Symbolisme

In this third and last part of the presentation of Notre-Dame de Paris' hermetic symbolism, Jean-François Blondel invites us to many reflections:
- Are the bestiaries representing fantastic animals such as centaurs, mermaids or winged-dragons coming from free imagination of Middle Ages drawers as assert current art historian or on the contrary, do these figures come within the framework of a coded language, which would be lost nowadays? For what reasons do we find these same representations in other French cathedrals?
- What vision did men have at the time of Philippe Auguste in the Middle Ages?

In this second part of the study of hermetic symbolism in Notre Dame de Paris, Jean-François Blondel invites us to reexamine the gates of Saint-Anne (also called Saint-Marcel) and Judgment. He tells us the different levels of historical reading, religious and alchemical, to which elements of the cathedral is susceptible to initiate us. The Saint-Marcel gate tells us how the eponymous bishop saved Paris exhorting the dragon to return to the Seine to disappear. It also illustrates forces of Christianism slaying the paganism beast. At last, it shows the presence of alchemical symbol of the King (the bishop), or sulfur, near the Queen, or Mercury, which sits below him, and philosopher mercury, represented by the dragon.

The park of the chateau de Versailles has many symbolical and mythological which course looks like an initiatory path. Alain-Claude Debombourg shows us some keys of reading from the four elements, the Tree of life and Pythagorean mysteries.
Thanks to them, the walker, if he wants to, can change into a thinker. Indeed, the first vocation of these gardens is a poetic research, but also an invitation to get closer to "Dame Cognoissance" as said Francesco Colonna in 1467 in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Among the most ancient concept of humanity, the garden has developed itself through the ages following forms going from the most refined to the most sophisticated, from the most syncretic to the most uninitiated.
When today the concept of world garden takes more importance, we can multiply comparisons between the elements of garden and territories of our planet, and this way to read symbolically our universe.
To Alain-Claude Debombourg, garden is a "sacred place", "an open-air temple".

Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris occupies today the place of an ancient pagan temple dedicated to Jupiter or Vulcan. It was founded on the ruins of the first Christian church of Lutetia under the order of the bishop Sully in 1163, tells Jean-François Blondel.
Cathedral comes "cathedra" which means "siege of the bishop". To the author, Notre Dame de Paris is like the temple which represents the reduction of cosmos. Directed from west to east, like all Christian churches, it symbolizes the course of the believer who goes from the shadows to light, represented by the choir of the buildings. Seen from above, it takes the shape of a Latin cross, symbol of saving Christ.

Le corps initiatique par Frédérique Vincent

Western Christianity has been wary of what concerned man and its animality. Which leads to body "demonization", core of instincts, to many thinkers. Idem for modern western which thinks as inferior to progress and technician reason. At the time when body comes back like emotion and imagination, Frédéric Vincent thought about that subject.

La symbolique de la marelle et du jeu de l'oie

Hopscotch and the snakes and ladders game take us back to our childhood. Do we know that the line of the hopscotch, known by children, represent a cross based on eight squares going from earth to the sky, four thousand years-old?

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