There is a similarity between the incantation of Leyden Papyrus, presented by Berthelot, and a quote by Canseliet in which the extended Spirit introduces a form very close to immortality.
M.Berthelot selected the Papyrus V, among all the Leyden Corpus manuscripts, to make it the introduction to his “ L’Etude de la Chimie des Anciens et du Moyen Age” Paris 1889, The Chemistry of the Ancient and Middle Ages. Berthelot tells us that this kind of operative manuscript often starts with an invocation or, better, a magic incantation by the scribe, generally resembling those found in “De Misteriis Egyptiorum” by Iamblicus.
Nevertheless, Papyrus of Leyden begins with a spellbinding stock of epithets that dazzles Berthelot himself in such a way that he must acknowledge they contain a certain degree of “ grandeur ”. Here I let Berthelot take full responsibility for summarizing all Leyden manuscripts as a collection of “ recipes to obtain falsified gold”.
Les portes du ciel sont ouvertes;
Les portes de la terre sont ouvertes;
La route de la mer est ouvert;
La route des fleuves est ouvert;
Mon esprit a été entendu par tous les dieux et les génies;
Mon esprit a été entendu par l’ésprit du ciel;
Mon esprit a été entendu par l’ésprit de la terre;
Mon esprit a été entendu par l’ésprit de la mer;
Mon esprit a été entendu par l’ésprit des fleuves.
Roughly:
The gates of the sky are open;
The gates of the earth are open;
The path of the sea is open;
The path of the rivers is open;
My spirit is being extended by all the gods and all the genies ( or daemons);
The spirit of the sky is extending my spirit;
The spirit of the earth is extending my spirit;
The spirit of the sea is extending my spirit;
The spirit of the rivers is extending my spirit.
Wait a moment before putting that off as a drogue consumption witness or a moving piece of poetry ( highly valuable topics, by the way). In the year 1600 A.D., in Rome, Giordano Bruno suffered the stake on a charge of Pantheism for having run along these lines.
In alchemy, there isn’t a thing like a spirit, as we commonly intend, as opposed to a thing like matter. In his popular equation, Einstein has balanced energy and mass, not spirit and matter. He was the first to make a sort of equivalence between mass and not better-identified energy. In that, he is very close to the hermetic concept of density stairs if only he had assimilated the concept of Secret Fire. Anyway, Spirit/Secret Fire, in a hermetic sense, not a religious one, is not a kind of energy, yet a substance on its own. People of the end of the nineteenth century, like Marcelin Berthelot, had discarded this archaic knowledge in favor of a more mechanical idea of nature working. Hardly could they accept electrical interactions between atoms. Of course, no element can turn into another in a chemical environment. For that reason, Berthelot treated Leyden’s recipes as archaic nonsense.
Ancient Egyptian burial practices concerned various Spirit densities, including the most undetectable one. Not body densities ( Maspero). These ineffable spirits were known as being double because of their strange working “ad speculum” ( like a mirror). Spirit, for us, is a synonym for Secret Fire/Mercure ( at least one of them around 500 more popular synonyms).
Back to the Leyden Papyrus incantation, we can notice a similarity here between the incantation mentioned above and an excerpt from“ Histoire Comique des Etats et empires du Soleil” by Savinien de Bergerac quoted by Canseliet in “Etudes diverses de Symbolisme hermétique et de Pratique Philosophale” 1964:
“… as my sight fell on my chest, I went through instead of being blocked by my body surface. I found myself looking behind me without turning my head. I felt my flesh, free from its opacity, transferring objects to my eyes and my eyes to the objects through my body… “
Canseliet (1) wrote that this miracle occurs at the end of the last cooking ( for a scheme of Opus Magnum). Instead of the vase open, the alchemist is going to find a great light:
“… I didn’t find the vase. In its place, I found the sky around me … inside an icosahedral crystal dome… I couldn’t help but touch it and break it into pieces.”
To this crystal dome, Canseliet gave the name of VITRIOL:” this is the crystal that raised our philosophe throughout the atmosphere to the empire of the sun, where the real Rosicrucians receive their legendary longevity and ubiquity.”
It may sound strange to Canseliet. But he, under any circumstances, trusted Bergerac, quoting him several times on more alchemical orthodox issues. But what do we mean by alchemical orthodox? Indeed Canseliet sometimes tends to surprise us with daring points. And ubiquity and longevity are set apart for the brave enough. Even magical arts usually do not aim so high. This statement from a so highly erudite researcher, the very person Fulcanelli entrusted with writing the preface to his works, might be a puzzling clue. Longevity, the ubiquity. How far are they from an immortality condition?
Of course “Histoire Comique des etats et empires du soleil” is a fictional composition. And as for actual Rose Cross, well… I imagine you are to encounter them as I am.
- Eugène Canseliet ( 1899-1984), pupil of J.J Champagne, made the acquaintance of Pierre Dujols and of course of Fulcanelli. Apart from some undeniable lies when answering about Fulcanelli’s identity, Canseliet was the hermetic authority of the XX century.
- See also Testamentum Fraternitatis Roseae et Aureae Crucis. Part 2 .