EIGHTEENTH CENTURY OCCULTISM
I
Man, at once instinctively mistrusting his own power, and inspired by
the love of the marvellous which is inherent in human nature, has from
the beginning invoked, or invented, as you will, the invisible powers
of an inaccessible sphere. History is filled with the phenomena arising
from this innate tendency to believe in the supernatural, which while
varying in form according to epochs, places, and customs are at bottom
identical. Belief in the supernatural is, indeed, the basic principle
of primitive man’s first conception of community of interest, the germ
from which religion, social order, civilization have developed.
In the beginning religion and magic were one. All the priests of Egypt
and the East were invested with supernatural and mysterious powers of
which they long possessed the monopoly. These powers were precisely the
same as those of the mediums of the present day; but the effects they
produced no doubt appeared infinitely greater owing to the boundless
credulity, simplicity, and ignorance of those who witnessed them.
By degrees, as civilization after civilization perished, knowledge
became more diffused. Magic passed from the sanctuary to the street.
The Pagan world was filled with astrologers, sorcerers, sibyls,
sooth-sayers, wonder-workers of all descriptions. In the Middle Ages,
when Christianity finally superseded Paganism, the supernatural once
more took up its abode in religion. Demonology, which had survived
all the revolutions of antiquity, and which still exists without
much fundamental difference under other forms all over the world,
assimilated itself to the dogmas of the Church. The Popes affirmed
the popular belief in sorcery, magic and diabolic possession. But the
supernatural phenomena associated with the belief in these things were
regarded as the work of the devil, in whose existence the Christian
world believed as implicitly as in the existence of God; so while the
Church sanctioned this belief as one of the mysteries of religion it
waged a merciless war against all persons suspected of having commerce
with demons. From its terrible ban the mystical visionaries alone were
exempt. These persons, ascetics all, the sanctity of whose reputations
was unquestioned and whose hallucinations were due to hysteria,
epilepsy, or neuroticism, were canonized.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century, with the revival of
a tolerant and enlightened philosophy, the devil had grown old and
accusations of sorcery were rare. But the belief in the supernatural
still continued to thrive; and in the century of universal scepticism,
the century of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, when faith in
everything till then venerated was exploded, that in the marvellous
alone survived. “The more civilization advances,” wrote Voltaire, “the
more noise does superstition make.”
On the eve of the French Revolution, Mesmer electrified the world
with his animal magnetism. With this discovery the belief in the
supernatural entered a new and more wonderful phase. The marvellous
had passed from a grossly material to a purely spiritual plane. The
magnetism of Mesmer was followed by the hypnotism of the Marquis de
Puységur, with its attendant train of table-turning and telepathy,
clairvoyance and clairaudience, spiritualism, theosophy, and Christian
science. To-day the whole system of the hermetic philosophy of the
Egyptians and Hindus has been re-discovered, re-deciphered, and
restored with the most astonishing results and the most conspicuous
success to the amazement of the world.
Never has the belief in the supernatural been more flourishing and more
invincible than at the present. Side by side with the positivism of
modern science marches the mysticism of the occult, equally confident
and undaunted, and equally victorious. Not a link in the chain that
connects the phenomena of the mediums and adepts of to-day with those
of the Chaldaeans has been broken. Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Eddy are
the latest descendants of Hermes Trismegistus, who whether regarded as
man, god, or the personification of all the knowledge of his remote
times, is the parent of all the wonder-workers, scientific as well
as unscientific, of the world. The prodigies of these priestesses of
theosophy and Christian science, which are the last and most popular
manifestations of the marvellous, are no less significant, and much
more wonderful because more inexplicable, than those of a Ramsay or a
Curie.
[Illustration: A.MESMER (_After Pujo!_)]
As to the future of this faith in the supernatural, one thing may
reasonably be taken for granted; the marvellous will never cease to
appeal to the imagination of mankind till the riddle of the universe
is solved. To deride it is ridiculous. Occultism is not a menace to
progress, but a spur. Its secrets are not to be ridiculed, but to be
explained. That is its challenge to modern science, which is at once
its offspring and its servant.
* * * * *
The desire to prolong life, the desire to enjoy life, and the desire to
look beyond life are inherent in human nature, and man has sought from
time immemorial to realize them. To-day it is to science that we look
for the realization of the first two of these great desires of which it
is the outcome; while it is only with the third that the marvellous, or
what is understood by occultism, is now associated.
Formerly, however, the search for remedies for the irremediable was
conducted exclusively in the sphere of the supernatural. The love of
life gave rise to the quest for the Fountain of Youth, which still
continues under innumerable other forms and names that will occur to
every one. The latest, perhaps, is the Menshikov Sour Milk Cure. From
the love of ease sprang the search for the “philosopher’s stone,” which
was to create wealth by the transmutation of metals into gold. This
quest which long captivated the imagination of men is now entirely
abandoned, though its object, needless to say, is more furiously
desired than ever. While to the curiosity as to the future we owe the
pseudo-sciences of astrology, palmistry, fortune-telling, divination,
etc.
Those who devoted their lives to these things were divided into three
classes--alchemists, astrologers, and the motley tribe of quacks and
charlatans, who may be summed up for sake of convenience under the
name of sorcerers. These divisions, however, were by no means hard and
fast. United by a common idea each class dabbled in the affairs of
the others. Thus astrologers and sorcerers were often alchemists, and
alchemists seldom confined their attention solely to the search for the
_elixir vitae_ and the philosopher’s stone.
As the alchemists, owing to their superior knowledge, and the results
they obtained, were more considered than the astrologers and sorcerers,
alchemy developed into a science at an early date. The obscurity
in which its origin is involved is a sign of its antiquity. Some
enthusiasts believe it to be coeval with the creation of man. Vincent
de Beauvais was of the opinion that all the antediluvians must have had
some knowledge of alchemy, and cites Noah as having been acquainted
with the _elixir vitae_, “otherwise he could not have lived to so
prodigious an age and begotten children when upwards of five hundred.”
Others have traced it to the Egyptians, from whom Moses was believed to
have learnt it. Martini, on the other hand, affirms that alchemy was
practised by the Chinese two thousand five hundred years before the
birth of Christ. But though a belief in the transmutation of metals was
general in the Roman Empire, the practice of alchemy does not appear
to have received much consideration before the eighth century. At this
period the discoveries of Gebir, an Arabian alchemist, gave so great
a stimulus to the quest of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of
life that he is generally regarded as the creator of these picturesque
delusions, which for a thousand years had so great a hold on the
popular imagination.
Banned and fostered in turn, and often at the same time, by the Church;
practised in all classes of society and by all sorts and conditions of
people; regarded with admiration and contempt; alchemy has played too
vast and important a rôle in the history of humanity to be despised,
wild and romantic though this rôle has been. Nothing could be more
unjust and absurd than to judge it by the charlatans who exploited
it. The alchemists whom history still remembers were in reality the
pioneers of civilization, who, venturing ahead of the race befogged in
dense forests of ignorance and superstition, cut a road through to the
light, along which mankind travelled slowly in their wake. Not only
were these fantastic spirits of light the parents of modern science and
physics, but they have helped to adorn literature and art. Some idea
of their importance may be gathered from the many words in common use
that they have given to the language, such as: _crucible_, _amalgam_,
_alcohol_, _potash_, _laudanum_, _precipitate_, _saturation_,
_distillation_, _quintessence_, _affinity_, etc.
The alchemists often stumbled upon discoveries they did not seek.
Science is thus indebted to Gebir for the first suggestion of corrosive
sublimate, the red oxide of mercury, nitric acid, and nitrate of
silver; to Roger Bacon for the telescope, the magic lantern, and
gunpowder; to Van Helmont for the properties of gas; to Paracelsus,
the most extraordinary of them all, for laudanum. It is to him also
that medicine owes the idea of the clinic. As in chemistry so in
other sciences the most important discoveries were made by men who
had a marked taste for alchemic theories. Kepler was guided in his
investigations by cabalistic considerations.
The search for gold and youth, however, were only one phase of alchemy.
It was too closely allied to what was known as “magic” not to be
confounded with it. In the popular estimation the alchemists were
all magicians. Most, perhaps all, of the so-called occult phenomena
so familiar to us to-day were performed by them. Long before such
things as animal magnetism, hypnotism, telepathy, ventriloquism,
autosuggestion, etc., had a name, the alchemists had discovered them,
though they themselves were as unable to explain or account for the
wonders they performed as the ignorant world that witnessed them.
Albertus Magnus had the power to delude whole crowds, precisely as
Indian necromancers do at the present. Cornelius Agrippa “at the
request of Erasmus and other learned men called up from the grave many
of the great philosophers of antiquity, among others Cicero, whom he
caused to re-deliver his celebrated oration for Roscius.” He also
showed Lord Surrey, when on the continent, “the resemblance in a glass”
of his mistress, the fair Geraldine. “She was represented on a couch
weeping for her lover. Lord Surrey made a note of the exact time at
which he saw this vision and afterwards ascertained that his mistress
was so employed at the very minute.” The famous Dr. Dee, whose whole
life was devoted to the search for the philosophers stone, was an
accomplished crystal-gazer and spirit-rapper.
It was, without doubt, the strong and crude element of magic in
alchemy that prepared the way for the great change that came over the
science at the beginning of the seventeenth century. With the revival
of learning that followed the Renaissance, there arose a mysterious
sect in Germany known as the Rosicrucians, who were destined to
revolutionize the belief in the supernatural. They claimed to derive
their name from a certain Christian Rosencreutz who, in a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, had been initiated into the mysteries of the wisdom of
the East. The tenets of the Rosicrucians, as well as their existence,
were first made known to the world at the beginning of the seventeenth
century in an anonymous German work said to have been found in the tomb
of Rosencreutz, who had died one hundred and twenty years previously.
The absurd legends concerning him have led many to deny that such
a person as Rosencreutz ever existed. Such writers attribute the
origin of the society to the theories of Paracelsus and Dr. Dee,
who unconsciously became the real though unrecognized founders of
the Rosicrucians. Be this as it may, no sooner were their doctrines
generally known than all the alchemists and believers in the marvellous
hastened to accept them. The influence thus acquired by the “Society
of the Rose-Cross” was as beneficial as it was far-reaching. Its
character was a sort of Protestant mysticism, and its chief aim the
gratuitous healing of the sick. Hitherto alchemy and the belief in the
supernatural had been grossly materialistic. The Rosicrucians refined
the one and spiritualized the other. They claimed that by strictly
conforming to the rules of their philosophy, of which chastity was
the most rigorous and important, they could ignore hunger or thirst,
enjoy perfect health, and prolong their lives indefinitely. Of the
occult knowledge they possessed, that of transmuting metals into gold
was stripped of its old significance. The philosopher’s stone was no
longer to be regarded as merely the means of acquiring riches, but the
instrument by which mankind could command the service of the spirits of
the invisible world.
They denied that these were the horrible and terrifying demons with
which the monks had peopled the unseen, but mild, beautiful, and
beneficent sprites, anxious to be of service to men. In the Rosicrucian
imagination there existed in each element a race of spirits peculiar
to it. Thus the air was inhabited by Sylphs, the water by Undines,
the earth by Gnomes, and the fire by Salamanders. It was by them that
all that was marvellous was done. In the course of their development
the mystical tendencies of the Rosicrucians became more and more
pronounced. Thus they finally came to regard the philosopher’s stone
as signifying contentment, the secret of which was compared in the
mystical phraseology they adopted to “a spirit that lived within an
emerald and converted everything near it to the highest perfection it
was capable of.”
In fine, Rosicrucianism may be described as the bridge over which the
belief in the supernatural passed from sorcery, witchcraft, and the
grossest superstition to the highly spiritualized form in which it
is manifested at the present. The transit, however, was not effected
without interruption. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century
the bridge, undermined by the mockery and scepticism of the age,
collapsed. About fifty years later it was reconstructed by Swedenborg
on a new and spiritualistic system. In the meantime, as will be seen,
superstition adrift on the ocean of unbelief, clutched credulously at
every straw that floated by.
II
The old belief in alchemy as a magical science did not survive the
seventeenth century. It is true the credulous and ignorant, deluded
by swindlers and impostors, long continued to regard alchemy as
supernatural; but the bona-fide alchemists themselves, who were able
and intelligent men, had begun to understand the nature of their
discoveries. The symbolic interpretation of the philosopher’s stone
led to a new conception of the uses of the crucible. The alchemists
of the eighteenth century, during which the name was still in common
use, though its original signification had become obsolete, were really
amateur chemists. From pseudo-science modern science was beginning to
be evolved.
The great changes, however, that upset the convictions and
disintegrated the whole fabric of society of the eighteenth century,
were favourable to the increase and spread of superstition. The
amazing recrudescence of the belief in the supernatural, which was one
of the most conspicuous features of the age, was the direct result
of the prevailing infidelity and indifference. Persecuted, banned,
anathematized, but never exterminated, it crept from the hiding-places
in which it had lurked for centuries, and in the age of unbelief
emerged boldly into the light of day. The forms it assumed were many
and various.
In 1729 Jansenism--a sort of evangelical movement in the Church of
Rome--which in its war with Jesuitism in the previous century had been
crushed, but not exterminated, took advantage of the apathy of the time
to reassert itself. To do this with success it was necessary to make a
powerful appeal to the popular imagination, and as no means are as sure
of producing effect as supernatural ones, the world was startled by a
series of miracles performed at the grave of Deacon Pâris, a famous
martyr in the cause of Jansenism. These miracles, which at first took
the form of cures such as at the present day are to be seen at Lourdes,
soon acquired fame. All sorts of people, whom the doctors were unable
to restore to health, began to flock to the Jansenist Cemetery of St.
Médard, where it was discovered that other graves beside that of Deacon
Pâris, and finally the whole cemetery shared the healing properties of
his ashes. The hitherto simple character of the cures was changed. They
were accompanied by extraordinary convulsions, considered more divine
than the cures themselves, in which the bones cracked, the body was
scorched with fever, or parched with cold, and the invalid fell into a
prophetic transport.
The noise of these pathological phenomena attracted immense crowds to
the Cemetery of St. Médard, where the spectators, who were drawn out of
mere idle curiosity, as well as those who came to be cured, were seized
or pretended to be seized with the convulsive frenzy. The popularity
of St. Médard induced the Jansenists to attach similar virtues to
other cemeteries. Convulsions became epidemic; the contagion spread
to the provinces which, jealous of Paris, determined to have their
share of the Jansenist deacon’s favours. Similar scenes to those at
St. Médard were enacted in several towns all over France, notably at
Troyes and Corbeil. The miracles now gave rise to scandalous scenes.
Women _convulsionnaires_ ran through the streets “searching for the
prophet Elijah.” Some believing they had found him in a handsome priest
named Vaillant, a visionary who had persuaded himself that he was the
reincarnation of Elijah, testified their adoration for him in a manner
that indicated their convulsions were caused by erotic hysteria rather
than by the miraculous properties of the bones of Deacon Pâris. Others
stretched themselves at full length on the ground of the cemetery, and
invited the spectators to beat them and otherwise maltreat them, only
declaring themselves satisfied when ten or twelve men fell upon them at
once.
The cure of a girl who had a frightful collection of infirmities,
“swellings in the legs, hernia, paralysis, fistula, etc.,” was the
signal for a general St. Vitus’ dance, led by the Abbé Bécherand, an
ecclesiastic with one foot shorter than the other. “He executed daily
on the tomb of the sainted deacon,” says Figuier, “with a talent not
to be matched, his favourite _pas_, the famous ‘carp jump,’ which the
spectators were never tired of admiring.”
But by this time the miracles had become a public scandal, and the
government hastened to suppress the “_ballet_ de St. Médard” and close
the cemetery. The Jansenists to escape ridicule, which would have
killed them more surely than the Jesuits, were obliged to disassociate
themselves from the _convulsionnaires_, who formed themselves into a
sect, which existed down to the Revolution.
To-day medical science has stripped the _convulsionnaires_ of St.
Médard of the last rag of the supernatural, but in the eighteenth
century only the sane intelligence of the philosophers divested them of
all claims to wonder. Their fame spread throughout Europe and helped in
its way to emphasize the trend of public opinion in which the boundless
credulity and ignorance of the many advanced side by side through the
century with the scepticism and enlightenment of the few.
So strong was the passion for the marvellous that the least
mystification acquired a supernatural significance. In Catholic Germany
a curé named Gassner who exorcised people possessed of devils and cured
the sick by a touch had over a million adherents. In England, “Dr.”
Graham with his “celestial bed,” his elixirs of generation, and his
mud-baths, acquired an immense reputation. In Switzerland, Lavater, an
orthodox Lutheran pastor, read character and told the future by the
physiognomy with astonishing success.
At Leipsic, Schröpfer, the proprietor of a café, flattered credulity so
cleverly that belief in his ability to communicate with the invisible
world survived even his exposure as an impostor. His history is not
without dramatic interest. Gifted with a temperament strongly inclined
to mysticism he became so infatuated with the study of the supernatural
that he abandoned his profession of _cafétier_ as beneath him and
turned his café into a masonic lodge where he evoked the souls of
the dead, damned and saved alike. Some of those who witnessed these
apparitions believing they recognized relations or friends, went mad, a
fate that was not long in overtaking Schröpfer himself. Intoxicated by
the immense vogue he obtained, he next turned his lodge into a private
hotel in which he received only persons of rank, assuming himself that
of a colonel in the French army to which he declared he was entitled as
“a bastard of the Prince de Conti.” Unfortunately at Dresden, whither
he had gone to evoke the shade of a King of Poland for the benefit of
the Duke of Courland, his imposture was exposed. Schröpfer hereupon
returned to Leipsic and after giving a grand supper to some of his most
faithful adherents blew out his brains. Nevertheless, this did not
prevent many from continuing to believe in his evocations. A report
that he had predicted he would himself appear after his death to his
followers at a given hour in the Rosenthal at Leipsic, caused a vast
concourse of people to assemble in that promenade on the day specified
in the expectation of beholding his shade.
Still more remarkable than the credulity that clung to imposture after
its exposure, was the credulity that discovered supernatural powers
in persons who did not even pretend to possess them. The curiosity
that scented the marvellous in the impenetrable mystery in which it
pleased the self-styled Count de Saint-Germain to wrap himself, induced
him to amuse himself at the expense of the credulous. With the aid of
his valet, who entered into the jest, he contrived to wrap his very
existence in mystery. He had only to speak of persons who had been dead
for centuries to convince people he had known them. Many believed he
had witnessed the Crucifixion, merely because by a sigh or a hint he
conveyed that impression when the subject was mentioned. No absurdity
was too extravagant to relate of him that was not credited. Even his
servant was supposed to have moistened his lips at the Fountain of
Youth.
As the century advanced the folly increased. Rumours began to be
current that agitated the popular mind--rumours of secret societies
bound by terrible oaths and consecrated to shady designs, rumours
of the impending fulfilment of old and awful prophecies; rumours
of vampires and witches; of strange coincidences and strange
disappearances--rumours in which one may trace the origin of the
haunting suspicion to which the Reign of Terror was due. All the
superstitions regarding the unseen world had their vogue. In Protestant
countries interpreters of the Apocalypse were rife. Everywhere the dead
came back to affright the living, led by the “White Lady,” Death’s
messenger to the Hohenzollerns.
In such an atmosphere it was not surprising that the _baquet
divinatoire_ of Mesmer should have seemed more wonderful than the
scientific discoveries of Newton and Lavoisier. Cagliostro had only
to appear to be welcomed, only to provide credulity with fresh occult
novelties to win a niche in the temple of fame.
III
Occultism, however, like human nature of which it is the mystical
replica, has its spiritual as well as its material side, and from the
depths of gross superstition is capable of mounting to the heights of
pure mysticism. In the boundless credulity of the age, symptom of
death though it was, the germ of a new life was latent.
The uneasy and forbidding ghosts of dead faiths that haunted Europe
awoke aspirations in ardent and passionate souls which sought their
realization in the fantastic reign of dreams. From the chaos of
superstition the need to believe gradually emerged. In the process the
marvellous became mystical. On the ruins of Rosicrucianism, Emmanuel
Swedenborg erected a new supernatural belief.
This man whose influence in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
especially in the years immediately preceding the Revolution was more
subtle than the philosophers who derided him had any conception,
is Occultism’s Copernicus; the spiritual Abraham from whom all the
Blavatskys and Eddys of the present are descended.
He was born at Stockholm in 1688 and throughout his long life--he died
in London in 1772 at the age of eighty-four--Fortune was uniformly
and exceptionally kind to him. Possessed of brains, sharpened and
cultivated by an excellent education, of an attractive personal
appearance and influential friends, he began at an early date to make
his mark, as the saying is. At twenty-one he started on the “grand
tour,” which it was customary in those days for young men of wealth and
position to make. But young Swedenborg was not one of those who merely
wandered luxuriously about Europe pursuing pleasure. Avid of knowledge
he devoted the time others spent in dissipation to Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, mathematics, science and philosophy. At the end of five years
he returned to Sweden with the intention of giving himself up entirely
to science. He published a scientific review and gained some reputation
as an inventor. At the age of twenty-eight Charles XII appointed him
assessor of mines; and three years later Queen Ulrica raised him to the
rank of nobility, by which his name was changed from Swedberg, as his
family was originally called, to the more euphonious and aristocratic
Swedenborg.
Being of an exceedingly inquiring and philosophical mind and having
plenty of leisure he naturally widened the area of his investigations.
For many years he sought to find the scientific explanation of the
universe. This quest and the intensity with which he pursued it
insensibly led him to seek to discover the connection between the soul
and the body, the relation of the finite to the infinite. From this
stage, to which he had been led no doubt by the force of heredity--his
father, a Lutheran bishop and professor of theology believed himself
in constant intercourse with angels--it was but a step to the
supernatural. The scientist, however, takes a long time in turning into
the mystic. Swedenborg was fifty-seven before the transformation was
accomplished.
This event occurred in London in 1745.
“I was dining,” he says, “one day very late at my hotel in London, and
I ate with great appetite, when at the end of my repast I perceived a
sort of fog which obstructed my view, and the floor was covered with
hideous reptiles. They disappeared, the darkness was dispersed, and I
plainly saw in the midst of a bright light, a man sitting in the corner
of the room, who said in a terrible voice, _Do not eat so much!_”
[Illustration: EMMANUEL SWEDENBORG]
From the character of this vision, “Do not drink so much” would
appear to have been the more sensible advice. Be this as it may,
Swedenborg was so frightened that he resolved to do as he had been
bidden. His diet henceforth was of the simplest, and it is possible
that the sudden change from one extreme to the other at an age when
the system has lost its elasticity may not be unconnected with the
continuation of his visions.
The next night “the same man, resplendent with light,” appeared to
him again. This time while Swedenborg gazed upon the spectre, which
was perhaps a thought visualized by the intensity of its fascination,
it said, “I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I
have chosen thee to explain the meaning of the Holy Scripture. I will
dictate to thee what thou shalt write.”
Whatever cause Swedenborg may have assigned to the previous vision, he
did not doubt for a moment now that the Most High had actually revealed
Himself to him. This conviction was so reassuring that the strange
things he beheld in his visions ceased to have any terror for him. If
he ever asked himself why he should have been selected by the Almighty
above the rest of mankind for so great an honour, the frequency of
the divine appearances no doubt speedily satisfied his curiosity, for
not a day passed during the rest of his life but God descended from
Paradise--or if too busy, “sent an angel or saint in His place”--to
converse with this remarkably privileged Swede and explain to him the
mysteries of Heaven and Hell.
In the visions of St. Francis and St. Theresa, the Virgin, Jesus and
the Almighty appeared according to the Roman Catholic conception of
them. The faith of Swedenborg’s heavenly visitor was Lutheran--a faith
be it said, to which Swedenborg adhered as devotedly as Saints Francis
and Theresa did to theirs--and when he appeared he dressed accordingly,
wearing neither the Stigmata nor the Crown of Thorns without which no
good Catholic would have recognized him. He spoke a mystical jargon
which was often so absurd as to be unintelligible.
The Unseen World, as revealed to Swedenborg was the exact counterpart
of the seen. It was inhabited by spirits of both sexes--the good ones
dwelt in Heaven and the bad ones in Hell. They had the same occupations
as people on the earth. They married and begot children, among other
things; and Swedenborg was present at one of these celestial weddings.
They also had “schools for infant angels; universities for the learned;
and fairs for such as were commercially inclined--particularly for the
English and Dutch angels!” For the spirits of the Unseen had all lived
in the seen.
According to Swedenborg, man never dies. The day he experiences what
he calls death is the day of his eternal resurrection. Christ was the
ruler of both these worlds. He was the one and only God. All human
desire would be consummated when the two worlds should become one, as
they had been in the beginning, before the Fall. On this day the New
Jerusalem would be established on earth. To hasten this event, it was
necessary to seek the “lost word” or “primitive innocence.” This was
Swedenborg’s idea of the philosopher’s stone, which he declared was to
be found in the doctrines he taught. Should any person be tempted to
seek it elsewhere, he was advised to go in quest of it in Asia, “among
the Tartars”!
It was some time, however, before he became at home in the spiritual
world. Time ceased to have any significance to him. He would lie for
days in a trance from which he would awake at night “to wrestle with
evil spirits” to the terror of his household. Sometimes his soul
would escape altogether from his body and “borne on the wings of the
Infinite, journey through Immensity from planet to planet.” To these
travels, the most marvellous that imagination has ever taken, we owe
the _Arcana Cœlestia_ and _The New Jerusalem_. These books translated
from the Latin in which they had been dictated to him by the Almighty
had a prodigious success. In Protestant countries--which he personally
canvassed--especially in Sweden and England where he made the most
converts, they were regarded as the gospel of a new religion, the Bible
of the Church of the New Jerusalem.
“Show me four persons,” said Fontenelle, “who swear it is midnight when
it is noon, and I will show you ten thousand to believe them.”
Firmly convinced that he was in daily intercourse with the Almighty,
Swedenborg soon convinced others. For his was the faith which removes
mountains. He had, moreover, a majestic appearance and a magnetic
personality which rendered ridicule silent in his presence, and
inspired the confidence and love of all who came in contact with him.
Three extraordinary instances of his power to communicate with the
unseen world are cited by his followers. Even Kant, the philosopher,
was struck by them, though he confesses that on inquiry he dismissed
them as having no foundation but report. Nevertheless there were
thousands who did not doubt, least of all Queen Ulrica. Had Swedenborg
not related to her the contents of a letter known only to herself and
her brother who had been dead for years?
That the sentimental Lutheranized Gnosticism he preached should have
been received with enthusiasm in Protestant Europe is not surprising.
The peoples of the North are naturally mystical. Nothing that appears
to them in the guise of religion is too fantastic to be refused a
hearing. In England the more fantastic the more certain is it of
success. Swedenborgianism was to the “illuminized Jerusalemites”
of Manchester, where alone they numbered twenty thousand, merely a
very delicious _rechauffée_ of a diet to which their imagination was
specially addicted. The eagerness with which it was accepted in England
was due entirely to appetite.
Much more remarkable was the influence of Swedenborg in the Catholic
world. Naturally it manifested itself differently in different nations,
assuming the character peculiar to each. Thus, whilst in England
supernaturalism under the influence of Swedenborg became a religious
craze, in France it grafted itself upon philosophy, and in Germany
infected the secret societies in which the theories of the French
philosophers found active political expression.
The secret of this universal appeal is not far to seek. It was one
of the articles of faith with the old Rosicrucians that by them “the
triple diadem of the pope should be reduced to dust.” The theosophy
of Swedenborg _presumed_ the liberty, equality, and fraternity of
mankind. It was at once the spiritual negation and defiance of the
arrogant supremacy of both Church and State. Occultism, which has ever
proclaimed the spiritual rebellion of the soul against any kind of
tyranny, was in the eighteenth century of necessity revolutionary. Of
the forces of disintegration to which the _ancien régime_ succumbed, it
was the only one that worked systematically towards a definite object.
In the previous century, when the social system that deprived the soul
of its liberty seemed irrefragable, the Rosicrucians had resignedly
considered contentment to be the philosopher’s stone. But now when the
whole structure was toppling, it was necessary to interpret afresh,
and in terms more in accordance with occult principles, the secret of
perfection. To the mystics of the eighteenth century the “philosophical
egg” by means of which the tyranny of throne and altar was to be
transmuted into the gold of absolute liberty was the Revolution.
And the crass credulity and superstition of the age was the crucible in
which they sought it.
IV
Nothing is more curious than to note the manner in which these
descendants of the old alchemists, pioneers at one and the same time of
modern Occultism and modern Socialism, while engaged in shadowing, so
to speak, the unbelief of their century, conspired to put an end to the
old _régime_.
In spite of the disasters that dimmed the glory of the last years of
Louis XIV’s long reign, the immense prestige that France had acquired
in _le grand siècle_ remained unchallenged. Intellectually the
influence of France under his successors was so supreme that the decay
of French civilization in the eighteenth century may be regarded as a
sort of mirror in which the process of the disintegration of European
society generally is reflected. Already as early as 1704, eleven years
before the death of Louis XIV, when _authority_ still seemed to be
everywhere dominant, Leibnitz detected “all the signs of the general
Revolution with which Europe is menaced.” With the passing of Louis
XIV respect, the chief stronghold of feudalism, surrendered to the
cynicism of the Regency. In that insane Saturnalia chains were snapped,
traditions shattered, old and worn-out conventions trampled under-foot.
The Regency was but the Revolution in miniature.
The orgy of licence passed in its turn, as the gloomy and bigoted
hypocrisy of which it was the natural reaction, had passed before
it. But the calm of the exquisite refinement that took its place was
only superficial. Freedom conceived in the revels of the Regency
yearned to be born. To assist at this _accouchement_ was the aim
of all the philosophical midwifery of the age. In 1734 Voltaire,
physician-in-ordinary to the century, declared “action to be the chief
object of mankind.” But as freedom of action is impossible without
freedom of thought Vauvenargues next demanded in clarion tones that
“God should be freed.” The idea of “freeing God” in order to free man
was an inspiration, and Vauvenargues’ magnificent phrase became the
tocsin of the philosophers.
But the chief effect of the Regency upon France, and thus indirectly
upon Europe, had been to “free unbelief.” Authority, which had feared
faith when alive and despised it when dead, crawled into the shell
from which the snail of belief had departed and displayed the same
predatory and brutal instincts as the intolerant religion in whose iron
carapace it dwelt. To dislodge it was the first step towards “freeing
God”; and all sorts and conditions of athletes entered the arena to
battle with prejudice and injustice. In France, where the contest was
destined to be decided, the Bastille or banishment was the punishment
that brute authority awarded those who dared to defy it. But to crush
the rebellion of intelligence against stupidity was impossible. The
efforts of the philosophers were reinforced by sovereigns imbued
with the spirit of the century. With Frederick the Great a race of
benevolent despots sprang into existence, who dazzled by the refulgence
of the philosophical light they so much admired did not perceive till
too late that in igniting their torches at its flame they were helping
to kindle a conflagration destined to destroy the system that would
deprive them of the absolute freedom they enjoyed, and to a limited
share of which they were willing to admit the nations they ruled.
Nor for that matter did the philosophers themselves. To them as
well as to their princely disciples “to free God” was another name
for religious toleration. That was the revolution for which the
Encyclopedists worked, and which Frederick the Great and the sovereigns
who shared his enlightened opinions desired. Nothing was further
from their intention than that it should take the form in which it
eventually came. It is impossible to believe that the Revolution which
demanded the heads of a Lavoisier and a Bailly would have spared those
of a Voltaire or a Rousseau. Least of all would the stupid mob that
watched the victims doomed to the guillotine “spit into the basket,” as
it termed in ferocious jest the fall of the heads beneath the axe, have
made any distinction between the virtuous and innocent Louis XVI and
Joseph II, or the Empress Catherine, had it been possible to arraign
them likewise at the bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The gratitude
of the people is even less to be depended on than that of princes. But
God was not to be “freed” in a day. Seventy-five years elapsed between
Freedom’s conception in the Regency and birth in the Revolution.
During this long pregnancy the century which was to die in child-bed
developed an extraordinary appetite for the supernatural. To the
materialistic philosophy that analyzed and sought to control the
process of decay which by the middle of the century had become
visible, even to one so indifferent to “signs of the times” as Louis
XV, the cult of the supernatural was an element unworthy of serious
consideration. But though long ignored the time was to come when it
obtained from the torch-bearers of reason a questionable and dangerous
patronage. It was on the eve of the birth of Freedom that “the century
of Voltaire,” as Henri Martin expresses it, “extended its hand to the
occultists of the middle ages.”
Between Voltaire and cabalistic evocations, between the scepticism
of the Encyclopedists and the mysticism of Swedenborg who would
believe there could be any affiliation? Yet the transition was
natural enough. The philosophers in their abuse of analysis had too
persistently sacrificed sentiment to reason. Imagination, which Louis
Blanc has called the intoxication of intelligence, had begun to doubt
everything by the middle of the century. Reaction was inevitable.
The sneers of Voltaire were succeeded by the tears of Rousseau. The
age of sensibility followed the age of unbelief. This was the hour
for which a despised occultism had waited. It alone had a clear and
definite conception of the Revolution. Patronized by philosophy, which
vacillated between sentiment and reason, it imbued it finally with
its own revolutionary ideas. The extent of their ascendency may be
gauged by the declaration of Condorcet, “that volcano covered with
snow,” as he has been called, “that society must have as its object the
amelioration, physical, intellectual and moral of the most numerous
and poorest class.” In his desire to escape from materialism the
philosopher trained in the school of Voltaire had but taken the road to
perfection along which the mystics were leading France and Europe.
Strange to relate, the leader of the mystical movement in France to
which philosophy was destined to attach itself, was himself the mildest
and least revolutionary of men.
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin might be described as the reincarnation
of St. Francis of Assisi in the eighteenth century. Had he lived four
hundred years earlier he would have passed his gentle flower-like
life in the seclusion of some cloister, had beatific visions of the
Saviour of the world, communed with the Virgin and Saints, worked
miracles, founded a monastic order, and at his death been canonized
by the Church, of whose faith he would have been the champion and of
its tenderness the exemplar. Pure and meditative by nature he had
been greatly influenced when a boy by an ascetic book, _The Art of
Knowing Oneself_, that he chanced to read. As his father, to whom he
was deeply attached, intended him for the Bar he devoted himself to
the study of law, and though he had no taste for the profession passed
his examinations. But after practising six months he declared himself
incapable of distinguishing in any suit between the claims of the
defendant and the plaintiff, and requested to be allowed to exchange
the legal profession for the military--not because he had any liking
for the career of arms, but in order that he might “have leisure to
continue the study of religion and philosophy.”
To oblige his father the Duc de Choiseul, then Prime Minister, gave him
a lieutenancy in the Regiment de Foix, then in garrison at Bordeaux.
Here he met one of those strange characters so common in this century,
who, either charlatans of genius or dreamers by temperament, supplied
with arms from the arsenal of the supernatural boldly asserted the
supremacy of the occult and attacked science and philosophy alike.
This particular individual was called Martinez Pasqualis, but as like
so many of his kind he enveloped himself in mystery it is impossible
to discover who or what he was, or where he came from. He was supposed
to be a Christianized Jew from one of the Portuguese colonies in the
East, which would account perhaps for his skill in the practice of the
occult. At any rate, the strange secrecy he maintained in regard to
himself was sufficient in the eighteenth century to credit him with
supernatural powers.
When Saint-Martin met him in Bordeaux he had for ten years held a
sort of school of theurgy. At Avignon, Toulouse, and other Southern
cities his pupils or disciples formed themselves into a sect, known
as Martinists after their master, for the practice of his doctrines,
which though but vaguely understood were attractive from the hopes
they held out of communicating with the invisible world. Saint-Martin
was the first to grasp their meaning. He joined the Martinists, whose
existence till then was scarcely known, and became their chief when the
dissensions to which the private life of Pasqualis had given rise were
healed by his sudden and singular departure for Haiti, where he died of
yellow fever shortly after his arrival.
Drawn from obscurity by the personal charm and high social position of
its new leader, Martinism rapidly attracted attention. In a strange
little book, _Des Erreurs et de la Vérité par un philosophe inconnu_,
Saint-Martin endeavoured to detach himself and his adherents from the
magic in which Pasqualis--who practised it openly--had involved this
sect. But though he gave up the quest of supernatural phenomena as
unnecessary to an acquaintance with the unseen, and wandered deeper
and deeper into pure mysticism, he never wholly succeeded in escaping
from the grosser influence of his first initiation in the occult. From
the fact, however, that he called himself the “Robinson Crusoe of
spiritualism,” some idea may be gained of the distance that separated
him from those who also claimed connection with the invisible world. He
did not count on being understood. Of one of his books he said, “it is
too far from ordinary human ideas to be successful. I have often felt
in writing it as if I were playing valses on my violin in the cemetery
of Montmartre, where for all the magic of my bow, the dead will neither
hear nor dance.”
Nevertheless, though philosophy failed to follow him to the remote
regions of speculation to which he withdrew, it grasped enough of his
meaning to apply it. And the Revolution, which before its arrival he
had regarded as the “lost word” by which the regeneration of mankind
was to be effected, and when it actually came as “the miniature of
the last judgment,” adopted his sacred ternary “Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity”--the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Martinism--as its
device. Saint-Martin was one of the few who strove to inaugurate it
whom it did not devour. He passed through it unmolested, dying as he
had lived gently. His only regret in passing from the visible to the
invisible was that he had left “the mystery of numbers unsolved.”
V
The influence of Saint-Martin, however, was passive rather than
active. Though philosophy confusedly and unconsciously imbibed the
Socialistic theories of mysticism, the French being at once a practical
and an excitable people were not to be kindled by speculations of the
intellect, however daring, original, and attractive they might be. The
palpable prodigies of Mesmer appealed more powerfully to them than the
vague abstractions of Saint-Martin.
It was in Germany that revolutionary mysticism found its motive power.
Whilst Saint-Martin, proclaiming in occult language that “all men
were kings,” sought to efface himself at the feet of sovereigns, Adam
Weishaupt was shaking their thrones. It would be impossible to find two
men more unlike. Weishaupt was the very antithesis of Saint-Martin.
He was not a mystic at all, and furthermore always professed the
greatest contempt for “supernatural tricks.” But consumed with an
implacable hatred of despotism and with a genius for conspiracy he
perceived in the widespread attraction and revolutionary tendency of
the supernatural the engine of destruction he required.
Born of Catholic parents at Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Weishaupt had been
sent as a boy to the Jesuit seminary in that town, but conceiving a
great dislike for the method of instruction employed there he left it
for the university. On the temporary abolition of the Order of the
Jesuits, having taken his degree, he was appointed to the professorship
of jurisprudence till then held by a Jesuit. Though deprived of their
functions the members of the suppressed Order still remained in the
country, and posing as martyrs continued to exercise in secret their
malign influence as powerfully as ever. Weishaupt naturally found in
them bitter enemies; and to fight them conceived the idea of founding
a secret society, which the great popularity he enjoyed among the
students enabled him to realize.
Perceiving the immense success that Gassner was having at this time
by his cures, and fully alive to the powerful hold the passion for
the supernatural had obtained on the popular imagination, he decided
to give his society a mystic character as a means of recruiting
followers. As Weishaupt’s object was to convert them into blind
instruments of his supreme will, he modelled his organization after
that of the Jesuits, adopting in particular their system of espionage,
their practice of passive obedience, and their maxim that the end
justifies the means. From mysticism he borrowed the name of the
society: Illuminés. From freemasonry, the classes and grades into
which they were subdivided, the purpose of which was to measure the
progress of the adept in assimilating the doctrine of the absolute
equality of man and to excite his imagination by making him hope for
the communication of some wonderful mystic secret when he reached the
highest grade. Those who enjoyed the confidence of Weishaupt were known
as _areopagites_. To them alone was he visible, and as he deemed that
too many precautions could not be observed in concealing the existence
of a society sworn to the abolition of the Christian religion and the
overthrow of the established social system, he and his accomplices
adopted names by which alone they were known to the others.
Comprised at first of a few students at the University of Ingolstadt,
the Illuminés gradually increased their numbers and sought recruits
in other places, special attention being given to the enlistment of
young men of wealth and position. In this way, the real objects of
Illuminism being artfully concealed, the society extended within the
course of four or five years all over Germany. Its adepts even had a
hand in affairs of State and gained the ear of many of those petty
and picturesque sovereigns of the Empire who, catching the fever of
philosophy from Frederick the Great and Joseph II, amused themselves
in trying to blend despotism, philanthropy, and the occult. As the
Illuminés were utterly unscrupulous, they did not hesitate to seek
recruits in the Church of Rome itself, of which they were the secret
and deadly enemy, in order by taking sides in the theological quarrels
of the day to increase dissensions and weaken the power of the Pope.
[Illustration: ADAM WEISHAVPT.
_G. V. Mansinger pinx._ _C. W. Bockfe._
(_After Mansinger_)]
However, cleverly organized though they were, the Illuminés, composed
of very young and passionate men carefully chosen--Weishaupt himself
was scarcely twenty-eight when he founded the sect in 1776--did not
make much progress, till Baron von Knigge joined them in 1780. He
possessed the one faculty that Weishaupt lacked--imagination. Young,
monstrously licentious, irreligious and intelligent, he was consumed
with an insatiable curiosity for fresh experiences. He had written
a number of novels which had attracted some attention and certain
pamphlets on morals that had been put on the Index. He had been
admitted to most of the secret societies of the day, particularly
that of the Freemasons. He had experimented in alchemy and studied
every phase of occultism from the philosophy of the Gnostics to that
of Swedenborg. Everything that savoured of the supernatural had a
profound attraction for him; even sleight of hand tricks, it is
said, had engaged his attention. At thirty he had seen, studied and
analyzed everything, and still his imagination remained as untired and
inquisitive as ever. An ally at once more invaluable and more dangerous
it would have been impossible for Weishaupt to have procured.
Admitted to the confidence of Weishaupt this young Hanoverian nobleman
rapidly gained an ascendency over him. It was owing to the advice
of Knigge that Weishaupt divided the Illuminés into grades after the
manner of the Freemasons, and adopted the method of initiation of which
the mysterious and terrifying rites were well calculated to impress the
proselyte. With a Knigge to invent and a Weishaupt to organize, the
Illuminés rapidly increased their numbers and activities. Overrunning
Germany they crossed the frontiers preaching, proselytizing, and
spreading the gospel of the Revolution everywhere. But this rapid
development was not without its dangers. Conscious that the existence
of such a society if it became known would inevitably lead to its
suppression, Knigge, who was nothing if not resourceful, conceived the
idea of grafting it on to Freemasonry, which by reason of its powerful
connections and vast proportions would, he trusted, give to Illuminism
both protection and the means of spreading more widely and rapidly.
The origin of this association, the oldest known to the world, composed
of men of all countries, ranks, and creeds sworn to secrecy, bound
together by strange symbols and signs, whose real mystic meaning has
long been forgotten, and to-day devoted to the practice of philanthropy
on an extensive scale--has been the subject of much speculation. The
theory, most generally accepted, is that which supposes it to have
been founded at the time and for the purpose of building the Temple of
Solomon. But whatever its early history, Freemasonry in its present
form first came into prominence in the seventeenth century in England,
whence it spread to France and Germany. It was introduced into the
former country by the Jacobites early in the eighteenth century with
the object of furthering the cause of the Stuarts. On the extinction
of their hopes, however, it reverted to its original ideals of equality
and fraternity, and in spite of these democratic principles obtained
a strong hold upon the aristocracy. Indeed, in France it was from the
first a decidedly royalist institution and this character it preserved,
outwardly at least, down to the Revolution, numbering nobles and clergy
alike among its members, and always having a prince of the blood as
Grand Master.
In Germany, on the contrary, where since the Thirty Years’ War popular
aspirations and discontent had expressed themselves inarticulately in
a multitude of secret societies, the principles of Freemasonry had a
political rather than a social significance.
The importance it acquired from the number of its members, its
international character, and its superior organization could not fail
to excite the hostility of the Church of Rome, which will not tolerate
within it the existence of secret and independent associations. The
Jesuits had sworn allegiance to the Pope and in their ambition to
control the Papacy were its staunchest defenders. But the Freemasons
refused to admit the Papal authority, and treated all creeds with
equal respect. War between the Church of Rome and Freemasonry was thus
inevitable--a war that the Church in such a century as the eighteenth,
permeated with scepticism and the desire for individual liberty, was
most ill-advised to wage. For it was a war in which extermination was
impossible and the victories of Rome indecisive.
Anathematized by Clement XII, persecuted in Spain by the Inquisition,
penalized in Catholic Germany by the law, and its members decreed
worthy of eternal damnation by the Sorbonne in France, Freemasonry
nevertheless managed to find powerful champions. Entrenched behind the
thrones of Protestant Europe, particularly that of Frederick the Great,
and encouraged by the philosophers who saw in it something more than
a Protestant challenge to the Church of Rome, it became the rallying
ground of all the forces of discontent and disaffection of the century,
the arsenal of all its hopes and ideals, the nursery of the Revolution.
To render it, if possible, suspect even to its patrons Rome denied the
humanity of its aims and the boasted antiquity of its origin. According
to the stories circulated by the priests, which excited by their fears
existed solely in their imagination, the Freemasons were the successors
of the old Knights Templars sworn to avenge the abolition of that
order by the bull of Pope Clement V and the death of its Grand Master,
Jacques Molay, burnt alive by King Philip the Fair in the fourteenth
century. But their vengeance was not to be limited to the destruction
of the Papacy and the French monarchy; it included that of all altars
and all thrones.[9]
This tradition, however, continually repeated and rendered more and
more mysterious and alarming by rumour, merely helped to articulate
the hatred of the enemies of the old _régime_ who had flocked to
Freemasonry as to a camp. As this association had at this period of
its history no homogeneity, it was possible for anybody with a few
followers to form a lodge, and for each lodge to be a distinct society
united to Freemasonry by the community of signs and symbols. It thus
became a vast confederation of independent lodges representing all
sorts of opinions, often hostile to one another, and possessing each
its own “rite” or constitution. Philosophy and occultism alike both
found a shelter in it. Even Saint-Martin left his mystic solitude to
found lodges which observed the “Swedenborg rite.”
To attach themselves to the Freemasons was therefore for the Illuminés
as easy as it was natural. Lodges of Illuminism were founded all over
Germany. The number and variety of sects, however, that had found an
asylum in Freemasonry by the diversity of their aims tended to weaken
rather than strengthen the association. At length, the discovery that
impostors, like Schröpfer, Rosicrucians and even Jesuits had founded
lodges led to a general council of Freemasons for the purpose of giving
the society the homogeneity it lacked. With this object a convention of
Masons was held at Wilhelmsbad in 1782 to which deputies were sent from
all parts of Europe. Knigge and Weishaupt attended and, perceiving the
vast possibilities of the consolidation of the sects, they endeavoured
to capture the whole machinery of the organization for the Illuminés,
much as the Socialists of to-day have endeavoured to capture the Trades
Unions.
The intrigue, however, not only failed, but led to a misunderstanding
between the chiefs of Illuminism. Knigge definitely withdrew from the
society, the existence and revolutionary aims of which were betrayed
two years later, in 1784, by a member who had reached the highest
grade, only to discover that the mystic secrets by which he had been
attracted to the Illuminés did not exist. This information conveyed
to the Bavarian government was confirmed by domiciliary visits of the
police who seized many incriminating papers. Weishaupt fled to Gotha,
where he found a protector in the occultist Duke, whose friendship he
had nursed for years in view of just such a contingency.
But though the society he had formed was broken up, it was too late
to stamp out the fire it had kindled. The subterranean rumblings of
the Revolution could already be heard. Mysticism which had made use of
philosophy in France to sap tyranny was in its turn in Germany turned
to political account. From the seeds sown by the Illuminés sprang that
amazing crop of ideals of which a few years later Napoleon was to reap
the benefit.
* * * * *
Such, then, was the “curtain” of Cagliostro; woven, so to speak, on the
loom of the love-of-the-marvellous out of mystical masonic principles
and Schröpfer-Mesmer phenomena.
And now let us turn once more to the personality of the man behind it.