R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz - The Temple in Man - Sacred Architecture and the Perfect Man (1977).pdf

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The Temple in Man
Sacred Architecture and the Perfect
Man
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz
Translated by
Robert & Deborah Lawlor
Illustrated by Lucie Lamy
Table of Contents
PAGE
Translator's Foreword ...................................................
7
Preface ..........................................................................
14
Introduction ..................................................................
16
Definitions .......................................................................
27
CHAPTER I. A Hypothesis and Its Evolution..................... 33
CHAPTER II. Significance
of the Crown of the Skull...........................
48
CHAPTER III. Reflections
on a Philosophy of Measure .....................
57
CHAPTER IV. The Plan ..............................................
68
CHAPTER V. Orientation ............................................
80
CHAPTER VI. The Temple in Man .............................
86
CHAPTER VII. The Crossing: Egyptian Mentality ..
111
CHAPTER VIII. The Egyptian Canon
for a Standing Man .............................
115
Conclusions ......................................................................
132
Translator's Foreword
THE APPEARANCE of this small book in 1949 created an unusually
large academic controversy in the renowned Department of Egyp-
tology of the College de France, Paris. An "amateur" Egyptologist
(as the scholars must have labeled Schwaller de Lubicz) had
presented an entirely new and radical approach for the considera-
tion of Egyptologists, archaeologists, and historians in general, an
approach that might have been ignored completely had it not been
developed with such a great amount of forceful, detailed research,
and had it not won over the complete acceptance and enthusiasm
of several of the leading Egyptologists and archaeologists of that
time, including Alexandre Varille and C.H. Robichon. We shall not
go into the intriguing way in which the academic establishment cir-
cumvented a confrontation with the challenge posed by Le Temple
dans l'Homme; nor shall we examine how they attempted to dismiss
this work through the well-known academic tactic of intentional
silence. Instead, let us use these few pages to introduce this rela-
tively little known author, then to see what might be some of the
major themes contained in the "New Egyptology" that Schwaller
de Lubicz's work opens before us.
It is true that Schwaller de Lubicz was not a qualified Egyp-
tologist by academic standards. Instead of first spending years in
the Egyptological libraries of Europe, he, upon his first visit to
Egypt, took up residence together with his family
1
in a small hotel
1
His wife, Isha Schwaller de Lubicz, a specialist in Egyptian hieroglyphic language, later wrote a
two-volume novel depicting life in ancient Egypt through the eyes of a young man who attains the
level of temple initiation. In Her-Bak Chirk Pea (Inner Traditions. 1979) and Her-Bak: The
Living Face of Ancient Egypt (Inner Traditions. 1978) she utilizes philosophic inspiration and
research material from her husband's work. His stepdaughter Lucie Lamy carried out the
exacting survey of the entire temple.
7
very near the Temple of Luxor, and there he remained For more
than fifteen years of intense, uninterrupted study of this great
monument of the Eighteenth Dynasty of pharaonic Egypt.
Schwaller de Lubicz was already a mature man by the time he
arrived in Egypt. Let us therefore review briefly his earlier years.
2
At about eighteen years of age. Rene Schwaller left his home in
Alsace, after having completed an apprenticeship with his father in
pharmaceutical chemistry, and went to Paris with the clearly
formulated intention of "learning the true nature of substance." In
addition to studying modern chemistry and physics, at this young
age he began reading every alchemical text he could find, those of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as well as sixteenth-century
Rosicrucian texts and the more familiar works of Paracelsus and
Raymond Lull. For a period he became interested in painting and
was a student of Matisse, but his main role among his contem-
poraries was that of a philosopher of nature; thus, he influenced
many artists in Paris at that time, such as Arp, Leger, and
especially Prince O.V. de Lubicz Milosz, the Lithuanian mystic
poet and statesman, who in 1919 conferred his family title on
Schwaller as a means of expressing his admiration and gratitude.
He served in the armed forces as a chemist during the First
World War, and at the close of the war he published a journal,
L'Affranchi, followed by Le Veilleur, both dedicated to social reform
in the difficult task of implementing peace.
During the course of his personal development, he received the
name of "Aor," signifying "Light of the Higher Mind." He is said
to have continued his alchemical research during this period, and
later, while living among and guiding a contemplative community
of students, scholars, artists, and craftsmen who had gathered
around him at. St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps, he produced
alchemical glass with reds and blues thought to compare with the
stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, a feat no other chemist has
been able to accomplish in the six hundred years since the
cathedrals were constructed. It was during the years at St. Moritz
that his philosophic and scientific vision coalesced around an
understanding of the universal laws of harmony.
2
For a more complete biographical account, see AOR, Sa vie, Son oeuvre by Isha
Schwaller de Lubicz (Paris: La Colombe, 1963), and Serpent in the Sky: A Study of
the Work of Schwaller de Lubicz by J. A. West (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
8

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