Page 20 - Cercle Sigebert IV n1 ENG

of the votive stones called Masseboth. However, even the figure of Jacob presents not a few

obscure sides. He lived for several years in Harran, the same city where the Picatrix was

created. Biblical testimonies

tell that he was a pastor, but the writers Adrian Gilbert and William Dermaud, nurture
reasonable doubts and do not exclude that he also had a deep knowledge on astronomy and

that he was informed of some secrets about the constellation of Orion and the universe;

probably handed down by the Sabines. Orion recalls to Egypt, to its mythical pyramids. The

three great calls: Jacob’s staff, the Milky Way, Jacob's ladder. In 1861 the painter Eugene

Delacroix portrayed the Patriarch in one of the three blades (Jacob’s struggle against the

Angels) kept in the

chapel of the Holy Angels

near the enigmatic

church of Saint Sulpice,
in Paris. Like most of the

works of art present in

this temple, this painting

also shows various

allegories that are

related to the town of

Rennes le Château with
the mystical Order of the

Priory of Sion which will

follow in the future

another article of study.

It is said of the engaged

struggle on the bank of a

ford, between an Angel

messenger of God and the Patriarch himself. The fight lasts a whole night, ending with the

defeat of the man, who appointed that place Penuel, or the face of God (perhaps a reference
to those unfaced stems venerated at Bethel.) At dawn, the Angel went away renaming Jacob

with the name Israel. The philosopher Edouard Schurè sees in the name Jacob a probable

Phoenician origin, but then asserts that with the prefix IS (such as Isaac, Ishmael, Isaiah,

Isis, Israel) it could also be called an Egyptian initiation. I believe that behind that fight

there is, in reality, a proof: a rite of affiliation, as revealed by the wound on the thigh and the

uncovered knee of the progenitor.

Schurè devoted
much time to the study of the Great Initiates, he analysed the Egyptian

literature in depth, dedicating himself to the divine figure of Hermes

Trismegistus. He who is called the master of secrets. He, turning to his

disciple Asclepius, said: What is eternal cannot be measured by the

short meter of time! In my opinion these words are to be connected to

the name of Jacob which in Hebrew means precisely the measurement

of time. Rereading certain pages of Schurè's work, I was able to note

with surprise that Jacob's dream is not a narrative of Christian

Catholic origin, but a popular version of Fiat lux, or the Vision of
Hermes. So, let's go with the imagination along the Nile valley, on the deserts of Egypt,

where ... Hermes feels pervaded by a marvellous luminescence, in diaphanous waves the

forms were paraded before him fascinating of all living things. Suddenly he felt a terrifying

darkness, sank into a damp, smoky chaos, where the god Osiris appeared to him. The story

continues with the sight of an incredible spectacle: the infinity of the space bounded by 7