The whole life of this pre-eminent adept, the first initiate after St. John who was devoted to the hierarchic apostolate of holy orthodoxy—his entire life, we repeat, was passed in pious foundations, in preachings, in immense scientific labours. Thus, in 1276, he established at Palma a college of Franciscans dedicated to the study of Oriental languages, and Arabic especially, with the object of refuting the works of Mohammedan doctors and of preaching the Christian faith among the Moors. John XXI confirmed this institution by a pastoral letter dated from Viterbo on December 16, in the first year of his pontificate.
From 1293 to 1311, Lully solicited and obtained from Pope Nicholas IV and from the kings of France, Sicily, Cyprus and Majorca, the establishment of many other colleges for the same purpose. Wherever he went he gave instructions in his Great Art, which is an universal synthesis of human knowledge, and has as its prime object the institution of one language among men as also one mode of thought. He visited Paris and there astonished the most learned doctors; afterwards he crossed over to Spain, tarried at Complute, where he founded a central academy for the study of languages and sciences. He reformed a number of convents, went on to Italy and recruited soldiers for a new military order, the institution of which he advocated at the very Council of Vienna which condemned the Templars. The catholic science and the true initiation of St. John were intended thereby to rescue the protecting sword of the Temple from faithless hands. The great ones of this world derided poor Raymund Lully, and yet in their own despite they did all that he desired. This illuminated personality, termed by derision Raymund the Fantastic, seems to have been pope of popes and king of kings; he was poor as Job and gave alms to sovereigns; he was called a fool, and he was of that order of folly which confounds sages. The greatest politician of the period, Cardinal Ximenes, whose mind was as vast as it was serious, never spoke of him except as the divine Raymund Lully and the most enlightened doctor. He died in 1314, according to Genebrard, or in 1315, according to the author of the preface to the Meditations of the Hermit Blaquerne. He was eighty years old, and the end of his toilsome and holy existence came on the Festival of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul.[245]
A disciple of the great Kabalists, Raymund Lully sought to establish an absolute and universal philosophy by substituting for the conventional abstractions of systems a fixed notion of natural actualities and by substituting a simple and natural mode of expression for the ambiguous terms of scholasticism. He condemned the definitions of the scholars at his period because they perpetuated disputes by their inexactitude and amphibology. According to Aristotle, man is a reasonable animal, but it may be replied that he is not an animal and is only rarely reasonable. Moreover, the words animal and reasonable cannot be brought into harmony; a fool, in this sense, would not be a man, and so forth. Raymund Lully defined things by their right names and not by their synonyms or approximations; afterwards he explained the names by etymology. To the question—What is man?—he would therefore reply that the word, in its general acceptation, signifies the state of being human, but taken in a particular acceptation it designates the human personality. What, however is this human personality? Originally, it is the personality which God made by breathing life into a body compounded of earth (humus); literally it is you, it is I, it is Peter, Paul, and so on. Those who were accustomed to scientific jargon protested to the illuminated doctor that anyone could talk like this; that on the basis of such a method the whole world might pose as learned; and that popular common sense would be preferred before the doctrine of academies. “That is just what I wish,” was the answer of Raymund Lully in his great simplicity. Hence the reproach of puerility made against his enlightened theory; and puerile it was in a sense, but with the puerility of His counsel Who said: “Except ye become as one of these little ones, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” Is not the Kingdom of Heaven also that of science, seeing that the celestial life of God and men is but understanding and love?
The design of Raymund Lully was to set the Christianised Kabalah against the fatalistic magia of the Arabs, Egyptian traditions against those of India, the Magic of Light against Black Magic. He testified that, in the last days, the doctrines of Antichrist would be a materialised realism and that there would be a recrudescence of all the monstrosities of evil Magic. Hence he sought to prepare minds for the return of Enoch, or otherwise for the final revelation of that science the key of which is in the hieroglyphical alphabets of Enoch. This harmonising light of reason and faith is to precede the Messianic and universal reign of Christianity on earth. So was Lully a great prophet for true Kabalists and seers, while for sceptics who at least can respect exalted characters and noble aspirations, he was a sublime dreamer.
CHAPTER IV
ON CERTAIN ALCHEMISTS
Nicholas Flamel belongs to alchemy exclusively, and he enters only into our consideration because of the hieroglyphical book of Abraham the Jew, in which the scrivener of the rue Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie found the absolute keys of the Great Work. This book was founded on the Keys of the Tarot and was simply a hieroglyphical and Hermetic commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah. We find as a fact, by the description of Flamel himself, that the leaves were 21 in number, making 22 with the title,[246] and that they were divided into three septenaries, having a blank leaf at every seventh page. Let us here bear in mind that the Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic summary of all occult types, also divided its symbols into three septenaries, between each of which there is silence in heaven, thus instituting a striking analogy with the uninscribed leaf in the mystic book of Flamel.[247] The septenaries of the Apocalypse are (a) seven seals to open, meaning seven mysteries to be learned and seven difficulties to be overcome; (b) seven trumpets to sound, being seven utterances to understand; (c) seven vials to empty, which signify seven substances which must be volatilised and fixed.
In the work of Flamel the first seventh leaf has as its hieroglyphical character the wand of Moses overcoming the serpents brought forth by the magicians of Pharaoh. They are seen devouring one another, and the figure as a whole is analogous to the Victor of the Tarot, yoking to his cubic chariot the white and black sphinxes of Egyptian Magic. The symbol in question corresponds to the seventh dogma in the creed of Maimonides: we acknowledge but one prophet, who is Moses. It represents the unity of science and the work; it represents further the Mercury of the Wise, which is formed by the dissolution of composites and by the reciprocal action of the Sulphur and Salt of metals.
The emblem on the fourteenth page was the Brazen Serpent set upon a cross. The cross represents the marriage of the purified Sulphur and Salt, as also the condensation of the Astral Light. The fourteenth Trump card in the Tarot depicts an angel, who is the spirit of the earth, mingling the liquids in two ewers, one of gold and one of silver. It is the same symbol formulated after another manner. On the 21st leaf of Flamel’s book there was the type of space and universal life, represented by a desert with springs of water and serpents gliding hither and thither.[248] In the Tarot, space is typified by the four signs allocated to the cardinal points of heaven, and life is represented by a naked girl dancing in a circle. Flamel does not specify the number of springs and serpents, but the former would probably be four, springing from one source, as in the Pantacle of Eden; the serpents would be four, seven, nine or ten.
On the fourth leaf was the figure of Time, preparing to cut off the feet of Mercury. Close by was a rose-tree in blossom, the root being blue, the stem white, the leaves red, and the flowers golden.[249] The number four is that of elemental realisation. Time is atmospheric nitre; his scythe is the acid which is extracted from this nitre, and the Mercury is fixed thereby, being transformed into salt. The rose-tree represents the Work and the successive colours which characterise its stages: it is the mastery passing through the black, white and red aspects, out of which gold is produced as a blossom that buds and unfolds.
The number 5 is that of the Great Mystery, and on the fifth page blind men were represented digging up the ground round the rose-tree in search of the grand agent which is present everywhere. Some others, who were better advised, were weighing a white water, resembling a solidified air.[250] On the reverse side of this page was the massacre of the innocents, with the sun and moon descending to bathe in their blood. This allegory, which is the literal secret of Hermetic art, has reference to that process of taking air into air, as Aristeus[251] puts it; or, to speak intelligible language, of using air as force, expanding it by means of Astral Light, just as water is changed into steam by the action of fire. This can be accomplished by the aid of electricity, magnets and a powerful projection of the operator’s will, when directed by science and good intent. The children’s blood represents that essential light which is extracted by philosophical fire from elementary bodies. When it is said that the sun and moon come down to bathe, the meaning is that the silver therein is tinctured into gold and that the gold acquires a grade of purity by which its sulphur is transformed into the true Powder of Projection.