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Post by whistler on Jan 24, 2005 19:21:40 GMT
The Gnostic Glad you have found your way here - The other place just too bruising when discussing interesting subjects - having to put up with all the rubbish thrown instead of concentrating on the subject was wasting time and energy. I have only recently read of Fulcanelli - I was wrapped. From the way he appeared delivered and then vanished . His wisdom reasonable and fascinating - So much to muse upon - one thing the hermetic content of the Catherdals which appears to be contrary to the public teachings of the church of the day. Who were the Officials who approved the design of thosw Catherdrals - They must have known what the designs meant. They must have asked for them in the first place - they certainly didn't explain them to the population - Mr Fulcanelli where do we start ;D
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Post by hollandr on Jan 25, 2005 13:06:05 GMT
Gnostic
There are some grounds for considering that the Templars brought the technology for the gothic cathedrals. The technology arrived complete so that the first gothic cathedrals were the highest and the best.
There are no other contenders that I know.
Cheers
Russell
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Jan 25, 2005 15:33:02 GMT
The first Gothic features appear in the early 1140s in the construction of the chevet of the royal abbey church of Saint-Denis, the burial church of the French kings and queens near the outskirts of Paris.
The Templars were reputedly founded in 1120 (the interestingly-named Guillaume de Tyre ;D places it earlier at 1111, but after the first nine knights founded it, no-one else is said to have joined for nine years). This certainly gives the Templars plenty of time to import the style, although it's curious they don't begin with a Templar church.
While I agree some of the look and certain of the themes of Gothic seem to show the influence of someone who's been looking at a lot of mosques, there's more solid evidence that Gothic was originally a decayed offshoot of late Romanesque. The skill of making Vitruvian arches was lost, and builders found they could build more easily, with better load-distribution, using a pointed arch than a round Roman fornix.
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Post by whistler on Jan 25, 2005 18:36:10 GMT
I was thinking especially of the images discussed in "Le Mystere des Cathedrales"
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Post by Thegnostic on Jan 26, 2005 18:59:47 GMT
Hi Whistler,
[quote author=whistler - So much to muse upon - one thing the hermetic content of the Catherdals which appears to be contrary to the public teachings of the church of the day. Who were the Officials who approved the design of thosw Catherdrals - They must have known what the designs meant. They must have asked for them in the first place - they certainly didn't explain them to the population - Mr Fulcanelli where do we start ;D[/quote]
I agree, the book was a great read yet it does not ever initmate who and why these Churches approved these wonderful designs. I am fascinated by the whole story and "Le Mystere des Cathederales" started me of. There is another book published under the Fulcanelli psydenom and I think it was called " The Cross at Hend**e" I read it a few years ago and will try to locate it again,
Gnostic
Fill the Pleroma - then feel the warmth
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Post by whistler on Jan 27, 2005 7:44:09 GMT
Gnostic I Found this summary "Fulcanelli's main point, the key to unraveling the mystery, lies in an understanding of what he calls the "phonetic law" of the "spoken cabala," or the "Language of the Birds." This punning, multi-lingual word play can be used to reveal unusual and, according to Fulcanelli, meaningful associations between ideas. "What unsuspected marvels we should find, if we knew how to dissect words, to strip them of their barks and liberate the spirit, the divine light, which is within," Fulcanelli writes. He claims that in our day this is the natural language of the outsiders, the outlaws and heretics at the fringes of society. It was also the "green language" of the Freemasons ("All the Initiates expressed themselves in cant," Fulcanelli reminds us) who built the art gothique of the cathedrals. Ultimately the "art cot," or the "art of light," is derived from the Language of the Birds, which seems to be a sort of Ur-language taught by both Jesus and the ancients. It is also related to the Sufi text by Attar the Chemist, entitled "The Conference of the Birds." In de Tassey's French translation of this work, which Fulcanelli references, the "conference" of the title is translated as "language." De Tassey goes on to explain the complex linguist metaphor beneath the simple fable. Fulcanelli uses the same method to decode the alchemical meaning of the cathedrals. Fulcanelli also claims that Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel is "a novel in cant," that is, written in the secret language. Offhandedly, he throws in Tiresias, the Greek seer who revealed to mortals the secrets of Olympus. Tiresias was taught the language of the birds by Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Just as casually, Fulcanelli mentions the similarity between gothic and goetic, suggesting that gothic art is a magic art. From this, we see that Fulcanelli's message, that there is a secret in the cathedrals, and that this secret was placed there by a group of initiates of which Fulcanelli is obviously one - depends upon an abundance of imagery and association which overpowers the intellect, lulling one into an intuitve state of acceptance. Fulcanelli, like Shakespeare, overwhelms the reader with his brilliance. It is difficult to accept this man as anything but an incredible intelligence." I know Ruff has strong opinions of the "Language of the Birds". What are your view. Going back to our Cathedrals - if those secrets were placed by initiates - surely the hierarchy of the church must have been part of things Now look at this And yet, a most curious thing happened. In the spring of 1943, a privately printed, 50 copy edition of a massive work entitled The Architecture of Nature was published in Paris with full clearance from the Nazi censors. This is indeed curious, since a large portion of the book deals with the Kabbalah, the esoteric tradition of the Jews, and its relationship to such things as Tantric Yoga, Gothic cathedrals and the enigmatic ornaments of Lallemant Mansion in Bourges, so important to Fulcanelli. Even a glance at this most rare of all modern esoteric volumes is enough to convince the reader that this work contains more than a whiff of the authentic voice, the Fulcanelli of Le Mystere. Could this be the lost third volume? And why would the Nazis permit its publication?What thoughts have you
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Post by whistler on Jan 29, 2005 22:59:24 GMT
Jay laughed and suggested that I read Mystery of the Cathedrals, Fulcanelli's first book, and The Fulcanelli Phenomenon, by Kenneth R. Johnson. When I did, I realized that they described one of the most fascinating puzzles of all time. Alchemy was certainly a key part of the mystery. However, at its heart lay something even stranger -- ancient knowledge of the location of the center of our galaxy and from that a way to estimate the date of a celestial event of eschatalogical magnitude. The sophisticated astronomical culture of the Central American Maya considered this event to be the end and beginning point of time itself. After the fall of the ancient cultures in the Old World, simple knowledge of the event became the secret possession of the initiated elite. In the middle of all this we find Ancient Freemasonry' Has any body read "The Fulcanelli Phenomenon, by Kenneth R. Johnson. ?
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