Tintin, a symbolic and initiatory work

Yes! Tintin is, of course, a work that has crossed generations and has been adapted, thanks to this fame, to many media (cartoons, movies, derivatives...), but it is above all a very thoughtful comic strip, which hides a multitude of symbols in the background! Follow me, you will see...

For this article, I rely mainly on the research of Paul-Georges Sansonetti, former lecturer of high studies at the Sorbonne, specialist in literature compared to mythology, cinema and graphic arts and author, who has deciphered in detail this monumental work. He approached it from the point of view of the Primordial Tradition and in particular through the Pole, a place which often returns in the adventures of Tintin and which is a central theme of this Tradition.

Hergé ? Name or symbol?

You may know it, but Hergé is a pseudonym. In reality, the father of Tintin and Snowy is called Georges Remi: but he chose to mirror his initials to create his pseudonym: RG. By the way, it is not insignificant to see that this choice of initials is superimposed on those of René Guénon, theorist of the Primordial Tradition and first great French esoteric. And for good reason! When Georges Remi (1907-1983) imagined the characters of Tintin and Snowy, in 1929, he was 22 years old. And, to do this, he was going to rely on the first books of René Guénon, published 2 years before, putting, in a way, elements of his esoteric theories within the reach of young people. Because Hergé is very "connected" to esotericism! In fact, the work of Hergé and that of Guénon are parallel and the father of Tintin will play, through the adventures of his young character, the secret agents of the Primordial Tradition for the (hidden) use of the young and the initiated.

The Pole and the Primordial Tradition

The Pole (North, that is) is not, strictly speaking, a place particularly featured in Tintin's adventures. However, this pole and what it represents on a symbolic level are omnipresent.

But let's start by explaining what the Pole represents and its central role in the Primordial Tradition, which we discussed in a previous article.

This tradition is based on the doctrine of the four ages, represented by metals that have been used since the time of the Greeks: the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, the iron age.

You will easily make the link between the first 3 metals and the awards at the Olympic Games...

Now, the pole is a representation of the golden age, which corresponds to the rich hours of the great civilizations.

In Guénon's theory, the fact that this succession of ages corresponds to a decrease in the quality of the metals that represent them goes with the fact that, throughout these eras, the spirituality and powers of a certain original supra-humanity (the great civilizations) have also declined. Let us recall that for Guénon, the remains of the pyramids (which indicate with great precision the pole) would only be a residue of the very advanced civilization that the Egyptians may have embodied, testifying to the fact that we humans are not in fact in a process of evolution, but of involution, or even of regression, including on the spiritual level.

The Golden Age represents, in a way, the Earthly Paradise, itself inseparable from the pole which, for the ancients, was the supreme Center, associated with the 111 representing the sacred (1+1+1 = trinity).

This same Primordial Tradition considers that this supreme Center is occulted with time and remains only through memories, represented by the different civilizations and peoples through secondary Centers like Delphi (Greek tradition) or Jerusalem (Judeo-Christian tradition).

It is essentially through gematria and encrypted names or places that Hergé transmits, through the adventures of Tintin, the said Primordial Tradition - adventures that Paul-Georges Sansonetti rather qualifies as a "quest", the quest for the Primordial Tradition.

Symbolism of the pole in Tintin

The importance of the pole in Tintin can be seen in the omnipresence of the number 111 in gematria. Examples abound (we will devote a specific article to this subject).

But, to begin with, let's see at which moments this supreme Center appears in the comic strip.

Here are a few examples:

• The whisky that Captain Haddock drinks is marked "Loch Lomond", and this loch, in an interesting way, has an arrow shape that indicates the North... In "Tintin and the Picaros", where this whisky plays a capital role, it is amusing to see that Haddock picks up his whisky bottle, puts it in front of his eyes and shouts "Iceberg" (p. 30)

• The Castafiore, before beginning the "Air des Bijoux" from Gounod's Faust, sings the "Ballad of the King of Thulé". Now, Thulé indicates the supreme Center of the pole

• The sceptre, in "King Ottokar Sceptre", is a symbol of royalty which also represents the axis of the world, which passes through the pole, an axis also symbolized by the meridian of Paris, which is in connection with the Merovingians (and Professor Cuthbert Calculus is looking for a Merovingian tomb in Moulinsart)...

The doubles in Tintin

According to the Primordial Tradition, in the Golden Age, the Being is double: he is both flesh body and glorious body. It is enough to look at Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man": it is a man represented in two postures who is both in a square (which, with its four cardinal points, represents the Earth) and in a circle, which symbolizes Heaven.

These doubles appear in several combinations in Tintin. First of all, through the author:

• Hergé was born under the sign of Gemini;

• his father had a twin brother;

• his pseudo refers to his initiatory reference (Hergé / RG alias René Guénon).

But also through the characters or objects:

• the name of the hero, repetition of the same syllable "Tin-Tin

• his binomial Tintin and Snowy

• his own duplicity, since Tintin is double: he is this luminous body in latency which must, in order to reveal itself, remember its origins, i.e. the golden age, which he displays through the color of his hair and his clothes (we will come back to this)

• the false twins Thompson and Thomson

• the mirror of the Castafiore, an instrument that reflects our image in double but inverted

Symbolism of the characters of Tintin and Snowy

Tintin has a first name that sounds like a nickname. Of all the male names ending in -tin, Célestin, for Paul-Georges Sansonetti, would most likely be the right one. Indeed, Tintin is a light character, who embodies a certain happiness: he does not smoke, does not drink, is quite childlike. He does not let himself be marked by his time or events, is always full of enthusiasm and without ego. He is well-balanced, straight in his boots, like someone who has found the pole, his own center, and no longer fears anything.

He embodies, without knowing it, the vestiges of the golden age. If he sometimes wears a golden yellow shirt (in "The Cigars of the Pharaoh", the starting point of Tintin's true quest) or a white one, he is most often dressed in an azure blue sweater and rust-colored golf pants: he comes from the golden age and he takes on the iron age. He has privileged links with the sky: he knows how to drive all types of planes, can fall from them without consequence, parachute... he always survives. His pairing with Snowy (half-wolf) is 111 in gematria and refers to Castor and Pollux.

In an interview, Hergé revealed that Tintin is eternally 17 years old (a number we will come back to in the next point).

Tintin lives at 26 rue de Labrador, 26 being a unique number for mathematicians because it is between the square (25) and the cube (27). It is also the gematria of the name Yahweh in the Hebrew tradition, the unique god capable of unfolding the Universe. Finally, it is as if Tintin lived in an intercalary space

But the 26 must be taken into account with the rest of the address: here, Labrador does not refer to the animal nor to the region since it is not the street of Labrador but the street of Labrador. A person, then? Why not, since Labrador would be the name of the person who discovered the said region (Lavrador, which later became Labrador) that occupies the Canadian northwest and leads to Greenland, making us look towards... the pole.

Some brief numerical elements in Tintin

In Christianity, the notion of Primordial Tradition is present through Johannism. Indeed, if Saint Peter represents the external church (the one that everyone sees and knows), Saint John represents the esoteric, hidden side of the church (for Islam it is Sufism, for Hebraism it is the Kabbalah, etc.).

When St. John talks about the miraculous catch (ref. to Captain "Haddock"), he says that St. Peter sinned 153 fishes (reference to the era of the Fish that began with Christianity).

Now, when we look at the coats of arms above the entrance door of the castle of Moulinsart, we see a crowned fish.

153 is a sign known by Hergé, who was initiated into Johannism. Tintin is voluntarily 17 years old, according to his "father". By doing the number 17 (a technique invented by the Greeks consisting in adding each number, from 1 to the one we are interested in): 1+2+3+4+5+...+16+17, we get 153.

Similarly, when the characters arrive at the castle of Moulinsart and go down into the crypt (Kruptos in Greek which means "hidden") Tintin sees the statue of John the Evangelist and explains to Captain Haddock that it may be an ancient chapel. In his explanation he says 3 x the word "evangelist" and 6 x the word "eagle" on the same page which makes sense: indeed, the gematria of the word "evangelist" makes 119 and that of the word "eagle" makes 34 and 119+34= 153, another proof that Hergé tells us, through Tintin, the quest for the Primordial Tradition.

As you can see from these examples, the symbols hidden in Tintin are both surprising and complex. Like most fairy tales, those of Perrault or the Fables of La Fontaine, these modern adventures have been conceived as an initiatory journey, all the more unsuspected as it is a work that has been immensely successful without the readers realizing that it has another level of reading.

My advice: the interview de Paul-Georges Sansonetti, sur BTLV, (in French) seems to me an interesting first approach if you want to go into more details, before diving into the reading of his book!

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Sources :

• Paul-Georges Sansonetti, Hergé et l'énigme du Pôle, l’incroyable face cachée de la plus célèbre bande-dessinée, édition Mercure dauphinois, 2011

• Bertrand Portevin, Le monde inconnu d’Hergé, Dervy, 2008

• Jacques Fontaine, Hergé chez les initiés, Dervy, 2001

• Etienne Badot, La clé alchimique de l'œuvre d’Hergé, éd. La Pierre Philosophale, 2016

• Olivier Reibel, La vie secrète d’Hergé, Dervy, 2010