On the Forbidden Letters by Antoine de La Censerie

Hermes - Harpocrates
[ A. Bocchi, Symbolicarum Quaestionum, Bologna 1574 ]

Introduction

'In view of the recognized frequency of this phenomenon [of homosexuality], its interpretation as a pathological perversion is very dubious. The psychological findings show that it is rather a matter of incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic archetype, coupled with a distinct resistance to identify with the role of a one-sided sexual being. Such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost.' [Carl Jung "Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept," CW 9i, par. 146./italics by me] [see footnote 1]

''Was Baphomet really a severed head? And if so, who or what could it represent?' [Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince]

'In certain grail-lore heads are taken off and replaced by other heads. Now, we are not talking about the head of flesh to be taken off. That would be lethal of course. It is the microcosmic, subtle head, interwoven in the head of flesh, that is taken off and replaced after the [kundalini] fire by a new subtle head, the Christ.' [The Paris 4 in the fourth Forbidden Letter]

[ illustration from the Aurora Consurgens, a medieval alchemical treatise
dating from the 15th century and attributed to Thomas Aquinas ]

Part 1

In the Summer of 2006 Carlotta de Renzi sent me the URL to the Forbidden Letters by the Paris 4 and the response articles to those letters at World Mysteries. I had been reading on alchemy in search of that famous 'secret of rebirth', to quote Fanny Bowditch, for a period of almost two years by then, because that much I had understood right from the start, that...

'...alchemy is performed in a physics of resurrection...' [Corbin]

...and that the alchemical dissolution takes therefore place...

'...nowhere else but in the blood.' [Pernety]

As the Letters slowly started sinking in, I suddenly realized too that there has never been an Osiris, or a Christ, to name but two aka's for a triumphant alchemist. In other words: Osiris has yet to come, and religion is mainly myth misunderstood.

The purely theosophical alchemists, so not the ones who tragically assumed that alchemy was about chemistry, or chemistry too, knew this of course. And they were, in the words of Aniane, well aware of the fact too that...

'...the time for cosmic transfiguration had not yet come.'

The CE2, in their response article to the Forbidden Letters at World Mysteries, even suggest that...

' ...alchemy is not only the goal of evolution...'

...but that it is, on top...

'...the one force that fights entropy, and thereby evolution proper.'

A suggestion that would lead us to Brillouin and his famous question:' How is it possible to understand life, when the entire world is ordered by a law, such as the second principle of thermodynamics?'

[ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ENTRTHER.html  ]

In December 2006 I purchased a copy of the Serpent Grail by Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn. The book that had caused the Paris 4 to post the Forbidden Letters. After having read both the Letters and the Serpent Grail I soon agreed with Arthur Musing that the Serpent Grail indeed did not hold the truth behind the Grail and the Elixir of Life as the authors had promised on the cover of that book. (A book dangerously leaning on shamanism in my opinion, because, as Kenneth Humphreys points out, the shamans, like any other priest or witchdoctor, lived 'on the backs of others ever since people started living in groups. Given this venal motive of these 'religiously inclined' we would be wise therefore to exercise caution before buying its product, or accepting its claims.')

But back to the Serpent Grail. Was that book, as Musing wrote too, nonetheless the best possible introduction to the Forbidden Letters because of the, what he called, secondary information it contained? I regret to say it was not. I've studied the book carefully and there is no secondary information on the Grail and the Elixir of Life that couldn't be found in long published other books. The book as a whole didn't even help me understand the alchemical theory of the Paris 4, like the response articles on World Mysteries did. In particular the ones by Hanno Temming, Otto Reich and Jonathan Rice. To put things elegantly: Arthur Musing had been very kind to Gardiner and Osborn is his little review-quote on the Serpent Grail in the Rice-article.

The core-theory of the Serpent Grail is, I'm afraid, even quite risible.

'Reading Gardiner's [The Serpent Grail] manuscript, his initial insight was that to cure or heal others, the ancient shaman or tribal witchdoctor would mix snake's venom with snake’s blood. The venom can kill, but the blood of the snake acts as an antidote to the poison and neutralises it, and so it was found that both mixed together would create a potent substance that, when swallowed, could cure most or all diseases.

However, Gardiner’s angle was that the mixture of both the snake venom and blood was perhaps the original ‘elixir of life’ and this is what made his thesis refreshing and exciting.

In his original manuscript Gardiner stated that these two properties of the one snake were mixed in a ‘human skull cap’ – adding that this “bowl” was possibly the origin for the Holy Grail vessel.' [Gary Osborn]

Risible, because, as all true experts on the Grail know, and Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince pointed out in an interview...

'...the vessel idea of the Grail was not its original form. The first tales either didn't describe the mysterious Grail as anything in particular, or had it as a stone.'

Risible, because the single serpent of Asclepius of medicine, the one that also represents the shamans and witchdoctors of Gardiner, has absolutely nothing to do with the intertwined serpents of the Caduceus of Hermes, who represent alchemical transformation and the Elixir of Life, being a by-product of that transformation in the body of the successful alchemist.

In other words, Gardiner and Osborn had failed to see that the Elixir of Life is produced in the lightbody of the victorious alchemist (the Shining One), i.e. man deified. That it is a purely microcosmic elixir therefore, and not a macrocosmic one, meaning one mixed in a skull for instance and presented to some patient. In yet other words: the Elixir of Life is not swallowed, it is exclusively produced and consumed in the body of a triumphant alchemist.

Needless to say that Gardiner and Osborn were ignorant then too about the true nature of the Philosopher's Stone. To give an example from their book:

'As von Eschenbach says, this stone is called the Grail. But how can we look upon something that is within ourselves? Clearly, we are not to take this literally.' [italics by me]

Because through the Forbidden Letters we know now that the Stone of Transmutation is indeed a real stone. That it...

'...grows from flesh and blood...'[Jung]

...that it...

'...is produced about where the liver is...'[The Paris 4]

...and that it is...

'...even pointy and about the size of a child's fist.'[The Paris 4]

That it...

'...ignites the Kundalini-fire...'[The Paris 4]

... and that the Phoenix is a metaphor for the alchemist in that fire. [see footnote 2]

(In an article on the Letters at World Mysteries Peter Lemesurier seems to be in the dark too when it comes to that alchemical Work when he confuses the ancient term for that Work, the Work of the Sun (labor solis), with the Virgilian term for a solar eclipse (labor solis too). He writes that 'the term 'labor solis' is simply Virgilian Latin for a solar eclipse, just as 'labor lunae' is for a lunar one.'[see footnote 3] - The fact that an experienced esoteric author as Peter Lemesurier confuses solar eclipses with an age old alchemical term just demonstrates how little known alchemy is.)

The discussions on Internet on the Letters nevertheless are slowly becoming more and more sophisticated, although the homosexuality of the alchemist...

' ...as brought to our attention by the Paris 4 is still proving to be a very sensitive subject to some people.' [Osborn]

Some are pessimistic, convinced that...

'...the gates have closed in 1986.' [Forum]

Others...

'...can't wait for that gay man to emerge from hiding, to where we can all see him and follow in his footsteps.'[Forum]

There are those who believe that gay man is a Jew, because, according to the Zohar...

'...only Jewish people come from the holy side, or sitra di-kedusha from which the divine spark proceeds...'[Forum-member in a PM to me quoting Gershom Scholem]

...and those, like Philip Gardiner, who think the Letters are the product of...

'... a fraudulent and psychotic individual'.* [see also footnote 4]

[* 'Ironic that these words are written by someone who clearly displayed pathological tendencies all the time I knew him. His need to tell total lies to impress were without question pathological. I can honestly say I have never met anyone like Gardiner.' [Gary Osborn]

Jana Dixon, the author of 'The Biology of Kundalini' calls the Forbidden Letters a...

'...type of psychotic rambling, holding back serious disclosure of the phenomena of kundalini.'

She is of the opinion that...

'...the authors of these letters attempt to appear mysterious and knowledgable, stringing together archaic imagery under a glaze of paranoid archetypal-symbolic secrecy.' [see footnote 5]

Jonathan Rice clearly disagrees with all this when he writes me that...

'...it is that uppish we-don't-care-whether-you-believe-us, you'll-see-we-were-right-sky under which those Letters are written that makes me trust them. - Impostors are much more sophisticated. And they certainly don't share their insecurities and questions with you in public, like the authors of those letters do. What's more, all the mysteries of alchemy seem solved. From the ludus puerorum to the decapitation, and from the role of the stone to the alchemist having to visit the center of the earth. Everything fits, and fits neatly. Even the Phoenix is explained, being a metaphor for the human body consumed and recomposed in kundalini-fire.'

And Jean Fenelon is happy to finally read a text on Kundalini...

'... not written by some New Age word-fetishist who, with his flood of words, only tries to hide the fact that, in reality, he knows nothing.'

Part 2

"So paradise is about 'Me Tarzan, you Wayne?' - Brokeback Paradise?" [David Goldberg]

In the autumn of 2006 I finally decided to consult three famous French experts on alchemy on the Forbidden Letters. They were all three highly alarmed, but wouldn't allow me to quote them in public at the same time. And if you think that is strange, Gary Osborn has too approached several alchemists.
And they all wrote back that 'the Letters contain many truths', but...

'...that they wouldn't want to go into detail.' [Osborn]

One of the respondents nevertheless went so far as to say that...

'... the Forbidden Letters by the Paris 4 are the conclusion to the mysteries of alchemy.'

The most revolutional part of those Letters being of course their timetable. A timetable implying that God is on his way in our genes. That alchemy is hence the goal of evolution, and that, therefore, there has never been such a thing as a sacred past or golden era. 'Man is god in the making' [Hall], not in the remaking.

And if that is true, and I think it is, then nothing makes more sense of course than exactly the unifying alchemical theory of the Paris 4.

- It's a pity Crowley can't read those Letters, Raven laments. I think it's equally a pity Jung can't read them, because it was Jung, to quote Richard Noll from his 'The Aryan Christ'...

'...who integrated the core themes of the ancient mysteries into his alchemical studies. Not only because he believed that the symbols were similar, but that both the mysteries and alchemy were, at their core, secret, underground, anti-orthodox christian spiritual movements that promised individual redemption and rebirth.'

What's more, Jung was of the opinion that...

'...within each native European there was a living pre-christian layer of the unconscious psyche that produced religious images from the Hellenistic pagan mystery cults, or even the more archaic [cults] of the Aryans. This phylogenetic unconscious does not produce purely christian symbols, but instead offers pagan images. If the sediment of two thousand years of Judeo-Christian culture could be disturbed, then this semitic 'mask' might be removed, and the biologically true images of the original god within could be revealed.' [Noll]

We cannot escape remembering Burland here, saying that...

'...one cannot read the alchemical literature of the Middle Ages without contstantly being reminded of the pre-christian mythology of the people north of Rome.' And Dufour, who reminds us of the fact that...

'...the christian religion is one of the youngest of the many thousands of our planet.' A religion that, after reading the response articles on the Forbidden Letters, indeed seems to have been exclusively inititiated to form a 'vehicle for alchemy'.

'Within the visible body there resides a spiritual body which Boehme compares to an 'oil' which must be set on fire.'[Aniane]

'And at night, Isis ('who belonged to the cosmology of Heliopolis' [Baring and Cashford]) placed the child in a fire to burn away all that was mortal in him.'[Baring and Cashford]

'Texts about 'burning Horus' and his salvation are extant in various Egyptian and Greek documents.'[Burkert]

'Throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrims visited Heliopolis to view the tree in whose shade, according to the Christian texts, the Holy Family rested on their flight from King Herod. [Quirke]

'You are born once with a soul and a body, and a third agent, spirit, can come in to save that body and soul by making it immortal in the Work of the Sun.'[Hanno Temming in his article on the Forbidden Letters at World Mysteries]

'Through baptism by fire, man, who was before dead, is made a living soul.'[Aurora Consurgens]

'Let the dead bury the dead.'[Jesus in Matthew]

'I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.'[John the Baptist in Matthew]

'Nothing depends on baptism with water. Baptism with water only symbolizes the fact that we were born through water, meaning biologically born. We need  two births to be saved. The one through water which gives us our spine and brain, the Tree of Life, that infrastructure for the Work of the Sun, and a second one through fire, when God plants our Tree of Life in that fire 'to stand everlasting.' So it's silly to say that you need to be baptized. You need to be biologically born through water, and to be born again though fire. That fire being the alchemical one called Kundalini, that water being the water of the womb. People who practise baptism and think anything depends on that confuse the symbol with the real thing.'[Fenelon]

'Whoever is near me, is near the fire, whoever is far from me, is far from the Kingdom.'[Jesus in Thomas]

'Kundalini either saves or destroys.'[de Beaumont]

'You Christ, who are all fire, have mercy on me.'[Ephraem the Syrian]

Part 3

[ etching by Rembrandt ]

'The acts of Jesus are as fictional as the acts of Parzival.' [The Paris 4]

' Not only do these Gospel contradictions preclude inerrancy, we have to ask how Christian traditions about such a key event as the crucifixion could have become so confused. The unresolved contradictions plaguing these stories from beginning to end make harmonization impossible. The Gospel writers disagree as to which day this momentous event took place, what the charges were, who was there, what Jesus said during his ordeal, and just about everything else. Under Jewish law of that time, executions could not be carried out during Passover. Also, the trial was illegal under Jewish law because the chief priest did not conduct trials, especially those possibly resulting in capital punishment. If Pontius Pilate had turned Jesus over to the Jews to be executed the method of execution would not have been crucifixion, as practiced by the Romans, it would have been stoning, the traditional Jewish method of execution. There is no geological evidence of any earthquake at that time nor is there any record of a mysterious darkness from noon to 3pm. According to Shmuel Golding of the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics, the temple veil was still there and in one piece 35 years after the alleged crucifixion. For these obvious reasons the gospel accounts of the so-called passion stories must be declared pure fiction.'  [L.Cable]

Footnotes

1. Jung also spoke of the potential neurotic effects of homosexuality on homosexuals, where he had better spoken of the potential neurotic effects of homophobia on homosexuals. After all, give homosexuals the same dignity as heterosexuals, and the neurotic effects of homosexuality on homosexuals will be as widespread as the neurotic effects of heterosexuality on heterosexuals. 
   

2. 'By the power of that (Grail)stone, the Phoenix burns to ashes, but the ashes quickly restore him to life again.'[Wolfram von Eschenbach on the Grail in his Parzival]
    

3. The Virgilian term for a solar eclipse (labor solis) is on top astronomically incorrect. Because a solar eclipse is the Work of the Moon of course, just as a lunar eclipse is the Work of the Earth (labor terrae).
    

4. Fraudulent I cannot judge, but psychotic? Perhaps Gardiner has been visited by hackers again who presented themselves as members of the Paris 4. That has happened before: 'The information came thick and fast and I was quite enjoying, if not totally agreeing, with what I was reading. Then something strange happened. Almost everybody on my own forum started being hacked. My emails and the Paris 4's emails were intercepted and we seemingly started saying bad things against each other. I closed up and refused to listen to anymore. Then we both found that somebody had been messing with our emails. Some people on my forum also had the same thing and eventually we all managed to get filters and god knows what else to stop it.' [Gardiner]
    

5. A month later Dixon would acknowledge the fact that 'the idea of kundalini coiled at the base of the spine is clearly archaic'.