Occultisme

At the half of the 19th century a former abbot became very popular in western occultists circles through a certain numbers of works. That man, born Alphonse Louis Constant, went down in history under the name Eliphas Lévi. Around the same time, especially in England, begins the early stages of a new "science" called epistemology. It refers to, the field of sciences philosophy, or the theory of knowledge.

In our modern societies,  demythologized, searching for a new breath that industrialization,  comfort and consumption doesn't give anymore: alchemists still exist. Paule di Puccio is living proof.
Born in 1917 in Burgundy, communist resistant during World War II, Paule di Puccio discovers alchemy in the 60's and especially through an esotericist learning from the United States, BOTA (Builders of the Addendum). For two decades she explores speculative alchemy, then in a day of Whit sun, when she decides to give up on everything, she receives the name of the Materia Prima : the operative alchemy's door opens to her.

The 19th century has been influenced, particularly in France, by secularization of mentalities promoting "close" concerns to the detriment of "ultimate" concerns. 20th century kept going that way, it experimented the expansion of state intervention, technocracy and consequently an excessive specialization, partitioning thinking groups. In a segmented society, what shape can "culture" have, and what values does it convey?  Is it necessarily the reflection of a conservative standardization or on the contrary, a conglomeration of very dissimilar component?   And as a result: what is the form, the significance and the substratum of its counterculture?

Those who practice spiritual alchemy call themselves philosophers, and operative alchemists philosophers by fire. For Fulcanelli and Eugène Canseliet, you can't be a philosopher and not be a philosopher by fire.    alchemy goes through labor and praying, labor et ora... through the laboratory!
According to Jean Artero, Eugène Canseliet (1899-1982) was the greatest alchemist of the 20th century. There is no biography about him, so we asked this author  to try fill in this gap. 
Eugène Canseliet was the friend and the disciple of an other great figure of alchemy:    Fulcanelli (1839- ?). Author of many  reference works about alchemy  that Canseliet prefaced, Fulcanelli would have made the Philosopher's Stone.  

Conspiracies (real ones) have always existed. Yet, conspiracy theories (often imaginary) appeared, during the French Revolution: their coming lines up with the end of monarchy and the secularization of our society.
The Illuminati, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Society of Jesus, Freemasonry, Rite of Strict Observance etc... created polemics, amalgams. Nowadays: Opus Dei, Illuminati or Scientology feed some newspaper where popular phantasmagoria goes beyond reality.

Stéphane François, political scientist, Didier Le Masson, specialist in German Freemasonry and Philipe Valode, author and historian, question themselves around that round table on reality and pregnancy of occultist ideas in the Nazi way of thinking.  Around Emmanuel Kreis,
- Is romanticism at the origin of the völkisch circles  (racial populism in Germany) who began the basis of Nazi mystic?
- Did high Nazi dignitaries knew occult groups such as the Black Order (Schwarzer Orden),

What means the epitaph "I seek the gold of time" that André Breton had engraved on his tombstone? What are the relations between alchemy, esotericism and time? In this 40-minutes presentation, Léon Gineste tries to unveil what is Alchemy: its origins, its first manuscripts (-200 BC in Alexandria); its great historical figures, and its relation with mystic and current neurosciences.

Occultists tried to make eschatology a science basing on a new history critic which was going give, on a new basis, the meaning of Johannine revelations.  Apocalypse gave a "reference code" to explain many troubled situations. It was present after almost all great traumatizes of western history, destruction inviting to speculate on signs. Henry Corbin, kept Ap. 21,1 "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth" for his analysis of Verus propheta comparing prophetical Sunnite and Shi'ite with the announced return of Christ. The same thought pattern is applicable to secular universe of Occultists who elaborated their theories appeal to a "subtle world", parent of  the "imaginal world" to give a meaning to trials which marked Europe at the threshold of the 19th century.

In this 43-minutes conference, Arnaud de l'Etoile invites us to discover Eliphas Lévi's life and work.
Born in Paris, Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), or Eliphas Lévi, is a figurehead of occultism, a spiritual and mystical way of thinking preoccupied by mysterious forces of cosmos and man.
With a disturbed youth, and a revolutionary past, he studies theology and becomes deacon. Teaching catechism, he falls in love and leaves the seminary. He devotes himself to occultist philosophy which he renews in "Dogmas and rituals of High Magic",

Earth, water, air and fire sign plants, says Anne-Laure Riggouzzo-Weiller. Through its form, color, taste, text, odor and other subtle qualities, plant expresses its origin and unveils its own signature. Linked to the earth by its roots from where it takes its strength, to water which feeds the stem and the leaves, to air which opens the flower and sun beams which accomplishes the fruit, it doesn't stop growing, it expresses its force of life.  The way it transforms, its intimate relation comes up with one or many elements. The poppy is linked to fire, vine to air, lotus to water and oak to earth.