For me, it all started a few years ago when Jay Weidner asked me what I thought of Fulcanelli. Being full of my own opinions and sure of their validity, I gave him the quick rundown on what I knew: “Mysterious twentieth-century alchemist featured in Morning of the Magicians and therefore somewhat suspect. Colin Wilson suggests that he is another alchemical con man such as Cagliostro or St. Germain.”
Jay laughed and suggested that I read Mystery of the Cathedrals, Fulcanelli’s first book, and The Fulcanelli Phenomenon, by Kenneth R. Johnson. When I did, I realized that the books described one of the most fascinating puzzles of all time. Alchemy was certainly a key part of the mystery. At the heart of this puzzle, however, lay something even stranger— ancient knowledge of the location of the center of our galaxy and from that knowledge a way to estimate the date of a celestial event of eschatological magnitude. The sophisticated astronomical culture of the Maya considered this event to be the end and beginning point of time itself. After the fall of the ancient cultures in the Old World, simple knowledge of the event became the secret possession of the initiated elite.
