The Vandals of Toulouse

I started our last post about one week ago and only published it yesterday.  I hadn't intended to write so much about bricks but the details seemed to become relevant as I went along.  This is somewhat fortuitous because on Saturday I came across a church that grabbed my eye and, as it turns out, was designed by an architect who also created the first industrialized brickworks in Toulouse.

The Église St. Jean-Baptiste d'Ondes is the parish church of Ondes, the next village after our neighboring village of Grenade-sur-Garonne.  It's a small place but is home to a few interesting buildings, one of which is a "haunted mansion" style house that sustained severe fire damage a few years back.

What struck me about the church were two things, the Tetragrammaton in the pediment, a triangle in glory, and the obelisks flanking the facade.

We have traced the use of free-standing architectural elements to delineate the entrance to sacred space back to the Egyptian use of two obelisks at the front of their temples.  This was picked up by the Phoenicians, who used two pillars instead of obelisks.  According to legend, it was Hiram Abiff, Phoenician architect, who used them in his design for Solomon's Temple.  The tale of Hiram and his murder by three unworthy laborers is an important story in Masonic lore.  A Masonic Lodge is ostensibly based on descriptions of Solomon's temple and thus, has an entrance clearly demarcated by two pillars called Jachin and Boaz after their Biblical ancestors.  But we've talked about all this at great length before. (See labels: obelisk and/or pillars).

I was tooling about with a friend when we ran across the church; i's design, atypical of the region, caused us to speculate about the date.   The friend suggested 19th century and I agreed, placing it at about 1830 or even a bit earlier, maybe 1810.  I also wondered if I was mistaken in seeing obelisks these church towers.  This close-up show that the edges of the obelisk are bevelled somewhat, so in a sense they are octagonal.  What struck me was the decorative element at the corner, a scallop or flower-like ornament which almost certainly has a name; but my days of intensively memorizing the architectural orders and their elements have been over for more than 20 years and besides, I don't think we ever got around to this one.

Does anyone have any idea what this element is called?

As luck would have it I saw some movement in the library across the street.  It turns out a ladies' knitting circle was just wrapping up but the most outgoing of the ladies talked to me a bit.  Apparently the church is rarely opened and she didn't know when it was built.  But this was a library, and she had a book in hand, toot sweet.

She leafed through the fat, self-published tome and voila, there was a lot of information about the church.  It was designed by one August Virebent (1792-1857) and work began in 1839.  Kudos for me!  This is pretty much exactly contemporaneous with the peak of the career of Urban Vitry (1802-1863).  Vitry, who we've discussed on LoS in several posts, was city architect of Toulouse from 1830 to 1843.  He put more typical obelisks at the entrance to his Terre Cabade cemetery (approved 1832, opened 1840) and designed a massive obelisk to commemorate the Battle of Toulouse (1814), constructed between 1835 and 1839.

This book also mentioned that one of the Virebents had married a Vitry; Wikipedia reveals that August Virebent's father Jean-Pascal (1746-1831), was not only Vitry's predecessor as city architect (from 1782 to 1830) but also his uncle.  August Virebent and Urban Vitry were cousins.

Both were men of their times, using classical elements liberally in their work.  Virebent was known especially for his use of caryatids and other sculptural motifs on his facades.  The "obelisks" on St. Jean-Baptiste church remind me of Vitry's tomb, the only photo of which I have is unfortunately too cropped to truly grok the similarities.  But the following photo of the Vitry-Bezat (I'm not entirely certain of the second name) family mausoleum is instructive.

You'll notice that the corner elements on the mausoleum are almost identical to those on the church.  So we can see that Virebent's flourish was part of the standard vocabulary of the time--for Vitry and Virebent at least.  Though this isn't "proof" of anything, it does support my reading that these towers on the Église St. Jean-Baptiste are (or refer to) obelisks.

Photo by flikr user christine.petitjean: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tisstit/5182656924/

I was pleased to learn that Virebent and Vitry were family and shared an aesthetic, but in light of my last post about the bricks used in local architecture, it's a happy coincidence the the younger Virebent was also known for being a briquetier, or brick manufacturer.  He developed and registered a patent for the ingredients and process of manufacturing brick; so, Virebent contributed to the Toulousain aesthetic at the most fundamental level.  His process made it easier to create bricks of varying dimensions that were both easier to cut and allowed for mortar to set better.  He also invented a machine that produced a finer, more solid and compact clay to produce a red or white brick-making material that made it easier to create decorative elements and reliefs based on brick.  Virebent is credited with being the first to industrialize the production of both humble bricks and decorative elements based on brick.  Form followed invention and today we see a multitude of forms in brick that had previously required the use of the slower and more expensive  technique of cutting stone.

Virebent's brick works seems to have continued to operate into the 1960's and the machines and processes used in the terra cotta industry today aren't much different from those he developed.

The first mention of a church at Ondes dates to 1538; it was dedicated to Notre Dame de l’Annonciation.  In 1613, the Archbishop of Toulouse judged that it was too small and authorized a replacement.  By the 1830's the church was in such a state of disrepair that instead of renovating it, a new construction was ordered.  The materials were found locally and the ornaments all came from Virebent's brickworks.  All the labor was performed by locals, for free, except for the artisans such as masons and carpenters.  The church was largely finished by 1848, but work on the decoration continued until 1866, by which time Virebent and Vitry were dead.

As for the title of this post, Vitry and the elder Virebent are largely responsible for the look of downtown Toulouse as it appears today, with two large thoroughfares forming a cross at its center.  It was rational and practical but the work, along with other urbanization projects, indiscriminately destroyed many of the cloisters and medieval streets that until then had characterized the center of town.  This earned Toulouse the title "capital of vandalism".

One man's "development" is another man's destruction, something that holds true today.  Toulouse is being transformed at a rate unseen since the days Vitry and Virebent were razing a good chunk of downtown Toulouse, for better or for worse, and a lot of these new projects are still using those red and white bricks.  Vitry and Virebent (the elder) are pretty much synonymous with the Toulouse style, sober and retrained with a strong neo-classical flavor and occasional Egyptian touches.  There is no indication, however, that they were Freemasons, so we can chalk this up to the wider interest in Egypt which spurred the ongoing revival that both preceded and followed their careers.

The resistance lives on

September 4, 1944.  Toulouse had been liberated by the Resistance two weeks earlier.  One Madame Ramon, farmer, was walking in a place where German trucks had been seen going to and fro during the occupation.  Following a trail of bloodstains on the ground, she discovered a mass grave where the Germans had dumped the bodies of prisoners, résistants they'd shot dead.  27 bodies were eventually identified:  students, farmers, an accountant, an "employee", a train station manager.... (Details from a poorly-written French Wikipedia article can be found here).  A 28th body was never definitely identified.

Every year on May 8, V-E Day,  a ceremony is held to honor these young men in front of a stele bearing their names.  Such stelae, usually marked with the Cross of Lorraine, dot the landscape around these parts of France and presumably elsewhere as well--by some estimates 20,000 members of the Resistance were killed.

In a kind of sad irony, on this day in 1945 a celebratory parade for the Allied victory in Sétif, Algeria ended in violence between anti-colonialists and French gendarmes.  Following this clash, Algerian militants killed 103 French civilians.  Some victims were raped; other were mutilated.  After five days of anarchy, order was restored, but then came the severe French reprisals.  Villages were bombed by aircraft and one town shelled from offshore.  Summary executions were carried out by the army and posses of citizens lynched others.  Nobody knows exactly how many Algerian civilians were indiscriminately killed, although historians estimate the number to be around 6000, perhaps much, much more. Unlike the victims buried in Bordelongue, there were not even summary trials and most of the dead probably had no involvement in the killing of French pieds-noirs

Coincidentally, I just acquired a copy of the 2010 film Hors la Loi which scandalized the French (at least the right) as it compared the Algerian anti-colonialists to....the Resistance.  By implication that would have made the French the equivalent of the Germans.  Provocative to be sure; thousands protested the film when it debuted in Cannes.  But Algeria, though part of France, was indeed a product of colonization, or occupation; whatever you want to call it depends on your agenda.

In any event, unlike the innumerable memorials to the French Resistance I previously mentioned, the Sétif massacre, at least until recently, hasn't even been mentioned in French schools.

But this monument is an interesting affair.  A stele dedicated to the martyrs sits upon a small mound and can be approached by twelve steps.  Five flagpoles fly the tricolor on ceremonial occasions.  When I visited it, only one flag was raised.

As far as I can make out, (a resonant) 13 lines formed by trees radiate out from the center of this off-kilter circumpunct.  Most of these correspond to a series of massive buttresses which are within a grassy berm surrounding the monument like a reverse question mark:  ؟​   The whole thing also brings to mind a stylized teardrop.

The berm seems to have the purpose of shielding the monument from the junction of various motorways at the location.  As you can see from the satellite images, this is far from the farmland it was 60 or even 30 years ago.  I'm not sure if the buttresses serve a structural purpose; in all likelihood they do, for they are widespread and none are visible from the monument itself, nor can they be taken in all at once from any perspective save from above.

I was struck by the fact that the shape also implies a spiral.  I think that this is less by some grand vision of what the shape should be as it is a sort of convenience.....the form of the memorial basically follows the constraints of the surrounding motorways.  As important as it is to honor these dead, the city wasn't going to re-route the motorways in order to accommodate a park in the form of a Lorraine Cross, for example.

I think this is interesting in the context of imposing regular geometric forms upon a landscape, what I've referred to as "tessellation of the plane," as opposed to following the natural boundaries of the existing landscape, even if that landscape is an artificial one as it is here.  We've talked a bit about how in 19th century Toulouse under the guidance of Urbain Vitry, great swaths of the old medieval quarters were razed to impose a more rational and neatly geometrical order upon the cityscape.  Vitry's rather severe measures lead the Count of Montalambert to call Toulouse the "home of vandalism" after a visit in 1832.

The Bordelongue monument, however, both in its spiral form and by following the constraints of its environment, rather than imposing regularity, signifies in part that the importance of such a memorial was not equal to the importance of the motorways.  It also stands in contrast--at least in part--to the idea of creating ceremonial axes at whatever cost, such as the previously discussed "axe historique" in Paris and Lisbon's "Pombaline axis" (my name for it anyway), not to mention to the great cross Vitry "bulldozed" onto downtown Toulouse with the Rue de Metz and Rue d'Alsace-Lorraine--two appellations which seem to be a nationalistic thumbing of the nose at the Germans.

Which leads us back to the monument at Bordelongue.  France's fractious history with its German neighbors is memorialized not just here but in its stelae to the "martyrs" of the Resistance, its monuments to the Great War, and somehow, in the Airbus A380--the fruit of both Franco-German cooperation and competition.  Thousands of Germans live in Toulouse these days; there are numerous German bars and a private German school.  The nearest Leclerc supermarket has an island featuring German products.

Which is (a little) ironic....le maréchal Leclerc is a French hero of the Resistance who participated in the Normandy landing and led an armored division to Paris during the Liberation.  He is memorialized with an obelisk (photo) in Strasbourg....capital of Alsace (and home of Kronenbourg beer).

Alsace and Lorraine are the most "German" regions of France, sitting on the border like geopolitical footballs, possession going back and forth for centuries....and a major prize for Hitler during the Second World War.  By naming a major pair of axes in the dead center of town after them, Toulouse was making a major statement about their Frenchness.  But if all property is theft and possession 9/10ths of the law, one might logically consider it all to be bullshit.  Occupation of territory and control thereof, ahh there's the rub indeed.  Gaza, Aztlan, Alsace-Lorraine, Kashmir.  Who becomes a martyr depends on who's currently controlling the territory.  One man's martyr is another man's terrorist.

The more I learn about the French in the Second World War, the more I realize to what extent they have gotten a bad rap about it.  That said, the ironies of this monument and the date upon which it becomes a ceremonial locus, May 8, open wider questions about who and what the French honor and who....and what, according to the unwritten laws of silence, they don't.

Pillars of the Community

The Hôtel du département de la Haute-Garonne--the departmental government headquarters--recently attracted our interest due to the two massive pillars at its entrance; the free-standing columns flank the entrance to the street--"both a ceremonial space and a shortcut"--that bisects the edifice diagonally. They are set well before the true facade of the building. To a mind so primed, these two pillars surmounted by globes bring to mind Jachin and Boaz, the pillars on the porch of Solomon's Temple.

As we have already discussed these pillars, it might be useful to establish a bit of historical background and demonstrate the link these pillars have to Freemasonry. We will here quote extensively from Mackey's encyclopedia.

Under the heading of PILLARS OF THE PORCH, Mackey writes of architect Hiram of Tyre: "these pillars he set at the entrance of the porch on the right hand, or South, and called it Jachin, and the other at the left hand, or North, and called it Boaz."

The fact these had names indicate that they were more than structural or ornamental elements:

"For the pillar Jachin, derived from the words Jah, meaning Jehovah, and achin, to establish, signifies that God will establish His house of Israel; while the pillar Boas, compounded of b, meaning in and oaz, strength, signifies that in strength shall it be established."

Most of this entry is a dry summary of the appearance of these pillars and the controversy over their exact measurements. What is important for us is that the pillars were surmounted by globes; or at least have been interpreted that way by Freemasons and thus often depicted:

"Each of these pillars was surmounted by a chapiter....The shape and construction of this chapiter require some consideration....Rabbi Solomon, in his Commentary, uses the word ponel, signifying a globe or spherical body, and Rabbi Gershom describes it as "like two crowns joined together."

Of their Egyptian provenance he writes: "It is evident, from their descriptions, that the pillars of the porch of King Solomon's Temple were copied from the pillars of the Egyptian Temples."

Of the capitals he says "they may be justly said to have represented the celestial and terrestrial spheres."

"As [Masonic] symbols they have been very universally diffused and are to be found in all rites. Nor are they of a very recent date, for they are depicted on the earliest tracing-boards, and are alluded to in the catechisms before the middle of the eighteenth century."

"It was, however, Hutchinson who first introduced the symbolic idea of the pillars into the Masonic system. He says:

The pillars erected at the porch of the Temple were not only ornamental, but also carried with them an emblematical import in their names: Boaz being, in its literal translation, in thee is strength; and Jachin, it shall be established....The Masonic symbolism of the two pillars may be considered, without going into minute details, as being twofold. First, in reference to the names of the pillars, they are symbols of the strength and stability of the Institution; and then in reference to the ancient pillars of fire and cloud, they are symbolic of our dependence on the superintending guidance of the Great Architect of the Universe, by which around that strength and stability are secured."

A second entry [PILLARS, TWO GREAT] is also worth quoting

"The oldest existing Tracing Boards of early Eighteenth Century Lodges contain the two Pillars. …. two pillars in the Tracing Boards in the oldest of the Lodges must have referred to the two pillars described in the Cooke MS., one of marble and one of "lacerns," or tile."

"When the Allegory of Solomon's Temple was introduced into the Second Degree, perhaps about 1740 or 1750 in its present form, the two Great Pillars belonging to it came into a prominent place. This meant that the older Lodges then had two sets of Pillars. Whether the former was dropped out, or the two became coalesced, it is impossible to know."

"Two problems about the Temple pillars are not yet solved: first, whether they stood out on the platform beyond the Temple, or stood in the facade of it, and as structural members of the building; second, what their height was. The narrative in the Book of Kings does not give an answer to either question. On the basis of the general custom in Egypt and in the Near East it is most likely that the Two Pillars stood apart from the building...."

"….In both the oldest Minutes and the oldest engravings the two Globes appear to have been unconnected with the Pillars. They were put sometimes in one place in the room and sometimes in another. Remarks incorporated here and there in the Minutes suggest that the Brethren used them to represent "the universality of Masonry," not in the sense that Masonry took in everything but in the sense that Lodges are constituted in every country. One globe was the sky, the other the land; together they made up the world…"

"By a similar development of symbolic interpretation the Terrestrial Globe came also to mean the earth, the earthy; the Celestial, to mean the heavenly, the spiritual. When the Globes and the Pillars were combined both sets of symbolism were synthesized, so that as used in modern Speculative Rituals they are very rich in significance...."

As for the departmental Hôtel, Floriana de Rosa, writing about chief architect Robert Venturi says: "Venturi considers it important to give the observer the pleasure of discovering something new each time, through elaborating on motifs which are made recognisable by their latent familiarity."

It would seem as though de Rosa is saying that Venturi recognizes that the adventure of discovery rests in reinterpreting tradition by utilizing images which might be called archetypes, potent images with subconscious power. Their very power lies in the recognition that these motifs represent something, if only their own continuity. In an echo of architecture parlante, Venturi's partner (and wife) Denise Scott Brown writes in an article entitled Talking Sheds:

"Architecture's communicative function was disregarded throughout the first half of the twentieth century. During the 1950s, Robert Venturi and I independently developed a strong interest in it....The idea of the building as a shed with communication on it has influenced all our work but particularly our civic buildings." (boldface added)

An interest in communicating, however, never usurps the fundamental goal of a building's purpose: "Two logics of functionality one of the immediate users, the other of the broader community must be satisfied in any design."

According to a bio on the same site: "In contrast to many modernists, Venturi uses a form of symbolically decorated architecture based on precedents.....In contradiction, Venturi also considers symbolism unnecessary since modern technology and historical symbolism rarely harmonize."

So, it would appear that aside from the intriguing renewal of the tradition of architecture parlante which we have already examined in relation to Freemasonry and the Egyptian revival, the architects here were mostly concerned with functionality as opposed to symbolism. But Venturi and Brown do emphasize the link with tradition; indeed the column of the Hôtel were inpsired and refer to a pair of pillars which once adorned the Pont de Minimes (built by Joseph-Marie de Saget, 1760-1763). Thus, it may be that in this design the pillars serve no symbolic function for the architects themselves; this doesn't, however, imply that this is so for the original architect--our main man Urbain Vitry, Masonic affiliation unknown, Egyptianizing tendencies clear and present.


According to one website, Urbain Vitry, as city architect, had these columns , um "erected" on the bridge in 1832. This was four years before his design for the Terre Cabade cemetery with it's overtly Egyptian obelisks was approved and three years before the obelisk commemorating the Battle of Tolouse was begun. We have already speculated that the Terre Cabade and Obelisk may include Masonic symbols; given this it's hard to avoid asking the same of the Minimes columns.

The Minimes columns were destroyed to make space in 1940, but found new life fifty years later at the entrance to the Hôtel.

The free-standing pillar as a temple component seems to have originated in Egypt; the practice of placing obelisks at temple entrances is well-documented and appears to have become common in the Middle and New Kingdoms.

This also features in Phoenician temple architecture: "In Phoenician architecture, the column fulfilled a ritual rather than purely structural function, with pillars possibly representing gods." Unsurprisingly, Temple architect Hiram of Tyre included them in his design of Solomon's Temple. His exact design remains uncertain: globe, crown or lotus flower? Mackey and Freemasons preferred the globe.

We would argue that give that the columns are free standing and globed, along with the circumstantial evidence surrounding Vitry possible linking him to Freemasonry, there is a good chance that his Minimes columns were Masonic references; ironically, given Venturi's professed ambivalence towards symbolism, their placement and function on the Hôtel put the globed pillars back in a more direct Masonic context.

It's the pair of pillars as a free-standing architectural element which makes this so, for the pillar or column surmounted by a ball finial is not entirely unique to Masonic architecture. The pillar with ball (ho-ho!) is a common form for market crosses. Briefly, a market cross was a medieval marker indicating where the market was held. Shaft and ball "crosses" can be found in Colston Bassett (1257; rebuilt 1831), Highburton (base, 14th c.; column, 18th or 19th c) Halesowen ("medieval; blown over and restored in 1908), Repton ("medieval"), Bonsall (pillar dated 1687; base is medieval), etc. These are just a few we have discovered; there must be many more. Interesting is that althought the bases are ususally quite old, it seems as though the use of the column and ball is usually a later, often 19th century addition.

Who know how many were of this model? Many were destroyed by the Puritans, according to P.H. Ditchfield in ch. 8 of his book English Villages.

In The Migration of Symbols, there is a long discussion about the perrons of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. These were essentially symbols of the judicial authority of the Prince-Bishop; after time is came also to symbolize a city's commercial liberty. Liège itself for example has a perron of the column and ball type and it appears in this form on coins dating to the 12th century. Author Goblet d'Alviella speculates that this may have derived from a Greco-Roman import; he notes that it while it may be a native Druidic symbol and that the Saxons venerated pillars, the ball is an evolution of the symbol from that of a fir-cone; for various reason he concludes:

"It may therefore be asked if the addition of the fir-cone to the perron of Liege is not due to the syncretic influence of Gallo-Roman art, which would thus have brought the Germanic column within the limits of classic paganism, as, at a later period, the Church introduced it into Christian society by surmounting it with a Cross. Perhaps also it was thus desired to keep alive in the monument a phallic signification, whilst correcting whatever too great coarseness this symbol might have had in its primitive form."

We recall that the obelisk was said to symbolize a petrified ray of light. Certainly it evolved from a phallic symbol; this would not necessary be inconsistent if we consider the life-giving properties of the sun were regarded mostly as masculine, as opposed to the earth or the moon which were usually characterized as feminine.

These perrons also correlate with English market crosses; they too were placed where judicial proclamations were read. They also symbolized a town's right to have a market and thus also echo the perrons of Liège.

So. The flight of fancy inspired by a walk in Toulouse, even a virtual walk, begets associations and quillindrums beyond the mind's imagining. We pretend that this means nothing. And it does mean nothing. It's like pulling a gun at a snowball fight.

The phallic ray of light, progenerative masterman, duplified. Temple front, civic god. Standing on the porch: by thus shall it be established. Tautological conundrum, these two pillars, globed: as above, yadda yadda. On this building, the Hôtel, oh tell? Monsieur Parlante, as in architecture, bedevil'd. A place of justice, of law, of commerce.

We have spoken of the Age of Enlightenment as a new kind of civic religion, where free enterprise beckons and comes into play; a revolutionary economic model with unintended? consequences. The pillars as symbol of economic liberty, yet with a theocratic vibe. Republican outpouring a later interpretation? A-dingle a-dangle, where is the wangle, the belated haggle; the conclusion to the deal?

There is none. The building echoes the past, and the ubiquitous Vitry, eau de vie. His pillars, now religiously placed on the porch of the civic temple, once advertised a brand of absinthe...
.

A rose by any other name is still a column, dagger, mark, monolith, monument, needle, pillar, pylon, shaft or tower

Terre Cabade Cemetery

Despite the fact that the cemeteries enclosed within the city walls of Toulouse had long been regarded as unsanitary places and had been the targets of many complaints, it wasn't until the city was threatened with a cholera epidemic that a new large cemetery was approved outside the city--in 1832. Even then, it wasn't until 1840 that the new cemetery was officially opened.

The result was the Terre Cabade Cemetery, the city within a city that houses the final remains of Toulouse's notable families and citizens. The name comes from "cavade", that is the say the clay-like soil taken from the earth which also serves to make the famous Toulouse brick.

The entrance to this cemetery was directly inspired by Egyptian art. This was in line with the Egyptian revival which as Wikipedia says:

"...is generally dated to the enthusiasm for ancient Egypt generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and, in Britain, to Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition's work, the Description de l'Égypte, began in 1809 and came out in a series though 1826. However, works of art and, in the field of architecture, funerary monuments in the Egyptian style had appeared in scattered European settings from the time of the Renaissance."

Indeed, considering that Egyptian art is so closely associated with funerary art, it was a logical choice.


The first Egyptian feature of the entrance is the pair of brick obelisks at either side of the front gate. This, however, was not the original proposal. A design submitted in 1833 featured a large pyramid to house the cemetery's chapel. The design, perhaps a bit too over-the-top, was not accepted; the version we can see today dates from 1836.

In ancient Egypt, obelisks were placed in pairs before Egyptian temples. They were said to be petrified rays of the sun and thus honored Ra, who in some cases was said to reside in the obelisks. In books such as The Hiram Key and The Messianic Legacy, the authors have linked the iconography of two obelisks--via the pillars of Solomon's Temple (Jachin and Boaz)--to Freemasonry.

The Messianic Legacy interprets the twin obelisks as representing the union of spiritual and temporal authority and ultimately the origin of the concept of twin messiahs. The Hiram Key posits that Freemasonry derives from Pharaonic initiation rituals and that Jesus, as heir to this tradition, was part of a sect that perpetuated the rites; thus making Jesus a kind of Mason! (Might as well claim Jesus was a kind of sentient pickle....)

Whatever dubious claims the books make is rather irrelevant. The theories presented in these books are not entirely new to them; they draw upon esoteric and heterodox currents present in Christianity from the very start, and the supposed Egyptian origins of Freemasonry is a theory that has been floated about since the 18th century. We here at LoS are not concerned with the truth of these claims insamuch as we are interested in the fact that these claims exist.


The second obvious Egyptian feature are the administrative offices behind the obelisks. The buildings are clearly modeled on Egyptian prototypes. As one can see from the following website, they are of the "open" type as opposed to the blatantly phallic "bud type." The closest capital found on these pages is identified as an "Open Papyrus." Whatever the exact identification, there's no doubt as to their provenance.

For more info on this interesting cemetery, we recommend the following website, for those who speak French.

The Obelisk of the Battle of Toulouse

The Battle of Toulouse (April 10, 1814) was one of the last battles of the Napoleonic Wars; indeed it came four days after Napoleon surrendered the Imperial Army to the Sixth Coalition. Indecisive and largely unnecessary, it nevertheless resulted in nearly 8,000 casualties. The French forces actually held out until the end and gave up the fight not because they were losing, but because they received news of the Empire's death. The French Forces escaped intact.


Today this largely-forgotten battle is commemorated by a large brick obelisk. The obelisk was the brainchild of Baron Louis Victorin Cassagne and was designed and built by the same Urbain Vitry who designed the Terre Cabade Cemetery. (Cassagne, incidentally, participated in several battles of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, including the Battle of the Pyramids, previously discussed on LoS. Baron Cassagne is buried in Terre Cabade, his tomb in an Egyptian style).

The first brick of the obelisk was set in 1835 and it was inaugurated in 1839, according to the Mairie of Toulouse; thus it is almost exactly contemporary with Terre Cabade, which you may recall was opened in 1840.

As you can see from the picture, just under the pyramidion, the obelisk is punctuated by a hexagram of the "Star of David" variety. This hole actually traverses the column so that from two sides one can see the light of the sky.

This hexagram could have a variety of meanings, but we propose to examine it in relation to Freemasonry. If rolling eyes could make a sound, I'm sure at this point there would be a deafening roar, what with all the bullshit flung about so freely on the internets. One of the biggest shit flingers is a fundamentalist anti-Mason by the name of Texe Marrs. Still, he's done us one service. Someone found an essay by him quoting Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry on the hexagram and popped it on Wikipedia:

"The interlacing triangles or deltas symbolize the union of the two principles or forces, the active and passive, male and female, pervading the universe. The two triangles, white and black, interlacing, typify the mingling of the two apparent powers in nature, darkness and light, error and truth, ignorance and wisdom, evil and good, throughout human life." (p. 809)

Fortunately for us, we also possess a copy of the Encyclopedia. Marrs quotes correctly. We also looked for "hexagram" and found "hexagon." In addition to being a nickname for France, the hexagon is merely a hexagram seen through a squinted eye....

"Hexagon. A figure of six equal sides constitutes a part of the camp in the Scottish degree of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret. Stieglitz, in an essay on the symbols of Freemasonry, published in 1825, in the Altenberg Zeitschrift, says that the hexagon, formed by six triangles, whose apices converge to a point, making the following figure,

is a symbol of the universal creation, the six points crossing the central point; thus assimilating the hexagon to the older symbol of the point within a circle." (323-324)

So the hexagon is not entirely alien to the Masonic milieu. But more importantly, the most universal of Masonic symbols, the Square and Compasses, is universally arranged so as to resemble....a hexagram.

The Prestige

The "Prestige," like in the movie, refers to that part of a magic trick where the trick is actually pulled off; it's the cum-shot, if you will. In our story it's where we leave the realm of history and enter the realm of speculation.

Between the cemetery and the obelisk there is an isosceles triangle formed by three streets. The two long arms of the triangle are called Rue de l'Obelisque and Avenue de la Colonne. The obelisk, as we've mentioned, is called "la colonne" (the column) The two streets thus refer to the same monument; unity in duality, like Mackey's hexagram? One cannot help but think of the two pillars or obelisks we discussed earlier in this post. Is the layout of the streets made to reinforce the symbolism of the two obelisks at the entrance of the Terre Cabade? Is the triangle in fact a Masonic delta? The base of the triangle is the Allee des Acacias, which joins the cemetery to the obelisk. Momuments of death joined with a symbol of....

Mackey has a longish entry on the Acacia's symbolism. It is both a symbol of innocence and initiation, but primarily one of the immortality of the soul: "that important doctrine which is the great design of the Institution to teach." (p. 7) One might even say the Acacia is a symbol of the foundation of Masonic doctrine...the base of the triangle.


But was Vitry a Freemason? We haven't been able to determine this. His tomb, which he designed and which sits in the Terre Cabade, features a prominent square and compasses over the entrance. But then again, this proves nothing; the man was an architect and the symbols may simply refer to his metier.

Another inconclusive symbol, found in a round medallion at the center of the cross atop the tomb, is a human hand. By chance we stumbled across another entry in Mackey's Encyclopedia--Hand (p. 317)--illustrated by an engraving of the hand in a nearly identical gesture:

"In Freemasonry, the hand as a symbol holds a high place, because it is the principal seat of the sense of feeling so highly revered by Masons....Horapollo says that among the Egyptians the hand was the symbol of a builder, or one fond of building, because all labor proceeds from the hand." Mackey continues, explaining its use in Christian iconography in a gesture of benediction: "The form of this act of benediction, as adopted by the Roman Church, which seems to have been borrowed from the symbols of the Phrygian and Eleusinian priest or hierophants, who used it in their mystical processions, presents a singular analogy, which will be interesting to Mark Master Masons, who will recognize on it a symbol of their own ritual. In the benediction referred to, as given in the Latin Church, the thumb, index and middle fingers are extended, and the other two bent against the palm. The church explains this position of the extended thumb and two fingers as representing the Trinity; but the older symbol of the Pagan priests, which was precisely of the same form, must have had a different meaning. A writer in the British Magazine (vol.i., p.565) thinks that the hand, which was used in the Mithraic mysteries in this position, was symbolic of the Light emanating not from the sun, but from the Creator, directly as a special manifestation....Certainly, to the Mason, the hand is most important as the symbol of that mystical intelligence by which one Mason knows another "in the dark as well as in the light."

Given that the symbol is used as a sign of benediction, it may not be anything more than a sign of his Catholic faith. But maybe it's a Masonic reference. It's certainly an eye-popper. Given Vitry's passion for Egyptian architecture, by which his tomb was inspired, it may simply be a nod to the use described by Horapollo. It's worth recalling the notion that the Egyptian obelisk is also thought to symbolize a petrified ray of light, much akin to our anonymous British writer's theory that the hand symbol represents the light emanating from the Creator. Again, like the square and compasses, it lead to tantalizing speculation but nothing conclusive. Maybe the hand is simply a brazen variation on the Anahinthan cock's comb.

Finally, since we've quoted so liberally from our copy of Mackey's Encyclopedia, we'll warn against taking its entries as "proof" of anything. What many anti-Masons fail to recognize first is that no one Mason can speak on behalf of his own Grand Lodge, let alone the Fraternity as a whole. State to state, nation to nation, rite to rite, practices and doctrines vary, in some cases quite considerably. Secondly, guys like Mackey, Waite and the infamous Albert Pike are atypical representations of the craft with idiosyncratic takes on its lore, legends and history.

Still, we propose further investigation of Vitry and Cassagnes, hereby soliciting the straight dope, as it were. Was Vitry influenced by Freemasonic imagery? Were both Masons? Is there intentionality behind the triangular arrangement of streets betwenn the cemetery and the obelisk? Was the Acacia reference a Masonic wink and a nod?

Stay tuned....