The famous cathedral of Notre Dame has always been a privileged place, not only for the history of art and literature, but also for the occult spirit. Proof of this is its constant association with occult, metaphysical symbols and history (from Hugo's rendering of Quasimodo and Eugene Sy's Paris Mysteries, to its appearance in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code).
After all, the mysterious figure of the old man with the Phrygian cap and coat in one of the towers of the famous Gothic cathedral is the allegory of the alchemist, who from the high pedestal of his knowledge of occult laws, observes the world.
In 1905, during the construction of the Paris metro, a statue of Isis was found under the old Bastille pits. The etymology of the city's name (Par-Isis, the ship of Isis) is also due to the great black goddess, whose worship spread throughout the empire through the Roman legions.
The truth is that Ile-de-la-Cite, the first settlement of the Parisians, appears from the sky like one of the boats that, at the dawn of history, sailed from the Nile, to the "black land", where Hermes Trismegistus was born and the art of turning base metals into gold. Gradually, the ancient Egyptian goddess was transformed from the twelfth century into the Black Virgin, and the crypt where she is worshiped is located right at the foot of the territory of the "island", opposite the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. After all, the name of "Notre Dame", "Our Lady" corresponds to the way of invoking the Egyptian deity.
Fulcanelli is the last famous alchemist, who dedicated his life to elucidate the mysteries in Notre Dame Cathedral. His very identity is also shrouded in unsolved mystery:for some, he was an engineer officer who collaborated with the architect Essen Viollet-le-Duc in the restoration of Notre-Dame.
For others it is Jean-Julien de Champagn himself, who signed the depictions of the Mystery of the Cathedrals. He is believed to have died in 1932 in an attic at 59 Rue de Rochechouart, near the Gare de Lyon train station, although many of the events he narrates in his books take place after World War II. a fact that feeds the imagination of those who believe that he had discovered the elixir of eternal life, the recipe of which can be read by the initiated at the entrance to the temple of Notre Dame.
Thanks to him, we know that the sick gathered in a special section of the Virgin Mary, where six lamps were hung and did not leave the temple until they were cured of their illnesses. While the doctors who cared for them did so around the baptistery at the entrance of the basilica. The reason for this rite still remains a mystery.
In the 14th century, every Sunday all the alchemists (in the species of Saturn, as Fulcanelli says) gathered in the central Gate, where they exhibited the results of their investigations and studied the alchemical symbols depicted on its lintel.
But on either side of the great entrance there are on the lintel two rows of 12 fronts and 12 figures representing the different elements and phases of the alchemical process. In fact, in these forms, a woman is shown three times holding a raven, symbol of decay, or a salamander, symbol of calcification, on a disc, and the representation with the Philosophical Mercury, which is the symbol of medieval science, stands out.
Also stand out:a knight in armor and spear guarding the atanor (the alchemical furnace where the ingredients are prepared). The raven, the symbol of decay which is necessary for the separation of the clean and the impure, qualities that come together in one union. A man holding an open furnace and in his right hand the philosopher's stone. At the top, where Victor Hugo's hunchback lived, we can observe, in the corner of the north tower, surrounded by witches, the impressive relief of an old man in a Phrygian cap and coat, resting with one hand on the banister and stroking with the other his beard:he is the alchemist, examining and wondering about the progress of the work.
At the other end of the island is the Sainte-Chapelle, built between 1245 and 1248 to house the relics of the Holy Passion. The magnificent stained glass windows were executed with alchemical processes in mind. Fulcanelli's favorite was the Massacre of the Innocents, an allegorical depiction of the "death" of the raw material at the hands of mercury, with the ultimate goal of its "resurrection" in the next phases of processing the nobler result.
Medieval masons carved the symbols of the Hermetic doctrine on the walls of cathedrals, which exerted a great influence on later examples of modern residential and religious architecture:on the right bank, behind the Louvre, the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, our amazes with its terrifying, hideous demons, and the evocative sculpture of the Virgin of Egypt. A little further east, are the churches of Saint-Merri and Saint-Martin-des-Champs.
From the old church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie today only the tower remains, from where pilgrims started for the Apostolic Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. A few meters from the tower, two streets cross, one with the name of Nicolas Flamel (who in 1389 built the Saint-Jacques gate) and his wife, Perrenelle.
Eight blocks north, at 51 rue de Montmorency, there is an inscription:"Here lived Nicolas Flamel, a rich Parisian, parishioner of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, whom legend has him turning into an alchemist in search of the philosopher's stone and of the way of converting lead into gold".
But no one denies, however, that Flamel spent all his fortune on the construction of shelters for beggars, on hospitals and on the cemetery of the Innocentes, on the facade of which he caused to be engraved the hieroglyphic with the keys of his science Mercury, who according to legend was taught by the teacher Canches in Lyon.
An eighteenth-century chronicler claims to have seen him at the Paris Opera with his wife, Perenelle, four centuries after his supposed death, and legend has it that when his tombstone was removed no remains were found.
Flamel's tombstone is today in the Cluny Museum. This museum also houses a series of medieval tapestries, such as "The Lady and the Unicorn", which according to the Hermeticians is not, or not only, an allegorical interpretation of sense perceptions, but also the alchemical work:the lady bearing a flag with three crescents, representing the fraction of mercury collected at the end of the first treatment, three times less than its total amount at the beginning of the alchemical process...
Fulcanelli, Jean-Julien Champagne (Jean-Julien Champagne, if it was not the same person), René Schwaller (for some, the real author of the works attributed to Fulcanelli) and the children of Ferdinando Lesseps, who opened the Suez Canal, they used to gather there near 76 Rue de Rennes, at the Livrairie du Merveilleux bookstore. Its owner Pierre Disole had a unique archive of occult sciences. The legendary library no longer exists, but as experts in esotericism say, in the nearby bookshops of Place Saint-Michel, one can find some "good contacts".
The heirs of the Templars held their secret meetings near Flamel's house, in the basement of the Conservatory, next to Foucault's giant pendulum (today exhibited in the Panthéon):at least in Umberto Eco's imagination. But just as delusional as it is plausible at the same time is Dan Brown's idea:
The Holy Grail is buried beneath the top of the Louvre pyramid, inaugurated in 1989. Transparent and enigmatic, this Egyptian-like pyramid is destined to continue to excite the imaginations of occult believers with the same magnetism that it exerts on them. the Gothic facade of Notre Dame.
SOURCE:APE-ME