TO THE READER

 The Message Rediscovered is not a collection of thoughts produced by human wisdom ; nor is it a literary work among the hundreds that appear every day in the publishing world. No, it is quite a different book. It is dedicated, as its inspired author states on the very first page, 

 To the glory of God and at the service of men who shall read with the eyes of the spirit and of the heart the signs inscribed in the flesh of the world [...] This book is not for all, but only for those to whom it is given to believe the unbelievable.

 E. d’Hooghvorst in reference to the origin of inspired word, wrote the following on Poetry :

 Of all forms of art, poetry certainly is the most worthy of admiration down here, for its material is the noblest of human functions: the Word. Poetry, true poetry, is the same thing as prophecy. The Ancients had no doubt that poets were possessed by a divine being: the Muse. Without muses there were no poets. The rhythmic terms of poetry were those of an incarnate god. The god of poetry was Apollo himself, head of the Muses’ choir and source of all prophecy or mantic word.1[1]

 This is why the British translators, on rendering the text into English, have adhered strictly to the precise meaning of the French words and present a literal translation. 

 Thus, in verse 40 of book I: « He who is learned (instruit)[...] » becomes « He who has been instructed [...] » : the French instruit does not have to be understood in the sense of university teaching, but rather in the sense of a divine teaching, that is, instructed by divine Light, which hermetic philosophers call « The Light of Nature ». One of these philosophers, Thomas Vaughan, alias Eugenius Philalethes, wrote in the treatise Lumen de Lumine :

 I wrote only what God confirmed for my eyes alone, and that He can prove before the world in general. I have seen His secret Light, His candle is my teacher.

 This is the true instruction to which The Message Rediscovered refers, for example, in book I, verse 2 :

 Pure men reach God without the aid of clerics or scholars since they are already saints in the Lord, who instructs as he wants, when he wants and where he wants.

 « Pure men »: it could be said, are those that have been made holy by divine initiation, but they are certainly very few in number.

 Let us also consider verse 3’ of book XIX :

 The Book speaks to intuition, to love and to deep memory, and not to men’s intelligence, will and superficial reason. « What the Book says is great, but what it induces in each one of us is incommensurable. »

 What we are concerned with here is revelation, rather than literature. The first twelve books represent the quintessence of Louis Cattiaux’s Message. The verses are short and concentrated in the extreme, and this is why their hermetic meaning is more difficult to penetrate.

[1] E. d’Hooghvorst, Le Fil de Pénélope, t. I, ed. La Table d’Émeraude, Paris, 1996, p. 98. 

From book XIII onwards, the poetic aroma becomes more perceptible. Some extracts taken at random provide examples of this. Let us consider book XXVIII, verse 14, book XXXVIII, verses 24 to 34’’, or book XXXV, verses 74 to 79’’.

 Let us not break our head over the Book; instead, let us break our heart over it, so that our precious soul germinates and fructifies before God in the secret of the beginning and end of all things. (XVII, 53’)

 A first edition of The Message Rediscovered was published in 1946 at the author’s expense, containing only the first twelve chapters, those that had been finished by then.

 That first edition was received by the public with total indifference, and the literary critics scarcely gave it a mention, except a few ones, among them René Guénon.

 The Message Rediscovered opens with two prayers in triangular form; one represents the sign of ascending fire, as the Father; the other, the sign of falling water, as the Mother. This work contains 40 books, or chapters, and is presented as a series of verses in two columns that should generally be read horizontally from left to right. Each chapter is preceded by epigraphs and followed by hypographs drawn from the holy Scriptures of all Nations.

 We speak a new language, but we repeat the ancient unique revelation, for nobody invents anything in the ART of God. (XXXIII, 42)

 This is the affirmation of the universality of a single and identical revelation since the beginning through all the holy books.

 The Message Rediscovered does not necessarily have to be read like an ordinary book, from beginning to end. A way of approaching it is to open it at random and to read the verses that your eyes fall upon. Or even better, one can consult it on a particular subject by inserting the point of a paperknife into its closed pages and reading the response indicated by the point of it. For it is, in fact, a kind of magic book that replies to questions one puts to it with simplicity and without malice.

 But to approach it is not to penetrate it. With regard to its profound content we read :

 The Book is like the ark that carries and transmits the secret of the Unique One. Many shall carry it, but few shall penetrate it. (XXIII, 61’)

 Here there is more than a moral and more than an asceticism, more than a philosophy and more than a mysticism. Here is the key to the restitution of man and the world in God. (IX, 36’)

 The Book teaches us how to come out of death and repose in life, but how many of the believers are passionate about this mystery? (XII, 5’)

 This is the true content of this Message, which has been called prophetic. 

 As the author says, this book addresses itself to intuition and profound memory, and not to speculative reason. Very few in number are those that have had the intelligence and the patience to read it and ponder over it, so as to penetrate it and discover the path that leads to the living secret of man, buried in the deepest depths of the nature of this world.

Has the murkiness of ignorance descended so thickly to that extent upon today’s humanity to make it forget the trace of the holy science of the disciples of Hermes, transmitted from age to age through filiation ?

 At the time, even those who still believed in it and who practised alchemy did not recognize L. Cattiaux as one of their own.

 « This book is all very fine », they say, leafing through The Message, « but it has nothing to do with our alchemy; it contains not a single practical formula like those taught by our masters. It is just one more mystical book among so many others ».

 Did the learned masters not also repel the Book as being alien to their revelations, their traditions and their sciences? (XXXVIII, 13)

 This verdict was almost unanimous.

 In short, The Message Rediscovered, in an uncommon language, that is to say, in a language other than that normally used by masters of alchemy, a language with which Cattiaux was perfectly acquainted from having studied the works of the ancient masters, The Message Rediscovered, speaks nevertheless on every page of their famous matter, light of Nature, secret fire of the opus capable of dissolving vulgar gold without violence, of making it

germinate, fructify and multiply, that is, of converting vulgar mercury into the Mercury of the Philosophers and maturing it, through the union of that which is most high with that which is most low.

 Louis Cattiaux, in a good many of letters to his close friends Charles (1924-2004) and Emmanuel d’Hooghvorst (1914-1999), had expressed his heartfelt wish to see his major work translated into English. He even thought an English edition should appear before the first complete edition in French :

 [...] in any case, English seems to me more in keeping with The Message Rediscovered, because there is among the English-speaking peoples a quest for God, a serious-mindedness and a faith that is, you might say, totally lacking in the French.

 [...] I continue to believe that the English edition of The Message Rediscovered is the only reasonable solution, for French has become the classic language of the ungodly, it must be said.

 [...] I think an edition in English would be more successful than one in French, which has become the language of sceptics and atheists par excellence.

 [...] an edition in an English-speaking country would be of great importance for the circulation of the work.

 [...] English is better than French because circulation is better and quicker. America would be the best place at the moment. We need to find a black publisher, preferably. A French edition will be possible afterwards. 

But this wish could not be fulfilled at the time, the first complete edition in French appeared in 1956, three years after his death. 

 Subsequently, Le Message Retrouvé has been republished seven times in French, the very latest version has been published by Philomène Alchimie in January 2024. The same publisher has also just published an art book on Louis Cattiaux as he was not only a writer but also a painter. The book, entitled Cattiaux, un Art magique features a comprehensive biography and fine reproductions of 192 pictorial works showing a clearly hermetic and alchemical content. It also includes extracts from Cattiaux's essay on Painting. Readers wishing to know more about this author can find this essay in English under the title Physics and Metaphysics of Painting, as well as a collection of letters to his friends The Collected Letters of Louis Cattiaux.

 Le Message Retrouvé has also been translated into several languages, with six editions in Spanish, five in Catalan, one in Italian, three in Portuguese, one in German, and a Dutch translation is coming.

 Upcoming event from September 2024: The international traveling exhibition on the Berthe Weill retrospective and her gallery, which will travel from the Grey Art Gallery in New York (30th Sept. 2024-2nd March 2025) to the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris (8th Oct.-25th Jan. 2025) via the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (5th May-7th Sept. 2025), will feature the work of Louis Cattiaux, through the exhibition of the painting entitled « La Vierge attentive ou la Vierge à l'étoile », a knife-painted canvas that bears witness to Louis Cattiaux's first pictorial stage.

Now, seventy years have passed, and we have the honour of presenting this work to English-speaking readers, to their enormous benefit. We hope thus to have fulfilled the wishes of its author.

©JEANNE D’HOOGHVORST

January 2024