The few rare seekers who, at the end of the author’s life, allowed themselves to be guided by their deep intuition to The Message Rediscovered, went to see Cattiaux to acquire a still unfinished book. They formed a deep friendship with him and even participated in the gestation of certain verses.
Cattiaux kept up an intense personal relationship with this group of friends passionate about his work; some of them did not live in Paris, which explains their regular correspondence. They wrote to each other almost daily to share their interest in the mysteries contained in the verses of The Message Rediscovered. […
The reader of The Message Rediscovered will find in the following pages a Cattiaux with a touching and intimate side. The originality, the freedom, the violence, indeed, and at times the tenderness of his letters reveals to us an extraordinary character, an interior man, one might say, matured over many years in isolation and reprobation. The interior man, indeed, being not of this world, scandalizes when the man containing him becomes transparent. The mediocre did not come to Cattiaux, nor did Cattiaux go to them.
This loner did not seek solitude, but it was as though imposed on him by the incomprehension of those around him. Very few, indeed, had an inkling of the precious, free and animated, albeit «strange», Cattiaux; and it was this strangeness that kept his true friends to a minimum.
It was precisely to his friends that he wrote these letters. We have classified by subject, disregarding both chronological order and addressee, a considerable number of thoughts on these apparently widely diverse subjects. But in fact their message is always the same: the Art, the Magnum Opus, cannot be practised without internal purity, without mystical life, without the forgetting of self, without offering and without love.
Thirty years have passed and a new generation is with us. It shall undoubtedly be more perspicacious than the previous one. Precursors of Cattiaux’s calibre see far into the future. It is, moreover, their destiny to have been misunderstood and repudiated in their lifetime, but lauded and sought after by the generations that follow.
From autumn 1980 to summer 1994, fragments of a series of Louis Cattiaux’s letters were published continuously as articles in the Belgian magazine «Le Fil d’Ariane», under the title «Florilège cattésien», and translated into Spanish in the collection «La Puerta».
Emmanuel d’Hooghvorst, responsible for the selection, writes about these fragments: «We have classified a number of thoughts on seemingly very different subjects by topics and without taking into account either the chronological order or the different recipients. But, in short, their message is always the same: Art, the Great Work, cannot be practised without inner purity, mystical life, self-forgetfulness, self-offering and love».
In January 2012, «Éditions du Miroir d’Isis» published a volume of the entire correspondence between Louis Cattiaux and René Guénon.
In December 2016, «Éditions du Miroir d’Isis» published a volume set of large extracts from Louis Cattiaux’s letters to James Chauvet, Gaston Chaissac and Serge Lebbal.
