“In our age of all curiosities is it not astonishing that, apart from two or three hermits whose names each one takes care not to remember, the study of the origin of symbols is nil or almost nil? How is it that such a study, conducted with materials and documents in hand, has not tempted the young phalanx which marches, few in number but ardent, to the conquest of this other golden fleece, the Ideal? 

“Today I experienced the joy of reading a book, the work of an artist who was also a scholar and a philosopher, in which it is established that certain decorative motifs reproduced among all peoples and in all times, on monuments as well as on simple everyday objects, are not due to the simple fantasy of art workers, but constitute a family of hierograms formerly commonly read by the wise men of the whole earth, and since lost due to the eternal inconstancy of human destinies. These signs revealing the most subtle laws of creation, these keys to the mysteries, the writer of the book I am talking about, Mr. Emile-Soldi, rightly considers, as symbols of a primitive language that he calls the Sacred Language.”

Edmond Bailly, 1897