11 juin 2007
Basilica Notre-Dame of good help, Guingamp
First of all, I would like to pay homage to an immense Man… Henri Blanquart. The analysis which follows is drawn mainly from its book on the basilica. Henri, we miss you…
One nowadays translates Guingamp by “white camp” or “white place”, which is not very evocative. Gwyn, currently translated by “white” was the name given to the spiritual higher sphere in druidic cosmogony. Thus let us translate (even if Gwynfyd is quite other thing) Guingamp by “high place” or “spiritual center”.
The name of Notre-Dame of good help should to also put the chip us at the ear… One can think of the prayers which beseech the cure or the return of a sailor. But “the good” help is that which cures us fundamental disease, of which suffer the pluspart from the men. Only that is Homme which has atteind the state of wisdom (as at the time of socrat), Satori (at Japonnais), which carried out God (like one says to the Indies), who arrived at the illumination (like one says in the Christian world).
Before having atteind this state, the man is lost in the world which its directions offer to him, without knowing from where it comes neither where it goes, nor in which state I wander. (Henri forgiveness…)
The entry of the building is on the northern side (side of the door of the initiates). It is a vault probably added with the top of the old crypt where Notre-Dame of under ground was venerated. It is here that throne the black virgin, Our-lady of Good help. It is a statue reconstituted with the XIX ème century starting from scattered fragments of three different statues.
It was posed on a pedestal in height, surrounded by two angels which encensent it. (since the end of the Sixties, it did not any more go up on its base which remains empty, but is posed after forgiveness on the furnace bridge downwards)
Its pedestal represents the baphomet, figure alarming and full with size… (it surrounds also the baptismal funds). With the top of the angels, land chains measuring. We are not far from an initiatory message.
The length of the nave, the transept and the height of the large tower are in the reports/ratios of the golden section.
By lowering the eyes, we realize that we are in the labyrinth. Its entry is on the external edge and all the way to be traversed consists in arriving in its center, where is a black stone on which we read: “ave Maria”. It is the fundamental lesson, it is towards the center (us even) that it is necessary to go… the labyrinth is too narrow to be able to make the way with foot, it is doncjuste a symbolic system object of meditation. (gnôti seauton)
Thus, of the thousands of men and women go on the labyrinth, with guingamp, in Chartres and elsewhere, without including/understanding its teaching: one can leave the labyrinth of the life only while arriving in his center, in “our” center. Having atteind the center, giving up the ground, water and fire, it is to the top, by the element air, which one can then escape. The labyrinth was sometimes called “the house of dead”… The man who does not have atteind the state of wisdom died in the eternal life, it wanders in the labyrinth of the dream of the life. One cannot escape from it that while finding in will chakra heart, the Silence (which is not absence of noise) the Peace (which is not absence of war) and the darkness (which is not absence of light) but which is waiting, as the seed in the ground, from the blossoming towards the divine light, by the awakening with the spiritual life.
Outside the basilica, on the southern frontage, it obviously misses a gate, however marked in the stone, with its two doors which do not exist. he would give in the vault Saint Jacques. Gate jubilaire?
The wall, where the door should exist, comprises an architectural line doubles, shifted, broken. It marks a passage hydrotelluric. The baptismal funds are invested on the diagonal which connects the cracks, (what explains why they are placed on the right while entering) as well as a series of wells located in the cellars of the houses facing the plomée fountain “”.
One notices as well as the baptismal funds are invested on a black and square stone (beginning of work for the new one baptized). Under the small stone bench, one finds also a sign engraved: it is the signature of the Master. Its hand directs triple folio to the top and towards the East. (the three sheets are divided they even into tois left, ammenant number 9: the philosopher's stone and degrees of wisdom)
With transept crossing, carved reasons show the follower who seeks, and who finds opposite him the grin of incomprehension, or the grimace of stupidity. We are here at a point of force of the basilica, from where the initiate can contemplate the three canopies (rosettes in the cathedrals). These points of force are found in each of the three tables which were used to the manufacturers to draw up the plans of the crowned building: the round in the center of the nave, the square one (on the point) with transept crossing, and the rectangular one, or square length in the chorus.
All in the basilica brings back to us to compostelle… One finds scallops, a vault Jacques saint, and a symbolism which makes us think of the pélerinage. But…
With the Middle Ages, whereas all Christendom was ruait on the ways of Jacques saint to go to Compostelle, the Breton ones remained on their premises… On the charts of this epopee, main road furrowed France. Only small branches leave Brittany. Not that the Breton ones missed faith and of religious enthusiasm, (all the mode connait Breton mysticism) but simply because they did not have no need to go to Compostelle, having on their premises, in Brittany even, all that it was necessary for large the pélerinage.
I will add (and it is a personal assumption) whom this way left the mount holy Odile to lead to the point of Van, where one finds the fountain of They saint, the highest water at the vibratory level which I never found.
http://lieuxsacres.canalblog.com/archives/bretagne/index.html
Please excuse me for the lapse of memory… Some of the photographs come from the site of the Wandering entertainers of the Tradition:
http://www.bldt.net/Om/article.php3?id_article=419