Natural Architecture, By PetrusTalemarianus

Preface to the English TranslationByJoscelyn Godwin

In offering this translation of L’architecture naturelle tothe English-speaking public, we do not pretend toresolve all the mysteries surrounding the book and itsauthorship. By its own testimony, it was written in Latinby one Petrus Talemarianus, during the hundred monthspreceding the summer solstice of 1944, then offered toAlexandre Rouhier, who oversaw its translation intoFrench, its editing, and its illustration. In 1949, thesmall Parisian publisher Les Éditions Véga issued thefirst edition of 252 copies, printed on separate folioswith a page size of 22 by 15 inches and contained in ared cloth slipcase. In 1982, Véga issued a full-sizedfacsimile reprint and also a version in smaller format,about the size of the present volume. Where such an unusual production isconcerned, anything is credible, even the existencesomewhere of an original Latin manuscript. But agentle mystification is also possible, and indeedrespectable for works of esoteric wisdom. The UnitedStates Catalog of Copyright Entries (Jan.-June 1977)identifies Petrus Talemarianus as Alexandre Rouhierhimself, on the authority of Odette Rouhier (hisdaughter[1]). Not much has been published about Dr.Rouhier, but he is famous for one thing: apharmacologist by profession, he was a pioneer in thefirst-hand study of hallucinogenic drugs and the authorof the classic book on peyote: Le Peyotl, la plante quifait les yeux émerveillés (Peyotl, the plant that fills theeyes with wonder, 1927), and the shorter Les plantesdivinatoires (Plants of divination, 1927). At least fiveyears earlier, he had been lecturing on the subject to a

“Groupe Paléosophique” whose members included theBelgian composer and theorist Ernest Britt (1857-after1950), the mathematician and historian Francis Warrain(1867-1940), and the psychical researcher EugèneCaslant.[2] These names introduce us to an obscure groupof scientifically-minded esotericists, who weresearching not only in traditions like Kabbalah andPlatonism but also in mathematics and the physicalsciences for the links between mind and body, God andman, the Absolute and the manifest. Francis Warrain isprobably the most significant of them, and is the solecontemporary authority cited in L’architecture naturelle.The Editor adds that he submitted the manuscript tohim, and includes an unpublished essay of Warrain’s asan appendix. Warrain’s difficult works ranged overhigher mathematics, Kabbalah, music theory,monographs on Kepler’s cosmology and on thepolymathic Charles Henry (1859-1926), and culminatedwith an immense unfinished study of the Polish“philosopher of the Absolute,” Hoëné Wronski (1776-1853). If L’architecture naturelle virtually ignores thetwentieth century, it is hardly more cognizant ofnineteenth-century authorities. Apart from themathematicians named in the section on regular solids,only two names appear: Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard (1817-1894), an important medical researcherwhose discoveries helped Charles Henry to develop hisown theories of psychophysics, and Wronski, whose lifeinspired Balzac’s novel La recherche de l’absolu. Thefocus grows sharper when we add that Ernest Britt, too,was a lifelong admirer of Wronski, and that he and hiswealthy second wife supported Wronskian enterprisesin France and Poland, including the publication by thesame house of Véga of Warrain’s L’Oeuvrephilosophique de Hoëné Wronski (three vols., 1933-38).

If with this loose circle of French Wronskians we havenot reached the creator(s) of L’architecture naturelle, atleast they were tangential to it. Some readers will soon spot another influence:that of René Guénon (1886-1951), the father of FrenchTraditionalism. Although Talemarianus never mentionsGuénon by name, he sows clues by using such phrasesas “the multiple states of being,” and by basing hismetaphysical hierarchy, from “Non-manifestation”downwards, on similar principles to Guénon’s. Like thelatter, he takes it for granted that wisdom is to besought in the ancient religious and philosophicaltraditions of East and West; that these traditions,rightly understood, are in accord with one another; andthat the monuments of literature and architecture, atleast up to the Renaissance period, encode a perennialesoteric knowledge. The connection with Guénon goes further, for itwas on his initiative that Éditions Véga, publisher ofL’architecture naturelle, was founded. This happened in1929-30, during Guénon’s brief liaison with anAmerican heiress, Mary Wallace Shillito (1876 or 1878-1938).[3] Mary was the daughter of a Cincinnatidepartment store magnate, John Shillito (1808-1879),and had recently lost her second husband, Assan FaridDina (1871-1928). Guénon’ wife had also died in theprevious year, and as soon as the two of them met,reputedly in Chacornac’s occult bookshop, they becameclose friends. They decided to start a publishing houseto specialize in traditional texts; Guénon would selectand edit them, and Mary Shillito would provide thefunds. As a first step, they planned a trip to Egypt, togather materials. This was not how things turned out. The coupleleft for Egypt on March 5, 1930, but after three months,Mary returned alone to France, where she immediatelymarried the aforementioned Ernest Britt. Guénon

stayed in Egypt for the rest of his life. Véga did publishtwo of his works, and those among his most important:Le symbolisme de la croix (The symbolism of the cross,1931) and Les états multiples de l’être (The multiplestates of being, 1932), but its loyalty had shifted.Before the end of the year, flush with Mary Shillito’smoney, it had brought out a luxurious, limited edition ofBritt’s La lyre d’Apollon (Apollo’s lyre); in 1931appeared Warrain’s La théodicée de la Kabbale; andVéga remained devoted to the Wronskians for the restof the decade. [4] L’architecture naturelle could well be called aTraditionalist work in the Guénonian sense, but it lacksthe negative attitude assumed by most of those whowear that label. While Guénon, in such works as TheCrisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantityand the Signs of the Times, was one of modernity’ssharpest critics, Talemarianus does not bother withpolemics or utter apocalyptic warnings. With theexceptions mentioned above, he simply ignoresanything later than the seventeenth century. Rabelais,Kepler, and the Château of Versailles are as far as hecares to go. [5] Having begun his “Report” early in 1936and labored at it “for a hundred months” that took himthroughout the second World War, he finished it on June24, 1944, during the heat of the Normandy invasion—ofwhich it bears not the slightest trace. Véga’s publication of it in 1949 was another actof positive defiance of the times. The extravagance andgigantic size of the book, its superb typography andhundreds of illustrations, and the declared intention ofteaching architects how to build houses and palaces,churches, and temples with natural materials, inaccordance with natural laws, were as contrary aspossible to the drabness and shoddiness of the post-war world. Much of the credit for the book’s beauty goes to

Marcel Nicaud, an employee of the French nationalmuseums whom Rouhier apparently brought into theproject. Nicaud’s other known work includes bookillustrations and the copying and restoration ofmedieval wall-paintings.[6] The decision to use nophotographic reproductions, but to have Nicaud redraweven well-known alchemical engravings, as well as ahost of artefacts from every corner of the globe, givesL’architecture naturelle its graphic unity. The onlycomparison that comes to mind is Manly Palmer Hall’smasterpiece of 1928, The Secret Teachings of All Ages,with its fine typography and color-plates by J. AugustusKnapp. As for the enigmatic figure of PetrusTalemarianus, the catalogues of some rare bookdealers, evidently privy to inside information, identifyhim not as Alexandre Rouhier but as “Bordeaux-Montrieux.” That is the surname of a distinguishedFrench family, a branch of which owns the Château deTalmay, in the village of that name east of Dijon. [7] Thewhole atmosphere of L’architecture naturelle seems inaccord with its authorship by an aristocratic recluse,who chose as a pseudonym a Latinization of hisancestral home (Talemarianus = “of Talmay”), whileRouhier, the pharmacologist-editor, inserted theincongruous references to the personalities andinterests of the Wronskian circle. There is evidently afield for investigation here, but our responsibility to thebook has not yet allowed us to pursue it further.[8] Joscelyn Godwin, Hamilton, New YorkAriel Godwin, Columbus, OhioJune 2006

[1] Odette Rouhier is identified as Dr. Rouhier’s daughter, and

quoted on the subject of her father’s relations with René Guénon, inJean Robin, René Guénon, Témoin de la tradition (Paris: GuyTrédaniel, 1986), p. 202 n.[2] Information on the Groupe Paléosophique and on Ernest andMary Britt comes from the Britt papers in the library of the Universityof Texas, Austin. See J. Godwin, Music and the Occult: FrenchMusical Philosophies, 1750-1950 (Rochester: University of RochesterPress, 1995), 99-126, for more on the theories of Wronski, Britt,Henry, and Warrain.[3] On Mary Shillito and Guénon, see Jean-Pierre Laurant, Le senscaché dans l’oeuvre de René Guénon (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme,1975), p. 210; Jean Robin, René Guénon, Témoin de la tradition(Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1986), pp. 201-202; Mark Sedgwick, Againstthe Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 74-75, 288. See also The History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County(Cincinnati: S.B. Nelson & Co., 1894), pp. 476-477, which describesJohn Shillito’s career and states that at the time of writing, hisdaughter Mary was married to “Henry P. Rogers of New York City.”The Château des Avenières in Cruseilles, between Annecy andGeneva, is now a hotel and maintains its own website, which statesthat was built by Mary Shillito in 1907-1917 and shows the gaudydecorations, with images from the Tarot and all religions, painted byAssan Faride Dina, “born of a Hindu father and a French mother.”Time Magazine, Dec. 10, 1923, reports that Assan Dina, a Hindumillionaire, and his wife are going to give France the world’s biggestobservatory at the cost of $6,000,000. La Salévienne, a magazine ofGenevan-Savoyard history also accessible on the Internet, givesAssan Dina’s dates and the date of his marriage to Mary (June 23,1913), and reproduces a photograph of the Britts in 1932, breakingground for a road donated by them.[4] According to the history of the Château des Avenières (seeprevious note), Britt exhausted Mary’s fortune in five years; theysold the château in 1936 and divorced in 1937. She died in anaccident the following year. The financing of L’architecture naturellemust therefore have come from elsewhere.[5] It is also almost wholly lacking in references to Islam: a traditionthat did not figure much in Guénon’s works before he left France,and whose esoteric dimension (Sufism) was then hardly known inEurope.[6] Searches of the Internet during 2005-06, notably that of thePatrimoine de France and of the Centre des monuments nationaux,have shown that Marcel Nicaud was active from the 1940s until atleast 1967 copying medieval wall-paintings for archival purposesand restoring them. He also illustrated Jean Marquès-Rivière, Rituelde magie tantrique hindoue (Véga, 1939) and Yüan Kuang: Méthodepratique de divination chinoise par le “Yi-king” (Véga, 1950).

[7] See, for example, Catalog no. 314 of Burgersdijk en Niermans(Leiden, Nov. 20-21, 2001), lot 74.[8] Thanks to M. J.-P. Laurant of the École Pratique des HautesÉtudes for apprising us of the Bordeaux-Montrieux connection.