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Fulcanelli As far as one can tell, the name of Fulcanelli appeared for the first time in Spring, 1926, on the cover of the first of two works published under this pseudonym: Le Mystère des cathédrales et l'interprétation ésotérique des symboles hermétiques du Grand Œuvre (The mystery of the cathedrals and the esoteric interpretation of the Hermetic symbols of the Great Work). Only a small number of copies was issued; the book contained a Preface by → Eugène Canseliet (1899-1982) and plates by the painter Jean Julien Champagne (1877-1932). It was followed in 1930 by Les demeures philosopha…

Canseliet, Eugène Léon, * 18 Jan 1899 (Sarcelles (France)), † 17 Apr 1982 (Savignies (France)) Eugène Canseliet, alchemist and writer, was born to a modest family of Belgian origin that settled in the Paris suburbs at the end of the 19th century. As a youth, he was interested in art, especially drawing, and competed for entrance into art schools. During World War I he attended that of Marseille, where his family had moved to protect him from the war. Canseliet never lost his passion for painting and drawing. At Marseille he met → Fulcanelli, who, according to Canseliet's account, w…

Alchemy I: Introduction Alchemy is a subject of enormous intrinsic interest but one which has long proven difficult to grasp properly. The last thirty years, however, have witnessed a remarkable florescence of scholarly work on the subject, which has shed much new light on this obscure subject and brought forth significant revisions and advances in our understanding of it. Whereas it was common just half a century ago for historians of science to dismiss alchemy out-of-hand as a “pseudo-science” or to deploy it merely as a foil against which to set the …