the intelligent alchemist (the graphic, april 2006)
Nothing mattered at that moment and nothing made sense.
Taking a deep breath as he cautiously recounted the events in his mind, Daniel Brummel sighed.
It was winter in New York City. 2,772 miles away from his hometown of Pasadena, Calif., Brummel was busy touring with Los Angeles’ best-kept rock & roll secret, Ozma.
Enjoying his short vacation with Andrea, Brummel’s high school sweetheart and then-girlfriend on his arm, he didn’t hesitate to say “sorry” when a stranger asking for change encountered them in the street at 11:30 p.m.
They were only a block away from Andrea’s dorm when it happened.
Though Daniel and Andrea had always been a solid couple, their relationship was hard at times. Brummel was studying at UCLA and touring with his band. Andrea was at Columbia University, studying psychology and bartending to put herself through school. Both felt the weight of Ozma’s popularity gaining on their shoulders. Whether Brummel was in the US or Japan, playing with Weezer or headlining tours with Nada Surf or Rilo Kiley, his commitments to his band made their relationship tough on them.
All things changed on that night in New York City – only one night before Brummel’s return home to Pasadena.
“We came upon this bum - an older black man - and he asked me for money,” Brummel said.
The air was cold and Brummel was intent on getting Andrea home quick and safe. Andrea had never seen the African-American male on that street corner before, and Brummel wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough to find out why he was there.
“I said I didn’t have any money,” Brummel remembered, talking rapidly as the memories came back to him. “Then he asked me for a cigarette, so I gave him a cigarette, and he said, ‘what month were you born?’”
In the cold New York winter weather, Brummel sweat. He repeated the stranger’s words once in his head, then looked for a way out of the conversation. Unsure how to simply turn around and forget this man forever, he simply asked the stranger to repeat the question. The man replied.
“What month were you born?”
Daniel Brummel was born on September 15, 1981. He saw no harm in simply answering the man’s question with “September.”
“Ah, that’s right.” The man chortled to himself for a moment, as if he felt silly for asking. He already knew the answer. “You were both born on the fifteenth.”
They couple froze – they stood very still, slightly scared. At that moment, nothing made sense. Brummel looked to Andrea for answers, though he knew she had none. She, too, was born on a fifteenth.
“You know, he loves you a lot,” the mysterious stranger said to Andrea, who was anxious to leave and be safe at home again. Brummel stood still, intrigued as the man eyeballed him. “She loves you too, but it’s real hard for her to hold on when you’re so far away.”
Unsure of anything and everything, Brummel understood Andrea’s sudden urge to go back home. The couple left the man standing outside.
“He had this magical knowledge. It gets even weirder,” Brummel warned me over the phone as his voice sped up.
“We went back up to her dorm room on the ninth floor. I was excited, and I wanted to go back down and talk to him some more, but Andrea was freaked out.”
Peering down the nine floors from Andrea’s window, Brummel noticed that the man had come around the corner of the building, where he was now visible from Andrea’s room. Startled and curious, Brummel watched from his bird’s eye view as something he would never understand happened.
“At the moment I stared at him,” Brummel said, “I felt like he could feel my gaze, and he froze.”
The streetlamp on Andrea’s side of the street cast the shadows of trees across the pavement, where the man was standing.
Brummel says he will never forget what he saw next. “I noticed that the guy was standing in the shadow of a tree, and I thought, ‘that’s really strange. Why is he standing aligned with that tree?’”
The stranger did not move, and Brummel stole his gaze away from the strange occurrence to return to Andrea. Because she was still visibly shaken by the encounter, he made no mention of the man and the tree to her and instead stayed up all night - excited, his intellect awakened. Unable to sleep, he read all night about a supernatural phenomenon he had recently discovered in texts called Hermetic alchemy. That is when everything changed for him.
Hermetic alchemy, a spiritual technique used to purify and refine oneself, doesn’t have much to do with turning coal into gold, or Harry Potter. Alchemy was, traditionally, an early proto-scientific practice. In turn, Hermetic alchemy - said to be created by the Greek god of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus (“Hermes the Thrice Great”) - is the process of understanding the physical procedures of alchemy as a metaphor for purifying the soul.
The practice unconsciously became a path that Brummel took towards a new philosophical and musical approach to everyday life, which eventually created a divide between him and friends, family and bandmates.
Inspired by the stranger’s magical knowledge, Brummel looked deep within the texts that night to find that these alchemists of old possessed rare abilities, one similar to the stranger’s - the gift of foresight, which Brummel actively sought an answer for.
That night, Andrea understood that her boyfriend was on the verge of something big in his own mind. Though still nervous from their earlier encounter, she planted the seeds for what would grow to be her support of her boyfriend’s oncoming transformation by giving him Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morals,” which she had read at Columbia, for his flight back to Los Angeles.
It was on that plane that everything came together.
“I pulled out the book to read it, and it’s an all black cover – there’s only one picture on the cover, and it’s a cutout drawing of a tree casting the shadow of a man.”
Carl Jung, often studied alongside Nietzsche, speaks of similar cases of coincidence as an “acausal connecting principle” – when two cases happen simultaneously in a manner that is meaningful to that person experiencing them, Brummel tells me.
“I felt energized,” Brummel remembers. “It was like an awakening. I felt like, from that moment on, I was initiated into mysticism. Ever since then I can’t stop reading about these types of phenomenona.”
But this energy for Brummel wasn’t to last. The band split in May of 2004 and Brummel left Los Angeles for both New York City and Andrea. Without friends, a job or responsibilities, he spent much of his days immersed in the pages of books unraveling the secret lives of the alchemists.
“I wanted to figure it out - it’s written down, but it’s kind of written in secret code. And that’s what alchemy is.”
To begin his metaphysical transformation, Brummel sought out a rare book – the alchemist’s bible – Fulcanelli’s 1922 masterpiece “Le Mystère des Cathédrales” (“The Mystery of the Cathedrals”). The following year saw him furiously writing and recording new music in his New York apartment with thoughts of spiritualism in his mind and alchemy in his blood.
If asked, Brummel will tell you everything he can about the mysterious master alchemist named Fulcanelli. He’ll tell you that Fulcanelli aged backwards. He’ll tell you that the man is believed to still be alive today, reincarnated into a woman. Though Fulcanelli’s true identity has never been discovered for almost a century, Brummel will tell you how the master was pursued by pre-World War II German intelligence for his rumored knowledge of nuclear weapons long before any ever existed.
Few English translations of “Le Mystère des Cathédrales” exist. In 1920, Fulcanelli handed his pupil the manuscript and gave him the task of publishing it. Fulcanelli then disappeared, not to be seen again for thirty years (an a time when he appeared to age backwards... more on this later).
The book affirms that the process and transformation of the soul through alchemy is possible, and that the carvings and engravings on the Gothic cathedrals in France have offered mankind instruction in the techniques of this evolution for more than 700 years.
Brummel admits that, though he never consciously sought out to write music about alchemy - hoping to keep his profession and his personal beliefs separate - it happened anyway.
The songs came together beautifully. His result of months of work (and Brummel’s own personal transformation) became Speak Easy, Brummel’s first solo concept-record after Ozma’s initial break-up. It was released in the fall of 2005.
Songs like “The Mystery of the Cathedrals” and “The Language of the Birds” contain numerous allusions to Fulcanelli and his followers’ beliefs.
The actual language of the birds, also called the “phonetic cabala” and “The Green Language,” is the secret name in “Le Mystère des Cathédrales” for the hidden language that the alchemists were believed to have spoken in order to avoid accusations of heresy against the church. Today, followers read the Hermetic texts closely in order to gain secrets into the meanings behind the language - as if the language of the birds could be passed on that way. (It ain’t Parsel Tongue, Mr. Potter.)
And on the subject of birds, Brummel appears to be as taken with flora and fauna as he is with poltergeists. Of Speak Easy’s twelve tracks, five reference birds directly - most notably “Language of the Birds” and “Coo Coo Bird.” Elsewhere, Brummel’s drummel Corey Fogel flutters his brushes together in the air ever so slightly on “O Death” so that it sounds convincingly like a bird flapping around, trapped inside their apartment.
“The thing about the birds,” Brummel tells me over the phone, “is they have a God’s eye view. Birds have been here longer than us. They’ve got the perspective.”
During a drive through Malibu months later, Brummel brought his car to a screeching-halt in the middle of a narrow, empty road and asked me, his voice worried, “is it out?” I peered out his window just in time to see a small bird hop out from underneath the right passenger side of his sedan. With a sigh of relief, Brummel drove forward only when safe for all parties involved.
Fulcanelli argues that the main point to unraveling the larger mystery of alchemy and the cathedrals lies in understanding the language of the birds.
But today, even the most avid readers of Fulcanelli have trouble believing much of what he says. It is written in the forwards to “Le Mystère des Cathédrales” that the last time Fulcanelli was seen was in 1954 by a follower named Canseliet. Summoned to a castle in the mountains of Spain by his former master, Canseliet returned to tell a tale of how Fulcanelli, who should have been about eighty years old, miraculously rejuvenated himself, appearing fifty (Canseliet’s own age).
Many still question the believability of the claim, including Brummel.
When asked if he believes in Hermetic alchemy, he moved to a position on the defensive side of things. He explains how it is too easy to say you believe in anything, including God, and that to know something is the strongest affirmation of faith.
“Gnosis is based on the word ‘to know.’ You need to know God. In the archetypal sense of the word ‘religion’ and in terms of a set of beliefs that you believe to be true, ‘belief’ is a very weak word.”
The Hermetic alchemists are believed to have ‘known’ the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who supposedly taught the Egyptians all their knowledge of natural and supernatural things, including the hieroglyphics. Seen as their Moses, Hermes Trismegistus (known to the Egyptians as the god Thoth) was also believed to have created divine commandments on what is known as the Emerald Tablet, or “The Secret of Hermes.”
One translation, by Isaac Newton, found among his alchemical papers begins with “tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of only one thing... hence I am called Hermes Trismegist [sic], having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.”
When considering these ancient texts, Brummel says, it’s no surprise that Hermetic alchemists are poorly regarded by most of western society, similarly to Scientologists.
The mysterious forward to “Le Mystère des Cathédrales” confirmed the feeling all those years ago. It is written that “since alchemists are popularly regarded as at best deluded and at worst deranged, a claim that alchemy is not only science but Science, not only a religion but Religion, is apt to be dismissed out of hand as derisory.”
Brummel confirmed that feeling of being dismissed out of hand; since his mystical encounter, he has found himself more detached from modern society than ever as he believes more in the supernatural side of Hermetic alchemy.
When asked a second time whether or not he is a believer, Brummel openly said ‘sure.’ “Anybody who has called it a religion in the past has been called a heretic, but I would say sure.”
He is not the first entertainer to do so, either. Author Dan Brown is also an avid follower of Fulcanelli’s writings, gathering much of his research for “The Da Vinci Code” from Fulcanelli’s interpretations of the hidden meanings carved into the statues of the cathedrals, written in “Le Mystère des Cathédrales.” It is also believed that the Priory of Sion, whose supposed task was to guard the secret bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, was also influenced by Fulcanelli’s writings and findings. Also, Frank Zappa wrote a song affirming his beliefs called “But Who Was Fulcanelli?” on the second disc of his album, Shut Up n’ Play Yer Guitar.
Today, that influence is spreading with each play of Speak Easy and with each of Brummel’s rare solo performances.
On April 8, Brummel performed his mystical songs at the No Future Café (operated inside a church’s rec-room in Pasadena) for an audience only thirty-five in number.
Flash-forward to seven days later; Brummel sings lead-vocals for the newly-reunited Ozma at the University of Southern California’s Spring Concert Festival for a crowd of roughly one thousand. The band performs only their hits, all written before Brummel’s spiritual transformation.
Though Brummel may never escape his past (and past achievements in songwriting, which he calls “pretty shallow”), this is who he is. He’ll always be remembered by casual fans and critics as that kid who wrote songs about video games and the film ‘Back to the Future.’ That kid who wore the funny t-shirts at his concerts.
Wearing a shirt with a slogan begging for the United States protection of a genocide-stricken region in Sudan (“SaveDarfur.Org”), Brummel tells the audience “thanks for coming” as he and his band saunter through another wonderful pop-rock song about the girl he couldn’t get in high school – though a mysterious stranger in New York City will confirm that he did.
When he gets home after the show, Brummel will likely dive back into thoughts of playing his late grandmother’s upright piano. He will meditate on the drone of the F-sharp below middle C. He will likely continue to write wonderful folk songs about alchemists, astrologists, mathematicians and - apparently - newly developing injustices in the world that deserve our attention.
Worlds collide, nations die, and Daniel Brummel makes music asking ‘why?’
---
michael alahouzos
published in ‘the graphic’ 2006
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