October 1945; the last surviving number of Year IV.
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La Iniciación: Mensuario del Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos
The Initiation: Monthly of the Independent Group of Esoteric Studies
La Iniciación · Año IV, Nº 42 · October 1945
Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileOperator ruling: no copyright implications asserted for this work. Uruguay life+50 (Leo d. 1970 → PD 2020); US URAA restoration assessed at ~2041 in the collection plan and overridden by the operator.
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1THE MODERN THEORIES OF ALCHEMY. By Jollivet Castelot S. I. 6 We are going to set forth here, as briefly as possible, the constitution of atoms and the experiments of transmutation of the chemical elements, according to the most recent theories.
2We shall use, for this purpose, the very clear little volume that Jean Becquerel has just published on Radioactivity and the transformation of the elements.
3We shall examine, afterwards, some points relating to a procedure different from that employed by modern physicists.
4THE RAYS. The different rays are designated under the names of Becquerel rays, beta, alpha, gamma and secondary rays. [Sic: the Spanish prints nombro, for nombre.]
5The Becquerel rays produce a photographic action and ionisation — that is, the formation of electrified centres in rarefied gases.
6The beta rays are formed by a flux of particles charged with negative electricity, and are deflected and dispersed by a magnetic field.
7The corpuscles that compose the beta rays are identical with the cathodic corpuscles; they are electrons.
8The alpha rays — a very absorbable part of the irradiation — are formed by helium ions emitted with a velocity of many thousands of kilometres per second, and pass through matter.
9These rays are analogous to the canal rays of Crookes tubes.
10These alpha rays give off heat through the bombardment they effect of the substance to which they belong, and their energy represents 9/10 of the energy of the total irradiation.
11The gamma rays are very penetrating rays, not deflected, capable of crossing a great thickness of lead, and are clearly distinguished from the beta rays.
12On crossing lead, these rays give origin to very important and very active secondary rays.
136 1) This interesting article by Jollivet Castelot, translated for La Iniciación by Pitágoras, has been extracted from the review Le Voile d'Isis — Year 30 — No. 64 — April 1925 — pages 196 to 210.
14Jollivet Castelot, initiated into the Martinist Order and into the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose Cross, was a great collaborator of Papus.
15He was director of alchemical studies at the Faculty of Hermetic Sciences, and first Secretary and afterwards President of the Alchemical Society of France.
16He founded, in 1885, the review Hyperchimie, Organ of the Alchemical Society of France and, in 1900, the review Le Rose Croix. [Editorial gloss: the founding year of Hyperchimie is usually given later in the same decade.]
17He directed the review Les nouveaux horizons de la Science and collaborated in many others, among them Les Partisans.
18He published numerous works worthy of mention: La synthèse de l'or; La science alchimique; Comment on devient alchimiste; L'état actuel de l'Alchimie en France; Natura Mystica; L'Alchimie; Tradition occulte; Métaphysique de l'Hermétisme; Au Carmel; La vie et l'âme de la matière; etc. [Sic: several of the French titles are printed with corrupted accents.]
19EDITORIAL NOTE. · 15
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Masthead stereotype unchanged.
Six articles; Lorelair returns to open the number with her prophecy's reckoning.
The forecast scored: Lorelair's June 1944 prediction — peace visible only "from the end of September to October of this year onward" — is recalled and claimed, the war having ended in August-September 1945. The Nº 29 loading already carries the forward edge to this article; here is its landing. The SUMARIO drops Neptune from her title; the article restores it.
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The article's injunction after victory: "Nor must he permit feelings of defeat or of victory. Only one word must reign: PEACE!" — the review's first postwar number setting reconciliation as practice, closing on "Love one another".
The SUN through the twelve houses — the fourth planet of the reference series; the sixth house named its worst seat, the tenth its surest.
The twelfth house's close: the Sun there "also inclines toward occultism" — the series' habit of ending each planet on the esoteric register.
"Desire" closes on the four powers: TO WILL TO KNOW, TO WILL TO KEEP SILENT, TO WILL TO DARE, TO WILL TO WILL — the Sphinx's to-know/to-dare/to-will/to-keep-silent recast with QUERER as the operator; Mabel Collins's "Light on the Path" quoted; signed only "La Plata".
The Astral Plane page's meditation text — "The Initiator is not a human Being, and the Path is the perfect way of living" — with its two purifying practices in capitals; the praxis layer carries the passage.
The Gita Bashya synthesis resumes: the three invocation verses, Krishna and Arjuna as members of the Spiritual Hierarchy, and AHAMSA — "I AM THAT" — as the Prachina Hamsas' office.
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Why does Vyasa visit the blind King? Compassion for his son, and the Master's duty — the introduction's narrative frame treated as initiation-doctrine: the King as the disciple who cannot yet be taken directly.
The three discipleship grades return with their full Sanskrit apparatus (Jnana Dipa, Viveka, Vairagya, Tapas) and Arjuna's "I am THY disciple. Save me, O Lord" — the number's central practice text, carried by the praxis layer.
Sanjaya's tutorship of the King — Aparaprakriti and Paraprakriti, the Gayatri as the key, the war as "an incident already foreseen" — the S.D.M.'s Gita reading turning the epic's frame-story into a manual of spiritual direction.
The unsigned coda states the three aims of Yoga — know Brahman, know the purpose of individual existence, co-operate in the divine plan — the tidiest summary of the Mandalam's programme the run has printed.
Jollivet Castelot arrives: Papus's collaborator, President of the Alchemical Society of France, translated from Le Voile d'Isis (April 1925) with a full editorial biography — Hyperchimie, Le Rose Croix, La synthèse de l'or. The estate's French-occult shelf gains its chemistry wing; the run's alchemy coverage now has an author with a laboratory.
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Becquerel's physics folded back into Hermes: "present-day science returns to the ancient doctrine of the hermetists… the Grand Man of the Kabbalah" — Castelot's standing move, and the reason the review adopted him.
Castelot's polemical voice survives translation intact: "My God, how clear all this is! And yet, when one of these gentlemen sees white, another sees black" — the alchemist mocking the physicists' confusion over disintegration, 1925.
The hermetist atom: structure as masculine-feminine affinity, "the primordial and absolutely universal law" — set beside Thomson and Rutherford as an equal hypothesis; atoms and stars under identical laws.
The five recipes for gold — thallium minus one alpha, lead minus two alphas and a beta — Rutherford's transmutation results rewritten as alchemical recipes, then dismissed for their "deplorable" yield in favour of the chemical way.
The Lestrade letter, Lyon, 28 November 1924: 125 grammes of virgin silver, orpiment and kermes, the furnace at 1150/1200º, and an assayer's verdict of unweighable traces "approximately 1/4 of a gramme" — the run's most detailed laboratory protocol, printed as testimony.
The Appeal to the Young Chemists: distrust "fashionable theories, algebrism à outrance and the magister dixit… The future of Chemistry is not confined, thank God, to the laboratories of the Sorbonne" — Castelot's manifesto closing the last surviving number of Year IV.
Castelot's critique of infinite divisibility — "the ion and the electron: might they not correspond rather to vital manifestations… of the atomic being?" — hylozoism offered as physics; the era's occult-scientific frontier in one question.
GIDEE prospectus stereotype at page 23.
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Library back cover and imprint close Year IV's surviving run.
QA gate report
- PASS G1 coverage 337/337
- PASS G11 alignment 313/313
- PASS G0 source kind 1/1
- PASS G6 page anchoring 337/337
- PASS G3 bracket legality 337/337
- PASS G10 numeric fidelity 337/337
- PASS G2 no unanchored English 337/337
- PASS G4 no pipeline scaffolding 337/337