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Rene Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (December 7, 1887 – 1961), born René Adolphe Schwaller in Alsace-Lorraine, was a French occultist, student of sacred geometry and Egyptologist known for his twelve-year study of the art and architecture of the Temple of Luxor in Egypt and his subsequent book “The Temple In Man“. Before that Schwaller was a Theosophist, esotericist, and alchemist who worked for many years with Fulcanelli. In the 1920s, Rene and his wife Isha moved to Switzerland and established Suhalia, a center for research into scientific and alchemical studies. He was fascinated with the esoteric secrets of Gothic architecture and became acquainted with the man whose name is most associated with the “mystery of the cathedrals” (“Le Mystère des cathédrales“), the pseudonymous Fulcanelli. Sometime between 1918 and 1920 in Montparnasse, Schwaller met Fulcanelli, who had gathered a band of disciples around him, aptly called “The Brothers of Heliopolis“. Schwaller would later claim that the word alchemy (خيمياء) meant “out of Egypt“.

Alchemy had found a home in the strange world of the Parisian occult underground, and Fulcanelli and the Brothers of Heliopolis studied the works of great alchemists, like Nicolas Flammel and Basil Valentinus. Fulcanelli and Schwaller met often and discussed the Great Work, the transmutation of matter, a possibility that the recent advances in atomic theory seemed to bring closer to reality.

Then, one day, Fulcanelli told Schwaller about a manuscript he had stolen from a Paris bookshop. While cataloging an ancient book for a bookseller, Fulcanelli discovered a strange piece of writing: a six-page manuscript in fading ink, describing, Fulcanelli claimed, the importance of color in the alchemical process.

But, said Schwaller, when it came to alchemy, Fulcanelli was a materialist, and so he didn’t grasp the true nature of color.

Schwaller enlightened him:

Nature had shown me a great mountain, crowned with a peak of immaculate whiteness,

but she was unable to teach me the way leading to it.

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He was given the title “de Lubicz” in 1919 by the Lithuanian writer, mystic, and diplomat Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz. He also wrote under the mystical name ‘Aor‘, light (Hebrew: or, אור), signifying “Light of the Higher Mind“.

Here is his tarot deck based on his research:

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