'Le Temple de l'Homme' - Introduction - Schwaller de Lubicz

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014

The purpose of this text is to present indisputable evidence that a symbolic directive was operative in the architecture of the Temple of Luxor.
This material allows us to affirm that what is true for the Temple of Luxor is also true for other monuments from all the Egyptian dynasties, the symbolism evidently having been adapted to the particular consecration of an edifice and to the nature of the place where it was erected.

EXCAVATIONS and philological studies supply the Egyptologist with abundant material for a knowledge of the life, beliefs, and theology of ancient Egypt.
An encyclopaedic amount of work is available to the researcher.
Nevertheless, Pharaonic Egypt remains unknown in terms of its true science, its contingent psycho-spiritual knowledge, and its philosophical mentality.
The funerary texts develop the myth transcribed into images, but it has not been possible to translate the deeper meaning of these images into comprehensible language.
The philosophical connection of the accumulated data is lacking.
One tends to seek in ancient Egypt, as well as in other traditions of the past, what might be called a rational expression of esotericism.
This is an error that arises from the prejudice that there is no esotericism, or that there exists an intent to conceal a certain knowledge.
However, simple reasoning shows us that, for example, if the Gospels were written to teach the way of Truth and to show us what this Truth consists of,. then the form of parables and enigmatic phrases chosen for this revelation would be nonsensical if its purpose were to conceal this Truth.
The purpose of these parables and enigmatic phrases is not to hide anything from "he who has eyes to see and ears to hear," according to the evangelical formula.
The purpose is to select those who developed the necessary under- standing and who are for this reason worthy of these "secrets" (that is to say. they will not misuse them for selfish motives).
There was never any intent to conceal, from those thus prepared, any of the wisdom transmitted by texts, traditions, or monuments.
The enigma does not lie in the thing itself but is the result of our understanding, our faculties, and our intelligence, which are not attuned to the mentality according to which the idea was expressed, and it is just this that our present education prevents us from admitting.
However, there is a type of education that using the vital organs in which the nervous flux is transformed as well as the centers (or "nodes") of this flux can awaken "consciousness" of states that precede and transcend material forms.
The West has no terminology for this science, and thus we must have recourse to the oriental languages.
But the words alone are useless without the concepts.
Ancient Egypt is in fact one of the major sources of these sciences: however, a true vocabulary of the Pharaonic language, or even a provisional one, will never be possible unless attention is given to those questions which we define as psycho-spiritual.
The Egyptian symbolism can guide us in this regard and show us meanings other than the common meanings currently accepted for a great many words.
In this way. the meaning of many texts will become clear.
Rationalism is based on the data provided by the senses, and the senses perceive only a meagre part of what is.
Thus, through rationalism alone we can know only what is encountered through the senses, what is ponderable, - quantitative.
Yet mathematics have demonstrated the existence of elements that fall outside the physical; we must take this into account, and if rationalism brings us up against an impenetrable wall, in so doing it in fact teaches us that it has its limits and that we should seek another means of knowledge.
We express ourselves in a conventional language, and the dictionary defines and limits the meaning of each word.
Therefore, we can understand nothing beyond what the dictionary knows.
We write with conventional alphabetic signs that in themselves express only sounds; thus our alphabet is merely a mechanical means for composing the words in the dictionary and transmitting the thoughts they encompass.
It may be said that the combinations of these letters are almost infinite: true, but the number of words is limited by notions already acquired.
Thought can also examine observed phenomena and seek the causes. . . .
Certainly it can, but as soon as it approaches the metaphysical, it can no longer find in our languages and forms of writing the means of expressing itself: abstract ideas, formulated in words for which we lack the concepts, are objectified and lose their significance.
It follows from these observations that either there exists only a concrete world perceptible to the senses, or we lack a faculty that would enable us to grasp the abstract, without having to concretize through the imagination.
The process is ingrained in us, in accordance with a mode that always leads toward the quantitative definition.
This is the inverse of the Egyptian mentality.
If an unknown phenomenon appears, it is already the concretization of a cause that was abstract for us.

Instead of searching out the nature of this cause, we obey our reductionist tendency and restrict both cause and phenomenon to the realm of the mechanical mentality.
We investigate nothing deeply; we pull everything down to our own limits.
However, a simple image proves to us that there is a way we can express ourselves without limiting a notion to a defined form, and transcribe our thought without imposing our own mentality on those who will read this image.
We have gotten into the habit of reducing everything in Time and Space: - this is the rational habit.
An image, on the other hand, gives access to a world of qualities and functions.
For instance, if we say "a man walks,'' we see a man walking, but we sec him in a limited way: we imagine only the fact of moving or walking.
We can then place that fact in the past, present, or future and all the gradations of these tenses: we situate this movement in Time and Space.
If, on the other hand, we see an image that represents a man walking (or simply lines depicting a man) we no longer imagine him, we no longer situate him; he is there, it is the function that interests us, and the quality of that function.
We can then paint this man green: it will no longer be solely the function of walking with one's legs that is evoked - this movement could also signify vegetation or growth.
But to our reason, walking and growing are two different functions, while in reality there is an abstract connection between them: it is movement outside consideration of Time, or pathway, or specific direction.
If we wish to define this movement, we immediately reduce it in Time and Space, whereas there is no further need to define the feeling of motion (whether walking or growing); the image - the symbol - acts as definition, and we can in fact experience this condition (unconsciously become one with it, without any reasoning) just as any child would looking at pictures.
Thus, the representation - the symbol - is our only true means of transmitting an esoteric meaning, which, in alphabetic writing, we have to seek in parable, or, possibly metaphor or allegory.
The Chinese mentality is characteristic of this transcribed symbolic mentality: the idea is circumscribed but not named.
Something of this mentality, which we encounter in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, has remained among the peoples of the Middle East: - the indirect question and answer.
Symbolic representation, and imagistic writing are the pure hieratic forms of esoteric expression.
Through symbolism, and through it alone can we read the thought of the Ancients.
It is only through the symbolical that we will be able to coordinate the known elements of this great civilization and that the writing may take on its true meaning.
With regard to this mode of expression, I shall quote Ampere, 'Essai sur la Philosophic des Sciences' (vol. 2, pp. 103-104):
"These rites, these dogmas, often conceal ideas once reserved for a small number of initiates: and the secret of these ideas, though buried with them, can be rediscovered by those who study in depth all the types of teachings remaining of the ancient beliefs and the ceremonies they prescribed. Hence, a science, given the name of 'the Symbolic' (the name I shall retain for it), proposes to uncover what was hidden behind such diverse emblems."
I shall explain more precisely what I mean by the word symbol in the chapter on "Definitions" and in the "Summary of Principles."
We also see in the symbol the only means of making a connection between the "oriental" mentality and the "occidental" mentality, according to the basic distinction currently accepted.
But Pharaonic Egypt - which is, in my opinion, the main source of Mediterranean civilization - is in some ways closer to us than is the Orient.
Its mentality is positive, and its expression is symbolic, to convey a form of esotericism that does not differ from the others, since Wisdom cannot vary if it is real.
This symbolic aspect has been completely neglected in Egyptology.
It is the proof of its existence, and of the directive stemming from it in the Pharaonic expression, that I find and present with the Temple of Luxor.
The strangely irregular plan of this temple prompted me to investigate the causes of these irregularities.
Since this architectural conception was executed in several phases along the temple's longitudinal axis, hitherto the simple explanation of attributing utilitarian purposes to successive builders has been adopted.
In my opinion, only more profound reasons could have inspired these extraordinary constructions, which certainly, on account of the very effort required, could not have been consecrated to inconsequential ideas.
Many positive proofs and experiments now confirm the correctness of this way of thinking. 
Obviously, no one would build such monuments, and in such great numbers, over thousands of years, for uncultivated peasants.
This work is of necessity that of an elite, and, even more remarkably, an elite that never ceased to renew itself, an elite that seems to have been uniquely endowed with a wealth of scientific knowledge, including an understanding of the laws of Life.




Schwaller de Lubicz and Egypt

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014

SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ and EGYPT

It might be said that Schwaller de Lubicz's preparation for Egypt was that of a philosopher, in the sense that his entire life constituted an intense philosophical   inquiry.   
His unique and intuitive way of seeing, in combination with a technical and scientific education, gave him his extraordinary insight into the values and objectives motivating ancient science and theology.

Luxor Temple
In Schwaller de Lubicz's scrupulous
examination of the art and architecture of the Temple of Luxor,  at  least  two  concurrent levels are  being  developed  at  any  given point.
One is the study of Egypt as a civilization that existed in a factual geographic place and time (including its people, mythology, social forms, its chronological unfolding, its monuments and artifacts), but this level is only a backdrop, or support, for another Egypt which might be defined as a "quality of intelligence."
This is Egypt as an evocation of a particular utilization and expression of a universal power of higher intellection.
This Egypt is outside of chronological considerations; it is, rather, both an ever present and a recurring possibility of consciousness.
In his approach to Egypt, Schwaller de Lubicz stresses the view that in order to comprehend the significance of a heightened phase among man's varied historical expressions, we need to impose on ourselves the discipline of attempting to enter into the mentality of the people and the spirit of the time.

Schwaller de Lubicz
To do so would mean more than just learning the language and symbols of the period under study; we must also awaken in ourselves a living inner rapport with the material being researched and identify with it in a potentially self-transforming manner.
Of course, this ideal can never be fully attained, as our present consciousness is inevitably with us, but, on the other hand, by continuing to sift all of history through our present rationalized, individualized psychological mentality, we distort beyond recognition the content and meaning of the past.
This distortion often occurs when we try to interpret the great mythological cultures of Egypt or Vedic India in particular; we tend to lose sight of the fact that these cultures were expressing a different mentality, and values, from ours and that they had a completely different understanding of the goal and purpose of life.
As a result, in all of their science, art, and knowledge these cultures used distinct modes and methods of symbolization.


 'Propos sur Esoterisme el Symbole'
Schwaller de Lubicz
Heiroglyphics
Pyramid of Unas
Schwaller de Lubicz found it necessary to inquire into the nature of symbolization itself in order even to arrive at an understanding of what a heiroglyph is.
This he carried out in two small books, 'Propos sur Esoterisme el Symbole' (Esotericism and Symbol) and 'Symbole et Symbolique' (The Symbol and the Symbolic), English translations of which are forthcoming from Autumn Press.
That these ancient peoples thought differently than we do, and that we must understand this difference if we are to study them properly seems obvious, but an example will show how difficult it is to put this idea into practice.




'Le Temple de l'Homme'
Schwaller de Lubicz
Schwaller de Lubicz explains in 'Le Temple de l'Homme' (Caracteres, 1957) that in the ancient temple civilization of Egypt, numbers, our most ancient form of symbol, did not simply designate quantities but instead were considered to be concrete definitions of energetic formative principles of nature.
The Egyptians called these energetic principles Neters, a word which is conventionally though incorrectly rendered as "gods."

"In considering the esoteric meaning of Number, we must avoid the following mistake: Two is not One and One; it is not a composite. It is the multiplying Work; it is the notion of the plus in relation to the minus; it is a new Unity; it is sexuality; it is the origin of Nature. Physis, the Neter Two. It is the Culmination (the separating moment of the full moon, for example); it is the line, the stick, movement, the way, Wotan, Odin, the Meter Thoth, Mercury, Spirit."

Also, when the ancients considered the process of mathematical multiplication, their mode of calculation had a direct relationship with natural life processes as well as metaphysical ones. 
Schwaller de Lubicz called this mode the "principle of the crossing" (interestingly, we today continue to symbolize multiplication with the sign of a cross: X).
This crossing was not a sterile, mental, numerical manipulation, but a symbol for the process by which things enter into corporeal existence.
All birth into nature requires a crossing of opposites.
It can be the crossing of vertical and horizontal lines, which give birth to the square, the first measurable surface; or male and female, giving birth to a new individual; or warp and weft, creating a fabric; or light, and darkness, giving birth to tangible forms; or matter and spirit, giving birth to life itself.
Thus the vital linking up of the mental abstraction of calculation with its counterpart in natural phenomena gave the ancient mathematician a living and philosophic basis for his science. 
Similarly, these ancient peoples did not use words as we do, that is, as symbols or sounds linked together, which have fixed, memorized associations and which we compose in sequential patterns within the mind.
For them words were of a musical nature; or, more precisely, speaking was a process of generating sonar fields establishing an immediate vibratory identity with the essential principle that underlies any object or form.
The Pharaonic intelligence that Schwaller de Lubicz reveals to us was not the visualizing, analytical mentality we know but a sonar-intuitional mode.


Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
In 'The Egyptian Temple', Gaston Camille Charles Maspero wrote, 'the human voice is the instrument par excellence of the priest and the enchanter.
It is the voice which seeks afar the Invisibles summoned and makes the necessary objects into a reality. . . . But as every one (of the tones) has its particular force, great care must be taken not to change their order or to substitute one for the other.'

Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (June 23, 1846 – June 30, 1916) was a French Egyptologist. He created the term "Sea Peoples" in an 1881 paper. Among his best-known publications are the large 'Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient classique' (1895-1897), displaying the history of the whole of the nearer East from the beginnings to the conquest by Alexander; a smaller 'Histoire des peuples de l'Orient', of the same scope, which passed through six editions from 1875 to 1904; 'Etudes de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes' (Paris, 1893, etc.), a collection of reviews and essays originally published in various journals, and especially important as contributions to the study of Ancient Egyptian religion; 'L'Archéologie égyptienne' (1907), of which several editions have been published in English. He also established the journal 'Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes; the Bibliothèque égyptologique', in which the scattered essays of the French Egyptologists are collected, with biographies, etc.; and the 'Annales du service des antiquités de l'Egypte', a repository for reports on official excavations, etc.

Clearly, this approach to Egyptology demands a qualitative change on our part if we are to enter into the Pharaonic spirit.
And this change in our thinking may offer us perspective not only on the vastly different intelligence of the past but on the limitations and excesses of our present intellect as well.


Luxor Temple Colonade
This meticulous meditation on the stones and statuary of Luxor also raises far-reaching questions on the function and nature of history itself.
In particular we begin to see that Egypt may have left us some essential keys to help us find our way toward an integration of things metaphysical (spirit), mathematical (mental, scientific), musical (vibrational, living) and physiological (physical or material).
As a civilization, Egypt certainly holds up to us a model of this reintegrated expression of the various planes and parts of our individual natures, and of the cosmic life of our universe, and thus may prove of greater value in the spiritual crisis now confronting us than the religions of transcendence adapted from various ancient Eastern cultures.
Egypt was not of the lineage that advocates transcendence and denial of material existence; it taught, rather, transformation.
The ancient name for Egypt was "Kemi," meaning "Black Earth," the field of vital transformation; the Arabs, Schwaller de Lubicz points out, called Egypt "Al-Kemi."
Thus we find in its very name that age-old, universal doctrine so often disguised in symbols and parables.
This doctrine encompasses a vision of the principle of matter as a field of existence responsive to and capable of being transformed by spiritual influences brought about through the evolution of embodied and individualized consciousness.
The West today could benefit from a philosophy of spiritual depth that does not suppress, diminish, or deny our intellectual and material nature, but rather fulfils our commitment, to the meaningfulness of human life and this material expression of the universe.
This lost alchemy, the pursuit, of which extends back to its flowering in ancient Egypt, can be seen as the hidden esoteric roots of both civilization and individuals throughout recorded time. 
It is this same alchemy which is at the core of the vision of the anthropocosm - of Man as being and containing within himself the entire universe.
This vision, which is expanded and brought to life in his major work, 'The Temple of Man, leaves us with a single, enduring message: the inevitable resurrection of the spiritual essence which has involved itself in matter in the form of organic creative energy.


Egyptian Pharaoh
This resurrection depends upon the transformation of the material universe -or to express the idea more as Egypt left it imprinted in the stones of Luxor: the birth of divine man (symbolized by the Pharaoh) depends upon the transformation of the universal mother (materia prima).
This transformation was considered the sole cosmic goal.
Every human birth participates in this alchemy, either in an awakened manner through the intentional perfecting and expression of one's higher nature, or un-awakened, through the tumult and suffering of karmic experience leading eventually to a spiritual self-awareness, the temple in man.


The Temple in Man.
The intensification and heightening of human consciousness was believed to cause biological and even cellular changes in the physical body of the initiate.
This divinization of the individual body, on the microcosmic level, comprised the goal and purpose of the evolution of human consciousness in general.

Within the Temple of Egypt, psycho-spiritual growth was wedded to precise intellectual and physiological disciplines which acted to accelerate the influence and transformative effects of spirit over matter.
With Egyptian alchemy we are considering, then, a science in the highest sense of the word, - and one very different from our own.
It was science directed toward the embodiment of spiritual knowledge, toward the internalization and corporeal expression of intellectual and spiritual powers, rather than the mechanistic utilization of knowledge-power for the exploitation, and manipulation of the earthly environment.
The Temple was the pinnacle of the collective life, ever guiding the energy of the long-lived civilization of the Nile Valley toward the gestation of a divine humanity out of the transitory human form.

Schwaller de Lubicz - Introduction

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014

SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ




René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961), born René Adolphe Schwaller in Alsace-Lorraine, was a French occultist, student of sacred geometry and Egyptologist, known for his twelve year study of the art and architecture of the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, and his subsequent book 'The Temple In Man'.





Early Life

Schwaller's father was a chemist - apparently wealthy - and the young René grew up in a world of science, nature and art.
Dreamy walks in the Alsatian forests followed hours spent painting and "experimenting."
He also had two peculiar experiences.
In 1894, at the age of seven, Schwaller had a kind of mystical insight into the nature of the divine.
This glimpse of metaphysical reality would return seven years later when, at fourteen, he experienced another insight, this one into matter
 "What is the origin of matter ?" the budding meta-physician asked himself.
The question occupied him the rest of his life.


 Paracelsus
Schwaller left home at the age of eighteen after having completed an apprenticeship with his father in pharmaceutical chemistry.
Moving to Paris from Alsace to study modern chemistry and physics, he developed an interest in Alchemy, reading every alchemical text he could find including those by Paracelsus and Raymond Lull.

Paracelsus (/ˌpærəˈsɛlsəs/; born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 11 November or 17 December 1493 – 24 September 1541) was a Swiss German Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist. He founded the discipline of toxicology. He is also known as a revolutionary for insisting upon using observations of nature, rather than looking to ancient texts, in open and radical defiance of medical practice of his day. He is also credited for giving zinc its name, calling it zincum. Modern psychology often also credits him for being the first to note that some diseases are rooted in psychological illness.

Ramon Llull (Catalan: [rəˈmon ˈʎuʎ]; c. 1232[2] – c. 1315), T.O.S.F. (Anglicised Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull; in Latin Raimundus or Raymundus Lullus or Lullius) was a Majorcan writer and philosopher, logician and a Franciscan tertiary. He is credited with writing the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory. He is also considered a pioneer of computation theory, especially given his influence on Gottfried Leibniz.

He also developed an interest in painting.


Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz
He was given the title "de Lubicz" in 1919 by the Lithuanian writer, mystic and diplomat Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz.

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (Lithuanian: Oskaras Milašius) (May 28, 1877—March 2, 1939) was a French-Lithuanian poet. His literary career - as manifested through his many poems, two novels and three plays - passed from its beginnings in the late symbolist movement of la Belle Époque towards a highly personal and dense cosmology. A recluse and meta-physician, his poems were visionary and tormented, concerned with love and loneliness and full of alchemical imagery. Milosz also wrote essays.

He also wrote under the mystical name 'Aor', signifying "Light of the Higher Mind".


Schwaller came under the influence of the new physics of Albert Einstein and Max Planck.
Like many people today, Schwaller believed that the strange world of quantum physics and relativity opened the door to a universe more in line with the cosmologies of the ancients, and less compatible with the Newtonian clockwork world of the nineteenth century.
He was especially stimulated by the idea of complementarity, developed by the Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, and the uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg.
Bohr sought to end the debate over the nature of light - whether it was best described as a wave or as a particle - by opting for a position that would see it as both.
Heisenberg's "uncertainty" - which caused Einstein to retort famously that "God does not play dice with the universe" - argued that we cannot know both the position and the speed of an elementary particle: pinpointing one obscures the other.
Schwaller would agree with Einstein about God's attitude toward gambling.
But he appreciated that complementarity and uncertainty demand a stretch of our minds beyond the "either/or" of syllogistic logic, to an understanding of how reality works. 
Complementarity and uncertainty ask us to hold mutually exclusive ideas together.
The result, Schwaller knew, can be an illogical but illuminating insight.
This "simultaneity of opposite states" plays a great part in Schwaller's understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
It characterizes what he calls 'symbolique', a way of holding together the object of sense perception and the content of inner knowing, in a kind of creative polarity.
Schwaller later argued that when the Egyptians saw the hieroglyph of a bird, , they knew it was a sign for the actual, individual creature, but they also knew it was a symbol of the "cosmic function" that the creature exemplified - flight - as well as all the myriad characteristics associated with it. 
Hieroglyphics did not merely designate; they evoked.
As he wrote in Symbol and the Symbolic, "the observation of a simultaneity of mutually contradictory states . . . demonstrates the existence of two forms of intelligence" - an idea the early twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead would discuss, with many similarities to Schwaller's thought, in his book, 'Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect' (1927).
He became a student of Theosophy and Saint Yves d'Alveydre's Synarchy.
Theosophy (from Greek θεοσοφία theosophia, from θεός theos, God + σοφία sophia, wisdom; literally "God's wisdom"), refers to systems of esoteric philosophy concerning, or investigation seeking direct knowledge of, presumed mysteries of being and nature, particularly concerning the nature of divinity.


Seal of the Theosophical Society
Saint Yves d'Alveydre
Theosophy is considered a part of the broader field of esotericism, referring to hidden knowledge or wisdom that offers the individual enlightenment and salvation. The theosophist seeks to understand the mysteries of the universe and the bonds that unite the universe, humanity, and the divine. The goal of theosophy is to explore the origin of divinity and humanity, and the world. From investigation of those topics, theosophists try to discover a coherent description of the purpose and origin of the universe.

Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquess of Alveydre (26 March 1842, Paris – 5 February 1909, Pau) was a French occultist who adapted the works of Fabre d'Olivet (1767–1825) and, in turn, had his ideas adapted by Papus. He developed the term Synarchy - the association of everyone with everyone else - into a political philosophy, and his ideas about this type of government proved influential in politics and the occult.

Schwaller was fascinated with the esoteric secrets of Gothic architecture and became acquainted with the man whose name is most associated with the "mystery of the cathedrals," the pseudonymous Fulcanelli.
Sometime between 1918 and 1920 in Montparnasse, Schwaller met Fulcanelli, who had gathered a band of disciples around him, aptly called "The Brothers of Heliopolis."
(Schwaller would later claim that the word alchemy meant "out of Egypt.")
Alchemy had found a home in the strange world of the Parisian occult underground, and Fulcanelli and the Brothers of Heliopolis studied the works of the great alchemists, like Nicolas Flammel and Basil Valentinus.
Fulcanelli and Schwaller met often, and discussed the 'Great Work', the transmutation of matter, a possibility that the recent advances in atomic theory seemed to bring closer to reality.
Then one day, Fulcanelli told Schwaller about a manuscript he had aquired from a Paris bookshop.
While cataloguing an ancient book for a bookseller, Fulcanelli discovered a strange piece of writing: a six-page manuscript in fading ink, describing, Fulcanelli claimed, the importance of color in the alchemical process.
But, said Schwaller, when it came to alchemy, Fulcanelli was a materialist, and so he didn't grasp the true nature of color.
Schwaller enlightened him.
Tired of the distractions of Paris, Schwaller moved to Grasse, in the south of France, where he invited Fulcanelli to join him in an alchemical retreat.
There, after much work, they performed a successful opus, involving the secrets of "alchemical stained glass."
The peculiarly evocative reds and blues of the rose windows of cathedrals like the unearthly Chartres had eluded artisans since the Middle Ages.
In Grasse, Schwaller and Fulcanelli may have cracked the formula.
But there was tension between the two.
The ideas for his most famous work, 'The Mystery of the Cathedrals' (1925), are said to have been taken from Schwaller de Lubicz.
Fulcanelli returned to Paris and against Schwaller's advice, tried to perform their work again. 
He wasn't successful.
This was, Schwaller claimed, because Fulcanelli left out essential ingredients known only to him.
Ignoring Schwaller's warnings, Fulcanelli persisted in performing the work in Paris.
But his strange death from gangrene, a day before he was to reveal the secret to his students, brought an end to his opus.

Les Veilleurs

Schwaller de Lubicz was the founder in 1919, with other members of the Theosophical Society, of the esoteric right-wing French group called Affranchis, that published a journal 'L'Affranchi-Hiérarchie, Fraternité, Liberté', a monthly journal of art and philosophy, dealing with a spiritual and social renewal within the framework of a mystical political philosophy.
Its president was René Bruyez.


Rudolf Walter Richard Heß
On 23 July 1919 the group dissolved and another group was formed in its place: Les Veilleurs ("the Vigilants"), to which, allegedly, the young Rudolf Hess belonged (according to the historian Pierre Mariel).

Rudolf Walter Richard Heß, (26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987), was born in Alexandria, in Egypt, and served in the First World War, later becoming a prominent politician in Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom during World War II. 

Its uniform consisted of a dark shirt, high-boots and riding-breeches.
Les Veilleurs delivered its manifesto in December 1919, its politics conveyed through a series of letters called "Appeals" and signed by its members.
The first issue of its journal, 'Veilleur', contained an article concerning the position of Jews in society that first appeared in a Masonic journal from 1898.
The artist André VandenBroeck in his memoirs and biography of Schwaller de Lubicz described him as being concerned with race and the nature of Judaism.

Suhalia

During the 1920s with his wife Isha, Schwaller de Lubicz established in Switzerland the 'Station Scientifique Suhalia', a research centre consisting of
"laboratories for physics, chemistry, micro-photography and the manufacture of homeopathic tinctures was set up, along with an astronomical observatory, a machine shop, workshops for woodworking, blacksmithing, printing, weaving, rugmaking and glassmaking and a theater." 
While there, Schwaller de Lubicz brought to a total whole his philosophical vision, and in 1926 published his book 'L'Appel du Feu', where his "inspiration and higher intelligence is personified as 'Aor'."
At Suhalia, Schwaller's views on the evolution of consciousness began to coalesce.
In 'L'Appel du feu' (1926), he recorded a series of inspirations via a higher intelligence that he called "Aor."
These revealed to him the true significance of time, space, measure, and harmony.
The basic insight was to think simply, to abstract oneself from time and space, and to "consider only the aspect common to every thing and every living impulse."
As he would later write,
"To cultivate oneself to be simple and to see simply is the first task of anyone wishing to approach the sacred symbolism of Ancient Egypt."
This is necessary because "the obvious blinds us," the obvious being our perception of the world via cerebral consciousness alone, which divides, analyzes, and "granulates" experience - Bergson's "static perception."
Schwaller would later discover that the Egyptians associated this type of consciousness with the "evil" god Set; its opposite, the "intelligence of the heart," they associated with Horus.
Schwaller claimed that the knowledge he received at Suhalia was from a past life.
Like Plato, Schwaller believed that all real knowledge is a kind of re-membering - a bringing back together what had been separated, a reparation of the "primordial scission."
Suhalia continued until 1929, when finances caused Schwaller to shut it down.
The next few years were spent at Grasse and aboard his yacht.
Two years of comparative solitude in Palma de Mallorca ended with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
The moment seemed right to embark on a journey to Egypt.

Egypt

In 1936, on a visit to the tomb of Rameses IX in Alexandria, Schwaller had a kind of revelation. 
A picture represented the pharaoh as a right-angle triangle with the proportions 3:4:5, - his upraised arm adding another unit.
Schwaller thought it demonstrated the Pythagorean theorem, centuries before Pythagoras was born.
For the next fifteen years, until 1951, Schwaller de Lubicz remained in Egypt, investigating the evidence for what he believed was an ancient system of psychological, cosmological, and spiritual knowledge.
Most of Schwaller’s work was done at the temple at Luxor, - his study of its remarkable architecture and design a natural outcome of his early fascination with the mystery of number. 
On his first visit in 1937, Schwaller was impressed with a tremendous insight.
The temple, with its strange, "crooked" alignments, was, he was certain, a conscious exercise in the laws of harmony and proportion.
He called it the 'Parthenon of Egypt' - somewhat anachronistically, since he believed Luxor was concrete proof that the Egyptians understood the laws of harmony and proportion before the Greeks.

Schwaller searched Luxor for evidence of the golden section, and 'phi'.
 If the golden section had been used, that would prove the Egyptians had knowledge of it much earlier than the Greeks,-  a revelation that alone would cause an uproar in orthodox Egyptology. Schwaller linked 'phi' to the orbits of the planets, the proportions of Gothic cathedrals, and the forms of plants and animals.
It was a "form constant," a blueprint for reality, a law of creation.
And the Egyptians knew it.
The Egyptians knew much else: the precession of the equinoxes, the circumference of the globe, and the secrets of phi.
The knowledge of the Egyptians indeed made the Greeks seem like children.
Their forgotten mathematical wisdom led Schwaller increasingly to realize that Egyptian civilization must be far older than we suspect - the clear evidence of water erosion on the Sphinx also suggests that.
He concluded that their knowledge may have been inherited from vanished Atlantis.
But more important than any of those conclusions, was his growing conviction that the Egyptians had a radically different consciousness from ours.
They viewed the world symbolically, seeing in nature a "writing" conveying truths about the metaphysical forces behind creation - "the Neters," as Egyptian gods are called.
It was a vision Schwaller believed we desperately need to regain.
He, with the French egypologist Alexandre Varille, developed the symbolist approach to ancient Egypt.
He argued that Egyptian temples were used for mystical initiations, and that their design incorporated symbolism, expressing a belief system that combined religion, philosophy, art, and science.
He believed, for instance, that the Egyptians were aware of astronomical concepts like axial precession, which was reflected in their religious beliefs.
He linked the astrological age of Gemini with the development of the dualistic themes in Egyptian religion, the age of Taurus with the bull god Apis, and the age of Aries with the god Amun, who was sometimes depicted as a ram.
He also argued that the human form was the basis for ancient Egyptian architecture, and he equated parts of the temples with parts of the human body.
His three-volume work 'The Temple in Man' includes a drawing that compares the plan of Luxor Temple to the shape of a human skeleton.
Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince argue that these ideas were influenced by Schwaller de Lubicz' existing beliefs, such as Synarchy and Theosophy.
Like many other esotericist figures, he believed that Egyptian civilization dated back much farther than conventional Egyptian chronology allows.
Mainstream Egyptologists have largely ignored his claims or viewed them with hostility, although Erik Hornung points out that his survey of Luxor Temple contains information useful to anyone studying the temple today.
He is an influential figure among the advocates of theories about ancient Egypt that challenge the conclusions of mainstream Egyptology - theories that are sometimes labeled "alternative Egyptology".

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