Egyptian cosmology. Dwellings, and the new work by Weidner and Bridges, is extremely exciting confirmation of my own work to reconstruct the Galactic Cosmology of the ancient Maya.

The Galactic Alignment (or Galactic Cross) concept is thus the key to alchemy, having survived the steep attrition of the ages and the ascent of ego-ignorance as the Iron Age deepened, to be "let out of the bag" by the enigmatic Fulcanelli. One might think that Fulcanelli’s work would have been translated, analyzed, decoded and interpreted long ago. As a testiment to the distorted priorities of our age, it’s taken seventy years for Dwellings to appear in English. And yes, it’s cryptic. But now, with the work of Weidner and Bridges, and this fine edition of Dwellings by Archive Press and Communications (translation by Brigitte Donvez and Lionel Perrin), we can enter into the completion of the Great Work, the apotheothis of time and the final distillation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Hopefully, it is not too late.

John Major Jenkins / kahib@ix.netcom.com / http://edj.net/mc2012

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