CHAPTER VII

THE MAGICAL ORIGIN OF FREEMASONRY

That great Kabalistical association known in Europe under the name of

Masonry appeared suddenly in the world when revolt against the Church

had just succeeded in dismembering Christian unity. The historians

of the Order are one and all in a difficulty when seeking to explain

its origin. According to some, it derived from a certain guild of

Masons who were incorporated for the construction of the cathedral of

Strasburg. Others refer its foundation to Cromwell, without pausing

to consider whether the Rites of English Masonry in the days of the

Protector were not more probably developed as a counterblast to this

leader of Puritanical anarchy. In fine, some are so ignorant that they

attribute to the Jesuits the maintenance and direction, if not indeed

the invention, of a society long preserved in secret and always wrapped

in mystery.[292] Setting aside this last view, which refutes itself,

we can reconcile the others by admitting that the Masonic Brethren

borrowed their name and some emblems of their art from the builders

of Strasburg cathedral, and that their first public manifestation

took place in England, owing to radical institutions and in spite of

Cromwell’s despotism. It may be added that the Templars were their

models, the Rosicrucians their immediate progenitors,[293] and the

Johannite sectarians their more remote ancestors. Their doctrine is

that of Zoroaster and of Hermes, their law is progressive initiation,

their principle is equality—regulated by the hierarchy and universal

fraternity. They are successors of the school of Alexandria, as of all

antique initiations, custodians of the secrets of the _Apocalypse_

and the _Zohar_. Truth is the object of their worship, and they

represent truth as light; they tolerate all forms of faith, profess

one philosophy, seek truth only, teach reality, and their plan is to

lead all human intelligence by gradual steps into the domain of reason.

The allegorical end of Freemasonry is the rebuilding of Solomon’s

Temple; the real end is the restoration of social unity by an alliance

between reason and faith and by reverting to the principle of the

hierarchy,[294] based on science and virtue, the path of initiation and

its ordeals serving as steps of ascent. Nothing, it will be seen, is

more beautiful, nothing greater than are such ideas and dedications;

unhappily the doctrines of unity and submission to the hierarchy have

not been maintained in universal Masonry. In addition to that which was

orthodox there arose a dissident Masonry, and all that is worst in the

calamities of the French Revolution were the result of this schism.

Now, the Freemasons have their sacred legend, which is that of Hiram,

completed by another concerning Cyrus and Zerubbabel. The legend of

Hiram is as follows. When Solomon projected his Temple, he entrusted

the plans to an architect called Hiram. This master-builder, to ensure

order in the work, divided the craftsmen according to their degrees

of skill. They were a great multitude, and in order to recognise

craftsmen, so that they might be classified according to merit or

remunerated in proportion to their work, he provided Pass-Words and

particular Signs for each of three categories, or otherwise for the

Apprentices, the Companions and the Masters. It came about that three

Companions coveted the rank of Master without having earned it by their

ability. They set an ambush at the three chief gates of the Temple, and

when Hiram was issuing from one of them, the first of these Companions

demanded the Master-Word, threatening the architect with his rule.

Hiram answered: “It is not thus that I received it.” Thereupon the

Companion in his fury struck him with the iron tool and gave him the

first wound. The builder fled to the second gate, where he met with

the second Companion, who made the same demand and received the same

answer. On this occasion Hiram was struck with a square or, as others

say, with a lever. At the third gate there stood the third assassin,

who completed the work with a mallet. The three companions concealed

the corpse under a heap of rubbish, planted on the improvised grave

a branch of acacia, and then took flight like Cain after the murder

of Abel. Solomon, however, finding that his architect did not return,

sent nine Masters to seek him, when the branch of acacia revealed the

corpse. They drew it from beneath the rubbish, and as it had laid long

therein, they uttered in so doing a word signifying that the flesh was

falling from the bones. The last offices were rendered duly to Hiram,

and twenty-seven Masters were despatched subsequently by Solomon in

search of the murderers. The first of these was taken by surprise in a

cavern; a lamp was burning near him, a stream flowed at his feet and a

dagger lay for his defence beside him. The Master who had been first

to enter recognised the assassin, seized the weapon and stabbed him

with the exclamation _Nekam_—a word signifying vengeance. The head was

carried to Solomon, who shuddered at the sight and said to the avenger:

“Unhappy being, did you not know that I reserved to myself the right

of punishment?” Then all the Masters fell on their knees before the

king and entreated pardon for him whose zeal had carried him away.

The second murderer was betrayed by one with whom he had found an

asylum. He was concealed in a rock near to a burning bush; a rainbow

shone above the rock, and a dog lay near him. Eluding the vigilance

of the dog, the Masters seized the criminal, bound and carried him to

Jerusalem, where he perished in the utmost tortures. The third assassin

was slain by a lion, and the beast had to be overcome before the body

could be secured. Other versions say that he defended himself with a

hatchet when the Masters fell upon him, but they succeeded in disarming

him and he was led to Solomon who caused him to expiate his crime.[295]

Such is the first legend and its explanation now follows. Solomon

personifies supreme science and wisdom. The Temple is the realisation

and emblem of the hierarchic reign of truth and reason on earth.

Hiram is the man who, by science and wisdom, has attained empire.

He governs by justice and order, rendering to each according to his

works. Each Degree is in correspondence with a word, which expresses

the sense thereof. For Hiram the word is one, but it is expressed

after three manners. One is for the Apprentices and can be uttered by

them; it signifies Nature and is explained by Work. Another is for the

Companions; in their case it signifies thought and is explained by

Study. The third is for Masters; in their mouth it signifies truth and

is explained by Wisdom. As to the word itself, it is used to designate

God, Whose true name is indicible and incommunicable. Thus there are

three degrees in the hierarchy and three entrances of the Temple; there

are three modes of light and there are three forces in Nature, which

forces are symbolised by the Rule that measures, the Lever which lifts

and the Mallet which consolidates. The rebellion of brutal instincts

against the hierarchic aristocracy of wisdom arms itself successfully

with these three forces and turns them from their proper uses.

There are three typical rebels—the rebel against Nature, the rebel

against Science and the rebel against Truth. They were represented

in the classical Hades by the three heads of Cerberus; in the Bible

by Koran, Dathan and Abiram; while in the Masonic legend they are

distinguished by names which vary in the different Rites. The first,

who is usually called Abiram, or the murderer of Hiram, is he who

strikes the Grand Master with the rule; this is the story of the just

man immolated by human passion under the pretence of law. The second,

named Mephibosheth, after a ridiculous and feeble pretender to the

throne of David, attacks Hiram with the lever or the square. So does

the popular square or lever of insensate equality become an instrument

of tyranny in the hands of the multitude, and assails, still more

grievously than the rule, the royalty of wisdom and virtue. The third

in fine despatches Hiram with a mallet: so act the brutal instincts

when they seek to establish order, in the name of violence and of fear,

by crushing intelligence.[296]

The branch of acacia over the tomb of Hiram is like the cross on our

altars; it is a sign of knowledge which outlives knowledge itself;

it is the green sprig which presages another spring. When men have

disturbed in this manner the order of Nature, Providence intervenes to

restore it, as Solomon to avenge the death of the Master-Builder. He

who has struck with the rule shall perish by the poignard. He who has

attacked with the lever or square shall make expiation under the axe of

the law: it is the eternal judgment on regicides. He who has slain with

the mallet shall be the victim of that power which he misused. He who

would slay with the rule is betrayed by the very lamp which lights him

and by the stream from which he drinks: it is the law of retaliation.

He who would destroy with the lever is surprised when his watchfulness

fails like a sleeping dog, and he is given up by his own accomplices,

for anarchy is the mother of treason. He who struck with the mallet

is devoured by the lion, which is a variant of the sphinx of Œdipus,

while he who can conquer the lion shall deserve to succeed Hiram.

The decaying body of the Builder indicates that forms may change but

the spirit remains. The spring of water in the vicinity of the first

murderer recalls that deluge which punished crimes against Nature. The

burning bush and rainbow which betray the second assassin typify life

and light denouncing outrage on thought. Finally, the vanquished lion

represents the triumph of mind over matter and the definite subjection

of force to intelligence. From the dawn of the intellectual travail by

which the Temple of unity is erected, Hiram has been slain often, but

ever he has risen from the dead. He is Adonis destroyed by the wild

boar, Osiris put to death by Typhon, Pythagoras in his proscription,

Orpheus torn to pieces by Bacchantes, Moses abandoned in the caverns

of Mount Nebo, Jesus crucified by Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate. Now

those are true Masons who seek persistently to rebuild the Temple in

accordance with the plan of Hiram.

Such is the great and the chief legend of Masonry; there are others

that are no less beautiful and no less profound; but we do not feel

justified in divulging their mysteries. Albeit we have received

initiation only from God and our researches,[297] we shall keep the

secrets of transcendental Freemasonry as we keep our own secrets.

Having attained by our efforts to a grade of knowledge which imposes

silence, we regard ourselves as pledged by our convictions even more

than by an oath. Science is a _noblesse qui oblige_ and we shall in

no wise fail to deserve the princely crown of the Rosy Cross. We also

believe in the resurrection of Hiram.

The Rites of Masonry are designed to transmit a memorial of the

legends of initiation and to preserve them among the Brethren. Now,

if Masonry is thus holy and thus sublime, we may be asked how it came

to be proscribed and condemned so often by the Church; but we have

already replied to this question when its divisions and profanations

were mentioned. Masonry is the Gnosis and the false Gnostics caused

the condemnation of the true. The latter were driven into concealment,

not through fear of the light, for the light is that which they

desire, that which they seek and adore; but they stood in dread of the

sacrilegious—that is to say, of false interpreters, calumniators, the

derision of the sceptic, the enemies of all belief and all morality.

Moreover, at the present day, there are many who think that they are

Masons and yet do not know the meaning of their Rites, having lost the

Key of the Mysteries. They misconstrue even their symbolical pictures

and those hieroglyphic signs which are emblazoned on the carpets of

their Lodges. These pictures and signs are the pages of a book of

absolute and universal science. They can be read by means of the

Kabalistic keys and hold nothing in concealment for the initiate who

already possesses those of Solomon.

Masonry has not merely been profaned but has served as the veil and

pretext of anarchic conspiracies depending from the secret influence

of the vindicators of Jacques de Molay, and of those who continued the

schismatic work of the Temple. In place of avenging the death of Hiram

they have avenged that of his assassins. The anarchists have resumed

the rule, square and mallet, writing upon them the words Liberty,

Equality, Fraternity—Liberty, that is to say, for all the lusts,

Equality in degradation and Fraternity in the work of destruction. Such

are the men whom the Church has condemned justly and will condemn for

ever.

BOOK VI

_MAGIC AND THE REVOLUTION_

ו—VAU

CHAPTER I

REMARKABLE AUTHORS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

China was practically unknown to the outside world until the end of

the seventeenth century, when its vast empire, explored in part by

our missionaries, began to be revealed by them and appeared like a

necropolis of all sciences in the past. The Chinese may be compared

to a race of mummies; nothing progresses with them, for they live in

the immobility of their traditions, from which the spirit and the life

have long since withdrawn. They know nothing any longer, but they

have a vague recollection of everything. The genius of China is the

dragon of the Hesperides—which defends the golden apples in the garden

of science. Their human type of divinity, instead of conquering the

dragon, like Cadmus, cowers fascinated and magnetised by the monster

who flashes before it a changing mirage of its scales. Mystery alone

is alive in China, science is in a state of lethargy, or at least

is in a deep sleep and speaks only in dream. We have said that the

Chinese Tarot is based on the same Kabalistic and absolute data as the

Hebrew _Sepher Yetzirah_; but China has also a hieroglyphical book

consisting exclusively of combinations of two figures; this is the

_Y-Kim_,[298] attributed to the emperor Fo-Hi, and M. de Maison, in

his _Letters on China_, states that it is utterly indecipherable. Its

difficulties however are not greater than those of the _Zohar_, of

which it appears to be a curious complement and is indeed a valuable

appendix thereto. The _Zohar_ explains the work of the Balance, or of

universal equilibrium, and the _Y-Kim_ is the hieroglyphic and ciphered

demonstration thereof. The key of the work is a pantacle known as the

Trigrams of Fo-Hi. According to a legend related in the _Vay-Ky_, a

collection of great authority in China, composed by Leon-Tao-Yuen,

under the dynasty of the Soms, some seven or eight hundred years ago,

the emperor Fo-Hi was meditating one day on the bank of a river about

the great secrets of Nature, when he saw a sphinx come out of the

water, meaning an allegorical animal, having the composite form of a

horse and a dragon. Its head was elongated like that of a horse, it

had four feet and ended in the tail of a serpent; the back was covered

with scales, on each of which there shone the symbol of the mysterious

Trigrams; they were smaller towards the extremities than those on the

breast and back, but were in perfect harmony throughout. The dragon was

reflected in the water but with all its characteristics inverted. This

serpentine horse, the inspirer or rather the bearer of inspirations,

like the Pegasus of Greek mythology, that symbol of universal light,

or like the serpent of Kronos, initiated Fo-Hi into universal science.

The Trigrams served as the introduction; he numbered the scales and

combined the Trigrams in such a manner that he conceived a synthesis of

the sciences compared and united with one another by the pre-existent

and necessary harmonies of Nature. The tables of the _Y-Kim_ were the

result of this marvellous combination. The numbers of Fo-Hi are the

same as those of the Kabalah, while his pantacle is analogous to

that of Solomon, as explained already in our _Doctrine and Ritual of

Transcendental Magic_.[299] His tables correspond to the thirty-two

Paths and the fifty Gates of Light; consequently the _Y-Kim_ cannot

be obscure for those who have the key of the _Sepher Yetzirah_ and

_Zohar_.[300]

The science of absolute philosophy has therefore existed in China;

the Kims are commentaries on this Absolute which is hidden from

the profane, and their relation to the _Y-Kim_ is like that of the

Pentateuch of Moses to the Revelations in the _Sepher Dzenioutha_,

which is the _Book of Mysteries_ and the key of the Hebrew

_Zohar_.[301] Kong-fu-tzee, or Confucius, was the revealer or veiler

of this Kabalah, the existence of which he might have denied, to turn

the researches of the profane into a wrong path, just as that learned

Talmudist Maimonides denied the realities of the Key of Solomon. After

Confucius came the materialistic Fo, who substituted the traditions of

Indian sorcery for the remnants of Egyptian Transcendental Magic. The

cultus of Fo paralysed the progress of the sciences in China, and the

abortive civilisation of this great people collapsed into routine and

stupor.

A philosopher of sagacity and admirable profundity, the learned

Leibnitz, who deserved most assuredly initiation into the supreme

truths of absolute science, thought that he could discern in the

_Y-Kim_ his own discovery of the differential calculus, while in the

straight and divided line he recognised the characters 1 0, employed

in his own calculations. He was on the threshold of the truth, but,

seeing it in only one of its details, he could not grasp it as a whole.

The most important discoveries on religious antiquities in China have

been the result of theological disputes.[302] This came about through

the question whether the Jesuits were justified in permitting the

worship of heaven and ancestral worship among the Chinese who were

converted to Christianity—in other words, whether the educated Chinese

regarded their heaven as God or simply as space and Nature. It was

reasonable to have recourse to the educated themselves and to public

good sense, but these do not constitute theological authorities.

There was therefore much debate, much writing and more intriguing;

the Jesuits were fundamentally right but were wrong in their mode of

procedure, with the result that fresh difficulties were created which

have not been yet overcome and which still continue in China to cost

the blood of our indefatigable martyrs.

[Illustration: THE GREAT HERMETIC ARCANUM]

Whilst the conquests of religion in Asia were thus disputed, a great

spirit of unrest was agitating Europe; the Christian faith seemed

on the point of being extinguished, though on every side there was

a rumour of new revelations and miracles. A man who had a definite

position in science and in the world otherwise, namely, Emmanuel

Swedenborg, was astonishing Sweden by his visions, and Germany was

swarming with new _illuminati_. Dissident mysticism conspired to

replace the mysteries of hierarchic religion by mysteries of anarchy; a

catastrophe was in preparation and was imminent. Swedenborg, the most

sincere and the mildest among the prophets of false illuminism, was

not for this less dangerous than the others. As a fact, the pretence

that all men are called to communicate immediately with heaven[303]

replaces regular religious instruction and progressive initiation by

every divagation of enthusiasm, by all excesses of imagination and of

dream. The intelligent _illuminati_ felt that religion was a great

need of humanity and hence must never be destroyed; not only religion

itself but the fanaticism which it carries along with it as a fatal

consequence of enthusiasm inspired by ignorance, were, however, to be

used as arms for the overthrow of hierarchic church authority, they

recognising that from the war of fanaticism there would issue a new

hierarchy, of which they hoped to be founders and chiefs. “You shall be

as gods, knowing all without having the trouble of learning anything;

you shall be as kings, possessing everything without the trouble of

acquiring anything.” Such, in a summary form, are the promises of

the revolutionary spirit to envious multitudes. The revolutionary

spirit is the spirit of death; it is the old serpent of Genesis, which

notwithstanding it is the father of movement and of progress, seeing

that generations are renewed only by death. It is for this reason that

the Indians worship Siva, the pitiless destroyer, whose symbolical form

was that of physical love and material generation.

The system of Swedenborg is no other than the Kabalah, _minus_ the

principle of hierarchy;[304] it is the temple without key-stone

and without base; it is a vast edifice, fortunately all airy and

phantastic, for had anyone attempted to realise it on this earth it

would collapse upon the head of the first child who sought, not indeed

to overthrow it, but merely to lean against one of its chief pillars.

To organise anarchy is the problem which the revolutionaries have

undertaken to solve, and it is with them for ever; it is the rock of

Sisyphus which will invariably fall back upon them. To exist for a

single moment they are and will ever be compelled fatally to improvise

a despotism having no other justification than necessity, and it is

one which is blind and violent like anarchy. Emancipation from the

harmonious monarchy of reason is attained only by passing under the

disorderly dictatorship of folly.

The means proposed indirectly by Swedenborg for communication with the

supernatural world constitute an intermediate state allied to dream,

ecstasy and catalepsy. The illuminated Swede affirmed the possibility

of such a state, without furnishing any intimation as to the practices

necessary for its attainment.[305] Perhaps his disciples, in order

to supply the omission, might have had recourse to Indian Ceremonial

Magic, when a genius came forward to complete the prophetic and

Kabalistic intuitions of Swedenborg by a natural thaumaturgy. This man

was a German physician named Mesmer. It was he who had the glory of

rediscovering, apart from initiation and apart from occult knowledge,

the universal agent of light and its prodigies. His _Aphorisms_, which

scholars of his time regarded as a bundle of paradoxes, will ultimately

form a basis for the physical synthesis.[306]

Mesmer postulated two modes in natural being; these are substance

and life, producing that fixity and movement which constitute the

equilibrium of things. He recognised further the existence of a first

matter, which is fluidic, universal, capable of fixity and motion; its

fixation determines the constitution of substances, while its continual

motion modifies and renews forms. This fluidic matter is active and

passive; as passive it indraws and as active it projects itself. In

virtue of this matter the world and those who dwell therein attract and

repel; it passes through all by a circulation comparable to that of the

blood. It maintains and renews the life of all beings, is the agent of

their force and may become the instrument of their will. Prodigies are

results of exceptional wills or energies. The phenomena of cohesion and

elasticity, of density or subtlety in bodies, are produced by various

combinations of these two properties in the universal fluid or first

matter. Disease, like all physical disorders, is owing to a derangement

in the normal equilibrium of the first matter in this or that organised

body. Organised bodies are sympathetic or antipathetic to one another,

by reason of their particular equilibrium. Sympathetic bodies may

cure each other, restoring their equilibrium mutually. This capacity

of bodies to equilibrate one another by the attraction or projection

of the first matter, was called magnetism by Mesmer, and as it varies

according to the forms in which it acts, he termed it animal magnetism

when he studied its phenomena in living beings.

Mesmer proved his theory by his experiments, which were crowned with

complete success. Having observed the analogy between the phenomena

of animal magnetism and those of electricity, he made use of metallic

conductors, connecting with a common reservoir containing earth and

water, so as to absorb and project the two forces. The complicated

apparatus of tubs has now been abandoned, as it can be replaced by a

living chain of hands superposed upon a circular non-conducting body

like a wooden table, or on silk or wool. He subsequently applied to

living organised beings the processes of metallic magnetisation and

attained certitude as to the reality and similitude of the phenomena

which followed. One step only was left for him to take, and it was to

affirm that the effects attributed in physics to the four imponderable

fluids are diverse manifestations of one and the same force

differentiated by its usages, and that this force—inseparable from the

first and universal matter which it sets in motion—now resplendent,

now igneous, now electric, now magnetic, has but one name, indicated

by Moses in Genesis, when he describes its manifestation by the _fiat_

of the Almighty before all substances and all forms: that Word is THE

LIGHT—הי אור.

Let us now have the courage to affirm one truth which will be

acknowledged hereafter. The great thing of the eighteenth century is

not the _Encyclopedia_, not the sneering and derisive philosophy of

Voltaire, not the negative metaphysics of Diderot and D’Alembert, not

the malignant philanthropy of Rousseau: it is the sympathetic and

miraculous physics of Mesmer. Mesmer is grand as Prometheus; he has

given men that fire from heaven which Franklin could only direct.

There was wanting to the genius of Mesmer neither the sanction of

hatred nor the consecration of persecution and insult; he was hunted

out of Germany, ridiculed in France, which, however, provided him

with a fortune, for his cures were evident, and the patients who went

to him paid him, though they may have stated afterwards that their

restoration was a matter of chance, so that they might not draw down

upon themselves the hostility of the learned. The authorised bodies did

not even so far honour the thaumaturge as to examine his discovery,

and the great man resigned himself perforce to pass for a skilful

impostor. It was only the really instructed who were not hostile to

mesmerism; sincerely religious persons were alarmed by the dangers of

the new discovery, while the superstitious cried out at the scandal and

the Magic. The wise foresaw abuses; the imbecile would not so much

as tolerate the exercise of this marvellous power. Some thought that

the miracles of the Saviour and his saints would be denied in the name

of magnetism; others wondered how it would fare with the power of the

devil. True religion, notwithstanding, has nothing to fear from the

discovery of truth; and further, in putting a limit to human power,

does not magnetism give a new sanction to divine miracles instead of

destroying them? It follows that the fools will ascribe fewer prodigies

to the devil, which will leave them the less opportunity to exercise

their hatred and their rage; but persons of real piety will not find

this a ground of complaint. The devil must lose ground when light

manifests and ignorance recedes; but the conquests of science and of

light extend, strengthen and increase more and more our love of the

empire and the glory of God.

CHAPTER II

THAUMATURGIC PERSONALITIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The eighteenth century was credulous about nothing but Magic, and

the explanation is that vague beliefs are the religion of souls

devoid of true faith. The miracles of Jesus Christ were denied, while

resurrections were ascribed to the Comte de Saint-Germain. This

exceptional personality was a mysterious theosophist who was credited

with possessing the secrets of the Great Work, and the manufacture of

diamonds and of precious stones. For the rest, he was a man of the

world, agreeable in conversation and highly distinguished in manners.

Madame de Genlis, who saw him almost daily during his early years, says

that even his representations of gems in pictures had a natural fire

and gleam, the secret of which could not be divined by any chemist

or painter. None of his pictures are in evidence, and it can only be

speculated whether he had contrived to fix light on canvas or whether

he employed a preparation of mother-of-pearl, or some metallic coating.

The Comte de Saint-Germain professed the Catholic Religion and

conformed to its practices with great fidelity. This notwithstanding,

there were reports of suspicious evocations and strange apparitions; he

claimed also to have the secret of eternal youth. Was this mysticism

or was it madness? His family connections were unknown and to hear him

talk of past events suggested that he had lived for many centuries. Of

all that was in kinship with occult science he said but little, and

when the benefit of initiation was demanded at his hands he pretended

to know nothing on the subject. He chose his own disciples, required

passive obedience on their part and then talked of a royalty to which

they were called, being that of Melchisedek and Solomon, a royalty of

initiation, which is a priesthood at the same time. “Be the torch of

the world,” he said. “If your light is that only of a planet, you will

be as nothing in the sight of God. I reserve for you a splendour, of

which the solar glory is a shadow. You shall guide the course of stars

and those who rule empires shall be governed by you.”

These promises, the proper meaning of which is quite intelligible to

true adepts, are recorded substantially, if not in the words here

given, by the anonymous author of a _History of Secret Societies in

Germany_,[307] and they are evidence as to the school of initiation

with which the Comte de Saint-Germain was connected. The following

details have been so far unknown concerning him.

The Comte de Saint-Germain was born at Lentmeritz in Bohemia, at

the end of the seventeenth century. He was either the natural or an

adopted son of a Rosicrucian who called himself _Comes Cabalicus_—the

Companion Kabalist—ridiculed under the name of Comte de Gabalis by the

unfortunate Abbé de Villars.[308] Saint-Germain never spoke of his

father, but he mentions that he led a life of proscription and errantry

in a world of forest, having his mother as companion. This was at the

age of seven years, which, however, is to be understood symbolically

and is that of the initiate when he is advanced to the Grade of Master.

His mother was the science of the adepts, while the forest, in the same

kind of language, signifies empires devoid of the true civilisation and

light. The principles of Saint-Germain were those of the Rosy Cross,

and in his own country he established a society from which he separated

subsequently when anarchic doctrines became prevalent in fellowships

which incorporated new partisans of the Gnosis. Hence he was disowned

by his brethren, was charged even with treason, and some memorials on

illuminism seem to hint that he was immured in the dungeons of the

Castle of Ruel. On the other hand, Madame de Genlis tells us that he

died in the Duchy of Holstein, a prey to his own conscience and terrors

of the life beyond.[309] It is certain in any case that he vanished

suddenly from Paris, no one exactly knowing where, and that his

companions in illumination permitted the veil of silence and oblivion

to fall as far as possible upon his memory. The association which he

had formed under the title of Saint-Jakin—which has been turned into

Saint Joachim—continued till the Revolution, when it dissolved or was

transformed, like so many others. A story is told concerning it in a

pamphlet against illuminism; it is derived from a correspondence in

Vienna and, though it is worth reproducing, there is nothing that can

be termed certain or authentic therein.

“Owing to your introduction, I had a cordial welcome from M. N. Z.,

who had been informed already of my arrival. Of the harmonica he

approved highly. He spoke first of all about certain trials, but of

this I understood nothing; it is of late only that I have been able

to grasp the meaning. Yesterday, towards evening, I accompanied him to

his country house, the grounds of which are very beautiful. Temples,

grottos, cascades, labyrinths, caves form a long vista of enchantments;

but an exceedingly high wall which encompasses the whole pleasaunce was

extremely displeasing to me, for beyond this there is also a wonderful

prospect.... I had brought the harmonica with me, at the instance of

M. N. Z., with the idea of playing on it for a few minutes in a place

indicated, and on receiving an agreed signal.[310] The visit to the

garden over, he took me to a room in the front of the house and there

left me, somewhat quickly and under a trivial pretext. It was now very

late; he did not return; weariness and the wish to sleep began to come

over me, when I was interrupted by the arrival of several coaches. I

opened the window, but, being night, I could see nothing, and I was

much puzzled by the low and mysterious whispering of those who seemed

entering the house. Sleep now overcame me, and an hour must have passed

away, when I was awakened by a servant who was sent to conduct me and

also carry the instrument. He walked very quickly and far in advance

of myself, I following mechanically, when I heard the sound of horns,

which seemed to issue from the depths of a cave. At this moment I lost

sight of my guide and, proceeding in the direction from which the noise

seemed to be coming, I half descended a staircase leading to a vault,

from which, to my utter surprise, a funeral chant arose, and I saw

distinctly a corpse in an open coffin.

“On one side stood a man clothed in white, covered with blood; it

appeared to me that a vein had been opened in his right arm. With the

exception of those who were helping him, all present were shrouded in

long black mantles and were armed with drawn swords. So far as I could

judge in my state of terror, the entrance to the vault was strewn with

human bones, heaped one upon another. The only light which illuminated

the mournful spectacle was that of a flame, such as is produced by

spirits of wine.

“Uncertain whether I should be able to overtake my guide, I retreated

hurriedly and found him in search of myself a few paces away; there

was a haggard look in his eyes, and taking my hand in rather an uneasy

manner, he led me into a singular garden, where I began to think

that I must have been transported by magic. The brilliance produced

by a vast number of lamps, the murmur of falling waters, the singing

of mechanical nightingales and the perfume which seemed to exhale

everywhere exalted my imagination at the outset. I was hidden behind a

green arbour, the interior of which was richly decorated, and thither

they brought immediately a person in a fainting state, apparently the

one who had occupied the coffin in the vault. It was at this point that

I received the agreed signal to play my instrument. Disturbed very much

by the whole scene, there is no doubt that a good deal escaped me,[311]

but I could see that the swooning person came to himself as soon as I

touched the harmonica; he also began to ask questions with an accent of

astonishment, saying: ‘Where am I? What is this voice?’ Shouts of joy,

accompanied by trumpets and timbrels, were the only answer. Everyone

ran to arms and plunging into the depths of the garden were quickly out

of sight. I am still in agitation as I write these lines; and if I had

not taken the precaution to make my notes on the spot, I should regard

it to-day as a dream.”

The most inexplicable part of this scene is the presence of the

uninitiated person who tells the story. How the association could

thus risk the betrayal of its mysteries is a question that cannot be

answered, but the mysteries themselves can be explained easily.[312]

The successors of the old Rosicrucians, modifying little by little the

austere and hierarchic methods of their precursors in initiation, had

become a mystic sect and had embraced zealously the Templar magical

doctrines, as a result of which they regarded themselves as the sole

depositaries of the secrets intimated by the Gospel according to St.

John. They regarded the narratives of that Gospel as an allegorical

sequence of rites designed to complete initiation, and they believed

that the history of Christ must be realised in the person of each one

of the adepts. Furthermore, they recounted a Gnostic legend, according

to which the Saviour, instead of being buried in the new tomb of

Joseph of Arimathea, having been swathed and perfumed, was brought

back to life in the house of St. John. This was the pretended mystery

which they celebrated to the sound of horns and harmonica.[313] The

Candidate was invited to offer up his life and was actually subjected

to bleeding which caused him to swoon. This swoon was called death

and when he returned to himself, his resurrection was celebrated

amidst outbursts of joy and gladness. The varied emotions produced,

the scenes, by turns mournful and brilliant, must have permanently

impressed the candidate’s imagination, and rendered him either

fanatical or lucid. Many believed that a real resurrection took place

in themselves and felt convinced that they were no longer subject

to death. The heads of the society thus had at the service of their

concealed projects the most formidable of all instruments, namely,

madness, and secured on the part of their adepts that blind and

tireless devotion which unreason produces more often and more surely

than goodwill.

The sect of Saint-Jakin was therefore an order of Gnostics steeped in

the illusions of the Magic of Fascination; it drew from Rosicrucians

and Templars; and its particular name was one of the two names—_Jachin_

and _Boaz_—engraven on the chief pillars of Solomon’s Temple. In Hebrew

the initial letter of _Jachin_ is _Yod_, a sacred letter of the Hebrew

alphabet, and also the initial of Jehovah, which Divine Name was indeed

veiled from the profane under that of _Jachin_, whence the designation

Saint-Jakin. The members of this order were theosophists, unwisely

addicted to theurgic processes.[314]

All that is told of the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain supports

the idea that he was a skilful physician and a distinguished chemist.

He is said to have known how to fuse diamonds so that there was no

trace of the operation; he could also purify precious stones, thus

making the most common and imperfect of high value. That imbecile and

anonymous author[315] whom we have already cited places the latter

claim to his credit but denies that he ever made gold, as if one

did not make gold in the making of precious stones. Saint-Germain

also invented, according to the same authority, and bequeathed to

the industrial sciences, the art of imparting greater brilliance and

ductility to copper—another invention sufficient to prove the fortune

of him who devised it. Performances of this kind make us forgive the

Comte de Saint-Germain for having been acquainted with Queen Cleopatra

and for chatting familiarly with the Queen of Sheba. He was otherwise

good-natured and gallant; he was one who loved children and amused

himself by providing them with delicious sweetmeats and marvellous

toys; he was dark and of small stature, dressed richly but with great

taste and cultivating all the refinements of luxury. He is said to have

been received familiarly by Louis XV, and was engrossed with him over

questions of diamonds and other precious stones. It is probable that

this monarch, entirely governed by courtesans and given up to pleasure,

was rather yielding to some caprice of feminine curiosity than to any

serious concern for science when he invited Saint-Germain to certain

private audiences. The Comte was the fashion for a moment, and as he

was an amiable and youthful Methuselah, who knew how to combine the

tattle of a roué with the ecstasies of a theosophist, he was the rage

in certain circles, though speedily replaced by other phantasiasts. So

goes the world.

It is said that Saint-Germain was no other than that mysterious

Althotas who was the Master in Magic of another adept with whom we are

about to be occupied and who took the Kabalistic name of Acharat. The

supposition has no foundation, as will be seen in due course.

Whilst the Comte de Saint-Germain was thus in request at Paris,

another mysterious adept was on his way through the world, recruiting

apostles for the philosophy of Hermes. He was an alchemist who called

himself Lascaris and gave out that he was an eastern archimandrite,

charged with collecting alms for a Greek convent. The distinction was

this, that instead of demanding money, Lascaris seemed occupied, so

to speak, in sowing his path with gold and leaving the trail of it

behind him wherever he went. His appearances were momentary only and

his guises many; here he was old and in the next place still a young

man. He did not make gold in public on his own part, but caused it

to be made by his disciples, with whom he left at parting a little

of the powder of projection. Nothing is better established than the

transmutations operated by these emissaries of Lascaris. M. Louis

Figuier, in his learned work on the alchemists, does not question

either their reality or their importance. Now, in physics above all,

there in nothing more inexorable than facts, and it must be therefore

concluded from these that the Philosophical Stone is not a matter of

reverie, if the vast tradition of occultism, the ancient mythologies

and the serious researches of great men in all ages are not otherwise

sufficient to establish its real existence.[316] A modern chemist, who

has not failed to publish his secret, has arrived at the extraction

of gold from silver by a ruinous process, for the silver sacrificed

by him does not produce in gold more than the tenth of its value, or

thereabouts. Agrippa, who never attained the universal dissolvent, was

notwithstanding more fortunate than our chemist, for he did obtain gold

which was equivalent in value to the silver employed in his process

and did not therefore lose his labour absolutely, if to employ it in

research after the grand secrets of Nature can be called loss.

To set men upon researches which might lead them to the absolute

philosophy by the attraction of gold, such would appear to have

been the end of the propaganda connected with the name of Lascaris;

reflection on Hermetic books would of necessity lead those who

studied to a knowledge of the Kabalah. As a fact, the initiates of

the eighteenth century thought that their time had come—some for

the foundation of a new hierarchy, others for the subversion of all

authority and for setting on the summits of the social order the level

of equality. The Secret Societies sent their scouts through the world

to sound opinion, and at need awaken it. After Saint-Germain and

Lascaris came Mesmer, and Mesmer was succeeded by Cagliostro. But they

were not all of the same school: Saint-Germain was the ambassador of

illuminated theosophists, while Lascaris represented the naturalists

attached to the tradition of Hermes. Cagliostro was the agent of the

Templars, and this is how he came to announce, in a circular addressed

to all Masons in London, that the time had come to build the Temple

of the Eternal. Like the Templars, Cagliostro was addicted to the

practices of Black Magic and to the fatal science of evocations. He

divined past and present, predicted things to come, wrought marvellous

cures and pretended to make gold. He introduced a new Rite under the

name of Egyptian Masonry and sought to restore the mysterious worship

of Isis. Wearing a _nemys_ like that of the Theban sphinx, he presided

in person over nocturnal assemblies, in chambers emblazoned with

hieroglyphics and lighted by torches. His priestesses were young girls,

whom he called doves, and he placed them in a condition of ecstasy

by means of hydromancy in order to obtain oracles, water being an

excellent conductor, a powerful reflector, and highly refracting medium

for the Astral Light, as proved by sea and cloud mirages.

It is obvious that Cagliostro was a successor of Mesmer and had the

key of mediumistic phenomena; he was himself a medium, meaning that he

was a man whose nervous organisation was exceptionally impressionable,

and to this he joined a fund of ingenuity and assurance, public

exaggeration and the imagination—especially of women—supplying the

rest. Cagliostro had an extravagant success; his bust was to be seen

everywhere—inscribed: “The divine Cagliostro.” A reaction equivalent

to the enthusiasm was of course to be foreseen; after having been a

god, he became an intriguer and impostor, the debaucher of his wife, a

scoundrel in fine, to whom the Roman Inquisition shewed grace by merely

condemning him to perpetual imprisonment. The fact that his wife sold

him lends colour to the idea that previously he had sold his wife.[317]

He was taken in a snare, his prosecution followed and his accusers

published as much of the process as they pleased. The revolution came

in the meantime, and everyone forgot Cagliostro.

This adept is, however, by no means without importance in the history

of Magic; his Seal is as significant as that of Solomon and attests his

initiation into the highest secrets of science. As explained by the

Kabalistic letters of the names Acharat and Althotas, it expresses

the chief characteristics of the Great Arcanum and the Great Work.

It is a serpent pierced by an arrow, thus representing the letter

_Aleph_, an image of the union between active and passive, spirit and

life, will and light. The arrow is that of the antique Apollo, while

the serpent is the python of fable, the green dragon of Hermetic

philosophy. The letter _Aleph_ represents equilibrated unity. This

pantacle is reproduced under various forms in the talismans of old

Magic, but occasionally the serpent is replaced by the peacock of Juno,

the peacock with the royal head and the tail of many colours. This

is an emblem of analysed light, that bird of the _Magnum Opus_, the

plumage of which is all sparkling with gold. At other times, instead

of the emblazoned peacock, there is a white lamb, the young solar

ram bearing the cross, as still seen in the armorial bearings of the

city of Rouen. The peacock, the ram and the serpent have the same

hieroglyphical meaning—that of the passive principle and the sceptre

of Juno. The cross and arrow signify the active principle, will,

magical action, the coagulation of the dissolvant, the fixation of the

volatile by projection and the penetration of earth by fire. The union

of the two is the universal balance, the Great Arcanum, the Great Work,

the equilibrium of _Jachin_ and _Boaz_. The initials L.P.D., which

accompany this figure, signify Liberty, Power, Duty, and also Light,

Proportion, Density; Law, Principle, and Right. The Freemasons have

changed the order of these initials, and in the form of L∴D∴P∴[318]

they render them as _Liberté de Penser_, Liberty of Thought, inscribing

these on a symbolical bridge, but for those who are not initiated they

substitute _Liberté de Passer_, Liberty of Passage. In the records of

the prosecution of Cagliostro it is said that his examination elicited

another meaning as follows: _Lilia destrue pedibus_: Trample the lilies

under foot; and in support of this version may be cited a masonic

medal of the 16th or 17th century, depicting a branch of lilies severed

by a sword, having these words on the exergue: _Talem dabit ultio

messem_—Revenge shall give this harvest.

The name Acharat, assumed by Cagliostro, is written Kabalistically

thus: אש‏‎, אר‏‎, את‏‎, and expresses the triple unity: אש, the unity of

principle and beginning; אד, the unity of life and perpetuity of

regenerating movement; and את, the unity of end in an absolute

synthesis.

The name Althotas, or that of Cagliostro’s master, is composed of

the word _Thot_, with the syllables _Al_ and _As_, which, if read

Kabalistically are _Sala_, meaning messenger or envoy. The name as a

whole therefore signifies: _Thot_, the messenger of the Egyptians, and

such in effect was he whom Cagliostro recognised as his master above

all others.[319]

Another title adopted by Cagliostro was that of the Grand Copht, and

his doctrine had the twofold object of moral and physical regeneration.

The precepts of moral regeneration according to the Grand Copht were

as follows: “You shall go up Mount Sinai with Moses; you shall ascend

Calvary; with Phaleg you shall climb Thabor, and shall stand on Carmel

with Elias. You shall build your tabernacle on the summit of the

mountain; it shall consist of three wings or divisions, but these shall

be joined together and that in the centre shall have three storeys.

The refectory shall be on the ground-floor. Above it there shall be a

circular chamber with twelve beds round the walls and one bed in the

centre: this shall be the place of sleep and dreams. The uppermost room

shall be square, having four windows in each of the four quarters; and

this shall be the room of light. There, and alone, you shall pray for

forty days and sleep for forty nights in the dormitory of the Twelve

Masters. Then shall you receive the signatures of the seven genii

and the pentagram traced on a sheet of virgin parchment. It is the

sign which no man knoweth, save he who receiveth it. It is the secret

character inscribed on the white stone mentioned in the prophecy of the

youngest of the Twelve Masters. Your spirit shall be illuminated by

divine fire and your body shall become as pure as that of a child. Your

penetration shall be without limits and great shall be also your power;

you shall enter into that perfect repose which is the beginning of

immortality; it shall be possible for you to say truly and apart from

all pride: I am he who is.”

This enigma signifies that in order to attain moral regeneration, the

transcendent Kabalah must be studied, understood and realised. The

three chambers are the alliance of physical life, religious aspirations

and philosophical light; the Twelve Masters are the great revealers,

whose symbols must be understood; the signatures of the seven spirits

mean the knowledge of the Great Arcanum. The whole is therefore

allegorical, and it is no more a question of building a house of three

storeys than a temple at Jerusalem in Masonry.

Let us now turn to the secret of physical regeneration, to attain

which—according to the occult prescription of the Grand Copht—a retreat

of forty days, after the manner of a jubilee, must be made once in

every fifty years, beginning during the full moon of May, in the

company of one faithful person only. It must be also a fast of forty

days, drinking May-dew—collected from sprouting corn with a cloth of

pure white linen—and eating new and tender herbs. The repast should

begin with a large glass of dew and end with a biscuit or crust of

bread. There should be slight bleeding on the seventeenth day. Balm

of Azoth[320] should then be taken morning and evening, beginning with

a dose of six drops and increasing by two drops daily till the end of

the thirty-second day. At the dawn which follows thereafter renew the

slight bleeding; then take to your bed and remain in it till the end of

the fortieth day.

On the first awakening after the bleeding, take the first grain

of Universal Medicine. A swoon of three hours will be followed by

convulsions, sweats and much purging, necessitating a change both

of bed and linen. At this stage a broth of lean beef must be taken,

seasoned with rice, sage, valerian, vervain and balm. On the day

following take the second grain of Universal Medicine, which is Astral

Mercury combined with Sulphur of Gold. On the next day have a warm

bath. On the thirty-sixth day drink a glass of Egyptian wine, and on

the thirty-seventh take the third and last grain of Universal Medicine.

A profound sleep will follow, during which the hair, teeth, nails and

skin will be renewed. The prescription for the thirty-eighth day is

another warm bath, steeping aromatic herbs in the water, of the same

kind as those specified for the broth. On the thirty-ninth day drink

ten drops of Elixir of Acharat in two spoonsful of red wine. The work

will be finished on the fortieth day, and the aged man will be renewed

in youth.[321]

By means of this jubilary regimen, Cagliostro claimed to have lived for

many centuries. It will be seen that it is a variation of the famous

Bath of Immortality in use among the Menandrian Gnostics.[322] The

question is whether Cagliostro believed in it seriously. However this

may be, before his judges he shewed much firmness and presence of mind,

professing that he was a catholic who honoured the pope as supreme

chief of the religious hierarchy. On matters relating to the occult

sciences he replied enigmatically and when accused of being absurd

and incomprehensible he told his examiners that they had no ground of

judgment, at which they were offended, and ordered him to enumerate

the seven deadly sins. Having recited lust, avarice, envy, gluttony

and sloth, they reminded him that he had omitted pride and anger. To

this the accused retorted: “Pardon me; I had not forgotten them, but

I did not include them out of respect for yourselves and for fear of

offending you further.”

He was condemned to death, which was afterwards commuted to perpetual

imprisonment. In his dungeon Cagliostro asked to make his confession

and himself designated the priest, who was a man of his own figure

and stature.[323] The confessor visited him and was seen to take his

departure at the end of a certain time. Some hours after the gaoler

entered the cell and found the body of a strangled man clothed in the

garments of Cagliostro, but the priest himself was never seen again.

Lovers of the marvellous declare that the Grand Copht is at this day in

America, being the supreme and invisible pontiff of the believers in

spirit-rapping.

CHAPTER III

PROPHECIES OF CAZOTTE

The school of unknown philosophers founded by Martines de Pasqually and

continued by L. C. de Saint-Martin seems to have incorporated the last

adepts of true initiation. Saint-Martin was acquainted with the ancient

key of the Tarot—the mystery, that is to say, of sacred alphabets and

hieratic hieroglyphics. He has left many very curious pantacles which

have never been engraved and of which we possess copies. One of them

is the traditional key of the Great Work and is called by Saint-Martin

the key of hell, because it is that of riches.[324] The Martinists were

the last Christians in the cohort of _illuminés_, and it was they who

initiated the famous Cazotte.

We have said that during the eighteenth century a schism took place in

illuminism: on the one hand, the wardens of the traditions concerning

Nature and science wished to restore the hierarchy; there were others,

on the contrary, who desired to level all things by disclosing the

Great Arcanum, thus rendering the royalty and priesthood alike

impossible in the world. Among the latter, some were ambitious and

unscrupulous, seeking to erect a throne for themselves over the ruins

of the world. Others were dupes and zanies. The true initiates beheld

with dismay the launching of society towards the abyss, and they

foresaw all the terrors of anarchy. That revolution which was destined

at a later period to manifest before the dying genius of Vergniaud

under the sombre figure of Saturn devouring his children had already

shewn itself fully armed in the prophetic dreams of Cazotte. On a

certain evening, when he was surrounded by blind instruments of the

Jacobinism to come, he predicted the doom of all—for the strongest and

weakest the scaffold, for the enthusiasts, suicide—and his prophecy,

which at the moment was rather like a sombre jest, was destined

to be realised amply.[325] As a fact, it was only the calculus of

probabilities, and it proved strictly correct because it dealt with

chances which had already become fatal consequences. La Harpe, who was

impressed by the prediction, amplified the details, to make it appear

more marvellous.[326] He mentioned, for example, the exact number of

times that a certain guest of the moment would draw the razor across

his throat. Poetic licence of this kind may be forgiven to the tellers

of unusual stories; such adornments are of the substance of style and

poetry rather than untruths.

The gift of absolute liberty to men who are unequal by Nature is an

organisation of social war; when those who should restrain the headlong

instincts of the crowd are so mad as to unloose them, it does not

need a great magician to foresee that they will be the first to be

devoured, since animal lusts are bound to prey upon one another until

the appearance of a bold and skilful huntsman who will end them by

shot and snare. Cazotte foresaw Marat, as Marat in his turn foresaw

reaction and a dictator. Cazotte made his first appearance in public

as the author of some literary trifles and it is said that he owed his

initiation to the romance of _Le Diable Amoureux_. There is no question

that it is full of magical intuitions, and love, that supreme ordeal

of life, is depicted in its pages under the true light of the doctrine

of adeptship. Passion in a state of delirium and folly invincible for

those who are slaves of imagination, physical love is but death in the

guise of allurement, seeking to renew its harvest by means of birth.

The physical Venus is death, painted and habited like a courtesan;

Cupid also is a destroyer, like his mother, for whom he recruits

victims. When the courtesan is satiated, death unmasks and calls in

turn for its prey. This is why the Church—which safeguards birth by

sanctifying marriage—lays bare in their true colours the debaucheries

which are mortal, by condemning without pity all the disorders of love.

If she who is beloved is not indeed an angel, earning immortality by

sacrifice to duty in the arms of him whom she loves, she is a _stryge_

who expends, exhausts and slays him, finally exposing herself before

him in all the hideousness of her animal egoism. Woe to the victims of

the _Le Diable Amoureux_, thrice woe to those who are beguiled by the

lascivious endearments of Biondetta. Speedily the gracious countenance

of the girl will change into that camel’s head which appears so

tragically at the end of the romance of Cazotte.

According to the Kabalists there are two queens of the _stryges_ in

_Sheol_—one is Lilith, the mother of abortions, and the other is

Nehamah, fatal and murderous in her beauty. When a man is false to

the spouse set apart for him by heaven, when he is abandoned to the

disorders of a sterile passion, God withdraws his legitimate bride

and delivers him to the embraces of Nehamah, who assumes at need all

charms of maidenhood and of love; she turns the hearts of fathers, and

at her instigation they abandon all the duties owing to their children;

she brings married men to widowhood; while those who are consecrated to

God she coerces into sacrilegious marriage. When she assumes the role

of a wife she is, however, unmasked easily, for on her marriage-day

she appears in a state of baldness, that hair which is the veil of

modesty for womanhood being forbidden her on this occasion. Later on

she assumes airs of despair and disgust with existence; she preaches

suicide, deserts him who cohabits with her, having first sealed him

between the eyes with an infernal star. The Kabalists say further that

Nehamah may become a mother but she never rears her children, as she

gives them to her fatal sister to devour.

These Kabalistic allegories, which are found in the Hebrew book

concerning the Revolution of Souls, included by Rosenroth in the

collection of the _Kabbala Denudata_, and otherwise met with in

Talmudic commentaries on the _Sota_ must have been either known or

divined by the author of _Le Diable Amoureux_.[327] Hence we are told

that after the publication of his novel, Cazotte had a visit from an

unknown person who was wrapped in a mantle, after the traditional

manner of emissaries of the Secret Tribunal. The visitor made signs to

Cazotte which he failed to understand and then asked whether indeed

he had not been initiated. On receiving a reply in the negative, the

stranger assumed a less sombre expression and then said: “I perceive

that you are not an unfaithful recipient of our secrets but rather

a vessel of election prepared for knowledge. Do you wish to rule

in reality over human passions and over impure spirits?” Cazotte

displayed his curiosity; a long talk followed; it was the preface

to other meetings; and the author of _Le Diable Amoureux_ was called

to initiation at the end. He became a devout supporter of order and

authority as a consequence and also a redoubtable enemy of anarchists.

We have seen that, according to the symbolism of Cagliostro, there

is a mountain into which those must go up who are on the quest of

regeneration; this mountain is white with light, like Tabor, or red

with fire and blood, like Sinai and Calvary. The _Zohar_ says that

there are two chromatic syntheses; one of them is white and is that

of peace and moral light; the other, which is red, is that of war and

material life. The Jacobins had plotted to unrol the standard of blood,

and their altar was erected on the red mountain. Cazotte was enrolled

under the banner of light, and his mystical tabernacle was established

on the white mountain. That which was stained with blood triumphed

for a moment, and Cazotte was proscribed. The heroic girl who was his

daughter saved him from the slaughter at the Abbey; it so happened that

the prefix denoting nobility was not attached to her name and she was

spared therefore that horrible toast of fraternity which immortalised

the filial piety of Mlle. de Sombreuil, who, to be vindicated from

the charge of aristocracy, drank the health of her father in the

blood-stained glass of cut-throats.

Cazotte was in a position to foretell his own death, because conscience

compelled him to fight against anarchy even to the last. He obeyed it,

was arrested for the second time and brought before the revolutionary

tribunal as one condemned already. The President who pronounced his

sentence added an allocution full of esteem and regret, pledging his

victim to be worthy of himself unto the end and to die nobly as he had

lived. Even in episodes of the tribunal, the revolution was a civil war

and the brethren exchanged salutations as they condemned one another to

death. The explanation is that there was the sincerity of conviction

on both sides and both were entitled to respect. Whosoever dies for

that which he thinks to be true is a hero even in his deception, and

the anarchists of the ensanguined mountain were not only intrepid when

despatching others to the scaffold, but ascended it themselves without

blanching. Let God and posterity be their judges.

CHAPTER IV

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Once there was a man in the world who was soured on discovering that

his disposition was cowardly and vicious, and he visited his consequent

disgust on society at large. He was an ill-starred lover of Nature,

and Nature in her wrath armed him with eloquence as with a scourge.

He dared to plead the cause of ignorance in the face of science, of

savagery in the face of civilisation, of all low-life deeps in the face

of all social heights. Instinctively the populace pelted this maniac,

yet he was welcomed by the great and lionised by women. His success was

so signal that, by revulsion, his hatred of humanity increased, and he

ended in suicide as the final issue of his rage and disgust. After his

death the world was shaken in its attempts to realise the dreams of

Jean Jacques Rousseau, and that silent conspiracy which ever since the

murder of Jacques de Molay had sworn destruction to the social edifice,

inaugurated in Rue Platrière, and in the very house where Rousseau had

once lived, a Masonic Lodge, with the fanatic of Geneva as its patron

saint. This Lodge became the centre of the revolutionary propaganda,

and thither came a prince of the blood royal, vowing destruction to the

successors of Philip the Fair over the tomb of the Templar.

It was the nobility of the eighteenth century which corrupted the

people; the aristocracy of that period were seized with a mania for

equality, which took its rise in the orgies of the Regency; low company

was kept for the pleasure of it and the court obtained diversion in

talking the language of the slums. The archives of the Order of the

Temple[328] testify that the Regent was its Grand Master, that he

had as his successors the Duc de Maine, the princes of Bourbon-Condé

and Bourbon-Conti, and the Duc de Cossé-Brissac. Cagliostro drew

auxiliaries from the middle class to swell the membership of his

Egyptian Rite; everyone was eager to obey the secret and irresistible

impulse which drove decadent civilisation to its destruction. Events

did not tarry, but as if impelled by hands unseen, they were heaped one

upon another, after the manner foreseen by Cazotte. The unfortunate

Louis XVI was led by his worst enemies, who at once prearranged

and stultified the paltry project of evasion which brought about

the catastrophe of Varennes, just as they had done with the orgie

at Versailles and the massacre of August 10. On every side they

compromised the king; at every turn they saved him from the fury of the

people, to foment that fury and ensure the dire event which had been

in preparation for centuries. A scaffold was essential to complete the

revenge of the Templars.

Amidst the pressure of civil war, the National Assembly suspended the

powers of the king and assigned him the Luxembourg as his residence;

but another and more secret assembly had ruled otherwise. A prison

was to be the residence of the fallen monarch, and that prison was

none other than the old palace of the Templars, which had survived,

with keep and turrets, to await the royal victim doomed by inexorable

memories. There he was duly interned, while the flower of French

ecclesiasticism was either in exile or at the Abbey. Artillery

thundered on the Pont Neuf, menacing posters proclaimed that the

country was in danger, unknown personages organised successive

slaughters, while a hideous and gigantic being, covered with a long

beard, was to be seen wheresoever there were priests to murder.

“Behold,” he cried with a savage sneer, “this is for the Albigenses and

the Vaudois; this is for the Templars, this for St. Bartholomew and

this for the exiles of the Cevennes.” As one who was beside himself, he

smote unceasingly, now with the sabre and now with axe or club. Arms

broke and were replaced in his hands; from head to foot he was clothed

in blood, swearing with frightful blasphemies that in blood only he

would wash. It was this man who proposed the toast of the nation to

the angelical Mdlle. de Sombreuil. Meanwhile another angel prayed and

wept in the tower of the Temple, offering to God her own sufferings and

those of two children to obtain pardon for the royalty of France. All

the agonies and all the tears of that virgin martyr, the saintly Mme.

Elizabeth, were necessary for the expiation of the imbecile joys which

characterised courtesans like Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry.

Jacobinism had received its distinctive name before the old Church

of the Jacobins was chosen as the headquarters of conspiracy; it was

derived from the name Jacques—an ominous symbol and one which spelt

revolution. French iconoclasts have always been called Jacques; that

philosopher whose fatal celebrity prepared new Jacqueries and was a

peg on which to hang the sanguinary projects of Johannite schemers

bore the name of Jean Jacques, while those who were prime movers in

the French Revolution had sworn in secret the destruction of throne

and altar over the tomb of Jacques de Molay. At the very moment when

Louis XVI suffered under the axe of revolution, the man with a long

beard—that wandering Jew, significant of vengeance and murder—ascended

the scaffold and, confronting the appalled spectators, took the royal

blood in both hands, casting it over the heads of the people, and

crying with his terrible voice: “People of France, I baptise you in

the name of Jacques and of liberty.”[329] So ended half of the work,

and it was henceforth against the Pope that the army of the Temple

directed all its efforts. Spoliation of churches, profanation of sacred

things, mock processions, inauguration of the cultus of reason in the

metropolis of Paris—these were the signals in chief of the war in

its new phase. The Pope was burnt in effigy at the Palais Royal, and

presently the armies of the Republic prepared to march on Rome. Jacques

de Molay and his companions were martyrs possibly, but their avengers

dishonoured their memory. Royalty was regenerated on the scaffold of

Louis XVI; the Church triumphed in the captivity of Pius VI, when he

was taken a prisoner to Valence, perishing of fatigue and suffering.

But the unworthy successors of that old chivalry of the Temple perished

in their turn, overwhelmed by disastrous victory.

Signal abuses had characterised the ecclesiastical state and grave

scandals were entailed by the misfortune of great riches; but when the

riches melted away, the pre-eminent virtues returned. Such transitory

disasters and such a spiritual triumph were predicted in the Apocalypse

of St. Methodius, to which reference has been made already. We have

a black letter copy of the work mentioned, printed in 1527 and

embellished with amazing designs. Unworthy priests are shewn in the

act of casting the sacred elements to swine; the populace in a state

of rebellion are seen assassinating the priests and breaking their

sacramental vessels on their heads; the Pope appears as a prisoner

in the hands of soldiers; a crowned knight raises with one hand the

standard of France, and with the other draws his sword against Italy.

Finally, two eagles are depicted on either side of a cock, bearing a

crown on his head and a double _fleur de lys_ on his breast. One of the

eagles combines with griffins and unicorns to drive the vulture from

his eyrie; and there is a host of other marvels. This singular book may

be compared with an illustrated edition of the prophecies attributed

to Abbé Joachim, the Calabrian, wherein are exhibited portraits of

all the Popes to come, with the allegorical signs of their respective

pontificates, down to the coming of Anti-Christ. These are strange

chronicles of futurity, pictured as things of the past; they seem to

intimate a succession of worlds wherein events are repeated, so that

the prevision of things to come is the evocation of shadows already

lost in the past.

CHAPTER V

PHENOMENA OF MEDIOMANIA

In the year 1772, a certain parishioner of Saint-Mandé, named Loiseaut,

being at Church, believed that he saw an extraordinary person kneeling

close by him; this was a very swarthy man, whose only garment was a

pair of coarse worsted drawers. His beard was long, his hair woolly,

and about his neck there was a ruddy circular scar. He carried a book,

having the following inscription emblazoned in golden letters: _Ecce

Agnus Dei_.

Loiseaut observed with astonishment that no one but himself seemed

aware of this strange presence, but he finished his devotions and

returned home, where the same personage was awaiting him. He drew

nearer to ask who he was and what might his business be, when the

fantastic visitor vanished. Loiseaut retired to bed in a fever and

unable to sleep. The same night he found his room illuminated suddenly

by a ruddy glow; he sprang up in bed, believing that the place was

on fire; and then on a table in the very centre of the room he saw a

gold plate, wherein the head of his visitor was swimming in blood,

encompassed by a red nimbus. The eyes rolled terribly, the mouth

opened, a strange and hissing voice said: “I await the heads of kings,

the heads of the courtesans of kings; I await Herod and Herodias.” The

nimbus faded and the sick man saw no more.[330]

Some days after he had recovered sufficiently to resume his usual

occupations. As he was crossing the Place Louis XV, a beggar accosted

him and Loiseaut, without looking, threw a coin into his hat. “Thank

you,” said the recipient, “it is a king’s head; but here,” and he

pointed towards the middle place of the thoroughfare, “there will fall

another, and it is that for which I am waiting.” Loiseaut looked with

astonishment towards the speaker and uttered a cry when he recognised

the strange figure of his vision. “Be silent,” said the mendicant;

“they will take you for a fool, as no one but yourself can see me.

You have recognised me, I know, and to you I confess that I am John

Baptist, the Precursor. I am here to predict the punishment which will

befall the successors of Herod and the heirs of Caïaphas; you may

repeat all that I tell you.”

From this time forward Loiseaut believed that St. John was present

visibly at his side, almost from day to day. The vision spoke to him

long and frequently on the woes which would befall France and the

Church. Loiseaut related his vision to several persons, who were not

only impressed but became seers on their own part. They formed among

themselves a mystical society which met in great secrecy. It was their

custom to sit in a circle, holding hands and awaiting communications

in silence. This might continue for hours, and then the figure of the

Baptist would appear in the midst of them. They fell, concurrently or

successively, into the magnetic sleep and saw, passing before their

eyes, the future scenes of the revolution, with the restoration which

would come thereafter.

The spiritual director of this sect or circle was a monk named Dom

Gerle, who became also their leader on the death of Loiseaut in

1788.[331] At the epoch of the Revolution, however, having been won

over by republican enthusiasm, Dom Gerle was expelled by the other

members, acting on the inspirations of their chief somnambulist, who

was known as Sister Françoise André. He had a somnambulist of his

own, and in a Parisian garret he followed what was then the new craft

of a mesmerist. The seeress in question was an old and nearly blind

woman, named Catherine Théot; she prophesied, and her predictions were

realised; she cured many who were sick; and as her forecasts had a

political cast invariably, the police of the _Comité de salut public_

were not slow in taking up the matter.

One evening, Catherine Théot was in an ecstasy, surrounded by her

adepts. “Hearken,” she exclaimed, “I hear the sound of his footsteps;

he is the mysterious chosen one of Providence, the angel of revolution,

at once its saviour and victim, king of ruins and regeneration. Do you

see him? He draws nigh. He also has been encircled by the ruddy nimbus

of the Precursor; it is he who shall bear all crimes of those who are

about to immolate him. Great are thy destinies, O thou who shalt close

the abyss by casting thyself therein. Do you not behold him, adorned

as if for a festival, carrying flowers in his hands—garlands which are

crowns of his martyrdom.” Then sobbing and melting into tears: “How

cruel is thine ordeal, my son; and how many ingrates shall curse thy

memory through the ages. Rise up, and kneel down: he comes; the king

comes—he is the king of bloody sacrifices.”

At this moment the door opened quickly; a man entered enveloped in a

cloak and having his hat drawn over his eyes. Those who were present

rose up; Catherine Théot stretched forth her arms towards the new comer

and said as her hands trembled: “I knew that you must come, and I have

awaited your coming. He who is at my right side, but unseen by you,

shewed you to me yesterday, when an accusation was lodged against us.

We are accused of conspiring for the king, and of a king I have indeed

spoken; it is he whom the Precursor reveals to me at this present

moment, having a crown steeped in blood, and I know over whose head it

is placed—your own, Maximilian.”

At this name the unknown started, as if a red hot steel had entered his

breast. He cast a swift and anxious glance about him, after which his

expression became again impassible.

“What would you say? I fail to understand,” he murmured in a short and

abrupt manner.

“I would say,” replied Catherine Théot, “ that the sun will beam

brightly on that day when a man clothed in blue and bearing a sceptre

of flowers shall be for one moment the king and saviour of the world.

I would say that you shall be great as Moses and as Orpheus, when,

trampling on the head of that monster which is ready to devour you, you

shall testify to headsmen and to victims that God is. Cease from this

masking, Robespierre; shew us rather without paling that valiant head

which God is about to cast in the empty scale of his balance. The head

of Louis XVI is heavy and yours can only be its counterpoise.”

“Do you threaten?” asked Robespierre coldly, letting his cloak fall.

“Do you think by this juggling to startle my patriotism and influence

my conscience? Do you hope by fanatical measures and old wives’ fables

to surprise my resolves as you have played the spy on my proceedings?

You have looked for me, it would seem, and woe to you because you have

looked. Since you compel the curiosity-seeker, the anonymous visitor

and observer to be Maximilian Robespierre, representative of the

people, as such I denounce you to the committee of public weal, and I

shall proceed to have you arrested.”

Having said these words, Robespierre cast his cloak round his powdered

head and walked stiffly to the door. No one dared to detain and none to

address him. Catherine Théot clasped her hands and said: “Respect his

will, for he is king and pontiff of the new age. If he strike us, it is

that God wills to strike us; lay bare the throat before the knife of

Providence.”

The initiates of Catherine Théot waited expecting their arrest

through the whole night, but no one appeared. They separated on the

following day. Two or three further days and nights elapsed, during

which the members of the sect made no attempt at concealment. On the

fifth day, Catherine Théot and those who were called her accomplices

were denounced to the Jacobins by a secret enemy of Robespierre

who insinuated skilfully to his hearers certain doubts against the

tribune—a dictatorship had been mentioned, the very name of king

was pronounced. Robespierre knew, and how came he to tolerate it?

Robespierre shrugged his shoulders, but on the morrow Catherine Théot,

Dom Gerle and some others were arrested and consigned to those prisons

which, once entered, opened only to furnish his daily task to the

headsman.

The story of Robespierre’s interview with Catherine Théot had

transpired, one knows not how.[332] Already the counter-police of the

Thermidorians were watching the presumed dictator, whom they accused

of mysticism because he believed in God. Robespierre notwithstanding

was neither the friend nor enemy of the sect of New Johannites. He

went to Catherine Théot that he might take account of phenomena, and

dissatisfied at having been recognised he departed with threats which

he did not attempt to fulfil; those who converted the conventicle of

the old monk and ecstatic into a sect of conspiracy hoped to derive

from the proceeding a doubt or an opportunity for ridicule attaching

to the reputation of the incorruptible Maximilian. The prophecy of

Catherine Théot was fulfilled by the inauguration of the worship of the

Supreme Being and the swift reaction of Thermidor.

During this time the sect which had gathered about Sister André, whose

revelations were recorded by a Sieur Ducy, continued their visions and

miracles. The fixed notion which they cherished was to preserve the

legitimacy by the future reign of Louis XVII.[333] Times out of number

they saved in dream the poor little orphan of the Temple and believed

also that they had saved him literally. Old prophecies promised the

throne of the lilies to a young man who had been once a captive. So

Bridget, St. Hildegarde, Bernard Tollard, Lichtemberger—all foretold a

miraculous restoration after great disasters.[334] The Neo-Johannites

were the interpreters and multipliers of these forecasts; a Louis XVII

never failed them; they had seven or eight in succession, all perfectly

authentic and not less perfectly preserved. It is to the influence of

this sect that we owe at a later period the revelations of the peasant

Martin de Gallardon and the prodigies of Vintras.

In this magnetic circle, as in the assemblies of Quakers or Shakers of

Great Britain, enthusiasm proved contagious, and was propagated from

one to another. After the death of Sister André, second sight and the

gift of prophecy devolved upon a certain Legros, who was at Charenton

when Martin was incarcerated provisionally therein. He recognised a

brother in the Beauceron peasant whom he had never seen. All these

partisans, by force of willing Louis XVII created him in a certain

sense; that is to say, they worked such efficacious hallucinations that

mediums were made in the image and likeness of the magnetic type, and

believing themselves to be literally the royal child escaped from the

Temple, they attracted all the reflections of this gentle and frail

victim, so even that they remembered circumstances known only to the

family of Louis XVI. This phenomenon, however incredible it may appear,

is neither impossible nor unheard of. Paracelsus states that if, by

an extraordinary effort of will, one can picture oneself as another

person, one would know thereby and forthwith the inmost thought of

that person, and would attract his most secret memories. Often after a

conversation which has placed us in thought-affinity with a companion

in conversation, we dream reminiscences of his private life. Among the

simulators of Louis XVII we must therefore recognise some who were not

impostors, but hallucinated beings, and among these last is the Swiss

who is named Naündorff, a visionary like Swedenborg, one indeed so

contagious in his conviction that old servants of the royal family have

recognised him and cast themselves weeping at his feet. He bore the

particular signs and scars of Louis XVII; he recounted his infancy with

a startling appearance of truth and entered into minute details, which

are decisive for private remembrances. His very features would have

been those of the orphan of Louis XVI, had he really lived. One thing

only in fine was wanting for the pretender to have been Louis XVII

truly, and that is not to have been Naündorff.[335]

Such was the contagious magnetic power of this deluded person that

even his death did not undeceive any of the believers in his reign

to come. We have seen one of the most convinced, to whom we timidly

objected—when he spoke of the approaching restoration of what he

called the true legitimacy—that his Louis XVII was dead. “Is it then

more difficult for God to raise him from death than it was for those

who preceded us to save him from the Temple?” Such was the answer

given us—and this with a smile so triumphant that almost it seemed

disdainful. We had nothing to rejoin on our own part, but were rather

compelled to bow in the presence of such a conviction.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMAN ILLUMINATI

Germany is the native land of metaphysical mysticism and phantoms. A

phantom itself of the old Roman empire, it seems always to invoke the

mighty shade of Hermann, consecrating in his honour the simulacrum

of the captive eagles of Varus. The patriotism of young Germany is

invariably that of the Germans in elder days. They have no thought of

invading the laughing land of Italy; they accept the situation, as it

stands, simply as a matter of revenge; but they would die a thousand

times in the defence of their hearths and homes. They love their old

castles, their old legends of the banks of the Rhine; they read with

the uttermost patience the darksome treatises of their philosophy;

they behold in the fogs of their sky and in the smoke of their pipes

a thousand things inexpressible, by which they are initiated into

the marvels of the other world. Long before there was any question

of mediums and their evocations in America and France, Prussia had

its _illuminati_ and seers, who had habitual communications with the

dead. At Berlin, a great noble built a house destined for evocations;

King Frederick William was very curious about all such mysteries and

was often immured in this house with an adept named Steinert. His

experiences were so signal that a state of exhaustion supervened and he

had to be restored with drops of some magical elixir analogous to that

of Cagliostro. There is a secret correspondence belonging to the reign

in question which is cited by the Marquis de Luchet in his work against

the _illuminati_, and it contains a description of the dark chamber

in which the evocations were performed. It was a square apartment,

divided by a transparent veil; the magical furnace or altar of perfumes

was erected in front of the veil and behind was a pedestal on which

the spirit manifested. In his German work upon Magic, Eckartshausen

describes the whole of the fantastic apparatus, being a system of

machines and operations by which imagination was helped to create the

phantoms desired, those who consulted the oracle being in a kind of

waking somnambulism, comparable to the nervous excitement produced by

opium or hasheesh. Those who are contented with the explanations given

by the author just mentioned will regard the apparitions as magic

lantern effects, but there is more in it assuredly than this, while

the magic lantern was only an accessory instrument in the business and

one in no sense necessary for the production of the phenomenon. The

images of persons once known on earth and now called up by thought do

not appear as reflections of coloured glass; the pictures painted by a

lantern do not speak, nor do they give answers to question on matters

of conscience. The king of Prussia, to whom the house belonged, was

well acquainted with all the apparatus and was not therefore duped by

jugglery, as the author of the secret correspondence pretends. The

natural means paved the way for the prodigy but did not perform the

latter; and the things which occurred were of a kind to surprise and

disturb the most inveterate sceptic.[336] Schroepfer, moreover made

use of no magic lantern and no veil, but those who came to him drank

a kind of punch which he prepared; the forms which then appeared by

his mediation were like those of the American Home, that is to say,

partially materialised, and they caused a curious sensation in persons

who sought to touch them. The experience was analogous to an electric

disturbance, making the flesh creep, and there would have been no such

sensation if people had moistened their hands before touching the

apparition. Schroepfer acted in good faith, as does also the American

Home; he believed in the reality of the spirits evoked by him, and he

killed himself when he began to doubt it.[337]

Lavater, who also died violently, was utterly given over to evocations;

he had two spirits at his command and belonged to a circle which

cultivated catalepsy by the help of a harmonica. A magical chain was

formed; a species of imbecile served as the spirit’s interpreter and

wrote under his control.[338] This spirit gave out that he was a

Jewish Kabalist who died before the birth of Jesus Christ, and the

things which the medium recorded under his influence were worthy of

Cahagnet’s somnambulists.[339] There was, for example, a revelation

on sufferings in the life beyond, the communicating spirit stating

that the soul of the emperor Francis was compelled to calculate the

number and exact condition of all the snail-shells which may exist

and have existed in the whole universe. He made known also that

the true names of the three Magi were not, as tradition tells us,

Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, but on the contrary Vrasapharmion,

Melchisedek and Baleathrasaron; it is like reading the names written

by our modern process of table-turning. The spirit also testified that

he was himself doing penance for having threatened his father with

the magical sword and that he felt disposed to make his friends a

present of his portrait. Paper, paints and brushes were placed at his

request behind a screen; he was then seen to design on the screen the

outline of a small hand; a slight friction was audible on the paper;

when it ceased everyone pressed forward and found rudely painted the

likeness of an old Rabbi vested in black, with a white ruffle over the

shoulders and a black skull-cap, a costume altogether eccentric for

a personage who was anterior to Jesus Christ. The painting, for the

rest, was smudged and ill-drawn, resembling the work of a child amusing

himself by daubing with eyes shut.[340] The written instructions of

the medium under the inspiration of Gablidone vie in their obscurity

with the characteristics of German metaphysicians. “The attribute of

majesty must not be conferred lightly,” says this authority, “for

majesty is a derivation from Mage, seeing that the Magi were pontiffs

and kings; they were therefore the primeval majesties. It is against

the majesty of God that we offend when we sin mortally; we wound Him

as Father, casting death into the sources of life. The fountain of the

Father is light and life; that of the Son is blood and water; while

the splendour of the Holy Spirit is fire and gold. We sin against the

Father by falsehood, against the Son by hatred and against the Holy

Spirit by debauchery, which is the work of death and destruction.”

The good Lavater received these communications like oracles and when

he asked for some further illuminations, Gablidone proceeded as

follows: “The great revealer of mysteries shall come, and he will be

born in the next century. The religion of the patriarchs will then

be known on earth; it will explain to mankind the triad of _Agion_,

_Helion_, _Tetragrammaton_; and the Saviour whose body is girt with a

triangle shall be shewn on the fourth step of the altar; the apex of

the triangle will be red and the device of mystery thereon will be:

_Venite ad patres osphal_. One of the auditors demanded the meaning

of the last word, and the medium wrote as follows without other

explanations: _Alphos, M: Aphon, Eliphismatis_. Certain interpreters

have concluded that the magus whose advent was announced in the course

of the nineteenth century would be named Maphon and would be the son of

Eliphisma, but this reading may be somewhat speculative.

There is nothing more dangerous than mysticism, for the mania which it

begets baffles every combination of human wisdom. It is ever the fools

who upset the world and that which great statesmen never foresee is

the desperate work of a maniac. The architect of the temple of Diana

at Ephesus promised himself eternal glory, but he counted without

Erostratus. The Girondins did not foresee Marat. What is needed to

alter the equilibrium of the world? asked Pascal, on the subject of

Cromwell. The answer is, a speck of gravel formed by chance in the

entrails of a man. So do the great events come about through causes

which in themselves are nothing. When any temple of civilisation

crashes down, it is always the work of a blind man, like Samson, who

shakes the pillars thereof. Some wretched preacher, belonging to the

dregs of the people, is suffering from insomnia and believes himself

elected to deliver the world from anti-Christ. Accordingly he stabs

Henry IV and reveals to France in its consternation the name of

Ravaillac. The German thaumaturgists regarded Napoleon as the Apollyon

mentioned in the Apocalypse and one of their neophytes, named Stabs,

came forward to kill the military Atlas, who at the given moment was

carrying on his shoulders a world snatched from the chaos of anarchy.

But that magnetic influence which the Emperor called his star was

more potent than the fanatical impulse of the German occult circles.

Stabs could not or dared not strike; Napoleon himself questioned him;

he admired his resolution and courage; but, as he understood his own

greatness, he would not detract from the new Scevola by forgiving him;

he shewed his estimation indeed by taking him seriously and allowing

him to be shot.

Carl Sand, who killed Kotzebue, was also an unfortunate derelict child

of mysticism, misled by the secret societies, in which vengeance was

sworn upon daggers. Kotzebue may have deserved cudgelling, but the

weapon of Sand reinstated and made him a martyr. It is indeed grand to

perish as the enemy and victim of those who wreak vengeance by means

of ambuscades and assassinations. The secret societies of Germany

practised rites which were less or more comparable to those of Magic.

In the brotherhood of Mopses, for example, the mysteries of the Sabbath

and the secret reception of Templars were renewed in mitigated and

almost humorous forms. The Baphometic Goat was replaced by a dog, as

if Hermanubis were substituted for Pan, or science for Nature—the

latter being an equivalent change, since Nature is known solely by

the intermediation of science. The two sexes were admitted by the

Mopses, as was the case at the Sabbath; the reception was accompanied

by barkings and grimaces, and, as among the Templars, the Neophyte was

invited to take his choice between kissing the back parts of the devil,

the Grand Master or the Mopse, which was a small image of card-board,

covered with silk, and representing a dog, called _Mops_ in German.

The salutation in question was the condition of reception and recalls

that which was offered to the Goat of Mendes in the initiations of the

Sabbath. The Mopses took no pledges other than on their word of honour,

which is the most sacred of all oaths for self-respecting people. Their

meetings were occasions for dancing and festivity—again like those of

the Sabbath—except that the ladies were clothed, and did not hang live

cats from their girdles or eat little children: it was altogether a

civilised Sabbath.[341]

Magic had its epic in Germany and the Sabbath its great poet; the

epic was the colossal drama of _Faust_—that completed Babel of human

genius. Goethe was initiated into all mysteries of magical philosophy;

in his youth he had even practised the ceremonial part. The result

of his daring experiments was to produce in him, for the time being,

a profound disgust with life and a strong inclination towards death.

As a fact, he accomplished his suicide, not by a literal act but in

a book; he composed the romance of _Werther_, the fatal work which

preaches death and has had so many proselytes; then, victorious over

discouragement and disgust, and having entered the serene realms of

peace and truth, he wrote _Faust_. It is a magnificent commentary on

one of the most beautiful episodes in the Gospel—the parable of the

prodigal son. It is initiation into sin by rebellious science, into

suffering by sin, into expiation and harmonious science by suffering.

Human genius, represented by Faust, employs as its lackey the spirit of

evil, who aspires to become master; it exhausts quickly all the delight

that is attributed by imagination to unlawful love; it goes through

orgies of folly; then, drawn by the charm of sovereign beauty, it

rises from the abyss of disillusion to the heights of abstraction and

imperishable beauty. There Mephistopheles is at his ease no longer; the

implacable laughter turns sad; Voltaire gives place to Chateaubriand.

In proportion as the light manifests, the angel of Darkness writhes and

tosses; he is bound by celestial angels; he admires them against his

will; he loves, weeps and is conquered.

In the first part of the drama, we see Faust separated by violence from

Margaret; the heavenly voices cry that she is saved, even as she is

being led to execution. But can that Faust be lost who is always loved

by Margaret? Is not his heart already espoused to heaven? The great

work of redemption in virtue of solidarity moves on to its fulfilment.

How should the victim ever be consoled for her sufferings, did she

not convert her executioner? Is not forgiveness the revenge of the

children of heaven? The love which has first reached the empyrean draws

science after it by sympathy; Christianity uprises in its admirable

synthesis. The new Eve has washed the mark from the forehead of Cain

with the blood of Abel, and she weeps with joy over her two children,

who hold her in their joint embrace. To make room for the extension

of heaven, hell—which has become useless—ceases. The problem of evil

has found its definitive solution, and good—alone necessary and alone

triumphant—shall reign henceforth eternally.

Hereof is the glorious dream of the greatest of all poets, but the

philosopher, by misfortune, forgets the laws of equilibrium; he

would swallow up light in a shadowless splendour and motion in an

absolute repose, which would signify cessation of life. So long as

there is visible light, there will be shadow in proportion therewith.

Repose will never be happiness, unless equilibrated by an analogous

and contrary movement. So long as there shall be free benediction,

blasphemy will remain possible; so long as heaven remains, a hell there

will also be. It is the unchangeable law of Nature and the eternal will

of that justice whose other name is God.

CHAPTER VII

EMPIRE AND RESTORATION

Napoleon filled the world with wonders, and in that world was himself

the greatest wonder of all. The Empress Josephine, his wife, curious

and credulous as a creole, passed from enchantments to enchantments.

A glory of this kind had, as we are told, been promised her by an old

gipsy woman, and the folk of the countryside still believe that she

was herself the Emperor’s good genius. As a fact, she was a sweet

and modest counsellor who would have saved him from many perils, had

he always listened to her warnings, but he was impelled forward by

fatality, or rather by providence, and that which was to befall him

had been decreed beforehand. In a prophecy attributed to St. Césaire

but signed Jean de Vatiguerro, and found in the _Liber Mirabilis_, a

collection of predictions printed in 1524,[342] there are the following

astonishing sentences.

“The churches shall be defiled and profaned, and the public worship

suspended. The eagle shall take flight over the world and overcome many

nations. The greatest prince and most august sovereign in all the West

shall be put to rout after a supernatural defeat. A most noble prince

shall be sent into captivity by his enemies and shall mourn in thinking

of those who were devoted to him. Before peace is restored to France,

the same events shall be repeated again and again. The eagle shall be

crowned with a triple diadem, shall return victorious to his eyrie and

shall leave it only to ascend into heaven.”

After predicting the spoliation of churches and the murder of priests,

Nostradamus foretells the birth of an emperor in the vicinity of Italy

and says that his reign will cost France a great outpouring of blood,

while those who belong to him will betray him and charge him with the

spilling of blood.

“An Emperor shall be born near Italy,

Who shall cost dear to the Empire:

They shall say, With what people he keepeth company!

He shall be found less a prince than a butcher.

From a simple soldier he shall come to have the supreme command,

From a short gown he shall come to the long one;

Valiant in arms, no worse man in the Church,

He shall vex the priests, as water doth a sponge.”[343]

This is to say that at the moment when the church experiences the

greatest calamities, he will overwhelm the priests with benefits. In

a collection of prophecies published in 1820, and of which we possess

a copy, the following phrase occurs after a prediction concerning

Napoleon I: “And the nephew will accomplish that which the uncle failed

to do.” The celebrated Mlle. Lenormand had in her library a volume in

boards with a parchment back, containing the _Treatise of Olivarius on

Prophecies_, followed by ten manuscript pages, in which the reign of

Napoleon and his downfall were announced formally. The seeress imparted

the contents of this work to the Empress Josephine. Having mentioned

Mlle. Lenormand, a few further words may be added about this singular

woman; she was stout and extremely plain, emphatic in talk, ludicrous

in style, but a waking somnambulist of conspicuous lucidity. She was

the fashionable seeress under the First Empire and the Restoration.

There is nothing more wearisome than are her writings, but as a teller

of fortunes by cards she was most successful.

Cartomancy, as restored in France by Etteilla, is literally the

questioning of fate by signs agreed on beforehand. These in combination

with numbers suggest oracles to the medium, who is biologised by

staring at them. The signs are drawn by chance, after having shuffled

them slowly; they are arranged according to Kabalistic numbers,

and they respond invariably to the thoughts of those who question

them, seriously and in good faith, for all of us carry a world of

presentiments within us which any pretext will formulate. Susceptible

and sensitive natures receive from us a magnetic shock which conveys

to them the impression of our nervous state. The medium can then read

our fears and hopes in ripples of water, forms of clouds, counters cast

haphazard on the ground, in the marks made on a plate by the grouts of

coffee, in the lottery of a card-game, or in the Tarot symbols.

As an erudite Kabalistic book, all combinations of which reveal

the harmonies pre-existing between signs, letters and numbers, the

practical value of the Tarot is truly and above all marvellous. But we

cannot with impunity, by such means, extort from ourselves the secrets

of our intimate communication with the universal light. The questioning

of cards and Tarots is a literal evocation, which cannot be performed

apart from danger and crime. By evocations we compel our astral body to

appear before us; in divination we force it to speak. We provide a body

for our chimæras by so doing, and we make a proximate reality of that

future which will actually become ours when it is called up by power of

the word and is embraced by faith. To acquire the habit of divination

and of magnetic consultations is to make a compact with vertigo, and we

have established already that vertigo is hell.

Mlle. Lenormand was infatuated with herself and with her art;

she thought that the world could not go on without her and that

she was necessary to the equilibrium of Europe. At the Congress

of Aix-la-Chapelle, the seeress made her appearance with all her

properties, did business at all the customs, and pestered all the

authorities, so that they were compelled in a sense to concern

themselves with her; she was truly the fly on the wheel, and what a

fly! On her return she published her impressions with a frontispiece

representing herself surrounded by all the powers, who consulted her

and trembled in her presence.[344]

The great events which had just come to pass in the world turned all

minds towards mysticism; a religious reaction began and the royalties

constituting the Holy Alliance felt the need of attaching their

united sceptres to the cross. The Emperor Alexander in particular

believed that the hour was come for Holy Russia to convert the world

to universal orthodoxy. The intriguing and turbulent sect of the

Saviours of Louis XVII sought to profit by this tendency for the

foundation of a new priesthood, and it succeeded in introducing one of

its seeresses to the notice of the Russian Emperor. Madame Bouche was

the name of this new Catherine Théot, but she was called Sister Salome

by the sect.[345] She spent eighteen months at the Imperial Court and

had many secret conferences with Alexander, but he had more of pious

imagination than true enthusiasm; he delighted in the marvellous and

pretended that it amused him. It came about that his confidants in this

class of interests presented him with another prophetess, and Sister

Salome was forgotten. Her successor was Madame de Krudener, an amiable

coquette full of piety and virtue, who created but was not herself

Valérie.[346] It was, however, her ambition to pass as the heroine

of her own book, and when one of her intimate friends pressed her to

identify the hero, she mentioned an eminent personality of that period.

“Ah then,” said her friend, “the catastrophe of your book is not in

conformity with the facts, for the gentleman in question is not dead.”

But Madame de Krudener replied, “Oh, my dear, he is little better than

dead,” and the retort was her fortune. The influence of Madame de

Krudener on the somewhat weak mind of Alexander was strong enough to

concern his advisers; he was often shut up with her in prayer, but in

the end she was lost by excess of zeal. One day the Emperor was taking

leave of her when she threw herself before him, conjuring him not to go

out and explaining how God had made known to her that he was in great

danger, that there was a plot against his life, and that an assassin

was concealed in the palace. The Emperor was alarmed and summoned

the guards; a search followed, and some poor wretch was ultimately

discovered with a dagger. In confusion he finished by confessing that

he had been introduced by Madame de Krudener herself.[347] Was it true,

and had the lady played the part of Latude in the vicinity of Madame

de Pompadour? Was it false, and, secreted by the Emperor’s enemies, was

the man’s mission—in the event of the murder failing—to destroy Madame

de Krudener? Either way, the poor prophetess was lost, for the Emperor,

in his shame at being regarded as a dupe, sent her about her business

without hearing her, and she had reason to think herself fortunate in

escaping so easily.

The little church of Louis XVII did not conclude that it was beaten

by the disgrace of Madame Bouche, while in that of Madame de Krudener

it beheld a Divine punishment. The prophecies continued and were

reinforced, as required, by miracles. In the reign of Louis XVIII they

put forward a peasant of La Beauce, named Martin,[348] who declared

that he had seen an angel.

From the description which he gave the angel in question was in the

guise of a lackey belonging to some good family; he had a long surtout,

cut very close at the waist and of a yellow colour; he was pale and

thin, with a hat which was probably adorned with gold lace. The strange

thing is that the seer managed to be taken seriously and obtained an

interview with the king, furnishing one more instance of the resources

in persistence and boldness. It is said that the king was astonished

by revelations concerning his private life, in which there is nothing

that is impossible or even of an extraordinary nature, now that the

phenomena of magnetism are better authenticated and known. Moreover,

Louis XVIII was sufficiently sceptical to be credulous. Doubt in the

presence of existence and its harmonies, scepticism in the face of

the eternal mathematics and immutable laws of life, by which Divinity

is manifested everywhere—this assuredly is the most imbecile of

superstitions and the least excusable, as it is the most dangerous, of

all credulities.

BOOK VII

_MAGIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY_

ז—ZAIN

CHAPTER I

MAGNETIC MYSTICS AND MATERIALISTS

The denial of the fundamental doctrine of catholic religion, formulated

so magnificently in the poem of _Faust_, had borne its fruits in the

world. Morality deprived of its eternal sanction became doubtful

and unsettled. A materialistic mystic turned about the system of

Swedenborg to create on earth a paradise of attractions in proportion

to destinies. By the word attractions Fourier understood the sensuous

passions, and to these he promised an integral and absolute expansion.

God, who is the Supreme Reason, marks such condemned doctrines with a

terrible seal; the disciples of Fourier began by absurdity and ended in

madness.[349]

They believed seriously that the ocean would be presently transformed

into an immeasurable bowl of lemonade; they believed also in the future

creation of anti-lions and anti-serpents, in epistolary correspondence

to be established between the planets. We forbear speaking of the

famous tail, thirty-two feet in length, with which it is reported

that the human species was to be adorned, because it would appear

that they had the generosity to set this notion aside as, according

to their master, a purely hypothetical question. To such absurdities

does the denial of equilibrium lead. And at the bottom of all these

follies there is more logic than would be thought. The same reason

which necessitates suffering in humanity renders indispensable the

bitterness of sea-water; grant the integral expansion of instincts, and

you can no longer admit the existence of wild beasts; endow man with

the capacity of satisfying his appetites as the sum of all morality,

and he will still have something to envy in ourang-outangs and monkeys.

To deny hell is also to deny heaven, seeing that, according to the

most exalted interpretation of the Great Hermetic Dogma, hell is the

equilibrating reason of heaven, for harmony results from the analogy

of contraries. _Quod superius, sicut quod inferius._ Superiority

presupposes inferiority; the depth determines the height, and to fill

up the valleys is to efface mountains; so also to take away shadows

would be to destroy light, as this is only visible by the graduated

contrast of darkness and day; an universal obscurity would be produced

by all-dazzling brilliance. The very existence of colours in light

is due to the presence of shadow; it is the triple alliance of day

and night, the luminous image of dogma, the light made shadow, as the

Saviour is the Word made man. All this rests on the same law, which

is the first law of creation, the one absolute law of Nature, being

that of the distinction and harmonious balancing of opposing forces in

universal equilibrium.

[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF KABALISTIC DOCTRINE]

That which has revolted public conscience is not the dogma of hell

but its rash interpretation. Those barbarous dreams of the middle

ages, those atrocious and obscene tortures, sculptured on the porticos

of churches, that infamous cauldron for the cooking of human flesh

which lives for ever, so that it may for ever suffer, while the elect

are rejoiced by the smoke—all this is absurd and impious; but none

of it belongs to the sacred doctrine of the Church. The cruelty

attributed to God constitutes the most frightful of blasphemies, and

it is precisely for this reason that evil is for ever irremediable

while the will of man rejects the divine goodness. God inflicts the

tortures of reprobation on those who are damned only as He causes

the death of the suicide. “Work in order to possess, and you will be

happy”—so speaks the Supreme Justice to man.—“I would possess and enjoy

without labour.”—“You will then be a robber and will suffer.”—“I will

rebel.”—“You will be broken and will suffer further.”—“I will rebel for

ever.”—“Then shall you suffer eternally.” Such is the decree of the

Absolute Reason and the Sovereign Justice: what can be answered hereto

by human pride and folly?

Religion has no greater enemy than unbridled mysticism, which mistakes

its feverish visions for divine revelations. It is not the theologians

who have created the devil’s empire, but the false devotees and

sorcerers. To believe a vision of the brain rather than the authority

of public reason or piety has been ever the beginning of heresy in

religion and of folly in the order of human philosophy; a fool would

not be a fool if he believed in the reason of others. Visions have

never been wanting to piety in revolt, nor chimeras to reason which

excommunicates and banishes itself. From this point of view, magnetism

has its dangers assuredly, for the state which it induces leads to

hallucination as easily as to lucid intuition. We are dealing in this

chapter, on the one hand, with mystic magnetisers, with materialistic

magnetisers on the other hand, and we would warn them in the name of

science concerning the risks which they run. Divinations, magnetic

experiences and evocations belong to one and the same order of

phenomena, being those which cannot be misemployed without danger to

reason and life.

Some thirty or forty years ago a choirmaster of Notre Dame, who,

for the rest, was an exceedingly pious and estimable man, became

infatuated with mesmerism and gave himself up to its experiences; he

also devoted more time than was reasonable to the study of the mystics,

and above all the vertiginous Swedenborg. Mental exhaustion followed,

and as it was accompanied by sleeplessness, he used to rise and

continue his studies; if this failed to quiet the restlessness of his

brain, he took the key of the church, entered it by the _Porte Rouge_,

repaired to the choir which was lighted only by the feeble lamp of the

High Altar, took refuge in his stall and there remained till morning,

immersed in prayers and profound meditation.

There came a night when eternal damnation formed the subject of his

reflections, in connection with the menacing doctrine of the small

number of the elect. He was unable to reconcile such rigorous exclusion

of the majority with the infinite goodness of that God Who, according

to Holy Scripture, wills the salvation of all and their attainment of

truth. He thought also of those fiery torments which the most cruel

of earthly tyrants would not, were it possible, inflict for one day

only on his worst enemy. Doubt entered his heart by all its avenues,

and he had recourse to the conciliating explanations of theology. The

church does not define the fire of hell; according to the gospel it

is eternal, but it is nowhere written that the greater number of men

are destined to suffer eternally. Many of the condemned may undergo

only the privation of God; above all the church forbids absolutely the

assumption of individual damnation. Pagans can be saved by the baptism

of desire, scandalous sinners by sudden and perfect contrition, and in

fine we must hope for all, as we must pray also for all, save one only,

being he of whom the Saviour said that it would have been better for

him had that man never been born.

The last thought brought the choirmaster to a pause, and it came upon

him suddenly that a single man was thus carrying officially the burden

of condemnation for centuries, that Judas Iscariot, who is the subject

of reference in the passage of Scripture quoted, after so far repenting

his crime that he died because of it, had become the scapegoat of

humanity, the Atlas of hell, the Prometheus of damnation. Yet he it was

whom the Saviour on the threshold of death had termed his friend. The

choirmaster’s eyes filled with tears, redemption seemed ineffectual

if it failed to save Judas. “For him and for him only,” he exclaimed

in his exaltation, “would I have died a second time, had I been the

Saviour. Yet is not Jesus Christ a thousand times better than I am, and

what must He then be doing in heaven, if I am weeping on earth for His

hapless apostle?... What He is doing,” added the priest, his exaltation

increasing, “is to pity me and console me; I feel it. He is telling

my heart that the pariah of the gospel is saved and that he will

become, by the long malediction which still weighs upon his memory,

the redeemer of all pariahs.... Now, if it be so, a new gospel must

be proclaimed to the world, and it will be one of infinite, universal

mercy—in the name of the regenerated Judas.... But I am astray, I am a

heretic, a reprobate ... and yet, no—for I am sincere.” Then clasping

his hands fervently, the choirmaster added: “My God, vouchsafe me that

which Thou didst not refuse unto faith of old and which Thou dost not

refuse now—a miracle to convince and reassure me, a miracle as the

testimony of a new mission.”

The enthusiast then rose and in that silence of the night which is

so formidable at the foot of altars, in the vastness of the mute and

darksome church, he pronounced the following evocation in loud tones,

but slowly and solemnly: “Thou who hast been cursed for eighteen

centuries, thou for whom I weep, for thou dost seem to have taken

hell solely unto thyself, so that heaven may be left for us; thou,

unfortunate Judas, if it be true that the blood of thy Master has

purified thee, so that thou art saved indeed, come and lay thy hands

upon me, for the priesthood of mercy and love.”

While the echo of these words was still murmuring through the

affrighted arches, the choirmaster rose up, crossed the choir and knelt

under the lamp before the High Altar. He tells us, for the account is

related by himself, that he felt positively and really two warm and

living hands placed upon his head, as bishops impose them on the day of

ordination. He was not sleeping or swooning and he felt them; it was a

real contact which lasted for several minutes. He became certain that

God had heard him, that a miracle had been performed, new duties had

been imposed, and that a new life was for him begun; from to-morrow he

must be a new man. But on the morrow the unhappy choirmaster was mad.

The dream of a heaven without hell, the dream of Faust has made other

victims innumerable in this hapless century of doubt and egoism,

which has only succeeded on its own part in the realisation of a hell

without a heaven. God Himself has become of no effect in a system

where all is permissible, where all things count for good. Men who

have reached the point where they fear no longer a Supreme Judge,

find it easy to dispense with that God of simple folk, who is less

of a God in reality than the simple folk themselves. The fools, who

vaunt themselves as conquerors of the devil, end by making themselves

gods. Our age is above all that of these pseudo-divine mummers, and we

have known all grades of them. The god Ganneau, a good and too poetic

nature, who would have given his shirt to the poor, who reinstated

thieves, who admired Lacenaire, and who would not have hurt a fly; the

god Cheneau, a dealer in buttons in the rue Croix des Petits-Champs,

a visionary like Swedenborg, and recording his inspirations in the

style of Jeannot;[350] the god Tourreil, an excellent personage who

deified woman and decided that Adam had been extracted from Eve; the

god Auguste Comte, who preserved the Catholic religion intact with two

only exceptions, being the existence of God and the immortality of the

soul; the god Wronski, he being a true scholar, who had the glory and

the happiness to rediscover the first theorems of the Kabalah, and

who, having sold their communication for 150,000 francs to a wealthy

imbecile named Arson, has borne witness in one of his most serious

works that the said Arson, having refused to pay him in full, has

become actually and literally the beast of the _Apocalypse_. With a

view of enforcing payment, Wronski published a pamphlet entitled _Yes

or No—that is to say, have you or have you not, yes or no, purchased

from me for 150,000 francs my discovery of the absolute?_