Fulcanelli

The first was in 1922, together with his most devoted pupil Eugène Canseliet, when the two supposedly performed a successful transmutation of 100 grams of lead into gold in the presence of Julien Champagne and Gaston Sauvage.

This demonstration took place in a laboratory of the gas works of the Georgi company at Sarcelles, and was achieved with the use of a small quantity of "Projection Powder" (also known as the Philosopher's Stone) prepared by Fulcanelli.

Fulcanelli wrote two books that were published after his disappearance in 1926, having left his magnum opus, Le Mystère des Cathédrales, with his only student, Eugène Canseliet.

Patrick Rivière, a student of Canseliet's, believed that Fulcanelli's true identity was Jules Violle, a famous French physicist.

[8] In a 1996 book, samples of writing by Jean-Julien Hubert Champagne (born January 23, 1877) and Fulcanelli are compared, and show considerable similarity.

[10] However, most of the testimonies compiled in its historical context, between 1910 and 1940, always designate Julien Champagne as the author, either unique or inspired by the materials of the librarian Pierre Dujols (1862-1926).

[11][better source needed] In 1960, with the publication of the international bestseller The Morning of the Magicians, Pauwels and Bergier popularized the mystery of the Master Alchemist.

[15] Walter Lang reports that Fulcanelli communicated with Jacques Bergier to warn French atomic physicist André Helbronner of man's impending use of nuclear weapons.

The liberation of nuclear power is easier than you think and the radioactivity artificially produced can poison the atmosphere of our planet in a very short time: a few years.

I shall not attempt to prove to you what I'm now going to say but I ask you to repeat it to Mr. Helbronner: certain geometrical arrangements of highly purified materials are enough to release atomic forces without having recourse to either electricity or vacuum techniques...

Unfortunately, only a handful are successful..."[18] In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons.

[22] According to Fulcanelli, the Phonetic Cabala (Fulcanelli's term for a special use of language, drawing on phonetic similarities and other symbolic techniques for expanding the expressive reach of words)[dubious – discuss] is not the Hebrew Kabbalah; even the derivation is different: Cabala is derived from the Latin caballus, a horse, as in the Horse of Troy in the Iliad.

Frontispice of Le Mystère des Cathédrales by Fulcanelli (1926). Illustration by Julien Champagne.