The secret of the cathedrals. Fulkanelli Zh.

The author of the book - the Great Alchemist - made his philosophical feat in the 20th century, during the triumph of mechanical materialism and limitless faith in technological progress. The adept, hiding behind the initiative name of Fulkanelli (“vulcaning”, “erupting”), was a talented writer, a brilliant erudite, an expert on the history of the Middle Ages, a sophisticated researcher and theorist of architecture. He left this world, more precisely, disappeared from it in an unknown direction of some 70-80 years ago, leaving us his books as a gift, explaining how alchemists prepared their gold and why their secrets are captured in the architectural details of Gothic buildings. The “Secret of the Cathedrals” offers the keys to unraveling the alchemical rebus of the Gothic cathedrals, where each statue is with the position of the hands clamped in them with objects, sometimes just nods the head - silently reports the secrets of preparing philosophical stone. Turning to the miraculously preserved museum copies of esoteric sculptures destroyed during the revolution, then to the testimonies of contemporaries of the distant past, then to his own experience and insight, Fulkanelli in grains restores the lost speech of “stone books”, gradually restoring the integral picture of the alchemical great work. The Secret of the Councils is one of the best books on Gothic art, and can be considered as a guide to mystical France.

The book is valuable not only for researchers of hermetic tradition and those interested in alchemy, but also for everyone who is not indifferent to Gothic art, European medieval history and culture.