From the Founding Fathers to Fulcanelli: Revelations from a French-American Alchemical Manuscript
The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum (La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique) presents the first English translation of an extremely rare French alchemical manuscript that recently surfaced in the New York Public Library’s Archives and Manuscripts Division. The history of the manuscript ties it directly to the Gallatin family, with intriguing links to the mysterious Parisian alchemist, Fulcanelli.
COMPOSED in Middle French and preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript, The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum presents itself with a singular purpose: to unlock the symbolic philosophy of the Emerald Tablet in order to provide the foundations of alchemical practice.
Title page of La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique, which recently surfaced among the papers of Albert H. Gallatin (1839–1902). New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts Division, MSSCol36.
Previously unknown apart from some captivating citations from a Parisian alchemist named Fulcanelli, this mysterious work recently surfaced among the manuscripts of the Gallatins, a family of Swiss provenance who rose to prominence among the founding fathers of the United States of America. Specifically, the manuscript originated from the personal collection of Albert H. Gallatin (1839–1902), a professor of chemistry, geology, and mineralogy who devoted himself to the study of ancient languages in order to study alchemical texts. Translated into English for the very first time, The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum (La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique) appears here in a dual-language edition featuring a carefully prepared edition of the French text alongside a clear English translation. This copiously annotated volume comes with an introduction exploring the figure of Gallatin and his possible connections to Fulcanelli—one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic alchemists—together with a historical appendix distinguishing this text from other works known under similar names. As a whole, this volume proves of singular interest to historians of science, scholars of religion, and practitioners of the royal art.
Gallatin and Fulcanelli
Abraham Alfonse Albert de Gallatin (1761–1849), Secretary of the Treasury under James Madison and Thomas Jefferson; great grandfather of Albert Horatio Gallatin (1839–1902).
Albert H. Gallatin was the great grandson of Abraham Alfonse Albert de Gallatin (1761–1849), a Swiss emigré to the United States who achieved considerable political eminence among the founding fathers, serving as Secretary of the Treasury under two U.S. Presidents: James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. [1] In 1831, de Gallatin founded the New York University, where his alchemically-inclined grandson would later teach. In 1863—at the age of 24—Albert H. Gallatin joined the faculty of Norwich University in Vermont, but mysteriously resigned a year later. Relocating to New York, he taught analytical chemistry at the Cooper Institute, before attaining a position at New York University. The curious French manuscript that he owned, which bears the inscription “Albert H. Gallatin, Paris 1869”, suggests that he also spent time in Europe thereafter. A century and a half later, however, his manuscript would be listed in the catalogue of the New York Public Library’s Archive and Manuscripts Division.
As the editors note in their Introduction to the translation: “The Gallatin family originally migrated from Switzerland, so it is reasonable to assume that our Gallatin was brought up speaking several different languages. In the New York Public Library, there is a list of books that formerly belonged to our Gallatin, among which are many alchemical titles in English, French, German, and Latin. From certain private letters that we have obtained copies of, we also know that Gallatin had a vivid interest, from an early age, in alchemical texts”. [2] According to one letter that the editors cite, Gallatin even studied Arabic in order gain deeper access to the medieval alchemical manuscripts of Andalusia:
I am very busy indeed now, working from sunrise to sunset in my laboratory, and at night writing lectures, and reading scientific works. Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays I spend partially in studying German and Arabic. I thought I would take advantage of the dreamy country hours, to study the tongue in which the adepts in Alchemy wrote many of their masterpieces in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and which still lie buried, untranslated in the musty libraries of Spain of all the relics of the ancient civilization which conquered that territory, by far the most interesting to me. (Albert Horatio Gallatin to Horatio Gates Stevens, Wednesday 24 February 1864).
The editors go on to suggest some intriguing connections between Gallatin and the mysterious twentieth-century alchemist, Fulcanelli. Best known for his 1926 masterpiece, The Mystery of the Cathedrals (Le Mystère des cathédrales), Fulcanelli was virtually emblematic of the Parisian alchemical revival, which peaked in the early twentieth century. His two magisterial works—the 1926 Cathédrales text and The Dwellings of the Philosophers (Les Demeures Philosophales, 1930)—stand among the most erudite yet operationally astute exegeses on the alchemical opus. [3]
Jean Julien Champagne (1877–1932). Influential Parisian alchemist and illustrator of the two volumes which appeared under the pseudonym “Fulcanelli”.
Fulcanelli never revealed his identity, and for this reason continues to intrigue researchers to this day. The most convincing theory regarding the entire phenomenon is that Fulcanelli’s writings were a composite work. The chief protagonists in this composition appear to have been: (i) Jean Julien Champagne (1877–1932): the alchemist, artist, and inventor who illustrated Fulcanelli’s volumes, liaised with the publisher, and even privately presented himself as “Fulcanelli” to at least two of his closest colleagues; (ii) the Alsatian Egyptologist and Hermetic philosopher, René Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961), who collaborated with Champagne for almost twenty years, and who notably claimed, towards the end of his life, that Champagne “stole” his research; and (iii) the classically-trained erudite, Pierre Dujols (1862–1926), alias Magaphon, proprietor of the Librairie des Merveilleux, who may also have been Champagne’s master. [4]
Inscription from the opening leaves of the Gallatin manuscript: ‘Albert H. Gallatin. Paris 1869’. New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts Division, MSSCol36.
The possibility that Fulcanelli and Gallatin may somehow be connected is principally suggested by the fact that the only person to ever mention our manuscript before it was discovered among Gallatin’s papers in 2013 was Fulcanelli. While texts with similar titles are known, they all prove, on closer inspection, to refer to completely different works (as the editors demonstrate in their rigorous appendix to the translation). [5] The manuscript, as far as we can ascertain, is utterly unmentioned in any literature before Fulcanelli. Only “two” people, therefore, knew of its existence: Gallatin and Fulcanelli.
The implication made by the editors is that Gallatin, who possessed the only version of the manuscript that has ever come to light, may not only have been connected with Fulcanelli, he may have even influenced the identity of Fulcanelli—or at least his mythos. To this end, some intriguing anecdotal connections between the two figures are explored. Gallatin and Fulcanelli share the same year of birth, for instance, while Fulcanelli had a bitter and abrupt change of career at the age of 24—the same age that Gallatin mysteriously resigned from his position at the Norwich faculty. [6] While the evidence that the two figures were connected is by no means conclusive—Gallatin died before the works of Fulcanelli were published—the discovery of the Gallatin manuscript and its identification with the manuscript cited by Fulcanelli remains a significant historical breakthrough. As surprising as this new evidence is, however, its ultimate ramifications for the mystery of Fulcanelli remain to be explored in more depth.
Of Cabinets and Sanctums: A note on Translation
The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum / La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique, published by Rubedo Press, presents a dual-language edition of the New York Public Library’s manuscript, featuring a carefully prepared transcription of the French text, alongside a clear, facing-page English translation. The publication was edited, translated, and annotated by Christer Böke, John Koopmans, and Juan Duc Perez, with contributions by Aaron Cheak.
At first glance, the title of our manuscript, La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique, appears to lend itself to a fairly straight-forward translation: “The Key to the Hermetic Cabinet”. This, however, risks falling for the faux amis du traducteur (the false friends of the translator), i.e., those words which look or sound similar but which in fact have substantially different meanings. The French term cabinet is one such word.
The literal and contextual meaning of cabinet in French is essentially a “chamber or room in which a professional undertakes their activity”. A cabinet du médecin, for instance, is a doctor’s office; a cabinet de chimie, a laboratory. The famous cabinets des curiosités (German Wunderkammern, “rooms of wonder”), were museum-like galleries of marvelous art and unusual natural specimens.
The word also accrued further literary and artistic uses: a cabinet du lecture, or cabinet littéraire, referred to a study, reading room, or library. The meaning of cabinet as a place where one conserves precious objects such as manuscripts and books would inform its meaning as a museum. As the appendix to this volume makes clear, there is an early reference to a cabinet hermétique which turns out to be a reference to the collection of alchemical texts known as the Musæum Hermeticum—“The Hermetic Museum”. [7] But even here it is the archaic meaning of museum that is to be understood—a chamber of study conceived as a place of inspiration. Museums, it should be noted, were originally temples and shrines to the muses. Only later did they become repositories of cultural inspiration: libraries and studies at first, and later, museums in the modern sense. The exact translation of the word cabinet thus shifts according to context.
The “chamber of practice” of a Hermetic philosopher is, historically speaking, twofold: oratory and laboratory. This is confirmed by the earliest identifiable alchemist that we have any substanial biographical information on—the fourth-century Egyptian artisan-priest, Zosimos of Panopolis. As both theurgist and metallurgist, his chambers of practice were temple and atelier. [8] This dual heritage continued into the European alchemical tradition, where it became embodied in the adage, ora et labora, “pray and work”.
Our manuscript, while eminently operative, also explicitly perpetuates this sacred aspect of the tradition. No one, we are told, will be able to unravel the intentionally obfuscated descriptions of the alchemical opus without divine inspiration. Thus, while “chamber” alone might have been a safe enough translation for ordinary purposes, we have gravitated towards the more evocative “sanctum”—the sacred enclosure—because it elicits the space in which the alchemist secludes themself in order to unlock the mystery of the great work.
The decision to translate cabinet as sanctum has not been unanimously undertaken, yet it is our view that the predominant meaning of the English word “cabinet”—a piece of furniture with shelves, cupboards, or drawers used for storing or displaying things—is completely inadequate in this context. [9] While “sanctum” may take a certain measure of poetic license, it nevertheless evokes the spirit of the word far more effectively than the English word “cabinet”. On this general point, the author of our manuscript is himself quite explicit: “we must not stop at the letter, but only at the meaning of the thing: not at the sound of words, but what they signify”.
Unlocking the Emerald Tablet
Regarding the nature of the cabinet hermétique as a work of studied contemplation, divine inspiration, and praxis, the anonymous author of the manuscript cites Hermes himself as his guarantor. Specifically, we are told that this treatise “is only an explanation or commentary on his Emerald Tablet, in which is contained all the mysteries of this admirable art”. “This”, our author adds, “is why I entitled it the Key to the Hermetic Cabinet”. The chamber that this key unlocks, therefore, is first and foremost a textual one: the symbolic philosophy of the Emerald Tablet.
Attributed to the thrice-great Hermes, the Emerald Tablet, or Tabula Smaragdina, comes down to us via Latin translations of medieval Arabic works that appear to reflect Syriac and Greek originals. Its opening lines famously state: “that which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, to perform the miracles of the one thing”. Arabic sources ascribe this work to pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana’s Book of the Secret of Creation (Kitāb Sirr al-khalīqa). However, the opening formula bears a still deeper identity to the hieratic art practiced by the Neoplatonic theurgists, who according to Proclus, saw “the lowest things in the highest and the highest in the lowest”. [1o]
Among the various ways in which our manuscript unpacks the Emerald Tablet, one point in particular should be emphasised because it speaks directly to the nature of alchemy as a “divine art”, an expression whose provenance also drinks deeply from the Greek and Arabic roots of alchemy. The similitude of above and below is revealed here in its deeper meaning. The alchemical work is a microcosm of the cosmos at large because the alchemist replicates the divine act of cosmogenesis:
The philosopher must join heaven with the earth, he must draw from the chaos, that is to say from his subject, the luminaries, to separate the light from the darkness, and by the union of the spirit to make a perfect whole, imitating by this act God in the creation of the world.
The divine act of conjoining above and below, of drawing forth two natures from one substance in an almost Daoist dance of darkness and light, thus forms the essence of the alchemical art. Upon this basis, our manuscript opens the gates to the philosophy and practice of the œuvre, and ultimately, to the divine aims of alchemy itself—the perfection of metals and mortals through the restoration of their incorruptible natures.
Aaron Cheak, PhD
Saturnalia 2020
Notes
See Gregory May, Jefferson’s Treasure: How Albert Gallatin Saved the New Nation from Debt, Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2018, and Nicholas Dungan, Gallatin: America’s Swiss Founding Father, New York: NYU Press, 2010.
Böke, Christer, John Koopmans, and Juan Duc Perez, ‘Introduction’, in The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum, Auckland: Rubedo Press, 2020.
Fulcanelli, Le Mystère des cathédrales et l’interprétation ésotérique des symbols hermétiques du grand œuvre, Paris: Jean Schmidt, 1926; Les Demeures philosophales et le symbolisme hermétique dans ses rapports avec l’art sacré et l’ésotérisme du grand-oeuvre, Paris: Jean Schmidt, 1930.
On the Fulcanelli writings as a composite work, see especially Geneviève Dubois, Fulcanelli dévoilé, Paris: Dervy, 1996; and Jean Artero, Julien Champagne: Apôtre de la Science Hermétique, Paris: Grenoble Le Mercure dauphinois, 2014. On the validity of Schwaller de Lubicz’s influence on Champagne, see the letter that Fulcanelli’s disciple and amanuensis, Eugène Canseliet (the chief perpetrator of the Fulcanellian mythos), wrote to Schwaller in 1933 about some ‘highly philosophical’ concerns regarding the ‘juncture of the primitive androgynous state’ that he discerned in Schwaller’s 1926 work, Adam l’homme rouge. In his letter, Canseliet conveys that these concerns were in fact ‘the same as those that gripped Mr. Champagne upon his return from [Schwaller’s home at] Plan-de-Grasse and that seemed to overturn his previous notions’. More specifically, Canseliet reveals that Schwaller’s insights motivated them both to resume their praxis on the alchemical caput mortuum. See Cheak, ‘The Alchemy of Desire: The Metaphysics of Eros in René Schwaller de Lubicz (A Study of Adam L'homme rouge)’, in H. Thomas Hakl, ed., Octagon II: The Quest for Wholeness, Mirrored in a Library Dedicated to Religious Studies, Philosophy and Esotericism in Particular, Gaggenau: Scientia Nova, 2016. On the alleged theft of Schwaller’s research by Champagne, see André VandenBroeck, Al-Kemi: Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Rochester, Vermont: Lindisfarne Press, 1987; and Cheak, Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt, Dissertation, University of Queensland, 2011. On Pierre Dujols, see (in addition to Dubois and Artero) Jean-François Gibert, Propos sur la Chrysopée, suivi de ‘Manuscrit de Pierre Dujols-Fulcanelli traitant de la pratique alchimique’, Paris: Dervy, 1995.
Böke, Christer, John Koopmans, and Juan Duc Perez, ‘Appendix: How Many Hermetic Cabinets’, in The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum, Auckland: Rubedo Press, 2020.
Böke, Koopmans, Duc Perez, ‘Introduction’.
Böke, Koopmans, Duc Perez, ‘Appendix’.
See especially Shannon Grimes, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt, Auckland: Rubedo Press, 2018.
In the English editions of Fulcanelli’s works which reference our manuscript, cabinet is given simply as ‘cabinet’ or ‘chest’. Although the English word cabinet does in fact retain an archaic meaning of ‘room’ or ‘chamber’ in accordance with its etymology—a diminutive of cabin—this sense is extremely oblique to the modern reader and remains inadequate.
See Cheak, ‘Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium’, in Cheak, ed., Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, revised edition, Rubedo Press, 2021 (forthcoming); Proclus, On the Hieratic Art, 148, cited in Algis Uždavinys, ed., The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy, Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2004.