THE SACRED WAY

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The Watchers

Within the Group of the Watchers, founded in 1919 by Aor, there existed a hermetic and secret branch named : The Mystical Order of the Resurrection. This title reveals two essential ideas. One is that of the expectation of Theosophy, which hopes for a Teacher capable of arousing the golden age; the other is anchored to the ancient Mystery of Osiris and his resurrection. Built on this base, the Order was composed of twelve Masters whose task was finding and reconstituting the ancient Initiation. They wore a white robe, sword at the side, head crowned with gold and they called each other “Brothers of Elijah”. These members were Aor, Oscar Milocz de Lubicz, Carlos Larronde, René Bruyez, Elmiro Celli, Henri Coton-Alvart, Luis de La Rocha, André Fourcine, Carpentier and André Chancerel. They were meeting in the house of Louis Alainguillaume in Boulogne-sur-Seine, where was built a Temple and soon other Loges were born in France.

Originally, the Order was to have only seventy-two members, including twenty-four Companions and twelve Masters who met to celebrate transmutation rituals and practiced a kind of fire cult. But the number of Initiates increased considerably and quickly passed to more than 600 followers in Paris and in Province. During this exhilarating period, a whole world thirsting for occultism and spiritual knowledge was flocking to literary salons and initiatory temples. They were all invited to Natalie Clifford-Barney, the American super rich woman, friend of Oscar Milosz de Lubicz. She was receiving friends in her Masonic Workshop, The Temple of Friendship. Many artists such as Debussy, Satie, Gide or Cocteau flocked to listen Aor's lectures. This current known as Occultism succeeded Symbolism and was the precursor of the Surrealist Movement.

 

The Mystical Order

But the idealistic and elitist character of the group displeased many intellectuals and provoked a defamatory press campaign. A few dissensions came to light and the roads of Aor and Milosz de Lubicz separated. In 1921, the adventure of the Watchers officially ends, but the Mystical Order of the Resurrection continues to exist secretly. During these events, Aor often met Fulcanelli to talk about Operative Alchemy. Of their meetings, we do not know much, except that Fulcanelli would have predicted a failure in Switzerland, but he would find him again in 20 years in Egypt. Aor had thought he was joking…  

There has been a lot of nonsense about Fulcanelli’s identity. For some he would have been Julien Champagne the painter keen on Alchemy; for others he would be neither more nor less than Eugene Canseliet (Fulcanelli’s disciple); others say he could be publisher Pierre Dujols, even Aor himself ! Let's be clear : Fulcanelli is a real character who received the Donum Dei, which means he discovered the secrets of eternal life and reached immortality.

 

Suhalia

The Swiss adventure of Suhalia, was not what Aor expected, although he found the alchemical secret that allowed the glassmakers of the Middle Ages to get the famous blue stained glass of Chartres and that so many modern chemists tried to break through. During this Swiss interlude, the Mystical Order of the Resurrection continues an underground route in Paris, under the leadership of Renée Foatelli whose initiatic name is Amma. She had worked with Isha at Eurythmy and had herself created a Sacred Dance School where she taught religious gestures. But Aor's departure for Egypt will temporarily put the Order to sleep.

 

Egypt

In early 1939, the Schwallers moved to Luxor with the project of studying and understanding the empirical science that made the Egyptians the first people of antiquity. It is July 4th, 1939. It is extremely hot on the esplanade of the Temple of Amon where Aor has been working. The excavation season has long since been over due to the high temperature, but Aor continues tirelessly to make his topographical surveys. He patiently copies on a layer engraved hieroglyphs, while some of his workers sift piles of stones and sand in large baskets around. Suddenly, a fellah starts screaming in Arabic, followed soon by the noisy exclamations of the other workers. Aor approaches and discovers in the basket a very shiny metallic object : gold ! It was a cartouche in excellent condition about ten centimeters in length and three centimeters wide, with hieroglyphic signs chiseled in the mass. Aor has just got hold of the Chen. The  Chen, which means Chain, Ring, Link, represented the sun, that is to say the universe, figured in the form of a rope closed by a knot. To make it possible to inscribe the royal name, it took an elongated form and was most often painted yellow or covered with gold. The Chen represents the symbol of eternity.

 

The Chen

For Initiates, the Chen means something else. It is the Ring of the Covenant, the living symbol of the initiate who is a real link in the Initiatic Chain. The Chen of the followers was therefore a sign of belonging to Osiris, to its Mystery and to the secret brotherhood to which they were admitted. It is very likely that Initiates, Companions, and Masters wore a ring with engraved inscriptions like the Chen; it is in any case what suggests this cartouche. Aor understood that it had to be something that linked them to the old rites, until he discovered its deeper meaning. Of course, he knew that the followers never transcribed their knowledge in profane language, but they used the hieroglyphs according to their level of initiation. He determined after long research that the inscription of the Sacred Cartouche should be understood as follows: “The Lion is bound by our Chain, until the Lady comes”. The Lady clearly had to understand herself as Isis, but he did not know who the Lion meant, he was just beginning to see what the “Chain” was, that is to say, a brotherhood. But it was only after his experience with Osiris that he was able to decode these symbols.

 

The mysterious experience

It happened two years later in 1941, in Karnak inside the Temple of Amun. We have the narration of this episode in a letter that kept Amma. 

“It was about noon this 2nd of February and I was sitting at my desk trying to decode an inscription. A curious smell of incense suddenly caught my eye. Where did this pleasant smell come from ? I got up and crossing the great courtyard of the Temple, I entered the hypostyle hall, while sniffing the trace of this enigmatic perfume that seemed to guide me inside the sanctuary of Seti I. There, I thought I heard a melody, accompanied by a rhythm of sistrum. The smell of incense becoming more pregnant, I pushed further into the Temple, but suddenly the air froze and I was suffocating. I had the feeling of being a red fish that came out of an aquarium, I was desperately looking for air without being able to find it. All around me swirled, the tall columns were torning apart, their image was undulating, spinning; I was blinded by this spectacle. Then everything became calm. A bluish light shone now in the Temple and I saw men in loincloths (priests or servants). They were quietly going about their liturgical activities without worrying about me. I realized that I was plunged body and soul in ancient times ... After a few moments a character of beautiful pace, athletic, dressed like the others, approached me. Immediately I understood his language without a single word coming out of his mouth ... / ... and he said to me : Listen ! To hear, become ear and when you will be ear, I will tell you the story of created things... Look ! To see, become eye and thought and you will know the origin of created things ... / ... His intense gaze penetrated inside me and he gave me the desired explanations, so much hoped, he translated what I did not understand, he showed me everything about the origin of world, human being and cosmos”.

Aor immediately understood that this character was Osiris. As in any extrasensory experience, his consciousness had been changed, his vision of Egypt was now enlarged, and he would later say that he knew things from within. All his work was going to take a decisive turn, for he puzzled out the inscriptions with ease and released the sealed words that were once addressed to the Initiates. A new Egypt emerged, a whole new world that unveiled not only its high science, but also its secrets from the depths of time. The encoded texts of Tep Zepi finally spoke, revealing the reality of the Flood and the collapse of Atlantis. Egypt became the memory of humanity.

 

Renovation of the Initiation

In Luxor, Aor's theories met now with the support of a large number of intellectuals, such as Charles Kuentz, director of the French Institute of Archeology, or Alexandre Varille and Clément Robichon, eminent Egyptologists who had joined the master. Regularly his research was relayed in the newspapers of Cairo, animating at the same a controversy between partisans of the new school and the proponents of academic egyptology. These enthusiasts met regularly in the annex of the Luxor Hotel where a workshop had been arranged and they could be recognized by the flat ring, worn on the right hand. Aor was commissioned by the Masters to restore the old initiatory customs and he admitted certain members of this elite to the first degree of initiation. The Mystical Order of the Resurrection, which had long been preparing the resurgence of the true Initiation, then became the Initiatic Order of the Sacred Way, Ta Meri. This title was blown to Aor by a character who made his reappearance in Luxor at the Christmas 1941. At first, neither he nor his wife Isha recognized him... It was a man in his fifties knocking on their door, asking for the hospitality we owe to friends. This unusual character was none other than Fulcanelli ! He fulfilled the promise he made to meet them again in Egypt in 20 years... They had known him at the advanced age of eighty years and now would not he be a hundred years old ? It looked barely half ! From this last meeting, we know very little, but we can imagine that the alchemist Master confided secrets to Aor and especially on the march of History, on the future of earth and the threat that would soon constitute the discovery of the nuclear weapon...

 

Amma : the last link

During the Schwallers Egyptian exile, Amma was responsible for maintaining and developing the Order in Paris and France. In Aor's correspondence with her, he constantly returned to the urgency of bringing back all initiatic movements to the Egyptian source and bringing them together for one purpose : to build a true fraternity. His writings, workbooks, plans and more, would serve to establish the bases of knowledge that could be disseminated within the Sacred Way. Returning to France at the end of the war, his work did not receive the welcome he had hoped for and his teaching met with a mixed response, despite the enormous success of his book The Temple of Man. The post-war era was a very pragmatic time devoted to reconstruction and material progress, where spirituality had less and less space. Despite all the energy deployed by Lucie, daughter of Isha, to broadcast his work, Aor’s research gradually sank into oblivion…

In 1960, he gave to Amma the Chen which is the testimony of the Immemorial Chain of the Initiates, link between all those who received the Ring of Osiris. It was in a way the last gesture of the Master, his initiatic testament. Towards the end of his life, he spoke incessantly of great Initiates and sighed nostalgically evoking Ta Meri, the “beloved land”… But this term reveals a different meaning, more than the land of Egypt ; a mysterious and secret meaning that signifies the Sacred Way, that which leads to the stars.

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To Day

After Aor's death, the Order continued in Paris under the direction of Amma and formed a closed inner circle. But when she died, the last Loge closed. For 20 years, the Phoenix was waiting to be reborn. But fire was brewing under the ashes and in 2001 three lodges were formed, giving a new impetus to Aor's work. The Master had foreseen its disappearance and in 1960 he wrote : "The work has persisted until now, but like any building it has to know the law of the Djed. Ta Meri will be destroyed. Ruin and desolation are necessary to allow resurrection, like the sacred bird that nests in a generating fire and is reborn wiser and more beautiful, so we will open the way on a resplendent horizon".

Aor left us his philosophical testament two years before his death,. He develops a prophetic vision of what will be the Order of the Sacred Way: "Having been away from the country since a long time, so I see things from a fresh perspective to observe the inconsistencies of this world just coming out of war.The privations of yesterday incite the excesses of today and there is such a voracity of goods that no one will be able to hold the helm of the drunk boat ... But the initiate must be lucid.
With regard to the two Lodges that remain faithful to the Way and have not embraced the Masonic cause, as has been the case with others, I invite them to understand that our richness and our great difference compared to these obediences, is the immense privilege to be able to think, work and act outside the logic and the human reason. Alas, the almost exclusive tool of Masonry and its members is precisely the reason, as an engine of influence. They have forgotten that intellection can not be validated outside the intuitive way. The intuitive way is the intelligence of the heart. It is essential, it is a priority which can not be considered as incidental. The intelligence of the heart is inner energy, it is the radiation of our work. If we lose it; we will lose ourselves! I urge you to place right along your way this enlightening force that allows you to move forward safely. There is progress only if we listen to the message that comes from the stars, through the upper channel which we alone we known. To desdain the way of the stars is to disdain our conscience, which is just awakening from the limbo of nothingness. There are too many factors, and we are not going to enumerate them, that have greatly contributed to keeping the Freemasons away from the goal. Let us not repeat the same mistake that will lead them in next decades to lose their values ​​and to irreparably break the Chain of Union. On the contrary, let's tighten the links and, even if they are few, they are solid because they are not made of an ordinary metal, but they are forged into a transmuted metal. Fulcanelli predicted at the time that our work will not be in vain, because it contains secretly the oldest ferments transmitted by the Masters of Wisdom. It is thanks to this alchemical manure that the most thankless lands become fertile. This is not a message of hope, because this word has no meaning and does not exist in Egypt, hope hinders action and bounds us to time. We, on the contrary, let us forget hope and impose the eternity which is superior to everything. 
(handwritten) : " Do not trash the inestimable treasure of our Way, but love it."

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