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Jacques Cambry - Voyage dans le Finistère - A Celtic legend
Identifier
013910
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Jacques Cambry (2 October 1749 – 31 December 1807) was a Breton writer and expert in Celtic France. He was the founder of the Celtic Academy, the forerunner of the Societé des Antiquaires de France. In addition, he is still honored as the "inventor" of the Oise département and praised for his contributions to the regional Breton identity as well as the national identity of post-Revolutionary France.
Cambry published on historical and archeological topics. His Voyage dans le Finistère proved to be an important late-eighteenth century text exemplifying the' concept of the sublime'.
It contains an early description of the Finistère département in Brittany, and was "hugely influential," greatly promoting travel to the area. French historian Alain Corbin described Cambry's prose as an "emotional mapping of the sea-shore", he refers to Cambry's jubilant evocations of moments of 'sublimity' as "in the manner of Ossian's disciples."
A description of the experience
Jacques Cambry - Voyage dans le Finistère - 1794
The Prince is carried up into the vortex of the Moon. Here millions of souls traverse vast plains of ice, where they lose all perception but that of simple existence. They forget the course of the adventures in which they have been engaged and whic they are now to recommence.
On long tubes of darkness, caused by an eclipse, they return to Earth. They are revived by a particle of light from the sun, whose emanations quicken all sublunary things. They begin anew the career of life.
Towards the disk of the Sun, the young Prince approaches at first with awful dread, but presently with inconceivable rapture and delight. This glorious body consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in an ocean of bliss. It is the abode of the blessed - of the sages - of the friends of mankind.
The happy souls, when thrice purified in the sun, ascend to a succession of still higher spheres, from whence they can no more descend, to traverse the circle of those globes and stars which float in a less pure atmosphere.
The source of the experience
CelticConcepts, symbols and science items
Symbols
AscensionDisk
Earth
Four seasons and the hours
Paradise
Prince and princess
Spheres
Sun and Moon
Tunnel
Twin horns
Whirlwind