The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (27 page)

But the most interesting part of the account lies in the alchemist’s reply to Bergier’s question about the nature of his researches.

Jacques Sadoul, another modern student of alchemy, makes the same point in his book
Alchemists and Gold.

When he swallows this dose, the alchemist loses all his hair, nails and teeth; but they grow again, stronger and healthier than before. The adept becomes younger, and no longer needs food although he may still eat for enjoyment.

Most modern readers will be understandably sceptical about all this, and the only full-length book on Canseliet’s mysterious Master,
The Fulcanelli Phenomenon
by Kenneth Raynor Johnson (1980), will do little to undermine his scepticism. He tells how in the 1930s a student of the occult named Robert Ambelain became so intrigued by Fulcanelli’s books (the second,
The Dwelling Places of Philosophy
, is an expansion of the ideas of the first) that he set out to try to track him down. He called on the publisher, Jean Schemit, to ask permission to quote Fulcanelli’s books in a work of his own,
In the Shadow of the Cathedrals
. Schemit told him how, in the early part of 1926, he was visited by a shortish man with a long Gallic moustache. The stranger began talking to Schemit about Gothic architecture, and claimed that it was a kind of code (“argot”), known as the “green language”. He went on to argue that slang contained many plays on words and puns that actually indicated a profound philosophical depth: in fact, it was the ancient hermetic language, the “Language of the Birds” – that is to say, of the initiates. He then left. A few weeks later Canseliet appeared in Schemit’s office, and left with him the manuscript of
The Mystery of the Cathedrals
. Schemit read it, and recognized the speech patterns of his previous visitor. He decided to publish it. Soon after, Canseliet called again, bringing with him the artist who would illustrate the book, Jean-Julien Champagne. And in Champagne Schemit recognized his previous visitor. Canseliet showed him “extraordinary respect and admiration, addressing him one minute as “Master”, the next as “my Master”. Canseliet also referred to Champagne as “my Master” in his absence. Schemit consequently reached the conclusion that Fulcanelli was Champagne.

Canseliet always insisted that his friend Champagne was simply an illustrator, but this was flatly contradicted by an article in a popular occult magazine containing a description of an illustration by Champagne; the illustration was full of alchemical symbols, and the author of the article admitted that the description was by Champagne himself. The same author, a man called Jules Boucher, told Ambelain that Champagne possessed a biscuit tin containing gum resin, and that Champagne would often inhale its odours deeply, telling Boucher that it possessed some magical quality that enabled him to gain “intuitive insights into the knowledge he sought”. Boucher also said that Champagne could induce “OBE’s” – “out-of-the-body experiences” – at will.

Champagne had died in 1932, in his mid-sixties. His former landlady told Ambelain that Canseliet and Champagne had occupied rooms at 59 bis rue de Rochechouart – the attic – and that Canseliet treated Champagne with great respect, addressing him as Master. So it would seem to be a logical conclusion that Champagne
was
Canseliet’s “master” – i.e., Fulcanelli.

Boucher – who was also a “pupil” of Champagne – had no doubt that Champagne and Fulcanelli were the same person. When Champagne was correcting the proofs of
The Mystery of the Cathedrals
he became extremely indignant at printing errors, and the proofs of the two books “were redrafted eight times under the watchful eyes of their author”. Moreover, said Jules Boucher, Champagne wrote the introductions to the books, which he asked Canseliet to sign.

Canseliet, predictably, denies all this. He claims that Schemit never met Champagne, and insists that he himself wrote the introductions. He tends to be dismissive of Boucher’s claims to have known Champagne intimately. But then if Champagne and Canseliet invented Fulcanelli between them, this would be perfectly understandable. Having gone to the trouble of creating a modern myth – not unlike that of Saint-Germain – why should he admit that the whole thing is a straightforward piece of mystification?

Kenneth Raynor Johnson’s arguments against the Champagne-Fulcanelli identification are also unconvincing. He points out that Champagne was a well-known practical joker, as well as an alcoholic. As an example of Champagne’s sense of humour, he tells how Champagne advised a gullible student that the first step in alchemy was to fill his room with bags of coal. When the student had heaved sack after sack up several flights of stairs, and had scarcely enough room left to lie down on his bed, Champagne told him that the search for the philosopher’s stone was a waste of time, and that he had better forget it. This suggests that Champagne’s sense of humour was both puerile and cruel. This, Johnson argues, hardly sounds like the author of
The Mystery of the Cathedrals
, to which the obvious answer is: why not? Immersion in magic and “occultism” seems to demand a peculiar temperament; it can be seen in a dozen cases, from Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa to Macgregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, all of whom combined the temperament of a genuine “seeker after truth” with that of a confidence trickster. Contemporary accounts reveal that the “great adept” Saint-Germain was vain, talkative and boastful, and among “adepts” this seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

Does this mean then that alchemy should be regarded as a fantasy or a
waste of time? The commonsense answer should obviously be yes. But common sense can easily lead us into error, as when it tells us that the sun revolves round the earth or that matter is solid. Jung’s studies of alchemy led him to conclude – like Bergier’s mysterious alchemist – that the real purpose of alchemy is to transform the alchemist: in other words, that it is, like yoga or mysticism, a spiritual discipline. The main difference between Jung and Freud was that for Freud the world is divided into sick people and “normal” people, while Jung had always been fascinated by “supernormal” people – saints and men of genius. Jung wanted to find a connection between “depth psychology” and supernormal people, and thought that he might have found it in alchemy, which like certain earlier researchers he was inclined to see as a “mystery religion”. But after studying obscure alchemical texts for many years, and attempting to “interpret” them as if they were full of dream symbolism, he reached the somewhat disappointing conclusion that the alchemist “projected” his own basic obsessions into his experiments, much as we might “see” faces in the clouds, so that alchemy became a kind of mirror in which he saw his own hidden depths. In other words, it was a kind of unconscious self-deception.

Yet in his later work on synchronicity (see Chapter 54) Jung had stumbled on some vital clues to this problem. By synchronicity Jung meant “meaningful coincidence as, for example, when we hear a name for the first time, then hear it half a dozen times more over the next twenty-four hours, almost as if “fate” is trying to make sure we learn it by heart. Jung tried hard to find “scientific” explanations for such coincidences, talking about an “acausal connecting principle” and about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Critics like Arthur Koestler have suggested that Jung was merely trying to dress up “occult” ideas in acceptable scientific terminology.

But it is generally agreed that the basis of “occultism” is the statement attributed to Hermes Trismegistos (after whom the “hermetic art” is named) “As above, so below”, which means the pattern of the greater universe is repeated in the smaller universe of the human soul (microcosm). In
Alchemists and Gold
Jacques Sadoul begins by quoting a translation of the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes by Fulcanelli: “As below, so above; and as above, so below. With this knowledge alone you may work miracles”.

What we might call the Jungian interpretation of this is as follows. It is self-evident that external events influence our states of mind (or soul). But perhaps the most fundamental tenet of occultism is that the human soul can influence external events, possibly by some process of induction
not unlike that employed in an induction coil. The principle of the latter is as follows. When an electric current is passed through a coil of wire it creates a “field” around the wire. And if another coil of wire, with more “circles” of wire, is wound around the first, a far more powerful current is somehow induced in the second coil. A piece of American electrical equipment runs off a current of 120 volts; in England the voltage is twice as high; so if I wish to use an American electric razor in England, or vice versa, I merely have to buy a small transformer which will either “step up” 120 to 240 volts, or “step down” 240 volts to 120. The electrical vibrations in one coil communicate themselves to the other, and induce a stronger – or weaker – current.

The law “As above, so below” may be thus interpreted: the human soul can, under the right circumstances, induce its own “vibrations” in the material world; one result of this process is coincidence – or rather, synchronicity.

It is also true, of course, that the “mind-transformer” can be used for the opposite purpose: to “step down” the vital current to a lower level. This is in fact the problem with most human beings: we use our mind-transformer the wrong way round. More often than not, a vague general sense of “discouragement” or pessimism causes “negative induction” in the environment. We are all familiar with the feeling that this is just “one of those days”, and how on such days everything seems to go wrong. Moreover, we all recognize instinctively that this is due to our own negative attitudes; they seem to attract bad luck.

The reverse is the feeling that things are somehow destined to go right, and that in some odd way the optimism induced by this intuition will
induce
“serendipity”. In such moments we also have a glimpse of an exciting insight: that if we could learn to create this mood of optimism
at will
we could somehow
make
things go right. Everyone recognizes the other side of the same coin: that pessimistic people who “expect the worst” somehow attract bad luck. Yet the feeling that the right mental attitudes can induce good luck is oddly worrying; it seems to be tempting fate . . .

All this, I would argue, is implied in the Jungian theory of synchronicity, and in the “hermetic law”, As above, so below. And if this law is also the starting-point of alchemy, then it is obviously a mistake to think of alchemy as a misguided form of chemistry whose aim is the transmutation of lead into gold. Sadoul is obviously right; the transmutation is merely a symbol of something else. But if the transmutation is merely another name for mystical insight, a synonym for satori or enlightenment, then why waste time with retorts and crucibles?

What seems to be implied is that alchemy is
a method
, like yoga or the disciplines of Zen. Ancient alchemists may well have believed that lead can be transmuted into gold by some straightforward chemical process, but their modern counterparts know better. They recognize that, in a basic sense, alchemy is a symbol for the actual process of living. The traditional alchemist begins with the so-called
prima materia
(which some believe to be salt, some mercury, others earth, even water), which must be mixed with “secret fire” and heated in a sealed vessel; this should first of all become black (the “nigredo”) then white (the “albedo”). This is mixed with “mercury” (but not necessarily the mercury of the chemist), and then dissolved in acid; after a process known as “the green lion” it finally turns red – the philosopher’s stone. For all human beings, the
prima materia
is the world of their everyday experience. Pleasant surprises, enjoyable physical stimuli, flashes of “holiday consciousness” can transmute everyday experience into what J.B. Priestley calls “delight”, and that strange feeling that “all is well”. When we experience such moments we always find ourselves confronting the same insight: that, as absurd as it sounds, the pleasant experience that triggered the insight
was unnecessary
; we should be able to achieve it
by an act of will
.

The whole chemical process of alchemy may be seen as a parallel to this experience. Canseliet remarks that Fulcanelli would never have attempted “the great work” unless he started with a conviction that it was possible. And this seems to be the initial step in the process we are discussing: the creation of a state of optimism, a pragmatic state of “intentionality”. The implication of the classic texts of alchemy is that the alchemist must somehow “support” the chemical process by a psychological process. It is only when he has achieved the right state of mind, of “positive induction”, that the transformation can be achieved. And the ultimate aim of the process is not the philosopher’s stone but the state of mind in which the philosopher’s stone can be manufactured. The aim of the alchemical process is to make the “operator” recognize that he can control his own mental states. The use of sexual symbolism in alchemy may be a hint that the nearest most human beings come to this control is in the mental component of sexual experience.