The Force - XI lame of the Tarot de Marseille

In Hermetic culture, initiates have always compared the properties of the spiritual substance preceding matter to that of an ocean, because its water fills the “void” (vidia translates as knowledge in Sanskrit) as would water in any container. This ocean echoes the cosmic sea of dark energy to which David Böhm alluded. Since the homophone of sea (mer), mother (mère) comes from mater in Latin, we can weave interesting semantic links between mother (mère), sea (mer), mercury (the Latin avatar of Hermes-Trismegistus), mater, matrix and Mary  ((Marie) (which  is the anagram of love (aimer)).

If this invisible matrix is at the origin of all manifestation, the assumption that she is a virgin is obvious and the symbol of the black virgin (vierge noire) (black, in opposition to the synthesis of the 6 colors of the visible spectrum, expresses the absence of light), as well as that of the virgin Mary (vierge Marie), becomes more explicit from the point of view of theosophy, since the holy virgin (sainte vierge), the queen mother (reine mère), is the ordinary representation of the mercury of the Philosophers. Strangely enough, the anagram of dark energy (énergie noire) is unknown queen (reine ignorée), which reminds us of the parable in verse 1:5 of the biblical poem Song of Songs, probably born of the love between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba : « I am black, but I am beautiful (...) ».

In the twelth century, in his secret book on the hidden art and the Philosopher's Stone, the alchemist Artephius presented the water of the wises (l’eau des sages) in this way :  « How precious and magnificent is this water ! For without it the work could not be perfected : therefore it is called the vessel of nature, the womb, the matrix, the receptacle of the dye, the earth and its nurse, it is the fountain in which the King and Queen wash, and the mother that must be placed and sealed on the womb of her child who is the Sun. »

Are you beginning to understand how the Cabalists deliberately blurred the lines back to the primordial ocean by handling a deliberately convoluted lexical field in order to define a single thing, that is, in this case, the uniqueness of matter, the materia prima ?

Prima Materia at Phra That Lampang Luang Temple – Thailand

In the Corpus Hermeticum, verse 16 of the excerpt from a speech by Hermes to Tat states that : « everything that exists is in motion; only non-being is immobile ». Unity, a preliminary state to divine manifestation, could then be imagined as energy in the form of stationary waves, and when this energy is vectored, the whole is set in motion creating space, time and, consequently, matter. The universal matrix is born from the rupture of the spatial equilibrium of unity, this first impulse is The strong Force of all forces, its Spiritus Mundi and its Holy Spirit, it is the passage from the ain soph to the ain soph aur in the tree of life of the Hebrew kabbalah.

A Cabalist would break down the word HOLY (SAINT) into 3 parts: S, AIN and T. The silent T is the outline of an immaterial cross and expresses the center. AIN is the abyss, the non-existence in Hebrew and is heard as one (un) in French and S is the letter of manifestation because it undulates like the graphic representation of a pulse. In other words, the vibratory signature of the saint resonates with the first impulse from the center of unity. This is the reason why the soul of a saint, his spirit, will always be close to God and his creation. The different states of matter could be compared to the rungs of a ladder where the matrix Force condenses, crystallizes, in more or less regular forms.

The adept Fulcanelli outbids the generation of the Wheel of Fire. by giving the best definition of alchemy that you can find : « Alchemy is the permutation of form by Light, Fire or Spirit ».

The Philosophy (Scala Philosophorum) on the facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral - Paris, France

Even if metallic transmutation seems to be a reality according to the testimony of Irenaeus Philalethe (1628-1665), making gold to get rich has never been the purpose of alchemy. Here again, many have been misled into not understanding the Cabalistic scriptures. To separate the pure from the impure is to go from a vile matter to a rectified matter. The simpler and more orderly the molecular arrangements become, the more matter and the matrix source gradually tend towards reunification, towards unity. Matter is purified in a revolution that is the reverse of the Luciferian fall (Lucifer is the Latin word for Light bearer. Lucifer appears for the first time in Greek mythology where he is the guardian of the horses of the solar god Apollo), hence the concept of the Nietzschean eternal return. The famous immortality, about which dreamers fantasize so much, is perhaps finally only the search for eternity, for absolute immobility, where the eternal rests, as close as possible to unity. The realm of the science of the adepts is therefore, by definition, outside of time and space. Unlike modern science, which is concerned exclusively with matter, alchemy, magic and astrology focus directly on the matrix and the natural laws of the invisible that animate it.

Astrology allows us to gauge the energetic variations of celestial Fire. Alchemy is the manifestation of this Fire in organisms, a priori, inanimate (minerals and plants) and magic in animate organisms (human beings and animals). The magician has always had a perfect mastery of cosmic Fire, this Force that he makes pass through his body, in order to modulate it, then to redirect it according to the use he wanted to make of it. Either for positive purposes if the love of God filled his heart (white magic), or to sow division and destruction if he was seduced by the dark side (black magic).

The Holy Spirit in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal - Paris, France

If we push the reasoning as it should be, on the horizon of intellectual honesty, it appears that the driving principle of all existence, the force underlying life, is generated by a matrix that originates outside the boundaries of our reality. In 1922, Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winner in physics, said : « All the things we call real are made of things that cannot be considered real ». Since the matrix Spirit is outside the sensible and measurable field, how is it possible to perceive its substance in the world accessible to men?

 

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If this creative Force is the cause of tangible effects, its signature must necessarily be observable in nature. It is therefore possible to glimpse the mechanisms of this matrix by adopting the mentality of an insatiably curious person ; that is, by opening our eyes wide. In this will, specialization in one field or another would be a serious mistake, the Philosopher of nature must open the field of possibilities to all scientific fields, from astronomy to mineralogy; in other words, to all visible phenomena between heaven and earth. The imprint of The Force must be present everywhere, and as the emerald tablet suggests, in the infinitely large as well as in the infinitely small. The work consists of noting its traces and then finding the analogies that link them.

It was while working on this task that the mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci noticed in the thirteenth century AD that an arithmetic sequence was linked to growth in the biological world.  In the progression of this sequence, each new number is the sum of the two preceding it, that is ; 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... and so on. The higher the numbers become, the more the ratio between a number and the one that precedes it tends towards a mathematical constant with a value of 1.618. This ratio of proportion was defined by the Greek Euclid, father of geometry born in the fourth century before the birth of the prophet Jesus, as the division of a segment between extreme and average reason. This ratio is invariably repeated in all the creations of nature, where the phyllotaxis of the vegetal world is probably the most explicit example.

Phyllotaxis, cactus at Queen Sirikit Botanical Garden - Chiang-Mai, Thailand

We can observe spiral arrangements of this numerical matrix in flowers, romanesco cabbage and pine cones, but also in the shells of nautilus and gastropods. These analogies are quite amazing because they are not limited to these few examples, they find a universal echo in the 3 kingdoms of the living world (mineral, vegetal, animal). Nature makes geometry, automatically, without square or compass. Nature does not need a plan, it is the plan. Its architecture, especially when it is expressed in a helical (helical, helix have the same etymological root as Helios ; the Greek solar neter) and logarithmic way, is simply dazzling. I will never understand why most of you still remain stoic in front of such beauty and elegance ? Don't you have eyes to see ?

Nowadays, the ratio equal to 1.618 is better known as the golden ratio, it was popularized by Matila Ghyka in the twentieth century and results from a cross between semantics and mysticism. The etymology of the word gold comes from aor, aour or our in the Semitic languages and translates into light. When one remembers the prologue of St. John where it says: « The Word was god (...) The Word was the true Light », the correlation between God, The Word, The Light and the golden ratio becomes more than obvious for synonymic reasoning and alchemical thought. If you were looking for a concrete proof of the existence of God, the golden ratio would give your argument a factual dimension that would be difficult to refute. Especially since the Greek symbol of the golden ratio: Φ, defined in the early Christ worshippers : The Force of God, the Will (the Telesme of the Emerald Tablet) or the principle of concentration of the Spirit in matter.

Φ's signature is also evident in human anatomy. Among the multitude of examples, we could cite, the case of the navel (nombril) is the most significant. Indeed, knowing that the word Navel (nombril) is the phonetic counterpart of nombreel, the Cabalists would break it down into nombre and el to find its true essence. As el is the name of God given by the Semites, this point, so special to the Vitruvian man, is the physical revelation of God's number in the proportions of the human body. On the one hand, it is from this point that the mother's nourishing energy was breathed into us, and on the other hand, and this is what interests us here, it divides, on average, the distance between the feet and the head by the ratio of the golden ratio. The verse 1:27 of Genesis which states that « man was made in the image of God » is not a parable, it must be understood literally, in the first degree.

The Larousse dictionary explains that Φ [ phi ] is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet (21=3x7), corresponding, in ancient Greek, to an aspirated [ p ] and, in modern Greek, to an [ f ]. It is transposed by [ ph ] in the French words coming from Greek. The first syllable of the words Philosophy, Physics, Phyllotaxis, Firmament, Force and Fire underlines the intimate relationship that these words have with the golden ratio. Etymology is a science to be handled with the utmost seriousness because, as you may have realized earlier, the keys of investigation offered by this tool are unequalled.

Vitruvian Man - Leonardo da Vinci

In the face of all these sympathies, it seems to me not very presumptuous to affirm that Φ, the true swirling pivot of universal harmony, is the organic imprint of a Creative Matrix whose structure is subject to the laws of geometry and arithmetic. Plato understood this very well since he declared: « God, always, makes geometry » and « Geometry attracts the soul towards the truth, and forms the Philosophical Spirit, by forcing the soul to raise its gaze upwards, instead of lowering it. »

Historians say that the golden ratio was named phi in honor of the sculptor Phidias (480-430 BC), famous for having participated in the construction of the Pantheon in Athens, where the ratio so precious is exalted in the proportions of its facade. Should we be astonished that the golden ratio was already used five centuries before the Christian era by Greek architects, but also, according to the work of René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961), by their Egyptian colleagues? We do not think so, because all the Artists worthy of the qualification have always made their works resonate with this signature. In their desire to mimic (singer) nature (to hear holy G (saint G), where G is a graphic presentation of the spiral), they made it the canon of beauty. Whenever Φ is used, it is a syncretic tribute to nature and the creator that is celebrated. From the grandiose pyramids of the Giza plateau to the abstract paintings of Kandinsky, Φ has always been the prerogative of Artistic genius and the mark of a symbiotic relationship with the universe. This form of expression was certainly born of a necessity, that of revealing and glorifying in the material world the intelligence of the divine creation.

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No matter what our contemporaries think, the Art of before the twentieth century had nothing in common with the one which is proposed to us since. The word “art” has become, in spite of itself, a catch-all term in which any ‘‘creative’’ delirium can find its place. It is enough to frequent the galleries to become aware that art has become an intellectual masquerade and a visual pollution on which charlatans try to make their fortune. Already in 1973, Jean Phaure described this hype with the objectivity that it deserved : « Modern art is a black magic, sometimes in the most operative sense of the term, and has for eschatological function, as the psychoanalysis, to put back in the field of our consciousness our infra-psychism populated of all the psychic and demonic residues that had in the previous phases of the cycle been contained in these cellars by the sacred art, the religions and the initiatory knowledge ». No need for a doctorate in art history to realize that creativity is, in comparison with the achievements of our past, the victim of a process of ordered destruction. Indeed, how can we put on the same pedestal the paintings of Jackson Pollock or Pablo Picasso with those of Michelangelo, Raphael or Botticelli ? Unfortunately for our awakening and our well-being, this imposed form of intellectual terrorism is not limited to the borders of Art, but rots all the pillars on which rests the emancipation of a healthy and balanced society.

To this, we must add that a person's creativity does not necessarily make him an Artist. The masters are formal and are always there to testify to this; one does not become an Artist overnight, perfecting one's Art requires a lot of work and a spiritual asceticism of every moment. Without having gone through the purification and rectification of one's soul - to show holiness - it is practically impossible to receive divine inspiration, to resonate with The Force and to be one with the grace of its quintessence.   Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) drives the point home a little deeper and dismantles the overly hasty self-qualifications : « The artist, unceasingly occupied in contemplating creation, pays perpetual homage to the creator. Our so patient study of the divine work, requires more efforts than to sing matins ».

Art induces a fusional relationship with the sacred and in this sense, it must reflect the divine space. In order to achieve this, every detail must be carefully thought out, measured and weighed, absolutely no element can be the fruit of chance and as Jean Phaure pointed out, this type of work is the antithesis of spontaneous art. The arithmetical proportions and the geometrical lines organize a harmonious and resonant composition. The choice of colors matches the symbolism of the figures and volumes. Mythological and religious archetypes are mixed with Cabalistic references of all kinds. And of course, never forget to remember the Hermetic character of the form, that is to say, as the adage of the tradition stipulates; to show, to signify, and to hide... All at the same time. The divinity does not speak... It means, it suggests !

Symbolic facade of 63 rue Reaumur - Paris, France

Often considered the cornerstone of all the arts, architecture occupies a privileged place in its relationship with the natural elements. The synchronization between the properties of a temple and the cosmic cycles has always been one of the best kept secrets of the high initiatory spheres of the priestly castes. It is in the resolution of the squaring of the circle that the building is elevated to the sacred and asserts its operative function by conjugating celestial and earthly energies within it. When a temple is built according to the rules of art, its geometric form gives the space its orientation, and like a needle on a sundial, it also gives the measure of time. In this, the scientific knowledge of the cycles raises the Architect to the rank of the initiated and in its finality, it cannot be otherwise.

Sadly, few truly understand the coding systems used in the Art of the past, and even if their attempts are successful, the academic doxa automatically labels them as mildly enlightened. This label justifies all the more the approach of the Arts through the prism of psychology among modern thinkers, it is necessary to try to bring an explanation, even phantasmagorical, on the allegories, the metaphors and the parables of the traditional culture of our masters. In any case, we will try to decipher some works for what they really were throughout this thesis. The best way to do this is to use the tools that have been bequeathed to us, and in this virtuous measure, the Liberal Arts are essential.

The Liberal Arts are seven in number and are divided into two paths : the Trivium and the Quadrivium.

-        The Trivium is defined by the expression of The Word (The Light) through words. It is divided into 3 subjects: grammar, dialectics and rhetoric.

-        The Quadrivium refers to the powers of numbers, the expression of the Word through mathematics and is divided into 4 subjects: arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy.

Alongside these 7 ways, a linguistic axiom from the Hermetic Cabal, called the language of birds, completes the already well-supplied palette of the Artist. This kind of slang, qualified as solar and whose principles are sanctified in the appearance of it initiator (the Egyptian neter with the head of an ibis : Djehuty-Thoth) is based exclusively on the assonance of words, without ever taking into account the rules of spelling and grammar. Richard Khaitzine (1947-2013), the friend we would have liked to have by our side, spoke of it thus : « This language of the birds is the one revealed by Jesus to the apostles through his Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Remember this episode from the Gospels. It is the time of Pentecost and the apostles receive the Gift of tongues in the form of tongues of Fire, Fire being a synonym for Spirit. But in this case, you ask, why is it called the language of birds? Because the Holy Spirit, being volatile in nature, is frequently symbolized by a bird, often a dove. »

In order to overcome the weaknesses of language and to provide the last indispensable keys to the opening of the closed kingdom of the magi, the disciple of Hermes used another means of transmission that is still poorly understood today : the symbol.

 

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The symbol plays a more than singular role. Stimulating only the psyche, this figurative sign links man to his imagination and connects his thought to spheres that cannot be described by words. Indeed, the sound of a word is a vibration that the ear can hear and in this state, it has already  a material manifestation. The word awkwardly cuts off the dynamics of the idea it wishes to define and it is precisely to remedy this weakness that the use of the symbol demonstrates all its effectiveness. By creating a bridge between reality and the uncreated, this mode of reading gives the mind the possibility to cross the mirror of appearances and to glimpse the other side of the scene, outside of space and time. Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1849) specified : « The symbol is image, it is thought... It makes us seize between the world and us some of these secret affinities and of these obscure laws which can well pass the range of science, but which are not for that less certain, any symbol is in this direction a kind of revelation ».

If a picture is worth a thousand words, as the ancient Taoist wisdom suggests, a symbol would be worth a thousand images.

We could not conclude this brief paragraph without honoring the sharp words of René Guénon (1886-1951) because his life and work alone crystallize a spirituality without concessions. He wrote in his book Symbols of the Sacred Science :  « We have already had occasion to speak of the importance of the symbolic form in the transmission of doctrinal teachings of a traditional nature (...) Why is there so much hostility, more or less avowed, towards symbolism ? Certainly, because it is a mode of expression which has become entirely foreign to the modern mentality, and because man is naturally inclined to distrust what he does not understand. Symbolism is the most suitable means of teaching truths of a higher order, religious and metaphysical, that is to say, everything that the modern mind rejects or neglects; it is the very opposite of what is suitable for rationalism, and all its opponents behave, some of them without knowing it, as true rationalists (...) It is thus that the highest truths, which would not be in any way communicable or transmissible by any other means, become so to a certain extent when they are, so to speak, incorporated into symbols which will undoubtedly conceal them for many, but which will manifest them in all their brilliance to the eyes of those who know how to see (...). If the Word is thought within and spoken without, if the world is the effect of the divine Word spoken at the origin of time, the whole of nature can be taken as a symbol of supernatural reality. Everything that is, in whatever form, having its principle in the divine intellect, translates or represents this principle in its own way and according to its own order of existence ; and thus, from one order to another, all things link and correspond to each other in order to contribute to the universal and total harmony, which is like a reflection of the divine trinity itself. This correspondence is the true foundation of symbolism, and that is why the laws of a lower realm can always be taken to symbolize the realities of a higher order, where they have their deepest reason, which is both their principle and their end. »

In its vulgar figuration, the holy bol takes the form of a cup or chalice, during the magical ritual of the mass, at the time of the Eucharistic sacrament, it collects the Christic blood : metaphorical liquid of the cosmic fluid. The evocation of a watery substance inevitably recalls the way in which Hermetists associated the behavior of the Mercurial Spirit with a primordial ocean. Following the analogical reasoning, the symbol fulfills exactly the same function as its homophone, revealed by the language of birds ; the holy cup (saint-bol), namely to be the receptacle and the revealer in the tangible world, of the unspeakable principles of the universal matrix.

The Holy Grail, Saint-Eustache church - Paris, France

I understand that for most of you, Hermeticism seems quite mysterious, even chimerical, all the more so as this philosophical current proposes historical and scientific perspectives that the dominant thought immediately qualifies as irrational. I can already hear the rhetoric of the most recalcitrant : « How could the man of antiquity know what modern science is just beginning to glimpse?  Are we not superior to these hicks of the past ? »

Whatever he may think, today's man is not aware of his ignorance. We should not blame him for this. From the nursery school benches to the university lecture halls, he is pushed to naively repeat what he has learned. And since most of them grew up in the same system, it is logical that "normal" people are all formatted in the same way. In his defense, it must be recognized that the quest for knowledge, intellectual and cultural enrichment is an activity that is no longer valued. Absolutely nothing is organized to encourage us to read library books and to multiply our general knowledge. This sad fact is the direct consequence of a Regalian education constantly levelled downwards, of the propagation and normalization of the culture of the artificial (to the detriment of the natural), of the promotion and standardization of mediocrity by the dominant media, of the stultifying and hypnotic manipulation of the masses by television, but above all, of the ever-increasing denial of a transcendent and saving spiritual kingdom. We no longer count the number of friends who are very proud of their agnosticism… How sad !

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the collapse of thought is the image of the decadence, the degeneration and the decline of our civilization. This intellectual sclerosis has become an increasingly thorny obstacle to overcome for those who take the path of spiritual evolution and personal emancipation. The social conditioning is so powerful that the intrepid, those who still dare to think for themselves, are often put on the bench of the infrequent and are unfortunately subject to mockery. It takes a great deal of strength of character to free oneself from popular vindictiveness and the judgment of others. This work requires a deep and delicate introspection on oneself, very few people are ready to suffer to dissolve the illusions of everyday life and free themselves completely. To be able to empty one's chalice of all the dross, and then fill it again with a brighter light, is an accomplishment that is earned over time.

Fountain of "Vert-bois" - Paris, France

Prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice are the cardinal virtues necessary to open the kingdom of God. If perseverance and truth are our loyal servants, the vertical essence of Solar Fire will illuminate our hearts and the work we undertake will always be successful. Without this spiritual quest, I would probably never have found the courage to share with you these few lines, because the metaphysical currents on which the winds of this demonstration will carry us are ridiculed by the orthodoxy of the educational system and very poorly understood by the globalized culture of today. This thesis could never have been an original stone brought to the edifice, if our usual prejudices had not been surpassed and if the lands of the unexplored had not been pushed back.

The scientific study of the main religious symbols is the major axis around which this thesis will evolve, its Axis Mundi. The veil will be lifted on the nature of their synchronicity and on the naturalistic nature of the Holy Spirit : matrix of the sacred science. Like a modern Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, guided by the clarity of the North Star, we will navigate the most mystical and least imaginable vibratory oceans.

I invite you to embark on my ship of exploration and to raise the moorings towards the most absolute mystery of all : the universal creation, origin of space-time.

 

LN

Published October 28, 2021

 

Post Scriptum : This thesis introduction has been translated with the help of an artificial intelligence. Although we have made all the corrections available to me, this text can still be improved. If you want to help with this task, you are welcome ! (Please send an email to ludovic@lamatricecreatrice.com)   

 

 

Illustrations & photographies : Ludovic Nicolas © 2023