Mabille Pierre - Mirror of the marvelous: the classic surrealist work on myth

To Jeanne Mgnen, whose inestimable collaboration made this book possible.

Inner Traditions wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the government of France through the ministre de la Culture in the preparation of this translation.

We thank Madame Elisa Breton and Jrme Lindon of Les ditions de Minuit for their help in preparing this work, especially for their kind permission to publish the preface written for the 1962 French edition by Andr Breton.

MIRROR
of the
MARVELOUS

Pierre Mabilles Mirror of the Marvelous reflects on the strangely beautiful and often terrifying domains of visionary reality as expressed in world literature. His collection of classically unusual tales and sympathetic insightful interpretations provides the reader with an oasis for the Divine Imagination. Mabilles association with the Surrealists helped link their aesthetic with the great tradition of Western occult symbolism. I am thrilled that Inner Traditions has brought Mirror of the Marvelous to the English-speaking world at last.

ALEX GREY, ARTIST AND AUTHOR OF NET OF BEING AND SACRED MIRRORS

Foreword

DRAWBRIDGES

A man of great counsel, the only one Ive known to grasp the whole nexus of communication lines best tracked along the most ancient trails, commonly leading to dead ends these days, but which, for him, retained their attraction and their promise, such a presence was Pierre Mabille, and still is now, judging by the light emanating from him. A scout in the full sense of the word, among the most active of medical practitioners, and, as such, a participant in the most advanced scientific research, his speculative field, far from being reduced only to what science revealed to him, never ceased to embrace at the same time the whole of esoteric thought, about which, above and beyond his very brilliant medical and surgical studies, he educated himself. These ideas, their traditional nature, would attest to him alone that they harbored a soul of truth, and, as passionate about truth as he was, one would find him totally immersed in them at the most profound depths. Thus, it was within him that the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns worked toward its resolution, not without clashes and occasional uncertainties, which had great human resonance and resulted in his own distinct ways of moving, leading, in large part, to his peculiar charm. For all the incidental details of his life, for all the quick decisionssuch as medical operations requireno one knew better how to replicate daydreams great soaring flights, in the evening, while he spoke, rallying together more and more remote points of hermetic philosophy and with each one, regaining vigor. There are few looks that have pleased me as much as his, and for me, his physical disappearance has not diminished this in the least.

I see us again, he and I, in 1934, as if it were yesterday, working out the meaning of our respective roles in Minotaure, and again now as then, I feel the fire he brought to bear there, beginning with his own, a Preface to the Praise of Popular Prejudices, At that time and place, one of the most important encounters I have ever had took place, a determining encounter, I think I am able to say, for both of us, and one in which our mutual confidence was sealed without the least possibility of retraction.

Two years would pass before he would unveil publicly, in Minotaure number 8,

Allow me a moment of subjectivity here: I couldnt forgive myself if it appears that I have forgotten that completely cheerful being whom he knew how to portray, the expressive ease of his gestures under all circumstances, his incredibly warm presence, the comfort that I drew from him so many times. With the same beautiful hands that brought her into the world, I see him the very next day, tracing out for me on paper my daughters birth chart to the nearest minute, and I again hear his discourse on this subtle methodmultidialectic and artlessof prediction. Totally agreeing that in our day, astrology hardly survives against traditional memory, which is rarely sufficient for legitimizing it, his intention was to retain the symbolic sense of the ancient language. He also deemed the astrological method itself fertile, the principle on which it was based worth retaining for its simple hypothesis. On those darker days when I had to take recourse to his office for matters of health, the care he provided, far from being limited to physical needs, extended to the moral, because of that rare gift he had for restoring serenity. This power he drew from his conviction that spirituality is stronger than material forces, should they be opposed, and that consequently, the transformation of these latter into moral possibilities was the final human end. This art of rising instead of descendingwhich conforms not even to the slightest demand in poetryhe indicated several times he owed to alchemy, throughout which this schema is inscribed like a watermark. Considering this in the light of his resilient good humor, the wonder was that the debt I contracted, always growing larger as the days passed, weighed him down no more than an armful of wildflowers.

The long, sensitive exchanges, which our then frequent discussions permitted, perhaps do not give the complete measure of his personality. That would require the whole network of circumstances that the armistice, signed in June 1940, decided. Demobilized in the French zone and then stripped of all means of existence, I thought first of seeking asylum wherever he was. That was in Salon-de-Provence, and I rejoined him there. He welcomed me with opened arms and we did not leave each others side for several months. In these extremely troubled times when no one could know for sure how the dice would fall, when deception and impudence were the official currency, when the future could tolerate only the shortest intervals of sunlight, Pierre Mabille was still the best conspirator and the most adept at safeguarding, at shelving away, whatever would keep of what was most sacred to the rights of the spirit. Few people possessed, and even fewer at that time, a mind such as his which drew upon the work of the medieval seekers for its life force. Few could be as articulate as he was when he knew he had someones ear, nor as naturally receptive and mobile, which, in the face of current events, he opposed to oppression and spinelessness.

Always faithful to his anthropological vocation, he remained one for whom the terms solve and coagule ceased to be dead language, absorption and expenditure, to act and to suffer. In both the specific and the general, he recognized and rejuvenated once and for all the six constraints or primal tendencies ascribable to existence. In this way, he assured himself that no external constraints could prevail against them. But one of his most endearing traits was that he was also a man of great conjecture. How many times, under the trees at a caf in Salonin Salon, where Nostradamus lies burieddid I see him grappling with the enigma of the Centuries