The Morning of the Magicians

CHAPTER IV


The modern alchemist and the spirit of research . . .

The modern alchemist is a man who reads treatises on nuclear physics. He is convinced that transmutations and still more extraordinary phenomena can be obtained by manipulations and with the aid of comparatively simple apparatus. It is among contemporary alchemists that the spirit of the isolated seeker is to be found, and the preservation of such a spirit is very important at the present time. For it is generally believed today that no progress in science is possible without large-scale teamwork, vast apparatus, and considerable financial backing. And yet the fundamental discoveries, such as radioactivity and wave mechanics, were made by men working in isolation. America, where everything is done on a big scale, with large teams of workers, is now sending its agents all over the world in search of original minds. The Director of American scientific research, Dr. James Killian, declared in 1958 that it was undesirable to trust entirely in collective research, and that an appeal should be made to solitary workers with original ideas of their own. Rutherford did some of his fundamental work on the structure of matter with old tins and bits of string. Jean Perrin and Mme. Curie before the war sent their assistants to the Flea Market on Sundays to look for material. Of course big, well-equipped laboratories are necessary, but it would be advisable to ensure some cooperation between these laboratories and these teams and these solitary workers. The alchemists, however, would refuse the invitation. Their rule is secrecy; their ambition of a spiritual nature. “There can be no doubt,” wrote René Alleau, “that the manipulations of the alchemists help to maintain an inner asceticism.” If alchemy contains some science, this science is only a means of gaining access to knowledge. It is consequently most important that it should not be generally known, otherwise it would become an end in itself.
     What is the alchemist’s working material? The same as that used for high temperature mineral chemistry: furnaces, crucibles, scales, measuring instruments with, in addition, modern apparatus for detecting nuclear radiation--Geiger counters, scintillometers, etc.
     Such a stock-in-trade may seem hopelessly inadequate. An orthodox physicist would never admit that it is possible to produce a cathode emitting neutrons with such simple and inexpensive apparatus. If our information is correct, alchemists do in fact succeed in doing this. In the days when the electron was considered to be the fourth state of matter, extremely elaborate and costly machinery was invented to produce electronic currents. Later on, in 1910, Elster and Gaitel showed that it was enough to heat lime in vacuo to a dull red heat.
     We do not know all the laws of matter. If alchemy is a more advanced form of knowledge than our own science, it employs simpler methods.
    
We are now going to give, for what we believe to be the first time, a description of what an alchemist actually does in his laboratory. We do not claim to reveal every detail of the methods employed, but we believe we can throw some light which will not be without interest. Nor do we forget that alchemy’s ultimate aim is the transmutation, of the alchemist himself, and that his operations are only steps in his slow progress toward “spiritual liberation.” We are now going to try to give some fresh information about these operations.
     The alchemist in the first place spends many years deciphering old texts that, deprived of any guiding Ariadne’s thread, are like a labyrinth where everything has been done deliberately and systematically to throw the uninitiated into a state of inextricable mental confusion. With the help of patience, humility, and faith he gradually begins to understand these texts. Having got so far, he is ready to begin actual alchemic operations. These we are going to describe, but there is one thing of which we have no knowledge. We know what happens in an alchemist’s laboratory, but we do not know what happens in the alchemist himself, in his mind and heart. It may be that spiritual energy plays a part in the physical and chemical operations of the alchemist. It may be that a certain method of acquiring, concentrating, and directing this spiritual energy is essential to the success of the alchemists’ work. This is not certain, but in this rare context it is impossible not to recall Dante’s saying: “I see that you believe these things because I tell you them; but you do not know the reason for them, and therefore, in spite of being believed, their meaning is still hidden.”
     Our alchemist begins by preparing a mixture of three ingredients. The first, in a proportion of 95 percent, is some sort of ore: arsenopyrites, for example, an iron ore containing among its impurities arsenic and antimony. The second is a metal: iron, lead, silver, or mercury. The third is an acid of organic origin, such as tartaric or citric acid. He will continue to grind and mix by hand these ingredients for five or six months. He will then proceed to heat the mixture in a crucible, increasing the temperature by degrees and continuing this operation for ten days or so. He must take precautions, for toxic gases are released: mercury vapor and especially arsenohydrogen, which has killed many an alchemist at the beginning of his experiment.
     Finally, he dissolves the contents of the crucible by means of an acid. Next the liquid is evaporated and the solid residue recalcined. The alchemist will repeat this operation thousands of times. Why? Perhaps he is waiting for the moment when all the most favorable conditions will be fulfilled: cosmic rays, terrestrial magnetism, etc. Perhaps it is in order to obtain a condition of “fatigue” in the structure of matter of which we still know nothing. The alchemist speaks of a “sacred patience” and of the slow condensation of the “universal spirit.” But behind this parareligious language there is surely something hidden.

PREFACE


Part One

The Future Perfect

I. Salute to the reader in a hurry--A resignation in 1875--Birds of ill omen--How the nineteenth century closed the doors--The end of science and the repression of fantasy--Poincaré’s despair--We are our own grandfathers--Youth, Youth!

II. Bourgeois delights--A crisis for the intelligence, or the hurricane of unrealism--Glimpses of another reality--Beyond logic and literary  philosophies--The idea of an Eternal Present--Science without conscience or conscience without science?--Hope

III. Brief reflections on the backwardness of sociology--Talking cross-purposes--Planetary versus provincial--Crusader in the modern world--The poetry of science

An Open Conspiracy

I. The generation of the “workers of the Earth”--Are you a behind-the-times modern, or a contemporary of the future?--A poster on the walls of Paris 1622--The esoteric language is the technical  language--A new conception of a secret society--A new aspect of the “religious spirit”

II. The prophets of the Apocalypse--A Committee of Despair--A Louis XVI machine-gun--Science is not a Sacred Cow--Monsieur Despotopoulos would like to arrest progress--The legend of the Nine Unknown Men

III. Fantastic realism again--Past techniques--Further consideration on the necessity for secrecy--We take a voyage through time--The spirit’s continuity--The engineer and the magician once again--Past and future--The present is lagging in both directions--Gold from ancient books--A new vision of the ancient world

IV. The concealment of knowledge and power--The meaning of revolutionary war--Technology brings back the guilds--A return to the age of the Adepts--A fiction writer’s prediction, “The Power-House”--From monarchy to cryptocracy--The secret society as the government of the future--Intelligence itself a secret society--A knocking at the door

The Example of Alchemy

I. An alchemist in the Café Procope in 1953--A conversation about Gurdjieff--A believer in the reality of the philosopher’s stone--I change my ideas about the value of progress--What we really think about alchemy: neither a revelation nor a groping in the dark--Some reflections on the “spiral” and on hope

II. A hundred thousand books that no one reads--Wanted: a scientific expedition to the land of the alchemists--The inventors--Madness from mercury--A code language--Was there another atomic civilization?--The electric batteries of the museum of Baghdad--Newton and the great Initiates--Helvetius and Spinoza and the philosopher’s stone--Alchemy and modern physics--A hydrogen bomb in an oven--Transformation of matter, men, and spirits

III. In which a little Jew is seen to prefer honey to sugar--In which an alchemist who might be the mysterious Fulcanelli speaks of the atomic danger in 1937, describes the atomic pile and evokes civilization now extinct--In which Bergier breaks a safe with a blow-lamp and carries off a bottle of uranium under his arm--In which a nameless American major seeks a Fulcanelli now definitely vanished--In which Oppenheimer echoes a Chinese sage of a  thousand years ago

IV. The modern alchemist and the spirit of research--Description of what an alchemist does in his laboratory--Experiments repeated indefinitely--What is he waiting for?--The preparation of darkness--Electronic gas--Water that dissolves--Is the philosopher’s stone energy in suspension?-- The transmutation of the alchemist himself --This is where true metaphysics begin

V. There is time for everything--There is even a time for the times to come together

The Vanished Civilizations

I. In which the authors introduce a fantastic personage--Mr. Fort--The fire at the “sanatorium of overworked coincidences”--Mr. Fort and universal knowledge--40,000 notes on a gush of periwinkles, a downpour of frogs and showers of blood--The Book of the Damned--A certain Professor Kreyssler--In praise of “intermediarism” with some examples--The Hermit of Bronx, or the cosmic Rabelais--Visit of the author to the Cathedral of  Saint Elsewhere--Au revoir, Mr. Fort!

II. An hypothesis condemned to the stake--Where a clergyman and a biologist become comic figures--Wanted: a Copernicus in anthropology--Many blank spaces on all the maps--Dr. Fortune’s lack of curiosity--The mystery of the melted platinum--Cords used as books--The tree and the telephone--Cultural relativity

III. In which the authors speculate about the Great Pyramid--Possibility of “other” techniques--The example of Hitler--The Empire of Almanzar--Recurrence of “ends of the world”--The impossible Easter Island--The legend of the white man--The civilization of America--The mystery of maya--From the “bridge of light” to the strange plain of Nazca

IV. Memory older than us--Metallic birds--A strange map of the world--Atomic bombardments and interplanetary vessels in “sacred texts”--A new view of machines--The cult of the “cargo”--Another vision of esoterism--The rites of the intelligence

Part Two

A Few Years in the Absolute Elsewhere

I. All the marbles in the same bag--The historian’s despair--Two amateurs of the unusual--At the bottom of the Devil’s Lake--An empty antifascism--The authors in the presence of the Infinitely Strange--Troy, too, was only a legend--History lags behind--From visible banality to invisible fantasy--The fable of the golden beetle--Undercurrents of the future--There are other things besides soulless machinery

II. In the Tribune des Nations the Devil and madness are refused recognition--Yet there are rivalries between deities--The Germans and Atlantis--Magic socialism--A secret religion and a secret Order--An expedition to hidden regions--The first guide will be a poet

III. P. J. Toulet and Arthur Machen--A great neglected genius--A Robinson Crusoe of the soul--The story of the angels at Mons--The life, adventures, and misfortunes of Arthur Machen--How we discovered an English secret society--A Nobel Prize winner in a black mask--The Golden Dawn and its members

IV. A hollow Earth, a frozen world, a New Man--“We are the enemies of the mind and spirit”--Against Nature and against God--The Vril Society--The race which will supplant us--Haushofer and the Vril--The idea of the mutation of man--The “Unknown Superman”--Mathers, chief of the Golden Dawn meets the “Great Terrorists”--Hitler claims to have met them too--An hallucination or a real presence?--A door opening on to something other--A prophecy of René Guénon--The Nazis’ enemy No. 1: Steiner

V. An ultimatum for the scientists--The prophet Horbiger, a twentieth-century Copernicus--The theory of the frozen world--History of the solar system--The end of the world--The Earth and its four Moons--Apparition of the giants--Moons, giants, and men--The civilization of Atlantis--The five cities 300,000 years old--From Tiahuanaco to Tibet--The second Atlantis--The Deluge--Degeneration and Christianity--We are approaching another era--The law of ice and fire

VI. Horbiger still has a million followers--Waiting for the Messiah--Hitler and political esoterism--Nordic science and magic thinking--A civilization utterly different from our own--Gurdjieff, Horbiger, Hitler, and the man responsible for the Cosmos--The cycle of fire--Hitler speaks--The basis of Nazi anti-Semitism--Martians at Nuremberg--The antipact--The rockets’ summer--Stalingrad, or the fall of the Magi--The prayer on Mount Elbruz--The little man victorious over the superman--The little man opens the gates of Heaven--The Twilight of the Gods--The flooding of the Berlin Underground and the myth of the Deluge--A Chorus by Shelley

VII. A hollow Earth--We are living inside it--The Sun and Moon are in the center of the Earth--Radar in the service of the Wise Men--Birth of a new religion in America—Its prophet was a German airman--Anti-Einstein--The work of a madman--A hollow Earth, Artificial Satellites and the notion of Infinity--Hitler as arbiter--Beyond coherence

VIII. Grist for our horrible mill--The last prayer of Dietrich Eckardt--The legend of Thule--A nursery for mediums--Haushofer the magician--Hess’s silence--The swastika--The seven men who wanted to change life--A Tibetan colony--Exterminations and ritual--It is darker than you thought

IX. Himmler and the other side of the problem--1934 a turning point--The Black Order in power--The death’s-head warrior monks--Initiation in the Burgs--Sievers’ last prayer--The strange doings of the Ahnenerbe--The High Priest Frederick Hielscher--A forgotten note of Jünger’s--Impressions of war and victory

Part Three

That Infinity Called Man . . .

I. A New Kind of Intuition: The Fantastic in fire and blood--The barriers of incredulity--The first rocket--Bourgeois and “Workers of the Earth”--False facts and true fiction--Inhabited worlds--Visitors from Beyond--The great lines of communication--Modern myths--Fantastic realism in psychology--Toward an exploration of the fantastic within--The method described-- Another conception of liberty

II. The Fantastic Within: Some pioneers: Balzac, Hugo, Flammarion--Jules Romains and the “Great Question”--The end of positivism--What is parapsychology?--Some extraordinary facts and experiences--The example of the Titanic--Clairvoyance --Precognition and dreams--Parapsychology and psychoanalysis--We reject occultism and the pseudosciences--In quest of machinery for sounding the depths

III. Toward a Psychological Revolution: The mind’s “second wind”--Wanted: an Einstein for psychology--A renaissance of religion--Our society is at death’s door--Jaurès and the “tree buzzing with flies”--We see little because we are little

IV. The Magic Mind Rediscovered: The green eye of the Vatican--The “other” intelligence--The story of the “relavote”--Is Nature playing a double game?--The starting-handle of the supermachine --New cathedrals and new slang--The last door--Existence as an instrument--A new view of symbols--All is not everything

V. The Notion of an “Awakened State”: After the fashion of theologians, scientists, magicians, and children--Salute to an expert at putting spokes in wheels--The conflict between spiritualism and materialism: the story of an allergy--The legend of tea--Could it be a natural faculty?--Thought as a means of travel on the ground or in the air--A supplement to the Rights of Man--Some reflections on the “awakened” Man--Ourselves as honest savages

VI. Three True Stories as Illustration: The story of a great mathematician “in the raw”--The story of the most wonderful clairvoyant--The story of a scientist of the future who lived in 1750

VII. The “Awakened” Man: Some Paradoxes and Hypotheses: Why our three stories may have disappointed some readers--We know very little about levitation, immortality, etc.--Yet Man has the gift of ubiquity, has long sight, etc.--How do you define a machine?--How the first “awakened” Man could have been born--A fabulous, yet reasonable dream about vanished civilizations--The fable of the panther--The writing of God

VIII. Some Documents on the “Awakened State”: Wanted: an anthology--The sayings of Gurdjieff--When I was at the school for “awakening”-- Raymond Abellio’s story--A striking extract from the works of Gustav Meyrinck, a neglected genius

IX. The Point Beyond Infinity: From Surrealism to Fantastic Realism--The Supreme Point--Beware of images--The madness of  Georg Cantor--The Yogi and the mathematician--A fundamental aspiration of the human spirit--An extract from a story by Jorge Luis Borges

X. Some Reflections on the Mutants: The child astronomer--A sudden access of intelligence--The theory of mutation--The myth of the great Superior Ones--The Mutants among us--From Horla to Leonard Euler--An invisible society of Mutants?--The birth of the collective being--Love of the living


INDEX

Louis Pauwels (1920-1997) was a French journalist who founded the magazine Planète, an outgrowth of this book. Jacques Bergier (1912-1978) was a nuclear physicist and chemical engineer who was active in the French Resistance in World War II and helped destroy the German atomic plant at Peenemünde.

"A must read . . . contains a lot of gems and wonderful food for thought."
Institute for Hermetic Studies, Jan 2009

" . . . this is a book which I recommend for two very important reasons. First, because it brings to the attention of the average reader information which has probably not been seen before. And, second, because it is sure to inspire, at least some readers, to go further and learn more about the anomalies in our world and how they affect the world in which we live."
Michael Gleason, Witchgrove.com, Jan 2009

“This modern alchemical manifesto has been inspiring thinkers for half a century. It illuminates the intersection between science and mysticism, proclaiming matter as a gateway of the spirit. The Morning of the Magicians declares that an objective appreciation of the material world is a means by which we may attain an awakened state of consciousness, the next step in human evolutionary destiny. This study of ‘fantastic realism’ is a look behind one of the many masks of God.”
James Wasserman, author of The Secrets of Masonic Washington and An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar

"The Morning of the Magicians is one of those books that you hate to see end. It is pure magic itself. I have not read anything quite like it . . . The New Cosmology that we are now living in is all about creating consciousness or self and this book will certainly assist you in that. There are several books that are jewels in the crown of literature and [this] is one of these. Do Not miss this read."
Bonnie Lange, publisher/editor Truth Seeker Company, Oldest Freethought Publication since 1873, Feb 2009

"From masterminds behind early civilizations' growth to connections between alchemy and modern physics and Hitler's psychic potentials, The Morning of the Magicians offers a wide-ranging history. Both are fine new age library additions."
The Midwest Book Review, March 2009

"Pauwels and Bergier employ an engaging writing style, coming across excitable, poetic, and authoritative. The Morning of the Magicians is a reference book with a soul, a treasure chest of information that can pay the ransom of modern societies' stagnant mental promises, and lo, it has just been re-released and is now all the easier to find. Enjoy having your mind blown."
Chard Currie, New Dawn, No. 114, May-June 2009

ANCIENT MYSTERIES / SECRET SOCIETIES

“This modern alchemical manifesto has been inspiring thinkers for half a century. It illuminates the intersection between science and mysticism, proclaiming matter as a gateway of the spirit. The Morning of the Magicians declares that an objective appreciation of the material world is a means by which we may attain an awakened state of consciousness, the next step in human evolutionary destiny. This study of ‘fantastic realism’ is a look behind one of the many masks of God.”
--James Wasserman, author of The Secrets of Masonic Washington and An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar

This groundbreaking, international bestseller, first published in 1960, couples profound insights into the hidden history of humanity with scientific evidence that supports the existence of paranormal activity, telepathy, and extraterrestrial communications. The first book to explore in depth the Nazi fascination with the occult, Pauwels and Bergier also broke new ground with their study of pyramidology, alchemy and its close kinship with atomic energy, and the possibility of a widespread mutation of humanity that would herald a new age for the earth. Their study of secret societies, starting with the Rosicrucians, suggests that such changes are actively being pursued in the present day by a “conspiracy” of the most spiritually and intellectually advanced members of the human race.

The Morning of the Magicians will open your mind to questions that have previously gone unanswered:

-Were the masterminds behind the great civilizations of Central and South America from Mars?

-What connects the ancient art of alchemy and modern atomic physics?

-Was Hitler, during his mystical trances, in touch with the “Unknown Master”?

-Does extrasensory perception reveal that human consciousness has advanced beyond its currently accepted limits?

The Morning of the Magicians explores the anomalous events collected by Charles Fort, the work of Gurdjieff, and the history of the mysterious Fulcanelli, who was widely believed to have manufactured the philosopher’s stone--which provided the Nazis the motive for mounting an intensive search for him during their occupation of Paris. Much more than a collection of strange facts defying conventional wisdom, this book remains a sophisticated philosophical exploration of repressed phenomena and hidden histories that asks its readers to look at reality with ever “awakened eyes.”

LOUIS PAUWELS (1920-1997) was a French journalist who founded the magazine Planète, an outgrowth of this book. JACQUES BERGIER (1912-1978) was a nuclear physicist and chemical engineer who was active in the French Resistance in World War II and helped destroy the German atomic plant at Peenemünde.