The Thunderstones

Les Pierres de Foudre, May 1929.

In his article devoted to the Tarot in the special issue of Voile d'Isis, Mr. Auriger, referencing the sixteenth Arcanum, wrote this sentence: “It seems that there exists a relationship between the hails of stone that sur- round the Lightning Tower and the word beith-el, the House of God, of which the Semites designated as the aeroliths of lightning stones.” This link is suggested by the name of 'House of God' given to the Arcana in question which is indeed the literal translation of the Hebrew beith-el; but it seems to us that there exists some confusion between several dif- fering things, and that a clarification of the issue may be of some interest. Firstly, it is undoubted that the symbolic role of aeroliths or stones falling from the heavens is very important, because these are the same 'black stones' that are mentioned in so many different traditions, from the figure of Cybele, or the 'Great Goddess,' to the black stone enshrined in the Kaabah in Mecca, which is also related to the story of Abraham. In Rome as well, there was the lapis niger, not to mention the sacred shields of the Salians that were said to have been carved from a meteorite in the time of Numa. ^[25] These 'black stones' can certainly be classified in the category of 'baetylus,' which is to say stones considered as 'dwellings of the divine,' or, in other words, as supports of certain 'spiritual influ- ences;' but did all the baetylus have this origin? We do not think, and, in particular, we have seen no evidence that this may have been with the case with the rock which Jacob, according to the account of Genesis, gave the name of Beith-el, a name applied to the very place he had rested his head on while having his vision.

The 'baetylus,' strictly speaking, is the representation of the Ompha-los, which is to say, a symbol of the 'Center of the World,' which is nat-urally identified with the 'divine interior.'^[26] This stone could have taken a variety of forms, including that of a pillar; this is why Jacob says: “And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be the house of God;" and among the Celtic peoples some menhirs, if not all, had the same meaning. The Omphalos could also be represented by a conical or ovoid stone, such as the 'black stone' of Cybele; the cone evokes the sacred mountain, a symbol of the 'Pole' or the ‘Axis Mundi;' as for the ovoid form, it relates directly to a very important symbol, that of the 'World Egg.' In any case, the 'baetylus' was a 'prophetic stone,' a 'talking stone,' which is to say, a stone that made oracles, or with which oracles were made, thanks to the 'spiritual influences' of which it was the support; the example of the Omphalos of Delphi is very characteristic in this respect. The 'baetylus' are therefore essentially sacred stones, but not necessarily of a celestial origin; however, it is perhaps true that, symbolically at the least, this idea is true in a certain way. What makes us think this is so is their relation to the mysterious luz of the Hebraic tradition, this relation is certain in the case of the 'black stones,' which are actually meteorites, but it should not be limited to this one case, since it is stated in Genesis, when speak-ing about the Beith-el of Jacob, that the first name of this place was pre-cisely the same, Luz. We may even recall at this point that the Grail had been, it was said, to have been carved from a stone fallen from the heav-ens, between all these there are very close ties, but we will not ponder on it anymore, for these considerations may lead us astray from our sub-ject.^[27]

Indeed, whether they are 'baetylus' in general, or 'black stones' in the specific, neither have anything in common with the 'thunderstones;' it is especially on this point that we recall a serious confusion in the sentence quoted at the very beginning, which can be explained quite easily. One is certainly tempted to suppose that the 'thunderbolts' or 'thunderstones' must be stones that fall from the sky, aeroliths, and yet it is not so; one could never guess what they are without have learned from the peasants who have preserved the memory of it through the oral tradition. In fact, by their very nature, these same peasants have committed an error of interpretation, showing the true nature of tradition escapes them when they believe that these stones to have fallen with the lightning, or that they are the lightning themselves. They say that the thunder falls in two manners, 'of fire' or 'of stone;' the first case is when it burns, while in the second it breaks; but they know very well of the "thunderstones,” and they are only in mistaken in attributing to them, because of their name, a celestial origin which they do not have and never had. The truth is that the 'thunderstones' are stones that symbolize light- ning; they are nothing more than the prehistoric flint axes of the 'World Egg,' just as the fossilized sea urchin is the material figuration of the 'serpent's egg.' The stone axe is the stone that breaks and splits, and this is why it represents lightning; this symbolism harkens back to an ex- tremely remote era, and it explains the existence of certain axes, labelled by archaeologists as 'votive axes,' ritual objects that never had any prac- tical usage as weapons or instruments. This brings us quite naturally to recall a point that has already been treated: the stone axe of Parashurama and the stone hammer of Thor are one and the same weapon, and we will add that this weapon is the sym- bol of lightning. ^[28] We also see that this symbolism of the 'thunderstones' is of a Hyperborean origin, which is to say that it is related to the oldest of the traditions of present humanity, to that which is really the primal tradition of the present Manvantara. ^[29] It should be noted, moreover, the very important role that lightning plays in Tibetan symbolism, the vajra, which represents it, is one of the principal insignias of the dignitaries of Lamaism. ^[30] At the same time, the vajra symbolizes the masculine principle of the universal manifestation, and thus lightning is associated with the idea of a 'divine paternity,' an association which is found just as clearly in Western antiquity, since lightning is the main attribute of Zeus Pater or Ju-piter, the 'father of the gods and men,' who besides blasts the Titans and the Giants with thun- derbolts, just as Thor and Parashurama destroy their equivalents with their respective weapons of stone. ^[31] There is even, in relation to this connection, even in the modern West itself, another link that is quite unique: Leibnitz, in his Monadology, says that "all the created monads are born, so to speak, by continuous fulgu-rations of Divinity from moment to moment;" thus, in this way, through the traditional points we have just recalled, lightning (fulgur) is linked to the idea of the production of beings. It is likely that the academic com-mentators have never noticed this, nor does it have exactly the same meaning as that of the great Tibetan Lamas; but who, then, in modern Masonry, could boast of actually possessing the mysterious power, one in its essence, though double in its apparently contrary effects, of which this attribute is the sign? We do not think that we are going too far in saying that in what remains of the Western initiatic organizations, no one has even a remote idea of what this is about; the symbol remains, but when the 'spirit' has withdrawn, it is nothing but an empty form; is it necessary to maintain, despite everything, the hope that a day will come when this form is revitalized, where it will once again respond to the reality of its original raison d'être and which alone gives it its true initiatic character?

The Triple Druidic Precinct La triple enceinte druidique, June 1929. Mr. Paul Le Cour reported, in the Atlantis (July-August 1928), a curious symbol traced on a Druidic stone discovered around 1800 in Suèvres (Loir-et-Cher), which had previously been studied by the president of the Society of Natural History and Anthropology of Loir-et-Cher, Mr. E.-C. Florance. Florance believes that the location where this stone was found could have been the annual meeting place of the Druids, situated, accord- ing to Caesar, on the borders of the Carnutes' land.^[32] His attention was drawn to the fact that the same symbol was found on a seal of a Gallo- Roman occultist, found around 1870 in Villefranche-sur-Cher (Loir-et- Cher); and he suggested that what the symbol could represent was a tri- ple sacred precinct. This symbol is indeed formed of three concentric squares, interconnected by four lines at right angles (fig. 1).

Fig. 1

At the time when the article in the Atlantis appeared, it was pointed out to Mr. Florance that the same symbol had been engraved on a large stone base of a buttress on the church of Sainte-Gemme (Loir-et-Cher), a stone that seems to have an origin preceding the construction of the church, which could even have its origin in Druidism. Furthermore, it is certain that like many other Celtic symbols, and particularly of this wheel, this figure remained in use up to the Middle Ages, since Mr. Char- bonneau-Lassay reported it among the 'graffiti' in the dungeon of Chi- non, ^[33] together with another figure that is just as ancient, formed of eight rays and circumscribed by a square (fig. 2), which is on the 'baetylus' of Kermaria studied by M. J. Loth^[34] and to which we have had occasion to reference elsewhere.^[35] Mr. Le Cour indicated that the triple-square sym- bol is also found in Rome, in the cloister of San Paolo, dating from the thirteenth century, and furthermore it was known in antiquity by those besides the Celts, as he has pointed to it several times at the Acropolis in Athens, on the tiles of the Parthenon, and on those of the Erechtheion.

Fig. 2

The interpretation of the symbol in question as representing a triple precinct appears to be correct; and Mr. Le Cour, in this regard, establishes a connection with what Plato says, who, speaking of the metropolis of the Atlanteans, describes the palace of Poseidon as being built in the cen- ter of three concentric enclosures connected to each other by canals, which indeed forms a figure similar to the one in question, but circular in place of a square. Now, what can the significance of these three precincts be? Our im- mediate thought was that it should be three degrees of initiation, so that these would have been in some way representative of the structure of the Druidic hierarchy; and the fact that this same figure is found elsewhere than among the Celts would indicate that there were, in other traditional forms, hierarchies built on the same model, which is perfectly ordinary. The division of initiation into three grades is, furthermore, the most fre- quent, and we could say, the most fundamental; all others represent, gen- erally, only subdivisions or more or less complicated developments. What gave us this notion is the awareness of documents which, in some Masonic systems of high ranks, describe precisely these grades as many successive precincts drawn around a central point;^[36] certainly, these doc-uments are incomparably less old than the monuments in question, but we can nonetheless find an echo of tradition, and in any case, these pro-vided us with a starting point for interesting connections. It must be noted that the explanation which we propose is in no way incompatible with certain other explanations, such as that given by Mr. Le Cour, and which would bring the three precincts back to the three circles of existence recognized by the Celtic tradition; these three circles, which are found in another form in Christianity, are also the same as the 'three worlds' of the Hindu tradition. Therein, the celestial circles are sometimes represented as so many concentric enclosures surrounding the Meru, which is to say the sacred Mountain which symbolizes the 'Pole,' or the 'Axis Mundi,' and this again is a remarkable agreement. Far from excluding each other, the two explanations harmonize perfectly, and one could even say that they coincide in a certain sense, because, if it is a question of initiation, its degrees correspond to as many states of beings which are described, in all traditions, as so many different worlds, for it must be understood that 'localization' has only a purely symbolic character. We have already explained, when speaking of Dante, that the heavens are properly 'spiritual hierarchies,' which is to say, degrees of initiation;^[37] and it goes without saying that they relate at the same time to the degrees of universal existence, because, as we stated then, ^[38] by virtue of the constitutive analogy of Macrocosm and Microcosm, the in-itiatic process rigorously reproduces the cosmogonic process. We will add that, in general, the characteristic of any true truly initiatic interpre-tation is to never be exclusionary, but, on the contrary, includes within itself, synthetically, all possible interpretations; it is, moreover, why sym-bolism, with its multiple and superimposed meanings, is the normal means of expression of all true initiatic teaching. With this same explanation, the meaning of the four lines arrange in the form of a cross and connecting the three precincts becomes immedi-ately clear: they are channels through which the teaching of the tradi-tional doctrine is communicated from above, below, from the supreme rank which is the depository, and is distributed hierarchically to other degrees. The central portion of the figure thus corresponds to the 'foun-tain of teaching' of which Dante and the 'Fedeli d'Amor' speak, ^[39] and the cruciform arrangement of the four channels identifies with the four riv-ers of Pardes. Relating to this connection, it should be noted that there is, between the two circular and square shapes of the figure of the three precincts, an important nuance to observe which relate respectively to their derived symbolism. In the first case, the center of the figure would then be the source of the doctrine, while the second would relate more to the ‘reser-voir,' the spiritual authority that has a role of conservation; but, of course, the symbolism of the 'fountain of teaching' applies to both cases.^[40]

Fig. 3

From the point of view of numerical symbolism, it must be noted that all three squares form the duodenary. Arranged otherwise (Fig. 3), these three squares, to which are added four crosswise lines constitute the fig- ure according to which the ancient astrologers inscribed the Zodiac; fur- thermore, this figure was regarded as that of the celestial Jerusalem with its twelve gates, three on each side, and there is an evident connection with the meaning we have just given for the square form. No doubt there are many more similarities to consider, but we believe that these few notes, however incomplete, will shed some light on the mysterious ques- tion of the triple Druidic precinct.