The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye

by Jay Weidner

  From the spiny ridge to the east of Samye, where a Bön-po temple once stood and Padmasambhava sat in meditation while Samye was built, the complex of temples and chapels surrounded by a flattened ellipse can be seen in all its grandeur, despite over twelve hundred years of use and misuse. At night, as in the Andean highlands of Peru, the river of the galaxy dominates the night sky, stretching at its summer zenith from northwest to southeast, with its bulging center high overhead. As at Misminay, the pattern of Samye chokor matches the path of the galaxy in the sky with its satellite chapels or lings, while the main structures, including the central Utse Rigsum, form the cardinal cross of the directions. The Utse Rigsum acts as the central omphalos and World Tree, and on the outside walls can still be seen vast cosmological murals and depictions of Samye in its glory.22

  Along that northwest line, the celestial road of the galaxy from Samye, is the holy city of Lhasa. If we think of this axis as the galactic axis, then Samye lies on the edge of the galaxy, with Lhasa at its center. The palace of the king was there, atop the jagged ridge of Marpo Ri, and the most ancient center of Tibetan civilization, the Jokang Temple, stood nearby. Eventually, the Marpo Ri would become the Potala Palace, and Lhasa itself would become the absolute center of Tibetan life, both political and spiritual.

  Standing on the roof of the Jokang Temple and looking west, back toward Mount Kailas and beyond to Mevryl’s Sphinx, 60 degrees of latitude away in Egypt, we note immediately the alignment of two large hills, Chakpo Ri and Bompo Ri, on the due west line (fig. 13.7). Even the modern work of the Communist Chinese, when they rebuilt this avenue, follows the ancient path of the alignment straight to the Jokang. In the Serpent’s Cave, on the northeastern side of Chakpo Ri, is a model of Samye, complete with supposedly self-generated stone statutes of the five Buddhas. This repeating pattern of how the cosmos aligns to create time and the meaning of time forms the center of the center, the point from which the dharma radiates throughout the land.

  When his work was finished, Padmasambhava departed Tibet for the Copper Mountains of the southwest. Before he left, he gave a series of predictions and prophecies to his main followers. These included instructions on how to find the termas he left behind, as well as predictions and pointers to the time of the coming destruction: “When the iron bird flies, and houses run on wheels, the Dharma will come to the land of the Red Man. Know, by these signs, that the age of darkness is ending.”23 He also left instructions for the opening of the hidden valleys, such as Khembalung, and predicted that they would be needed at a time when the demons had been released by the barbarians and Tibet had fallen to unbelievers in the dharma.24

  Figure 13.7. Looking west from Jokang Temple, Lhasa, along Mevyrl’s Sphinx line. The two hills between the modern office blocks are Chakpo Ri and behind it Bompo-Ri. (Photo by Vincent Bridges)

  Such a moment has perhaps arrived. The dharma is fading in Tibet, even as it is taking root in strange ways in the West. Many Tibetan refugees have indeed fled to protected valleys, such as Nepal, in the fringes of the Himalayas. But Padmasambhava left us no further clues to the opening of the hidden valleys, no exact timing on which to hang a date or a time period. While Padmasambhava clearly saw the need for a place of refuge, a science of timing and transformation didn’t arrive in Tibet for another two hundred and fifty years. The Kalachakra, or Wheel of Time, Tantra, introduced in 1027 C.E., brought it with a message from the hidden kingdom of Shambhala.

  SHAMBHALA AND THE WHEEL OF TIME

  The legends of a hidden civilization somewhere in central Asia have a long history, and as recently as the last century, this history could still influence world politics. The invasion of Tibet by British troops in 1904 was caused by a mistaken opinion on the part of some Tibetans that the czar of Russia was the king of Shambhala.25 In the 1930s, the idea of a lost valley in the Himalayas exploded on the mass consciousness with James Hilton’s best seller, The Lost Horizon, based in part on the experiences of a real Christian monk who converted to Buddhism in the seventeenth century. Shangri-la, the name of the hidden monastery in Hilton’s book, became a kind of synonym for all hidden valleys and places of refuge. FDR, when asked where the planes came from that bombed Tokyo in the spring of 1942, replied simply, “Shangri-la.” Roosevelt had his own “Shangri-la,” a hideaway in the Maryland Hills now called Camp David.26

  While most Westerners think of Tibet itself as the hidden kingdom, the Tibetans look to another, even more hidden land as the source of wisdom and inspiration. There, a line of enlightened dharma kings guard the most secret teachings of the Buddha, the Kalachakra Tantra. At the end of time, when the dharma is in danger of being totally destroyed by the barbarians of the age of darkness, the Kali Yuga, the king of Shambhala will emerge from the hidden land, defeat the forces of evil, and usher in a millennium of peace and prosperity.

  The legends and ancient texts also say that it is possible, though very difficult and dangerous, to travel to the hidden kingdom and there learn the Kalachakra firsthand. Curiously, all versions of the route to the hidden kingdom begin with the planetary omphalos on Mevryl’s Sphinx line, Mount Kailas.27

  Our earliest glimpse of a hidden paradise to the north populated by sages comes from the Mahabharata, the vast epic of Vedic India. The main character, Arjuna, a cousin of the king of Nepal, Yalambar, who founded the Kirati dynasty, travels to border of the mysterious land of Uttarakuru but fails to enter. His route takes him to Mount Kailas, and then northwest, along the galactic axis, to the hidden paradise. To the Bön-po, Uttarakuru was known as Olmolungring, and it also lay to the northwest of Mount Kailas. One of the many Tibetan guides to Shambhala also suggests that the route is northwest from Mount Kailas to the region of Kashmir, and then farther north.

  It is possible that this hidden kingdom was once a real country, somewhere in the region of the Tarim basin, north of Kashmir. Certainly, many ancient kingdoms, some of them Buddhist, flourished and died along the ancient Silk Route from China to the West, and the legend of Shambhala may have such a kingdom as its inner kernel of truth. But the idea of the hidden kingdom of enlightened sages goes deeper than just an ancient city-state, no matter how well organized and progressive it may have been. Like Atlantis, the myth of Shambhala points to an ancient cosmic unity of earth and sky.

  This becomes apparent when we examine the principal symbolic feature of Shambhala, its eight-petaled, lotus-shaped design. The lotus as a symbol of completeness and attainment goes all the way back to Atum and the cosmic ocean. Shambhala is a version of the vihara, or cosmic pattern, the Dharmachakra displayed at Samya chokor, and the union of the Saint Andrew’s solstice cross and the Saint George equinox cross, which represents the complete alignment of the Cube of Space, as does the Hendaye cross, as we saw in chapter 11. As shown in figure 13.8, the eight-petaled lotus, according to some Tibetan teachers, symbolizes the eight nerve channels that radiate from the heart center.28

  In physical terms, Shambhala is depicted as a ring of 108 snowcapped mountains. Within it are ninety-six principalities or local regions divided into eight countries (see fig. 13.9) of twelve principalities each. The center region consists of a central five-tiered mountain, or stupa, surrounded by four smaller hills marking the intercardinal directions. Each of these locations is said to have seventy-two devas, or god-like sages, within them. At the very center is the throne of the king of Shambhala. All of these numbers are related to precession: 96 × 270 = 108 × 240 = (5 × 72) × 72 = 25,920. As we saw with Atlantis, this mandala design echoes both internal and external systems and unites them with a sense of cosmology that is little short of remarkable for any era.29

  Also, as with Atlantis, Shambhala is connected with the last catastrophe. The older, non-Buddhist versions of the legend point to the founding of Shambhala around 13,000 years ago. The Bön-po claim that Olmolungring was founded after the last catastrophe and that once every 13,000 years, another Bön-po exemplar enters the world to renew and revitalize the ancient teachings. The remaini
ng Bön-po sects eagerly await such an exemplar. The Mahabharata also places the founding of Uttarakuru at the turn of the last golden age, roughly 13,000 years ago, as we saw in chapter 10.

  Figure 13.8. Correspondence between the lotus shape and the nerves of the heart center in the Tibetan tradition. Redrawn from Bernbaum. Compare this correspondence to the plan of Shambhala in fig. 13.9.

  Figure 13.9. A drawing of the kingdom of Shambhala, surrounded by 108 snowcapped mountains and divided into eight countries. (Stylized representation from Bernbaum)

  To the Buddhists, the history of Shambhala began when King Sucandra learned the Kalachakra from the last great teaching of the Buddha in the late sixth century B.C.E. He took this ultimate wisdom back to Shambhala, where it flourished and grew until the middle of the tenth century. A young Indian yogi named Tsilupa traveled, like Arjuna, to the edges of the northern paradise, where he met Manjusri, who taught him the Kalachakra and sent him back to India.

  Whether or not Tsilupa actually met Manjusri on the road to Shambhala, scholars have determined that the Kalachakra was practiced and taught in Kashmir by 960 C.E. This brings us to an interesting point. Both Kashmir and points farther north on the Silk Road had prominent Jewish communities in the ninth and tenth centuries. Could the legend of Shambhala have been grafted on to an early form of the kabbalistic Bahir? And would the result have been the unusual complexity and astronomical involvement found in the outer teachings of the Kalachakra? Could the Kalachakra be a Buddhist version of the ancient Hebrew illuminated astronomy?

  In the 1020s, another Indian yogi, Somanatha, brought the Kalachakra to Tibet and created the official chronology of Tibetan history. The astronomical calendar of the Kalachakra would spread across China, becoming eventually the elemental animals of Chinese restaurant menus. In Tibet it would have many applications, including the prophecy that 960 (10 for each principality in Shambhala) years after the introduction of the Kalachakra, the keys to Shambhala, or the clues to its reappearance, would be found. A teaching of the first Karmapa, one of the founders of the Karma Kagyu school, relates that after the 960 years have passed comes a period of 25 years, five times through the five elements, in which the cycle of time comes to an end and the wisdom king of Shambhala will return to this world in the form of the female water dragon. By this measure, 960 + 1027 = 1987 + 25 = 2012; we are in the period of turmoil at the moment. Note also how closely this matches Fulcanelli’s season of destruction.

  Even the orthodox Tibetan sects, such as the Gelugpa, whose leader is the Dalai Lama, consider that twenty-five hundred years after the Dharma reached Shambhala, around the sixth century B.C.E., the twenty-fifth king, Rudra Kalkin, would emerge and defeat the barbarians, ushering in the new golden age. Even with some looseness, it is very close to twenty-five hundred years since the time of the Buddha. And even though this is not openly expressed, it may be considered the driving force behind the Dalai Lama’s campaign to initiate as many people as possible, in the time remaining, into the Kalachakra Tantra.30

  FOURTEEN

  ALCHEMY AND TRANSCENDENCE

  Our quests led us from Egypt, to Europe, then on to Peru and Atlantis, beyond that to Tibet, India, and Nepal, and finally back to where we started, Egypt. In that long journey, we discovered early on that “alchemy,” in the sense of turning base metal into gold, was merely a by-product of a much greater attainment. That the transmutation of metals was possible, and had in fact been part of the historical record from the fourteenth century on—right up to the twentieth century if we are to believe the legends surrounding Fulcanelli—seemed less important than what such a transmutation said about the nature of reality and the significance of enlightenment.

  In the end, we discovered that alchemy actually is transcendence, the goal and the method united in one “process” that is ultimately never ending. The nature of that transcendence seems to be a gnosis about the nature of the cosmos, an alignment of inner centers—chakras or sefirot—with the outer alignments of the Cube of Space-Time. The inner “golden age” aligns the internal structure of one’s cosmos with the Golden Age in the sky, bringing on a personal apokalypsis, or unveiling of the mysteries. When this happens, consciousness and the physical body are transformed. If the person has available to him the “skillful means” developed by other initiates who have had the same experience, then he evolves toward what Alberto Villoldo called the Homo luminous, the Diamond Imperishable Body. If not, then the results are incomplete, and sometimes disastrous.

  In the story of the Djedi and King Khufu and in that of Padmasambhava and King Tri-Tsrong De-tsen of Tibet told in chapter 13, we can see a basic pattern. Both “magicians” are immortal, or virtually so, and have command of the life force in unusual ways. Their names or titles are similar, the “Stable One” of the Djed has the same implications as the “Lotus-Born One” of the skhamba or cosmic axis, and they both possess the secret to a model of space-time. In the case of the Djedi, these were the monuments on Giza and the mysterious text hidden in Heliopolis; in the case of Padmasambhava, it was the plan of the Dharmachakra of Samye chokor and eventually, the text of the Kalachakra. In both cultures, we find legends of a lost, or hidden, advanced civilization: Atlantis from Egypt, by way of the Greeks, and Shambhala in Tibet.

  These similarities ultimately help us understand Fulcanelli and Le Mystère de cathédrales. When we follow all the clues, run down all the threads and hints, we arrive at a few basic conclusions.

  Fulcanelli is directing us to a time period, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when a coalition of initiates managed to have the text of the mystery carved onto the architectural structures designed to facilitate the personal alignment and gnosis of those who could read the mystery from the books of stone and then use the practical implications within the cathedral itself. In this way, Notre-Dame-de-Paris and Samye chokor are the same concept, modified only by the culture in which they were created. But the function, the connection of the inner and outer alignments of space-time, is virtually the same.

  Our second conclusion concerns the Hendaye cross. It is also a model of the proper golden-age alignment of inner and outer realities, and a marker of the exact time period, now and for the next decade or so, in which these cosmological myths, these intrusions of mythic time, will be played out in the sky. In this way, the Hendaye cross truly is the philosopher’s stone, because unless one understands the alignments in the sky depicted on the cross—that is, unless one has the key to the mystery—then even the greatest of these monuments to the end of time, from Notre Dame to Giza and Samye, are but mute wonders built for obscure reasons by people in the distant past.

  Our third conclusion is a little more complex. It concerns the role of light in enlightenment. The Pyramid Texts suggest that after death, the pharaoh was reborn with Osiris in the star fields of Orion, which are a mere seventy light-years away and the closest area of stellar creation to our solar system. The pharaoh attained immortality in these star fields as he passed in death along the path of Nun, which in Egyptian is the word for the primeval ether soup out of which all creation arose, through the area of stellar formation in the body of Orion. Thus, by being reborn as a star in Osiris’s company, the pharaoh reenacted on a local level the original creation of the universe.

  But to attain this star birth in the bardo, or transition state, of Orion required first of all that the pharaoh understand the “number of the shrines of the secret chamber of the enclosure of Tehuti.” As we saw above, this numbering of shrines creates the throne of Osiris, the Pyramid complex, from which, as the soul star place, the pharaoh made the jump to a light body in Orion, becoming thereby a new Osiris. We can see this same function in the grand design of Samye chokor, with the exception that becoming a star body, and thereby leaving this plane entirely, is not part of its plan. Unlike the pharaoh, when Padmasmbhava became a “new Osiris” in a light-body state comparable perhaps to a living star, he did not leave for Orion. He stayed on to help the rest of us make the
transition.

  And this brings us to the point of our conclusion. Alchemy may in fact be as simple as: Changes in the nature of Light create changes in the Mind of nature. And the shift of the age in the sky signals a profound change in the nature of both Mind and Light. It was this sense of impending change, even catastrophic change, that drove the cathedral-building frenzy in the thirteenth century and eventually led to Fulcanelli’s message in a bottle, Le Mystère des cathédrales, in the twentieth century.

  In the end, we can do no better than agree with Fulcanelli when he says: “I ask for neither remembrance nor gratitude, but only that you should take the same trouble for others as I have taken for you.” It is our hope that in this book, we have followed his instructions, becoming, along with Fulcanelli, “a beacon on the great highway of the esoteric Tradition.”

  EPILOGUE

  FULCANELLI REVEALED

  In the end, one final mystery remains. The question of Fulcanelli’s identity haunts all the other mysteries like the shadow of a high-flying bird on a sunny day. We can see his absence, the shadow, but when we look for the bird itself, we are blinded by the sun’s brilliance. In Fulcanelli’s case, the brilliance is that of the gnosis and intelligence of his works, and, just as with the sun, this intense light makes it hard to find the bird, the personality, casting the shadow.

  When all the pieces of evidence and innuendo are sifted and sorted, we end up with less than what we had at the beginning. “Fulcanelli” vanishes, leaving apparently only a long series of jokers, pranksters, plagiarists, and sensationalists. The work remains, isolated in context and hermetic in meaning, a true message in a bottle from the last adept. Revealing the levels of complexity in that message, as we have done in this book, leaves us finally with a core of truth, both about ourselves and about the cosmos in which we live. That truth is the secret of alchemy, which perhaps can be revealed, fully, only at the end of time.