©1999 Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges
Republished with permission of Jay Weidner.
In the end, the mystery of the Cross at Hendaye, and the secret it was designed to encode, boils down to the message contained in the oddly divided Latin inscription. Fulcanelli instructs the reader that its message concerns a place of refuge from the double catastrophe described by the monument. But how exactly does it tell us this? And does it give us any clue to where this place of refuge might be located?
At this point in our investigation, we had proved that Fulcanelli’s assertions of a double catastrophe were viable, and even found evidence linking the cataclysmic process to the inner and outer transformative mechanisms of alchemy. Dr. LaViolette’s active ether subquantum kinetics model even resembled Sannella and Bentov’s “kindling effect” model for the onset of Kundalini. This suggests that the inner light and the outer light are generated by similar processes.
Everything that Fulcanelli had alleged, no matter how bizarre it sounded on first reading, had been found to be based on truth. There seemed no reason to doubt Fulcanelli’s word on the inner meaning of the inscription’s message. However, in the Hendaye chapter, Fulcanelli gives us no clue as to what or where this place of refuge might be.
He simply informs us that from the inscription “we can learn that a country exists where death cannot reach man at the terrible time of the double cataclysm.” It is up to us to find it, implying that the inscription does indeed tell us the “geographical location of this promised land.” Those who find it, Fulcanelli promises, will take up the mission of renewing mankind after the disaster. Fulcanelli assumes that this elite will be “the children of Elias,” that is the followers of the astro-alchemical path of transformation. As we will see, this hope may or may not have become reality.
So we are left with the 17 letters of the inscription -OCRUXAVES/PESUNICA – and Fulcanelli’s peculiar comments on it. He begins by telling us that it is easy to recognize the familiar phrase: O Crux Ave Spes Unica, which is translated as “Hail O Cross, the Only Hope.” Indeed this inscription is so common as to render any coded phrase within it meaningless. There must hundreds of thousands of graves in France with this inscription on them. Fulcanelli tells us that this one is different because of the misplaced S.
In telling us exactly how this makes a difference, however, Fulcanelli lapses into obscurity. He calls attention to the incorrect grammar in the second line, even though he knows that including the S on the second line would correct the grammar. As we have seen, Pes, foot or measure, can also be related to unica, the word “only,” by transposing the i and the c to form uncia, “the 12th part.” This “measure of the 12th part” can be connected to the cycles of the catastrophe measured by the galactic Cross. Fulcanelli is calling attention to this interpretation with his fudging about grammar. But he doesn’t say that this is the reason for the split S, he merely speculates that it was done on purpose.
And then he tells us that he already knew the meaning of the inscription from studying the images on the pedestal. This is a clear reference to the cosmic cycles and alignments spelled out on the pedestal, the “measurement of the 12th part.” But he wants to show investigators how these “hidden matters” might be solved by “plain common sense, logic and reasoning.” In other words, he is posing us a riddle, an intellectual test.
He tells us that the letter S, “which takes on the curving shape of a snake, [(note that spes, hope, reversed is seps, or snake)] corresponds to the Greek khi (X) and takes over its esoteric meaning.” Just in case we missed this reference to the key or Cross in the sky made by the X of the snakes or dragons, Fulcanelli informs us that “it is the heliocoidal track of the sun, having arrived at the zenith of its curve across space, at the time of the cyclic catastrophe.”
Of course, this is only clear if you have made the mental journey outlined in this book. “The heliocoidal track of the sun” is an archaic term for the sun’s precessional motion against the ecliptic. Heliocoidal can be translated literally as sun circles, a description of the ecliptic and the slow “suspended” movement of the earth’s wobble against it. The zenith of its curve across space is the moment when the solstices cross the galactic axis – the time, according to Fulcanelli, of the cyclic catastrophe.
When Leo fell on the spring equinox, aligning the rising sun with the local energy gradient of the solar system’s movement through the cosmic ray field coming from the center of the galaxy, the summer solstice was slowly coming into alignment with the opposite end of the galactic axis, the region of Taurus and the Pleiades. Now, half a precessional cycle later, Leo rises on the fall equinox as the winter solstice begins its alignment with galactic center in Scorpio. As Fulcanelli insists, the crossing of these dragons create “the image of the Beast of the Apocalypse, the dragon, which on the days of Judgment, spews out fire and brimstone on macrocosmic creation.”
However clear this is, it brings us no closer to finding our place of refuge. It does however confirm our theories about astro-alchemy and the apocalypse. Fulcanelli simply says that the symbolic value of the S, displaced on purpose, gives us to understand that the phrase must be translated in the secret language. However, his explanation of how this phrase can be translated in the phonetic language of the birds seems to lack any emphasis on the displaced S. He tells us to read in French “the Latin just as it is written. Then by making use of the permutation of vowels, we shall be able to read off the new words, forming another sentence, and re-establish the spelling, the word order and the literary sense.”
When we do this, Fulcanelli assures us, we will find the sentence: “Il est ecrit que la vie se refugie en un seul espace,” which can be translated as “it is written that life takes refuge in a single space.” Yet, we have missed something if we take Fulcanelli’s word for it and do not attempt to solve the puzzle ourselves.
He implies that we are to read the Latin letters as if they were French words. When we do this, certain words pop out at us. “La vie,” or life is easy to derive phonetically from AV, or ah vee, and “espace” is also obviously derived from ESPE, ess pay ee. We can find ecrit in CRX, eh cree teh, by seeing the X as a T, and en un seul can be found in UNCA, en un say ahh. The I and the S form the “il est” that begins the sentence. Therefore we have I S CRX, AV, ESPE, UNCA, or “Il est ecrit (que) la vie (se refugie) en un seul espace.” There are two letters left, the O and the U.
Curiously, there is no way to make the French word “refugie” from this Latin phrase. There is no consonant for the “jay” sound of refu-gie. Even if we reuse the R and assign the U to the “oo,” we are left with only part of the word. However, “refugie,” as Fulcanelli gives it, is not refuge but refugee, implying that the sentence should read “It is written that life (becomes) a refugee in a single space.” Fulcanelli emphasizes the displaced S, which falls in the middle of the word “space,” telling us that is the key to the code. Since refuge is not directly attainable from the Latin inscription as it is, we are directed to the displaced S and its assignment in this specific case to the Greek letter Khi, which is X or K. We can only find the place of “refuge,” and restore “the literary sense,” if we can solve the puzzle of the S that changes into an X and the X that changes into an S.
From this, we can see that Jules Boucher in his 1936 article misunderstood the directions for translating the inscription. He clearly knows that it is a phonetic key, but can’t make it work. He gives us the French translation of the sound of the Latin words, O Croix Have Espace Unique, or “O cross, the single pale space.” From the above it is easy to see how he arrived at this, but it also shows that he was far from the mark. Fulcanelli uses similar methods and arrives at a conclusion that leads us deeper into the inscription itself. Boucher thinks the inscription points to the disaster – he changes Croix to Mort or death to make the point – but seems unaware of its promise of refuge.
Our puzzle then is to find the place of refuge by changing the S into K, or a hard C sound. This suggests a cryptogramic or anagramic process, such as that proposed by Mevryl in The Fulcanelli Phenomenon. However, Mevryl’s complex and spurious anagrams are designed to deceive the reader, to make sure that this sort of word play is discredited before anyone actually applies the riddle of the S to K to the inscription itself. First and most curious, Mevryl switches the attribution. In his version, X becomes S, not S becomes X or K. This is clearly not what Fulcanelli meant. He tells us that S corresponds to K, takes over its meaning in fact, not the other way around.
Mevryl’s interpretation of the inscription doesn’t suggest any place of refuge, and his comments on Fulcanelli’s translation indicates that he might not understand as much as Boucher. Mevryl tells us that Fulcanelli translated the inscription into French, Boucher’s O Croix Have Espace Unique, and “then transposed it into the langue diplomatique by means of the rules of diplomacy.” This parroting of Fulcanelli shows that either Mevryl did not understand it, or chose to make it incomprehensible.
He does, curiously, suggest that the front paws of the Sphinx is our X-marks-the-spot observation point. He notes that Hail, in Saudi Arabia, is in the line of sight from the Sphinx, and that far beyond it is the Himalayas and the valley of Katmandhu. This, he suggests, is the place of refuge, drawing attention to the cat, man and hu or breath combination found in the name Katmandhu. The valleys of Nepal are thought to be places of refuge in the Tibetan tradition, associated with both Padmasambhava and the Kalachakra tantra, so Mevryl is pointing to a possible connection. However, his attribution of Cat-Man, Sphinx, and Hu, breath as the place of refuge has nothing to do with the message on the inscription. Once again, as we will see, Mevryl is toying with us.