Étienne Perrot, picture page 84 of the special edition

of ‘Le Monde Inconnu’, dedicated to Alchemy.

October 20 1978 issue.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA-constituting Part 2 of our sampler series dedicated to the memory of Étienne Perrot, the French Jungian psychologist and influential dream interpreter-is an excerpt from the foreword to his French translation of Michael Maier’s ‘Atalanta Fugiens‘ published in 1969 by Editions Librairie de Médicis and here in the second edition issued by Editions Dervy in 1997. From page 11 to 14.

We will follow up with Part 3, ‘Alchemy & Poetry‘ and with Part 4, ‘The key to alchemical symbolism‘. The foreword, being lengthy, will provide more material for later. The text, ‘Clarification upon the Alchemical Path‘, written earlier in 1964’-composed as a presentation of a few translated chapters of the ‘Atalanta Fugiens‘ published in a magazine and found here as an appendix to the present edition we are using-will be shared also, in a forthcoming publication.

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‘Wenn sie den Stein der Weisen hätten,

Der Weise mangelte dem Stein.’

Even if they had the Philosopher’s Stone,

the Wise would be missing from it…

Goethe, ‘Second Faust’, verses 5063 and 5064.

At this very moment, while this book is hitting the bookstores, Alchemy is coming out from a long purgatorial night, in which it was barely vegetating; it was solely an object of curiosity or a subject of interest for some very few people, attracted by the strange, the fringe, or simply having a liking for all things of the past.

Modern science-a goddess rarely contradicted-has verified, following its own practices, what it calls Matter was in its core Pure Energy. The consequences it drew from this discovery are now dominating our humanity. Already, in fact, the Great Modern Work has given its fruit. The new Lord of the Lords-an epithet for the Philosopher’s Stone-was born. Its lethal lightning tore the Asian sky on the morning of August 6_1945-the day the Christian Church is celebrating the transfiguration of Christ, called by the Greeks, the festival of Metamorphosis. The men who participated into this epiphany knew, in a sort of drunkenness fraught with fear, that they had-in their own manner-overcome the human condition.

The chief of that nation elected for this titanic task immediately announced the news to his fellow citizens, ‘that the force from which the sun draws its power was tamed and used as a weapon of war in the extreme East.’ This radio broadcasted announcement was given on August 7 1945 by president Harry Truman to the American nation.

Three week before, the scientist responsible for the operation Trinity, Dr. Oppenheimer, had celebrated the birth of the son of the modern philosophers in the desert of Alamogordo, by quoting a thousand year old Hindu verse, from the ‘Bhagavad-Gita’ XI-12, celebrating the birth of a god: ‘Divi surya-sharasya‘: ‘If the clarity of thousands suns would appear suddenly in the sky, it would be similar to the brightness flowing from this great soul’. These words describe the transfiguration of the god-man Krishna, Arjuna just witnessed-filled with marvel, joy & fear.

And far from repeating what is commonly said about our modern scientists achieving the dream of the alchemists of old, we will declare, what many know or feel confusedly, and assert that our epoch has seen the accomplishment of the reverse Great Work, the anti-thesis of the alchemical redemption-a fact fraught with threat for Humanity. Robert Oppenheimer, was, belatedly, moved by this acute awareness he shared with many of his companions; did he not one day confess: ‘We have done the devil’s work”?

We will never meditate enough upon the details of this apocalyptic manifestation, we had the terrible privilege to witness. This is why, before moving further, we do not think it is off-topic to remain a little bit longer in considering the clues they provide.

President Truman in his August 7_1945 message to the American nation was seven years early. Why? Because the fission bomb of Hiroshima only represented but a first step in the collective physical work. It played-if we can use this image-the role of the stone in its white stage. The complete consciousness with which the American scientists-suddenly seized with a fright similar to the sorcerer’s little apprentice-tried with all of their power and influence to prevent-but to no avail-the making of the fusion bomb which was experimented in Eniwetok on November first 1952. This disintegration process that was initiated that day was, according to our current understanding of science, similar to the soaring energy of the sun.

Our century we live in has in deed achieved the work in its red stage, the solar work, and it is not in vain that this horrible marvel was baptized with the letter H, the initial of Hydrogen, but also of Helios. We have learned that this absolute weapon-so remote from the Wise Men’s Absolute-did not have as a father one person or a few others, but a machine, a computer called with a name composed of initials that can be read: Maniac. Therefore, death has come out fully weaponized deep from the metallic brain of Madness.

The epithets given to their production by the Los Alamos scientists are of the higher interest for anybody well trained with the language of the old alchemical texts. The atomic bomb received the nickname of thin man and the hydrogen bomb’s nick name was fat man. The first of these names strangely recalls the homunculus or hermetic child but if we read it as sin man, it invokes the more worrying and closer to the reality of the meaning of the man of sin, the son of perdition whose apparition must, according to the Scriptures, precede and announce Judgement Day (II Thessalonian, chap. 2-3). As for the fat man it can be linked with the Latin word Adeps (fat, grease) which is one of the harmonics contained in the word Adept (the maker of the philosophical stone). But fat is also close to the word fatuus, the insane man frequently found in the old alchemical treatises.

Applying the language of the birds to the adventure of these north American scientists would obviously provide many more stunning discoveries, but we believe we have said enough here. We will now further on sweep in front of our own door in outlining an aspect mentioned the press at the occasion of the first French nuclear experiment in the Sahara desert, a Muslim land. At the very moment when the lightning gushed in the sky, the participating witness having received the instruction to prostrate themselves and to have their head close to the ground, their backs turned towards the explosion. Hence providing the common image of worshipers in Islam prostrating, but as reverse image, because Fright demands to its worshipers that they show not their forefront, but their butts. We are in a real sabbath: The participants kiss the ass of the goatee, or turns its towards their idol; it is always the same black mass being celebrated.

Finally, we will pick up the eloquence of the terms of the euphemisms used by the strategists to designate a collective annihilation that is an integral part of their guesses. We commonly speak of a vitrification of a country, and further more of a whole part of Europe. And the transformation of the alchemical body into glass is, according to the hermetic philosophers, a serious danger the operator is exposed to, by using fire in excess: It may bring, according to them, eternal death.

Alike, in Goethe’s tale, the voices shouting to our ears: ‘Times are over!‘ are scaringly multiplying like spontaneous generations. The burning of the Great Pan in the ‘Second Faust’ is the first act of the Great Transformation. Is it now getting really close to us?

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Source

Coming next:

A Little Étienne Perrot Sampler: Part 3

-‘Alchemy & Poetry’.

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