The Path that Saves from Exile and Death, presented by Charles d'Hooghvorst at the Almirall bookstore in Barcelona, 2001
INTRODUCTORY NOTE by R. Arola
Over the years dedicated to spreading The Message Rediscovered in Spain, many took an interest in this mysterious book. Charles d’ Hooghvorst tirelessly assumed his responsibility: he regularly received visitors at his home, kept up a lively correspondence, and did not hesitate to seize every opportunity to take part in seminars and presentations, or to give lectures.
Every year in November, a series of lectures dedicated to the masters of the tradition took place at the Almirall bookshop in Barcelona. In November 2001, Charles d’ Hooghvorst presented the work of Louis Cattiaux to an audience of around one hundred people. During his lectures, he used to read the text he had prepared, each word of which he had patiently weighed up, with the aim of accurately expressing the thought he wanted to convey. We present here this text, written in his own hand.
On this occasion, he addressed an aspect often mentioned by Cattiaux: the way of the saint and the way of the wise man, which represent the two levels of realization that should not be confused. These two ways constitute the two parts of the Great Work of the alchemists: dissolution and coagulation., «How is it possible» Charles d’ Hooghvorst wondered «that this fundamental notion of every sacred tradition has been radically erased from the consciousness of Western man?»
Our author could not come to terms with this; with natural charisma, he continued to explain to anyone willing to listen that tradition a reality that is not only metaphysical or mystical, but that, being at the root of the complete regeneration of creation, it is also physical and initiatory.
During this lecture, Charles d’ Hooghvorst would talk about Louis Cattiaux, his brother Emmanuel and also Eugenius Philalethes, alias Thomas Vaughan (1622-1666), whose study of the complete works enthusiastically punctuated his daily life until the end of his life. He found in this English alchemist the same teaching as in his friend Cattiaux and his brother Emmanuel.
The two successive paths of return to God (2001), OR THE PATH THAT SAVES FROM EXILE AND DEATH, studied mainly according to the teachings of The Message Rediscovered, by Charles d’Hooghvorst
The concept of an original fall of nature and humanity is present in all traditions, and no one can deny its consequences: suffering, illness, old age and death.
Any search for divinity involves the recognition of this fundamental notion of an incarnation on a land mixed with death, a land of exile, like the Israelites who became slaves in Egypt, subjected to all kinds of servile labour, with no other end in sight than death.
Would it not have been better to remain in this unconsciousness of the «Great Wholeness», instead of incarnating ourselves, i.e. seeking to obtain this imperfect body doomed to destruction, and suffering all its consequences?
The question is worth asking, but its answer is negative: do not we see that without the body, without the senses, the spirit cannot manifest itself, cannot express itself? All external nature proves to us that the universal spirit, the soul of the world, needs an earthly seed to manifest itself. It is then that this spirit produces all sorts of species in the three worlds: mineral, vegetable and animal.
Nature always tends to incarnate itself. Let us turn for a moment to the metals generated in the bowels of the earth. What generates them is nothing other than their correspondents in heaven, that is to say, this universal spirit, called universal because it proceeds from the seven planets in relation to the seven metals. These planets, through their circular movement around the zodiac, always turn in the same direction. «Universal» comes from the Latin universus, «that which turns in the same direction». This is what the Ancients called the «soul of the world», which they identified with divinity.
This force is the one that seeks to corporatise itself in this world, which keeps it alive and nourishes it; it is also life, the light of the sun.
During the night, this universal spirit settles on the earth through the humidity of the air or dew. It is attracted by the natural magnets of each species and incorporates itself into them, causing them to grow.
In the morning, due to the heat of the sun, the spirit that has not been attracted rises upwards; and the portion of this spirit that has been retained in the roots of plants, for example, is also drawn upwards, but into the trunks and buds of plants, causing them to grow and increase.
The secret of the sages seems to be this universal spirit that they say must be collected in the spring, when it is more abundant, but before it is mixed with the mixed elements of the three kingdoms.
It is extremely volatile and escapes at the slightest light. Assuming one manages to collect a certain quantity of this spirit, what should one do with it? They say it must be united with a fixed substance of the same nature as itself, namely, with a perfectly pure body. But there is no perfectly pure body in this world. So what should we do?
It seems that one must dissolve and purify this body of the same nature in order to make it suitable to unite with the universal spirit so that it can germinate and bear fruit.
This spirit continually desires to take on a corporeal form in the earth. It is therefore generative, but it is also destructive, since it is this same universal spirit that ultimately destroys each of its creations. For the original paradisiacal earth was poisoned due to the mixture introduced by the enemy at the time of our first parents’ fall. This earth therefore carries within it the seed of its own corruption.
Such is the world of generation and corruption in which we have been plunged at the moment of our birth; the divine destiny of man, foreseen at the beginning, has been frozen and replaced by a destiny without purpose, subjected to the blind force of the stars.
The spirit always seeks to take on a corporeal form; the desire for a body is therefore precisely what drove us to incarnate in this land of exile. But it is an animal body, with a vulgar sense, that we have acquired. To be regenerated, this sense must be washed, softened and purified by blessing. This is the treasure that exile gives us the opportunity to find and know.
This is why The Message Rediscovered says:
The fall of man has a divinely elevated goal, which is the acquisition of a base body and its glorification in God. (MR, XXV, 49)
The serpent had indeed told Eve:
You will not surely die. For God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God. (Gen. 3, 45)
However, he held back from telling him about the price to be paid before reaching that state of «being like God». This price consists of all the trials that exile imposes on us to teach us that we are living on a foreign land, which is not our true homeland.
To put it another way, one could say that the divine seed we still carry within us does not germinate because we are, as it were, in the winter and in the exile in a foreign land. This winter frost creates the hell of this world. Through this frost, our sensitive soul, the soul of our senses, has been bound and attached to the three kingdoms (mineral, vegetable and animal) upon whose bark it merely crawls, as they are the food of its survival, but this food is mixed with corruption. Our soul, thus riveted, groans in exile and dissatisfaction, because we have a nostalgia for «something».
It is here that study must intervene, I mean, the study of the words of the sages and prophets who teach us the profound meaning of the mystery of the incarnation and consequently of regeneration. For if study and tradition do not intervene, we will follow the natural inclination of every spirit, which is to wish to return to the «Great Whole known before incarnation». This is mysticism, the so-called spiritual realizations, because our spirit has only one desire: to return to a bliss of which it still has a vague memory, but which is a senseless beatitude, without the senses; precisely because we want to escape from these senses that stink and torment us. This is what all the series of spiritual schools proposes to us through asceticism: they are realizations in spirit, that is to say, senseless, without the senses. Another tendency would be to attach our senses to the cross of discipline, of ascetic morality.
The Message Rediscovered teaches us this:
There are two ways back to God:
either the dissolution in free and universal life, or the coagulation in it.
The first way is taught by many and accomplished by a few.
The second way is taught by a few and achieved by very few.
He who separates them is ignorant.
He who unites them is wise.
(MR, XXVI, 13 à 13”)
The first way back to God consists of dissolution into universal and free life, which should not be confused with a mystical realization that we have just discussed and which is achieved by means of asceticism or natural disposition. This can sometimes give rise to astonishing powers; but these manifestations always come from the human being, let us not forget it, and are fleeting and inconsistent.
On the other hand, this first way of dissolution, that The Message Rediscovered speaks of is the fruit of a divine initiation, which is quite different. It is the beginning of the work of regeneration; this path is spiritual and even mystical, in a certain sense, but on the condition of understanding the word «mystical» in its etymological sense, i.e. «initiation into the mysteries» (in Greek mysticos means «concerned with the mysteries», and mystès, «initiated into the mysteries»).
Initiation is the awakening of that divine seed which is frozen in the human being, by means of «something» that is outside of man and that is not in man’ s power.
The study of the Word of our Master Hermes, and especially prayer, can help to obtain this external «means», without which nothing can begin.
One of the names of this «means» is Isis, Wisdom, the celestial Mother, the tacit Genius of the Scriptures. She represents what alchemists call «the volatile». On the other hand, the seed buried in the nature of this world is referred to as «the fixed». It is therefore towards heaven that we must turn at the beginning; it is this Celestial Lady that one must call upon, for she is intelligent and hears the prayers addressed to her.
We can say that this first path of returning to God constitutes the initial step, the spiritual realization that leads to enlightenment, what the Easterners may call «Nirvana».
The disciple is then already in God, but only in spirit.
The Message Rediscovered tells us:
Some attain here below
the spiritual enlightenment of the Lord of life,
and we call them blessed. […] It is the return to the free,
moving and unconditioned state in God.
They are God’s delivered. (MR XXXII, 42 et 43’)
Regarding this dissolution, this «SOLVE», we can read the following explanation in a treatise by Eugenius Philalethes:
I say that God created water to oppose it to the earth; and this appears by their different complexions and qualities. For the earth is gross and solid, the water, subtle and fluid; and the earth had in her the coagulating, astringent power, as the water had partly in it the softening, dissolving faculty. The earth then shuts up herself, and in herself the fire, so that there can be no generation or vegetation, unless the earth be opened, that the fire may be at liberty to work.
This we may see in a grain of Corn, where astringent, earthy faculty had bound up all the other elements, and terminated them to a dry compacted body. Now, this body, as long as it is dry, or as our Saviour said, « as long as it abides alone» (John 12, 24); that is to say, as long as it is without water, so long it can bear no fruit: But if it falls into the ground and dies, that is to say, if it be dissolved there by the humidity of heaven (for death is but dissolution) then it will bring forth much fruit, as our Saviour testifies.
It is the water then that dissolves, and life follows the dissolution; for no sooner is the body opened, but the spirit stirs in it, perceiving in the dissolvent or dewy water another spirit, to which he desires to be united . (The Works of Thomas Vaughan, edited by Arthur Ed. Waite, Kessinger Publishing Company USA, p. 425-426)
This process of dissolution could not be expressed more clearly!
To embark on this path, philosophers teach us that one must head north, where the sun never comes. These are the mysteries of the night, what some have called the occult experience, the initiatory death that provides the viaticum, the star that guides the Magi. Many courageous seekers have immersed themselves into the occult, but how many have emerged luminous, saying: Nox illuminatio mea, i.e. «my night is my light»? Indeed, there is no alchemy without Cabala. The Message Rediscovered indicates the two stages of the great work of the alchemists:
It is necessary to dissolve before coagulating.
That is the law of heaven and earth
(MR, XXXI, 39 et 39’)
One has to imbibe and dissolve before drying and cooking, for he who begins by cooking fixes the filth of sin instead of eliminating it. (MR XXII, 65’)
There is only one true ART, that which manifests the free spirit, which is the light of the Universe. There is only one true science, that which fixes this divine light in the repose of God. (MR XXII, 31’)
In other words, SOLVE and COAGULA.
After this union of heaven and earth, or of the volatile and the fixed, the second stage can take place. Some of these enlightened ones, as told in The Message Rediscovered:
[…] obtain the knowledge of divine science and go beyond spiritual realization to penetrate substantial realization.
It is the access to the free, fixed and manifested state in God. They are God’s resurrected.
(MR, XXXII, 44 et 44’)
When the human being, during the operation, emerges from this hidden world, he becomes a «Bearer of the Fire»; this is the stage of purification by fire, which occurs by itself.
René Guénon, in wanting to separate alchemy from the vulgar alchemists or blowers, asserted that true alchemy was of a spiritual nature and not material.
However, all true alchemists contradict this assertion, because the fact that the beginning of their work is spiritual does not mean that it is not a physical and material operation.
The disciples of Hermes, on the other hand, instead of stopping halfway, which spiritualists tend to do, want to help creation to be fulfilled in its entirety. Following this purification and after a long cooking, the disciple reaches the Adeptship, the end of the Adept’s Work, the resurrection of the body. The Adept then regains mastery over the lost Paradise, like the tree of life planted in the centre of the Eden’s Garden, whose fruits are the prophetic Word, which brings healing and salvation to all his crippled brothers, and this not only spiritually but also physically.
The Message Rediscovered says on this topic :
The saint binds the soul and the spirit in God and overcomes the second death
The sage binds the soul, the spirit and the body in God and overcomes the first and the second death
(MR, XXIII, 77 et 77’)
Such is the glorious body of resurrection.
By way of conclusion, we will read about the two ways of returning to God, as summarised in The Message Rediscovered:
Are the two ways not wisely intertwined in it to form the tree of life,
instead of being profanely separated in order to make dead crutches? (MR XXXI, 30’)
Did the light of life not come out of the union of heaven and earth?
And are the two ways of God not miraculously united in it alone ?
The profane are ignorant of both,
the half-instructed separate them and set them opposite one another;
only the sages assemble them and unite them
in the unity of God
(MR, XXXI, 41 et 41’)
Photo de Xavier Bolao
