Part of the Casswiki article series Esoterica
Esoterica
In alchemical discourse, the Green Language (also called the “language of the birds”) refers to the generally opaque and confusing way the few texts there are are written.
As Fulcanelli puts it, the alchemists of old had to resort to this means in order to obscure from one that which was to be disclosed to the other.
The language plays with phonetic analogies, plays on etymologies and symbols. It may be that the very mental exercise of making sense of the writings in itself is a preparatory exercise in expanding one’s mind towards being able to grasp the actual mysteries.
In Fulcanelli’s own writings, we have allusions to double meanings, where the seeker of literal transformation of lead into gold will simply get lost whereas the seeker of knowledge not concerned with material wealth or service to self will find keys to a new life, i.e. ascension to a multidimensional state of being, the Great Work.
For examples, see Fulcanelli’s Mystery of the Cathedrals and Dwellings of the Philosophers. Also, Mark Hedsel discusses the Green Language in The Zelator, edited by David Ovason.
From The Zelator:
Almost all esoteric systems have developed one form or other of what is called ‘The Language of the Birds’, or the ‘Green Language’, as a means of communication.’ This is an arcane tongue which permits initiates, and those on the Path, to com- municate secrets to one another in a form which is incomprehensible to those not versed in the language.
[…]
There are no words for the higher experiences – only symbols. There is a limit to what one can say with words. Once you step beyond the boundary of the ordinary, and wish to communicate what you have seen, then you have to speak in poetry or symbols. ‘Yet even the poetic frenzy will only take you so far. As you continue on the visionary Path, even the rules of art begin to break down. You might, like Dante, make flights of poetic symbolism so sublime that they have the power to carry even the most obtuse reader beyond the familiar, into the Spiritual.” Or you might, like Rabelais, throw yourself into a buffoon’s burlesque, fooling your way with an arcane language which few even recognize as arcane. You might even, like Mozart, break into music so exquisite that its beams of sunlight touch levels where few men have ever been…Yet, in spite of this, there is a point beyond which art cannot go.