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priestly caste, trained in its use, and the guilds of initiated artists, which existed throughout the world till comparatively recent times, were instructed in it. Nowadays, all this has changed...
    The essence of this art, says Stirling, is ‘working symbolically’.
    Schwaller was in his early twenties when he met, in the Closerie des Lilas, in Montparnasse, an alchemist who called himself Fulcanelli (and whose real name seems to have been Champagne) and they discussed the ‘Oeuvre’, the Great Work of transmutation. Fulcanelli was surrounded by a circle of disciples, who called themselves The Brothers of Heliopolis; all were dedicated students of the works of Nicolas Flamel and Basil Valentinus. They combed the second-hand bookshops of Paris looking for old alchemical texts. In an ancient volume he was cataloguing for a Paris bookshop, Fulcanelli had come across a six-page manuscript written in faded ink, and stole it. It indicated that colour played an important part in the secret of the alchemists. But Fulcanelli, whose approach to alchemy was materialistic, failed to understand it. Schwaller was able to help him in his interpretations. He also showed Fulcanelli his own manuscript on medieval cathedrals, at which Fulcanelli became excited, and offered to help find a publisher. In fact, Fulcanelli borrowed the manuscript for a long time, and eventually stole most of its central insights for his own Mystery of Cathedrals , published in 1925, which has achieved the status of a modern classic.
    Schwaller had meanwhile become friendly with a French poet—who was also a Lithuanian prince—called Luzace de Lubicz Milosz. During the First World War, Schwaller worked as a chemist in the army, and after the war Milosz bestowed on him a knighthood for services to the Lithuanian people, and the right to add ‘de Lubicz’ to his name. (It is not clear what right Milosz had to go around bestowing knighthoods.) At this point Schwaller also received the ‘mystic name’ AOR. He and Milosz founded a political organisation called Les Veilleurs (‘watchmen’ or ‘vigilant ones’) based upon Schwaller’s notions of élitism, of which Rudolf Hess was at one time a member (as well as of a German magical order called the Thule Society). But Schwaller seems to have grown tired of involvement in politics—recognising, like most mystics, that it is a form of entrapment—and moved to Suhalia, in Switzerland, to pursue his esoteric studies with a group of like-minded friends, particularly studies relating to stained glass. This lasted until 1934, when financial problems led to the dissolution of the Suhalia community.
    By this time, Fulcanelli was dead. According to Schwaller, he had invited Fulcanelli to his home in Grasse, in the south of France, to attempt the magnum opus and they were wholly successful. Convinced that he now knew how to bring about the alchemical transformation, Fulcanelli returned to Paris and repeated the experiment several times—failing each time. The reason, said Schwaller later, was that he had chosen the right moment and the right conditions for the experiment, and Fulcanelli was ignorant about such matters. Fulcanelli now decided to break the vow of silence he had taken, and to communicate what he had learned to his disciples. He ignored Schwaller’s pleas and turned down his offer of renewed financial support in exchange for silence. But he became ill, and died of gangrene the day before he was going to divulge the ‘secret’ to his disciples. Schwaller declared that this was an inevitable consequence of breaking the alchemical vow of secrecy.
    Schwaller spent the next two years on his yacht, apparently at something of a loose end. His wife Isha—who had come to him as a disciple in the early days (drawn to him, she claims, by some telepathic link)—had always been fascinated by ancient Egypt, but Schwaller had failed to share her interest. Now, in 1936, he allowed himself to be persuaded to go