Julien-Ernest Houssay (1840-1912), known to the world as Abbé Julio, stands as one of the most remarkable and least-known figures of the French esoteric-Catholic revival. Expelled from the Roman Church in 1885 for his denunciations of clerical corruption, he went on to become a celebrated healer, thaumaturge, and spiritual teacher, counting among his students and associates some of the most consequential figures of the early Gnostic Church - including Tau Synesius, Patriarch of Doinel's Église Gnostique, who penned the biographical notice of the Abbé that appears in this very volume.
Grand Marvelous Secrets places in the hands of the reader an extraordinary compendium of thaumaturgic prayer: daily prayers and general prayers, blessings and benedictions, prayers inscribed upon parchment, exorcisms for every manner of affliction, and - in one of the volume's most practically useful sections - a comprehensive alphabetical index of maladies and spiritual conditions, each keyed to the appropriate prayers and Psalms for their remedy. Drawing upon the healing methods of the extraordinary mystic Jean Sempé, the collected benedictions of the Catholic tradition, and the Psalms of David, this work represents the fullest expression of Abbé Julio's thaumaturgic method.
Abbé Julio's theology is emphatically catholic in the broadest sense: he insists that the gift of healing belongs to no order or rank, but to all who would cultivate it through faith, directed will, and the intercession of the Saints and Angels. This universalism, combined with his intimate connections to the bishops and Patriarchs of the early Gnostic and Liberal Catholic movements, ensures that his legacy belongs in a special way to the clergy and faithful of the Independent Sacramental Movement.
This first English edition is translated and introduced by Tau Phosphoros, who situates the Abbé's life and work within the complex landscape of French esoteric Christianity and traces the remarkable chain of apostolic succession linking Abbé Julio to the Gnostic Church as it exists today. The Foreword by +Nicodemus provides an essential theological orientation to the work's understanding of noetic prayer, theurgy, and the spiritual principles underlying its practice.
