The author of the book, a great alchemist, accomplished his philosophical feat in the 20th century, during the triumph of mechanistic materialism and boundless faith in technical progress. The adept, hiding behind the initiatory name Fulcanelli (“Vulcanizing”, “Erupting”), was a talented writer, a brilliant polymath, an expert on the history of the Middle Ages, a sophisticated researcher and theorist of architecture. He left this world, or rather, disappeared from it in an unknown direction some 70-80 years ago, leaving us as a gift his books, explaining how alchemists prepared their gold and why their secrets are imprinted in the architectural details of Gothic buildings. “The Mystery of Cathedrals.” "offers keys to solving the alchemical puzzle of Gothic cathedrals, where each statue - by the position of its hands, objects held in them, sometimes simply by a nod of the head - silently communicates the secrets of preparing the Philosopher's Stone. Turning now to miraculously preserved museum copies of esoteric sculptures destroyed during the Revolution, now to the testimony of contemporaries of the distant past, now to his own experience and insight, Fulcanelli bit by bit restores the lost speech of the “stone books,” gradually restoring a holistic picture of the alchemical Great Work. “The Mystery of the Cathedrals.” "is one of the best books on Gothic art, and can be considered as a guide to mystical France. The book is of value not only for researchers of the Hermetic tradition and those interested in alchemy, but also for everyone who is partial to Gothic art, European medieval history and culture. http