Chapter 1: Dedication & Notice

DEDICATION

MY DEAR MASTER,

The pitiless destiny that abruptly ended your earthly days has bequeathed to us the perilous honor of replacing, through the union of your friends, the unity of your intelligence for the publication of the Archeometer. Had you lived to witness this birth of your intellectual work, its dedication would have been made by you to the Angel who presided, from beyond, over its construction. It is to your dear wife, it is to that angelic spirit who descended to earth to illuminate our poor infernal world here below with all the radiance of her beauty and spirituality, it is to her that your work would have paid homage.

Thus it is our duty to evoke at the head of this publication, which comes from a dual plane, the memory of her who was its inspiration in the World of the living Utterance.

We therefore dedicate the Archeometer to Madame la Marquise de Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, who is now eternally united with you in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and through the goodness of Mary, the Virgin of pity and light.

NOTICE

Barely two years have passed since our venerated Master, leaving the visible world, crossed the Gate of Souls to unite forever in the divine Word with the angelic Soul who was always, even invisibly, his support and his life here below.

The disappearance of this luminous genius has caused disciples to spring up on all sides, and we could only rejoice in this, were it not that certain of these recent converts, exaggerating somewhat their neophyte zeal, attempt to persuade themselves and others that they are truly the custodians of the Master’s supreme confidences and most intimate thoughts. Needless to add that they all possess a thorough knowledge of the Archeometer, whose exact description—the one we hold from the very hand of its Inventor—remains entirely unpublished to this day.

Some do not hesitate to offer cabalistic interpretations of this Instrument of interpretation. Others, who blush not to claim knowledge of the ultimate secrets of Archeometric Science, promise grandiose Initiations and phantasmagorias that will never exist, thank God, except in their exalted imaginations. Still others, while invoking Saint-Yves’s name, serve their readers nothing but lucubrations of an anticlericalism and antipapism truly too rudimentary and childish, worthy at best of a village electoral subcommittee or a tenth-rate Lodge of the G.^o. O.^o, and which would have gotten their authors, during the Master’s lifetime, to be nailed to the pillory by one of those cutting words of which he had the secret.

Among those minds that sincerely read and appreciated Saint-Yves, some may have wondered why his Friends seemed so slow to defend his memory. The reason is simple. A being such as the one we can never sufficiently mourn needs no defense; even dead to Earth, he is powerful enough to defend himself alone, having left behind enough unpublished works to silence all impostors. The one we publish today is shining proof of this. It comes at its appointed hour, the hour willed and chosen by the Master, and it answers like a thunderclap all the nonsense uttered these past two years under the cover of his name.

As the complement and final seal of the “Missions,” this book is the true Introduction to the Study of the Archeometer. Never in any of his prior works has Saint-Yves unveiled the depths of his intimate thought as he does here; never in any has he so boldly scrutinized the Mysteries; never has he revealed himself so completely as in these pages.

Here we encounter not merely the Christian genius, the inspired Renewer of Synarchy, but the true successor of the ancient Nabis, the last Prophet. A terrible flame runs through this work of a modern Isaiah, as severe toward contemporary Pharisees and Scribes as the son of Amoz was toward the Lettered and priests of Judah. Equally terrifying are his visions concerning the future of France and Europe, now relapsed into the worst pagan Anarchy; several, alas! have already come to pass, others are in the process of fulfillment, and had we not heard these prophecies read by the Master’s own voice over seven years ago before the infinite Sea—which lent them, if possible, even greater breadth and majesty—we might believe they were written after the fact.

Yet while showing the imminent catastrophes for Peoples subjected to the implacable Laws of historical Cycles, his heart bleeds before this Fatality that seems inevitable yet need not be. And he adjures his human brethren to abandon the false path for the true Way, the one he has pointed out to them these twenty years past, the one he still indicates. He implores them to finally make honest trial of the means that alone can still oppose Destiny and save Humanity. And in this he is truly human, a man to whom “nothing human is alien,” and herein lies no small part of his claim to our veneration and profound affection.

It was around 1903, as certain allusions to events of that time indicate, that the Work we now deliver to the public was composed. Scattered notes and complete sections were gathered by us reverently, and we wished to be strictly nothing more than its simple arrangers. We forewarn the reader of this, who will thus understand why we had to relegate to an appendix a fragment written in a style and manner wholly different from the rest of the work. And if we have preserved and published this unfinished fragment, it is in the conviction that it will be read with pleasure by all who knew the Master and frequented his home; for they will find him there entire, with that fine irony, that sparkling wit, and that exquisite blend of Attic and Gallic salt which lent such charm, originality, and at times unexpected turns to his most elevated and serious conversations.

As for the form and division of the work, we shall not speak of them; they are clear enough, especially now that certain plates of the Archeometer have been disseminated and reproduced nearly everywhere.

May 23, 1911.

THE FRIENDS OF SAINT-YVES.