Fabre, Pierre Charles
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
(French Alchemist - Fl. 1630.) Hardly any biographical details concerning this French alchemist are forthcoming. Mr. Waite, in his Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, declares that Fabre was a native of Montpellier; but we do not find any evidence to support this statement, and it is possible that he has confounded Fabre the alchemist with a painter of the same name, who was born at Montpellier, and after whom the Musée Fabre at that town is called. Pierre Jean Fabre appears to have been a doctor of medicine, and to have been renowned in his own day as a scholar of chemistry, a subject on which he compiled several treatises; while, though it is not recorded that he ever won any marked successes in the field of alchemy, he certainly wrote numerous things dealing wholly or partly with that topic. Of these the most important are Alchimista Christianus and Hercules Pischymicus, both published at Toulouse, the first in 1632, the second two years afterwards; and in the latter he maintains that the mythological "labours of Hercules" are allegories, embodying the arcana of hermetic philosophy. The philosopher's stone, he declarés complacently, may be found in all compounded circumstances, and is formed of salt, mercury and sulphur. " Familiars Greece, where it had a consecrated priesthood confined to two families. The Roman Aruspices had four distinct duties, to examine the victims before they were opened, to examine the entrails, to observe the flame as the sacrifice was burnt, and also to examine the meat and drink-offering which accompanied it. It was a fatal sign when the heart was wanting, and this is said to have been the case with two oxen that were immolated on the day when Cæsar was killed. If the priest let the entrails fall, or there was more bloodiness than usual, or if they were livid in colour, it was understood to be a portent of instant disaster. Itruvius has attempted to account for the origin of extispicy by the custom of examining the viscera of animals, before settling an encampment, to ascertain if the neighbourhood was healthy, an explanation to which little value can be attached.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When the Encyclopaedia of Occultism wrote this in 1920 it complained that "hardly any biographical details" about Fabre were forthcoming, and doubted A. E. Waite's claim of a Montpellier connection. Modern scholarship has filled the gap: he was Pierre Jean Fabre (as the entry itself half-concedes, despite the "Pierre Charles" heading), born at Castelnaudary in the Lauragais about 1588, trained in medicine at Montpellier he mark after all ": Waite's link to that city was to the university, not to the painter Franaois-Xavier Fabre whose bequest founded the Musée Fabre. Rather than a footnote to occultism, Fabre is now studied as the leading exponent of a self-consciously Christian alchemy, and the Alchimista Christianus of 1632 has been edited and translated into French in modern times. One oddity of the page above is not Fabre's fault: the article breaks off mid-sentence and runs into an unrelated account of Roman haruspices and the examination of entrails.
Written for this edition, 2026.