The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye: Alchemy and the End of Time [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I had high hopes for this book. The author was featured on a radio program I listen to and gave a good interview, but on actually getting and reading the book I went from excited to mad in just a few chapters. Quite frankly, the author knows nothing about esotericism, to say nothing of a basic conceptualization of history. He starts out with talking about the book, then veers off into a discussion of Abraham, i.e. the mythical Patriarch, asserting that Abraham was given knowledge by god that the secret to the universe had to do with an alignment of the earth with the galactic center. Are you a little sceptical yet? You should be. After this revelation the author makes the assertion that the Tree of Life glyph in the Kabbalah actually refers to a constellation and that, moreover, when you fold it one way you get a mystical cube, which somehow has something to do with the galactic center. Absolutely no evidence is given for either one of these things.

It only gets better from there on. He goes on to talk about, for no obvious reason whatsoever, new age theories about how DNA generates photons.

The research, if there was any beyond an afternoon's worth, is terrible, the book makes no cogent arguments or presents any evidence to support the muddled assertions and in the end basically asks the reader to take it all on faith.

And because one permutation of the inscription on this cross at Hendaye yields the word "Urcos" and because the authors googled it, or looked it up in an Atlas I think they said, and found that there was a town named "Urcos" in Peru......suddenly Peru is the heart of an Atlantean civilization whose descendants are the Basque people of Spain and France, because Hendaye is close to the French Basque country.

The mind reels. It also reels at how exactly the authors can reconcile a literal belief in the existence of Abraham with a belief in some pre-cataclysmic civilization in South America.

Very nice view into esoteric occult mysteries. The strength of this book is the way Mr. Weidner & Mr. Bridges explain history, mythology, alchemy, qabalah, astronomy, astrology & tarot cards into the meaning of symbols on the Cross of Hendaye. If you have no background for the above subjects, the authors provide adequate explanations for you to understand their way of thinking. If you are closed minded, unwilling to stretch boundries in accepted history & science, you will have an under-appreciation for this book. If you have an open mind to a different view, especiality with history, you will appreciate the author's thought processes. Even someone with a substantial formal education will understand a need to look into these esoteric studies that are not formally taught. I thank the authors for this very informative book.

Un updated, much expanded edition of A Monument to the End of Time

In 1926, an enigmatic alchemist called Fulcanelli published a book called "Le Mystere des Cathedrales", or Mystery of the Cathedrals, which explains how Gothic cathedrals have hermetic and alchemical secrets encoded into their architecture and sculptures. In 1957, a second edition appeared, and included an extra chapter on the significance of a monument in the town of Hendaye in the Pyrenees. The monument - an engraved pedestal with a pillar and engraved cross - was built around 1680. The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye is a thorough exposition of the hidden meaning encoded into this Hendaye Cross.

The authors have traced the alchemical thread back to Egypt; to the first Gnostic groups, and re-exposed the fact that behind alchemy lies a triple transmutation - inner, outer and time. The inner transmutation is the refining of the psycho-sexual energies and fluids; the outer is using the inner change to transmute physical states; the third is the same transmutation applied to the whole Earth, changing the Age of Iron to the Age of Gold. The 4 ages - Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron relate to the 26,000-year cycle of precession, with the Fall occurring when the Tree (the celestial axis, or earth's rotational axis), points away from the centre of the galaxy. "Resurrection"or "redemption", occurs when the Tree points towards the centre of the galaxy. This is the point when the "sparks of light" - our souls as fragments of God - return to the source.

The thread is traced from ancient Egypt to the Coptic Church, the Gnostics, the Hebrews, Islaam (the Sufis), the Order of Sion, and the Knights Templar, the grail romances, the tarot, and, with increasing persecution of heretics, the engraving of cathedrals, and finally, the Rosicrucian movement.

The 4 engravings on the pedestal are found to refer to the 4 tarot trumps; The Star; The Moon; The Sun, and Judgement. The pillar is the Djed, or Earth's rotational axis ( Moira Timms has already pointed this out see Raising the Djed). The two "x" engravings refer to the winding of the ecliptic and the equinoctial points, plus trump 20, judgement. The "ocruxaves pesunica" engraving means "the secret concerns a cross and a snake which somehow measures the 12th part". When combined, these clues (along with clues from the kabbalistic Tree of Life, whose 22 paths correlate to the 22 tarot trumps), the authors conclude that half a precessional cycle ago, the spring equinox fell on the cusp of Leo/Virgo; 12,960 years later, in 2002, the autumn (fall) equinox will be in the same position. The planetary attributions of the tarot trumps, combined with the orientation of the faces of the monument confirms that 22 September 2002 is the date in question. Trump 14, temperance (Alchemy), correlates to the direction of Galactic centre, while trump 21, the World, correlates to the opposing Galactic edge.

Fulcanelli implies that the cross at Hendaye signifies a "fatal period" of a "double catastrophe". If autumn equinox 2002 is the mid-point of a 20-year period (the XX engraving implies this), this may imply the last katun of the Mayan "Great Cycle"(13-Baktun cycle), since this is the nearest autumn equinox to the katun mid-point (12 Feb 2003, Long Count date 12.19.10.0.0). The authors were stunned to discover that Paul LaViolette has been warning the world of just such a double catastrophe, in the form of a galactic core explosion, which he already tentatively linked to the 2012 end-point. The first effects would be "electromagnetic shifts...crustal torque, pole shifts, tidal waves and high winds", the second catastrophe would be "an explosion of the sun's corona caused by the influx of cosmic dust pushed by the galactic superwave".

Fulcanelli also said that the inscription "ocruxaves pesunica" revealed a place of refuge. By clues from Fulcanelli, the authors arrived at 2 anagrams: Inca cave, Cusco, Peru, and Hail to the Cross at Urcos. The authors were again amazed to find not only caves at Cusco, but a nearby town called Urcos with a cross. Sadly, the original cross had been destroyed, but they concluded that the place of refuge may be either the caves at Cusco, or the legendary tunnels under the Andes, if someone finds an entrance.

The authors suggest that we should learn to "weave" our "Bardo or transitional body into nicely fractal flows of self-awareness" simply by meditating on compassion, as suggested by the work of Itzhak Bentov (Bentov explains in Stalking the wild Pendulum p.33-36 & 54-56 that in meditative states, the breathing is so gentle that it no longer interferes with the feedback of the aorta, allowing the system to become resonant, allowing the whole body to resonate at the same frequency as the earth - 7.8 Hz. How this is affected by the increasing rate of Schumann resonance remains to be researched). We shall thus be ready to be "harvested", to become a soul inhabiting a star, like the pharaohs of Egypt (see Star Birth Bardo in the Body of Orion). The Paris Papyrus gives some clues that the transformational process may be triggered by the light from the glow of the exploding galactic centre, triggering a cerebro-chemical outpouring which fuels an internal light that externalizes as "the shining light or star body of imperishable quality". The authors suggest that we need to prepare by performing a ceremony every equinox, in which the kabbalistic tree of life is "projected onto the Celestial sphere", a technique developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The original review with links can be found at the diagnosis2012 website.