When Hypocrisy Matters

by Anthony Gregory | Campaign for Liberty

Questions as to whether Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary, has paid all his taxes or followed immigration law concerning his housekeeper raise an interesting point. The scrutiny surrounding confirmation hearings presents one of the only opportunities politicians get to see what it is like to be harassed like a normal American citizen. Only during scandals like these are government officials given a taste of their own medicine, and it is such a bitter taste that the more humane among us might sympathize even with our would-be rulers as their lives and finances become open to inspection and public criticism.

Consider the rich irony in Geithner’s case. He seeks to be the head of the Treasury, and thus the head of the IRS, which commands an apparatus of staggering intrusiveness nearly unparalleled in all of human history. The IRS notoriously enjoys a certain exemption from the standards of Anglo-Saxon law; the presumption with tax cases is that you are guilty until proven innocent. Every year, millions of good Americans are terrorized by the organization. Many have their homes, their savings, their businesses confiscated, all supposedly in the name of creating a great society for all. IRS agents give the wrong advice to Americans filling out their taxes about a third of the time, but getting it wrong under their instruction is no excuse when error is found.

In addition to the nightmare of mid-April, the Treasury and other departments have burdened Americans with thousands of regulations that invade every facet of financial life. Democrats are even worse rhetorically than Republicans in this regard. In response to cries for immigration reform, the most common proposal from Democrats is to crack down on employers, to spy on them and threaten them with fines and imprisonment if they do not pry into all their employees’ lives to ensure none are illegal aliens. Aside from being a threat to the freedom of contract, this guarantees increasing government involvement into business and erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Much of the rationale behind the horrific Real ID Act can be attributed to this particular desire to ferret out illegal immigrants.

And so what a scene we have: A national Democratic leader in potential trouble for violating employment regulations; the chosen chief of the Treasury, which brings in trillions of dollars annually by taking it by force from those who earned it, himself accused of not putting in his fair share.

From the standpoint of freedom, however, Geithner’s true rip-off of the American people is not in his alleged tax evasion. All by itself, not paying taxes is not a scandalous crime. An everyday taxpayer would not deserve media attention for this. And as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner did far more to compromise economic fairness than he could have possibly done with his tax forms; as Treasury Secretary, he would undoubtedly do much more. Furthermore, from the perspective of liberty, Geithner’s villainy is not in the fact that he might have hired an illegal alien so much as it is in the hypocrisy by which he and so many other government officials hold themselves to a standard of law radically different from that to which they hold the rest of us.

A little hypocrisy is ubiquitous in nearly any society, but the issue of government always raises the stakes and makes it all the more egregious. It may be an insult for someone to verbally criticize you for a vice, such as smoking, only to light up himself minutes later. But for the government to impose the will, the ethics, the standards of some politicians on you by force even as they do what they claim should not be done—that is a different, much worse form of hypocrisy altogether.

Which brings us to William Corr, Obama’s choice for the second slot at the Department of Health and Human Services. Corr is an anti-smoking advocate and both he and Obama seem to support an agenda, to be carried out by the Democratic Congress, of “increasing federal regulation of cigarettes, raising taxes on tobacco products and approving an international tobacco control treaty,” as the New York Times puts it.

Obama has gotten attention as the first open cigarette smoker to be elected president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and yet he seems to have no problem pushing around smokers, making their habit more expensive (tobacco taxes always hurt the poor the most), and even internationalizing an issue that should not even be dealt with at the national level under our Constitution. In a free society, tobacco, along with other drugs, would be handled locally, and ideally by the family and community, and not at all through the criminal justice and regulatory systems. Yet politicians who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco or even have tried illegal drugs think very little of taxing, regulating, harassing and even jailing their fellow citizens for doing the same.

It has long been frustrating to watch a politician who smokes tobacco or drinks alcohol champion the war on drugs, all to stem the tide of chemicals that don’t kill nearly as many people as tobacco and alcohol do. Perhaps it is even more frustrating to see a president who smokes cigarettes wave the anti-smoking banner. Government crusades against drugs, cigarettes or other vices always fail to uplift the moral character of the people, but they are great ways to destroy liberty and personal responsibility and are reliable sources of high hypocrisy.

Just this week we have seen two exemplary cases of political hypocrisy pop up in the area of Obama’s political appointments. Again, such appointments are one of the few occasions when the media really explore the hypocrisy saturating the personal lives of politicians. If they were watched this closely year round, we would find ever more examples all the time. But in all such cases, whether it is Al Gore consuming enough electricity for 20 people as he flies around condemning carbon emissions, or a Republican leader caught straying from the very family values he has claimed should be imposed on us all by national planning, the real problem in the hypocrisy is not usually the politicians’ personal indiscretions, which usually fall short of any offense against the public safety or liberty. No, the real problem with such hypocrisy is that it is borne by politicians who implement their plans for a Brave New World on their compatriots without considering the human costs, the destroyed wealth, the uprooted lives, the lost liberties, the jailed innocents. If Geithner agreed to butt out of our finances, and Obama agreed to let people smoke as they will, it is doubtful we would not happily reciprocate and leave them alone as well.

Barrack H. Obama is the Pied Piper of Our Time

“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
— Adolf Hitler

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”
— Adolf Hitler

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
— Adolf Hitler

Obama has better rhetoric, he’s a slicker speaker and is more deceptive than his predecessors. He knows how to say exactly what you want to hear, and he will tell you that he is here to solve all of your problems; even if he changes his rhetoric, or does the exact opposite later-on.  Whatever he says or does, or has said or done in the past; nobody seems to care.

Yes, Barrack H. Obama has yet to demonstrate genuine integrity, during his political career; nor does he have a willingness to change the status quo.  He and his friends in the congressional black caucus were integral in causing the debacle which lead to the epic failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Just have a look at this man’s history.  Has he ever demonstrated genuine integrity? What has he ever accomplished? If you think the man is for “change” then find me examples of what he has accomplished.

The people love him and he will be given a few months, during which he will be able to ram through, whatever legislation he wants; but after this so-called “honeymoon” period, there may be violence and insurrection as the blacks, especially, realize that we’ve all been fucked, right up the ass, just like it has always been done since the assassination of JFK.

Obama is in the oval office, as we speak, lubing up his big black anal probe. You had better bend right over and spread out those cheeks, young ones; because you’ve been had.  And I might add, it was like shooting fish in a barrel this time.

Barrack Heussein Obama, there is ample evidence to illustrate your contempt for the American people. You have refused to produce a certified birth certificate. You have deceived the American public into thinking that you will stop the warfare and fix what is wrong with this nation.

In point of fact, you truly plan on exacerbating what is wrong with this nation; and you plan on bringing socialist ideals and bigger government into an already bankrupt nation.

The politician you most closely resemble bears the name Adolf Hitler. One day, they may very-well call you the “Black Hitler” of our time.  May the youth who’s minds you have in the palm of your hands realize what you are before it is too late.

New Method of Life Extension Discovered

There are a number of relatively simple methods to lengthen life. Calorie restrictions via methods such as fasting and dietary restriction are highly accessible techniques, which can easily be done by anyone. Another method is to use anti-oxidant rich foods and supplements in your diet, such as fresh raw vegetables.

Now a new method has been discovered, which extends the anti-oxidant technique already in use. This method utilizes heavy water, which has anti-oxidant properties. According to the research already done on fruit flies, it doesn’t take much to have a major life-extending effect.

Could Drinking Heavy Atoms Lengthen Your Life?

source: mercola.com

In a back room of New Scientist’s offices in London, I sit down at a table with the Russian biochemist Mikhail Shchepinov. In front of us are two teaspoons and a brown glass bottle. Shchepinov opens the bottle, pours out a teaspoon of clear liquid and drinks it down. He smiles. It’s my turn.

I put a spoonful of the liquid in my mouth and swallow. It tastes slightly sweet, which is a surprise. I was expecting it to be exactly like water since that, in fact, is what it is – heavy water to be precise, chemical formula D2O. The D stands for deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen with an atomic mass of 2 instead of 1. Deuterium is what puts the heavy in heavy water. An ice cube made out of it would sink in normal water.

My sip of heavy water is the culmination of a long journey trying to get to the bottom of a remarkable claim that Shchepinov first made around 18 months ago. He believes he has discovered an elixir of youth, a way to drink (or more likely eat) your way to a longer life.

Many anti-aging medications are based on supplementing your body’s own defenses with antioxidant compounds such as vitamin C and beta-carotene, though there is scant evidence that this does any good.

Shchepinov realized there was another way to defeat free radicals. While he was familiarizing himself with research on aging, his day job involved a well-established – if slightly obscure – bit of chemistry called the isotope effect. On Christmas day 2006, it dawned on him that putting the two together could lead to a new way of postponing the ravages of time. read full article »

All That Stuff About Pirates: Just More British Fairytales

For years we have heard stories about “Pirates” floating around the seas with their “Jolly Rogers” flags committing senseless acts of greed and violence. This article, however, refutes that notion as a mere British fairytale. Yes its all just another lie coming from the frauds in Britain, who themselves have committed more senseless acts of greed and violence, through themselves and their agents, than anyone else on this planet.

Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates

Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling

theindependent.co.uk

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.
read full article »

Draining Patience, Draining Patience, Drain Vitality. This Paranoid, Paralyzed Vampire Acts a Little Old

by Tool

A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can’t go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act’s a little old.

But I’m still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I’m still right here.

Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).

If there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.

If there were no desire to heal
The damaged and broken met along
This tedious path I’ve chosen here
I certainly would’ve walked away by now.

And I still may … (sigh) … I still may.

Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.

And if there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away by now.
And I still may.

Gonna wait it out.

Natural Birthing Options: Technology in Birth- First Do No Harm

By Marsden Wagner. M.D.

Recently a woman in Iowa was referred to a university hospital during her labor because of possible complications. There, it was decided that a cesarean section should be done. After the surgery was completed and the woman was resting post-operatively in her hospital room, she went into shock and died. An autopsy showed that during the cesarean section the surgeon had accidentally nicked the woman’s aorta, the biggest artery in the body, leading to internal hemorrhage, shock and death.

Cesarean section can save the life of the mother or her baby. Cesarean section can also kill a mother or her baby. How can this be? Because every single procedure or technology used during pregnancy and birth carries risks, both for mother and baby. The decision to use technology is a judgment call-it may either make things better or worse.

We are living in the age of technology. Ever since we succeeded in going to the moon, we have believed that technology can do everything to solve all our problems. So it should come as no surprise that doctors and hospitals are using more and more technology on pregnant and birthing women. Has it solved all the problems that can arise during birth? Hardly. Let’s look at the recent track record.

Has the recent increasing use of technology during pregnancy and birth resulted in fewer damaged or dead babies? In the United States there has been no decrease in the past thirty years in the number of babies with cerebral palsy. The biggest killer of newborn babies is a birth weight that is too low, but the number of too-small babies born has not decreased the past twenty years. The number of babies who die while still in the womb has not decreased in over a decade. While the past ten years has seen a slight drop in the number of babies who die during their first week after birth, the scientific data suggest an increase in the number of babies who survive the first week but have permanent brain damage.

Is the increasing use of technology saving the lives of more pregnant and birthing women? In the United States the scientific data show no decrease during the past ten years in the number of women who die around the time of birth (maternal mortality). In fact, recent data suggest a frightening increase in the number of women dying during pregnancy and birth in the United States. So it may be that the increase in use of birth technologies is not only not saving more women’s lives but is killing more women. This possibility has a reasonable scientific explanation: cesarean section and epidural anesthesia have both been used more and more in this country and we know that both cesarean section and epidural block can result in death.

We should not be surprised with the recent poor track record of high tech birth. For many decades in the middle of the twentieth century the number of babies dying around the time of birth was decreasing but this was due not to medical advances but mainly to social advances such as less severe poverty, better nutrition, better housing and, most importantly, to family planning resulting in fewer women with many pregnancies and births. Medical care also was responsible for some of the decreasing mortality of babies but not because of high tech interventions but because of basic medical advances such as the discovery of antibiotics and the ability to give safe blood transfusion. There has never been any scientific evidence that high tech interventions such as the routine use of electronic fetal monitoring during labor decrease the mortality rate of babies.

What this means is that putting yourself in the hands of a high tech doctor and a high tech hospital does not guarantee you the safest birth. You must yourself take responsibility for your own birth, including the decision to have technology used on you and your baby. Remember, technology is not good or bad. How technology is used can be good or bad. Airplanes can be used to carry you to visit your family or can be used to drop bombs on women and children. How technology is used on you during pregnancy and birth is of great importance because it can help you and your baby or harm you and your baby.
read full article »

They Beat the Man Who Gave Bush a Fond Farewell

As the Butcher of Baghdad, George W. Bush, made his final visit to Iraq. Muntadar al-Zaidi decided to send him, just a tiny taste, of the sentiment towards him. He threw both of his size 10 Iraqi-made shoes at the disgraced President. Fortunately for Bush, he managed to dodge the bullet; which is more than I can say about the countless Iraqis who have been killed by the senseless war.

Bush is a disgrace to the united States of America, and to the human race in general, as is his entire family; all the way back to their Nazi-banker grandfather Prescott Bush. Under the Bush family’s influence, we’ve witnessed our once great nation crumble to the brink of collapse. Now even the most die-hard Bush loving blowhards admit that the man is a disgrace.

Now they see that the Bush regime truly is communist at its very heart. This family is not here to protect the American people; instead they are here to scuttle the ship and then profit from the demise of the republic.

I know that Bush is proud of himself, because this was his goal from the start. I also know that the sell-outs who backed him from the start are proud of themselves as well.

All of these cowards will pay for their indiscretions tenfold, that is the law of karma that has held true for all of time; there is no escaping divine justice.

Shoe thrower ‘beaten in custody’

BBC News

The brother of the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has said that the reporter has been beaten in custody.

Muntadar al-Zaidi has suffered a broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.

Mr Zaidi threw his shoes at Mr Bush at a news conference, calling him “a dog”.

The BBC tried to contact Iraq’s top security official but he was not available for comment.

Meanwhile, offers to buy the shoes are being made around the Arab world, reports say.

Mass rallies in support of Mr Zaidi have also been held across Iraq, calling for his release.

Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad he believed his brother had now been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital.

Hero figure

Mr Zaidi told our correspondent that despite offers from many lawyers his brother has not been given access to any since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser.

The Iraqi authorities have said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law, although it is not yet clear what the charges might be.

Iraqi lawyers have speculated that he could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki, who was standing next to President Bush during the incident. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

Our correspondent says that the previously little-known journalist from the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV has become a hero to many, not just in Iraq but across the Arab world, for what many saw as a fitting send-off for a deeply unpopular US president.

As he flung the shoes, Mr Zaidi shouted: “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog.”

Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that his brother deliberately bought Iraqi-made shoes, which were dark brown with laces. They were bought from a shop on al-Khyam street, a well-known shopping street in central Baghdad.

However, not everyone in Iraq has been supportive of the journalist’s action.

In Baghdad, the head of the Iraqi Union of Journalists described Mr Zaidi’s action as “strange and unprofessional”, but urged Mr Maliki to show compassion.

“Even if he has made a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad-minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young,” Mouyyad al-Lami told the Associated Press news agency.

“We hope this case ends before going to court.”

Abducted by insurgents

The shoes themselves are said to have attracted bids from around the Arab world.

According to unconfirmed newspaper reports, the former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has offered $100,000 (£65,000) for the shoes, while a Saudi citizen has apparently offered $10m (£6.5m).

The daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Aicha, said her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage, saying his action was a “victory for human rights”.

The charity called on the media to support Mr Zaidi and put pressure on the Iraqi government to free him.

Mr Zaidi, who lives in Baghdad, has worked for al-Baghdadia for three years.

Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the channel, described Mr Zaidi as a “proud Arab and an open-minded man”.

He said that Mr Zaidi was a graduate of communications from Baghdad University.

“He has no ties with the former regime. His family was arrested under Saddam’s regime,” he said.

Mr Zaidi has previously been abducted by insurgents and held twice for questioning by US forces in Iraq.

In November 2007 he was kidnapped by a gang on his way to work in central Baghdad and released three days later without a ransom.

He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him.

Mr Zaidi never learned the identity of his kidnappers, who questioned him about his work before letting him go.

Hard Times Among the Hyenas

source: LaRouche Political Action Committee

December 9, 2008 (LPAC)–“It’s all gone ‘poof’,” one Goldman Sachs banker told today’s Wall Street Journal. Bankers who once wrecked companies and looted pension funds are now finding themselves reduced to irrelevance. Once Masters of the Universe, they are now lucky to have a job. “Investment banking has become a phantom realm,” the Wall Street Urinal said “where everyone is busy but no one is doing anything,” where “status is conferred by a quality meeting, not a completed transaction.” The “basic reality” of their profession, the paper said, is an “excess of bankers.” If you feel tears swelling in your eyes at the plight of these poor souls, who are now faced with selling their yachts and their country homes, and cutting back in other ways, perhaps the knowledge that Wall Street played a major role in destroying the productive power of the U.S. economy, laying waste to countless American businesses and families, will help. This is a classic case of “they did it to themselves.” And, of course, to the rest of us.

Then there’s the spectacle of hyena versus hyena, which we see breaking out as the members of the pack turn on each other in self-preservation. Take the case of Carl Icahn, the notorious corporate raider, and Leon Black, head of private equity giant Apollo Management. Former allies (both got rich from the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk-bond machine, Black as a Drexel banker and Icahn as his client), they are now fighting over money. Apollo needs to reduce its debt by getting its holders to cash it in at as little as 36-cents on the dollar, while Icahn, who owns a bunch of it, calls that fraud and has filed suit.

Hyena versus hyena. Maybe they should have a quality meeting.

Daylight Dancer

by Lacuna Coil

Answer me, it can’t be so hard
Cry to relieve what’s in your heart
Desolation, grief and agony

Trying to move
down in this grave
Trying to believe in every faith
As another bridge to clarity

Want to stay another way
(Want to stay another way)
Want to stay another way
(Want to stay another way)

Take another chance
to find a distant sanity
and turn your pain in truth
Take another chance
to fight a different enemy
and try to free it
read full article »

Secrets of Alchemy: The Great Cross and the End of Time

Alchemy is an exceptionally ancient art whose teachings stretch back for many thousands of years. Most practitioners of Alchemy carefully pass on their knowledge to the next generation; with only the most exceptional and intuitive students receiving the true teaching. The teachings themselves are often formed into puzzles, of sorts, which force the student to learn how to think, if they want to truly absorb the knowledge.

In today’s world most thinkers consider themselves to be Scientists. This is often an erroneous categorization, however, since many of the so-called scientists are not genuinely interested in uncovering the empirical reality; instead they tend to be more interested in making facts fit to accepted models.

The primary differences between the Scientists and Alchemists lie in their field of awareness. Scientists tend to be aware of very small, specialized portions of phenomena; they often do see any importance in incorporating the whole into their understanding. Because of this, they tend to have very limited understanding.

While Alchemists share the same curiosity for understanding phenomena, they prefer to incorporate a broader understanding of the whole, instead of simply focusing on the matter-centered reductionist paradigm of the scientists.

The following documentary delves deeply into the work of Fulcanelli, the author of Mystery of the Cathedrals. The author of this documentary delves deeply into the Fulcanelli’s work and attempts to shed light on the mystery of the Cross of Hendaye.

The mystery of this cross is surprisingly complex and intricate, as is common in the tradition of Alchemy. To most observers, the cross simply bears a simple error; but to the astute student of the occult, it becomes apparent that an intriguing puzzle is presented in this artifact.

Fulcanelli: The Mystery, the Secret and The Man

Vincent Bridges | Wednesday, December 1st, 1999

In his masterwork, The Mystery of the Cathedrals, the anonymous author Fulcanelli poses a riddle: How does a Tree become a Stone, which then becomes a Star?

Of course, being Fulcanelli, he shies away from such blunt simplicity. It was far too much too say openly that the secret of alchemy, and of science in its broadest sense, consisted of a Tree forming a Stone and igniting into a Star. Never mind solving the riddle of how it’s done.

And yet, the careful reader will discern this very enigma at the core of Fulcanelli’s book. Why?

Because the truth is simple. The secret of alchemy is contained in the riddle of how a tree — the Tree of Life, the World Pillar, the Djed — transforms into the Precious Stone of the Wise. And then, the core of the mystery, how that Stone becomes a star, an imperishable light body or perhaps even the body of a star in Orion. However, even though the truth is simple, the secret has a way of protecting itself.

Take Le Mysterie for example. Much has been written about just who “Fulcanelli” might have been, but very little, outside of Canseliet, has been written about what Fulcanelli said. Eugene Canseliet, Fulcanelli’s pupil, took the approach in his works of expanding on Fulcanelli’s alchemical metaphors without venturing a concrete explanation of the process itself. By his own admission, he never succeeded in what he imagined the ultimate goal to be, the transmutation of lead into gold. Therefore, we might be justified to suspect Canseliet’s level of understanding.

But what did Fulcanelli say? Does he actually reveal the secret of alchemy’s riddle?

Understanding Fulcanelli’s masterpiece requires preparation, guidance and more than a little patience. Le Mystere is not literature in the normal sense. It’s an initiation document designed to instruct the reader in a new way of thinking in and about symbols. Fulcanelli is always honest. He never cheats the reader or hides behind his vows of secrecy, but he does insist that the reader do the work. Otherwise the revelation is worthless. Therefore, the initiation takes the form of a puzzle, or a riddle.

For preparation, one could do no better than to read carefully all of Book III and Chapter Two of Book V of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Fulcanelli assumes that any intelligent reader would be aware of this perspective and would basically agree with it. Fulcanelli, in Le Mystere, is trying to provide specific examples of Hugo’s metaphors in stone. A good guide book to Notre-Dame is also valuable, as is a general history of the Gothic period and its cathedrals.

The best preparation however is to forget everything you have ever read or heard about alchemy. Let Fulcanelli explain it to you as if you had never heard the word before. In practical terms, it means skipping Canseliet’s prefaces and Walter Lang’s introduction. Or, at least, save them until last.

When we do this, we start where Fulcanelli started, with an experience, a gnosis, of the transcendent power of a Gothic Cathedral. He tells us that his first sight of a cathedral, at the age of seven, sent him into “an ecstasy, struck with wonder.” Today, the only way to recapture a little of “the magic of such splendor, such immensity, such intoxication expressed by this more divine than human work,” is to stand some quiet summer evening just in front of the railing at the Great Porch of Notre-Dame de Paris and slowly let your vision crawl heavenward over the complex universe of symbolic forms. Bathed in the golden light of sunset, thousands of forms and concepts and images struggle toward some unity of purpose that our modern mind finds all but incomprehensible. But to the child, or the child-like, it has the power of revelation.

book in stoneFulcanelli informs us that the images on the cathedrals speak more clearly than words and books. They are “simple in expression, naive and picturesque in interpretation; a sense purged of subtleties, of allusions ,of literary ambiguities.” The Gothic, he suggests, is like Gregorian chants, many voices coming together in a single note. This is important guidance for understanding the book as a whole. Fulcanelli combines images or voices all juxtaposed on a single note or theme in such a way that every voice is related to the theme as a whole. As in music, the structure that allows this inter-relatedness is based on geometry and mathematics. It is nothing less than the hermetic Grand Theme, the Music of the Spheres, which is depicted within the Gothic cathedrals.

The Grand Theme is introduced by the arrangement and subjects of the nine chapters in part one, called “Le Mystere des Cathedrals.” From its title we can supposed that it was meant to impart an overall viewpoint from which the rest of the book, the details of the pattern, can be understood. Grouping the themes of the nine chapters as presented defines an interesting symbol: the sword in the stone. The first three chapters compose the grip of the subject and the sword, whose basic theme, the hermetic wisdom of the Gothic cathedrals, continues through a stone of five inter-related symbols within the cathedrals, and on into the foundation “stone” of Notre-Dame de Paris. This device also presents the lightning flash order of creation taught by magickal cabalists such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The next three sections fill in this revealed Tree. “Paris,” the second part of Le Mystere, completes the Tree of Life foreshadowed in the first section. This second section, reflecting the archetypal world of the cabalists, gives us the most complete rendition of the Grand Theme of ten spheres and twenty-two paths, including the gnostic Path of Return. “Amiens,” section three, fills in a portion of the developed Tree by giving the reader a deeper understanding of the planetary processes. The fourth section, “Bourges,” juxtaposes a series of mythological images on the planetary spheres, creating a fourth Tree. Therefore each of the “locations” or spheres have multiple images from which a meaning can be derived.

The added chapter from the second edition of Le Mystere, “The Cyclic Cross of Hendaye,” completes this pattern by crossing the abyss from Daat, gnosis, to Kether, the divine Crown. The key of course is that in the world of action, the fourth world or level of abstraction to the medieval cabalist, the Tree is formed in space. The Hendaye chapter completes this view by revealing the secret of an ancient astro-alchemical science based on the alignment of local events with the galactic axis.

In our book, “A Monument to the End of Time: alchemy, fulcanelli and the great cross, we examine in detail Fulcanelli’s use of this hermetic Tree of Life pattern. This introduction however is for the first time reader, or the reader who wishes to read Fulcanelli as if it were the first time. For that person, we can only admonish them to pay close attention to the images discussed and the illustrations. Fulcanelli is carefully building an inherent or implicate order by his use of patterns of images. Even the transpositions and other “mistakes” or departures from the established order are designed to impart some significance.

So who was Fulcanelli?

One of the benefits of reading Mystery of the Cathedrals without preconceptions is that the personality of Fulcanelli jumps off the page. This is the strongest evidence against the committee theory. It is hard to imagine how a committee could have arrived at such a clear sense of personality, and who among the group had the literary skills to pull it off? Canseliet? If that is the case, then literature lost one of its finest novelists when Eugene Canseliet turned to alchemy.

As we wind our way through Mystery of the Cathedrals, Fulcanelli becomes a trusted guide, always directing our attention to the key points, but always letting us make our own conclusions. As he does so, we find that a few hints and suggestions leak through concerning Fulcanelli himself. By the second or third careful reading, a profile emerges.

Fulcanelli was born in Picardy, a day’s ride or a little more from Amiens, whose cathedral he first glimpsed with such lasting effect as a seven year-old. His family was formally noble, or even royal, but had come down somewhat by his birth. At an early age, he moved to Paris, becoming a student in the Latin Quarter. His field of study seems to have been classical literature, with a side interest in medieval history. So much is clear. What’s hazy is which century it happened in.

Most commentators have assumed it was the 19th, since Fulcanelli was apparently about 80 in 1930, which makes him born around 1850. However, the personality that confronts one on the page is decidedly 18th century. There are even clues that Fulcanelli was in Paris before 1748, making him around 200 years old in 1930. However, a close reading of the first chapter of the first section reveals that Fulcanelli could have been present in the early 15th century. How old was he?

From Mystery of the Cathedrals we can discern a vague profile. He studied in Paris between 1740 and 1760, and joined some magickal lodge or society in the decades before the fall of the Ancien Regime in 1789. He seems to have spent the 19th century traveling across France collecting evidence of the existence of his order and its predecessors. After the Great War, he decided to publish an initiatory document, The Mystery of the Cathedrals, an examination of the order’s symbolism, Dwellings of the Philosophers, and a revelation, The Final Glory of the World, of which all that remains may be the Hendaye chapter.

Of course, this profile raises more questions than it answers. But we are left with the feeling that Fulcanelli was a real person, with a message to deliver.

Perhaps the only way to truly understand Fulcanelli and his masterpiece is to take your now well-thumbed copy of Mystery of the Cathedrals and go to France. The major locations can all be visited in a week or more, and a month or so of vagabondage will allow you to cover everything mentioned in Mystery. It is well worth the experience.

Two examples should give the reader the flavor. Nothing in the literature of either alchemy or eschatology describes so eloquently their inter-relationship as does the Great Porch of the Last Judgment at Notre-Dame de Paris. We come looking for Fulcanelli’s Path of Return images and find them on the supports for the pillars of the Last Judgment. The quintessential image of Alchemy occupies the base of the central pillar which leads to Christ in Judgment. This says so much more clearly than any words can that the End of the World has for its foundation the science of Alchemy.

templar churchAnother example is Fulcanelli’s use of clever side comments. Twice, in significant places, he mentions a church at Luz in the Pyrennes. In his only use of the word Templar in the entire book, Fulcanelli labels the church as Templar in his second mention. This should grab our attention. And if it does, and we make the long trek to the High Pyrennes, we will find that someone knew the key to the mystery right down to the 19th century. Fulcanelli doesn’t tell you it’s there, he merely assumes that you will find it if you look.

The houses in Bourges are not to be missed, both are open to the public. Tours in English are held in Notre-Dame de Paris on Saturday at 2 PM, and are essential. Everything closes for lunch, except Notre-Dame. Be sure to visit Hendaye on Wednesday mornings when the town square is full of vendors. Go looking for the Saint Marcellus statue on the south side of Notre-Dame de Paris. Demand that the guide in Jacques Coeur’s house show you the pentagonal treasure room. Seek and ye shall find!

How does a Tree become a Stone and then a Star?

Simple. The eternal polar axis of our celestial sphere, whose equator is the sun’s apparent motion against the stars, or the zodiac, forms the middle pillar of a cosmic Tree of Life. This Tree is also found within our bodies, and when we align these Trees and project them outward on the celestial sphere we create a jeweled sphere, The Precious Stone of the Wise, in which forms the Cube of Space. The Tree has become a Stone.

The next step, from Stone to Star, requires the transformation of light. Aligned properly, the Precious Stone can tell us the quality of time and the physics of creation. Internalized, this projected alignment leads to bursts of light, flashes of kundalini. If the process is supported by dark retreat and sudden light immersion, then it is possible that the entire body could be transformed. Something similar seems to have happened in the case of Padmasambhava, the Tantric master who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century.

But, given the information in the Hendaye chapter, then it is just possible that our species is on the verge of a mass initiation experience triggered by the “new” light from the center of the galaxy. Perhaps Fulcanelli’s “double catastrophe” is both physical and mental. When the Light of the Star shines into our souls, will we be ready for the change?

The Tree of Life unites our universe across vast scales of existence. When we identify with that immensity, we expand as we try to encompass it all. The flash of gnosis is the result, and from that, if we are lucky, comes the science of alchemy.

Fulcanelli has given us excellent guidance on the process. He shows us how the initiation worked in the past, and points toward the mass initiation that may be unavoidable in our future. When Isis, the Great Cosmic Womb of the Galaxy gives birth to the new Horus Light of transformation, let us hope that we have all solved the riddle of becoming a star.

Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt. “All that is, is Light.”