Translator’s Notes
T-01 — Translator’s Note: “Stop, traveler, you tread upon a hero’s dust!” Epitaph inscribed by the Count d’Enghien on the tomb of his great opponent, General Mercy, killed in 1645 in the Thirty Years’ War.
T-02 — Nephilim: giants, titans, fallen angels.
T-03 — Translator’s Note: Aryavarta — ancient name for northern India.
T-07 — Translator’s Note: The Thomist — Saint Thomas Aquinas.
T-08 — Translator’s Note: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.
T-09 — Translator’s Note: The French original uses Gigogne — a French expression denoting a prolific fatherhood/motherhood.
T-10 — Translator’s Note: Orthodoxy — a religious doctrine held to be true.
T-11 — Translator’s Note: Moxa — a cotton wick that Eastern peoples apply, lit, to cauterize wounds.
T-15 — Translator’s Note: Play on words in the French original: “de la Mer à la Mare” (from the Sea to the Pond).
T-16 — Translator’s Note: Periplus — coast-hugging navigation; a circular voyage.
T-18 — Translator’s Note: Purgatory.
T-19 — Translator’s Note: Alpha and Omega.
T-21 — Translator’s Note: Richelieu and Mazarin.
T-22 — Translator’s Note: Letter from Saint-Yves to Papus.
T-23 — Translator’s Note: Inventory — existing books.
T-25 — Translator’s Note: All the Correspondences given here refer to the Northern Hemisphere.
T-26 — Translator’s Note: Under conventional astrology, Libra would be attributed to Venus as its diurnal domicile.
T-27 — Translator’s Note: This contradicts the traditional astrological assignment of Mars’s diurnal domicile to Aries and nocturnal to Scorpio.
T-28 — Translator’s Note: Under conventional astrology, Gemini would be considered the diurnal domicile of Mercury.
T-29 — Translator’s Note: Again, Mars’s domicile contradicts traditional astrology.
T-30 — Translator’s Note: Under conventional astrology, Virgo is considered the nocturnal domicile of Mercury.
T-31 — Translator’s Note: A pagoda is an Oriental temple.
T-32 — Translator’s Note: Massorah — a critical work on the spelling and correct reading of the Hebrew Bible, compiled by Jewish doctors.
T-33 — Translator’s Note: Archeometric Mantras — a term coined by Saint-Yves to designate readings made on the scales of the Archeometer.
T-35 — Translator’s Note: Pluto does not appear here, as it had not yet been discovered at the time this book was written.
T-36 — Translator’s Note: There appears to be a confusion here: each 30° represents a rotation of 2 hours, so the twelve 30° divisions correspond to twice that span, i.e. 24 hours; therefore one must multiply by two (2) rather than divide.
T-37 — Translator’s Note: The author claims that Uranus and Neptune’s influence is insignificant compared to the closer planets.
T-38 — Translator’s Note: The entire reasoning is extraordinarily absurd and false, because the author attempts to apply to an occult science — astrology — premises drawn from a materialist science. It is not the visible material body of the planet that carries astrological influence; in any case, the astrological influence of the post-Saturnian planets has been clearly demonstrated.
T-39 — Translator’s Note: Matrix — the womb.
T-44 — Translator’s Note: A jar for washing the hands.
T-45 — Translator’s Note: Segments.
T-46 — Translator’s Note: Regarding the patent — particularly the standard and the adaptations — reproduced in full below.
T-48 — Translator’s Note: See the chalices above.
T-49 — Editor’s Note: In 19th-century French, rasta is common shorthand for rastaquouère — a flashy, suspicious social climber of dubious foreign origin. Not to be confused with the English word “Rasta” (Rastafarian).
T-50 — Editor’s Note: Pot-Bouille — a literary allusion to Émile Zola’s 1882 novel of the same name, which depicts the moral decay and hidden sordidness of the Parisian bourgeoisie.
T-51 — Editor’s Note: La lanterne des bourgeois de Falaise — a French idiom meaning an explanation that explains nothing, a light that sheds no light.
T-52 — Editor’s Note: Monsieur Dimanche — the hapless creditor in Molière’s Don Juan (1665), a character who is endlessly put off and manipulated by the debtor he tries to collect from.