SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions David Appelbaum, editor
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BY T H E SAME AUTHOR Kirchberger et Vllluminisme du XVTIIe siecle. Den Hag: Martinus Nijhoff, series International Archives for the History of Ideas, no. 16, 1966. Eckartshausen etla theosophie chretienne. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1969. L'Esoterisme au XVIIIe siecle en France et en Allemagne. Paris: Seghers-Laffont, series La Table d'Emeraude, 1973. Spanish edition: El Esoterismo en el sigh XVIII. Madrid: EDAF, 1976. Mystiques, Theosophes et Illumines au siecle des Lumieres. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, series Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie (Band 20), 1977. Les Contes de Grimm (Mythe et Initiation). Paris: Les Lettres Modernes, series Circe (Cahiers de Recherche sur l'lmaginaire), nos. 10—11, 1978. Acces de I'Esoterisme occidental. Paris: Gallimard, series Bibliotheque des Sciences Humaines, 1986. Rev. Ed. 1996 (Acces de VEsoterisme occidental I). English edition: Access to Western Esotericism. Albany: SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions, 1994. Vol. II, Gallimard, 1996. Toison d'Or et Alchimie. Paris and Milan: Arche Edidit, 1990. English edition: The Golden Fleece and Alchemy. Albany: State University of New York Press, SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Tradition, 1993. L'Esoterisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, series "Que Sais-Je?," no. 1031, 1992, new ed. 1993. Italian edition: L'Esoterismo, storia e significati. Milan: SugarCo, 1992 (other translations: German, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese). English translation in Access to Western Esotericism (cf. supra). The Eternal Hermes. Grand Rapids (Mich.): Phanes Press, 1995. Philosophie de la Nature (Physique sacree et theosophie). Paris: Albin Michel, series Idees Philosophiques, 1996.
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STUDIES IN WESTERN ESOTERICISM
Antoine
Faivre
Translated by Christine
Rhone
STATE UNIVERSITY O F N E W YORK PRESS
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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2000 State University of New York All rights reserved Originally published as Acces de I'esote'risme occidental, Tome II, © 1996 Editions Gallimard Translation supported by the French Ministry of Culture Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever withour written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by Cathleen Collins Marketing by Nancy Farrell Cover illustration: "The Creation of the Skies—The Separation of the Waters," in: De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines. A series of painted drawings made by the Portuguese Francisco d'Ollanda from 1545 to 1576. Biblioteca Nacional Madrid. Call number: B Artes 14-26. Facsimile edition with presentation and notes by Jorge Segurado, Lisbon, 1983,492p.in-fol. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Faivre, Antoine, 1934[Acces de l'esoterisme occidental. English] Theosophy, imagination, tradition : studies in western esotericism / Antoine Faivre : translated by Christine Rhone. p. cm. — (SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-4435-X (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-4436-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Occultism—History. I. Title. II. Series. BF1412.F313 2000 133'.09—dc21 99-39479 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Tojoscelyn
Godwin
CONTENTS
Provenance of the Articles Published in This Volume Preface: Esotericism and Academic Research Geneses Universities Criteriologies Methods
xi xiii xiv xviii xxi xxv
THEOSOPHIES T H E THEOSOPHICAL CURRENT: A PERIODIZATION I. The Birth and the First Golden Age of the Theosophical Current (End of the Sixteenth Century Through the Seventeenth Century) Its Genesis and Appearance The Characteristics ofTheosophy and the Reasons for Its Success The First Corpus and the First Critical Discourses II. The Transitional Period (First Half of the Eighteenth Century) Two Theosophical Families Some Succinct Criticisms Jacob Brucker, or the First Systematic Description HI. From Pre-Romanticism to Romanticism, or the Second Golden Age Reasonsfor the Revival Three Areas of the Theosophical Terrain The Word "Theosophy" and a Few Criticisms IV. Effacement and Permanence (End of the Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries) Factors in the Dissolution A Discreet Presence New Perspectives on the Theosophical Current
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26 26 28 29
THEOSOPHY AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM O F T H E BAROQUE CENTURY IN GERMANY (NOTE O N T H E WORKS OF BERNARD GORCEIX) Valentin Weigel
49 50
5 5
7 10 15 15 16 17 20 20 20 24
Vlll
Contents
Contents Johann Georg Gichtel Mysticism and Theosophy in Baroque Germany Theater, Kabbalah, and Alchemy Society and Utopias
THEOSOPHICAL POINTS OF VIEW O N T H E DEATH PENALTY Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin Joseph de Maistre Franz von Baader
59 64 77 81
87 87 91 93
EXERCISES O F IMAGINATION VIS IMAGINATIVA (A STUDY OF SOME ASPECTS O F T H E MAGICAL IMAGINATION AND ITS MYTHICAL FOUNDATIONS) From Jacob's Sheep to the Magic Seed of Paracelsus Ways, Byways, and Stakes in the Great Century Pre-Romantic Versions From Romantic Naturphilosophie to Occultist Spheres of Influence
99 100 104 110 116
T H O U G H T S OF GOD, IMAGES OF MAN (FIGURES, MIRRORS, AND ENGENDERING I N J . BOEHME, F. C. OETINGER, AND F. V O N BAADER) I. Sophia and the Bildniss of Jacob Boehme The Sophianic Mirror The Image in Man: Greatness and Self-Effacement The Image in Man: Paths ofRenewal II. Mirrors and Engendering in Franz von Baader The Theory of the Three Images Images and Reflections in God, in Man, and in Nature
137 138 138 139 141 143 143 145
FROM T H E DIVINE FIGURE T O T H E CONCRETE FIGURE, OR TRANSPARITION T H R O U G H MIRRORS Introduction: Two Apocrypha, One Homily I. The Isomorphy of the Image and of Its Model Primacy of the Image for Access to the Model Isomorphy ofLight and of the Eye II. The Reciprocal Engendering of the Image and Its Model The Personal Presence Reciprocal Engendering Through Seeing Perspectives
153 153 156 156 157 158 158 159 161
IN TERMS OF "TRADITION" T H E ROSICRUCIAN MANIFESTOS (1614, 1615) AND T H E WESTERN ESOTERIC "TRADITION" I. Medieval Esoteric Themes in the Manifestos Literary Themes Arithmology and Organon The Philosophy ofNature II. Presence of Renaissance Philosophia Occulta in the Manifestos Paracelsism Esoteric Themes in Vogue in the Latin Renaissance Presence of the New Hermes IE. The Manifestos Between the Old and the New* Torchlight and Shadows The Fortunes ofa Paradox Literary Esotericism in the Wake of the Manifestos Perspectives
171 171 171 172 173 174 174 176 178 180 180 181 184 186
ANALYSIS OF T H E MEDITATIONS OF VALENTIN TOMBERG O N T H E T W E N T Y - T W O MAJOR ARCANA OF T H E TAROT OF MARSEILLES Introduction: Bio-bibliographical Elements and Situation of the Work I. Christian Hermeticism and Traditions The Tarot and Hermetic Symbolism East and West The Hermetic Balance: Mysticism, Gnosis, and Sacred Magic II. Nature Philosophy and Anthropology The Signature of Things and Universal Becoming Living Polarities Hermetic Points of View on Man Regrets and Queries
191 191 195 195 197 201 208 208 210 217 223
RAYMOND ABELLIO AND T H E WESTERN ESOTERIC "TRADITION" I. Esoteric Elements and Themes Biographical Data and the Gnostic Tradition Traditional Sciences and the "Primordial Tradition " II. Esotericism and Modernity Rene Gue'non and the Status of the West Abellio and His Kin III. Raymond Abellio's Specific Contribution to Esotericism Phenomenology and Absolute Structure Universal Interdependence and Love Perspectives
229 229 229 232 235 235 237 240 2 40 243 245
Contents A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL G U I D E T O RESEARCH (CONTINUED) General works Alchemy Freemasonry and Fringe Masonry From the Second (Corpus Hermeticum) to the Fifteenth Centuries Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Eighteenth Century Romanticism and Naturphilosophie From the Nineteenth Through the Twentieth Centuries Concerning Tradition Esotericism, Literature, and Art Journals and Serials
249 250 251 252 252 256 256 256 258 258 259
Index of names
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P R O V E N A N C E OF T H E ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THIS V O L U M E
"Le courant theosophique (fin XVIe-XXe siecle): Essai de periodisation," pp. 6-41 in Politica Hermetica, no. VII (Les Posterites de la theosophie: du theosophism au New Age), Paris, 1'Age d'homme, 1993. Rev. ed., pp. 119-176, Cahiers de la Loge nationale de recherches Villard de Honnecourt, no. 29, Neuilly-sur-Seine, G.L.N.F., 1994. "Theosophie et mystique speculative du siecle baroque en Allemagne: Note sur Poeuvre de Bernard Goerceix," pp. 53-77 and 153-183 in Revue de l'histoire des religions, October 1979 and January 1980, Paris, P.U.F.; new edition, updated, pp. 1-50, A.R.I.E.S. (Association pour la recherche et Vinformation sur Pesoterisme), no. VI, Paris, La Table d'Emeraude, 1985. "Points de vue theosophiques sur la peine de mort (Saint-Martin, Joseph de Maistre, Baader)," pp. 17-24 in Actes du colloque sur la peine de mort dans la pensee philosophique et litteraire (Alexandre Zviguilsky, editor), Paris, Association des amis d'lvan Tourgueniev, 1980. "L'imagination creatrice (fonction magique et fondement mythique de l'image)": the fourth article was published under this tide, pp. 355-390, in Revue d'Allemagne, vol. HI, no. 2 (Hommages a Eugene Susini), Strasbourg, Societe d'etudes allemandes, April-June 1981. Italian edition: "L'immaginazione creatrice. Funzione magica e fondamento mitico delPimmagine," translated by Gracia Marciano, pp. 230-261 in Conoscenza religiosa (Fascicolo speciale dedica immaginario e immaginale), Florence, La Nuova Italia, April-June 1981. "Pensees de Dieu, Images de l'Homme (figures, miroirs et engendrements selon J. Boehme, F. Ch. Oetinger et Franz von Baader)," pp. 110-119 in Cahiers de I'universite Saint-Jean de Jerusalem, no. 12 (Face de Dieu et theophanies), Paris, Berg International, 1986. "De la figure divine a la figure concrete, ou la transparition par le miroir," pp. 38-58 in Cahiers du Groupe d'etudes spirituelles comparees, no. 2 (Images et Valeurs), Paris-Milan, Arche Edidit, 1994. "Les Manifestes et la Tradition": the seventh article appeared under this title, pp. 90-114 in Das Erbe des Christian Rosenkreutz. Vortrage gehalten
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Provenance of the Articles Published in This Volume
anlasslich des Amsterdamer Symposiums 18-20 November 1986, Amsterdam, In de Pelikan, 1988. "Analyses des Meditations de l'Anonyme sur les vingt-deux Arcanes du Tarot": the eighth article was published with this title, pp. 47-54 (no. 14, 1981), pp. 57-80 (nos. 15-16, 1981), pp. 29-36 (no. 17, 1981) inL* Tourbe des philosophes, Paris, La Table d'Emeraude. "Abellio et la tradition esoterique": the ninth article appeared with this title, pp. 139-152 in Question de . . . , no. 72 (La Structure absolue—Raymond Abellio, textes et temoignages inedits), Paris, Albin Michel, 1987.
PREFACE Esotericism a n d A c a d e m i c Research
In Access to Western Esotericism (SUNY, 1994), I gave an account of the creation, at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Section des Sciences Religieuses), of a chair dedicated to Modern Western Esoteric Currents. In the heart of the vast field known in academic institutions as "Religious Studies" had finally been officially recognized the existence of this new discipline which, since this dedication, has been the subject of specific methodological approaches and is in the process of being recognized and accepted in other countries as well. The area that it covers includes various currents of thought that share a certain number of common denominators. The more "classical" are, on the one hand, alchemy (understood as a Philosophy of Nature and as a mode of spiritual transformation), astrology (in its speculative and not only divinatory form), magic (or magia, a manner of conceiving Nature as alive, interwoven with correspondences, and to which are related various forms of arithmology and musicosophy). Others were born at the beginning of modern times, such as the Christian Kabbalah, Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, Paracelsism, theosophy, and Rosicrucianism. "Esotericism" is an ambiguous word, which appeared in a specific historical context, primarily in order to serve the purposes and prejudices of its different users. In Religious Studies we have retained it, lacking anything better, as a convenient term serving to designate simultaneously all these currents as a whole, the various aspects of their posterity until today, and the form of thought that they express. But the word has at least two other meanings, and this gives rise to frequent misunderstandings (see below, note 12). First, it currently signifies "secret knowledge," or "secret science," which is reserved for an elite and submitted to the discipline of the "arcane." Then, it also designates a type of knowledge or experience referring to a "place," to a spiritual "center"—known as "esoteric"—situated in the depths of the Being and, consequently, the means and techniques meant to reach this center. In the second half of the twentieth century, the use of the word "esoterism" understood in these last two senses is tending to spread in English, among the
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representatives of certain forms of spirituality, while the word "esotericism" corresponds to the sense understood here, namely, a vast area of currents and the forms of thought that they express. Of course, the field proper to "esoterism" is but one of the aspects of "esotericism," that is, of the history of the Western esoteric currents. The word "Western" here designates the medieval and modern GrecoLatin world in which the religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity have co-existed for centuries, visited by those of Islam. And "modern" refers to the period that goes from the end of the fifteenth century to our days. This has been chosen not only because it circumscribes conveniently or within reasonable limits a historical field that is already very vast, but also because it corresponds to a new and specific phenomenon.
side by side Moses, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Sibyls. Such a concordance of diverse traditions was due to the evolution of theological thought. Indeed, the latter increasingly had eliminated from its scope of thinking the domain of "second causes," that is, of cosmology— Nature—which nevertheless had long remained, during the Middle Ages, in phase with the metaphysics of the theologians—as in the School of Chartres or of Oxford. But when the time came when the sciences of Nature tended to separate from theology, then mostly reduced to metaphysics, this vast domain then became the subject of reinterpretations. These were, on the one hand, secularizing, prefiguring modern science, which would spring to life in the seventeenth century; on the other, extratheological, that is, no longer coming from theologians but from scientists, humanists, and philosophers, who appropriated for themselves this field of thinking that had become almost vacant. It is among the representatives of this second category of reinterpretations that one finds the first "esotericists" in the modern sense of the term. Their thought came in some manner to fill in the interface between metaphysics and cosmology, with speculations tending to account for the relationships between the particular and the universal, or among God, Man, and the universe. Often, they established these relationships in an eclectic spirit, referring to different authorities of the past, but almost always with a vision of universal correspondences inseparable from the idea that the cosmos is alive. The appropriation of philosophy by the scholastics was thus matched, marginally or reactively, by that of Alexandrian hermetism, the Jewish Kabbalah, magia inherited from the Middle Ages, and so on, by scholars who had become "specialists" in these traditions. Esotericism, in the sense that we here give this word, took birth with this appropriation. Its referential corpus was constituted little by little, made up of texts belonging to ancient traditions that, at the dawn of the Renaissance, began to be compared with one another, and new texts-^starting at the end of the fifteenth century—which often were commentaries on the first. It was also enriched, especially beginning in the sixteenth century, by works that were not "erudite"—thus, those of Paracelsus— presenting themselves far less as commentaries on ancient texts, with the exception of the Bible, than as direct readings of the Book of Nature, supposed to clarify that of the Revelation. But these works themselves were incorporated straight away into the referential corpus of esotericism. Among the representatives of "erudite" esotericism appeared, in the sixteenth century, Ludovico Lazarelli, Francois Foix de Candale, Francesco Patrizi (all three are inscribed in the current of Neo-Alexandrian hermetism), and in addition, Johannes Trithemius, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, Giorgi of Venice. All believed in the need to "reform" magic, which would have as a consequence a salutary reform of Christianity and, therefore, of the whole of
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GENESES A radically new situation appeared toward the end of the fifteenth century, when scientists and humanists undertook to appropriate various traditions of the past—Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian hermetism, Jewish Kabbalah—with the concern to show that some of them, indeed all of them, mutually enrich one another and represent more or less the branches of a common trunk, that is, of a philosophia perennis, an "eternal philosophy," less homogenous on the doctrinal plane, nevertheless, than representative of a common attitude of mind. Thus, Marsilio Ficino, who in 1463 translated from Greek into Latin the Corpus Hermeticum (a set of Alexandrian texts dating from the second and third centuries of our era) and attempted to marry the teachings of these texts with those of Christianity and Platonism, while drawing inspiration from the old "magical" tradition, by which Renaissance philosophy would then be nourished in the wake of such an eclectic scholar. In parallel, the Jewish Kabbalah, whose texts began to be known in Christianity especially after 1492 (the date of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain), became an instrument of knowledge for hermeneuts applied to the christianization of its symbolism—whence the name Christian Kabbalah to refer to this new form of literature. It is also the era when Pico della Mirandola affirmed that the Kabbalah and magic prove the truths of Christianity, allowing it to be better understood, and when other hermeneuts began to associate the Kabbalah with alchemy. The philosophia perennis thus expressed a need to have recourse to traditions of the past through the deciphering of documents and scholarly work, in the light of analogy. It was expected from all the texts thus solicited that they procure a higher knowledge—a gnosis— which by the same token presupposed a faculty in Man, potential but specific, to penetrate the mysteries of founding or revealed texts and of inspired glosses. This accounts for the series of names, often given in the period, where we see
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society. For the seventeenth century let us especially mention, for memory, Robert Fludd, Thomas Campanella, and Michael Maier. To the currents (Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, Christian Kabbalah, speculative and erudite alchemy) that these names illustrate were added three others, from the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. They were situated marginally to the philosophia perennis dear to the Renaissance humanists of esotericist leanings, because they made almost no claims to authorities belonging to a distant past. All three were in Germanic countries. The first is Paracelsism. A doctor from German Switzerland, whose works began to spread toward the end of the sixteenth century, Paracelsus (1493-1541) did not separate physical from spiritual healing. He is at the origin of a tradition that bears many similarities to the "occult philosophy" of the Latin type, but which differs from it as much by its "chemical"—alchemical—approach to all the natural planes as by the place he confers on the imagination, the queen of faculties, understood as essentially active and creative, as well as by an original alloying that blends Germanic-type mysticism with "magical"-type Nature Philosophy. On account of these two major traits, Paracelsism is more or less at the origin of two other currents, which both appeared almost simultaneously. These are, on the one hand, the theosophical current, which at the end of the sixteenth century and very begirining of the next, was more than merely heralded by the works of Gerhard Dorn, Valentin Weigel, and Johann Arndt. With Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) began the first golden age of theosophy; it extended over the whole seventeenth century with the immediate successors of Boehme (for example, Jane Leade, John Pordage, Quirinus Kuhlmann, Johann Georg Gichtel). Then followed a period of relative latency, interrupted by the appearance of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), very marginal in relation to the theosophy of the Neo-Boehmean type, but whose considerable cultural and spiritual influence widely overflowed the theosophical riverbed proper. This flourished again toward the end of the eighteenth century, with Martines de Pasqually, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, and others. Then, at the begirining of the nineteenth century, it marked its imprint on Naturphilosophie of the romantic type, to finally find in Franz von Baader one of its most eminent representatives. Three great common and complementary characteristics could serve to account for the notion of theosophy: (a) an illuminated speculation bearing on the relationships among God, Man, and the universe (Nature); (b) the primacy of myths (biblical) of foundation or origin as a point of departure for this speculation; (c) the idea that Man, by virtue of his creative imagination, can develop in himself the faculty of acceding to the higher worlds. It is, furthermore, the Rosicrucian current, whose birth certificate is the publication in German, at Kassel, of the two famous Manifestos—Fama Fraternatis, 1614; and Confessio Fraternatis, 1615 (they had been circulating for
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several years in manuscript form)—and then of the novel, also in German, by Johann Valentin Andreae, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz (Strasbourg, 1616). Just as the Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum by Ficino, almost a century and a half previously, had been at the origin of the current of modern Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, so these three texts constituted the founding act of Rosicrucianism. In the beginning, this placed itself under the authority of Paracelsus, more so than theosophy had done, and presented itself as an attempt at religious reform not meant to found a newly established Church, but rather to improve, to palliate the insufficiencies of Protestantism,, to foster a form of spirituality as much open to alchemy and occult philosophy as to all the sciences of the era. This current was perpetuated in various forms, principally that of initiatic societies, and this in the wake of the myth of Christian Rosenkreutz, the mysterious character who appears in the Fama (under the abbreviation C. R.-C.) and in the Chemical Wedding. Starting from the eighteenth century, one sees these initiatic societies proliferating. While they placed themselves explicitly under the sign of the Rosy Cross, they drew their inspiration from other esoteric currents, too. Both the former and the latter took on various forms according to the periods, in function of the culture and the society of the time. One also sees new currents being born, breaking away from those that had preceded but from which they issued: Western esotericism is riddled with discontinuities, rejections, reinterpretations. Thus, the occultist movement that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose figurehead was Eliphas Levi, well illustrates the process of discontinuity, because while we recognize there something of an echo of the theosophical program, it is distinct from it by a pronounced taste for "phenomena" and "scientific" demonstration, as well as by an attraction to the picturesque and the fantastical readily cultivated for their own sakes, in this era when the world seemed definitively disenchanted. Occultism gleaned the heritage both of Enlightenment rationalism and of eighteenth-century illurninism. And not among the least interesting characteristics of this current, is that it appears above all as an extension of the occult sciences from before 1860, but now confronted with materialist positivism and connected by affinity to the literary current of symbolism. So much for the discontinuity. A good example of rupture is furnished by the current issued from Rene Guenon (1886-1951). This thinker presented himself as the interpreter of the "Primordial Tradition," defined by him in terms of transhistorical truth and in the name of which he not only denounced the misdeeds of modernity, but attacked many aspects of Western esotericism present and past. If we consider his work from the inside only, we are tempted to find there the reflection, intended to be faithful, of a permanence and unity that unfortunate accidents of history would have come to disturb, and tempted also to consider as useless, surpassed, almost all the Western esoteric heritage
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prior to Guenon himself. But if we ask ourselves questions about the genesis of his work, the occultist terrain where it took seed, and the forms of esotericism deliberately ignored by it (not only, therefore, the forms that it is attacking), then "it appears to us much more interesting still, but as a new current, among others, inside this vast field that our discipline has the object of exploring.1
and experimental science, was perhaps the first historian to treat the esoteric currents exclusively and integrally (up to and including the seventeenth century), although he accomplished this starting with the sole idea of "magic" and without really distinguishing one current from another or developing a specific method.3 Research has progressed well during the past thirty years. Just as the works of August Viatte and Will-Erich Peuckert, those of Frances A. Yates on the Renaissance and the eighteenth century, and of Francois Secret on the Christian Kabbalah4 are of a nature to stimulate historians concerned with deepening a given current or treating this discipline in its specificity, or else with studying the relationships that these currents maintain with religion, politics, art, and literature. Studies such as those of Ernest Lee Tuveson on the reception of hermetism in Anglo-Saxon literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or of Massimo Introvigne on the "magical" movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,5 represent new approaches of an interdisciplinary nature. The multiplication of such studies has little by little suggested the idea that this is a whole sui generis. For the supporters of philosophia perennis or, more generally, of esotericism, this idea had seemed obvious; it was less so for the university historians, but these are increasingly adopting it—even if they do not understand it in the same way as the perennialists. This idea has oriented, implicitly or explicitly, the works of historians such as James Webb and Joscelyn Godwin in North America; of Jean-Pierre Laurant, Pierre A. Riffard, and Jean-Paul Corsetti in France; of Ernest Benz, Gerhard Wehr, and Karl Frick in Germany; of Massimo Introvigne in Italy.6 In the course of the past years, periodicals that had initially been devoted to one particular given aspect have widened their scope of subject matter; thus, Cauda Pavonis and Theosophical History. A periodical such as A.R.I.E.S., in France, publishes methodological articles, accounts of works, positions of theses, and the like, dedicated to the cutting edge of research.7 One sees conferences and seminars proliferating, where esotericism appears either as one subject among others or as the single theme of the program. In parallel, specialized libraries are the subject of a curiosity and an interest of which the past offered few examples.8 One then understands the growing necessity to develop specific methodological approaches (cf. infra, "Criteriologies" and "Methods"). Even before these questions of method had really been dealt with in depth, the need had made itself felt in France to establish a chair in modern Western esotericism. This was created in 1964, with the title "History of Christian Esotericism," in the section of Religious Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne), and entrusted to Francois Secret, who occupied it until 1979. At that date, which was also that of my election to this chair, the title became "History of the Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and
UNIVERSITIES This field has long been a subject of interest, but only recently has it begun to be approached in a neutral fashion, as one sector among others in the history of religions. At the beginning of modern times appeared works (such as De Occulta philosophia, 1533, written in 1510, by H. C. Agrippa) accrediting the idea that various traditions are linked to one another like communicating vessels and comprise a homogenous whole called occult philosophy, physica prisca, or philosophia perennis, although these terms are not really interchangeable. The authors of such works are esotericists themselves (such as Agrippa) or else their adversaries. They assemble a great deal of knowledge but their aim is not to do the work of objective historians. In the seventeenth century, once the four great currents mentioned above became apparent, the need made itself felt to treat them integrally, and this as much on the part of their enemies (among whom is E. D. Colberg, Das Platonisch-Hermetische Christenthum, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1690-91) as their defenders (such as Gottfried Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, Frankfurt, 1699-1700). The first really systematic description of the Western esoteric currents is found in the Historia critica philosophiae (1742-44, vols. I, IV, VI) of Jakob Brucker. Although a work of little objectivity, marked by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, its importance should not be underestimated, because for several generations it acted as a point of reference for philosophy in general and esotericism in particular. A little later, Johann Gottfried Herder in Germany and Antoine Court de Gebelin in France also engaged in research on certain aspects of this bushy terrain. Then came the period when, for the first time it seems, the substantive "esotericism" appeared (this is in French, in 1828), shortly before Joseph Scheible began publishing a long series of reference texts in Germany, in the 1850s.2 The occultist current then developed in its core a historical activity halfway between esoteric discourse and scholarly research, evidence of which are the publications of authors such as George R. S. Mead or Arthur Edward Waite. But one must wait for the twentieth century to witness the appearance of academic research properly said, encompassing wide sectors. Thus, August Viatte's thesis on illuminism marked, in 1928, an important turning point, followed by the works of Will-Erich Peuckert on pansophia and Rosicrucianism. Lynn Thorndike, with his monumental history of magic
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Contemporary Europe." In the United States, in 1980, the Hermetic Academy was created, whose purpose is to encourage exchanges among researchers in "esoteric studies"—understood in a broader sense than "modern esoteric currents"—academics for the majority, and it is one of the "Related Scholarly Organizations of the American Academy of Religion" (AAR, the largest professional Group, in North America, of academics in religious sciences). Within the AAR, the Hermetic Academy created an "Esotericism and Perennialism Group" that organized five symposia from 1986 to 1990. This Group became a Seminar starting in 1993, with the title "Theosophy and Its Phases of Development."9 The title changed in 1999, becoming "Western Esotericism from the Early Modern Period." And, last but not least, at the State University in Amsterdam a new Chair was created in 1999, entitled "History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents from the Renaissance to the Present." This Chair encompasses a full academic curriculum, from the undergraduate to the doctoral levels. Now that one is witnessing the progressive institutionalization of this new discipline on the academic plane, one may well ask why there has been such a long wait for it to gain the honor of official acceptance. If one considers the domain of Judaism or Islam, a fortiori the religions of the Far East, it seems that fields generally similar to that of modern Western esotericism had long been accepted in Western universities and that, in them, neither mysticism nor ancient gnosticism had been gready scorned by historians. As Wouter J. Hanegraff rightly comments, such a neglect could well be but the secular form of a Christian polemic: esotericism appeared too late to become a scientific problem inside theological discourse, which rid itself of it by attaching it sometimes, always awkwardly, to mysticism, or condemned it by identifying it with gnosis—understood as gnosticism. Later, the Christian religions had much to do elsewhere in their struggle with the new mechanistic or rational mentality; and when this ultimately predominated, modern historians took interest above all in the vicissitudes of the combat between reason and religion. Esotericism was superfluous, and came along to complicate everything. Today the situation is different, on account of the growing need for new interpretations, more or less complex, of the genesis of modernity.10 Yet the interest shown today in esotericism, even by serious people, does not always yield the best fruits. One often sees specialists of a given discipline speaking about esotericism without possessing any particular competence. The reason for this is double. On the one hand, our field, which has long been badly defined and little occupied in the universities, is naturally the target of appropriative aims. On the other hand, in our era of intense editorial activity, publishers often lack points of reference when it is a matter of matching competencies with tasks (popularizing essays, dictionary entries, etc.) relative to esotericism. Now, the fact that one may have some competence on one area
of mysticism, religious symbolism, or psychology, and the like does not mean that one is by the same token qualified to write on esotericism. The result is that today almost everyone feels they have claims to this domain." Such a confusion, added to those maintained by "loonies," inclines many serious thinkers, and not the least of them, to a negative reaction when faced with an undertaking to define a corpus specific to esotericism, because for them this corpus duplicates those that already exist for philosophy, literature, art, and so on. Indeed, one observes that generally it is not the esoterologists who produce the most satisfactory scientific works on a given author or subject, but rather specialists engaged in focused research (for example, a monograph on a treatise of Paracelsus, by a specialist of the sixteenth century; or a study of a theosopher by a historian of literature). CRITERIOLOGIES It is incumbent on any sector of the human sciences to be a subject of thought that aims to circumscribe its field and propose a methodology. As far as our sector is concerned, it seems that until the present only three researchers have undertaken to make a contribution to this type of thinking. After presenting, in relation to mine, that of Pierre A. Riffard, I shall then describe that of Wouter J. Hanegraaff. The first part of this preface ("Geneses") described the landscape by an enumeration of the features comprising it—essentially the currents: rivers, streams, and tributaries. But one must also ask what makes it a particular region distinct from its neighbors. That is why I have proposed12 calling "esotericism" in the modern West a form of thought identifiable by the presence of six basic characteristics distributed in varying proportions. Four are "intrinsic," in that their simultaneous presence is a necessary and sufficient condition for a discourse to be identified as esoteric. With them are joined two others, which I call "secondary," that is, not intrinsic but whose presence is frequent next to the four others. This being said, it is clear that none of the six belongs to esotericism alone. The six characteristics are as follows: (1) The idea of correspondence. This is a matter of symbolic correspondences—but considered here as very real—between all the parts of the visible and invisible universe ("As above so below," says the Emerald Tablet). This is the old idea of the macrocosm and the microcosm, or principle of universal interdependence. The correspondences are not obvious at first glance but are veiled, waiting to being read, deciphered. The universe is a theater of mirrors, a mosaic of hieroglyphs to be decoded; everything in Nature is a sign, the least object is hiding a secret. Here the principles of noncontradiction and excluded third middle, as of causal linearity, are replaced by those of synchronicity and
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included middle. The correspondences are of two sorts. There are those of visible or invisible Nature: occult relationships between the seven metals and the seven planets, between these and the parts of the human body, between the observable cosmos and the departments of the celestial or supercelestial universes, and so on. But there are also the correspondences between Nature, or even history, and revealed texts (myths of foundation or origin, as in the Kabbalah), or the idea of physica sacra, of sacred physicality, a form of esoteric concordism according to which the Bible and Nature are supposed to illuminate each other reciprocally, through a work of permanent hermeneutics. (2) Living nature. The cosmos is not merely complex, plural, and hierarchical, it cannot be reduced to a network of correspondences: it is also alive. The word magia, so important in the imaginary of the Renaissance, well evokes the idea of a Nature that is felt, known, understood, as palpitating in all its parts, that one readily imagines as pervaded by a light or hidden fire circulating through it. T o this idea of living Nature, seat of sympathies and antipathies, is attached that of magic in the operative sense: astral forces of which seals and talismans would be the bearers, harmonies of the world (of a musical nature especially), or again, stones, metals, plants, appropriate for the maintenance or reestablishment of physical or psychic health. But it is the idea of living Nature, and much less its practical applications—occultism in the general sense—that appears here as one of the constitutive elements of the form of esoteric thought; an idea always more or less inseparable from that of "knowledge," of "gnosis," in the sense that Goethe understands it when he has Faust say that he burns with desire to "know the world/in its intimate contexture/to contemplate the active forces and the first elements."13 This gnosis produces salvatory effects of which Man is not the only beneficiary: a text of Saint Paul (Romans 8:19-22) is proffered, where one reads that suffering Nature, submitted to exile and vanity, awaiting its part in salvation, is that of the entire cosmos, and that the knowledge that Man develops in himself concerning Nature can have redeeming effects on it. This said, one observes, since the beginning of the twentieth century especially, in the wake of an ontologically dualistic metaphysics, the appearance of a monist form of spirituality claiming the title of esotericism, for which Nature (everyone creates) is seen denied in its very reality. Modernity and, by the same token, the sciences issued from it are also rejected. For historians of esotericist thought, this form of monism is an offshoot or a derived current, whose genesis is all the more interesting to study. (3) Imagination and mediations. These two notions are here complementary. That of correspondences implied already, we have seen, an "imagination" capable of deciphering the hieroglyphs of the world, that is, the "signatures of things." Now, these "signatures" always present themselves more or less as mediators between the perceptible datum and the invisible or hidden thing to
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which it refers. Rituals, images of the Tarot, mandalas, symbols charged with polysemia are also mediators because, as supports for mediation, they would allow the various levels of reality to be reconnected to one another. As transmitters, initiators and gurus are also mediators. And not only the Bible, but the whole referential corpus of esotericism are like as many mediations. It is perhaps primarily this notion that makes the difference between what is mystical and what is esoteric. Simplifying a little, one could consider that the mystic—in the very classical sense—aspires to a more or less complete suppression of images and intermediaries, of mediations, because they quickly become obstacles for him to union with God. This, in contrast to the esotericist, who seems more interested in the intermediaries revealed to his inner vision by virtue of his creative imagination than in tending above all to a union with his God; he prefers to sojourn, to travel, on Jacob's ladder, where the angels—the symbols, the mediations—are ascending and descending, rather than venture resolutely beyond. Of course, such a distinction is only a matter of methodological convenience. In practice, there is sometimes much esotericism among the mystics (let us think of Saint Hildegard), and one observes a pronounced mystical tendency in some esotericists (Louis-Claude de SaintMartin, for example). As for the imagination, it is understood here as the very faculty that indeed allows these intermediaries, symbols, images to be used for gnostic ends, the theory of correspondences to be put in active practice, and the entities mediating between the divine and Nature to be discovered, seen, and known. It is therefore not a question of "flights of fancy" (the "mad woman in the attic"), but rather of a sort of organ of the soul through which Man may establish a cognitive and visionary relationship with an intermediary world, a mesocosm—what Henry Corbin has suggested calling a mundus imaginalis. And it is partly under the inspiration of the Corpus Hermeticum, rediscovered at the end of the fifteenth century, that memory and imagination are associated to the point of becoming identical, part of the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus consisting in "interiorizing" the world in our mens. Thus understood, the imagination (a word often compared here with Magnet, magia, imago) is the tool of knowledge of the self, of the world, of myth: the eye of fire that makes visible the invisible. The emphasis is put on certainty and vision rather than on belief and faith; this is why this concept of the imagination innervates the theosophie discourse in which it is exercised, it is deployed there starting from mediations on verses of revealed Books: thus in the Jewish Kabbalah, with the Zohar, or in the great theosophical current that springs to life in Germany at the beginning of the seventeenth century. (4) The experience of transmutation. This fourth element comes to complete the first three. We were dealing until now, indeed, with a vision of the world and a spiritual activity barely surpassing the limits of the cognitive. But the
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idea of transmutation adds to this the dimension of a living experience, that is, of a type not only visionary but initiatic. What one calls "gnosis" is often this illuminated knowledge that favors the "second birth." This transmutation follows a course whose path is generally marked out, alchemically symbolized by nigredo (death, decapitation), albedo (whitening), rubedo (reddening, philosopher's stone), and that one is tempted to compare with the three phases of the traditional mystical path: purgation, illumination, unification. Finally, as we have just recalled in respect to the idea of living Nature, the transmutation can be that of a part of Nature as much as of the experimenter himself. Such would, therefore, be the four basic components on which rests the approach, proposed here, of our sector. T o these come to be associated two others, "relative" to the extent that they are not indispensable to the definition. T o present them as two new necessary conditions would limit the explorable field too much; but both deserve to be considered in their specificity on account of their frequent presence with the four others. These are what could be called, on the one hand, the practice of concordance, and on the other, transmission. (5) The practice of concordance. Although it does not appear as an essential component of modern Western esotericism, the practice of concordance nevertheless occupies an important place in it, and first in its very genesis—as has been seen in relation to the notion of philosophia perennis. This practice consists in positing the existence of common denominators between two or several traditions, then studying these by comparing them, in the hopes of bringing out the forgotten or hidden trunk of which each particular tradition would be only one visible branch. This comparativist activity gained prominence starting in the nineteenth century, following a better knowledge of the East and through the appearance of a new academic discipline, "comparative religions"—to the point that the advocates of "perennialism" postulate and teach the existence of a "Primordial Tradition" which, according to them, as we have seen earlier, would overarch all the religious and esoteric traditions of humanity. (6) Transmission. This is a matter of channels, on which varying emphasis is put. It can be one of master to disciple, or initiation into a society. The idea is that one is not initiated by oneself alone and that the "second birth" (cf. supra) requires one to undergo this discipline. Some insist on the authenticity or the "regularity" of the channels of filiation supposed to transmit what could not be obtained without them. And it is known how important this idea of transmission has been in the West, in the history of secret or closed initiatic societies, since the middle of the eighteenth century. Modern Western esotericism is thus a form of thought-r^one among others, like modern science, mysticism, theology, Utopia . . . The specificity of each
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consists of the simultaneous presence of a certain number of fundamental or constituent characteristics. Each carries out its own operations and procedures, its various ways of adjusting its components, of articulating them. In so doing, it creates for itself a corpus of references, a culture. As the same component can belong to several forms of thought, some are obviously in a relation of close kinship; hence the "mystical" and the "esoteric." The "scientific" maintains complex, often ambiguous, relationships with this, in which Nature Philosophies are sometimes at issue. It is also interesting to observe the oppositions, the rejections that can result from an epistemological break inside one of them; thus, as long as the "theological" was presented as a form of symbolic theology (in the case of the ancient Fathers, the School of Chartres, or a Saint Bonaventure), it was rather close to what we call the "esoteric," which came afterward, but it became increasingly distinct from it, starting in the thirteenth century, with the development of thought of an Aristotelian type. A methodological approach different from ours was proposed in 1990 by Pierre A. Riffard.14 Starting from the idea that a universal esotericism would exist, this researcher attempted to find what its "invariables" would be. He found eight: author's impersonality, opposition of the profane and the initiated; correspondences, the subtle, numbers, occult sciences, occult arts, and initiation. The major difficulty that this model presents is precisely its universalizing aspect, which tends to embrace everything in an effort to end in one science all esoteric sciences. But, on the one hand, the sum of these invariables in no way constitutes a form of thought (which the author, after all, does not claim); and, on the other, these invariables occurring together only in certain circumstances, one would like to know why, and how, these circumstances would have reoccurred throughout the history of humanity. There is missing in this criteriology a general base, an anchoring in history, without which it becomes, by definition and by default, appropriable by anthropology or psychology. METHODS The approach of Pierre A. Riffard at least has merit of proposing a method, and of being distinct from the perennialist attitude. What is more, it usefully revives the question of a comparative science of esotericisms; a pertinent question, even if one does not take a position from a "universal" plane, which is that of this researcher. For Henry Corbin, not long ago, it was not so much a question as a well-defined project on which his heart was set: for him it was a matter of encouraging the comparative study of the three great religions of the Book, by taking their "esotericism" as a methodological point of departure. But the meaning given to "esotericism" in the present work would not be quite applicable to such a program, as Wouter J. Hanegraaff points out. Indeed, this program would imply that a more general "definition" of esotericism should be
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sought, inside of which what Hanegraaff and I term in this way would then appear as a subdomain, for which another name or qualifier would have to be found; moreover, the advantage of using the word "esotericism" for this comparativism may be doubted, when "gnosis" or "mysticism" would do just as well.'5 It is not merely a question of words, all the same. Why a comparative rather than a genetic approach? Experience shows that the fact of favoring the first almost always reveals a position of the religionist type (that is, expressing the religious belief of the researcher in a place of discourse normally reserved for scientific neutrality) on the universality of esotericism, and favors a tendency to efface the differences between the traditions studied, by stressing the similarities to the detriment of contingencies and historical events— different from a scientific inquiry, which begins with the comparative study of historico-genetic diffusions. This is why a comparative study of esotericism in the three great religions of the Book should begin with reciprocal influences, and once this is accomplished, move on to the emergence of innovations— new thoughts, ideas, practices—relatively independent but founded on a logic proper to monotheism and the religions of the Book, and not on the postulate of a mysticism that would be common to them.16 The propensity of the mind to amalgamation must incite us to vigilance. T o take an example of deviation among others—none at least are to be found in Henry Corbin, a serious researcher—for centuries there has been no lack of enthusiasts to see in ancient Egypt and its "mysteries" an esotericism that would be present under its symbols, initiations, hieroglyphs, and so on. Yet, even supposing that they are sometimes seeing rightly, what they are describing would never be but one form of religiousness among others, and there is no reason to call it "esotericism," unless one considers that the word can mean anything. It appears, on the other hand, more pertinent and fruitful to study the forms of Egyptomania or Egyptophilia proper to Westerners themselves, for if there is Egyptian esotericism, it is primarily in our modern imaginary that it is to be found. Whether or not, since about the sixteenth century, this reflects what ancient Egypt really was does not concern the historian of Western esoteric currents, unless very indirectly. It would rather concern the Egyptologist. What, in regard to the quest for similarities, I earlier called "religionism" is one of the three perspectives represented within the university world in the field of Religious Studies, in a proportion that varies greatly according to the country. One consists, as we have seen, in making a history of religions starting from a personal religious standpoint. Another perspective, known as the reductionist, consists in positing from the start that the religious is meant to "be dissolved" in "explanations," whether economical, political, sociological, or psychological, which would bring out, it is believed, the illusory
Prefat nature of all transcendence, of anything sacred. The third, known as empirical, is ours. The article by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, previously cited and partly devoted to the presentation of my own methodological approach, is entitled precisely "Empirical Method in the Study of Esotericism."17 This empirical method, as he describes it, corresponds exactly to the attitude of laicity (lai'cite) in the positive sense that this word has finally taken on in France, where it characterizes the spirit in which one studies religious sciences in the public institutions created for this purpose. Whether it bears on the considered religions as a whole or on the esoteric currents in particular, empirical research is first characterized by the rejection of metaphysical premises to establish scientific knowledge. It thus implies a "criticism of ideologies" that severely restricts the area in which science can legitimately speak with authority. By the same token, this empirical research posits that its access to "the religious" is limited to the study of human events that unfold in space and especially in time: it is a matter of working based only on the consciousness that believers have of a meta-empirical reality expressed in an empirical manner (by words, images, behaviors, etc.). This means that as empirical researchers we consider that we do not have access to the metaempirical, whence our recourse to a "methodological agnosticism"—to take up the expression of Jan Platvoet and Wouter J. Hanegraaff.18 We do not limit ourselves to empiricism because this would be the only reality, but because it is our sole access to the investigation. Inversely, religionism and reductionism in equal measure "have shown a characteristic tendency to impose 'immutable' laws and principles on their material, and this often at the expense of historical contingency (feared by both because of the relativist implications of this contingency)." The "terror of History" in Eliade appears to be one of the most obvious religionist examples." Indeed/it is certain that, especially in the study of esotericism, the religionist position has been little favorable to a critical undertaking and a classificatory theory, because religionists naturally have the tendency to insist on transhistorical unity to the detriment of differences, too readily dismissed by them as "secondary." They are more interested in the essence than in the manifestation. "Esoterism" is a convenient term for the perennialists, above all concerned with rediscovering the "transcendental unity of religions" dear to Frithjof Schuon. They employ this substantive in a metaphysical sense, while, for us, it refers to specific historical currents—and it is not by chance that they have almost always been superbly ignorant of most of these currents. Whence the necessity to establish the study of esotericism on solid academic bases, of fixing clear demarcations from the perennialist point of view.20 As Wouter J. Hanegraaff recendy brought to my attention,21 the empiricohistorical approach is of a nominalist type, and not (contrary to the perennialist perspective) of a realist type—in the broad sense of these two terms. And this,
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simply because truth is not a historical category. He compares the constituent elements that I have proposed to an empirical description of the properties of gold (color, substance, weight, etc.): it by no means signifies that whatever metal exhibiting the said properties of gold is genuine gold. As for the chemist, of course, he has at his disposal the means to identify real gold, but we, as historians, cannot know what can in fact be the "true esotericism." There is not, for us, any esotericism sui generis. Each of the component elements of the form of thought that it has been agreed to call esoteric presents itself only as a theoretical generalization starting from empirical data (under the circumstances, starting from concrete historical ideas).221 do not claim, for example, to know what the "true nature" of the correspondences would be, while a "realist" claims to know what it is or what it should be and, starting from that, sets himself the task of constructing, or reconstructing, esotericism as a category in itself. This is not our purpose, and if we study esotericism it is not so as to ensure its propagation. These four (or six) constitutive elements serve to make us sensitive not only to the existence of a form of thought, but also to differences, to changes, through time. They are like many receptacles, communicating but specific, in which various types of experiences and imaginaries come to be distributed. In Western esotericism, one finds as many hierarchical views, of a Neo-Platonic type, as nonhierarchical views of a neo-hermeticist type (for example, God is as much in a grain of sand as anywhere else); emanationist theories of creation as creationist views; belief in reincarnation as well as its rejection. One fails to grasp the nature of this form of thought by exhausting oneself in seeking what would be the "beliefs," or professions of faith, that would qualify it. Likewise, the esoterologist does not have to attempt to "define" his or her sector starting from the various manners in which esotericists have themselves attempted to codify it; that would be to start from sectarian presuppositions bearing on what it "should" be, as some do today who appeal to its authority with the purpose of placing their own parish above those of others. Just as an approach of a doctrinal type23 would be totally inadequate to our field of research—there are almost as many doctrines as there are currents or even authors—so a thematic criteriology could not account for its nature. Certainly, esotericism as we understand it indeed has its favored themes, such as angeology, androgyny, sophiology, the World Soul, and so on. But none of them belongs to it exclusively, because as elements of mythologies it is to the mythic in general that they refer. The presence, alone, in a work, of a theme or an identifiable archetype by no means implies that these must be classed as "esoteric." Unless some wish to monopolize the research of others, the esoteric field does not coincide with that of the anthropologist nor with this new discipline which is the imaginary,24 and this despite an actual
Preface proximity. As a corollary, a phenomenon such as the New Age, so interesting today to the sociologist, the psychologist, the historian of religions, belongs to the study of new religious movements, now also a specific discipline in the area of academic research. Similarly, parapsychology, sorcery, ceremonial magic— sectors with often obvious relationships to modern esoteric currents—are not intrinsically part of them. There also exist institutions, such as Freemasonry that, in some respects only, belong to esotericism; it largely depends on the nature of the ritual. Better than doctrines, themes, or archetypes, the notion of "family resemblance" can be revealed as operative. Employed by A. O. Lovejoy in his book The Great Chain of Being (1936), the expression "unit-idea" serves to distinguish families of key ideas closely related to one another, whose historical courses and reoccurrences can be analyzed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff has drawn attention to the relevance of this notion to the study of our esoteric field.25 Its point of reference is mental habits. For example, the idea of immutability, or the "monistic pathos" (a feeling that one is part of the universal Unity: "All is one!"). Or that of a "chain of beings," to which is devoted Lovejoy's best-known work. From a single "unit-idea," which can be expressed in ideologically or doctrinally contradictory forms, one can study the varying manifestations in works either inside the same field, such as esotericism, or in fields different from one another—theology, law, literature, art, and so on.26 Similarly, writes Wouter J. Hanegraaff, "an esoteric tradition, on its foundation, can be defined as a historical continuity in which individuals and/or groups are demonstrably influenced, in their life and thinking," by the four (or six) component elements that I have enumerated and which "they use and develop according to the specific demands and cultural context of their own period." It is then incumbent on the researcher to carry out a genetic work, that is, "to trace the filiation of ideas over time, not with the prior inten^ tion of demonstrating their trans- or metahistorical similarity or unity, even less with the intention to demonstrate historical 'anticipations' of cherished ideas, but with the intention of clarifying the complex ways in which people process—absorb, (re)interpret, (re)contruct, etc., the ideas of the past accessible to them," and to trace the map of migratory routes followed by them27— with the understanding that by "ideas" we do not mean elements of ideologies or abstract concepts, but essentially forms of the imaginary. The study of traditions and esoteric currents, their reinterpretations and reconstructions, indeed, also implies that of their migrations in art, literature, music, and even science—fields whose specialists, conversely, should not be unaware that ours exists. These migrations constitute a rich terrain of investigation on the multi- and interdisciplinary levels. But the very form of esoteric thought itself can be considered to be of a transdisciplinary nature par
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excellence. Indeed, while multidisciplinary thinking remains horizontal, and interdisciplinarity consists in identifying, in bringing to light, certain possibilities of transfers of method from one discipline to another, transdisciplinarity answers to three criteria, each independent but in interrelationship: the idea that several levels of reality can exist, the activation of forms of logic that are not classical (nonbinary); finally, the idea that the subject is to be found placed in the very center of his or her own research.28 The form of esoteric thought corresponds well to these three criteria. Its existence in no way springs from a method aspiring to scientific neutrality—in contrast to transdisciplinarity—but researchers of a transdisciplinary vocation could conceivably find in the esoteric corpus something to nourish their thinking; and, reciprocally, historians of esotericism could be equally open to transdisciplinarity. Our discipline would not thereby incur any risk of being dissolved into neighboring sectors, as soon as it succeeds in proving its own specificity, in laying out its beacon lights, both fixed and floating. Rather than present a "history" of modern esoteric currents,29 the nine essays that follow (just as those published in Access to Western Esotericism) aim merely to clarify certain aspects of it. They have been grouped into three broad sections: Theosophies. There did not exist, to my knowledge, any historical survey of the Western esoteric current (end of the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries). Whence my essay of periodization (in the sense of dividing and discussing this current in developmental periods). It is completed by two other studies: one analyzes the works of Bernard Gorceix relative to the emergence of this current in baroque Germany; the other treats a specific issue—theosophical discourse as a presence in the debate on the death penalty. Exercises of the Imagination. As explained above, the creative or active imagination is one of the constituent elements of esotericism as a form of thought. Magia, imaginatio, mundus imaginalis are as many key notions around which the three studies of this second part are articulated. In Terms of "Tradition." In esoteric discourses, mention is often made of "Tradition," but not always in a precise or appropriate manner.30 T o ask how certain esotericists are situated in relationship to one or more of the traditions from which they or others claim authority can serve to clarify this notion. The inquiry focuses on three examples widely separated in time: the authors of the proto-Rosicrucian texts (beginning of the seventeenth century), and two of our contemporaries, Valentin Tomberg and Raymond Abellio. Access to Western Esotericism contains an extensive section entitled "A Bibliographical Guide to Research" (pp. 297-348), to which readers may refer. The bibliography at the end of the present book is meant to complete that section with titles which have mostly been published since 1994.
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1. Let us nevertheless not neglect the permanences, because without them one would fail to understand the changes, the breaks, the reinterpretations, and become open to making such misinterpretations as the one Wouter J. Hanegraaff recendy pointed out: two sociologists studying contemporary occultism—astrology in particular—presented this as a deviation from truths generally accepted by the ambient culture, that is, as an antimodern phenomenon, while this occultism is much rather testimony to the permanence of traditions that gready precede the culture of modernity (Wouter J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method in the Study of Esotericism," in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 7, no. 2, 1995, p. 119. Articles criticized: Edward A. Tiryalrian, "Toward the Sociology of Esoteric Culture," in On the Margin of the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric, and the Occult, New York, 1974, p. 265; and Marcello Truzz "Definitions and Dimensions of the Occult: Towards a Sociological Perspective," in ibid., pp. 245 ff.). 2. Cf. notably J. G. Herder, vol. XV of Samtliche Werke, published in Berlin by Bernhard Suphan, 1877-1909. A. Court de Gebelin, Le Monde primitif, Paris, 1773-84, 8 vols. "Esoterisme" appears in Jacques Matter, Histoire critique du gnosticisme et de influences, Paris, Levrault, 1928, p. 83 (mentioned by Jean-Pierre Laurant, L'Esoterisme chretien en France au XIXe siecle, Paris, L'Age d'homme, 1992, pp. 19, 42). The volume of Kleiner Wunderschauplatz der geheimen Wissenschaften, Mysterien, Theosoph appeared in Stuttgart, published by J. Scheible, 1849-60. 3. George Robert Stow Mead was a very active publisher of periodicals, including Lucifer, The Theosophical Review, and The Quest, as well as Alexandrian herm texts. Arthur Edward Waite was author notably of The Occult Sciences, London, Kegan Paul, 1891. William Wynn Westcott was also one of these erudite occultists. Auguste Viatte, Les sources occultes du Romantisme: Illuminisme-Theosophie (1770-1820) Champion, 1928. (Many facsimile reprints, same publisher.) Vol. I, Le Preromantisme. Vol. 2, La Generation de PEmpire. Will-Erich Peuckert, Pansophie. Ein Versuch Geschichte der weissen und schwarzen Magie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1936. New edit Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1966. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and the Experimenta Science. 8 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. (First edition, 1923-58). W.-E. Peuckert, Die Rosenkreutzer. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation. Jena: Diederi 1928. Rpt. Das Rosenkreutz. Introduced and presented by Rolf Christian Zimmermann. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1973. 4. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago an London: The University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprints, 1979. First edition: London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Francois Secret, Les Kabbalistes chretiens de Renaissance. Paris: Arma Artis and Milan: Arche, 1985. Illustrated (new expanded edition). First edition, Paris: Dunod, 1964. 5. Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach Romanticism. London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1982. Massimo Introvigne, 7/ Cappello del Mago (1 nuovi movimenti magici, dallo Spiritismo al Sata Milan: SugarCo, 1990. Abridged French edition: La Magie (Les Nouveaux Mouvements Magiques). Paris: Droguet et Ardent, 1993.
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6. For the bibliography of these authors, see "A Bibliographical Guide to Research," pp. 297-348 in Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, Albany, SUNY, 1994. 7. For the periodicals cited, cf. ibid ., p. 342-346. 8. On libraries, cf. "A Word About Libraries" in ibid., pp. 346-348. 9. For more details on that Group, cf. Antoine Faivre and Karen-Claire Voss, "Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion," in Numen, vol. 42, Leyde, Brill, 1995, pp. 75 ff., n. 42. At the 17th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (Mexico City, August 1995), a Group directed by Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff was focused on "Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion" (proceedings published under that tide, Leuven, Belgium, ed. Peeters, "Gnostica" series, 1998). Also an IAHR Group "Western Esotericism and Jewish Thought" (directed by W. J. Hanegraaff and Jan Snoek) is announced for the Congress of 2000 in Durban (South Africa). At the Amsterdam Summer University, August 1994, a Congress (directed by Roelof van den Broek and W. J. Hanegraaff) was devoted to "Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times"; the proceedings are published under that tide (Albany, SUNY, "Western Esoteric Traditions" series, 1998). 10. W.J. Hanegraaff. "Empirical Method .. . ," art. cited, p. 122, n. 46. See also his contribution "On the Construction of 'Esoteric Traditions,'" p. 11-69 in Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, op. cit., where he discusses and differentiates "preesoteric universalisms," forms of "anti-esotericism," and "historical constructs." And his major work: New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1996 (distributed by SUNY). 11. The Dictionnaire critique de I'Esoterisme (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998) is the very example of the confusion generated by the two reasons mentioned here. It is divided into nineteen sectors, each one being the responsibility of a person in charge, and the whole book is supposed to cover all eras and areas, including those of the Australian aborigines, pharaonic Egypt, sub-Nigerian Africa, and China—without any definitional or methodological consensus having been reached among those responsible for the sectors (this consensus was, moreover, not desired by the publisher or the editor). A number of sectors thus contribute to make this volume a sort of dictionary of religions and myths. However, other sectors bear witness, in contrast, to a praiseworthy exigency of specific methodology. It is not, all the same, irrelevant to note that work on this dictionary began in 1990. Now, considering that since that date the esoteric field has, more than ever before, been established as a discipline in its own right, it seems likely that such a dictionary, had it been initiated today with the same publisher, would have rested on more secure foundations, indeed, entirely different ones. Work on another dictionary, limited to the western world, and for which those responsible are striving to avoid such hazards, has been in progess since 1997 (The Dictionary of Gnosticism and Western Esotericism, to be edited by Jean-Pierre Brach, Roelof van den Broek, Antoine Faivre, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff; Leiden, E. J. Brill). 12. Notably in Access to Western Esotericism, op. cit., pp. 10-14, and in the entry "Occident Moderne," Dictionnaire critique de I'Esoterisme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998. About this, and the other meanings of "esotericism" (as mentioned at the beginning of this Preface), see my contribution "Questions of Terminology proper
Preface
to the Study of Esoteric Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe," in Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, edited by Antoine Faivre and Wouter J Hanegraaff, Leuven (Belgium): Peeters, Series "Gnostica," 1998, pp. 1-10. 13. "Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im lnnersten zusammenhalt / Schau' al Wirkenskraft undSamen" (w. 381-383). 14. Pierre A. Riffard, L'Esoterisme: Qu'est-ce que I'e'sote'rismeF Antholog I'esoterisme occidental, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1990, cf. pp. 311-364. 15. Cf, for example, "Allocution d'ouverture" by Henry Corbin, in the Cambrai Colloquium (20-22 June 1965), Jerusalem, la Cite spirituelle, no. 2 of Cahiers de I'Universite Saint-Jean de Jerusalem, Paris, Berg International, 1976, p. 9. But on several other occasions as well, Henry Corbin strongly supported the idea of a comparative study of esotericism in the three great religions of the Book. For a discussion of this idea, see my forthcoming article, "Le probleme de I'esoterisme compare des religions du Livre," in Henry Corbin et la Spiritualite Comparee, edited by Antoine Faivre and Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron, Paris: Arche, series "Cahiers du Groupe d'Etudes Spirituelles Comparees," 2000. See also Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . ," art. cited, p. 123. On the notions of gnosis and gnosticism, cf. also W. J. Hanegraaff, "A Dynamic Typological Approach to the Problem of 'Post-Gnostic' Gnosticism," pp. 5^14, A.R.I.E.S., no. XVI, Paris, La Table d'Emeraude, 1992, and by the same author, "Esoterie, occultisme en (neo) gnostiek: historische en inhoudelijke verbanden," pp. 1-27, Religieuze Bewegingen in Nederland, no. 25, 1992. 16. W.J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . , " art. cited, pp. 122 ff. 17. The historian of religions, Jan Platvoet, has differentiated these three perspectives with great precision, notably in his article "The Definers Defined: Traditions in the Definition of Religion," pp. 180-212, in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2/2, 1990. Let us note that the word "reductionism" is not always employed in this sense: it also sometimes means "methodological reductionism," that is, not necessarily implying an axiomatic agenda; cf, for example, Ivan Strenski, Religion in Relation (Method, Application and Moral Location), Columbia, University of South Carolina Pres 1993, chap. Ill: "Reductionism and Structural Anthropology"—where the word "reductionism" is employed in a sense compatible with what Platvoet calls "empirical." For discussions on the criteriology I have tendered, see, besides Hanegraaffs studies quoted here, his contribution "On the Construction of 'Esoteric Traditions,'" in Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion (op. cit. supra note 12), pp. 11-62. And recent important article by Monika Neugebauer-Wolk, "Esoterik im 18. Jahrhundert Aufklarung und Esoterik. Eine Einleitung," in Aufkarung und Esoterik, edited by her, Hamburg: Meiner, 1999, Series "Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert," pp. 1-37. 18. W.J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . , " art. cited, p. 103, n. 10. 19. Ibid., p. 104, n. 13, where the author cites K. Rudolph, "Mircea Eliade and the 'History' of Religion," pp. 7ff.,Religion, no. XIX, 1989. 20. W. J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . , " art. cited, p. 110. A dossier on perennialism was published in A.R.I.E.S., no. XI (1990), nos. XII-XIII (1990-91), no. XIV (1991). See also William W. Quinn Jr., The Only Tradition, Albany, SUNY, 1997. 21. Letter from W.J. Hanegraaff to the author, 17 March 1995. 22. W.J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . , " art. cited, p. 121.
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23. A characteristic example of the type of confusion to which a doctrinal approach to esotericism can lead is the article by the Reverend Pierre Vernette, "Esoterisme occidental (Doctrine de 1')," pp. 630-633 in Dictionnaire des religions (directed by Cardinal Paul Poupard), Paris, P.U.F., 1993. The very tide of this article is already misleading; unfortunately, it is the only entry on "Esoterisme" in this dictionary, See the cogent review of that entry by Jerome Rousse-Lacordaire, pp. 50-55, A.R.I.E.S., no. XVIII, 1994. 24. The Dictionnaire critique de I'Esoterisme (cf. supra, n. 11) too often offers examples of such infringements or overlappings. As for the term "imaginary" (I'imaginaire in French), it is tending to gain recognition in English (see, for example, Leon Marvell, Hermes Recidivus: A Postmodern Reading of the Recrudescence of the Hermetic Imaginary. Ph.D. diss., University of Western Sydney, 1998). The "anthropological structures of the Imaginary" (as understood in Gilbert Durand's Les Structures anthropologiques de I'imaginaire, Paris, Bordas, 1960, several reprints) offer a criteriology that can obviously interest the explorers of esoteric currents, but they refer rather to archetypes—while Lovejoy's "unit-ideas" (cf. note infra), which are mental attitudes, are more direcdy connected with historical conditions. 25. Cf. especially A. O. Lovejoy, "Introduction: The Study of the History of Ideas" pp. 1-23 in The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History ofan Idea, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1936 (many reprints). On the comments inspired by A. O. Lovejoy's method, cf. W. J. Hanegraaff, "Empirical Method . . . ," art. cited, p. 113 ff, which suggests that because the expression "unit-idea" is not very felicitous, it might be better to replace it with "resemblance" (an expression used by Wittgenstein) . 26. For A. O. Lovejoy (op. cit., p. 10 ff), there are for example "endemic assumptions," such as the tendency to connect elements of a whole to other elements of that whole; types of pathos to which one is more or less sensitive: thus the monistic pathos (mentioned supra), the pathos of obscurity or the sublime, the pathos of "esotericism" (Lovejoy understands by this the taste for mystery: "How exciting and welcome is the sense of initiation into hidden mysteries!" he writes mischievously); "sacred" words or expressions, that is, charged with strong and vague connotations, such as "Nature." One sees by these examples that the four instrinsic elements of the form of esoteric thought (as I have presented them) are complexes of ideas in each of which "unit-ideas" are again to be found. Thus, for the correspondences: the tendency to connect the pathos of obscurity, that of "esotericism," the chain of beings. For mediations: the chain of beings and the tendancy to connect. For transmutation and living Nature: otherworldliness and the pathos of "esotericism." Let us also note that a unit-idea incompatible with a form of thought can perchance be introduced into it and change its nature; in this manner, it seems to me, the imaginary of the Guenonian variety (the monistic pathos of perennialism) has generated a new form of esotericism. Supple and operative, Lovejoy's criteriology is a tool of a historico-empirical type. In this capacity, it offers the historian of ideas a solid base. Indeed, if the history of ideas— of which esotericism is one aspect—has been the object of a certain disdain in the core of the human sciences, it is perhaps for lack of having sufficiendy affirmed that it is not only, and far from it, the history of doctrines or ideologies of certain thinkers or writers of genius. Fortunately, some are now engaged in bringing out this evidence (thus, Francois Azouvi; cf. his article, "Pour une histoire philosophique des idees," pp. 17-28
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xxxv
in Le Debat, Paris, Gallimard, no. 72, November-December 1992, dossier La Philosophie qui vient). 27. One can, in the process, adds W. J. Hanegraaff, identify constants, which "may give rise to theoretical typologies whose adequacy depends on the extent to which they are able to 'organize' historical materials in such a way as to help explain and render intelligible the 'life of ideas.' / But, obviously, even if—by definition—ideas 'live' in the minds of individuals, their survival over time requires that they be 'embodied' in social contexts. Certainly, it is on the basis of its ideas that esotericism becomes visible to the historian as a separate field of study; and it is their development over time which enables the historian to speak of a 'tradition' of esotericism" ("Empirical Method . . . , " art. cited, pp. 117 ff.). 28. For a succinct but substantial approach to the notion of transdisciplinarity, cf. Basarab Nicolescu, "Entre le Savoir et 1 Etre: la Nature, aujourd'hui," pp. 145-160, Science et Gnose (Proceedings of the A.R.I.E.S. Colloquium at the Sorbonne, June 1993), no. XVII of A.R.I.E.S., 1994. And by the same author: "Errances et Convergences," pp. 102-105, Passerelles, Paris, no. 7, 1993. 29. I presented a short history of these currents, pp. 49-110 in Access to Western Esotericism, op. cit. 30. On this notion in the context of Western esoteric currents, see my contribution "Histoire de la notion moderne de Tradition dans ses rapports avec les courants esoteriques (XVe-XXe siecles)," in Symboles et Mythes dans les mouvements initiatiques et esoteriques (XVIIe-XXe siecles):filiationset emprunts," Paris: Arche and L Table d'Emeraude, Series "ARIES," 1999, pp. 3-48. Italian edition of this contribution: Esoterismo e tradizione. Leumann (Turin): Elledici, Series "Religione e Movimenti," 1999, 80 pp.
T H E O S O P H I E S
The Theosophical
Current
A Periodization
When we use the term theosophy (a word with a long-standing history) we should always be specific about the sense in which we intend it.1 In 1987, James Santucci and Jean-Louis Siemons published the results of their respective research on the use of the word "theosophy" during late antiquity and the Middle Ages.2 From this it springs out that Porphyry (234—305) appears to have been the first to introduce the term theosophia. In Porphyry's view, a theosophos is an ideal being within whom are reconciled the combined capacities of a philosopher, an artist, and a priest of the highest order.3 Iamblichus (250-330) spoke of "the divinely inspired Muse" (theosophos Mouse); Proclus (412-485) uses theosophia to mean "doctrine," whereas, among the first Christian writers, for example, Clement of Alexandria (circa 150-215), we find that theosophos means "moved by divine science." Likewise, when reading the works of PseudoDionysius, we are hard put to distinguish among theologia, theosophia, and divine philosophy, whereas the late Platonists used the word theosophia to designate practically any kind of spiritual tenet, even theurgy itself. Finally, during the Middle Ages the term ended up acquiring the ordinary meaning of theologia* theosophoi thereby becoming, just as in the Summa Philosophiae attributed to Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), merely another name for the authors of Holy Scripture.5 These few examples exhibit as much multiplicity of meaning as they do affinity. Accordingly, if we assume that the overall significance of the word "theosophy" remains the "Wisdom of God" or the "science of divine things," one can choose either to emphasize the semantic discrepancies among the different meanings or to look for a middle term and a common ground, according to our individual preferences. In the first case, one risks overlooking the subtle ties that connect the different writers; in the second, one risks obscuring the contours of individual meanings so that both the authors and their theories become interchangeable. It is not only the texts from late antiquity and the Middle Ages which present us with this dilemma: from the 3
Theosophies
The Theosophical Current
time of the Renaissance until today the word "theosophy" has continuously had different meanings ascribed to it. Here, my aim is not simple enumeration, because that would yield only a fragmented picture of the whole, nor shall I attempt to reduce all of these terms to one common principle (an impossible task; moreover, one that would imply a doctrinal bias). Rather, I want mainly to draw attention here to the advantage of starting from empirical data6 and ask questions such as these: is it possible for an observer to draw some major trends from the myriad uses and meanings that the word "theosophy" has been given in the West, and how? If so, what are the essential elements each of these trends is comprised of? Approaching the subject in this way means we are afforded an escape from the dilemma that has just been alluded to, while at the same time the landscape is allowed to disclose itself as it really is. It seems that the answer to the first question could hardly elude any visitor to the imaginary museum composed of the esoteric and mystical currents that pervade modern and contemporary Western culture. Two major forms appear to stand out: on the one hand, there is a single esoteric current among others7 which does not correspond to an official Society; on the other, there is an official Society that has given itself the title "theosophical" and simultaneously a programmed orientation. The first major form is an initially amorphous galaxy that began to acquire shape in the spiritual climate of latesixteenth-century Germany, reaching such heights in the seventeenth century that it has continued to penetrate, with phases of growth and decline, part of Western culture until the present day. The second major form is represented by the Theosophical Society itself, officially founded in 1875 at the instigation of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), which has pursued relatively precise directions and goals ever since its inception (an endeavor incumbent upon any group of this kind), to the point where it is sometimes, rightly or wrongly, regarded as a new religious movement, if not a new religion. Of course, there are obvious similarities between these two: first, they both play an important part in Western esotericism; second, both claim to deal with "wisdom" or "knowledge" of "divine things," not from a theological perspective, but from a gnostic one. The gnosis in question—particularly the rapport and mediation that unite the human being to the divine world^is considered to be a privileged path of transformation and salvation. Why, then, the attempt to distinguish between these two "theosophies"? In the first place, they do not actually rely on the same reference works; in the second place, their style is different. The referential corpus of the first belongs essentially to the Judeo-Christian type; its foundational texts date from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. That of the second reveals a more universal aspect; it is deeply infused with Eastern elements, particularly Hindu and Buddhist. Of course, transitions and common elements among the material used by both trends are in evidence: for
example, borrowings from the theosophical current by the Theosophical Society are not unknown. In Politica Hermetica (cf. supra, n. 2) Jean-Louis Siemons points out that at least twenty references to Boehme can be found in Madame Blavatsky's works. While acknowledging obvious discrepancies between the Theosophical Society and western theosophy, Siemons adds that these dissimilarities, "however, are not important enough to cause an insurmountable barrier." One cannot help but agree with him on this point. If we admit the existence of different rooms inside the esoteric mansion as we can observe it, then each should be allotted its own style of furniture; if, on the other hand, each of the two theosophical "families" is large enough and rich enough to settle in one or even several of these rooms, there is nothing to prohibit their sharing the common rooms and the grounds. Likewise, although western Europe has indeed known a romantic era, it would be meaningless to put both Novalis and Alfred de Musset into the same category unless one had in mind the concept of an "eternal romanticism" (not unlike that of the "Primordial Tradition," so dear to some). But here we would be dealing with another matter, one that is fraught with subjectivity and not without doctrinal undertones—it is no longer the discourse of the historian. These preliminary distinctions being made, the purpose now is to present the genesis, development, and specific features of the first form ("classical theosophy") in the framework of a periodic overview. It appears that four different periods comprise its historical evolution, and these periods have provided me with the structure I adhere to in the present work:8 (I) From the end of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth, the development of a specific textual corpus that would be deemed "theosophie" from that time on; this period is a kind of first "Golden Age" of this particular current. (II) The spreading of that corpus and its reception by historians of philosophy in the first half of the eighteenth century. (EU) Its revival in the pre-romantic and romantic era (i.e., the second "Golden Age" ). (TV) Its decline, and also its endurance, from the mid-nineteenth century until the present. I. T H E BIRTH AND T H E FIRST GOLDEN AGE OF T H E THEOSOPHICAL CURRENT (END OF T H E SIXTEENTH CENTURY T H R O U G H T H E SEVENTEENTH CENTURY) Its Genesis and Appearance At the end of the fifteenth century was constituted what one could call a prefiguration of the modern Western esoteric landscape, This is due to the appearance of new currents, to the revival or adaptation of more ancient traditions, and, most of all, to the impetus to reconnect each of these different
5
Theosophies
The Theosophical Current
7
fields of research or knowledge with one another. Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, Christian Kabbalah, magia (as it was understood by Pico della Mirandola), and of course alchemy and astrology can be numbered among these currents. During the sixteenth century the Paracelsian current emerged, and it was also around this time, at the end of the century when the writings of Paracelsus (1493-1541) began to be systematically published, that another current that was soon to be called "theosophy" appeared. Born in Germany, like Paracelsism, theosophy draws on the former, and has a great deal of affinity with it. By this time, Paracelsus had already introduced a mode of reflection on Nature into European esotericism: a cosmology that was comprised of magic, medicine, alchemy, chemistry, experimental science, and complex speculations about the networks of correspondences uniting the different levels of reality in the universe. However, because of the emphasis he placed on something he called the "Light of Nature," for the most part Paracelsus remained within the limits of the "second causes," although he claimed to be returning to the "principles." Subsequently, it fell to a few inspired thinkers to fit these cosmological causes into a more global vision; that is to say, to ensure a transition between Paracelsian thought and theosophy proper. These thinkers truly appear to have been the "proto-theosophers." There are, in the first place, three German thinkers: Valentin Weigel, Heinrich Khunrath, and Johann Arndt. The theosophy of Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) "was born out of a remarkable encounter between two traditions: the influence of the Rhine-Flemish, which he maintained more fervently than anyone else in the Reformation period, and the influence of the great Paracelsian synthesis, which would not become known in Germany until after the Peace of Augsburg."9 Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605) was the author of, among other works, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1595 and 1609), an alchemical-theosophical work that had considerable influence on most of the esoteric currents in the seventeenth century. In his Vier Bticher vom wahren Christenthum, Johann Arndt (1555-1621), also the alleged author of an interesting commentary on four plates of the Amphiteatrum, formulated (particularly in book IV, published in 1610) what would come to be known as "mystical theology," from the title of a writing by Pseudo-Dionysius. His system blends medieval mysticism together with the Paracelsian legacy and the alchemical tradition, and he insists on the existence of a specific faculty innate in human beings, that of being able to attain a "second birth," which he understood as the acquisition of a new body within the elected soul. Arndt's influence was to be enormous, not only on theosophy, but also in the genesis of the Rosicrucian current. T o these three names we must add two more: first, that of Aegidius Gutmann (1490-1584), whose 1575 Offenbahrung gbttlicher Majestat enjoyed a wide private circulation (although it was not published before 1619) and played a large part in the emergence of both the Rosicrucian and the theosophical
currents. Second, that of the German heterodox Caspar Schwenckfeld (14901561), who, although a confirmed docetist, nonetheless elaborated a theory of the spiritual body (the Geistleiblichkeit or spiritual corporeity), an idea that would become central in theosophy. Third, that of Gerhard Dorn (ca. 1530-ca. 1584), editor and commentator of Paracelsus. In his alchemical writings, he developed a Philosophy of Nature (a visionary, highly elaborated Physica that in many aspects foreshadowed that of Boehme).10 With Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) the theosophical current acquired its definitive characteristics, the Boehmean work representing something like the nucleus of that which constitutes the classical theosophical corpus. One day in 1610, while contemplating a pewter vase, Boehme had his first "vision," a sudden revelation, through which he gained at one stroke an intuitive awareness of the networks of correspondence and of the implications between the different worlds or levels of reality. He then wrote his first book, Aurora, which I am inclined to see as the definitive birth of the theosophical current strictly speaking. This book was followed by many others (all written in German), and in turn, by those which numerous other spiritual thinkers wrote in the wake of Boehme's thought. The theosophy of Boehme is a kind of amalgam between the medieval mystical tradition of sixteenth-century Germany and a cosmology of the Paracelsian type. Judeo-Christian, it is presented as a visionary hermeneutic applied to biblical texts. Germanic in language, it is "barbaric" in the sense that it owes practically nothing to the Latin or Greek esoteric currents, whether a question of Neo-Alexandrian hermetism or Christian Kabbalah. In Boehme's theosophy we rediscover more alchemical elements and a bit of the Jewish Kabbalah, but above all, it should be emphasized, we find Paracelsism. In any event, the Boehmean synthesis went far beyond the Germanic countries, imbued as it was with a range of characteristics which, when taken as a whole, served to capture the attention of a large public for a long time and gave rise to a theosophical calling in many people. The Characteristics of Theosophy and the Reasons for Its Success Although there is no single point of doctrinal unity among theosophers, they do have some common traits. I propose to distinguish three: (a) The God/Human/Nature Triangle. This inspired speculation bears simultaneously on God—the nature of God, intradivine processes, and so on; on Nature—whether eternal, intellectual, or material; and on Man—his origin, his place in the universe, his role in the workings of salvation, and so on. Essentially, it deals with the relations among these three. The three angles of this Triangle (God-Man-Nature) are in complex relationships with one another, a complexity made of dramatic processes, and they are in close relation to
Theosophies
The Theosophical Current
Scripture (it is through active imagination that one is made capable of apprehending all of these correspondences). (b) The Primacy of the Mythic. The active, creative imagination of the theosopher gets support from what is given by Revelation, but always at the cost of privileging its most mythic elements (those which are found, for instance, in Genesis, the vision of Ezekiel, and the Apocalypse) and by tending to mythicize those elements which are less mythic. Thus, great use is made of various characters, mythemes, and scenarios such as the Sophia, the angels, the primeval androgyne, the successive falls (e.g., of Lucifer, of Adam, of Nature herself, etc.), all these being things that theologians tend to rationalize or even pass over entirely in silence. Theosophy is a kind of theology of the image. One could almost speak here of a return to a multifaceted imaginary, starting from which theologies (in the strict sense of the term) work, but which they present in a rational mode in order to legitimate themselves, thereby allowing themselves to be dissociated from what, for them, is no more than dross.11 (c) Direct Access to Superior Worlds. Man possesses in himself a generally dormant but always potential faculty12 to connect with directly, or to "plug into," the divine world or that of superior beings. This faculty is due to the existence of a special organ within us, a kind of intellectus, which is none other than our imagination—in the most positive and creative sense of that term. Once achieved, this contact exhibits three characteristics: (1) it permits the exploration of all levels of reality; (2) it assures a kind of co-penetration of the divine and the human; and (3) it gives our spirit the possibility to "fix" itself in a body of light, that is to say, to effectuate a "second birth." Here we can see the relationship with mysticism; however, the mystic intends to abolish images whereas, to the contrary, for Boehme and his successors the image signifies accomplishment.13 Taken by themselves, these three traits are not outside the field of esotericism.14 None of them is peculiar to theosophy, but the simultaneous presence of all three in the very center of this field makes for the specificity of theosophical discourse. Moreover, the style of theosophical discourse also appears to be quite specific. It is generally baroque, not only because the work of Boehme and his various German successors was already strongly marked by this form of expression, which was dominant at the time, but most of all, by virtue of its invariable recourse to myths of the fall, of reintegration, and of transformation, all of which were dramatically lived out or relived in the soul of the theosopher. These factors can also account for the recurrence of this style, albeit in a less spontaneous fashion, in the works of later theosophers. Here we might ask what, in the seventeenth century, favored the successful emergence of this kind of discourse. The style itself (i.e., the art form) is not enough to account for it. There was another contributing factor which can help account for both the appearance and the vogue of esotericism (understood
as a melange of currents and traditions comprising the referential body noted above, which became specific toward the end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). We find that theosophy, which had only recently been born, quickly attached itself to these currents and to this corpus and benefited from this vogue. Still other factors were at play. In the absence of any doctrinal unity or even doctrine, pure and simple, we find only systems of thought, peculiar to each theosopher, a characteristic guaranteed to appeal to minds which had been disturbed by the religious quarrels during the period that kindled the Thirty Years' War. We can distinguish four different factors of a politicoreligious type that were linked to Lutheranism, and two of a philosophicoscientific type. Originally, theosophy emerged from Lutheran soil. First of all, Lutheranism allows free inquiry (whether theoretically or by definition), which in certain inspired souls can take a prophetic turn. Second, Lutheranism is characterized by a paradoxical blend of mysticism and rationalism, whence the need to put inner experience under discussion, and inversely, to listen to discussions and to transform them into inner experience. Third, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, less than a hundred years after the Reformation, the spiritual poverty of Protestant preaching and the dryness of its theology were sometimes sorely resented, whence the need for revitalization. T o these three factors was added a fourth, which presented itself as a challenge: if in the milieus where Lutheran theosophy was born (i.e., among the nobility and the physicians) there was a certain freedom vis-a-vis ministers of the cult, prophetic activity was nevertheless not well tolerated; for example, Boehme was a scapegoat of the Lutheran minister in Goerlitz, and in other places people were fiercely orthodox. The same factors accounted for the appearance of the Rosicrucian current, also a recent arrival in the terrain of Western esotericism and with a reformist slant. In addition, one can observe that since the time of the Renaissance most esoteric thinkers were, according to their various lights "reformers" as well, if we give this word a general meaning so as not to confuse it with Protestantism per se. On the philosophico-scientific level, it is a commonplace to recall that the epoch witnessed an intensified desire for the unity of sciences and ethics—a need to unify thought. The idea of a solidarity of thinkers, that of a "total" science, formed part of the spiritual and intellectual climate. Now, theosophy appeared to respond to this need. Theosophy is globalizing in its essence. Its vocation demonstrates an impetus to integrate everything within a general harmonious whole. It is the same with Rosicrucianism (Fama Fraternitatis, 1614, and Confessio, 1615) and with the "pansophic" current which it created; pansophy presented itself above all as a system of universal knowledge, just as Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670) had proposed: all things are ordained by God and classified according to analogical relations. Or, if one prefers, a
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knowledge of divine things is gained starting from the concrete world, from the entire universe, whose "signatures" or hieroglyphs it is first a matter of deciphering.15 The second philosophico-scientific factor was the appearance of mechanism, which favored the emergence of Cartesianism. In contrast to this new form of scientific imagination and to an epistemology that emptied the universe of its "correspondences," theosophy and pansophy reaffirmed the place of the microcosm in the macrocosm. Certainly, theosophy is not scientific, and pansophy has never gone beyond the project stage. Nevertheless, at this time, both of them appeared to many people as a promise, a hope, a new dawn of thought. Moreover, the poetic aspect of their discourse favored a copenetration of literature and science and by virtue of this contributed to the development of the popularization of science.
That is about all there is. There are relatively few names, but it is an important corpus (many of these authors were prolific). Besides Sperber, Van Helmont, Fludd, More, and of course Gutmann, we find that a majority of the names are those of persons who are "disciples" of Boehme. One notes, too, that with rare exceptions (for example, Robert Fludd) the theosophers did not write in Latin but in the vernacular, the mother tongue being more advantageous than Latin for the expression of visions and feelings. The same can be said of the "proto-theosophers," with the exception of Khunrath. And alongside mention of writings proper, it is appropriate to call attention to the existence of a rich theosophical iconography—a "theosophy of the image"—which Khunrath's Amphitheatrum had inaugurated in a particularly lavish and radiant way, and which is also found beautiftilly exemplified in Gichtel's 1682 edition of the complete works of Boehme. It is true that this period had beautiful esoteric images, a fact that is attested to by the numerous illustrated alchemical books published all throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. But this flourishing iconography did not survive at the end of the century; we must wait a hundred years to see its reappearance, again shining only for a short time (cf. infra, "Three Areas of the Theosophical Terrain"). Toward the end of the century, many philosophers and historians began to speak of theosophy, adopting an attitude of either acceptance or rejection. Two warrant our special attention, because of their very particular use of terminology and because of the substance of their works. The first, Ehregott Daniel Colberg (1659-1698), a Protestant minister from Greifswald, devoted himself to an attack on various spiritual currents in which he perceived a danger to the faith. The title of his book, Platonic-Hermetic Christianity . . . (published in 1690-91)17 manifests an explicit program in itself: his targets are Alexandrian hermetism, Paracelsus, Boehme, astrology, alchemy, pansophy, as well as mysticism in general. He believes he sees a common denominator in all of these, that is to say, the postulate that human beings, who are of divine origin, possess the faculty of self-cuvinizing through knowledge or appropriate exercises. If the word "theosophy" does not appear here, the idea is present, although it lacks precise contours; Colberg finds it exemplified in the writings of some authors (besides Paracelsus, Boehme, and Antoinette Bourignon), and also to have been integrated into neighboring currents; all this, when taken together, comprises a goodly portion of the esoteric terrain. Beyond the theosophers themselves, it was pietism that Colberg targeted, and beyond pietism, he saw mystical theology as problematic because the mystic deifies the human being. It was the theory of a new birth, conceived as the earthly regeneration of the human being, as opposed to the doctrine of imputation, which Colberg refuted. The new birth in Germany at least was the main idea not only in the writings of Boehme and Arndt, but also in those of pietists and theosophers of every persuasion. Widely read, Colberg's book was republished in 1710.
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The First Corpus and the First Critical Discourses By theosophical corpus of the seventeenth century, we understand an ensemble of texts which the theosophers themselves as well as nontheosophically oriented observers of the latter (historians, theologians) range under that heading. There is a list which is cited frequently, albeit with some variants regarding the names of authors; we also note that the words "theosophers" and "theosophy" are not always used. In any case, here I am providing a list of the seventeenth-century authors most frequently cited in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The names are arranged according to countries and the list is limited to mentioning only a single work written by each author. Besides Paracelsus and Weigel, often cited as being representatives of the theosophical current, and Boehme, whose name constantly recurs and whose works are known because of numerous editions and translations,16 we find, first of all, in Germany: Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710), Theosophia Practica (published in 1722, but written a long time previously); Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651-1689), Kuhlpsalter, 1677; Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714), Das Geheimnis der gbttlichen Sophia, 1700. Sometimes, the lists also include Aegidius Gutmann (1490-1584), Offenbahrung gbttlicher Majestat (cf. supra) and Julius Sperber (?—1616), Exemplarischer Beweiss, 1616. In Holland, we have Johann Baptist Van Helmont (1618-1699), The Paradoxical Discourses concerning the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, 1685. In England, there is Robert Fludd (1574-1637), Utriusque Cosmi Historia, 1617-26; John Pordage (1608-1681), Theologia Mystica, or the Mystic Divinitie of the Asternal Invisibles, 1683; and Jane Leade (1623-1704), The Laws of Paradise given forth by Wisdom to a Translated Spirit, 1695. Henry More (1614-1687), one of the Cambridge Neo-Platonists, is sometimes added to this list. Finally, in France, there is Pierre Poiret (16461719), L'Economie Divine, ou Systeme universel et demontre des ceuvres et des devoirs de Dieu envers les hommes, 1687; and Antoinette Bourignon (1616-1680), Oeuvres (edited by Pierre Poiret in 1679 and 1684).
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The Theosophical Current
The second historian is Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714), a theosopher himself (cf. supra) and the author of two histories. His monumental Impartial History of Sects and Heresies . . . , published in 1699-1700, bears a slightly misleading title since theosophy and many of the other trends Arnold deals with have nothing sectarian or heretical in them. This history was followed by another, entitled History and Description of Mystical Theology . . . (1703).18 In the first, the concept of theosophy is sympathetically presented along with a wealth of information (this great book remains an oft-consulted reference work on the subject of Western spiritual trends). It was something of a response to Colberg's book, which is occasionally cited, but with the difference that Arnold omits mention of certain esoteric currents, such as Neo-Alexandrian hermetism (although the 1703 volume devoted a few pages to the subject). The theosophers whom he treats are Boehme, Bourignon, Poiret, and Kuhlmann. A lengthy section of the work deals with the writings of Paracelsus and those of the Rosicrucians. In the second history (1703) he returns to Boehme at length, and also mentions Thomas Bromley, but like Colberg, he does not distinguish between these spiritual thinkers and mystics proper;19 although he justifies Boehme, he is not his disciple. That which he extols more than anything else is mystical theology, which according to him represents true Christianity. Besides, he rarely employs the term "theosophy" or "theosopher" in his first History, and in the second, he does not give it the same meaning it has for us here. Indeed, that meaning continued to be fluid until the end of the seventeenth century, and will always remain so. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, "theosopher" was employed perjoratively. Thus, for Johann Reuchlin it designated a decadent scholastic, and for Cornelius Agrippa, a theologian who is a prodigious maker of syllogisms.20 In his Theosophia, which appeared in many volumes from 1540 to 1553, Alabri (the pseudonymn of Johannes Arboreus) claims that part of religious teaching must be reserved for elites, but the title of this great book is deceptive because it turns out that his meaning of "theosophy" is practically synonymous with "theology."21 It is possible that 1575 is the date of the first use of theosophia in the sense with which we are dealing here: that year, a booklet of magic, Arbatel, was published at Pietro Perna's in Basel. It was to be reprinted many times and was often quoted. Here the term designates the notitia gubernationis per angelos and is associated with anthroposophiaP It was perhaps under the influence of Arbatel that Heinrich Khunrath used the term theosophia a few years later, thereby becoming chiefly responsible for the use of the word to designate the literature with which we are concerned. In fact, he had the term figure significantly in no less than two of his works. From the time of the first edition (1595) of his Amphitheatrum, even the title is signed: "Instructore Henricus Khunrath Lips, Theosophiae Amator."
And in Vom Hyleatischen . . ., a work which appeared a short time later (1597), he even explained what he meant by it: it is a question of a meditative activity, of the oratory, and distinct from alchemical activity proper, of the laboratory, but for him one cannot exist without the other.23 Accordingly, he declared that he was speaking as a theosopher, and one can see that his Amphitheatrum, dedicated to Divine Wisdom, would almost certainly have caught Boehme's attention. At this time—1595, 1597—the theosophical current proper had not yet been born, and was only on the verge of appearing, but soon "theosophy" would seem sufficiently adequate to its representatives to begin assigning it the meaning that Khunrath intended, which they did increasingly on account of the influence of the numerous reprints of the Amphitheatrum. Besides, the term magia divina, which was still a rival for theosophia (for instance, in Bruno, Patrizi, Godelman), had a more dubious ring than the latter, at least in Germany. Therefore, theosophia would be preferred, from the first decade of the seventeenth century on, thereby being accepted once again, after having fallen into near oblivion for centuries. But now it was laden with a more specific connotation than in the past, although its use in a more vague sense still persisted.24 In any case, around 1608-10, Khunrath's meaning was being used more and more, although some people still persisted in using the term in a less specific sense. While it is not found in the proto-Rosicrucian writings (Fama Fraternitatis, 1614; Confessio, 1615; and Chymische Hochzeit, 1616), it appears under the pen of Adam Haslmayr in his "Response" (1612) to the "Laudable Fraternity of the Theosophers of the Rosy-Cross." And Johann Valentin Andreae (15861654), the primary founding father of the Rosicrucian adventure, uses it later—for example, in his Utopian Christianopolis (1619), in which he imagines many "auditoriums," one of which is reserved for metaphysics, meant to serve as a place for theosophia, presented here as a higher "contemplation" directed toward "the divine Will, the service of the angels, [and] the pure air of fire." This does not prevent Andreae from conferring a very perjorative connotation on the word "theosophy" every now and then in some of his other writings.25 But it is all the more interesting to observe similar fluctations of meaning in a single author—Andreae in this case—because the beginning of the seventeenth century proved to be an altogether decisive moment in the history of the word. We should not be surprised that the word rarely appears, despite Khunrath's influence, in the writing of Boehme, who moreover gave it a limited meaning: "I do not write in the pagan manner, but in the theosophical," he wrote, so as to make it quite clear that he was not conflating Nature with God. It is nevertheless his works which would powerfully contribute to spread the use of the word after Khunrath; this is on account of the title of some of the more important ones, but these titles appear to have been chosen more by the editors than by the author himself.26
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Theosophies
When Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-54) by Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) appeared, the word "theosophy" was already found to be well-imbued with this new meaning, thanks to Khunrath and to the editions of Boehme's books. However, the Jesuit father was not much interested in modern Germanic theosophy and far more interested in the esoteric thought of the Ancients, to part of which—without doing violence to it—he assigned the word "theosophy": a very important section of this enormous work is entitled "Metaphysical Theosophy or Hieroglyphic Theology."27 Kircher deals with the metaphysics of the Egyptians, the Corpus Hermeticum, Neo-Platonism. And so, in a work which was able to find a large and enduring audience, Kircher once again gave the word one of its most generally accepted ancient meanings, that of divine metaphysics. Later, other publishers of Boehme contributed to the fashion of using the word "theosophy" to refer to the current. Thus we have Gichtel, who entitled his edition of the complete works: Des Gottseligen (. . .) Jacob Bbhmens (. . .) Alle Theosophische Werken (Amsterdam, 1682), and that of the correspondence: Erbauliche Theosophische Sendschreiben (1700-1701). Around that time appeared a Clavicula Salomonis et Theosophia Pneumatica (Duisburg and Frankfurt, 1685), edited by A. Luppius and inspired by the book Arbatel. It comes as no surprise that Daniel Georg Morhof (1639-1691), an author with esoteric leanings and a historian of literature and professor of oratory and poetry at Kiel, employed the word "theosophy" following Gichtel's meaning. More favorably disposed toward esotericism than the latter, Morhof dedicated a dozen pages in his Polyhistor (1688) to "mystical and secret books" whose authors he divided into three categories: theosophers, prophets, and magicians. The first teach divine and hidden things about God, spirits, demons, and ceremonies; the Ancients also call these authors "theurgists." Hermes, Pythagoras, Iamblichus, PseudoDionysius, Boehme, and Paracelsus are included in this category, as are Jewish Kabbalists ("Hebrews called their theosophical books 'Kabbalah,'" he wrote). The second category is represented by those endowed with the ability to predict the future, like certain astrologers or Nostradamus. The third is represented by Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Johann Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa, Guillaume Postel, Thomas Campanella, and the magnetisers and alchemists.28 Nevertheless, in Colberg's Platonic-hermetic Christianity and in Arnold's great History (cf. supra), the word is almost never used.29 However, in his second history Arnold devoted a heading to it: "Was Theosophia sey?" ("What is theosophy?"). As for what is meant by true theology, he wrote, the word "theosophy" corresponds to the "Wisdom of God" or "Wisdom which comes from God"; this "secret theology" (geheime Gottesgelehrtheit) is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Arnold cited the use of the word in that sense by PseudoDionysius ("the Trinity is the overseer of Christian theosophy or the Wisdom of God"), and commented that some Protestant theologians are not afraid of
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using it30—of course, in the sense of good theology. This is a far cry from the meaning used by Morhof. II. T H E TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (FIRST HALF OF T H E E I G H T E E N T H CENTURY) Two Theosophical Families
In the first half of the eighteenth century a second corpus was constituted, once again primarily in Germanic countries. This continuity of theosophy was favored by the same factors that were enumerated above with respect to the beginning of the seventeenth century, because the same questions, in different forms, continued to be asked on philosophical, political, and religious levels. During the course of this period theosophical output was characterized by two main tendencies. (1) There was a tendency that appears to qualify as traditional in that it is closely akin to the original Boehmean current. It was represented notably by the Swabian Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), whose first book was dedicated to Boehme (Aufmunternde Griinde zur Lesung der Schriften Jacob Bbhmens, 1731) and whose theosophical production for the most part overflowed the period (cf. infra, "Three Areas"). Then there was also the English Boehmean, William Law (1686-1761), the author of An Appeal to All that doubt, The Spirit of Prayer, 1749, 1750, and The Way to Divine Knowledge, 1752. A German who had emigrated to England, Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649-1728) proved to be one of Boehme's most inspired interpreters (Freher's writings and translations into English were reprinted from 1699 to 1720). This was also the period when Gichtel's Theosophia Practica (1722), a fundamental theosophical work, appeared. Le Mystere de la Croix (1736) by the German Douzetemps was published, and so was Explication de la Genese (1738) by the Swiss Hector de SaintGeorges de Marsais (1688-1755), who was akin to spiritual thinkers from the city of Berlebourg (the famous Bible of Berlebourg is an edition of the Bible that is rich in theosophical and quietist commentaries). (2) The second was a tendency of the "magical" type, Paracelsian and alchemical in orientation, that was represented by four German authors: Georg von Welling (alias Salwigt, 1655-1727), Opus mago-theosophicum et cabbalisticum (1719, reprinted several times); A. J. Kirchweger (?-1746), Aurea Catena Homeri (1723); Samuel Richter (alias Sincerus Renatus), Theo-Philosophica Theoretica et Practica (1711); and Hermann Fictuld, Aureum Vellus (1749). With few exceptions, the theosophy of these two tendencies no longer has the nature of the visionary outpouring that characterized the theosophy of the beginning of the seventeenth century and which is also found in Gichtel. Of course we are dealing with some theosophizing speculations about Scripture
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and Nature, but this dampened theosophy, more intellectual in character, albeit "globalizing," hardly springs forth from a Zentralschau ("central vision"). In the work of theosophers in the periods that followed, this new corpus would serve less as a reference than would that of the periods which preceded it.
"some people, sometimes philosophers, sometimes theologians, who traffic with I don't know which mysteries and hidden things, give themselves the name theosophers." He then recalled the tripartite division proposed by Morhoff (cf. supra, "The First Corpus") and added that it is pointless to call them "theosophers," since if they are telling some truths, these are in agreement with Scripture, and we find the same truths in those who are called theologians. If they are not telling the truth, they are producing vain things and are not philosophers at all and even less "theosophers"; they are only selling smoke.34 Later, he cited some titles (not only names): Fludd (Philosophia Moysaica and Utriusque Cosmi Historia), Gutmann (Offenbahrung gbttlicher Majestat), and Kuhlmann (Der neubegeisterte Bohme). These authors, just as others of the same family, are enveloped in the shadows and are hiding, said Buddeus, more than they are illuminating Nature's secrets!35
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Some Succinct Criticisms A series of historical and critical discourses on theosophy, whether defending it or condemning it, assured its recognition in the fields of philosophy and of spirituality. We have already seen that Colberg (an adversary) and Arnold (an advocate) opened the way for this. Here we present three of those new discourses, the most important and interesting among them being those of Gentzken, Buddeus, and Brucker. For Friedrich Gentzken (Historia Philosophiae, 1724)31 it is Paracelsus who was at the origin of the current of "mystical philosophy and theosophy" (the author does not seem to make much of a distinction between these two terms), which took its inspiration from Kabbalah, magic, astrology, chemistry, theology, and mysticism. Its representatives certainly had a good "theosophical" attitude in that they professed that we are not able to obtain this special "wisdom" (sophia) of which they speak, without a special illumination, but their discourse is a chaos of truly fantastic things. Gentzken enumerates the theosophers: Weigel, the Rosicrucians, Gutmann, Boehme, J. B. Van Helmont, Fludd, and Kuhlmann. These are people who are guided by an uncontrolled imagination (tumultuaria imaginatio) and they do not agree among themselves. However, they do hold four points in common: (a) the theosopher claims to know the nature of everything better than ordinary mortals; he or she believes they understand the virtues of hidden things and call this "natural magic"; (b) he or she claims to be a genuine astrologer, one who knows how to scry the influence of the stars on our earth; (c) he or she pretends to know how to fabricate the true seed of metals in order to transform them into gold, to prepare the universal elixir; (d) he or she holds that there are three parts in the human being: the body, the soul, and the spirit.32 This development calls for two remarks. On the one hand, the names cited are precisely those of a corpus already recognized as such, in spite of the fact that the Rosicrucians were only related to it via pansophy. On the other hand, of the four common denominators proposed by Gentzken only the first could actually be applied to theosophy. The second and third are not relevant since theosophy is not necessarily astrological or alchemical, and the fourth is much too limiting to be validly retained. Johann Franciscus Buddeus (1667-1729), professor of philosophy at Halle and then of theology at Jena, and a thinker with a close affinity to pietism, talked about theosophers in his book Isagoge (1727).33 He wrote that
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Jacob Brucker, or the First Systematic Description Jacob Brucker (1696-1770), a pastor of Augsburg, can rightly be called the founder of the modern history of philosophy. One can only regret that the vast majority of his successors (the historians of philosophy) did not make a place for esoteric currents in the way that he did until the twentieth century. Brucker wrote two histories of philosophy, one in German (Kurtze Fragen, 1730-36) and the other in Latin (Historia critica Philosophiae, 1742—44). Destined to have great success, both served as reference tools for several generations. Never before had theosophy been made the object of such lengthy and systematic treatments as those which are found in these two treatises. Theosophy is in good company in these works, presented alongside other great currents in the field of esotericism such as hermetism, the Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, and Paracelsism. Taken as a whole, the chapters Brucker devoted to these currents constitute a general, rather detailed (although negative and tendentious) presentation of ancient and modern esotericism. In any case, his was the first that was so wide-ranging. Brucker established the distinction between those whom he called theosophers, and the "restorers of Pythagorean-PlatonicKabbalistic philosophy"36 such as Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Reuchlin, Giorgi, Patrizi, Thomas Gale, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. According to Brucker, the theosophical corpus is primarily comprised of the works of Paracelsus, Weigel, Fludd, Jacob Boehme, the two Van Helmonts, Poiret, and incidentally Gerhard Dorn, Gutmann, and Khunrath. T o these authors, Rosicrucianism can be added. Essentially, Brucker's indictment was the same as Colberg's: theosophers posit the existence of an "interior principle" (inwendiges Principium) in human beings, a principle that comes from the divine essence, or from the ocean of infinite light. Brucker said that theosophers oppose this emanation, which penetrates like an influx into the depths of the
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Theosophies
human soul, to "reason" (Vernunft), to which they assign an inferior position, only a little superior to "understanding" (Verstand). They occasionally make use of the word "reason," but unfortunately by reason they mean neither the knowledge of the truth which begins from natural principles, nor the virtue by means of which one knows this truth. Brucker reproached Paracelsus for having been the first to propagate this idea of the "illuminating principle" through which human beings claim to be directly connected with the Naturgeist (the Spirit of Nature). According to Paracelsus and the theosophers, if one knows how to use this "principle" which is in us, it becomes possible to penetrate this "Spirit of Nature," thereby opening all of its mysteries to our illuminated knowledge. And Brucker cited "one of the most celebrated and elegant" among these theosophers, to wit Boehme, and what he wrote in Aurora?1 The theosophers have a heated imagination and for the most part, a melancholic temperament. Claiming to possess an understanding of the most profound mysteries of Nature, they make a strong case for magic, chemistry, astrology, and other sciences of this kind, which they say open the doors of Nature, and they call "Kabbalah" divine philosophy which they believe the secret and very ancient Tradition of Wisdom. While searching for grace by means of the mediation of Nature and of their "interior principle," they mix Nature and grace, a direct and an indirect revelation.38 Brucker reproached them for showing themselves to be generally ignorant of the history of philosophy. Except for Franziskus Mercurius Van Helmont, they do not even know the true Kabbalah.39 Having a systematic mind himself, Brucker also complained that one could not find any doctrinal unity among the theosophers ("there are as many theosophical systems as there are theosophers")40 but only some common characteristics. These are: (a) emanation, as in Neo-Platonism: everything emanates from a divine substance and must return to this center; (b) the quest for an immediate revelation of the soul by the Holy Spirit and not by philosophical reason (the healthy reason of the Aristotelian type, the kind that Brucker preferred); (c) signatures, which are the image of the divine substance in all things; one knows creatures starting from God, one recognizes them in God; (d) the idea that a universal spirit (Weltgeist) resides in all things; (e) the use of signatures and of this universal spirit for magical ends; that is, with the aim of penetrating the mysteries of Nature, of acting on it and commanding the spirits (i.e., magical astrology, alchemy, theurgy, etc.); and (f) the tripartite division of the human being (divine spark, astral spirit, and body).41 Brucker recognized that, contrary to the followers of Spinoza, theosophers do not conflate God and the world,42 but for all that, they are no less aphilosophoi; their theosophy is an asophia.^ A few years after Brucker's book, Diderot's Encyclopedie devoted a twentysix-page entry to Theosophie. Essentially, as Jean Fabre has shown, the author—
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that is, Diderot himself—plagiarizes Brucker.44 Be that as it may, he does so with a great deal of talent, in a style which contrasts with the heavy Latin of his model, but he is clearly less precise than Brucker. This article deals mostly with Paracelsus, and moreover, approvingly (probably this strange, wandering, and genial figure of a physician appealed to him); Diderot disdains and ridicules Boehme, and only mentions five other names: Sperber, Fludd, Pordage, Kuhlmann, and J. B. Van Helmont. The mere presence of theosophy in the Encyclopedie is all the more interesting as the word does not seem to appear in other dictionaries of this period. Nonetheless, the word "theosophy" enjoyed popularization around the same time that the critical works were making their first appearance. As proof, we have only to consider the titles of "serious" treatises such as those of Welling, Sincerus Renatus (cf. supra), and J. F. Helvetius (Monarchia arcanorum theosophica, 1709), or more easily accessible and popular ones, such as Theosophie Room of the Marvels of the Superterrestrial King Magniphosaurus very much enamoured of the Incomparable Beauty of Queen Juno (1709), or even Theosophie Meditations of the Heart, written by the grandfather of Goethe's princely friend.45 By giving his edition of Boehme's complete works a title that includes the word "theosophie" (cf. supra, "The First Corpus"), Gichtel himself may well have played a part in the success of the term as we understand it or in reference, more vaguely, to a host of esoteric ideas. Johann Otto Gliising and Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld followed in this vein in producing new editions of the Boehmean corpus under the similar, but more eye-catching title of Theosophia Revelata. Das ist: Alle Gbttliche Schriften des Gottseligen und Hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Jacob Bbhmens (1715). This author, so important in the development of the theosophical current, was presented by the translator of Der Weg zu Christo (The Way to Christ) (1722), as the "Teutonic Theo-Philosopher," and a subsequent German printing of the same book was entitled Theosophisches Handbuch (1730), that is, Theosophical Handbook. A short while later, in Herrnhut, the Moravian Brothers sometimes used the term "theosophy" in a positive sense. Similarly, around 1751, N. L. Zinzendorfs son, Christian Renatus, as Pierre Deghaye tells us, invoked "holy theosophy" in a religious choral where he saw it "smiling in the Urim which symbolizes light on the breast of the priest." Christian Renatus wrote: "Komm heilige Theosophie,/die aus dem Urim lacht." Here, it stood for gnosis, or the equivalent of what Oetinger called "sacred philosophy."46 Zinzendorf himself used the word in a positive sense, for "theology": he then went on to speak of theologische Theosophie. T o this he opposed "another theosophy," a questionable one to be sure, but nonetheless more intelligent, which Pierre Deghaye locates in the wake of the Kabbalah and of Boehme.47
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III. FROM PRE-ROMANTICISM T O ROMANTICISM, OR T H E SECOND GOLDEN AGE Reasons for the Revival After a fifty-year period of latency, interrupted only by Swedenborg's writings (cf. infra), theosophy once again sprang into life during the 1770s and experienced a second Golden Age, which lasted until the mid-nineteenth century. Of course, such a renewal was connected with the recrudescence of all forms of esotericism, not a surprising occurrence in a period that was simultaneously optimistic and uneasy, enterprising and meditative, and which displayed two contrary yet complementary faces: the Eruightenment and the light of the illuminists. Nevertheless, there are some very specific factors that can at least partly account for this renewal. First, we see the increasing importance in spirituality that was given to the idea of the "interior" or "invisible" Church, that is to say, to the intimate experience of the believer, independent of any confessional framework: Man does not find God in the temple but in his heart, which was often understood as an organ of knowlege. Second, we find a widespread interest in the problem of Evil, more generally in the myth of the fall and reintegration, in which one can see the great romantic myth par excellence.48 That myth was explicated through secularized art forms and in political projects, as well as in theosophical discussions. Many Masonic or paraMasonic organizations became intent on building the New Jerusalem or reconstructing Solomon's temple. Third, we see an interest in the sciences on the part of an increasingly wide public. On the one hand, Newtonian physics had indeed encouraged speculations of a holistic type, more and more concerned with the polarities that exist in Nature—the main business being here to reconcile science and knowledge. On the other hand, experimental physics was popularized and introduced into the salons, in the form of picturesque experiments with electricity and with magnetism that were well suited for stimulating the imagination, because they hinted at the existence of a life or a fluid that traverses all the material realms. Eclecticism is inseparable from this third factor, and it is a trait that also characterized the preceding era, which was already fond of curious things—of curiosa—since they were concerned to harmonize the givens of knowledge. But in the second half of the century, eclecticism once again took on still more varied forms: people become more and more interested in the Orient (which became better known through translations), in ancient Egypt and its mysteries, in Pythagoreanism, in the ancient religions, and so on; and this, of course, outside the very field of esotericism proper. Three Areas of the Theosophical Terrain Within the theosophie scene that stretches over these eight-odd decades, one can distinguish three relatively different areas that overlap on more than one side.
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First (this presentation, however, is not chronological) is the area occupied by some authors located in the wake of the seventeenth century, that is to say, authors who are more or less Boehmean in outlook, even if they do not all claim allegiance with him. With the exception of Martines de Pasqually, and every so often Saint-Martin, Eckartshausen, or Jung-Stilling in their better moments, one no longer finds in these works the same prophetic and creative inspiration that infused the writings of Boehme, Gichtel, Kuhlmann, and Jane Leade. Essentially, here we are dealing with writers in whom speculative thought prevails over the expression of inner experience. The Frenchman Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803) somehow inaugurated the renaissance of theosophy with his first book, Des erreurs et de la verite (1775), partly inspired by the teachings of his master, Martines de Pasqually (1727-1774). The latter, a Portuguese or Spanish theosopher and theurgist and author of Traite de la Reintegration des Etres cries dans leur primitives proprietes, vertus et puissances spirituelles divines (which remained unpublished until 1899, although it had considerable influence, whether direct or indirect), had initiated Saint-Martin into his Order of Elect-Cohens around 1765. Thereafter, Saint-Martin wrote his Tableau naturel des rapports qui unissent Dieu, l'homme et Vunivers (1781), and then discovered Boehme's work during the years 1788-91—writings that neither he nor Pasqually had known. Henceforth, he occupied himself with being an interpreter of Boehme, by means of the translations that he made into French and by his own works, which were always original nonetheless (L'Homme de desir, 1790; Le Ministere de I'hommeesprit, 1802; De I 'esprit des choses, 1802; etc.). These works were not merely the productions of an epigone, but of a thinker in his own right, who can justly be considered the most inspired and the most powerful theosopher in the French language. Among the other great writers, let us recall some here, along with the titles of their major works. In France, Jean-Philippe Dutoit-Membrini (alias Keleph Ben Nathan, 1721-1793) wrote La Philosophie Divine, appliquee aux lumieres naturelle, magique, astrale, surnaturelle, celeste, et divine (1793), a book that owed little to Boehme and even less to Saint-Martin. In Germany, where several books by Saint-Martin were translated (paradoxically, it was the French translations of Boehme's work that were instrumental in the Germans' rediscovery of the latter, to the point that his influence on German romanticism would become significant), seven names come to the fore. There was Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803), a native of Munich, who wrote many books, among which some of the most beautiful were published posthumously: Die Wolke iiber dem Heiligthum, 1802; Uber die Zauberkrafte der Natur, 1819; and Ueber die wichtigsten Mysterien der Religion, 182 3. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817), in Marburg: Blicke in die Geheimnisse der Naturweisheit, 1787. Frederic-Rodolphe Salzmann (1749— 1821), in Strasbourg: Alles wird neu werden, 1802-12, and the Swabian, Michael
22
Theosophies
Hahn (1758-1819), with his Betrachtungen (1820-26). Yet the two most important authors writing in the German language were most assuredly Friedrich Christoph Oetinger and Franz von Baader. We have already encountered Oetinger (1702-1782) in our survey of the previous epoch. One sees him not only as one of the "fathers" of Swabian pietism (like Albrecht Bengel), but also as one of the principal German theosophers of his century. He was also the most erudite. He was a commentator on various works both theosophical (such as the writings of Boehme and Swedenborg) and Kabbalistic (e.g., Lehrtafel [der] Prinzessin Antonia, 1763), the outstanding precursor of Natur philosophie (with its theosophical propensity), and a remarkable popularizer of esoteric ideas (e.g., Biblisches und Emblematisches Wbrterbuch, 1776). His complete works were published in 1858 (cf. infra, "The Word 'Theosophy"') under the title Theosophische Schriften, in Stuttgart. Subsequently, and at least equally important, we have Franz von Baader (1765-1841), a native of Munich, who stands out among all of the nineteenthcentury theosophers as the best commentator on Boehme and Saint-Martin, and who was the major representative (along with Schelling) of romantic Naturphilosophie, and finally, the most powerful and original thinker of them all. His works appeared first as numerous scattered short pieces from 1798 to 1841, which were later integrated and republished by one of his closest disciples, Franz Hoffmann (1804-1881) in the form of complete works (1851-60). Among Baader's other disciples were Julius Hamberger (1801-1884), the author of Gott und reine Offenbarungen in Natur und Geschichte (1839) and Physica Sacra (1869), and Rudolf Rocholl (Beitrage zu einer Geschichte deutscher Theosophie, 1856). Appearing in the midst of this congregation were a few female characters whose writings were permeated with theosophy and who established relationships and played the part of inspiratrice among various members and groups of this theosophical family. Thus we have Bathilde d'Orleans, duchess of Bourbon (17501822), and Julie de Kriidener (1764-1824). While they do not possess the powerful visionary capacities of a Jane Leade or an Antoinette Bourignon, they nevertheless testify to the presence of female theosophers in the romantic context. If the Roman Catholic Baader can rightly be taken as an accomplished example of theosophy and pansophy within the German romantic Naturphilosophie, some other writers representative of the latter have shown that they, too, were influenced by theosophy and pansophy.49 This family of Naturphilosophen is exemplified by some celebrated people: Friedrich von Hardenberg (alias Novalis, 1722-1801); Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810); Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert (1780-1860); Carl Gustav Cams (1789-1869); Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768-1852); Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829); Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887); and Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772-1849). As a matter of fact, the romantic Naturphilosophie has features that connect it, if
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23
not directly to theosophy, at least to the project of pansophy; namely, (a) a conception of Nature viewed as a text which must be deciphered with the help of correspondences; (b) a taste for the idea of living concreteness and the postulate of a living universe, having several levels of reality; (c) the affirmation of an identity between Spirit and Nature. The second area of this theosophical terrain is original for at least two reasons: first, it can be summed up by evoking the name of a single author; second, it seems to owe nothing to the theosophy which preceded it or which was contemporaneous with it. The author in question is the Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a learned scientist and renowned inventor who, one day in 1745, interrupted his properly scientific activities on account of dreams and visions that came to him quite suddenly and transformed his inner life. Henceforth, he gave himself up to the study of Holy Scripture and wrote Arcana ccelestia (1745-58), followed by many other books (e.g., De Nova Hierosolyma, 1758; Apocalypsis revelata, 17'66; Apocalypsis explicata, 1785-89; etc.) All of this work was written prior to the period under discussion here; however, it began to spread throughout Europe and America from the 1770s on in the form of innumerable translations, abridged versions, and commentaries which, together with the writings of Swedenborg himself, comprised a new type of referential corpus that would henceforth be widely utilized. If one considers the three aforementioned main features of this current (cf. supra, "The Characteristics of Theosophy") as it was born at the beginning of the seventeenth century (viz., the triangle God-Man-Nature, the preeminence of the mythical, and the idea of direct access to the higher worlds), we find they are certainly present in Swedenborg's work. However, Swedenborg's theosophy distinguishes itself because of one essential trait: with him the mythical is almost entirely devoid of dramatic elements: the fall, the reintegration, the idea of transmutation, new birth, or the fixation of the spirit in a body of light; that is, the alchemical dimension, so omnipresent in theosophy, is almost absent from his visionary conception. Here we find ourselves in a universe interconnected by innumerable correspondences, but finally, in a universe which is rather quiet, static, and above all lacking in hierarchical complexity or intermediaries. In this respect, we can say that Swedenborg is not much of a gnostic. Sophia is absent, and angels can be merely the souls of the deceased. One can see that what is different here is the repertoire. While reading Swedenborg, one often has the impression that one is meandering through a garden rather than participating in a tragedy. But this and "reassuring" theosophy promptly met with tremendous success. Later, in his Opuscules theosophiques (1822), Jean-Jacques Bernard would attempt to unite Swedenborg's thought with Saint-Martin's theosophy, after admirers of Swedenborg, such as Edouard Richer, and then Le Boys des Guays (1794-1864), and
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formerly Dom Pernety (1716-1796), and many others had contributed to disseminating it. Still more than the other theosophical "areas," it influenced the works of writers such as Baudelaire, Balzac, and so on. The third theosophical area is occupied by a number of initiatory societies. Admittedly, these do little more than transmit the theosophy of both of the previous areas, at least in part, and they do it through rituals or through the instructions that accompany the rituals. It is well known that the last third of the eighteenth century witnessed a rapid proliferation of initiatory organizations, particularly Masonic rites of higher grades (i.e., those that include grades higher than the three conventional Masonic grades: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason). Besides the Order of the Elect-Cohens (mentioned in passing, supra), several of the more important ones should be mentioned here: the Rectified Scottish Order (much influenced by the theosophy of Martines de Pasqually and Saint-Martin), which was created in Lyons around 1768 byJean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824), a close friend of Saint-Martin's. This Regime propagated itself throughout Europe and Russia. There was also the Order of the Gold and Rosy Cross, constituted around 1777 in Germany, and inspired by alchemical and Rosicrucian ideas and the Brethren of the Cross, a rite founded by C. A. H. Haugwitz, also around 1777; the Asiatic Brethren, created around 1779 by Heinrich von Ecker- und Eckhoffen; the order of "Illuminated Theosophers," born around 1783 (of a Swedenborgian type), important in Great Britain and the United States; and the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, created in France, around 1801. A complete list would be long. The activity of these higher grade Masonic Rites was not limited to the Masonic work proper, but would sometimes include editorial projects as well. Thus, in Russia, the Mason Nicolas Novikov (1744-1818) had many books of theosophy translated which he published, while in Germany the Order of the Gold and Rosy Cross did the same. Their press issued the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreutzer, a superb book of "theosophy through images," which was published in 1785-86 in Altona.
those "detractors of human understanding," that is, "R. Lull, Paracelsus, Fludd, Jacob Boehme, J. B. Van Helmont, and Poiret," people one ought to "treat like diseased persons rather than as votaries (sectaires)."50 In a long poem entitled Theosophie des Julius (1784), Friedrich Schiller used the term in an imprecise way, which in any case bore no reference to the theosophical current.51 In 1786, J. G. StoWs's Judgement on Theosophy, Kabbah and Magick, was published; it is a superficial text, yet still bears witness to the fashionable nature of the term itself.52 Nevertheless, some authors, such as Henri Coqueret (Theosophie ou science de Dieu, 1803), still used the term as though it were synonomous with "theology," while Friedrich Schlegel quoted it very often in various notes dated from 1800 to 1804, with meanings that are difficult to decipher, but which are generally connected with the idea of "knowledge of a higher order."53 At the same time appeared an anonymous essay, entitled "Recherches sur la doctrine des theosophes" (published in 1807 in Saint-Martin's Oeuvres Postbumes).5* Written "by one of the friends" of the author, it was originally intended to serve as an introduction to those posthumous works.55 Given Saint-Martin's influence throughout romanticism, this text would require a deeper study. Theosophy, we are told, "was born with Man," and if the theosopher, inspired by "true desire" is first of all "a friend of God and Wisdom," the author specified nonetheless that this quest remains "founded on the relationship that exists between God, Man, and the Universe"— a God who is that of the Christians.56 Moreover, it provided an insight into the referential corpus of this "doctrine":
The Word "Theosophy" and a Few Criticisms
These remarks are followed by a long passage from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (chapter VII), quotations from Pythagorean texts and from Jacob Boehme, and comments indicating a laudative appreciation of Indian religious texts.58 A short time later, in 1810, in a book that enjoyed a wide and lasting audience (De I'Allemagne), Madame de Stael recalled the necessary distinction between the "theosophers; that is, those who are engaged in philosophical theology, such as Jacob Boehme, Saint-Martin, and so on, and mere mystics; the first attempt to penetrate the secrets of creation; the second are satisfied with their own hearts."59 And in his Opuscules theosophiques, Jean-Jacques Bernard thanked Madame de Stael for having cast "an approving glance at the
24
The time of plentiful critical disquisitions seemed to be finished, but here and there, judgments were still being passed. With respect to vocabulary, although the word "theosophy" had by this time sufficiently taken root so that it meant the current we are presenting in this volume, its uses nevertheless remained subject to variations. One fact to be noted is that theosophers themselves used the term sparingly, at least up until the middle of the nineteenth century. What follows here are some selected characteristic examples. In his De la Philosophie de la Nature (1769), Delisle de Sales quoted the word "theosophy," employing it in its already classical sense in order to castigate
25
Parmi les ouvrages de ces Theosophes, on remarque ceux de Rosencreuz, Reuchlin, Agrippa, Frangois Georges, Paracelse, Pic de la Mirandole, Valentin Voigel [sic], Thomassius, les deux Vanhelmont, Adam Boreil, Bcehemius or Boheme, Poiret, Quirinus [sic], Kulman, Zuimerman, Bacon, Henri Morus, Pordage, Jeanne Le'ade, Leibnitz, Swedenburg, Martinez de Pasqualis, St. Martin, etc?1
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theosophical doctrine—thereby proving that she was able to appreciate it."60 The said Opuscules are a collection of texts written by Bernard, who frequently quotes Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, and Joseph de Maistre. The latter also spoke of Saint-Martin, whom he saw as "the most learned, wise and elegant of modern theosophers," in his Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, which had been published in 1822.61 If the word "theosophy" is seldom to be found in Baader's writings,62 his immediate disciples made wide use of it. Above all, Friedrich von OstenSacken, in a long presentation of Baader and Saint-Martin, wrote that "the theosophie current constitutes the golden thread stretching alongside the speculation of understanding, that traverses the history of modern philosophy, from the time of the Reformation." Modern philosophy, even the Hegelian type, is not capable of seizing the depths of Spirit and Nature; only theosophy can revive speculation—an undertaking that had already been attempted by Boehme—and thus to Baader "is due the merit of having brought theosophy back to a precise principle of knowledge and thereby given it a firm foundation."63 Franz Hoffman, whom we have already quoted, also used the term "theosophy," but in a vaguer sense.64 Julius Hamberger-—another close disciple (cf. supra)—published an anthology entided Voices From the Sanctuary of Christian Mysticism and Theosophy6* in 1857, in which he presented, as announced in the title, texts from both tendencies, but without trying to distinguish one from the other theoretically. The book of Rudolf Rocholl (a more indirect disciple), Contributions to a History of German Theosophy,66 also attested to the vogue of the word for describing this current from the middle of the nineteenth century. In his book, Rocholl much discussed the Jewish Kabbalah, and while citing the Christian Kabbalah (e.g., Pico, Reuchlin) indirectly touched on modern esotericism (i.e., Agrippa, Paracelsus, Boehme, Gutmann, Scleus, Baader) in enthusiastic terms. It was also at this time that Oetinger's complete works were published in the form of a double series, one of which was precisely entitled Theosophical Writings, and that a high Masonic grade, that of "Theosopher Knight," appeared in the Rite of Memphis.67 IV. EFFACEMENT AND PERMANENCE (END OF T H E N I N E T E E N T H T O T W E N T I E T H CENTURIES) Factors in the Dissolution During the second half of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century, the so-called occult movement appeared, which sought to combine into one single worldview the findings of experimental science and the occult sciences cultivated since the Renaissance. The movement also wanted to demonstrate the emptiness of materialism. Its domain essentially remained
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that of the "second causes," but its propensity for eclecticism caused it to touch on a number of different fields, including the various branches of eso^ tericism, particularly theosophy and pansophy. This is why the boundary between occultism and theosophy is sometimes fluid—but only sometimes. This is the case with Barlet (the pseudonymn of Albert' Faucheux, 1838-1921) and Papus (the pseudonymn of Gerard Encausse, 1875-1916). This is also why some initiatic societies with truly theosophical inspiration flourished, albeit in limited numbers, in the heart of this occultist current; for example, the Martinist order, which Papus founded in 1891 (he also devoted one work to Martines de Pasqually and another to Saint-Martin). As its name indicates, this order was inspired by Saint-Martin and in that sense it was also close to the Rectified Scottish Rite (cf. supra), which had always been and continues to be widely practiced in Freemasonry. Extending beyond the domain of occultism strictly speaking,•the quest for one "Primordial Tradition" overarching all the other traditions of humanity was favored by a better knowledge of the Orient and by the appearance of comparative religions in the universities; in the last part of the nineteenth century, this quest for a "mother Tradition" became an obsession among a number of representatives of esotericism. It carries the risk of causing one to turn away from the privileged attachment to one tradition or a particular myth on which one could exercise the creative imagination. At the same time that this partiality toward universality developed, the theosophical current dried up. Guenonism, that is to say the thought of Rene Guenon (1886-1951), and the numerous discourses that it has inspired ever since, played a role here—a role that cannot be overemphasized. Guenon himself was not interested in the Western theosophical corpus (were it only because of its Germanic roots) nor in the various forms of Western hermeticism. But Guenonian thought has become synonymous with esotericism in the minds of rather many people. T o the best of my knowledge, the single text in which Guenon portrayed modern Western theosophy in positive terms consists of only four lines and is found in a book which, as it turns out, undertakes the radical demolition of the Theosophical Society.68 Obviously, in that book the traditional theosophical current only served as a foil: Guenon almost never mentioned it anywhere else, and probably did not know a great deal about it. The birth of the Theosophical Society was contemporaneous with that of the occultist current into which this Society plunges part of its roots. According to the wishes of its founders (H. P. Blavatsky, 1831-1891; H. S. Olcott, 18321907; and W. Q. Judge, 1851-1896), it responded to a triple goal: (a) to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood; (b) to encourage the study of all religions, of philosophy, and of science; and (c) to study the laws of Nature as well as the various psychic abilities of human beings. The T.S. does not have, any more than the theosophical current examined here, an official doctrine to which
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its members are supposed to subscribe (although what H. P. B. called "theosophy" really designates a doctrine that was elaborated in the 1880s and 1890s). Nevertheless, there are some notable differences, underscored by the three points that have been enumerated. As its name69 and point a (supra) indicate, this is a formally constituted society. It places itself outside all religions (and therefore, outside the three Abrahamic religions), not only beyond the confessional framework of formal religions (although point b [supra] speaks only of encouraging the study of religions). Finally, it is limited, at least theoretically (point c), to the "second causes." This said, such a huge program of an absolutely universal eclecticism (e.g., the major works it has created, starting with those of H. P. Blavatsky herself, testify to a propensity to integrate all forms of religious and esoteric traditions, and thereby also to integrate the referential corpus of the theosophical current, to which is due the aforementioned honor of having given its name to this vortex that tends to co-opt it, to swallow it up. But this remains a propensity, as if the T.S. had the feeling that it is dealing here with a foreign body which is difficult to assimilate. Here once again the notion of a referential corpus shows itself to be operative: if it is true that H. P. Blavatsky cited Boehme about twenty times in her work (cf. supra, "Introduction") and that alongside this name, we find under her pen other representatives of the classical theosophical current (such as Paracelsus, Khunrath, Van Helmont, et al.), these are nevertheless isolated figures in the midst of the enormous troupe of personalities that H. P. B. went in search of in every corner of the world. Finally, it is striking that certain of the best historians within this Society are today again inclined to hold firmly that these two ensembles—the theosophical current and the Theosophical Society—are essentially one and the same thing, the current being considered as a particular case of theosophy among others, and indeed, the teaching of the Society being supposed to provide one or more denominators common to all of them (a theosophia perennis of some sort). Now, that theosophia perennis could not be defined in a doctrinal fashion without danger of becoming just one religious creed among others; it therefore would fall under the heading of subjectivity. But a subjectivity "illuminated" by the study of all the religions of the world—in that, perhaps, lies the positive, fruitful contribution of the Theosophical Society.
1889, and Le Sens de l'amour, 1892-94; Serge Boulgakov (1877-1945), The Wisdom of God, 1937, and Du Verbe Incarne, 1943; and finally, Nicolas Berdiaev (1874-1945), Etudes sur Jacob Boehme, 1930 and 1946. Their work is traversed by a sophiological inspiration, even though the thought of Boulgakov does not follow from esotericism directly. The Anthroposophical Society, a schism of the Theosophical Society, was founded in 1913 by the Austrian Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), and because of its title can rightly appear to be a rival organization. It is that by virtue of its goals and its large membership, but its spirit is more nearly that of the traditional theosophical current.70 The Steinerian corpus (we cite here only Goethe als Theosoph, 1904, and Theosophie, 1904) and its descendants certainly represent an original orientation inside the theosophical current, but this new corpus— quantitatively the most important of the period—drew on its predecessors, particularly on Paracelsism, Rosicrucianism, pansophy, and a theosophizing Naturphilosophie. If Steiner was a genuinely visionary theosopher, perhaps the first in Germany since the period of romanticism, this is not the case of those who followed him; they tended more toward being synthesizers and harmonizers, although they were writers whose thought was creative and strong, for example, Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958), Ueberlieferung, 1948, and Menschwerdung, 1948. In the French language we note a Russian of Baltic German origin, Valentin Tomberg (1901-1973), whose Meditations sur les Arcanes Majeurs du Tarot (written directly in French, published first in German in 1972) is a book which any student can use to begin the study of western esotericism in general and theosophy in particular. Auguste-Edouard Chauvet (1885-1955) is the author of Esoterisme de la Genese, 1946^-8. And Robert Amadou, whose works on the illuminism of the eighteenth century are authoritative. He is most notably a specialist on Saint-Martin and has a personal connection with the theosophical current.
28
A Discreet Presence If the theosophical current strictly speaking remained alive, it has not been strongly represented. This is due in part to the reasons that have just been set forth. In any case, there was nothing comparable with the preceding period. Some names emerge here and there which merit being cited in this brief account. Among the Russians there were especially Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), Conferences sur la theantropie, 1877-81, La beaute de la Nature,
29
New Perspectives on the Theosophical Current If this current has ended up being confined to the dimensions of a small river, it could be said in response that the representatives of theosophy had never before been made the object of as much historical and scholarly work as they have in our century. An abundant critical literature has seen the light of day. It is a literature that is rarely hostile to theosophy, now that we know enough to regard theosophy as an integral part of Western culture, and it is a literature71 that has been represented above all by the French. Auguste Viatte was the first to do groundbreaking work in the thorny area of illuminism and theosophy of the eighteenth century. Alexandre Koyre, Gerhard Wehr, Pierre Deghaye, and others as well have devoted a number of fundamental works to Boehme. Of the immediate disciples of Boehme, we must call attention to the works of
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Serge Hutin and Bernard Gorceix (the latter is also the author of an important thesis on Weigel), and more recently of Arthur Versluis. Numerous monographs and papers often unexpectedly reveal hitherto little known aspects of the theosophical terrain, for example, the writings of Jacques Fabry on Johann Friedrich von Meyer and those of Jules Keller on Frederic Rodolphe Salzmann, or of Eugene Susini, a great pioneer in this field, who has produced in-depth studies on Franz von Baader. In Germany, in addition to Gerhard Wehr, an epigone and an excellent popularizer, the studies of Reinhard Breymayer on Oetinger and on some other authors of this movement are characterized by erudition and thoroughness. Prior to these writers, Ernst Benz (1907-1978) produced an abundant bibliography (notably on Swedenborg and Jung-Stilling) and was the preeminent German specialist of this current. Benz took part in the Eranos group in Ascona (Switzerland), which occasioned the eclectic Eranos Jahrbuch er (1933-88) containing a certain number of interesting articles about the theosophical current. The reputed Islamicist, Henry Corbin (1903-1978), who was also a member of the Eranos group, was deeply interested in Western theosophy, particularly in Swedenborg and Oetinger. Perhaps no other contemporary scholar has done as much as Corbin to locate Abrahamic theosophy in the heart of a research program comprised of diversified scholarship and personal experience. His field was primarily that of Islam (Ismacilyya, Shi'ism, Suhrawardi, Ibn 'Arabi, etc.), but among his credits he merits recognition for having been the first to reveal to the West a corpus which until that time had not been known to us, and at the same time, to have laid the foundations for a "comparative theosophy" of the three great religions of the Book (cf., for example, L'Imagination cre'atrice dans le soufisme d'Ibn 'Arabi, 1958; Terre celeste et corps de resurrection, 1960; and En Islam iranien, 1971-72). Such a "comparative theosophy" depends in part on the recognition of the presence of that which Corbin took the felicitous initiative to call the mundus imaginalis, or "imaginal world," a specific mesocosm situated between the sensible and intelligible worlds, a place where spirits become corporeal and bodies become spiritualized. The three constituents of Western theosophy, presented above (the triangle God-Man-Nature, the primacy of the mythic, and direct access to the superior worlds) are present also in Arabic and Persian theosophy. But a difference exists between both theosophies. Namely, the Islamic one is permeated by dramatic scenarios to a lesser extent than the first, and there Nature also takes a less prominent place.72 However, the three branches of the Abrahamic tree constituted (at least in theosophical matters—Kabbalah, Christian theosophy, and Islamic theosophy) something like an organic whole for Corbin. He always sought, at least in his works, not to go beyond this triple tradition by venturing into a different and more "extreme Orient."73 By the same token, the theosophical
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current has now become the object of still another kind of attention. A meditation on this or that text in the theosophical corpus may occasion a reflection of a kind which is at once philosophical and scientific. Thus, for example, reading Boehme recently inspired quantum physicist Basarab Nicolescu with creative intuitions that might serve as the point of departure for a new philosophy of Nature (La Science, le Sens et I'Evolution: Essai sur Jakob Boehme, 1988). This is not the place to draw up a list of the different uses made of the word "theosophy" from the end of the nineteenth century until today, as it was in the first part of this work:74 the word is now employed mostly for designating either the current that has been examined here or the teachings of the Theosophical Society. And if either one holds any interest for the historian of ideas and religious feeling in the modern West, the fact remains that only the first has four centuries behind it. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, a general history of the theosophical current has never been written, and so it is my hope that this work of periodization can perhaps provide some clues for anyone who might be tempted to carry out such a project. NOTES
1. The present study is devoted not merely to the history of a trend of thought but also to the history of a specific word. It has been anticipated by other more concise articles I have published under the heading "Theosophie": in Encyclopaedia Universalis (vol. XV [Paris, 1973], pp. 1095 ff.), a text that must undergo heavy editing and improvement before being reprinted; in Dictionnaire de spiritualite ascetique et mystiqu and in Dictionnaire critique de theologie (cf. infra, note 73). 2. Jean-Louis Siemons, Theosophia. Aux sources neo-platoniciennes et chretie Ql'-Vt siecles), Paris, Cariscript, 1988,-41 pp. James A. Santucci, "On Theosophia and Related Terms," Theosophical History, vol. II, no. 3 (July 1987), pp. 107-110, and James A. Santucci, Theosophy and the Theosophical Society (London: Theosophical History Centre, 1985). On the use of theosophia in patristic literature, see also G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, vol. I (Oxford, 1961), p. 636. On the same word as used within the Theosophical Society, cf. J.-L. Siemons, "De l'usage du mot theosophie par Madame Blavatsky," in Politica Hermetica, no. 7: Les Posterites de la theosophie: theosophisme au Nouvel Age (Paris, L'Age d'homme, 1993): pp. 125-134. 3. J.-L. Siemons, Theosophia, p. 11 ff. 4. Ibid., pp. 13-18, 21-23, 26 ff. As regards John Scottus Eriugena, commentator of Pseudo-Dionysius (around 862), cf. more particularly Migne, Patrologie latine, vol. 122, p. 1171. 5. Summa Philosophia Roberto Grosseteste ascripta, in Baumker's Beitrag Geschichte des Mittelalters, vol. IX, 1912, p. 275 passim. Some Latin commentators and translators of Pseudo-Dionysius (Hugo of St. Victor, for instance) retain the word theosophia; after the Renaissance, sapientia divina is often substituted (cf. infra, n. 21). 6. I have proposed an approach to the concept of esotericism in the same way, cf. "Preface," above.
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7. In addition to alchemy and astrology, obviously present before in various guises, the other esoteric currents in early modern Western thought are: NeoAlexandrian hermetism, Christian Kabbalah, Paracelsism, philosophia occulta (which takes variousforms),theosophy, and Rosicrucianism. 8. This periodization (in the sense of dividing and discussing this current in developmental periods) differs from the one suggested by Bernard Gorceix (La Mystique de Valentin Weigel [1533-1588] et les origines de la theosophie allemande [Universite de Lille III, 1972], p. 455 ff, note): "A history of German theosophy (16th to 19th centuries) should distinguish three periods: the Boehmean period (Jacob Bohme, 1575-1624), foreshadowed by Valentin Weigel, by the 'renaissance' of Kabbalah and alchemy in the 16th century, by the Paracelsism of Gerhard Dorn; the period of the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, around the figure of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), a period which is contemporary with the Kabbalistic renewal in Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689) and the Swedenborgian movement, with Johann Albrecht Bengel, Johann Conrad Dippel, Philipp Matthaeus Hahn; the third period, the richest one, is that of mystical romanticism, announced by the French Illuminist movement, with Kirchberger, Kleuker, Eckartshausen, Baader, etc." It is possible to put things this way only if one chooses to end the "Boehmean period" early. I am rather inclined to consider the entire seventeenth century as a whole. Let us add, moreover, that Oetinger's first publications did not begin to appear until 1731, that is, fifty-three years after Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbah Denudata (1677). Besides, neither Bengel's works nor Christian Kabbalah form part of the theosophie current understood stricto sensu (even though Kabbalah is indeed a kind of theosophy). Finally, the "Swedenborgian movement" began in the second half of the eighteenth century. 9. B. Gorceix, La Mystique de Valentin Weigel, p. 15. We remind our readers that there are two great Paracelsian trends, one with a rather "scientific" and rational oudook, exemplified by authors like Quercetanus or Severinus who do not belong to the esotericfield,and the other, which we are treating here. 10. The Paracelsian heritage is, however, not essential to Arndt; what is essential is the mystical theology inherited from Tauler through the devotio moderna and the Theologia Deutsch—in other words, a mystical theology popularized on a more practical plane, that of the praxis pietatis. On Caspar Schwenckfeld's theory of "spiritual flesh," see, for instance, Alexandre Koyre, Mystiques, Spirituels, Alchimistes du XVI siecle allemand (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955), Cahiers des Annales, no. 10, p. 16. Most of G. Dorn's treatises were reprinted in the Theatrum Chemicum, in several editions (Ursel, 1602, Strasbourg, 1613 and 1659-61) which contributed to their fame. Boehme may have possibly known Dorn's work through the Theatrum. 11. This accounts for the fact that theosophy is often better received within religions devoid of constraining dogmas. The Kabbalah of the Zohar is nothing other than a Jewish theosophy (cf. Gershom Scholem, Les Grands Courants de la mystique juive [Paris: Payot, 1960], p. 221ff.)On theosophy and Islam, see below, "New Perspectives on the Theosophical Current." Concerning the successive falls, there are indeed two of them: one, that of Adam, described in the Bible; the second, or Lucifer's, is hardly touched upon by Scripture. Now, it is part of the theosopher's attitude to stray out from the biblical text, so as to find the key to the major question: Unde Malum? ("Whence Evil?"). This question G. Scholem views as the true starting point of theosophie spec-
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ulation; that is how the matter stands with Boehme, anyway. Theosophy is always, in one way or another, a theodicy of some kind and its constant aim is to exonerate God (I owe this last remark to Pierre Deghaye). 12. This faculty may of course be compared with the human mens (nous) according to the Corpus Hermeticum, and with the spark of the soul (Seelenfimken) found in Meister Eckhart. 13. This world is imbued with the same nature as the mundus imaginalis mentioned by Henry Corbin in reference to Islamic theosophy (cf. infra, "New Perspectives on the Theosophical Current"). However, Boehme's Godhead can never become an object of knowledge, since it resides in a totally inaccessible light. As for its revelation through Nature, only the Man who is born from above is capable of receiving it. Boehme repeatedly quotes 1 Corinthians 2:14: "A man who is unspiritual does not receive the things of the Spirit of God." Boehme says der naturliche Mensch, or der psychische Mens for "the man who is not spiritual." Now, if mysticism admittedly claims to suppress all images, this can really be said only of the higher forms of contemplation and, even so, some shading must be introduced as, for instance, in the cases of Hildegard of Bingen or Maria of Agreda. As Pierre Deghaye (La Doctrine e'soterique de Zinzendorf(l 700-1760 [Paris: Klincksieck, 1969], p. 443) jusdy remarks: "Theosophy essentially describes intradivine life. Mystical theology also deals with that life. A mystic like Tauler describes, naturally, the process of divine life on the trinitarian level. But what is most present in that mystical theology is the description of inner states. A contemplative is unceasingly attentive to his own 'ground'; he has to abide by that rule, and when he relates his experience he deals mosdy with the life of this soul. As for the theosopher, he makes us moreforgetfulof his own person. He presents himself mosdy as a spectator of mysteries without necessarily getting back to his own self." And again: "For theosophy, and for related theologians, the fruit of our thought materializes under the visible symbolic form" (ibid., p. 540).
14. At least the esoteric field as I have attempted to circumscribe it, is a form of thought built upon the association offourbasic components (the idea of universal correspondences); (a) the idea of a living Nature; (b) the essential part played by creative imagination and the mediating planes it is linked with; (c) the importance of self (and/or Nature)—transmutation; and (d) two secondary elements (notions of transmission and "concordance"). See supra, n. 6. 15. Contrary to F. A. Yates' statement (The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London, Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 169), pansophia does not originate in Patrizi himself but could have been derived from his own terminology (panarchia, panpsychia, pancosmid) or direcdy borrowed from Philo or Pseudo-Dionysius. Carlos Gilly, who pointed this out in 1977 (see his study, "Zwischen Erfahrung und Spekulation. Theodor Zwinger und die religiose und kulturelle Krise seiner Zeit," pp. 57-137 in Basler Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Altertumskunde, no. 77, 1977: p. 80), also drew attention to the use of pansophia, as early as 1596, in a writing by the Polish hermeticist Bartholomaus Scleus: Instanz Theologia Universalis, reprinted in the Theosophische Schriften by the sa author (Amsterdam, 1686, p. 181). During that precise period, pansophia evokes the overall concept of a wisdom obtained by divine illumination, in other words, theosophy, or else, wisdom attained through the light of Nature, also called anthroposophia (cf. also infra, n. 22). Gilly also noted the reappearance of pansophia in the very tide of the Dutch
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Theosophies
physician Henricus Van Heer's dissertation Altar Iatrosophicum paniasoni pansophiaeque dicatum (Basel, 1600), in a different sense, though, than that given by the Rosicrucian current and more with the meaning of universal knowledge. On the other hand, it is understood as referring to theosophy and the science of Nature in a general way by Henricus Nollius (Physica Hermetica, Frankfurt, 1619, p. 689). In his Panosophia. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der weissen und schwarzen Magie (Berlin: Eric Schmidt, 1936, p. 392 ff; reprint, 1956), Will-Erich Peuckert has introduced some confusion between "theosophy" and "pansophy." For a list of authors employing the word pansophia, see W. Begemann, "Zum Gebrauche des Wortes Pansophia," pp. 210-221 in Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft, vol. 5, 1896, and K. Schaller, Pan. Untersuchungen zur Comenius-Terminologie, The Hague, 1958, pp. 14 ff. 16. Concerning the German and foreign editions of Boehme's works, cf. the almost exhaustive bibliography completed by Werner Buddecke, Die Jakob Bohme Ausgaben. Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis (2 vols., Gottingen, 1937-57). The relevant literature is still very abundant; among the best critical works, John Schulitz, Jakob Boehme und die Kabbalah (Frankfurt, 1933); Pierre Deghaye, La Naissance de Dieu ou la doctrine de Jacob Boehme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985). 17. Ehregott Daniel Colberg, Das Platonisch-Hermetische Christentbum, begreiffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vierlerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quacker, Bbhmisten, Wiedertduffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten und Quietisten, 2 vols. (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1690 and 1691, reprinted in 1710). 18. Gottfried Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirch en- und Ketzerhistorie, vom Anfang des neuen Testaments bis auf das Jahr Christi 1688, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1699-1700, reprinted in 1729); by the same author, Historie und Beschreibung der mystischen Theologie oder geheimen Gottes Gelehrtheit wie auch derer alten und neuen mysticorum (Frankfurt, 1703). Followed, within the same volume, by Vertheidigung der Mystischen Theologie. Latin edition: Historia et descriptio theologiae mysticae, seu theosophiae arcanae et reconditae, itemque veterum et novorum mysticorum (Frankfurt, 1702). As shown by this last tide, theosophy is understood as Gottesgelehrtheit, that is, a mere form of theology. 19. Arnold does differentiate, however, between the "two theologies." Thus he writes in the Latin edition of his History of Mystical Theology (cf. preceding note): "Theologia duplex [. . . ] Hacque mente divinarum rerum doctrina in duo genera dividebant. Quorum alterum, manifestum, apertum et cognitum, quod discursibus et demonstrationibus convincere posset; alterum vero occultum, mysticum et symbolicum, ut et purgans penetrans, et adperfectionem ducens dicebant" (p. 72). Further (p. 598 ff), he mentions as members of a similar intellectual family: Paracelsus, Weigel, Sperber, Scleus (Sclei), Georgi, the two Van Helmonts, John Scottus Eriugena, Postel, Bromley. 20. In his Liber de triplici ratione cognoscendi Dei, Agrippa mentions the quarrels caused "a recentioribus aliquot theosophistis, ac philopompis exercentur ad monem vanitatem" on the basis of a badly translated Aristode (the document has been published by Paola Zambelli, in Testi umanistici su I'ermetismo [Rome, 1955], p. 158). See also the letter to Erasmus of 13 November 1532, in Opera, vol. II, p. 1016: "Coeterum, quod te scire volo, bellum mihi est cum Lovaniensibus Theosophistis." 21. Francois Secret has already called attention to this book; cf. "Du De Occulta Philosophia a l'occultisme du XIXe siecle," in Revue de PHistoire des Religions (Paris:
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P.U.F., vol. 186 [July 1974], p. 60. A new, expanded version of the same article appeared in Charis. Archives de rUnicorne, no. I, Arche, Milan, 1988. The word has enjoyed a lasting favor in this sense. In Ficino's translations of the works of Porphyry and Iamblichus, as in those of Proclus by Aemilius Pontus, theosophia is always rendered by sapientia divina or by theologia. In his Commentarii Linguae Graecae, G. Bud recommends religio christiana. Henri Etienne, in his Thesaurus linguae Graecae, give rerum divinarum scientia (cf. C. Gilly, p. 88, in his article quoted above, n. 15). 22. Arbatel. De magia veterum. Summum sapientiae studium, Basel, 1575. The scientia boni includes theosophy (itself divided into "notitia verbi Dei, et vitae juxta verbum Dei institutio" and "notitia gubernationis Dei per Angelas quos Scriptura vigi vocaf) and, on the other hand, the anthroposophia homini data, divided into "scientia rerum naturalium" and "prudentia rerum humanum." The scientia mali is again divided by two headings (kakosophia and cacodaemonia, also subdivided in their turn). The Arbatel was published by the Neo-Paracelsian Pietro Perna (on him and the book itself, see Carlos Gilly, article quoted above, n. 15). Peuckert thought the book to be "the first treatise on white magic in Germany." Its success can at least pardy be explained by the elegance and clarity of the edition as a whole. Quotations from the Arbatel appeared for the first time in Johann Jakob Wecker, De Secretis Libri XVII, 1583, also published by Perna (cf. sect. XV, "De secretis scientiarum"). The Arbatefs scheme of theosophy-anthroposophy was taken over by Wolfgang Hildebrand (Magia Naturalis, Erfurt, 1611) and Robert Fludd (Summum Bonum, p. 1, 1629). About these texts, see Carlos Gilly, article quoted above, n. 15, p. 188 of the second section (Text II, no. 79, 1979). 23. The caption of the engraving from the Amphitheatrum showing a tunnel, to which access is gained by seven steps, states that these symbolize the way of the "Theosophicorum vere Philosophicam,filiorumDoctrinae . . . ut sophistice non moriant Theosphice vivant." At the foot of the other famous oval engraving depicting the alchemist in his oratory/laboratory, one reads: "Hinricus Khunrath Lips; Theosophiae amator." These are but a few occurrences of the word in the whole treatise. On the editions of the book, see Umberto Eco, L'enigme de la Hanau, 1609 (Enquete biobibliographique sur "L'amphitheatre de I'eternelle sapience . . ." de Heinrich Khunrath [ J.-C. Bailly, 1990]). In Vom Hylealischen, das ist Pri-materialischen Catholischen ode Allgemeinen Natiirlichen Chaos (Magdebourg, 1597), several reprints (Latin edition: Confessio de chao physico-chemicorum catholico . . . [Magdebourg, 1596]) and a rece facsimile edition (Graz, Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1990, with an introduction by Elemar R. Griiber), Khunrath writes (in the preface): "So vermbge Zeugniissen vieler Philosophischer guter Schrifften; aus (Gott Lob) unverruckter Vern erfahrner Leute Cabbalisschen Traditionen; Zum Theil auch beydes Theosophische Oratorio, und Naturgemass-Alchymischer in Laboratorio, eygner Ubungs Confirmation also auss dem rechten Grunde dess Liechts der Natur, nicht alleine Wahr sondern auch ihre Eygnschafften Gbttlicher und Natiirlicher Geheimnussen in jetziger verkehrten W bffentlich an Tag zu bringen zu lassen Klar herfur gegeben" Further, he says this about the "Gott-Weisslich Gelehrte," that is, the erudite theosopher: "Alleine der Gott-Weisslich gelehrte und von dem Liecht der Natur erleuchte auch sich selbst recht erkennende Mens Gott-weisslich Naturgemass und christlich darvon schliessen, Sonst niemand." Also in preface: "Von den Wortlein Theosophus, Theosophia, Theosophice, ein Gott-weiser—G
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Weissheit—Gott-weisslich—hab ich p. 28. Confessionis hujus, in scholiis kiirzlich mich genugsam erklaret. Will ein under lieber daiftir sagen Philotheosophus, Philotheosophia, Philotheosophice, das lasse ich auch geschehen. Ich will iiber den Worten mit niemand zancken, man lasse nur den Verstand gut bleiben. Wortzdnckerey bauet nicht" This sounds like an allusion to a quarrel about the choice of word (theosophia or philotheosophia), although I know nothing about it. Further on, p. 28 (pp. 26-27 in the 1708 edition) one finds: "Theosophice, Gott-Weisslich (wann Gott der Hbcbste Jehovah, der Herr Herr will denn seine Gnade wd'hret von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit iiber die so Ihn furchten kan, gesagter gestalt, wo feme wir uns selbst in die Sache nur recht Christlich schicken, dasselbe auch Uns (sowohl als den Alten Theosophis vor uns) erbffnet und bekant werden. Dann Gott der Herr schencket auch noch wohl heutigen Tages einem einen Trunck aus Josephs Becher. Oder aber auch seine Natiirlichen Signatura, das ist Bezeichnung welche auch eine Warheits-Stimme und Geheimniss-reiche recht lehrende Rede Gottes mit uns aus der Natur durch die Creatur ist: oder auch aus Schrifftlicher oder Miindlicher Anleitung und Unterweisung eines erfahren guten Lehrmeisters der von Gott dissfalls zu Uns oder zu deme Wir gesenden werden." 24. In using theosophia more or less with the meaning of the Paracelsian philosophia adepta, Khunrath is followed by Nicolaus Bernaud (1601), Libavius (1606, but with a pejorative innuendo), Oswald Croll, Israel Harvet (1608). On this use and these authors, cf. Carlos Gilly, p. 89 of the article quoted in n. 15. Let us also mention the Rosarium Novum Olympicum S Benedictum. Per Benedictum Figulum; Vienhaviatem, Francum: Poetam L. C. Theologum, Theosophum; Philosophum; Medicum Eremitam (Basel, 1608) and the dedication to a "philosopho ter maximo Theosopho jurisperito medico" in D. Gnosii, Hermetus tractatus vere aureus (Leipzig, 1610), p. 246 (quoted by Francois Secret in article quoted supra, n. 21; cf. pp. 68 and 19, respectively). In 1620, Johann Arndt sent Morsius a treatise by Alexander von Suchten dedicated as follows: "Clarissimo Theosopho et philosopho D. Joachimo Morsio" (cited in Fegfeuer der Chymisten, Amsterdam, 1702, Paris National Library shelffnark R. 38757). One wonders if the influence of the new esoteric trend (theosophy) is at work behind the use of theosophia in the translation (1644) by the Jesuit B. Cordevius of the Mystic Theology by Pseudo-Dionysius (cf. Migne, P.G., vol. 3, p. 998), following in the footsteps of John Scottus Eriugena. On the expression magia divina as a rival of theosophia, eventually to be almost completely supplanted by it (because the latter was considered less questionable, at least in Germany), cf. Carlos Gilly, p. 188 of the article quoted above, n. 15 (second section, 1979). Giordano Bruno makes use of magia divina as well as Patrizi (1593), Johann Georg Godelman (1601), and Campanella (1620); this expression was to be commented upon by Diderot (Encyclopedie, ed. 1775, vol. IX, p. 852). As regards theosophia understood at the time in the vague, general sense of theology and philology (akin to Roger Bacon's prima philosophia), it is found in B. Keckermann (Opera, 2, Geneva, 1614, p. 229) and Ioh. Lippius (Metaphysica Magna, Lyons, 1625, p. 5) as indicated by Carlos Gilly (article quoted supra, n. 15, first section 1977, p. 891). See further the tide of the anonymous and devotionally oriented miscellany Libellum Theosophiae de veris reliquis seu semine Dei (Neustadt, 1618), as well as, later on, the list of authors mentioned by Gottfried Arnold (see infra, n. 30): all this bears no relation to our theosophers and testifies only to the double use of the word. 25. Haslmayr's book (Antwort an die lohwiirdige Bruderschajft der Theosophen vom RosenCreutz . . . , 1612, s. 1.) has just been rediscovered by Carlos Gilly (cf. his study
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Adam Haslmayr, Der erste Verkunder der Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer, Amsterdam, In Pelikaan, 1994). Haslmayr also uses the word elsewhere (cf. ibid.). Concerning Andreae's use of it, cf. Christianopolis, heading no. 60 (in Richard Van Dulman's edition, Stuttgart, Calwer Verlag, 1972, pp. 140-142): "De Theosophia: Hoc idem auditorium superiori adhuc contemplationi servit. Haec theosophia est, nihil humanae inventionis, indagationisve omnia Deo debens. Ubi natura desinit, haec incipit, et a superno numine edocta my religiose servat. . . . Imprudentes nos qui Aristotelem nobis praeferimus, homuncionem n non Dei admiranda amplectimur, quae ilium pudefaciunt. Dei FIAT, angelorum servitiu auram, aquae spissitudinem, aeris depressionem, terrae elevatione, hominis infinita kquelam, solis remoram, orbis terminum non potuit Me credere an noluit, quae nobis c Si Deum audimus, longe maiora his apud eum expedita sunt. . . . Scrupuletur philos theosophia acquiescit; opponat ilia, haec gratias agit: haesitet ilia, haec secura ad C recumbit." Thus, theosophy means humility, obedience, submissive receptivity. It starts where Nature itself ends, is attributed the same "auditorium" as dialectics and metaphysics, but it is taught by God. See also the remarks by Roland Edighoffer, p. 363ff.and 419 of his Rose-Croix et Societe ideate selon J.-V. Andreae, Paris, Arma Arris, 1982. Again, De Christiani Cosmoxeni genitura judicium (Montbeliard, 1615), the theosophie vision of the perfect Christian devotee resides in the supreme paradox of sinful Adam's death and the glorious life of Christ the Redeemer; Andreae writes, p. 41: "Hactenus de Christiano nostra Iudicium Theosophicum, id est, Hominis in his terris vere Hospitantis, et in coe promouentis Imago expresa." Cf. also ibid. p. 186, and Roland Edighoffer, op. cit., p. 364. But in Tunis Babel, sivejudiciorum de Fraternitate Rosaceae Crucis Chaos (Argentorati, one reads these words put in the mouth of the character called Impostor: "Sed meminetis, esse Philosophum, Philologum, Theologum, Theosophum, Medicum, Chymicum, Fraternitatis invisibilis Coadjutorem, Antichristi hostem intractabilem, et quod ad rem facit, etiam Poetam" (pp. 23 ff). Finally, in a fourth writing by Andreae entided De Curiositatis pernicie syntagma ad singularitatis studiosos (Stuttgart, 1620), the author ridic an occult philosophy which adorns itself with the name "theosophy" whereas it is but a dubious and impious magical speculation: "ltaque jam caracteres, conjurationes, constellati synchronismi tuto adhibentur. Postquam Daemonomania in Theosophiam mutata audit. apparitiones, revelationes insomnia, voces auguria, sortes ac ornne genus false D exigunturfiuntquehorrendae incantationes, in aliis supplicto digna,filiistamen huius lucis, licita" (pp. 22ff.).On this passage, see also R. Edighoffer, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 345, 363 ff, whom I hereby thank for calling my attention to these four extracts. I must add that, in the Rosicrucian wake, "theosophy" is sometimes used in reference to the Rosy-Cross; thus, for instance, Josephus Stellatus (a.k.a. Christoph Hirsch) who defends the Rosicrucians in his Pegasus Firmamenti. Sive Introductio brevis in Veteram Sapientiam (s.l., urges (p. 21) the theosophiae studiosi to drink from the true wellspring of hermetic, Rosicrucian, and Paracelsian philosophy and pansophy.
26. "Ich schreibe nicht heidnisch, sondern theosophisch, aus einem hbheren Gr der aussere Werkmeister ist, und dann auch aus demselben" (Aurora, chap. 8, §56). T work was published in 1634. Boehme's treatises were first circulated as manuscript copies: during his lifetime Der Weg zu Christo was the only one to appear in print (1622), followed by Aurora (1634), De Signatura rerum (1645), Mysterium Magnum (1640), and so on. A Dutch translation by W. Van Beyerland of several of his works appeared in 1642, followed some twenty years later by John Sparrow's English
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versions. The first complete edition in German by J. G. Gichtel (1682) was based on the manuscripts collected by Beyerland. It is interesting to try and assess the impact of such an editorial activity —in German and other languages—on the spread of the word "theosophy" during the seventeenth century. A close study of Buddecke's bibliography (cf. supra, n. 16) goes a long way toward unearthing a rich store of information. The insertion of "theosophy" in the tides of Boehme's treatises is in fact the editors' choice and its first use is in connection with the author's letters: Theosophische Epistel of 1639 (cf. Buddecke, I, p. 226), followed by a Dutch version procured by Beyerland in 1641 (Buddecke, I, p. 45). Several other letters by Boehme were published later as Theosophische Sendbriefe in 1642 and 1658, edited by Abraham von Franckenberg (cf. Buddecke, I, p. 214). In English, the word made its first appearance (in the adjectival form, theosophicall) with the Theosophicall Epistles (Buddecke, II, p. 171) of 1645, which was also the first English publication of a writing by Boehme; theosophick is later met with in Theosophick Epistles (John Sparrow's version; cf. Buddecke, II, p. 143), and is found again under the same translator's pen in i77 Theosophick Questions (1661) and Theosophie Letters (same year; Buddecke, II, pp. 61 ff), as well as in Jakob Boehmen's Theosophick Philosophy Unfolded by another translator, 1691. In German, we find a 1658 edition under the tide Eine Einfaltige Erklarung . . . aus wahrem Theosophischen Grunde (Buddecke, I, p. 212) and the expression Theosophische Fragen appears in the tide of Quirinus Kuhlmann's Neuebegeisterter Bohme, 1674 (Buddecke, I, p. 86). Little wonder, then, to see the word featured in the tide itself of Gichtel's 1682 edition and, even more predictably, in that of the first 1686 complete edition in Dutch (Alle de Theosoopbiche ofGoawijze Werken Van... Jacob Boehme; cf. Buddecke, H, p. 5).
.'I "I
27. Oedipi Aegyptiaci Tomi Secundi Pars Altera, Rome, 1653, Classis XIII (pp. 497-546). 28. Daniel Georg Morhof, Polyhistor sive de notitia auctorum et rerum commentarii, Liibeck, 1688 (in two books; book III, posthumous, 1692). Reprint 1695. Cf. pp. 87-97 of book I, chap. X: De libris mysticis et secretis, where one reads in particular: "Mysticos et secretos libros dicimus, qui de rebus sublimibus, arcanis, mirabilibus scripti, suos sibi lectores postulant, neque omnibus ad lectionem concedi solent, neque ab omnibus intelligipossunt" (p. 87). Ibid., p. 88: "Theosophicos nunc eos vacant, qui de rebus divinis atque abstrusiora quaedam docent, quales apud Gentiles Theurgici dicebantur, quibus doctrina de Deo, Daemonibus, geniis, deque ceremoniis, quibus Mi colendi, tradebatur. Alii magiam divinam banc Theurgiam vocant. Haec ceterum Metaphysicaftiit."And p. 93: "Hebraeorum Theosophici libri, quos Mi Cabalae nomine vocarunt." On the same page, he adds, after mentioning the names of Pico, Postel, Reuchlin: "Christianorumjam a primis temporibus mystici quidam in Theosophia libri fuerunt. Principem in his locum sibi vendicant decantata ilia Dionysii Aeropagitae opera." 29. Still, Arnold does quote the extract from the Arbatel in its German version (Unpartheiische, op. cit., I, p. 457). 30. Historie und Beschreibung . . . , op. cit, pp. 5-7: "Und eben diesem wahren Verstand des Wortes Theologie ist nun gleichmdssig das Wort Theosophia, welches die Weissheit Gottes oder von Gott anzeiget. Weil die geheime Gottesgelehrheit also eine Gabe des H Geistes von Gott selbst herruhret mit Gott umgehet und auch Gott selbst und seinen Heiligen gemein ist wie diss Wort erklaret wird. . . . Es haben aber auch die protestantischen Lehrer dieses Wort Theosophie so gar nicht (wie einige unter ihnen meynen) vor insolent geachtet dass sie es selber ohne Bedencken gebraucht wie so wohl bey Reformirten (Vid. Franc. Junius Lib. de Theologia
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Cap. I p. 18 qui fatetur, orthodoxis Patribus Theosophiam, dictam esse Theologiam) a Lutheranern (Job. Frid. Mayer Theol. Mariana Artie. I, p. 24. Quid ad has blasphemi Theosophia Lutherana? Conf. Observationes Halenses ad rem literariam spectantes T Observ. I. de Philosophia Theosophia—§2) zu sehen. Dahero die Beschwerung derselb andere denen als Layen man kein Recht im Gbttl. Erkdntniss gemeiniglich zustehe, will hinweg fdllt nachdem es auch bey denen Schul-Lehrern offenbahrlich ein grosser Miss dieses wichtigen Tituls ist so offt er der zanksiichtigen und gantz ungbttl. Schul-Theolog geleget wird." In his Impartial History (part IV, sect. Ill, no. 18 and 19, ed. 1729, vol. II, pp. 1103 ff. and 1110-1142), G. Arnold introduces the reader to the work of his friend Friedrich Breckling (1629-1711) and offers large extracts of unpublished material. Breckling, himself a theosopher, but relatively unknown, suggests a beautiful definition of what he understands by theosophus, whom he compares to a bee: "Wer aller dinge zahle, mass, gewicht, ordnung und ziel ihnen von Gott gegeben, gesetzet und beygelege im gbttlichen licht einsehen, abzehlen, ponderiren, numeriren, componiren, dividire resolviren kan, das impurum und unnbthige davon abschneiden, und das beste, wie die davon extrahiren und purificiren kan, und also eines ieden dinges circulum cum exclu heterogeneorum concludiren kan, in einem lexico-lexicorum alles concentriren, und gl eine biene in seinen apiariis digeriren oder methodice und harmonice zusammen fasse was heut zu lernen und zu wissen vonnbthen ist, der ist ein rechter Theosophus, und d miissen dann alle unniitze und unvollkommene bucher fallen und von selbst zu grund ge (p. 113, col. 1). A little further on, he writes in his ratherflamboyantstyle: "Nun sind wir bis an die Apocalypsin kommen, welche denen, die in Pathmo mit Johanne exuliren von Gott in Geist erhbhet, und gewiirdiget werden, di interiora velaminis zu beschauen einer offnen thiir in geistlichen nach erbffnung der sieben siegel und uberwindung aller des creutzes, nach inhalt der sieben sendhrieffe wird geoffenbabret werden, dass sie als adler aufliegen, und aller dinge penetralia intima bis ins centrum durchschauen mbgen abo Theosophi per crucem et lucem, per ignem et spiritum werden, welche die Welt n kennen noch vertragen mag, weil sie mit Christo und Christus in ihnen kommen, ein lich feuer zum gericht der welt anzuziinden, daran alles stroh sich selbst mit ihren verfolg offenbahren, im rauch auffliegen und verbrennen muss" (p. 113, col. 2).
31. Friedrich Gentzken, Historia Philosophiae, in qua philosophorum celebrium vi eorumque hypotheses... ad nostra usque tempora ... ordine sistuntur, Hamburg, 1724. 32. Ibid., p. 249: "Porro observandum est, nostrum Paracelsum originem dedi philosophiae, mysticae et Theosophicae, quae dogmata philosophica ex cabala, magia, astrologia, chymia et theologia imprimis mystica emit et illustrat. Vocatur autem hoc philosophiae genus mysticum idea, quqniam obscurior tradendi ratio in Mis obtine theosophicum, quoniam citra specialem illuminationem neminem ejusmodi sapientiam posse praesumunt. Exstitit autem ab Mo tempore haut exiguus Theosophorum numerus, phantasticis suis imaginationibus delusi ex theologia et philosophia rnixtum et foedum aliquod chaos confecerent, inter quospraecipui sunt"—then Gentzken speaks of V. Weigel, the Rosy-Cross, Gutmann, Kulhmann, and goes on to add (p. 256): "Systema mysticae et theosophicae philosophiae exhiberi nequit, etenim cum hujus generis Philosophi no rationis, sed tumultuariae imaginationis ductum sequuntur, inter se consentire nequeunt, s quisque ferme eorum singulares et monstrosasfingite defendit opiniones. Accedit, qu plurimum contorto ac sumoso sermonis genere utantur, unde quid velint, nee ipsi, multo alii intelligunt. Plerumque tamen in his momentis consentiunt, (1) Theosophum rerum
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omnium naturam plenius nosse, ac occultas rerum vires intelligere, qualem cognitionem vocant Magiam naturalem. (2) Theosophum influxum siderum in haec terrena scrutari posse, ac demum verum Astrologum evadere. (3) Theosophum genuinum metallorum semen conficere, adeoque ignobilius metallum in aurum commutare ac inde universalem praeparari medicinam posse. (4) Tres esse hominum partes, corpus, animam, et mentem, etc." 3 3. Johann Franciscus Buddeus, Isagoge historico-theologica ad theologiam universam singulasque ejus partes, Leipzig, 1727, vol. I. After reminding his reader of the use of "theology" in the sense of "theosophy," which he finds in Francisco Iunius (Liber de theologia, chap. I, 18, already alluded to by Arnold, cf. supra, n. 30), Kilian Rudrauff (from Giessen, author of Collegii philo-theosophici volumina duo) and Herman Rathmann (Theosophia priscorum patrum ex Tertulliano et Cypriano, Wittenberg, 1619), Buddeus writes: "Potest tamen theosophia a theologia ea ratione distingui, ut per banc aut cognito ipsa rerum diuinarum, quie et alias ita vacatur, aut doctrina de iisdem, designetur; per illam autem facultas, siue virtus, bona a malis discernendi, et ilia amplectendi, haec fugiendi, quam antea sapientiam diuinam et spiritualem vocamus, et cui speciatim theologia moralis inseruit" (p. 25). 34. Ibid., p. 25: "Sunt vero etiam, qui nescio quae arcana et abscondita, turn theologica turn philosophica venditantes, theosophorum sibi namen speciatim vindicant." Then, after summing up Morhoffs opinion (cf. supra, nn. 26 and 27), he adds: "Ego vero lubens fateor, me nihil, in hisce scriptis deprehendisse, cur auctores corum, specialiori quadam ratione, theosophi vocari debeant. Si quid enim habent, quod cum veritate convenit, nee ex sola ratione cognoscitur, id ex sacra scriptura hauserunt, et apud alios, qui theologia vocantur, itidem reperitur. Sin aliquid proferant, quod veritati consentaneum non est, non tarn sapientiam suam, quam vanitatem, produnt, et ne philosophos quidem dicenti, multo minus theosophos. Qui nescio quae arcana secreta, abscondita crepant, haud raro fumum venditant, vulgaribus et protritis speciem quamdam acpretium conciliaturi." 35. Ibid., p. 272: "Qui theosophorum nomen sibi vindicant, prae reliquis Mosaici haberi cupiunt, cum tamen aut chemicorum simul principia admittant, aut alia admisceant, quae nee Mosi, nee aliis, scriptoribus, sacris in mentem venerunt. Referendi hue Robertus Fluddius, in philosophia Moysaica, etc. item in microcosmi et macrocosmi historia physica. Iacobus Boehmius, in mysterio mago, aliique scriptis Aegidius Guthman, in Offenbahrung goettlicher Maiestaet Quirinius Kuhlmann, in dem neubegeisteren Boehmen, aliique, qui suis plerumque ita se inuoluunt tenebris, ut occultare potius, quam recludere, arcana naturae videantur. In qui etiam fere consentiunt, quod spiritum quemdam naturae statuunt; quern similiter admittunt, qui itidem prae religuis Mosaice videri volunt, Conradus Aslachus, in physica et ethica Mosaica, loan, Amos Comenius in physicae ad lumen diuinum reformatae synopsi, Ioannes Bayerus, in ostio, seu atrio naturae, et si qui alii sunt ejusdem generis." 36. Jacob Brucker, Kurze Fragen aus der Philosophischen Historic, von Christi Geburt biss auf unsere Zeiten. Mit ausfiihrlichen Anmerkungen erldutert, 1730-1736, Vlth part (Ulm, 1735), cf. chap. HI: "Von den Theosophicis," pp. 1063-1254. And Historia critica philosophiae a tempore resuscitatarum in Occidente Literarum ad nostra tempora, vol. IV (a volume of addenda: on theosophy, see pp. 781-797). Chap. Ill of vol. VI: "De Theosophicis," pp. 644-750. Vol. IV, chap. IV, pp. 353^48: "De Restaurationibus Philosophiae Pythagoreo-platonico cabbalisticae" (on Christian Kabbalists and various writers: Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa, Patrizi, Thomas Gale, Ralph
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Cudworth, Henry More). Cf. appendix to chap. IV in vol. VI (1767), pp. 747-759. On the Jewish Kabbalah, cf. vol. II, pp. 916-1070. Vol. I, book II, chap. VII entided De Aegyptiorum . . . (pp. 244-305); there, Brucker treats, among other subjects, Hermes Trismegistus and the Corpus Hermeticum (cf. particularly, pp. 252-268 and passim). 37. J. Brucker, Kurze Fragen . . . , op. cit., pp. 1065 ff. and Historia . . . , op. cit., "Von den Theosophicis," p. 645. Citation of Boehme's text, from Aurora (chap. Ill, §38 of Aurora): "Nun merke: Gleichwie vom Vater und Sohn ausgehet der HI. Geist un eine selbstdndige Person in der Gottheit und wallet in dem ganzen Vater, also gehet a den Krdften deines Herzens, Adern und Hirn aus die Kraft die in deinem ganzen Leibe und aus deinem Lichte gehet aus in dieselbe Kraft, Vernunft, Verstand, Kunst und We den ganzen Leib zu regieren und auch alles, was ausser dem Leibe ist, zu unterscheid dieses beides ist in deinem Regiment des Gemiites ein Ding, dein Geist, und das bedeu den HI. Geist. Und der HI. Geist aus Gott hersschet auch in diesem Geiste in dir, bist ein Kind des Lichts und nicht der Finsternis." 38. J. Brucker, Kurze Fragen . . ., op. cit., pp. 1063, 1244 ff; Historia, op. cit., pp. 745 ff. 39. J. Brucker, Historia, op. cit., p. 749. 40. "Tot systemata (si modo nomen hoc mereantur male cohaerentia animi a somnia) theosophica [sunt], quotsunt theosophorum capita" (ibid., p. 741). 41. Ibid., pp. 747-749; J. Brucker, Kurze Fragen . . . , op. cit., pp. 1249-1252. 42. "Non ipsum Deum cum mundo confundunt, et in Spinozae castris militant" Brucker, Historia, op. cit., p. 743). 43. Ibid., p. 747. 44. Encyclopedie, vol. XVI, article "Theosophes," 1758 and 1765, pp. 253ff.Jean Fabre, "Diderot et les theosophes," pp. 203-222 in Cahiers de l'Association International des etudes francaises, no. 13, June 1961. Again in Lumieres et Romantisme, Paris, Klincksie 1963, pp. 67-83. 45. Johann Friedrich Helvetius, Monarchia arcanorum theosophica et physico medica, contra pseudo-philosophiam Spino-cartesianam, 1709. This book is placed in context of the confrontation between the new science and ancient wisdoms; that comparison forms an essential element of what Oetinger's thought would be somewhat later, and, more generally, of pre-romantic and romantic Naturphilosophie. Promotoris Edlen Ritters von Orthopetra K. S. und F .S. R. Theosophischer Wunder-S des in die unvergleichliche Schonheit der unterirdischen Kbnigin Juno inniglich verli Uberirdischen Kbnigs Magniphosauri. Das ist: Theosophischer Schauplatz / des ent geistlichen Lebens und Wesens aller Creaturen / Insonderheit des Brodt- und Weines / Von Theophilo Philatela, Corinthe (sic), 1709. Considerations about the "breath of life" (Lebensodem). On p. 35, one finds the word theosophiren. Karl August von Weimar, Zu dem hbchsten alleinigen Jehovah gerichtete theosophische Herzens Anda oder Furstliche selbstabgefasste Gedanken, wie wir durch Gottes Gnade uns von dem des Irdischen befreyen und im Gebet zum wahren Licht und himmlischer Ruhe einge sollen. Nebst einigen aus dem Buche der Natur und Schrift hergeleiteten philosophisch Betrachtungen, von drey Haushaltungen Gottes, im Feuer, Licht, und Geist, zur Wie bringung der Kreatur, Philadelphia, 1786. 46. P. Deghaye, op. cit. (cf. supra, n. 13), p. 439. 47. Ibid., p. 439, concerning a text of 1751, and pp. 440 ff.
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48. Among others, Leon Cellier, L'Epope'e romantique, 1954; republished under the tide L'Epopee humanitaire et les grands mythes romantiques. Paris: S.E.D.E.S., 1971. 49. The work of Saint-Martin, L'Esprit des choses (1802), seems to be, in France, the only representative of its kind (i.e., being quite dependent on a theosophical Naturphilosophie). On the latter, see Antoine Faivre, Philosophie de la Nature (Physique sacre'e et theosophie, 18eme-19eme siecles), Paris, A. Michel, 1996. 50. Anonymous (Deslisle de Sales), De la Philosophie de la Nature, vol. Ill (Amsterdam, 1770), pp. 299-307. I thank Jean-Louis Siemons for drawing my attention to this passage. 51. In Friedrich Schiller, Philosophische Briefe, published in Thalia, 1787. 52. J. G. Stoll, Etwas zur richtigen Beurtheilung der Theosophie, Cabala, Magie (Leipzig, 1786). 53. It would be of interest to devote a study to the frequent use of the word "theosophy" by Friedrich Schlegel. Almost always, it is in a vague sense, and in personal notes presented in the form of aphorisms and various reflections. Cf. particularly in the recent edition of the complete works (known as Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, Zurich: Thomas Verlag), vols. VI, XII, and XVIII (numerous notes written during the years 1800-1804). 54. "Recherches sur la doctrine des theosophes," in Louis-Claude de SaintMartin, Oeuvres Posthumes, Paris, 1807, vol. 1, pp. 145-190. 55. Ibid., p. 147, note. The editor adds in this note: "It reached us too late to be placed, as it should be, at the begirining of this volume; but we did not want to deprive our readers of it." 56. Ibid., pp. 148,150,154. 57. Ibid., p. 154. "Rosencreuz" relates evidendy to the "foundation" texts of Rosicrucianism (Fama, 1614; Confessio, 1615; Chymische Hochzeit, 1616). Johann Reuchlin is cited probably because of his De Verbo Mirifico (1494) and De arte cabbalistica (1517). Francois Georges is Giorgi, the author of Df Harmonia Mundi (1525, followed in 1536 by his Problemata). Pico here represents a double orientation: the Christian Kabbalah (as in Reuchlin and Giorgi) and magia (as in Cornelius Agrippa). Thus, Rosicrucianism, Christian Kabbalah, and magia are found annexed by the author to "theosophy," just as Paracelsus is—which makes sense. The annexation of both Van Helmonts (Johann Baptist and Franziscus Mercurius) to that sort of list is also current enough, as seen before. The presence of Francis Bacon is more unexpected. ApartfromWeigel, Boehme, Pordage, Poiret, Kuhlmann, Leade, Swedenborg, Martines de Pasqually and SaintMartin, who indeed represent the theosophie current proper, there still remain four names which are interesting to find here: Thomasius, Leibniz, Boreil (i.e. Boreel), and Zuimerman (i.e. Zimmermann). Christian Thomasius (1655- 1728), the author of Introductio ad philosophiam aulicam (1688), and editor of Pierre Poiret's book, De Eruditione triplici, passes for the principal representative of eclecticism, i.e., a thought of syncretistic type, open to all fields of knowledge and opposed to all forms of sectarian philosophy. Being anti-Cartesian, antimechanist, he shows a marked interest not only for Poiret, but also for Weigel, Boehme, and Fludd (cf, among others, his book Versuch vom Wesen des Geistes, 1699), theosophers whose "Philosophy of Nature," in many aspects, corresponds to his own orientation. One would hesitate, however, to see in him an esotericist, least of all to make of him a theosopher. The same with Leibniz,
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whose presence on that list can still be explained by that of Thomasius—or vice versa: Leibniz is one of the "great synthesizers" of his time; he intends to reconcile Aristode and Plato, and somewhat like Thomasius, to rediscover a "perennial philosophy" by studying the history of philosophical and religious traditions. Thus, in 1714, he writes in a letter to Remond de Montmort: "If I had some spare time for it, I would compare my dogmas with those of the Ancients and other clever men. Truth is more widespread than one believes, but very often it is varnished and, very often too, covered up, even mutilated, corrupted by additions that spoil it or make it less useful. By pointing to these traces of truth among the Ancients (or, more generally, in predecessors), one would extract gold from mud, the diamond from its mine, and light from darkness; and this would be, indeed, the perennis quaedam philosophia" (Leibniz, Schriften, ed Gerhardt, vol. 3, pp. 624 ff., quoted by Rolf Christian Zimmerman—Das Weltbild des Jungen Goethe [Munich: W. Fink, 1969], p. 21). The presence here of these two thinkers (Thomasius and Leibniz) is thus explained by the orientation which is both "perennialist" and "interiorist" (a reference to an inner, "interior," Church) of the author of that opuscule. There is indeed an obvious parallelism between the perennial philosophy of Leibniz and the "aulic" philosophy of Thomasius. The anonymous author could have added even a name like Gottfried Arnold, a great representative of the third branch— also parallel—that of the "mystical philosophy," which corresponds to a search for the "core" of all forms of Christian "mysticism." There now remain two more names to examine: Boreel and Zimmermann. Both seem to testify to a particular familiarity of the anonymous author with Germanic spirituality. Information about Adam Boreel (1603-1667), a student of Hebrew influenced by Sebastian Franck, is given by Gottfried Arnold, his contemporary (in Unpartheyische . . . , cited supra, n. 18; cf. vol. II, B. XXVm. C. XIII, heading 22, 1729 edition, vol. I, p. 1035; and above all, vol. II (edition of 1729), vol. I, chap. VI, headings 28-33, p. 68). Boreel attempted to found a religious society in Amsterdam in 1645. His teaching rested exclusively on the Holy Scripture: he rejected all Churches, in favor of a "private," divine service. Thus he, too, is an aposde of the inner Church, but he is not a theosopher. Among his writings may be quoted: Concatenatio aurea Christiana seu cognitio Dei ac Domini nostrijesu Christi, also published in Dutch the same year; Onderhandelinge noopende den Broederlyke Godtsdienst, 1674. As for Zimmermann, I would not quite rule out the fact that he may have been Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728-1795), a physician of Hanover (although a Swiss), akin to the Illuminati (concerning him, cf. Eduard Bodemann, J. G. Zimmermann, sein Leben und bisher ungedruckte Briefe an denselben, Hanover, 1878) it is hardly probable. With greater likelihood, one could propose the name of Johann Jacob Zimmermann, on whom Gottfried Arnold again informs us (in Unpartheyische ..., quote supra, n. 17: cf. vol. II, part IV, sec. Ill, num. 18 §142; i.e., p. 1105 in the 1729 edition): "astrologus, magus, cabalista," a preacher from Strasbourg, more or less a disciple of Boehme, who wrote under the pseudonym Ambrosius Sehmann. His name is also connected with the emigration to Pennsylvania of a group of some forty "brothers" and "sisters" whom he directed spiritually. Robert Amadou republished this text under the tide Recherches sur la doctrine des theosophes, introduction and notes b Robert Amadou (Paris: Le Cercle du Livre, La Haute Science series, 1952). In his introduction (p. 21) R. Amadou writes that this text may perhaps be attributed to Gence, the author of the Notice historique sur Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (Paris, 1824). In a
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appendix, he presents a bibiliographic notice (pp. 43-58) in which, concerning Zimmermann, he hesitates between J. G. Zimmermann and the Swiss Jean-Jacques Zimmerman (1685-1756), the author of a book on Pythagoras. He thinks that "Bacon" is Roger Bacon. 58. Recherches sur la doctrine des Theosophes, op. cit., pp. 155-168. Concerning India (and such texts as the Mahabarat [Mahabharata] and the Poupnekat [Upanishads], the latter from the Vedas) the anonymous author writes: "The Europeans, in seeing the relationship and striking similarities which the doctrines of India have with those which have been published for a number of centuries by various European theosophers, do not surmise that these theosophers learned them in India. Perhaps the time is not far away when these Europeans will cast their eyes willingly on the religious and mysterious objects which they now view only with suspicion and even contempt. Then, the writings of the different Theosophers and Spiritualists will probably appear less obscure and repugnant to them, since they will discover the bases of all the legendary theogonies of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, etc., and will recognize the key to all the knowledge that they are studying; perhaps they willfinallybecome convinced that the same bases and the same dogmas which have been generally accepted in places—how ever farflung—and intimes—howeverdistant from one another, must have the same principal character of truth" (pp. 167 ff). 59. Madame de Stael, De I 'Allemagne, vol. II, Bruxelles, 1820 edition, chap. V ("De la disposition religieuse appelee mysticite") "mysticism," vol. II (Brussels, 1830), p. 361: "The religious disposition called 'mysticite' is only a more intimate way of feeling and conceiving Christianity. Since in the word 'mysticite' is enclosed that of mystery, people believe that mystics professed extraordinary dogmas and participated in a sect. According to them the only mysteries are those of feeling applied to religion, and feeling is at once what is most clear, most simple, and most inexplicable. However, we must make the distinction between the theosophers; that is to say, those who concern themselves with theology, such as Jacob Boehme and Saint-Martin, etc., and the simple mystics; the first want to penetrate the secret of creation, the second want to be led by their own heart." And in chapter VII (same edition, pp. 387-390), entided "Des Philosophes religieux appeles Theosophes," Madame de Stael resumes the distinction set forth in chap. V, and she writes: "In affirming the spirituality of the soul, not only has Christianity led souls to believe in the unlimited power of religious or philosophical faith, but the revelation has appeared to some people as a continual miracle which can be renewed within each of them, and some have sincerely believed that a supernatural divination was accorded them, and that in them a truth was manifested of which they were more witnesses than inventors" (p. 388). She then proceeds to devote a few lines to Boehme and his translator, Saint-Martin (p. 389), and she compares the "spiritualist philosophers" (theosophers) with "materialist philosophers." The former "declare that what they think has been revealed to them, while philosophers in general believe themselves led solely by their own reason; but since both groups aspire to understand the mystery of mysteries, at this lofty altitude what significance do the words 'reason' and 'madness' have? Why stigmatize with the term 'insane' those who think they find deep wisdom in enthusiasm?" (p. 390). See also, for interesting variations of these texts, vol. V of Madame de Stael's works, in the critical edition procured by the Countess Jean de Pange and Simone Balaye (Paris: Hachette, 1960), particularly
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pp. 126-136 ("Des Philosophes religieux appeles Theosophes"), pp. 137-154 ("De l'esprit de secte en Allemagne"). 60. Anonymous (Jean-Jacques Bernard), Opuscules theosophiques, auxquels on a joi une defense des soirees de Saint-Petersbourg; par un ami de la sagesse et de la verite 1822). 61. Joseph de Maistre, Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg (Edition de Lyon, 1831), vol. II, p. 303 (11th discussion). First published in 1822, the book had been initially conceived as early as 1810. In the same discussion (p. 302), while speaking about the illuminati (i.e., about theosophers like Saint-Martin, whom he knew), he wrote: "Often . . . I had occasion to declare that every true statement they made was nothing but the catechism obscured by strange words." 62. In 1831, Baader wrote that the religious philosophy is not the Weltweisheit (the worldly wisdom, limited to "cosmosophy" and "physiosophy") but that to which Saint Paul opposed it, namely, theosophy, or Gottesweisheit (God's Wisdom). Cf. Franz von Baader, Sdmtliche Werke, in the edition procured by Franz Hoffman (1851-60), vol. I, p. 323. In a note of comments to Johann Friedrich Kleuker's Magikon, published in 1784, Baader writes: "Die Kirchenvater Tertullian, Tatian, etc., waren allerdings von Kabbala beriihrt, die Verwandtschaft des Neuplatonismus mit der Kabbala ist nicht zu und man kann mit Grund die christliche Theosophie eine erweiterte, bereicherte und (c modificirte Kabbala nennen" (vol. XII, p. 550; this concerned p. 255, lines 19-27 ff. of Magikon). In his Fermenta Cognitionis, published from 1822 to 1825, Baader wrote (in the sixth notebook of his Fermenta Cognitionis): "J. Boehme's Theosophie beruht ganz dem Evangelium Johannis I. 1-44" (II, 402). There exists a French translation of Fermenta Cognitionis by Eugene Susini (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985). 63. Friedrich von Osten-Sacken, in his introduction to book XII (1860) of the edition procured by Franz Hoffmann, pp. 16-40 writes: "Die Verstandes-Speculation [konnte] sich nicht dazu erheben, die Tiefe der Theosophie zu erfassen.—Wir miissen d als eine ganz besondere, eigenthiimliche Strbmung der geistigen Entwickelung betr Wahrend die Verstandes-Speculation in eigener Autonomic ihre Systeme gebaut hat, so Theosophie, von einer religiosen Erkenntniss ausgehend, sich stets in die absolute W Christenthums zu vertiefen gesucht und von diesem Standpuncte aus einer christlichen lation reiche Elemente geboten. Je mehr desshalb ein tieferer Blick in den Gang der Speculation uns erkennen lasst, dass diese Verstandesoperation nicht im Stande ist, die Geistes und der Natur zu erfassen und dass dieser Formalismus in seiner Consequenz z vollstdndingen Bruch mit unserem tieferen Sein gefuhrt hat, um so mehr thut es Noth, Aufmerksamkeit auf eine Richtung zu lenken, die dazu berufen scheint, eine Regenerat Speculation zu erzeugen. Diese Richtung einer theosophischen Anschauungsweise zieht nach der Reformation durch die deutsche Wissenschaft und wird in der grossartigste reprasentirt durch Jakob Bohme" (p. 17). "Man kannfreilichFranz Baader unter den Ph sophen als unsystematisch bezeichnen, dagegen muss man ihm das grosse Verdienst vin Theosophie auf ein bestimmtes Erkenntnissprincip zuruckgefiibrt und dadurch derselben Grundlage gegeben zu haben" (p. 40). The whole passage cited here concerning Verstandes Speculation remains a matter of particular interest today. It would be of service to bring out a new edition and translation of the entire text by von Osten-Sacken (pp. 1-73, in XII). 64. Cf. especially V, p. lxxiii: Franz Hoffmann says that one can use "theosophy" in relation to Baader, in the sense that Carl Gustav Carus gives it (Psyche. Zur
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Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele, 2nd ed., p. 73), when he explains that true philosophy could not be anything but theosophy; because if the divine, the origin of all things, is God, a profound knowledge can have no other object than the divine. Here we see that for Hoffmann the word "theosophy" retains a more general, vaguer sense than it does for von Osten-Sacken. 65. Julius Hamberger, Stimmen aus dent Heiligthum der christlichen Mystik und Theosophie. Fiir Freunde des inneren Lebens und der tiefern Erkenntniss der gbttlichen Dinge gesammelt und herausgegeben (Stuttgart, 1857), 2 vols. In his short preface (two pages), Hamberger declares having given up distinguishing mysticism from theosophy: "Es war nicht thunlich, die Mystiker von den Theosophen zu trennen, indem ja so manche Mystiker zugleich Theosophen sind, sondern sie folgen sich, ohne Scheidung, meist in chronologischer Reihe, int zweiten Theile aber mehr nach ihrer innern Verwandtschaft zusammengeordnet. Noch weniger war eine Zusammenstellung nach den Materien in systematischer Ordnung moglich, indem ein und derselbe Abschnitt nicht selten mehr als einen bedeutenden Punkt zum Gegenstande hat" (p. iv). He nevertheless ends this preface by the words here: "[einerseits lasst sich] der Mystik die Kraft nicht absprechen, denjenigen welche iiberhaupt ein ernstes Verlangen nach Einigung ihres Gemiithes mit der Gottheit in sich tragen, den Aufschwung zu derselben wesentlich zu erleichtern, und da uns andererseits in der Theosophie ein Licht entgegenschimmert, welches, wenn man ihm nur weiter und weiter nachzugeghen sich enschliessen kann, die christliche Lehre in einer Klarheit und Bestimmtheit erkennen lasst, wie sie die gegenwdrtige Verwirrung der Begriffe in der That gebieterisch erheischet" (p. iv). One thus finds in this anthology, besides persons who are mystics stricdy speaking, authors such as Paracelsus, Postel, Arndt, Boehme, Pordage, A. Bourignon, Oetinger, Philipp Matthaus Hahn, Johann Michael Hahn, Jung-Stilling, Saint-Martin, Dutoit-Membrini, Eckartshausen, Baader, Johann Friedrich von Meyer, and even Franz Hoffmann. One also finds there for the first time that a true anthology of theosophy has seen the day! Finally, one finds also some romantic Naturphilosophen such as F. J. W. Schelling, F. Schlegel, and G. H. Schubert. Each name presented is accompanied by an informative note, followed by a citation of one or more selected texts. 66. Rudolf Rocholl, Beitrage zu einer Geschichte der Theosophie. Mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung aufMolitor's Philosophie der Geschichte (Berlin, 1856). For a bibliography on R. Rocholl, cf. Gerhard Wehr, Esoterisches Christentum (von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart), 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1995), p. 386. 67. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Samtliche Schriften, edited by Karl C. Eberhard Ehmann (Stuttgart, 1858-64). The first series (5 vols.) is dedicated to the homiletic writings; the second (6 vols.) is dedicated to theosophical writings, among which are Lehrtafel (1763), Swedenborg (1765), Biblisches und Emblematisches Wbrterbuch (1776), etc. On the grade of Theosopher Knight in Masonry, cf. Karl R. H. Frick, Licht und Finsternis (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt), 1978, vol. II, p. 197. And yet shordy thereafter it is again in a very general but precise and not at all esoteric sense that the Italian philosopher Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797-1855) employs teosofia in his Teosofia (posthumous, 2 vols., Turin, 1859) and distinguishes (cf. especially vol. I., p. 2) two areas in metaphysics, namely, psychology and theosophy. The author declares that he is inspired by Saint Augustine, who reduced philosophy to two fundamental areas: the knowledge of the soul and the knowledge of God.
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68. Rene Guenon, Le Theosophisme, histoire d'une pseudo-religion (Paris: Val 1921), pp. 1ff.All traditional Western theosophy, "the basis of which is always Christianity," is represented by a certain group of authors of whom he gives a succinct list: "Such as, for example, doctrines like those of Jacob Boehme, Gichtel, William Law, Jane Leade, Swedenborg, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, and Eckartshausen: we are not claiming to give a complete list, but merely citing some of the better known names."* 69. On the choice of "theosophy" by the founders of the Theosophical Society and the meaning that they gave this word, cf. James Santucci, "Theosophy, Theosophia," in The American Theosophist, Special Issue (Autumn 1987). By the same author and Jean-Louis Siemons, see the communications in Politica Hermetica (cf. supra, n. 2). Cf. also the article by John Algeo in Theosophical History (California State University, Fullerton), vol. IV, nos. 6-7, April-July 1993: pp. 223-229, p. 226. According to the testimony of Henry S. Olcott himself, the choice of the name of the T.S. was a random one; regarding the meeting of 18 October 1875, he wrote: "The choice of a name for the Society was, of course, a question for grave discussion in Committee. Several were suggested, among them, if I recollect right, the Egyptological, the Hermetic, the Rosicrucian, etc., but none seemed just the thing. At last, in turning over the leaves of the Dictionary, one of us came across the word 'Theosophy,' whereupon, after discussion, we unanimously agreed that was the best of all; since it both expressed the esoteric truth we wished to reach and covered the ground of Felt's methods of scientific research" (H. S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Adyar, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1974, 1st ed., 1895, vol. I, p. 132). 70. Such a kinship makes us wonder whether Rudolf Steiner would not have called his movement "Theosophical Society" had this name been still available. 71. On the authors mentioned here, see Access to Western Esotericism, SUNY Press, 1995, "A Bibliographical Guide to Research," pp. 297-348, and infra, p. 255. 72. This trait sheds partial light on the docetist orientation of Henry Corbin's thought and his lively interest in Swedenborg. 73. SeveraltimesI heard Corbin exclaim, as often in his courses at the Sorbonne as in private conversation: "Madame Blavatsky confiscated, stole the word from us!" (i.e., the word "theosophy"); but he never denigrated the teachings of the Theosophical Society or of its founders. His spirit, less sectarian than Guenon's, and more open to the cultural, tended to lash out at the oppressors of symbolism and esotericism in general, rather than find fault with any one particular spiritual current or society of the spiritual kind. 74. The entry "Theosophy" in dictionaries and encyclopedias deserves being made the object of a special analysis. We have seen that it is practically absent throughout the entire eighteenth century (with the notable exception of Diderot's Encyclopedie), and that it appeared more and more frequendy beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, when its presence became almost obligatory. (See, for example, p. 28 in Real. Encyklopddie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vol. XVI [Gotha, and the interesting article in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1983 edition) by Carl T. Jackson.) The Dictionnaire de Spiritualite ascetique et mystique (fasc. 96-98, pp. 548-5 Paris, Beauchesne, 1990) is one of the last two undertakings to date (i.e., ,1998), at least to my knowledge, to have featured a long treatment of the word (by the author of the
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present article; the other one is the Dictionnaire critique de theologie, pp. 1135-1137 [Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998]—that article by the same author). Finally, we add that the rather felicitous expression theosophia perennis, copied from the expression philosophia perennis, can serve to emphasize the esoteric flavor of the latter, or to suggest that basically there is but a single theosophy, diversely manifested in many currents. It is in this "unifying" sense that Mircea Eliade employs the term: in his review "Some Notes on Theosophia Perennis: Ananda Coomaraswamy and Henry Corbin," in History of Religions, vol. 19, no. 2 (November 1979; August 1979-May 1980): pp. 167- 176. With Coomaraswamy, we enter the domain of Far Eastern traditions; under the pen of Eliade, perennis becomes a bridge connecting Hinduism and Abrahamism. As a final reference, let us mention the interesting article by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Wunenberger, "La pluralita dellefigureteofaniche (Esperienza e significato deH'immagine)," pp. 95-119 in Dalla Sofia al New Age (edited by the Centro Aletti), Roma, Lipa Sri, 1995, where the author deals with theosophy in its relation to theophanic experience and the symbolic imagination. While this essay was being printed for its publication in French, James A. Santucci took a felicitous initiative: the preparation of a collective work in two volumes. Vol. I is devoted to the history of the "classical" theosophical current studied here, and vol. II to the history of the Theosophical Society. Both are divided into chapters, each of which is entrusted to one author. The aim is to present a chronological survey of both currents. This is being carried out under the direction of James A. Santucci as one of the activities of the program he is directing, entided "Theosophy and Theosophie Thought" (which became in 1999 "Western Esotericism from the Early Modern Period"), within the American Academy of Religion. The collective work in two volumes is designed to be published by State University of New York Press.
Theosophy and Speculative of the B a r o q u e C e n t u r y in
Mysticism Germany
( N o t e o n the W o r k s of Bernard Gorceix)
Thanks to the studies by Alexandre Koyre and then Eugene Susini,1 French Germanists have been showing increasingly greater concern to integrate into their thinking a current of thought long neglected as much by them as by their colleagues across the Rhine. A current sometimes marginal, at times underground, or again distinctly perceptible in literature but then in a diluted form, as in literary romanticism in Germany, yet never really interrupted. As an example, to which the whole present analysis is devoted, while German mysticism of the fourteenth century is relatively well known, as is baroque literature of the seventeenth century, not enough interest has been taken in the speculative mysticism of the baroque age (or, if one prefers, the mystical baroque), perhaps because it was found neither sufficiently mystical, nor sufficiently philosophical and literary. Escaping convenient and reassuring classifications, it seemed above all a hybrid type, a Zwitter devoid of specific armature. Yet, this specificity does exist: it is a form of spirituality, a theosophy—as original for its contents as its form. If one makes of theosophy a subject of study, one realizes that it can be approached only by phiridisciplinary means and this is perhaps one of the reasons it has been left aside for so long—the other being its lack of theological characteristics. Bernard Gorceix (1937-1984), a great French scholar, prolific in the works he has left us, teaches us more than the essentials on German theosophy of the seventeenth century. He did not directly take on all the theosophers stricto sensu, already well known, such as Jacob Boehme, but did better: he showed how mysticism and the baroque interpenetrate each other through theosophy, revealing in his works its near omnipresence in areas where sometimes one would not have expected to find it. He went back to the sixteenth century, to the properly Germanic origin of this form of spirituality—which, as such, is obviously not limited to Germany—in his study on Valentin Weigel, and nearly all of his later studies were on the baroque period. 49
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VALENTIN WEIGEL The academic thesis of Bernard Gorceix on Valentin Weigel, defended in 1972,2 represents a contribution of the highest order to the knowledge of Weigelian thinking and the birth of German theosophy as it came into being in the sixteenth century and continued to flourish, to Baader and beyond, taking in Boehme, Oetinger, and other thinkers also representative of this current of thinking. As Henri Delacroix has commented, "Protestant fideism is only rarely mystical," and it is understandable that historians of ideas have not found in sixteenth-century Germany that alliance of mysticism and Catholicism that is so evident in other countries; but they are discovering more and more that speculative theology, especially theosophy, occupies part of the terrain left by mysticism. Between the Reformation and humanism before the Peace of Augsburg (1555), on the one hand, and the baroque from the start of the Thirty Years' War, on the other, half a century passes that seems relatively poor; but this is an error of perspective that the works of Albert-Marie Schmidt, Will-Erich Peuckert, Gustav Rene Hocke, Andre Chastel, and now Bernard Gorceix allow us to correct. Marginal to the two subjects of interest that are seventeenth-century German mysticism and the crisis of Germanic conscience between the Reformation and the baroque age, a third "line of force" leads us to the Saxon pastor Valentin Weigel (1533-88): theosophy. While it seems fairly clear that Paracelsus is not a theosopher in the full sense, but the author of a first philosophical representation of the universe, of the first global view of the visible and invisible worlds, Gorceix's study confirms that Weigel is indeed the direct precursor of German theosophy; his thinking is the fruit of a remarkable marriage of the Rheno-Flemish mystical tradition and the great Paracelsian synthesis. Gorceix, who was very knowledgeable on both, had already presented an excellent translation of the medical works of the doctor from Basel, provided with a commentary.3 Johann Arndt, then Gottfried Arnold and Leibniz, contributed to spread Weigel's influence and, in 1765, Diderot's Encyclopedie, in the article "Theosophy," puts it in prominent place, but the romantic era—except Saint-Martin and Baader—was to neglect it. Gorceix studied the six thousand pages, printed or manuscript, of the Saxon pastor—one of the most copious works of the century, dispersed through all of Europe, and this before Winfried Zeller, aided by the regretted Will-Erich Peuckert, had published his complete works, an undertaking still not finished to this day. Born of Catholic parents at Hayn near Dresden—the "Rome of Lutheranism"—where he spends his early childhood, Weigel studies at the universities of Meissen, Leipzig, Wittenberg; is named pastor at Zschopau, not far from Chemnitz, at the age of thirty-five in 1567, and would remain in this city until his death, thus for twenty-one years. The author traces this biography in detail
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while taking care to illuminate it on every page with commentary and historical and geographical observations concerning Weigel's life, while this simultaneously makes us better understand the social, political, and spiritual climate of this part of Saxony. Let us remember here that this period—roughly, from 1555 to the end of the century—is characterized by a pronounced taste for the thinking of Paracelsus; starting from the Peace of Augsburg, indeed, his writings circulate all over Germany: they are published and distributed, something the Basel doctor had not seen during his hfetime. His work profoundly marks Weigel's, which similarly would not be published until after his death: from 1588, there is a gap of some twenty-five years before his first writings see the light of day. It is from 1570 to 1584, at Zschopau, that the Saxon pastor writes all of his works, without their being either attacked or really accepted; they seem, however, to have been fairly well-known, Weigel having a wide circle of friends and admirers. He is not ignorant of the debates that disturb religious life in the years following the Peace of 1555. Rejecting rather, and always more vehemently, the manner in which the Church of his time understands faith, he undertakes a work of reform. The influence of Paracelsus determines the hardening of his attitude at the very moment when Lutheranism fixes itself in rigid dogma (the Formula of Concord, known from 1577 on). Weigel places at the head of his meditation the principle of interiority necessary to all authentic knowledge, recognizing in the divine Book its presence in the deepest part of ourselves. Speculations on the divine Word had led Sebastian Franck to postulate the new birth as solely dependent on individual and inner experience. God has placed in the heart of Man a "model" that is divine Wisdom itself: "We are capable of God," wrote Franck, "and, in some measure, we are of the divine essence." Now, the first rule that this interiority implies is freedom from all foreign authorities, which Weigel proclaims, whose program is nonetheless not limited to mere introspection, since to its practice he adds the Paracelsian teachings. In his treatise Gnothi seauton, he pushes back the limits of selfknowledge considerably, by trying to show that Man contains in himself the entire basis and core of all beings, the qualities of the entire world. All of Nature, tangible and intangible, is, so to speak, concentrated into a closed fist; the macrocosm has become the microcosm. The light of Nature and the light of grace, such as Eckhart had already celebrated them, do not oppose but complete one another, forming together this most noble attribute of Man, the double knowledge (die Zweyfache Erkendtnuss). Our theosopher demands of the new Man not just the inner perception of divinity; he also puts salvation on the level of knowledge: we must learn, see, know, and recognize, that is, know ourselves and know God, inwardly and outwardly, in the spirit and in Nature. The three ways of knowledge are: sensory (including the five senses and the imagination), intellectual, and
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supreme knowledge, which is revealed. Weigel refers directly to Paracelsus when he says that the imagination depends on the firmament, that it is the star in Man, the "sidereal" spirit. He takes up again, as we see, the Paracelsian word and concept of Gestirn; if the body obeys the lower elements and if the spirit—the image of God in Man—is governed (gubernirt) by God Himself, then the arts, natural wisdom, and light, like the imagination, depend on the firmament ('Wir sein des Gestirns Schuler und das Gestirn ist unser Lehrmeister"). But the true knowledge is interior. The careful study made by Gorceix shows us that the Saxon pastor distinguishes himself rather clearly from Paracelsus and the later Naturphilosophen in that he does not seem to consider the outer world as the dwelling-place of the divine Word. Only our inner world is the seat of this divine Word: no need, therefore, to seek God in the objects of Nature, that is, in created beings, but in the deepest part of the subject, or in Christ, who lives in us. In this era when the political order is disintegrating in the Germanic empire, a great anxiety is shaking the sciences. As for Weigel, he does not challenge the concept, proper to modern astronomy, of a decentered universe, of a God torn from the world. In this respect, his work is a "quiet beach," writes Gorceix. He knows nothing of the reversal that Copernicus had proclaimed in 1543. However, he posits that place and spirit are fundamentally incompatible: the spirit cannot be enclosed in any place, because no circle could be great enough to contain it. The angels are not prisoners of the terrestrial sphere but float in the limitless abyss of divinity; as for diabolical creatures, who reside in the four elements, and the beings of the middle world (Mittelwelt), namely, the nymphs and the undines, as well as the souls of the dead, their status in space does not seem to have been clearly defined by Weigel (pp. 150 ff.). This meditation on place results in one on the world: it resembles an egg—an alchemical image also taken from Paracelsus. The shell corresponds to the sphere of the bearings of the pre-Copernican world and contains all the stars, the twelve signs of the zodiac; the egg yolk represents the lower sphere of the world (the earth and the sea) and the white represents fire and air. "The only cause of the movement of celestial bodies," writes Weigel, "is the desire they feel to attain to God, to repose, to God's Kingdom." The world is made up of matter that he divides, like Paracelsus, into three substances: sulphur, salt, and mercury. These basic structures of the universe, studied according to alchemical tradition—he mixes the teaching of Genesis with that of Paracelsus—allow us to understand that creation can be defined as an emergence of the invisible, as the birth of the visible from the invisible. We see only the body, not the agent, of creation. It is the invisible spirit that explains the activity of Nature; language itself does not speak, but human reason. The passage of the invisible to the visible, that is, to creation, is an "explanation" of God, a development (explicatio) of what is enveloped
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(complicatum) in divinity. These terms are borrowed from the Consolation of Boethius, and Nicholas of Cusa (De docta ignorantia). The visible world is born of the angels, who themselves are born on the first day, at the same time as the light, of which they are the fruit. The birth of the visible world from the angels is made real through the mediation of the four elements, the mothers (Mutter) of all things, which are the invisible forces, seeds, matrices being birthed from the angelic essence. It is they who allow the creation of matter, hence the three substances (salt, sulphur, mercury). Gorceix does not point out that this scheme reverses the sequence of traditional alchemy, according to which the elements issue from three principles of which they are, so to speak, the condensation. However, there is perhaps no fundamental divergence between these two representations, to the extent that one accepts that each posits the existence of a naturans principle that founds a naturata whole. What some call "principles," others may call "elements," and vice versa, especially as the four elements are sometimes reduced to three, "fire, water, and earth" then fulfilling the role of "salt, sulphur, and mercury": it is enough to name the principles each time, or the elements properly said. T o this macrocosm corresponds the equally ancient concept of the microcosm on which Paracelsus, in his Philosophia sagax, had conferred a philosophical and poetic status. The ternary division of the worlds is reproduced in the three levels of the human body, since our body is composed of three parts (lower, middle, upper); similarly, the eye of flesh (oculis carnis) lets us see the perceptible world, the eye of understanding (oculis rationis) corresponds to the astral world, the eye of spirit (oculis mentis seu intellectus) allows us to perceive God and His angels. But each part of which Man is composed is not a simple correspondence, it is the product of the macrocosm: "from the elements and from all the spiritual creatures" Man draws, writes Weigel, "his visible and palpable body. He draws his spirit from the starry firmament. The soul comes to him from the Spiraculum vitae." We are subject to the stars, whereas Adam lived in an angelic manner before the fall; but those who live in the new birth are no longer bound to the injunctions of the stellar spirit: astrology concerns only natural Man; in this capacity, it allows us to know ourselves by determining our exact place in the world, at least until we are born a second time. Man is the quintessence, that is, a fifth element drawn from the world of the four elements. He is thus an extract, a summary, a synthesis, of the world as a whole; tongue of creation, he puts into language the totality of the divine work. The importance of this symbol in Weigel is shown by his frequent repetition of the word Begriff, already employed in an analogical sense in Theologia Germanica (late fourteenth century). This term, which means "envelopment" (before meaning "concept"), designates what one can touch, what is corporeal (leiblich). Boehme would sometimes employ Leiblichkeit and Begreiflichkeit indiscriminately, and Saint-Martin, in his translation of Aurora, would render Leib by
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Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism
"circumscription," that is, the boundary limiting the extent of a body (what encloses, what envelops). One could add that Franz von Baader and G. H. Schubert would take up this Boehmean notion of Begreiflichkeit, of "earthly corporeity," assigning to it, as Boehme had done, a radius of action reaching as far as the moon, at least not going farther than the planets of our solar system: beyond it are the fixed stars, of an etheric nature. But the meditation on the divine names and attributes is less clearly expressed. On the basis of two works (The Consolation ofPhilosophy, of Boethius, and Theologia Germanica), we find ourselves with Weigel in the presence of a distinct preference for the One, the Unity. God is at the same time the center and circumference (p. 204). The image of the mirror helps one to visualize the creative knowledge of God: as He turns toward Himself and seeks Himself, God looks at Himself, contemplates Himself, in a divine Mirror which is the Word, engendered in the first act of reflection, and which is also the mirror of creation. God there discovers the soul, and the soul will there discover God. Thus, "God engenders His own image, at the very moment when He seeks Himself. He discovers Himself in the very accomplishment of the creative act. Creation is strictly contemporaneous with the divine reflexive act" (p. 210). Sebastian Franck, Meister Eckhart, and Tauler had described this engendering in a similar way. But since the weight of the Aristotelian tradition is still very heavy in Weigel, and according to the Physics every movement, every action, presupposes a deprivation, a lack, Weigel preserves the divine perfection by never saying that God acts, but only that He "is acting" (wirckend). Thus the divine action becomes a simple attribute that is applied to the being without transforming it, while, in the created being, the action is contemporaneous with the very modification of this being. The third term, the solid link between the created and uncreated, is will. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is a link that unites the Father and the Son, while obviously remaining God Himself. Weigel is following the teaching of Eckhart, who defined the Spirit as the principle of union in the heart of the Trinity and in the created world. Paracelsus, in Astronomia magna, had differentiated two creators: the Father who "creates Man, starting from below, the other, the Son, starting from above." The light of the Father sprung from the created, or the light of Nature, is not the fight of the Father or of grace ("Through the Father, we are mortal, through the Son, eternal"); but the Holy Spirit, expression of the divine force present everywhere, allows Man to express himself as much in the natural light as in the divine one. We find again in Weigel this interpretation of the Spirit as an animating movement, indeed in agreement with the etymological meaning of Geist. Weigel clearly contrasts the two chains that come from immutable divinity: the Father that engenders the Son, through whom He is the redeemer; and God who penetrates the created being by the Word, through which He is the Creator, Father of light and of life (pp. 219 ff.).
The theme of the celestial Eve, spouse of God, occupied an important place in the thinking of Paracelsus. The author of the book on invisible illnesses and the Philosophia sagax put in the foreground the concept of an invisible and spiritual generation. The heavenly Eve of Weigel is the firstborn of all created beings. Herself created, she remains a distinct hypostasis in God only through her person. At the beginning of time, says Weigel, it was she who "made of God a God," that is, she "tore God away from the eternity of his withdrawal, so that he would reveal himself in creation." She is the spouse of God, the creatress. Later, for Gottfried Arnold, she would be rather the spouse of the soul, savioress. The form, image, and sign of deity (i.e. the "character" according to Weigel, the "signature" according to Boehme) are Christ. Without the Word, God would remain in the negativity of deity. Weigel, like Sebastian Franck, does not postulate the notion of the historical redemption of humanity through Christ's birth, any more than that of predestination, "for the economy of the creative act already implies the presence in Man of the Word of God" (p. 231). But while according to Franck the flesh of Christ at his birth is the flesh of Man and then goes through a strange process of purification in the course of which it becomes spiritual and celestial, according to Weigel the flesh of Christ is pure and celestial in all eternity. In Astronomia magna, Paracelsus had brought out the originality of the new birth in Man through the new flesh of Christ, in order to distinguish clearly the earthly body from the sidereal one, then the two bodies of the divine body, and thus attempted to bring together in a higher harmony the elementary and the angelic, the human and the divine, nature and grace—in agreement with the first statements of the Tabula Smaragdina—going so far as to grant that even flowers, fragile and ephemeral, will subsist resurrected, eternally transfigured. Weigel thus infuses into his meditation the new blood of a theosophy no longer conceiving the creation and the end of the world as an emergence and an annihilation of no importance, but as the emanation of and then the return to a prima materia elementorum, just as Man does not rebecome pure spirit in the heart of God but is endowed with a new and an eternal body. The voluntarism of Weigelian mysticism prefigures that ofJacob Boehme. Also the concept of/ree will, of which Bossuet would speak in his treatise "Du libre arbitre," was termed in German theology, especially of the sixteenth century, freier Wille. But Weigelian thinking on sin or the fall simply takes up Paulinian and scholastic expressions and images, just as it does those of the Theologia Germanica and the Franckian treatises: here again we find meditations on the trees of knowledge of good and evil, on the tree of life, on the seed of the serpent, and on woman. The story of the fall is that of the transformation of the free will of the rational created being into self-will, for Man is created free. There exists an evil that is original, contemporaneous
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with the creative act, because every creation is the loss of a unity, the revelation of a duality. Weigel does not develop this divine birth in the spirit of what would be the Boehmean antinomy, but he does have a clear intuition of it, confirmed by his meditation on the reconciliation in God of the contraries. There is also an accidental evil, that of Man who has sinned through pride. But Evil is crushed by grace, it is not substantial: it does not have to be annihilated since essentially it does not exist. Gorceix then devotes a long chapter to the via mystica according to Weigel, bringing out the concepts of this author on natural and sanctifying faith and presenting the stages of mystical life, the processes of union of the soul with God, as well as the Weigelian theories on the New Church. Let us describe here only the essential ideas of the last part on eschatology, that is, considerations that are more specifically theosophical than the development treating the via mystica. We see coming to light, indirectly, an intuition that was to become a pillar of Saint-Martinian and Baaderian theosophy: the concept of a general corruption of matter through the fall. Fortunately, faith is life and because it is life, it is just as much of a spiritual nature as of a corporeal one. It is the whole Man who can be saved. Paracelsus had established the necessity of the celestial flesh, a concept completed by Weigel, who speaks of the urgency of an absolute metamorphosis that would find once more "beyond death and judgment, the vital alloying of the spirit and body." Spiritual assimilation is nothing, if it is not associated with a corporeal assimilation, and in faith the "corporeal cannot be without the spiritual" (p. 420). The identification of the believer and Christ can be perfect only if the believer possesses the whole Christ, Christ incarnated and Christ resurrected: "Man mtisse Christum ganz haben behalten und nicht von einander theilen." Thus the body of Jesus is just as important as his spirit (pp. 420 ff.). The intuition of a spiritual corporeity even appears as a central point of his theosophy. The concretization of the spiritual, the corporealization of the new birth, express a celestial naturalism in him that is grafted onto the mystical tradition. It is an important historical moment. Oetinger would write: "Geist ist ein vermischtes Wesen aus dem geistlichen und leiblichen Grundanfang," and it is known how Baader was to define this concept of the "double physicality." There already exists in Weigel, as it would later in Baader, an eternal nature in the sense where the latter speaks of ewige Natur, for the former indeed makes a distinction between limus naturae (corrupted matter) and limus coelestis (the immaterial concrete). Gorceix also points out clearly that Baader erred in regretting not to find in Weigel this eternal sensibility of which the romantic says: "Ewige Natur setzt ewige Sinnlichkeit" (eternal nature posits an eternal sensibility) [p. 424]. The Weigelien frequency of the expressions begreiffen, Begriff implies in contrast, and anticipates, the Oetingerian notion of a Leiblichkeit des Geistes, of a corporeal circumscription by the Spirit (holy) of
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beings and things. Thus Gorceix can write: "Without the Paulinian forcefulness, the Boehmean genius, the abstract clarity of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, or the matured Baaderian art of expression, Valentin Weigel, through his concept of the spiritual body of the new birth, introduces into the history of German thought this grandiose theme of the corporeity of the spirit, which German theosophy of the ensuing centuries would develop under the triple influence of the Kabbalah, Swedenborg, and Martinism" (p. 426). The Weigelian whimsies describing the hereafter could illustrate the Delights of Hieronymus Bosch and form in any case an underrated contribution to the study of the fantastical in the sixteenth century (p. 429). The souls of the damned can appear to us. While men of goodness know nothing, in the hereafter, of the world and its tears, the evil dead are often seen: "They gallop through the forests, they hunt, they skirmish, they whirl about, they brandish their lances" (p. 430). As for the world, which was born of a coagulated smoke, it will return to smoke again to be definitively extinguished; but the spiritual, let us remember, does not eliminate the corporeal. What is new in Weigel is that the Kingdom of Christ must exist corporeally, materially: "The New Jerusalem," he writes, "must be corporeal (leiblich), just as Christ had a bodily existence, not only spiritual" (p. 43 8).4 Another feature of the Weigelian beyond, common to Protestant authors since Luther, is the absence of purgatory; ghosts are not the denizens of purgatory but the souls of those awaiting the final judgment. Two centuries later, Jung-Stilling would develop similar theories. As for Lucifer, his punishment is to be confined for six thousand years in the visible world. The demons thus inhabit the elements and are threatening us from very near. Satan, after the final judgment, would bear in himself, and for eternity, his eternal hell. Thus, the works of Weigel are important if one considers them not only in the context of the sixteenth century, but also for their later ramifications. The Saxon pastor first appears as a thinker who distances himself from the teachings of Luther. While the latter tended to distend the relationships of Man the sinner and God, the better to apprehend the infinite and terrifying grandeur of the God of justice and love, Weigel does nothing to impinge on the essential union of the soul and the deity. Evil itself is but an accident. However, a current is already emerging in Weigel, before exploding in Boehme: the reinforcement of the theme of the fall and the concept of a radical evil. Moreover, the reading of Paracelsus leads him to distinguish two methods of seeking for truth, whose union constitutes a "pansophia," a universal science: the light of grace, which is interior, by which Man knows himself and God; the light of Nature or "philosophia sagax majoris et minoris mundi," by which the theosopher puts Man back on the ladder of creation. Paracelsian also are the ternary division of Man, from the anatomical and psychological point of view, the tripartite structure of the universe, the three basic substances (salt, sulphur,
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mercury), the concept of the active role of the imagination by which we act on the world and accomplish an invisible work. Let us not speak of a nuptial mysticism nor a mysticism of love, but of a mysticism of trust—as Gorceix suggests (p. 453). The gracious gift of God in the soul is the will that He implants in Man, a will that is the divine life itself. What is theosophical in Weigel is the affirmation that the world of above and that of below have the same basic constitution, possess rigorously parallel structures, are not opposed like the physical and the spiritual, flesh and spirit, the created and the void. There is a higher nature and a lower, just as there are two matters, two physicalities (the "double physicality" of Saint-Martin; and Baader would suppose both a visible and an invisible materiality). The true theosophical method of investigation is the study of the law of analogy—and of homology—that rules the universe, for life is characterized by the interaction of infinite unities (while, according to Oetinger, the systems of Leibniz and Wolff know only action or reaction). The tide of the Oetingerian treatise, Theologia ex idea vitae deducta (1765), would be also a complete program in this respect. While grace is spiritual, it is at the same time of a concrete order. Certainly, the inferior is realized only in the superior, but the superior is a panharmonic universe, Oetinger would say. It is also theosophy, which introduces evil into the very interior of the process of creation, but it would be necessary to wait for Boehme to see this concept clearly stated. All the same, one can say that all the theosophers establish that Man corrupts the entire world through his sin, the Adamic fault having tainted lower nature from the beginning (Romans 8:19-22). Creation—let us understand: divine automanifestation—is also one of the favorite themes of the theosophers. This is also true of the theologians; but this theosophical theogony constantly calls on phenomena of a natural order, because for it the mysteries of creation reflect the movement of divine fife: the data of terrestrial physicality are transferred to this other physis that is the history of creation. Whereas the theologia naturalis is content to posit a symbolic relationship between the material and the spiritual, theosophy defines and develops relationships of interaction, of form and nature: religious speculation is supported by physics and chemistry. Boehme would evoke the divine life in describing the birth of the tree. Whence the striking resemblances between this sacred physicality and Kabbalistic theogony or theosophy since, as G. C. Scholem writes, theosophy "aims to know and describe the mysterious operations of Divinity." The sephiroth of the Kabbalah express the theogonic process not as an intellectual act, a simple coining into awareness of God of himself, but as a corporeal realization, a continuous embodiment—"Kein Leben ohne Leib," Baader would say. Gorceix thinks that the notion of a spiritual body, which is not heterodox moreover—Paul distinguishes body and flesh—was transmitted, during the Middle Ages and later, through alchemy, whose lapis (which many texts identify with Christ) is not merely the body but just as much spirit.
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Weigel thus appears as the first, in Germany and in German, "to develop a system of mystical theology on the basis of theosophical principles" (p. 459). Not that he invented the ideas that he set forth, since they go through the history of Christianity from the initial gnosis; but he is the first to have, systematically so to speak, blended into a single thinking the Rheno-Flemish tradition, intellectual and abstract, and the colorful and concrete thought of Paracelsus. The ties that unite mysticism, theosophy, metaphysics, romantic philosophy, and German idealism in the fortunes of the West—"and that form," writes Gorceix, "one of the most remarkable stories of the human spirit"—can be anticipated already, from the second half of the sixteenth century, in the work of Valentin Weigel, pastor of Zschopau. A detailed and critical bibliography, accompanied by substantial notes, and an index nominum usefully complete the thesis of Gorceix. J O H A N N GEORG GICHTEL The work that the same author has devoted to Gichtel5 opens with an introduction where he recalls that the neglect into which a whole area of contemporary European spirituality had fallen is no longer justified, because the currents responsible for the great universal events that are romantic literature and German metaphysics, from the end of the eighteenth century to the dawn of the nineteenth, now appear to be as rich as the gnoses and Hellenistic hermeticism of the beginning of our era, Iranian theosophy, or Kabbalistic thinking. In the current of Western Christian theosophy, Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710), so often cited, occupies a prime position, both for the specific content of his works and for the influence, direct or indirect, that he exercised for a long period. However, until now no monograph had been devoted to him; one must rejoice that the person who is perhaps the most competent in this area took it upon himself to write it. Gorceix first presents a thoroughly researched biography of this Bavarian born in Ratisbonne, a student of theology and law in Strasbourg, but who spent the last forty years of his life in Amsterdam, where he founded the Community of the Brothers of the Angelic Life (Engebbriider, or Gichtelianer). This biography is followed by a chapter on the works of Gichtel: a delicate undertaking because of its extreme complexity, but in which Gorceix succeeded to the great satisfaction of readers who until then had not been able to find their bearings in the scattered information, patchy and contradictory, of previous historians. Let us recall only that the name J. G. Gichtel remains connected with three publications. The first is of equal interest to specialists of Boehme and of Gichtel because it is the first edition of the complete works of the former (1682); the two others are: (a) a collection of letters, the Theosophia practica in seven volumes; (b) a relatively brief theoretical treatise, published thirteen years after the death of
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the theosopher: A Brief Revelation and Instruction on the Three Principles and Worlds in Man (its authenticity is problematic, however). The author then studies Gichtel's doctrine, which, while being very close to Boehme's—Gichtel discovered his work in 1664 and studied it until 1682— does not present any the less a definite originality on essential points, without ever ceasing to be inscribed, from one end to the other, within the great stream of Western Christian theosophy. Gichtel is above all a visionary who celebrates an ineffable wedding with the Sophia, Divine Wisdom. According to his biographer and friend Ueberfeld, the wedding with Sophia would have lasted from 1664 to 1706—Wisdom appearing tangibly to Gichtel as well as to Ueberfeld himself. Such wonders could have turned Gichtel away from a narrow attachment to the Scriptures and from an assiduous practice of the sacraments: while the Bible was constituted only after the people of Israel had been thrown into the pit of perdition, Noah, Moses, Job were still speaking directly of God; the role of Scripture was only protective: it called the lost back to their duties. Then, baptism and the Last Supper are not necessary on the path of true faith. Gichtel again takes up "this syncretist structure that grafts the hyperbolic excesses of the left wing of the Reformation onto the vocabulary of mystical asceticism. The first word that comes to the fore is interiority [. . .] the only place of salvation, beyond the body, is the profound being that our author celebrates by the name Gemut" (p. 51). In Sebastian Franck, Johann Arndt, Valentin Weigel, Philipp Jakob Spener, and in the Theologia Germanica, "a gracious God" is always present and the activity of Taulerian resignation is transformed "into a sort of necessary evidence that leads back to the Neo-Platonic image of reflux." Their thinking does not for all that abandon a mystical speculation that is both knowing and able, as one sees in the case of Weigel. But Gichtel defends a more dramatic concept of the life of faith; he experiences this in fire and anguish; the fight is not born silently in the heart, it is not the serene expression of God in us described by Eckhart in the Talks of Instruction, but "it explodes, irrupts, it is a violent outburst, a piercing through." We are still far from John of the Cross, but with Gichtel it is no longer a matter of "gentle undulations where merge, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Rheno-Flemish tradition and spiritualism" (pp. 55 ff). One sees him, likewise, separating himself from the English theosophers of his era, in particular Jane Leade—whose works begin to appear in German translation in Amsterdam in 1696—because she believes in the coming to repentence of the Evil Being. Gichtel upholds on the contrary a position very distant from Origen's apocatastasis: how could the light still exist, he asks as Boehme had done, if the shadows should disappear? The mission of Christ was not to save Satan, but Man, whose nature Jesus took on; hence the fall of Lucifer is eternal, not that of Adam (p. 71). Gorceix describes the nature of the
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relationships that Gichtel maintains with other thinkers of the time; thus Gichtel criticizes Gottfried Arnold, the author of the celebrated Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (1699-1700, History of Churches and Heresies),forhaving married— in 1700—and for having defended, in a writing of 1702, the union of man and woman and family life. While Jane Leade retained but few Boehmean themes, the Bavarian theosopher studied Boehme's work in depth; and whereas Arnold expresses the meeting of the soul and Sophia more readily as a poet, Gichtel seems more abstract, more speculative. But it is especially from 1697 until his death that the theosopher makes his own doctrine explicit (p. 76). While according to the Neo-Platonic concept, God is a substance, the only real one, the Supreme Being, the God of Luther by contrast appears as a Being essentially alive and active: now, it is the Lutheran—and Boehmean— concept that is predominant in Gichtel's work. T o make his correspondents understand what his God is, he expresses himself through images inspired not so much by light as by fire. God is for him not merely a luminous center that irradiates toward the created being, but, writes Gorceix "a truly eruptive effulgence that destroys everything that cannot withstand the trial of fire." Gichtel says of God that He is "a holy majesty, revealed in the depths of the soul in the form of a sea of fire" (pp. 78 ff.). Boehme's core intuition, that is, the double necessity of a struggle and an opposition of the contraries whose synthesis constitutes life, is the foundation of the speculations of Gichtel for whom, in God Himself, the structure of being is dialectic. But the two theosophers maintain the distinction between eternal nature, "central fire of the Holy Trinity," which is love only, and outer nature, whose fire is only anger. What fascinates Gichtel the most when he speaks of the "three principles" or of Sophia is the notion of celestial corporeity: the new birth is a process that is just as corporeal as spiritual, a total birth, global. This notion of body-power, or body-energy, Oetinger would take up again in the eighteenth century with his concept of Geistleiblichkeit. God is not content to think the universe before creating it, "He imagines it," so that the outer world has a true model, or archetype, in the heart of divine nature; Wisdom (Sophia) allows God to form this image of the pure world, the mirror in which God "plays" with the ideas of creation. Sophia is neither a hypostasis nor a person of the Trinity, but its very body, and the flesh and blood of Christ (p. 87). Although concerned with specifying, in the wake of Boehme, his own concepts on Nature, Gichtel is little concerned with the outer world, whose salvation is a matter of indifference to him. He concentrates all his attention on Man and on Adam: "It is introspection, not the spectacle of the macrocosm, that teaches him the means to break the reign of Lucifer" (p. 90). In this regard he seems to escape the Paracelsian ascendency, and Gorceix showed how tangible it was in the other theosopher, Valentin Weigel. Above all, he allows free rein to his poetic inspiration in looking at the perceptible world as a gigantic ruin attesting to
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the past unleashing of indescribable catastrophes, that is, the curse that struck all of Nature immediately after the fall of Lucifer (pp. 91, 158). It is known how frequent similar descriptions would be in romantic theosophy, literature, and painting. The Gichtelian speculations on the androgynous Adam of before the fall have merited a particular development, for the theosopher was not content to take up the concepts set forth mainly in Boehme's De tribus principiis; he developed them in a subtle and poetic fashion in pages that would deserve to appear in any anthology dedicated to this current of thinking. He reveals in Adam a masculine element and a feminine element, respectively named Adam and Sophia, the first corresponding to the spirit, the second to the body, because the latter, writes Gorceix, "then takes on the decisive role, tempering the spirit, clarifying it, just as in God, eternal Wisdom makes real the plan of the divine economy" (p. 97). The story of Adam's fall thus takes up that of the preceding theosophers, Gichtel bringing in an original note here and there. Especially, while the evidence of the movement of emanation and reversion led Weigel to confer a decisive place on static concepts, it is by contrast the incidences of a dramatic polarity—of which God himself is also the s e a t that come to totally overturn the Weigelian notions of place, tranquillity, envelopment-development. The baroque aspect of the representations, so characteristic of the time, is opposed to the "classicism" of Weigelian and Eckhartian speculation. The essence here is the central place conferred on Sophia, who establishes the correspondence of God and the androgyne since she is at once the body of God and that of Adam. The first consequence of the Adamic fall was the loss of this spouse, the guarantor of the perfection of the human-divine couple (p. 105). The anthropology of Boehme and then of Gichtel complete in a decisive manner the double triplicity, the Rheno-Flemish (memory, intellect, will) and the Paracelsian (spirit, soul, body). Adam is no longer merely the image of the created world, but that of an eternal and living divine nature, for this first Man "reveals," writes Gichtel, God in the three principles (p. 108). All this is articulated in a coherent vision of which the dominant element is fire. While it is true that the Amsterdam theosopher did not write a metaphysics of fire, which Boehme had done, his psychology merits, according to Gorceix, the title "psychology of fire." The human Gemtit represents the forces of the soul as a whole, at the same time as what we could call the spiritual organism, by which forces and in which organism the igneous foundation "expresses itself, acts, lives"; this Gemtit guarantees, as it were, the corporeity of the soul. Finally, the role of the imagination is certainly what is most surprising in this thinking, at once illuminated, fertile, and strange. The progressive emphasis on the imaginative faculty begins with Weigel, the first reader-commentator of Paracelsus. Jacob Boehme makes of it a plastic, "magical" power of the first
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order, since he defines it as the pure imagination of the divine spirit and sees in it also, in the unfolding of the second birth, the mechanism of action by which faith is expressed: "It is faith that makes the soul flow into the form imagined by it, in other words, Christ." Yet Gichtel goes further; he boldly associates imagination, magic and magnet (Magnet), replacing the term "will" with the term "imagination," so that the whole drama of the Luciferian and Adamic fall can be understood in terms of the imagination, and the triad, memory, intellect, will, can be considered as replaced by this: will, desire, imagination (pp. 121 ff.). Johann Georg Gichtel thus appears as one of the representatives of the great ascetic movement that goes through Germany from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and that originates in Boehme, passes through Gichtel and Gottfried Arnold, and bears its fruits in the nineteenth century in Johann Jakob Wirz and the Nazarean group. The second current also takes root in the theory of the Sophia but ends in inverse conclusions: the beloved woman becomes the mediatrix, the celestial lover, the earthly Eve is the propylaea of the heavenly Eve, Eve is already Sophia. Just as Quirinus Kuhlmann confers a messianic function on his lover Maria Anglicana, so would Novalis describe, in the Hymns to the Night, the transfiguration of his dead fiancee (Sophie). But the Gichtelian Sophia conceived as a principle, thus independently of her possible "incarnation" in a given person—an interpretation proper to the second current just mentioned—remains the cornerstone of this theosopher's whole system. Sophia reigns in the heart and in the head, in the center of perceptible and astral life. She also illuminates reason. She pours through all created beings, "in the sky, the earth and in every plant, and in the firmament as well," writes Gichtel, "and in herbs and flowers, their color, perfume, taste and powers, and in the metals of the earth" (pp. 128 ff.). Would the alchemical philosophers be seeking anything but this? Sophia sustains the fallen Man, bringing us true theosophy, that is, writes Gichtel in 1710, "the knowledge of God and of all creatures" as well as true magic, which is, trust in the new name of Jesus. Finally, in restoring in ourselves the divine image that God created, we recreate in our soul the dynamism that unites the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and which animated the creation of Man; we find once again participation in the inner life of divinity (pp. 131 ff.). Gorceix affirms with pertinence that the speculations of Gichtel, who is far from being an isolated figure, are, to a certain extent, as important in understanding the philosophical and literary awakening of the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth as the constructions of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Without the meditation on the body conceived as Ende der Wege Gottes, how would Schelling have developed his philosophy of the Spirit and Nature? Without Gichtel's Sophia, would the way leading to Hymns to the Night have been sufficiently prepared? Rather many
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were the theosophers who have left us their works. However, from 1680 to 1790, three authors of the German language emerge from the specifically Boehmean tradition as a whole: Gichtel, who died in 1710; Oetinger, who published his works from 1735 to 1777; and Michael Hahn, born in 1758. It is half a century before Hahn, some thirty years before Oetinger, that Gichtel, a contemporary of Gottfried Arnold, Boehme, and Pierre Poiret, turned toward the shoemaker of Gorlitz to achieve the great merit of being, in 1682, the first publisher of this prince of Christian theosophy. And this even though Gichtel may not have gone deeply enough into the philosophy and the poetry of Nature, that is, of the created universe, Boehmean intuitions that were to nourish, if only indirecdy, "the dynamic Schellingian identification of nature with spirit, Hegelian philosophy, the Fichtean doctrine of the birth of the perceptible world, the concepts of the philosophers and poets of German Romanticism" (p. 138). It remains that Gichtel developed the other great directing themes of the Teutonic Philosopher: (a) The dialectical structure of eternal nature, the presence in God of unmanifest evil, the opposition in God of the three principles, the Mysterium Magnum that is revealed in opposing itself to itself. Without this central intuition, would Fichte, Schelling, Hegel be thinkable? (b) The doctrine of the imagination, of Paracelsian origin, where the romantics go to draw a good share of their inspiration, (c) A corpus of great themes proper to Christian esotericism: those of the Sophia, of the theory of the "double physicality" that would be found again in Saint-Martin and Franz von Baader, of the androgyne, of the corruption of the world through the falls of Lucifer and Adam. But while in the case of Gichtel mysticism and theosophy still hold the balance, in Franz von Baader the speculative element would predominate over the mystical experience. It is Gichtel who, perhaps the first, clearly fixes, "at the end of the baroque century, in the times of pietism, at the dawn of the era of the Enlightenment, these basic themes, with a strength and precision that save them from falling into oblivion" (pp. 137-139).
almost completely ignorant of the visionary phenomenon" (p. 281); this only appears in the second half of the baroque century, with Quirinus Kuhlmann and Gichtel, who discover new spiritual directions in the United Provinces, in particular those of Madame Guyon and Antoinette Bourignon. It is moreover not a matter, in the case of the two Germans, of a static vision: the Gichtelian structure of the absolute and of being is dialectical, and the divine will engenders the shadows whence light springs forth through the intermediary of fire. Shadow, fire, and light—the three syllables of the name Je-ho-vah—are indistinctly united. Similarly, his description of the igneous structure of the soul modifies the traditional scheme of its powers: memory, intellect, and will play no more than a supporting role for which is then substituted, as we have already seen, the triad will, desire, imagination. "Power to the imagination, that is what Johann Georg Gichtel magnificently calls the only true chemistry and spiritual magic" (p. 289). This theosophical tradition is presented in Flambee et agonie as inseparable from the religious context, principally mystical, in which it could flower. Nothing surprising, therefore, in that a color reproduction of the beautiful painting by Georges de la Tour, La Madeleine a la Veilleuse, should serve as an exergue to this work. Also, for Gorceix, it was primarily a matter of filling a serious gap by showing that German mysticism does not stop in the fourteenth century. In the beginning, he analyzes the causes of the mystical blaze in seventeenth century Germany. Then he considers the authors that represent most clearly the different tendencies of the contemplative spirituality of this period: mysticism, speculation, and poetry in the case of Daniel Czepko; mysticism, praise, Nature and poetry in the Jesuit Friedrich Spee and the Protestant Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg; mysticism, chiliasm, and Boehmeanism in the Silesian Quirinus Kuhlmann; finally, in the dusk of this era disturbed by the crisis of the European consciousness, the final flames with the two witnesses that are Johannes Scheffler (Angelus Silesius) and J. G. Gichtel. In a third section, the author attempts to bring out the importance of mysticism in the evolution of the deep tendencies of the century. The appearance, in the last third of the sixteenth century, of a constraining dogmatism is manifested by the publication of catechisms, of corpora doctrinae leaving little room for freedom of thinking. Mysticism then presents itself as the ultimate refuge. Czepko, Spee, Scheffler seek essentially what Meister Eckhart and Isaac Luria were already looking for: a true relationship between Man and God beyond traditional frameworks that were judged to be deadening. Social history also allows for a better understanding of this evolution because the mystics are part of two social groups: the minor nobility and the urban preproletariat (cf. also infra, in relation to the essay "Society and Utopia"). T o the spiritual demands are added political and social ones; the mystical renewal is born of their very coincidence. Moreover, the ascetic and
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MYSTICISM AND THEOSOPHY IN BAROQUE GERMANY It was almost as much to mysticism proper as to theosophy that Bernard Gorceix oriented his later research and thinking, whose result is offered in his last great work, Flambee et agonie.6 Not that the theosophical element is always absent among these mystics, but mysticism is not theosophy. T o Gichtel is devoted part of the last chapter of his book ("Johann Georg Gichtel, mystique et sophiologie," pp. 278-293), where he returns to the essence of the conclusions given in the monograph already mentioned, but without repetitions, in a spirit of synthesis and taking greatest account of the historical context. Gorceix points out that the German mystical tradition, in contrast to Spain and France of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, "is
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contemplative tradition benefits from the blossoming of baroque literature, just as the latter is enriched thanks to the former, during an era when Germany knows a literary revival: the Treatise of German Poetry (Das Buch der deutschen Poetery), of the Silesian Martin Opitz, records belatedly (1624!) the flowering of poetry, which France had known well before (La Defense et illustration de la langue frangaise, of Du Bellay, had been published in 1549). In addition, German baroque poetry, an art that was still feeling its way, slowly turned toward what would be, at the end of the eighteenth century, "its living center, the illustration of the inner personal life, particularly the emotional, of the individual, what the Germans call subjektive Erlebnisdichtung" (p. 37). The mystical tradition plays a role here that is not insignificant, since Man learns, through the intimate dialogue of the soul and God, to know himself, even outside any social and political context. Fruitful exchanges, therefore, between mysticism and literature, but also between mysticism and philosophy, at a time when the doctrinal bases of the Middle Ages reveal themselves unable to sustain a mystical synthesis. Theosophy, chiefly that of Weigel and Boehme, is the new form of thinking from which the speculatives draw inspiration. We have indeed seen how, in Weigel, the encounter of Germanic mystical tradition with Paracelsian thought had led to the birth of German theosophy which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, explodes in Jacob Boehme (more than twenty editions of the selected works of Boehme in the baroque period!). The concepts of the speculation of union find their illustration, indeed their confirmation, in theogonic thinking, at the same time as the proliferation of Boehmean images vivifies the language of the last writings of the Rheno-Flemish school. A linguistic renewal that already transpires in The Chemical Wedding of Andreae, in 1616, but of which all baroque mysticism would be more or less impregnated. Daniel Czepko (1605-60), the son of a pastor, become a member of the upper bourgeoisie and a servant of princes, "perhaps the most despised and unappreciated spiritual author of the German XVIIth century," is finally the subject of an in-depth work: "Our rapid study," writes Gorceix, "necessarily takes on the appearance of a rehabilitation" (p. 50). Despite the studies by Werner Milch, detailed knowledge of Czepko's work was all the more difficult because the main writings of the author of the Sexcenta monodisticha sapientium (1648) had never been printed. Czepko, who had befriended Abraham von Franckenberg, Boehme's biographer and confidant, is "the author who best assimilated the Rheno-Flemish tradition in all its speculative richness" in the mid-seventeenth century (pp. 60 ff.). He develops the themes of the traditional meditation on the role of the will, which is not only the first cause of the fall but also the chief artisan of the return; theosophy here makes its presence felt, inasmuch as for Czepko Man is not only eternal through the soul, but also earthly through the body, which possesses the four elements of the outer
world—a Paracelsian intuition that is supported by advice meant to help the created being pass from a closed earthly circle to "infinite matter" (unendliche Materie). Furthermore, God needs Man in order to know Himself. In the soul of Man are concentrated the powers of things enclosed by the sky and earth; thus, in Czepko, a purely spiritual meditation results in a Paracelsian Philosophy of Nature and heralds, by the vocabulary and style, the thinking of the romantics: "Nature," he writes, "is engendered in God . . . and God in nature" (p. 83). He spontaneously develops a metaphysics, a theology, of fire. Gorceix sees in him a poet of fire. The relationships of the soul and God are the same relationships of union as between Nature and God: "rarely has a mystical author understood with such clarity" as Czepko "the integration of the mystical union with universal law" (p. 86). T o the divine Trinity corresponds the trinity of the parts of Man—spirit, soul, body—the trinity of the mineral and vegetative realms and the chemical principles (sulphur, salt, mercury); the theogonic process is identical to the fife of Nature, the seeking of mystical union is comparable to creation. Three principles govern genriination: fire (sulphur), salt, which forms the body, water (mercury). The mysteries of creation are the reflection of the movement of the divine life. In contrast to Boehme, mysticism predominates over metaphysics nonetheless. It is essentially a matter, for Czepko, of illustrating the mystical union of the abandoned soul and deity by representing the life of Nature, its uprooting and its return to God. The essential movement that carries Nature around the two principles of corporification and fire reproduces the movement of life and the soul. Gorceix delves even further into these concepts and themes in an article on Czepko.7 Under the title "Mystique, louange, nature et poesie," we next broach two more thinkers: Friedrich Spee (1591-1635) and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-94). The first, a Rhenish Jesuit, is especially known as the author of Gtildenes Tugend-Buch (The Golden Book of Virtue) and Trutz-Nachtigall (The nightingale that issues a challenge, the challenge of the German language to the Latin poets), published in Cologne after his death, in 1649. He did not go unnoticed among the German romantics. However, his inspiration is not very theosophical; no considerations on the corruption of the universe subsequent to the fall, but almost always an insistence on the gentleness of an earth where the serpent and the sword of the archangel seem to have left but few traces. The devil hardly ever makes an appearance, divine goodness keeping him behind the scenes. "The world as shown by the poems of Trutz-Nachtigall is never a chaos" (p. 103). Three fundamental structures underlie the work: trust, praise, and desire. Let us add to this the defense of the value of a life of faith that is eminently personal and individual, the principle of a relationship, immediate and free, with the object of belief. A global and subjective understanding predominates over organized meditation, with a marked taste for trust, confession, and sentimentality. One sees appearing here a psychology of
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worry and an aesthetic of sentiment. Spee distances himself by this from RhenoFlemish mysticism but joins up with the psalmic tradition and reveals himself as a tributary of the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola, whose spiritual exercises aimed to develop a discipline of prayer and the body to reproduce the intervention of divine grace by a true "liturgy of the soul," rather than force the intervention of this grace. The theology of praises and sighs, in Spee's case, is developed prudently but comprises a psychophysical method which it has been possible to compare with the orthodox theology of hesychasm and naturally the devotio moderna of the fifteenth century. We find again in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, the "Austrian Protestant," a taste at least as pronounced for this type of devotion. One could study her work—she is above all the author of Geistliche Sonnette Lieder und Gedichte (Nuremberg, 1672) and Der Teutschen Uranie Himmelabstammend (Nuremberg, 1672)—according to strictly literary methods, or again by comparing them with the Lutheran tradition, without any reference to mysticism. Catharina likes to adore a remote God, despotic, paradoxical, a male God of omnipotence, but at the same time capable of an absolute goodness to the extent that we have no expectations. A struggle of the contraries, therefore, but very different from that of Boehme. Catharina sometimes gives the impression of having wanted to rewrite the Song of Songs in the baroque mode ("I kiss you and eat you whole, for love, in the depths of my body," p. 141); she has given in any case one of the clearest and perhaps rarest testimonies of nuptial mysticism in the German language. In the case of Spee it is the strength of the desire, of the call, and thus of feeling, that was especially affirmed; he was spontaneously discovering the rules of popular poetry, with a simplicity that is sometimes surprising. In the Austrian mystic by contrast, the taste for Nature breaks through more sharply, as does a very distinct awareness of intellectual poetry and an abstraction that is often difficult. But both are seeking to establish the great relationship among the four terms: mysticism, Nature, praise, and poetry. Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651-89) occupies almost all of the following chapter entitled "Mystique, chiliasme, et boehmisme" (pp. 158-228). Here finally is a study in French on this great figure of the baroque and the history of spirituality, a study that completes usefully even the works in German already devoted to this character,8 for Gorceix here emphasizes what has been least often studied: the spiritual economy, the relationships of Man and his God, in this person whose whole life was in the service of what Mircea Eliade would call an "initiatic wandering" (p. 163). The inexhaustible pilgrim would, in thirty-eight years of existence, go through not only the German countries, the United Provinces, France, and Great Britain, but also other countries, since after his stay in Constantinople to convert the Turks one finds him again in Moscow, where his life ended on a stake built on the banks of the Moskova,
although he had come to convert the Tsar. The account that Tolstoy has given of this last endeavor in his novel on Peter the First is not entirely consistent with the facts. But certainly the life of this Illuminated One does constitute an outstanding novel; it is all the more astonishing that he left such a voluminous work (sixty-eight tides, according to the latest bibliography). At Breslau, he cultivates first the epigram in alexandrines, defends the German language and culture; at Iena, he devotes himself to travel accounts, criticizes the society of his time, and composes spiritual sonnets entitled Kisses ofHeavenly Love (Himmlische Liebes-Kiisse, 1671). He attempts to establish programs aimed at the description of an encyclopedic method encompassing all the sciences, an undertaking that, after Raymond Lull, his correspondent Athanasius Kircher and Leibniz (De arte combinatoria, 1666) attempt during the same period. He also writes a Boehme Newly Inspired (Neubegeisterter Bohme), meant to put in harmony the prophecies of the Teutonic Philosopher and those of the Dutch prophet Johannes Rothe. His major work remains the Psalms of Refreshment (Kiihlpsalter), a collection of songs, or rather psalms, written in the 1670s, ordered according to a complex arithmology and packed with biblical allusions mixed with Boehmean references: that is, "ten books," which reveal "the seven spirits and the three principles, the seven sources and the three restorative powers, the seven outer planets then the inner ones connected to a center (Centrum) designating in both Quirinus Kuhlmann and Jacob Boehme the vital link from which the reconcentrated powers assure their creative action" (p. 168). He is well aware of the literary concerns of his century. His poetry always remains very elaborate, even when it is a question of describing his movements of enthusiasm and his illuminations. The plan for an encyclopedia alone would be enough to attest to his taste for abstract problems: starting from the "principle of alternation," he would like to determine the rules which would account for the functioning of the universe and thus discover the science of sciences. God, indeed, has created the heavens and earth as a wheel that changes, and created beings are to Him what words are to a poet: "Nature also practices anagrams and the alternation of letters" ('selbst die Natur anagrammatisiert oder buchstabenwechself), he wrote (p. 171). Certainly, it is indeed a metaphysics that fashions his whole ideology, but it is to Kuhlmann that we owe the most accomplished expression of Boehmeanism in a text in verse. The God of the Kiihlpsalter does not have the limpid serenity of that of RhenoFlemish mysticism: the endless Deity becomes God one and trine, no longer by luminous flowing, effusion-diffusion, but by pure boiling, ardent effervescence, as in Boehme. Kuhlmann remains very discreet on the subject of the androgyne, but he much insists on what one could call the igneous Adamic nature. Man is the heir of divine fire; the depths of our soul will always be fire. The author of the psalter speaks rapidly of the paradisial state, but speculation
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on Adam's fault and its consequences is a veritable leitmotiv: Sophia having withdrawn, fire exercises its devastating action and Nature undergoes the repercussions of the catastrophe. Of all the descriptions of the humain condition in the seventeenth century, it seems that his is the most despairing. Indeed, here one is dealing with a work that primarily describes a unique drama: that of Man in conflict with his God. Anguish, trust, and doubt are expressed spontaneously and find a metaphysical justification only afterward, in a second time. The manner in which he gives an account of the union makes him comparable to Friedrich Spee and Johannes Scheffler in the sense that the love of God and Man is described as that of husband and wife, under the influence of the Song of Songs and the Bernardian commentaries. Kuhlmann occupies a choice position in this Brautmystik. T o this characteristic is added the insertion in his work, starting from 1678, four years after his discovery of Jacob Boehme, of the theme of the Sophia. Only the Wisdom that unites him to her allows him, in the despair following the failure of his mission of conversion, not to succumb)—according to his own words—to madness and suicide. The many pages that Kuhlmann devotes to Sophia are perhaps among the most beautiful that exist on her. The comparison of human existence with the growth of a tree illustrates the true role of this Divine Wisdom, which can be transformed into a regenerating sap capable of mastering the wild growth of diseased branches and allowing the branches to form a regular crown (p. 212). One can group his visionary testimonies into three principal subjects: the revelation of the calendar and chiliastic events; the description of the role of Kuhlmann and his companions in the course of the events, and finally the description of the unio mystica, described less as a loss in an ineffable absolute than as an accession to a closed and ordered universe that he calls the Heavenly Jerusalem. The common ground among these three themes is the place—the city, the garden—which is delimited, the hortus conclusus. One must also recall that the metaphors taken from Nature, notably botany, led him to make use of a symbolism seldom employed in the Germanic mystical tradition, the symbolism of colors, and that a great number of the metaphors employed by him are found again in the greater context of alchemical symbolism. "In the XVUth century," writes Gorceix, "no other mystic used the spagiric tradition with such breadth. It is nevertheless difficult to determine the authors by which the Silesian is supported, for he indicates his sources but very rarely" (p. 223). The alchemical tradition indeed allows the metals and precious stones to be engaged in a drama described as similar to that of the via mystica: lead, steel, and copper are transmuted into silver and gold, just as the fallen soul will be transformed into Jesus and Sophia. We thus find on several occasions the key term "tincture," as in Boehme and Gichtel; it signifies that the alchemical transmutation needs auxiliary products, adjuvants, the word Tinctur designating both the vehicle of the operation—mercury alone—and its term, the
Philosopher's stone, a tincture as well, just as a dyer's coloring product impregnates fabric, conferring its true quality on it. Kuhlmann's visionary chiliasm is based on a prophetic attitude—the prophet "brings out hidden truths in the name of a God by whom he claims inspiration" (p. 227)— that of a Man for whom the asceticism described by Rheno-Flemish spirituality no longer suffices but who, through invocations or torments that result in ecstasy, through a theology that dislocates the unity of the Absolute, wants really and concretely to touch the hidden God. Mysticism is found divided here into four complementary attitudes: nuptial mysticism, laudatory mysticism, Sophianic mysticism, and visionary mysticism. It further allows Man to tear himself out of the labyrinths of his despair—a statement confirmed by the study of Johannes Scheffler and Johann Georg Gichtel. That is why Scheffler and Gichtel are presented as "the two last witnesses" of this period of flame and agony that is the baroque seventeenth century. Johannes Scheffler, Lutheran by origin and training, received the name Johannes Silesius at the time of his conversion to Catholicism in 1635 at Breslau and then adopted that of Angelus Silesius. Many works have been devoted to him, to the point that still today his name and that of Meister Eckhart often seem to summarize the essence of Germanic mysticism. His major works are Holy joy of the soul or spiritual eclogues of Psyche in love with her Jesus (Heilige Seelenlust oder Geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche, 1657), The Cherubic Pilgrim (Der Cherubinbche Wandersmann, 1657), and Sensible Description of the Four Last Things (Sinnliche Beschreibung der vier letzten Dinge, 1675). Contrary to what other critics have advanced, Gorceix believes that the reasons for his conversion were essentially inner ones. Scheffler became a Catholic because he thought he could better preserve and so defend what, at least until 1657, remained the essential concern of his meditation: the union of the soul with God. Here is what the author of Flambee et agonie attempts to demonstrate by an internal and external critique; he also attempts to rescue from relative oblivion the two works (Holy Joy of the Soul and Sensible Description) previously neglected by criticism in favor of Cherubic Pilgrim only. Even more, Holy Joy allows a better understanding of the Schefflerian distinction—also present in Bonaventure—between "cherubic" mysticism and "seraphic" mysticism; the first—that of the Pilgrim—is an intellectual manner of approaching God, the second—that of Holy Joy—is all love, all feeling, all openness. Scheffler attributes strictly the same importance to both in the mystical journey. The first often becomes burdened in its expression with a certain dryness that is perhaps inevitable in the debate of ideas. But angeology fares well in subtle distinctions. The union allows, he explains, to attain "higher angelic nature" which is true humanity; but angels can neither taste nor appreciate the delights of this union for they do not know what it is to be without it. We are therefore more favored than angels, and we must love like the seraphim,
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dominate like the thrones, contemplate like the cherubim, in order to become God. The Pilgrim is teeming with metaphors often taken from alchemical imagery: hence the comparison between the transformation of lead into gold starting with the dissociation of the three Paracelsian elements (sulphur, mercury, salt) and the transmutation through the only immortal tincture, Jesus Christ crucified. Curious is the statement that sin does not afflict God because He has neither a form nor a purpose in Himself, He is unfdrmlich und ohne Ziel. His gift is ultimately only a Game. He "plays" with the created being ("Dies alles ist ein Spiel, das ihr die Gottheit macht; /Sie hat die Kreatur um ihretwill'n edacht," II, 198). Moreover, speculation on the Eckhartian ganster, the seelenfunklein, the spark of the soul, is absent; Man is confronted directly with God—as already in the case of Weigel—and the body itself is carried away in the supreme delight. But inversely, it would seem, Man is the very condition of the existence of God, indeed, of divinity. We have less need of God than He does of us. We add "tones to the pale seas of deity" ("das farbenlose Meer der ganzen Gottheit malen," I, 115). One sees that the use of limiting statements is readily organized in an antithetical structure. A distich comes to contradict a preceding one, less to destroy its meaning than to account for paradoxical truths, in such a way that we finally gain the impression from the Pilgrim of a scintillation, an irisation, the opposite of any closed system, of any rigorous or progressive unity. It belongs finally to the line of traditional mysticisms and remains as far from pantheism—from which it escapes by its thinking on the opposition of Deity-God—as it does from dualism, on which the concept of Evil-accident prevents it from foundering. The statements of Meister Eckhart express the ever-renewed attempt to understand the revolutionary dynamism of the birth of God in Man, and the attitude of Scheffler is inscribed in the same tradition. But perhaps more than in other mystics, what is striking in his case, especially in the Pilgrim, is the postulate that the more a statement is paradoxical or improbable, the more cogent it is as a motivation to seek elsewhere: "The sacrificium intellectus has all the more value for the mystic as the intellectus that accepts it penetrates all the further into the contradictions of the world," writes Gorceix in this respect (p. 264). The world and the distichs of the Silesian result in an illogicality, because the absolute is illogicality itself. The drama is that the Silesian does not find the answer he was expecting in seraphism either. The Holy Joy of the Soul is striking by its concern for detail, which is revealed in the description of the love relationships of the soul and Jesus. The permanence of the single theme (the relationships of Psyche and Jesus), the richness of the language, the internal tension, the whole theme of the call, those of the enclosed place and of ignition-immersion, are perhaps less surprising than the absence of testimony and descriptions of nuptial mysticism, that is, of the realized union. It is not a matter of relating a unitive
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experience, but of representing the pleasure and perfection promised to Man when Jesus will have answered. Now, in the Holy Joy of the Soul he does not answer, or just barely. Gorceix declares that he regrets that he was unable, in this work, to bring out other forgotten authors of the seventeenth century, such as Johann Theodor von Tschech, Andreas Sculteus, and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, authors of whom Gottfried Arnold has outlined certain basic characteristics in his celebrated Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (cf. supra). But he really succeeded in affirming in a convincing fashion the primacy of the mystical fact in the Germany of this era. All too often previously, one had been put off by the complex speculations of the mystical thinkers who considered the mysticism known as Northern—that of Meister Eckhart, of Tauler, of Suso—only as a point of departure to orient themselves in other directions, and by their frequently heterodox attitude, indeed anticlerical. Fortunately, the degermanization of criticism, the falling back of the Churches, which henceforth began to show more tolerance, as well as a better knowledge of non-Christian traditions are new factors, thanks to which it is now easier to take into consideration previously neglected areas of Western culture. The existence of these currents that are now better known upsets, certainly, and will upset further, a scenario that some might have wished to be settled, according to which the seventeenth century is only a transition when the rationalism of Modern Times was developed. It is sure that while this century, despite the theses of positivist and Marxist historians, is a great mystical century, it is also the last—whence the title Flambee et agonie. Certainly, the eighteenth century would often speak, in the heart of the pietist movement, of illuminism and religious and literary irrationalism, of the union of the soul and God, but it would mark what Gorceix calls "the passing of the living experience to a homothety of principle" (p. 303), mysticism being of interest for little more than the postulate it sets of a possible union of Man and God, of the Spirit and the Absolute. This union would finally be reduced to an axiom, even if from this, speculations would develop on the Absolute and the Spirit or on the philosophy of identity. German mysticism of the seventeenth century is characterized first by the absence of schools, whence a great diversity of inspiration and expression. Czepko, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Kuhlmann, Gichtel are no longer part of the clergy, Scheffler was not a Jesuit. Neo-Platonism, rediscovered in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and which was at the fountainhead of the Dominican revival—in opposition with Aristotelian Thomism—confers on mysticism, starting from the thirteenth century, a characteristic that it would always conserve: the speculative. But Boehme's God, whose essential mark is the good-evil bipolarity, came to replace the Deity-God opposition of the Rheno-Flemish, even in the case of Catharina von Greiffenberg, however little a Boehmist. The rather static concepts of emanation and reversion, in the
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closed world of a Ptolemaic universe—it was still that of Weigel—are found overthrown by a dramatic polarity that bears on every level and on God Himself, and that henceforth echoes through "the dislocated universe of infinite cosmographical spaces" (p. 308). Tension, anxiety often result in an extreme complexity: "Rheno-Flemish mysticism and baroque Germanic mysticism are opposed like the Gospels and gnosis, like the early Gothic and the flamboyant. [. . .] Mysticism is tragic, like the universe of Pascal and Racine" (p. 310). The central term of anguish, Angst, then takes on a resolutely modern aspect from our viewpoint. At the same time, these "torrents" spoken of by Madame Guyon are revelations, hallucinations, which succeed what had been "the silent drowning in the ineffable." On the theological plane, Evil, this "central concept of the theodicy of Leibniz's century" (p. 311), takes on greater and greater weight, while sophiology modifies speculation on the Trinity, imposing the reality of the Quaternary on German mysticism. It is appropriate to add to this a new and essential element. In the case of Meister Eckhart, in Rheno-Flemish mysticism, Nature appeared above all as a figure of allegory. It was the same situation after Tauler and in the Theologia Germanica, whose spiritual journeys were described without many references to the forces of the outer world: luxuriance, effervescence, which had so fascinated Paracelsus, had not yet come to change the ordo mundi inherited from Aristotle and Saint Thomas. Now, meditation on Nature becomes an essential province of speculative mysticism in seventeenth-century Germany. In Czepko, the perpetual generation of the soul reproduces the essential movement of Deity, for Nature and the soul aspire to the igneous and divine void. In Angelus Silesius, the seraphic plane—rather than the cherubic plane, more silent in the matter—coincides with the emergence of a true sentiment of nature, already outlined by Friedrich Spee and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg and which then blossomed with Kuhlmann and Gichtel. These two thinkers indeed transpose into a divine nature the motivating forces that animate the created universe, and its generation typologically reproduces the engendering of a world that the fall had come to corrupt. Gorceix notes that it is not a question here of a "mystical" contemplation of Nature by Man, as it would be among the German romantics, in particular Novalis. But we do not think that there is merely a mystical "contemplation" in Novalis, for whom theosophical speculation seems to us to inform and underlie contemplation itself. We experience some difficulty also in accepting with Gorceix that it is "very vague and ambiguous" (p. 312) to speak of Naturmystik in relation to the thinkers that he presents to us. Indeed, there is ambiguity only if one does not define the terms, and a term like this is no longer ambiguous today; it is now known, and the works of Gorceix himself would be enough to show, that in this current of thinking, on the whole rather specific, it is not a question of a simple mystical contemplation of Nature by Man, but of speculation of a theosophical character. Simply,
the word Mystik takes on in Naturmystik, which Gorceix himself acknowledges is untranslatable in French (p. 312), a meaning that relates it more to speculation than to contemplation. The author then recalls very justly that this Western theosophy does not bring in "fundamentally new concepts, if one refers to Christian exegesis," but particularly emphasizes themes that are in short traditional; "The theosophical universe does not overturn the Christian structure" (p. 313). Its originality is to put the stress strongly on the relationship of dependency of the created world and the uncreated, transferring the data of the terrestrial physicality into this other physicality that Saint-Martin would call "sacred"; on the term Leib (caro spiritualis); on the Sophia. Friedrich Spee and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg are barely touched by theosophical themes, but their emergence is attested among all the other representatives of the century's mysticism. Four speculative systems influence this. First, Rheno-Flemish mysticism: the upheaval caused by the union is supported by a true conceptual armature, that was already characteristic of the Dominican school of the fourteenth century and its epigones (Ruysbroek, the Theologia Germanica, Weigel); furthermore, the union is conceived as the accession not so much to a trinitarian god as to a beyond the Trinity, to deity (Gottheit)—a characteristic nevertheless little marked in the seventeenth century. Then, the nuptial mysticism (Brautmystik) that views the relationships of the soul and God as love relationships (Scheffler calls it "seraphic," returning to Bonaventure's distinction between love in Seraphim and knowledge in Cherubim). Third, the mysticism of praise: the coherence of the meditations of Spee, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, and Quirinus Kuhlmann seems all the more remarkable as these authors did not maintain any contact. Finally, Sophianic mysticism is more generally theosophical: "Through fire, Sophianic generation, which is also a regeneration, becomes a grandiose alchemy" (p. 321). Same diversity on the diachronic plane. The first period (1600-1650), represented by Czepko, is characterized, as in Weigel, by the themes of quietude and rest. The second (1630-65), with Spee and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, corresponds to a tension, yet which never results in a complete rupture. The alternation of anguish and appeasement that comes through in their work, in the century of the Thirty Years' War and the Princely State, marks a transition during which the drama is still under control. The third period (1655-1710) reveals, through the work of Scheffler, Kuhlmann, and Gichtel, a tension ever more intensified of the mystical life and its description. Curiously, in a period of relative peace, after the treaties of Westphalia, anxiety is at its keenest; this is because nascent mechanism and rationalism "henceforth force the spiritual into a defensive action." In the case of Gichtel, "as though to defend himself, the mystical path is covered over with a carapace of gnosis" (p. 323).
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Finally, three principal themes allow German mysticism to be repositioned within the general evolution of the century. First, the affirmation of subjectivism; the ascetic and contemplative spirituality of seventeenth-century Germany refuses, unlike France, to adapt itself to the constraining demands of the established Churches. Then, the constant of tragedy and the rejection of closed systems: "The rare lightningbolts of union indeed calm an impatience that results in gnosis. But the bolts are rare, and they are merely flashes" (p. 329) in this century of tragic inner tension. One no longer writes solely to transmit or explain, but just as much to explain oneself to oneself. The truth is less outside the poem than in the poem itself, and the spiritual universe that it expresses exists only in the very work: "It may well be that it was then that modern literature was born" (p. 329). Impossibility of the system, painful and absolute powerlessness of the method, a synthesis always renewed, created, "dialectic." Finally, the confirmation of the role of Nature, "understood as the summit of a triangle more dynamic than harmonic, a triangle whose three summits are God, Man, Nature" (p. 332). T o these three principal themes are added three contributions of details, but important ones in the history of Western thought. First of all, sensitive values predominate little by little over speculative tendencies, the vocabulary of affectivity is developed; it is at the same time an exaltation of the imaginative power: Tauler still rejected the bilderinne or fantasia (imaginatio, fantasia, of scholastic psychology), but the imaginatio vera of Paracelsus is already tangible in Czepko, for whom magia transplants the spirit into the Trinity and operates by the action of a generating principle that animates God and all of Nature. For Gichtel, the Sophia is the pure imagination of deity. The second contribution is an interest in the universe of things and created beings. In France, Nature remains generally on a psychological plane, but we have seen that in Germany it is included in a general thinking about the world. Gorceix sees the origin of the concepts of Nature in German romanticism in the grafting, operated by German baroque mystical poetry, of a series of philosophical references onto the sentiment of nature in gestation. The third contribution bears on the treatment of the image. "The new relationship of the image, the concept and the phenomenon as it appears in the symbol, is in gestation precisely in Germanic mysticism of the XVIIIth century" (p. 337). The Boehmean meditation has come here to break Jacob's ladder, in the sense that the "signature" no longer appears as the fortuitous mark of the divine impression but as a "character," that is, the only possible expression of divine nature. Things are not only the effigy of God, but God and Spirit all together. Fire, light, lightning are revealed to be more apt than the monad and mathematical series to translate Divine Persons. The symbol thus predominates over allegory. One does not transform the phenomenon into a concept, then the concept into an image (Goethe), because for these thinkers there is no "concept" in the sense of a "limited and finished
expression of infinite reality. The image is indeed still the term of the figure, but it must express not the concept (Begriff), only the idea (Idee), whose characters are the inexpressible, the elusive" (p. 338). The living absolute can no longer be expressed except by fire. Romantic thinking would place the symbol, this new treatment of the image, in the center of its system. Thus, the third peak in the history of Germanic mysticism, that of the seventeenth century, seems to correspond to the anxieties, to the concerns of our times. This, writes Gorceix, seeks "a dubious salvation in distant spiritualities and forgets all too often the hidden riches, too long repressed, of Christianity and of Europe" (p. 339). Flambee et agonie contributes to rescue from neglect a large portion of these treasures that were only waiting to be rediscovered. The West has not much to envy of the East.
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THEATER, KABBALAH, AND ALCHEMY Bernard Gorceix also published several articles on various aspects of these theosophical currents. It seems useful to survey here the very specific approaches that he has opened up in them. "Mystique et theatre au XVTfe siecle en Allemagne"9 presents to us one of the least known, but perhaps the most interesting, works of baroque mysticism because we find in it, at the dawn of pietism, the essential themes of Germanic mystical theology in the seventeenth century expressed in a spectacular play—a genre of which the period was extremely fond. Knorr von Rosenroth sets forth his concept of the search for the union of Christ and the abandoned soul in his play entitled Ein geistliches Lustspiel/Von der Vermdlung Christi mit der Seelen (A Spiritual Comedy, on the Wedding of Christ with the Soul). Published in 1694, it has many points in common with another occasional play, by the same author, published in 1677, Conjugium Phoebi et Palladis oder die/durch Phoebi et Palladis Vermdhlung/erfundene Fortpflantzung des Goldes [The Marriage of Phoebus and Palladius, or the Invented Reproduction of Gold], where Knorr aimed to illustrate alchemical transmutation mythologically (cf. infra). A detailed commentary by Knorr, incorporated into the text of the Spiritual Comedy, lets us follow the development of the mystical action in parallel to the politico-amorous action; indeed, the heroes are not so much the protagonists of a comedy as those of an initiatic religious drama. We are dealing with a relatively detailed and complete description of the mystical path by this contemporary of Angelus Silesius (Der Cherubinische Wandersmann, "The Cherubic Pilgrim," or cherubinic, came out in 1657 in Vienna), of Quirinus Kuhlmann (the Kuhlpsdlter was published from 1684 to 1686), and of the founders of pietism, Philipp-Jakob Spener (1635-1705) and August Hermann Francke (1662-1727)—the Collegia Pietatis of Spener met in Frankfurt starting from 1670. We find here once again the essence of the themes of European mysticism: tranquillity and repose (Sabbath and peace), the imitation
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of Jesus, "Know thyself," spiritual death, the advent of the Kingdom of Christ represented by the wedding of Jesus and the soul. Nevertheless this play presents itself less as a description of a mystical peregrination properly speaking than as a mystical theology—that is, a "religious thinking that applies the terms historically associated with the description of a preparation for asceticism and the mystical wedding to a mysticism on the renewal of faith against confessional dogmatism" (p. 189). This speculation is marked by the teachings of the Kabbalah, which could not be surprising coming from the author of the celebrated Kabbala Denudata (two volumes, published in 1677 and 1684). In addition, the unity of philosophy and Christianity recalls the pansophia dreamed of by the baroque century at its beginnings in Germany. This play, like the Conjugium Phoebi et Palladis, confirms the prominent role of the theater in the baroque age, at the same time as the Jesuits were bringing the "didactic drama" into vogue, which had reached its zenith in the middle of the century before leading on to opera, developing through the spectacular festival displays of the Viennese court. The Spiritual Comedy, which focuses this tendency to gnosis, proper to Knorr and German mysticism of the seventeenth century, also recalls The Chemical Wedding (1616) of Andreae who, in this alchemical novel, also described the ascent of the soul toward union. Gorceix asks himself (p. 190) whether it would be appropriate to see in this taste for mystery, in this sacred hermeticism, "one of the last gasps of a great power of the Middle Ages and the beginning of Modern Times, that crumbled before the birth of the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the development of the methods of contemporary science"— mysticism having lost its intellectual and social foundations. "Alchimie et litterature au XVIIe siecle en Allemagne"10 opens with a quotation from Albert-Marie Schmidt concerning the prime position occupied by alchemical gnosis in French poetry of the sixteenth century, while this same gnosis went through a distinct decadence in the following century, especially from 1620 to 1670. Now, Gorceix points out to us that this relationship was the opposite in the Germanic countries, even though the first spagiric text composed in the German language (Buch der heiligen Dreifdltigkeit, of which perhaps the oldest copy, magnificently illustrated, is conserved in the Germanisches Museum in Nuremberg) goes back to the first years of the fifteenthth century. While Paracelsus was not ignorant of the "high science," it was only in the baroque century that this gained the honors of literary nobility in Germany. Gorceix studies two of these works belonging to literature proper: The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, of Johann Valentin Andreae (the first of the "Swabian Fathers"), published in Strasbourg in 1616 and, at the other end of the century, the Conjugium Phoebi et Palladis (1677, cf. supra) of Knorr von Rosenroth. The study that he gives us of The Chemical Wedding was taken up by him again, considerably developed, in the book that he published
immediately after this article." An account of this work having appeared through our care, it does not seem necessary to comment on it again.12 The other text considered by Gorceix, The Wedding of Phoebus and Pallas, already mentioned in relation to the Spiritual Comedy by the same author, Knorr von Rosenroth, was published in 1677, thus in the same year and the same place (Sulzbach) as the first volume of his celebrated Kabbala Denudata. This play, also a spectacular one, contains an impressive number of scenes and characters. The adventures of Phebus and Pallas illustrate "mythologically" the alchemical wedding of the "philosophical" marriage that was also described in the Rosicrucian novel. As the title may perhaps indicate, this was a spectacular chemical play (chymisches Pracht-Spiet) that "discovers" (erfinden) the multiplication of gold (Fortpflanzung des Goldes). The alchemical meaning of each tableau is given to us by the author at the start of each scene, so we can follow the description of the magisterium without too much trouble. The loves of Mars and Venus evoke the role of Mercury that moderates steel; the garden of the Hesperides and the golden apple guarded by a fire-spitting dragon designate the alchemical tree and the philosophical stone that the alchemist obtains only by mastering the igneous element. It seems to Gorceix that the two figures of Phebus and Pallas could have been drawn from the first pages of book II of the Chrysopoeia (1515) of Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, whose alchemical books enjoyed considerable success in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the best known German version—Halle, 1716—is entitled Vellus aureum et Chrysopoeia). The alchemical themes, such as they appear to us in Knorr's work, are inscribed in the context of the baroque age, which Jean Rousset has defined by a double image: "Circe and the Peacock, that is, metamorphosis and ostentation; movement and decor." The author also shows that this play is riddled with political allusions. But he ends this study by bringing up the value of the works of C. G. Jung for whoever may wish to approach depth psychology, and by recalling that alchemy is a true "sacred science" whose description ultimately is the province of historians of religion. Finally, while this science becomes, through its metaphorical treasure, the primary motivating power of literary invention in the novel The Chemical Wedding, it provides the Conjugium with the basis of a spectacular festival play: "By this intrinsic duality of its history, it serves to support a premise, mystical in the case of the Swabian, theological and moral in that of the Silesian [Knorr]" (p. 31). The contributions of Gorceix to our knowledge of alchemy do not stop there. In 1980, he gave us a fine selection of German texts, in an elegant and a careful translation, entitled Alchimie.'3 These include, on the one hand, three writings that are signed: Caspar Hartung (Das Kunstbtichlein [Little Book on Art], 1549); Gerhard Dorn (Aurora Thesaurusque Philosophorum); Franciscus Kieser, (Kabbala chymica, 1606). And, in addition, three anonymous German ones, in the Paracelsian wake (Apocalypsis of Hermes; The Magical Secret; On the
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Light of Nature). They were chosen especially because they were little known. Except for the first, they are situated in the Paracelsian sphere. In his "Introduction," occupying no less than fifty-two pages, Gorceix strongly emphasizes two directive lines that are revealed through these diverse writings. These are first a tragic concept of matter, or Nature, and of their "history." Then there is also the idea that a perpetual exchange between matter and spirit is operant. The order of the world, the life of matter, desire rediscovered compose the traditional substratum on which the alchemical cosmology is built. We must finally mention the valuable edition that he has procured for us of L'Aurore a son lever (Aurora Consurgens), a very classic text of which this is a beautiful French translation.14 This writing has been attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas, but Gorceix eludes the problem raised by this doubtful paternity; he prefers to make himself the rediscoverer and hermeneut of this jewel, to which he applies himself chiefly to show its richness of content and its beauty. The texts of Alchimie are almost all marked by Paracelsism, and it is to this that Gorceix returns once more specifically with two studies. We know (cf. supra, p. 50) that he had already published the Oeuvres medicales de Paracelse in 1968. Twelve years later, in a collective work, appeared his translation and introduction of the Prologue of Paracelsus to his Astronomia Magna (1537-38), where he underscores quite rightly that "the absence of a French translation of Paracelsus is deeply felt" in France.15 This work is followed, in the same book, by his article: "Paracelsisme et Philosophie de la Nature au XVIe et XVITe siecles en Allemagne (A propos d'un traite de 1575: Des secrets de la creation)?"6 It is again Paracelsus, but also Boehme, that are the subjects of his study: "La melancolie aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles: Paracelse and J. Bohme."17 As for Boehme, he is the subject of two good publications provided with commentaries by our author. T o the French reader are henceforth available the Theosophical Epistles and the Forty Questions?* In the Boehmean sphere, the theme of the Sophia was not forgotten since Gorceix also gave us a study on Gottfried Arnold and a translation of a text of his on the mystery of the divine Sophia.19 Among his contributions to the study of the mystics also appear not only a work on Caspar Schwenckfeld,20 but especially two publications on Hildegard of Bingen: Initiation et Vision is the title of a collection of three texts, previously unpublished in French, of the Benedictine visionary, translated here according to the Latin Patrology of Migne and the German edition of Salzburg (Pub. Otto Muller): letter to Bernard de Clairvaux, and reply from Bernard; letter from Bernard de Clairvaux, and reply to Bernard; letters of Hildegard to Guibert of Gembloux. Above all, the great visionary is now better known to French readers thanks to the translation, precise and inspired, which has recently been given by Gorceix of the Book of the Divine Works?' An article22 on the angel in seventeenth-century Germany completes this set of works relating to theosophy and mysticism. Had the angel, "shaken by
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the Lutheran interrogation," disappeared from German literature? Only shortly before, in the Stunden-Buch and the Neue Gedichte, R. M. Rilke had nevertheless granted an important place to the figure of the celestial messenger; in the Elegies ofDuino, the angel even occupies a central function. There would be no lack of plastic representations, as attested by the works of Riemenschneider, Diirer, Griinewald, Gerhard, and Rembrandt. Reflection on the angels allows Boehme to penetrate to the innermost essence and nature of the divine, "while Angelus Silesius understood the foundation, the value, the greatness of human possibilities" (p. 4). Boehme discusses at length the creation of the angelic spirits, their function in the core of divine nature, their life, their different categories, their relationships with us. He integrates them into the heart of the living organization of divine nature, which through them can be manifested and understood by us. "The angel puts the divine name into language" (p. 25). This relationship of the angel to God, and the angel to Man, introduces here, once again, the theme of celestial corporeity, of spiritual materiality that, from Paracelsus to Saint-Martin and including Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Weigel, remains one of the principal components of theosophical meditation. It is also known that Angelus Silesius is a pseudonym, and it is significant that, besides this name Angelus, Scheffler had chosen the adjective cherubic to entitle his best-known collection of verses, the Cherubic Pilgrim. We have also seen, in regard to Flambee et agonie, the distinction that this mystical thinker makes between seraphic and cherubic. Scheffler also emphasizes the superiority of Man over the angel in the eyes of God; the destiny of the angel is peace and evidence, ours is struggle and aspiration, so that our merit is the greater. Man issues Man a challenge and he wins it thanks to God—this God who would disappear in the Elegies of Duino. Despite the differences separating Scheffler's angeology from Boehme's, it remains that, in both, the angel is not a mere decoration or relic but an essential wheelwork in meditation and as necessary, after all, as in the sculpture and architecture of the times. "God, angel, and Man, in the seventeenth and XXth centuries, an ever-present triad, in the ages ofGodandMan"(p.28). SOCIETY AND UTOPIAS Since the works of Karl Vietor, we have greater knowledge of the important role played by the mystical revival in the development of baroque spirituality and the blossoming of German literature in the seventeenth century, but certain questions remain nevertheless poorly studied, in particular, that of the relationship between this mystical flowering and social evolution. Gorceix approaches this question in "Mystique et societe."23 J-B. Neveux had also approached it in his masterly and prolific works.24 Gorceix first points out that the social group to which the baroque mystics belonged or were related
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concern two families: the first and most often represented is composed of the mystics issued from the provincial and landed nobility, who traveled, frequenting only exceptionally the court of their principality (Johann Theodor von Tschech, Abraham von Franckenberg, Friedrich Spee, Johannes Scheffler). The second is recruited from the urban class of skilled tradesmen or more generally the lower strata of the urban population (Jacob Boehme, Quirinus Kuhlmann, Johann Georg Gichtel). The case of Daniel Czepko, who was ennobled after making a rich marriage, remains an exceptional case. Now, these two groups are precisely those that allow historians to use the expression "social question" in relation to seventeenth-century Germany. The rural nobility, ruined by the depreciation of monetary values and the Thirty Years' War, leads an often precarious existence; in France, while the size of the country and distance from Versailles allow it to subsist with a relative independence, in Germany the tiny size of the principalities and, consequently, the presence of the administration of princely and religious power favor opposition. As for the lower layers of the urban population, their situation does not cease to worsen, the trade guilds seeking to oppose the monopoly of the masters criticize the established order, and in particular the Church, "mixing purely corporative protests with heterodox religious aspirations" (p. 25). Everything therefore happens as if the representatives of these two social classes found in mystical meditation the means of asserting their independence in relation to religious authority. Certainly, one cannot speak of a revolutionary attitude and, in any case, it is not a matter of the author casting doubt, in view of these elements, on the authenticity of the spiritual experience of these thinkers: "One in no way prevents the other." Thus one better understands the success of Boehme's work, which the lesser Lusacian nobility preserved and propagated and "whose overwhelming novelty was already an attack against the fetters of the Formula of Concord or the Catechism of Trent" (p. 26), and one also better understands the role of Silesia in this concert, one of the German provinces ravaged by war and where the peasantry had become among the most miserable. We find again, in a later article, this concern to define as closely as possible the sociocultural reality of the milieus that were so favorable to the esoteric currents of the seventeenth century. In "L'utopie en Allemagne au XVIe siecle et au debut du XVTIe siecle,"25 Gorceix studies two Utopias in the wake of those of Thomas More (Utopia, 1516) and Campanella (City of the Sun, 1602), and preceding that of Francis Bacon (New Atlantis, 1624). These are the writings of Johann Eberlin von Giinzburg and Johann Valentin Andreae. Do they belong to the Utopian genre, and, if so, how are they different from the other contemporary Utopias? The New statuten die Psitacus gebracht hat uss dem land Wolfaria, by the Franciscan Giinzburg, are merely two lampoons mixed with others by the same author, so they have fallen into oblivion. They are to be found in Giinzburg's
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Ausgewdhlte Schriften (Halle, 1896). The geography of Wolfaria, the country of prosperity, is not really described, but the description of the inhabitants and their religious activities is relatively complete. Each person must possess only according to need; luxury does not exist; Jews and non-believers have access to neither honors nor public offices; storehouses and houses of commerce are forbidden; commercial policies are autarchic. It operates on a synthesis of themes borrowed, it would seem, from Thomas More and diffuse general aspirations. The Republicae Christianopolb descriptio of Andreae26 was published in Latin in 1619 (at Strasbourg) before the City of the Sun of Campanella, published in 1623. But the latter, completed in 1602, was in circulation starting from this date in manuscript form, so that Christianopolis was long held to be a mere plagiarism of Campanella's book. It is not, actually, nor do we find in it the great epic inspiration, the beautiful flights of imagination, as we do in Campanella, who still had a taste for the fantastical, only refined Lutheranism. Andreae, in contrast to Giinzburg, nonetheless adopts the form of the "storycontext," along with the procedures of Utopia. Better than Campanella, he articulates the progress of science and knowledge: Campanella marshaled them into a broad metaphysical thinking to serve as an image of the world and God, but Andreae confers on them a relative independence, The pages on the organization of schools and teaching herald the considerations of the Swabian Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the "father of modern pedagogy," although the leitmotiv of religion predominates over science; omnipresent, religion appears as the final aim of the Utopian state: the ideal city is the city of faith. He who would be an inhabitant of Christianopolis, says Andreae, must be neither a Rosicrucian, a chemist (i.e. a "puffer"), nor a fanatic. It is a matter of creating a state (politia) following the example of Christ and founded on the virtues. Stating the premise that "all the duties that comprise divine law are also the rules that maintain human society," Andreae asks a theologian to be the first of the three governors of the city. The sciences, from medicine to astronomy, must serve God (while Francis Bacon, in New Atlantis, puts the stress on scientific activities); marriage is established solely on virtue. Gorceix recalls that according to Richard Van Diilmen, who has recently introduced and commented on the new edition of this work (cf. supra), Andreae would have here wished to be the heir to the Lutheran tradition, but coloring it with themes borrowed from contemporaries, in particular from Johann Arndt (1555-1621), author of the Vier Bticher vom wahren Christenthum (Four Books on True Christianity), from his disciple, Johann Gerhard, and from Martin Moller. Gorceix refuses to state—which Van Diilmen does—that the Christianopolis is "the first bourgeois Utopia," because for that there is missing in Andreae, or in his text, two basic characteristics: the defense of an individualism opposed to State authority and the claim to private property or the free accumulation of
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wealth. Certainly, there would indeed be an encounter between Protestantism and the established bourgeoisie, but only one century later, at the time of pietism. Most interesting of all remains perhaps that, behind the surface statements (down with mysticism and the Rosicrucian dream!), one sees the ideal of Paracelsus, Valentin Weigel and Johann Arndt coming through, who already represented the essential message of the Rosicrucian Manifestos (1614-16) like that of The Chemical Wedding: the union of the light of grace and the light of Nature, the marriage of religion and science—what, Gorceix wrote pertinently, "Will-Erich Peuckert called, a little hastily, pansophia." One is far, certainly, from the alchemical games and baroque imagery of The Chemical Wedding, but fundamentally the ideal is still this synthesis of a science in progress and a living religion. We note, among almost all of these Utopians, tendencies in countercurrent: they propound the community of wealth at the time when property rights are being affirmed; collectivism, when individualism is being constituted; autarchy, at the moment when international commerce is really beginning to exist. These states are dictatorships. Finally, the German Utopias do not have the playful aspect proper to Rabelais; they are terribly serious and have none of the virtuosity of Campanella. God, the angel, and Man . . . Sophia, Nature, and Man. . . . T o understand these theosophical co-respondences one must have symbolic intelligence, whose organ is the creative imagination. The authors that have just been discussed understood them, and if Gorceix could re-create their thinking so well for us, it is because he was linked to them by an an undeniable affinity. This comes through on almost every page, without one ever getting the impression that he is deviating from his critical spirit. The beautiful language with which he writes his studies succeeds in reconstituting treasures, for the French reader, that are deprived the least possible of their specificity and flavor by the necessary transposition of words and expressions. He has also known how to show us—his area of research lent itself to it—how artificial it can sometimes be to separate literature from philosophical or metaphysical expression; this is because the thinkers that he treats for us attempted to make, to take up the phrase of Mallarme, "le commentaire des signes purs, a quoi obeit toute la litterature, jet immediat de l'esprit"21 ("the commentary of pure signs, which all of literature obeys, immediate fountainhead of spirit"). NOTES 1. Cf. notably A. Koyre, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929 (reprint 1980); and E. Susini, Franz von Baader et le romantisme mystique, Paris, Vrin, 1941.
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2. La Mystique de Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) et les origines de la theosophi allemande, Universite de Lille III, Service de reproduction des theses, 1972, 500 pp. 3. Paracelsus, Oeuvres medicates, translated and introduced by Bernard Gorceix, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, "Gallien" series (Histoire et philosophie de la biologie et de la medecine), 1968, 259 + xvi pp. Moreover, the appearance of Kosmosophie, published by Kurt Goldammer, Wiesbaden, 1962-71 (3 vols.), was the subject of a substantial account by Gorceix: "Paracelsus redivivus," pp. 326-330, in Etudesgermaniques, Paris, Didier, 1977, no. 3. Finally, Gorceix prefaced a facsimile reprint of Grillot de Givry's translation of the texts of Paracelsus: Oeuvres completes (sic) de Paracelse, Paris, Chacornac, 1985. 4. Cf. also A. Faivre, "The Inner Church and the Heavenly Jerusalem," pp. 135-146, in Access to Western Esotericism, State University of New York Press, Albany, SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions, 1994. 5. Johann Georg Gichtel, theosophe d'Amsterdam, Paris, L'Age d'homme, "Delphica" series, 1975, 174 pp. 6. Flambee et agonie. Mystiques du XVlle siecle allemand, Sisteron, Presence, 1977, 359 pp. and ill. 7. "Natur und Mystik im 17, Jahrhundert: Daniel Czepko und Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg," pp. 212-226 in Epochen der Naturmystik (Hermetische Tradition im wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt), ed. by A. Faivre and R. C. Zimmermann, Berlin, Eric Schmidt, 1979. 8. Cf. especially the work of W. Dietze, Quirinus Kuhlmann, Ketzer und Poet, Berlin, 1963. 9. "Mystique et theatre au XVIIe siecle en Allemagne: La Comedie spirituelle des noces du Christ et de fame, by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689)," pp. 179-190 in Revue de l'histoire des religions, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, October 1970. 10. "Alchimie et litterature au XVIIe siecle en Allemagne," pp. 18-31, in Etudes germaniques, Paris, Didier, January 1971. 11. B. Gorceix, La Bible des Rose-Croix, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1971, 125 pp. This work includes: (a) an introduction by Gorceix; (b) the translation, by Gorceix, of the three proto-Rosicrucian texts (the Fama, 1614; the Confessio, 1615; The Chemical Wedding, 1616), accompanied by important commentaries. 12. A. Faivre, "Rose-Croix et Rose-Croix d'Or en Allemagne de 1600 a 1786," pp. 57-70 in Revue de l'histoire des religions, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, April 1972. Text reprinted pp. 227-229 in A. Faivre, Mystiques, theosophes et Illumines au siecle des Lumieres, Hildesheim, Olms, 1977. 13. Alchimie. Textes allemands du XVIe siecle, traduits et presentes par Bernar Gorceix, Paris, Fayard, series "L'Espace interieur," 1980, 234 pp. "Presentation", pp. 12-64; notes, pp. 222-233. 14. Paris, Arma Arris, 1982,xliv+ 183 pp. 15. Paracelse (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de PHermetisme" series, 1980, pp. 233-247. 16. Ibid., pp. 249-267. 17. Recherches germaniques, Strasbourg, Universite des sciences humaines, no. 9, 1979, pp. 18-29.
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18. J. Boehme, Quarante questions sur I'ame. Traduction de Louis-Claude de SaintMartin (Paris, 1807), facsimile introduced by B. Gorceix, Paris, Arma Arris, 1984, 349 pp. Gorceix is the author of the Epilogue, pp. 305-347. J. Boehme, Les Epitres the'osophiques, translated and introduced by B. Gorceix, Paris, Ed. du Rocher, "Gnose" series, 1980 ("Presentation" by Gorceix, pp. 11-110). 19. "Le culte de la Sophia dans l'Allemagne baroque et pietiste. A propos du Mysiere de la Sophia divine du pietiste Gottfried Arnold (1700)," pp. 195-214 in Sophia et I'Ame du Monde (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme" series, 1983. "Prologue de la divine Sophia ou Sagesse (1700)," pp. 215-224, in ibid. 20. "La christologie de Caspar Schwenckfeld," pp. 217-220 in Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1978, no. 2. 21. "Initiation et vision," pp. 23-29 in Travaux de la Loge nationale de recherches Villard de Honnecourt, Neuilly, G.L.N.F., 1982, no. 4. Le Livre des Oeuvres divines (Visions), Paris, Albin Michel, "Spiritualites Vivantes" series, 1982 (cl pp. by Gorceix, and 217 pp. of translation). 22. "L'Ange et l'homme en Allemagne au XVIIe siecle," Recherches germaniques, Strasbourg, Universite des sciences humaines, no. 7, 1977; reprint pp. 140-156 in L'Ange et l'Homme (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme" series, 1978. 23. "Mystique et Societe. A propos de la mystique baroque allemande," pp. 20-28 in Etudes germaniques, Paris, Didier, January 1973. 24. J.-B. Neveux, Vie spirituelle et vie sociale entre Rhin et Baltique au XVIIe siecle, Paris, Klincksieck, 1967. 25. "L'utopie en Allemagne au XVIe siecle et au debut du XVIIe siecle," pp. 14-29 in Etudes germaniques, Paris, Didier, January 1975. 26. Johann Valentin Andreae, Reipublicae Christianopolis descriptio, reprinted by Richard Van Diilmen, Stuttgart, Calwer, 1972. 27. Let us mention six other articles by B. Gorceix in order to complete this bibliography: "Litterature et alchimie (Marguerite Yourcenar et Michel Butor)," pp. 159-170, in Fachbereich Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft, Frankfurt-am-Main, Peter Lang, Reihe A, vol. I, 1973. "Aspects du lyrisme allemand en 1972," pp. 926-937 in Revue d'Allemagne, Paris, Armand Colin, October 1973. "Un des representants de la 'poesie pure' dans l'Allemagne d'aujourd'hui: le Westphalien Ernst Meister," pp. 601-627 in Revue d'Allemagne, October 1976. "La 'renaissance' de Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782)," pp. 66-68 in Etudes germaniques, Paris, Didier, January 1979. "La melancolie aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles (Paracelse et Jacob Boehme)," pp. 18-29 in Recherches germaniques, Strasbourg, Universite des sciences humaines, no. 9, 1979.
Theosophical
P o i n t s of
on the Death
View
Penalty
When the opponents of the death penalty criticize its supporters, they generally attack the simplicity of their arguments, the barbarity of their minds, and the outdated nature of their concept of humanity. Certainly, it is possible that a good number of anti-abolitionists are to be recruited from among the simpleminded, people with no imagination or devoid of any generosity; and so it seems all the more interesting to look into families of mind that are free of these faults, but who in this controversy are to be found, if not always in practice, at least in theory, on the side of the defenders of capital punishment. Two identical ballots can be found in the same ballot box; however, it is not immaterial to know that one was put there by a carp and the other by a rabbit. One of these families, that of the theosophers, sustains our interest by the seriousness of its arguments, which are based on an anthropology that is ontologically founded; three of its most eminent spokesmen, selected here because they were contemporaries—the historical framework will thus delimit the purpose— deserve to be heard: Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), called the "Unknown Philosopher"; Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who was rather deeply marked by the tradition with which Saint-Martin was connected; finally, the philosopher Franz von Baader (1765-1841) of Munich. LOUIS-CLAUDE DE SAINT-MARTIN While Saint-Martin manifests his hostility to the death penalty several times as well as to the idea of a collective redemption by blood, his reasons are not comparable to those of modern abolitionists: it is that for him Christ has already redeemed all of humanity by dying on the Cross. In his very first work, Des erreurs et de la verite? he recalls that Man "at his first origin" (let us understand: Adam before the fall) "was solemnly invested" with the "right to punish," which he held from the "higher Principle, unique and universally good" opposed to the "evil Principle"—that of Satan. His justice was "exact and sure"; it is no longer so because of the original fall that altered his rights "of life and death 87
Theosophies over the evildoers of his Empire," that is, over the demons, and not over the other beings of Adamic humanity, for the question could not arise "in the Region that he then inhabited." The original prevarication cast him down into the state of nature, "whence results the state of Society, and soon of corruption."2 However, fallen Man—present humanity, that of history until today— could not "have a just authority over others without having, through his own efforts, recovered his lost faculties": Similarly, whatever this authority may be, it cannot reveal in him the right to punish his fellow-men corporeally, nor the right of life and death over them; since he did not have this right of life and bodily death, even during his time ofglory, over the subjects submitted to his domination? The only kind of superiority that Man "can acquire over his fellow-men is that of setting them aright, when they go astray." However, "according to the Laws of Truth, nothing must go unpunished" and further, "through his fall, Man, far from acquiring new rights, has allowed himself to lose those he had." So then, what is to be done? "One absolutely must find elsewhere" than in Man "the rights that he needs" to safeguard the society to which "he is presently attached." The theosopher discovers these rights in a metaphysical principle indissociable from the myth he adheres to, namely, "in this same temporal and physical Cause which has taken the place of Man, by order of the first Principle" to serve as a beacon light and illuminate all the steps of our way. Being of the fallen, not one of us has the right or the power to stop crimes from being committed in society. Thus it is this temporal and physical "cause" that will provide it, but being "above tangible things [. . .] it must employ tangible means to manifest its decisions, just as it does in order to have its judgments carried out." What will these "tangible means" be, in other words: the executive organ of the "Cause"? One will scarcely be surprised at Saint-Martin's reply, for who indeed, besides Man himself, could be the delegate of this "Cause"? It is the voice ofMan that it [the temporal and physical Cause] employs for this function, but only when he has made himself worthy of it; it is he that it entrusts to announce justice to his fellow-men, and to have them observe it. Thus, far from Man being by his essence the keeper of the avenging sword of crime, his very functions announce that this right to punish remains in another hand whose mere agent he must be? The judge must thus attain to "really being the organ of this intelligent Cause, temporal and universal," in order to discern faultlessly, through a "sure light," the innocent from the guilty. T o this "inestimable advantage," as well as to other means, Man remains susceptible: "They all originate from the
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faculties of this active and intelligent Cause, destined to establish order in the Universe among all Beings of the two natures"; this "Cause" can, among other beneficial or salvatory actions, offer us the only true "assistance for the administration of civil or criminal justice in society."5 By all means, human testimony is subject to caution; "ignorance and bad faith" are to be feared, but if a judge allows himself to be guided by this light he will make no mistakes. "Political Law alone" is not superior to that "of a man of blood."6 Saint-Martin has few illusions on the willingness that a judge might have to allow himself to be guided by this light. At the very moment when we would expect him to justify the death penalty unreservedly, he delivers this unexpected description: The death of each enemy [in war] is uncertain; whereas here an iniquitous machine accompanies the executions. One hundred men take arm, assemble, and coldly go to exterminate one of their fellow-men, to whom they do not even allow the use of his forces; and it is claimed that mere human power is legitimate, power which can be fooled any day of the week and so often pronounces unjust sentences; human power, finally, that a corrupted will can convert into the instrument ofan assassin? He explains further on that the "criminal Codes" do not possess the law of retaliation, that is, the just penal law; they could not have it because "the only law that can surely regulate the way of Man" does not come from Man, but would be "necessarily the work of a powerful hand"—let us understand "supernatural." Torture, reproved by the Unknown Philosopher, is indeed always proof of "the weakness and darkness wherein the legislator languishes"; another proof of this weakness is that capital punishment is inflicted only for crimes "perpetrated on the temporal and the tangible," while a great many others are committed "on more important objects, and which escape the sight of our justice every day": / am speaking of these monstrous ideas that make ofMan a being of matter; of these corrupted and desperate doctrines that strip him even of the feeling of order and happiness; in a word, of these stinking systems that, bearing putrefaction even to its own seed, smother him or render him absolutely pestilential, so that the Sovereign has no more to reign but on vile machines or on brigands? There is another argument against the death penalty and which preoccupies Saint-Martin. T o kill a guilty party is a hasty condemnation, while "true justice" would have left him "the time to atone for his mistake through remorse." What is more, "the atrocity of execution" strips him of the power of a repentance that divine Justice could have credited him with in the hereafter; therefore the death penalty
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Theosophies exposes him to losing in despair a precious life, ofwhich a more just use and a sacrifice made in time could have erased all his crimes; in such a way that this makes him incur two penalties for one, of which the first, far from expiating anything, can on the contrary make him multiply his iniquities, and by this make the second penalty more inevitable.9
How, then, could a judge "be at peace with himself? The capital punishment that he will have inflicted "differs from murder only in form"; he will have to "impute to himself all the evil consequences" of this temerity and injustice, that is, the supernatural consequences entailed by a death too hasty. Does this mean that if the judges were pure, Saint-Martin would accord them the right of life and death? What he has described above on the light dispensed by the "Cause" would leave this logically to be supposed; nevertheless, he cannot resign himself to it, he who is struck by these "scenes of horror"; and as he does not seem to entertain many illusions on the real possibility of a true illumination of the "sovereigns and judges," he is content to exhort them to be "pure," to make "the wrongdoers tremble, rather by their presence and their names, than by the gallows." It remains that from this "Cause" or "Principle," judges and sovereigns should expect more than one kind of aid; not only that of judging in an absolutely perfect fashion but also that, among others, of healing illness.10 Twenty years later, the problem of capital punishment still interests Saint-Martin, who notes in his journal: Coming backfromthe central Bureau to have my passport countersigned on the 11th ofThermidor in the year 5, 29 July 1797,1 found myself on the Greve just when four murderers were about to be executed. Despite my abhorrence of blood, I stayed on for the execution with a view to helping to my utmost these wretched ones through my prayers in these moments that are so important. I had the consolation offeeling that divine justice does sometimes work under human justice; and this is what gives rise in the audience to that spirit ofgrave composurefromwhich mostfindthemselves defenseless. I nevertheless felt a heavy suffocation at the sight of this appalling spectacle. It is truly the picture of hell?' In the same year (1797) he publishes his little work Eclair sur I'association humaine, in which a long passage picks up the essence of the ideas expressed in 1777 on capital punishment. Where indeed, first asks Saint-Martin, have human legislators "taken this right to deal death on their fellow-man," to remove from him what would not be in their power to return to him "when they had found him sufficiently penalized"? Corporeal destruction in any case is "useless to the guilty, and . . . is hardly more profitable to the miserable ones who are its witnesses." One might believe that the question does not call for
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an answer, be tempted to see in it rather a horrified exclamation. Nothing of the sort: Saint-Martin again takes up his argumentation of 1777 while specifying certain points. As soon as he has asked: "where, I say, have [human legislators] taken this right of death on their fellow-men?" he adds, "Here it is,"12 and he launches into a long argumentation. Let us summarize it in five points: (a) The original fall has brought about natural death for every Man; the material mortal life to which he is now bound can be considered as a penance for the Adamic fault, and death as a deliverance. Here, it is "deprivation" that is the punishment.13 (b) The "new crimes" that our "earthly region" has opened up to fallen Man have compelled supreme justice to shorten our lifetime, death becoming a punishment, because ever since then it has always been premature. Here, it is "molestation" that is the punishment;14 this is divine like the preceding one (cf. point a). (c) Supreme justice did not always employ "physical scourges and the powers of nature immediately"; but it often entrusted "its right to the voice and hand" of men legitimately and effectively provided with the "right of life and death over [their] fellow-men," exercised "by order, and according to lights that were not human."15 The author does not say in what era this was still possible, but here we find again the idea, rather prevalent in theosophy, of a succession of falls. The death penalty, in this period before known history, thus appears to Saint-Martin fully justified. (d) Unfortunately, later on and until today, human lawmakers have transformed this divine power into a criminal arbitrariness: they have judged, condemned, and killed, but while taking "the mere memory of this divine right for the right itself."16 (e) In any case, crimes are no longer committed for more than very secondary motives; buried as men are "in brute matter, they no longer become, actively and in full knowledge of the facts, enemies of the spiritsource, in which they do not believe"; that is why they are getting further away from, rather than closer to, "the great seats of the crimes that they call death— let us understand: of spiritual crimes. As moreover the "legislators" conduct themselves "as if they saw around them the fruits of the tree of vital crimes"— spiritual ones—, and consequently pronounce capital punishments, while the truly great prevarications are of another order, Saint-Martin sees there "both an inconsequentiality and an injustice in the legislators."17 JOSEPH DE MAISTRE It does not seem that Joseph de Maistre has shown himself as specific as SaintMartin on this serious subject anywhere in his works, but one finds again in him a similar theosophical content, save that his speculations can only be
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understood in context of the mysticism of the redeeming blood, a permanent backdrop in his thinking. On the subject of the French Revolution, de Maistre does not hesitate to say "that there are few Frenchmen, among those known as innocent victims of the Revolution," to whom their conscience could not say: From your errors see what sad fruits have resulted And recognize the blows that you have conducted?8 This is to add shortly afterward: "There is no punishment that does not purify."19 Redemption by blood, he writes in one of his most beautiful texts (and perhaps also one of the most theosophical), is a universal idea; Christianity, in certifying the dogma, does not explain it, at least publicly, and we see that the "secret roots of this theory of sacrifice greatly preoccupied the first initiates of Christianity." Origen, who had long reflected on this subject, wrote "that the blood shed on Calvary had been useful not only to Man, but to the angels, to the stars, to all created beings." Did the apostle Paul not say that the blood of Jesus shed on the cross has pacified "what is on earth as much as what is in heaven"?20 Certainly, it happens that the innocent die in collective disasters, but one can consider this "in its relationship to the universal dogma, and as ancient as the world, of the reversibility of the sufferings of innocence to the benefit of the guilty?'1' As condemnable as he deems the execution of the king of France, he does not hesitate to confide in us: "There could have been in the heart of Louis XVI and in that of the celestial Elisabeth, such an impulse, such an acceptance that was capable of saving France."22 In the first conversation of the Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, de Maistre has the count, his mouthpiece, say that the profession of executioner is too unfairly decried. "What is then this inexplicable being, asks the count, who has preferred to any of the agreeable professions, lucrative, honest, and even honorable [. . .] that of tormenting and putting to death his fellow-men?" For such beings to exist there must doubtless have been "a particular decree, a FIAT of the creative power." The executioner lives apart, his fellow-men flee from him, "but all grandeur, sublimity, all power, all subordination rest on the execution: he is the horror and the bond of human association"; without him order would become chaos, thrones would tumble, society itself would disappear. Could one object that there can be judicial errors? The count retorts in advance that it is "equally possible that a man sent to death for a crime that he has not committed could have really deserved it for another crime completely unknown"— which, affirms the count, happens more often than one might believe. Indeed, judicial errors are relatively rare.23 The apology of the executioner is what he has very much at heart, for at the beginning of the seventh "soiree" or conversation, he returns to this subject so as to persuade his interlocutor that an executioner deserves, when all is said and done, more respect than a soldier, all wars not necessarily being just.24
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FRANZ VON BAADER A disciple of Saint-Martin and at least as much of Boehme, the theosopher Franz von Baader from Munich has expressed the essence of his ideas on this subject in a little article entitled precisely "On the death penalty," written shortly after 1836.25 Recent criminologists, says Baader, are mistaken in claiming that capital punishment inflicted on criminals who have knowingly killed has vengeance by blood as its only motive and that, consequently, it is a barbaric practice that would be fit to abolish. One must seek elsewhere the justification for this penalty, and the introduction of Christianity has made this not only a right but a duty, because of all crimes murder remains the only one that, without this condemnation, prevents the criminal from assuring a position (Stellung) for himself in the assizes of the hereafter. One sees how much the opinion of Baader differs on this point from that of Saint-Martin, although one of the masters of his thinking; also he prefers to cite another authority on this subject, that of Daub, the theologian from Heidelberg.26 One must be concerned, says Baader, for the soul of the criminal, act in such a way that he resigns himself, freely accepts his death which is the only way for him to undertake the expiation of the crime himself; persuade him not only that he is being rightfully executed but that thereby he is being "benefited, in the highest sense of the term." Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, recognizes in secular authority the right and the duty to use the sword.27 T o the redoubtable idea that prevailed, of a sanguinary and pitiless judge in the hereafter, Christianity substituted another, encouraging and consoling: "every murderer falling under the sword of the executioner can still share today in the reconciling virtue of the sacrifice of Golgotha, just as much as did the good thief." "Tradition" comes to reinforce the teaching of the Scriptures: Paracelsus (1493-1541), a great authority in the eyes of Baader, is called to the rescue; the alchemist doctor of the Renaissance had written in his treatise De sanguine ultra mortem: He who judges by the sword shall die by the sword, he will be judged in his turn, and this expiation and this penance imposed by the temporal authorities will be followed by the pardon of sin or divine mercy. The penance is not imposed by the ecclesiastical authority but by the temporal, however, when the latter executes its sentence the murderer sees his sin remitted; then follows the mercy of God, which without this punishment does not descend to him?g Thus, instead of seeing in capital punishment a "crying injustice, because irreparable," as "modern opinion" does, it would be time to inquire seriously, while carrrying out all the necessary research, on what it was based in the past
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and on what it is based today. Baader ends his account with this scheme of thinking that well sums up his position: Now, one finds among all peoples, savage or not, at all times and in every part of the world, the conviction, clearly or obscurely formulated, that there subsists between the soul of the blood of the victim (des Germordeten Blutseele) and the murderer (as well as the places surrounding him) an effective relationship (effectiver Rapport)—as has been said earlier, a vis sanguinis ultra mortem. The duty to exterminate (criminal jurisdiction) was based on this, so that the authorities did not accomplish this duty in their name only or according to their convenience, but with the aim of summoning the criminal—coming under their jurisdiction only in the lower court—before a Forum of the hereafter, the one before which the offended was already standing in the capacity ofaccuser?9 Christianity has done nothing but reinforce this certainty since the court of the hereafter can show itself merciful. "Only the materialism of our times, which denies any hereafter as it does any relationship it might have with our world, could weaken this certainty."30 In a short work composed during the same period,31 Baader recalls that "among all ancient peoples" the death penalty was founded on principles radically different from those of modern philosophers. According to the belief of these ancient peoples, the victim passes into the other world before the time normally fixed for it; the murderer takes on himself, and compensates for, a share of the consequences that this victim has undergone by the fact of his premature appearance there. The murderer could not render this service as long as he remained on earth. Theologians should be well on guard, when the death penalty is being discussed, that "the very death of our Savior necessarily had to be premature and violent, so that this transfer could be operated—which, indeed, was immediately effected in Hades." Thus there exists between the executed Christ and any other man perishing in the same manner a relationship that will only cease with the resurrection of the flesh.32 Baader, as might have been expected, did not find only allies. The review Der Bayerische Landbote took him strongly to task on the 20th of November 1836.33 Julius Hamberger, another theosopher, a friend of Baader's, rose to his defense in the same columns. If the lifetime of the victims, explains Hamberger, has been shortened by violence—time that should have served them to prepare themselves for infinity—they have passed into a region—the beyond—inaccessible to the criminal; the latter then has but a single means to put himself at peace with his conscience: that of being led in his turn to this region, for only there does this restitution become possible, although in a manner on which we have but little knowledge. Therefore, one should not, adds Hamberger, be strongly surprised to see so many murderers who are not yet completely hardened entreat their judges to apply to them this death
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penalty that they anticipate as a genuine benefit, nor to hear them frequently declare, during interrogations, that they have lost all rest because of their victim's soul which had not stopped persecuting them until they had confessed their misdeed.34 One could ask oneself whether Saint-Martin and Baader, living in our era, would not have somewhat corrected their positions. We have seen that SaintMartin declared himself against the death penalty in practice while maintaining it as a theory that would never be applicable, because he had no illusions on the moral competence of the courts in this area. The reticence of Saint-Martin has bearing on the judges, not on the criminals themselves. But advances made in psychology have particularly restricted in our days the scope of individual responsibility in a great many cases. Would Saint-Martin have omitted this argument from his thesis? And Baader himself, little inclined to rely on the judgments of a fallen human nature, might not have asked better than to see in mental disorders the direct cause of certain murders, just as already he could not miss considering demonic possession, in the possibility of which he gready believed, as a conspicuous limitation of responsibility. An unaccountable individual would no more be liable to fall under the blow of Baaderian jurisdiction in the beyond, any more than on this earth. As for de Maistre, while he barely speaks of the application of capital punishment, he nonetheless links this back up with its theosophical context, just as the two other thinkers do. It is this context that is of interest to us, more in any case than the question of knowing whether any one of them ultimately declared himself to be against the practical application of this penalty. One has the right, certainly, not to believe that blood reunites in the hereafter the guilty party and his victim in a relationship of restitution, or that there exists on the supernatural plane a reversibility of penalties. It remains no less that this theosophical argument, because it rests on the myth of the fall and the redemption, carries much more weight, and should be taken far more seriously, than the two very weak arguments generally advanced by the opponents of abolitionism: that of an alleged law of retribution, and that, more sentimental, of the pain felt by those close to the victim. NOTES 1. Des erreurs et de la verite, ou les hommes rappeles au principe universe! de science, Edimbourg (Paris), 1775. Anastatic reprint, Hildesheim, Olms, 1975. On the question of the death penalty in Saint-Martin, cf. several references (taken up here again, for the majority) in the article by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin, "Le citoyen LouisClaude de Saint-Martin, theosophe revolutionnaire," pp. 209-224 in Dix-Huitieme siecle, 1974, no. 6. 2. Des erreurs..., pp. 331 ff.
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3. Ibid., p. 332. 4. Ibid., pp. 332-334. 5. Ibid., pp. 334 ff. 6. Ibid, pp. 336-338. 7. Ibid, p. 341. 8. Ibid, pp. 347 ff. 9. Ibid, pp. 350 ff. 10. Ibid, pp. 351 ff. 11. Mon portrait historique et philosophique (1789-1803), published by Robert Amadou, Paris, Juilliard, 1962, pp. 352, 793. 12. Eclair sur Vassociation humaine, Paris, 1797, cf. 57, 76, 79, 95. 13. Ibid, pp. 80 ff. 14. Ibid, p. 82. 15. Ibid, pp. 81 ff. 16. Ibid, p. 82. 17. Ibid, p. 83. It is interesting to compare, as G. Decote has already done, the attitude of Saint-Martin and that of Jacques Cazotte, who perished on the gallows himself (cf. Georges Decote, L'ltineraire de Jacques Cazotte: de lafictionlitteraire au mysticisme politique, Academic thesis, University of Nanterre, 1979, pp. 874 ff, 904 ff. Published under the same tide, Geneva, Droz, 1984; cf. notably pp. 432 ff). 18. Considerations sur la France, in Oeuvres completes, Paris, Vitte, 1884-87, vol. I, p. 9. 19. Ibid, p. 40. 20. Sur les Sacrifices, in Oeuvres completes, op. cit, vol. V, p. 349. Colossians 1:20; Ephesians 1:10. 21. Considerations sur la France, op. cit, p. 39. 22. Ibid. 23. Les soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, in Oeuvres completes, op. cit, vol. IV, pp. 32 ff. 24. Ibid, vol. V, p. 5. 25. Ueber die Todesstrafe, in Sdmtliche Werke, vol. V, 1854 (anastatic reprint, Scientia Verlag, Aalen, 1963), pp. 326-329. 26. In ibid, p. 326. Karl Daub, Darstellung und Beurtheilung der Hypothesen in Betreffder Willensfreiheit, ed. by Kroeger, Altona, 1834, pp. 218 ff. 27. Ueber die Todesstrafe, op. cit, p. 326. Romans 13:4. 28. Paracelsus, Liber de sanguine ultra mortem, cited by Baader; this text, in the Sudhoff edition, appears in vol. XIV (section I, 1933, pp. 101-114). 29. Baader, op. cit, p. 328. Leviticus 27:28-29; Numbers 31:1-3; Deuteronomy 13:17; Joshua 6:17-24; 7:1, 12, 15. (Cf. p. 328, n. 1, Biblical references given by Franz Hoffmann, editor of the Oeuvres completes). 30. Ibid, p. 328. 31. Ibid, p. 359, 362 ff. 32. Ibid, p. 363. And Ueber den Begriff einer vis sanguinis ultra mortem. Eine briefliche Mitteilung an Justinus Kerner (1863), in Sdmtliche Werke, op. cit, vol. IV, 1853, pp. 423-432. Romans 9:22: "Sine sanguinis fusione nonfitremissio." 33. Cf.nos. 321,322, 338. 34. Cited in Ueber die Todesstrafe, op. cit, p. 329.
E X E R C I S E S
O F
I M A G I N A T I O N
Vis
Imaginativa
(A S t u d y of S o m e A s p e c t s of t h e M a g i c a l I m a g i n a t i o n a n d Its M y t h i c a l F o u n d a t i o n s )
; jpj M i '" -i '""all 1 13 !^
The period has been long during the course of which, from Aristotle to Sartre and taking in Pascal and Kant, the imagination has been held to be a derived product, dubious really, whether it is stuck in between the intellect and sensation or, according to Malebranche, reduced to the sole virtue of forming images from objects—or again, as in Kant, to a faculty mediating between intuition and understanding. But these "classic" philosophers, that is, those of our official programs, have not been the only ones to interest historians of philosophy for the past forty years. These now lean toward other currents of thought as well, in whose core the imagination had a completely different status, whether it be in Neo-Platonism, in Arab philosophy, or in Western esoteric currents. Among the instigators of this shift are Heidegger, who revised the Kantian notion of the imagination by showing that it was "without a homeland"; Gaston Bachelard, who renewed thinking on scientific and poetic imagination; Henry Corbin, who validated the notion of mundus imaginalis by revealing the treasures of the Shi'ite gnosis. Indeed there would be much to say of this renaissance, and a fortiori of the long and complex history of the imagination in the West—a history which has not yet been put to paper although it has already been sketched out in its broad outlines.1 The present purpose is not to retrace its vicissitudes but to present one of its aspects, namely, the vis imaginativa, understood as an ability to act upon Nature, whether the action is exercised on the body of the imagining subject only (called intransitive action) or else on objects exterior to it (called transitive action). T o further delimit the purpose and to avoid a pointless plethora of fanciful anecdotes, the main focus will be on the discourse of philosophical or theosophical vindication advanced by the proponents of this magical concept of the imagination.2
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FROM JACOB'S SHEEP T O T H E MAGIC SEED OF PARACELSUS The most common justification, when the authority of the Bible is called upon, is Genesis 30:31-42 where we read that Jacob's white sheep, by gazing at colored bark, were able to conceive speckled and spotted lambs. Saint Jerome and Saint Chrysostome commented on this passage and Dionysius the Aeropagite likened it to the fact that a painter ends up by resembling his model.3 Origen, contrary to the gnostic Valentinus, defended the dignity of the image which, according to him, was grounded in the perfection of the Son, who was himself the image of the invisible God; he thus set forth a voluntarist concept of the imagination.4 And Porphyry taught that the daimons are endowed with a cloud-like spirit that can take on various forms according to their imaginings of the moment, so that they appear to us in different and changing guises.5 This was already the concept of magical imagination as a plastic mediator (cf. infra); perhaps it is also in this fashion that we can understand a passage of Synesius's well-known book, On Dreams (chap. 8). During the Middle Ages, there was no dearth of philosophers to expound on this vis imaginativa. According to Al Kindi (De radiis stellicis, ninth century), the imagination can form concepts and then emit rays that will affect exterior objects, especially if astrological conditions are favorable. Avicenna saw in it the effect of the natural domination of spiritual essences on matter, and for Al Gazzali (Algazel) the virtue of imagination can move an object such as a stone or a camel.6 This way of thinking was frequent starting from the high Middle Ages.7 In fact this debate was rather important, for to think like Avicenna on this matter can give the impression of wanting to provide a "natural" explanation for Christ's miracles. In Amicus Amicorum (1431), Jean Ganivet explained that human souls are capable, through strong imagination, of uniting with the intelligence of the moon. The same author repeated a story (already broadcast by Nicholas de Lyra in the preceding century) that told of a Spanish woman who was unjustly suspected of illicit relations with a man of color because she had given birth to a black baby, while according to her it was due to the effect produced on her by a painting of a group of Ethiopians that was hanging in her room.8 This kind of anecdote proliferated until the eighteenth century and even later: we have here the belief in the power of the imagination of pregnant women on their fetuses—a paradigmatic example of the vis imaginativa of intransitive nature. Marsilo Ficino, who would often be quoted, wrote in De Theologia Platonica (book 13, chap. 1 and 4): Four feelings spring forth from the imagination: desire, pleasure, fear, and pain. All of these, when they are very intense, suddenly affect the body of the person, sometimes even that of another person. [. . .] How very clear it is that a pregnant woman's desire impresses the mark of the object of her
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desire upon the tender fetus. How varied, and how unlike theirs, are the gestures and the faces that parents give their children, because of the different things that they may picture strongly in their minds during the act of coitus. [. . .] How often have people with malevolent intentions done harm, through spells and charms, to men, to animals, and even to plants. [. . .] Through its feeling alone, the soul commands the elements, bringing winds into a peaceful sky, calling forth rain from the clouds, and restoring calm and good weather once again.9 Prominent among those who drew inspiration from Ficino's text were Pomponazzi and Agrippa.10 Pietro Pomponazzi, a doctor and professor in Bologna, intended to demystify the occult, but he believed in an imagination that could make an imagined object concrete, and he attacked the Gospel miracles and interpreted them as the effect of natural magic (cf. his De naturalium effectuum admirandorum Causis, sive de incantationibus, Basel, 1556, written around 1520). In his commentary on Ficino, he gave the creative image a mythical foundation by referring to Boethius: the image of the divine idea is the cause of the imagined being, even without an intermediary. For God created this visible world on the idea of the world that is in divine thought, as Boethius says in the Illrd book of the Consolation. Then, the idea of things that are to come, which is in the Intelligences, produced the lower world through the intermediary of instruments that are the celestial bodies." Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, author of the most characteristic work of Renaissance magical literature (De Occulta Philosophia, 1533, written toward 1510), while following Ficino, set forth the imagination as an example of magical activation and placed it in a cosmological framework, conferring on it an ontological dignity that also gready exceeded the status of an example falling only within the domain of the theory of knowledge. He recognized in it the potential to influence the health of others for good or evil through the intermediary of the stars. One sees, he wrote, in the urine of those who have been bitten by a dog with rabies, figures of dogs. One makes white peachicks by draping white sheets around the nests of brooding peahens. And so on.12 Later in the century, the work of Giordano Bruno, De Imaginum, Signorum et Idearum compositione (1591), propounded a theory of the imagination conceived of as the principal instrument of magical and religious processes. In so doing, Bruno, in the manner of Giulio Camillo (L'idea del Teatro, 1550), transformed the art of memory, which had been merely a rational technique using images (as in Thomas Aquinas), into a religious and magical one. It was a matter of training the imagination to make of it an instrument allowing the acquisition of divine powers. One could attract the spirits through incantations, seals, and
Exercises of Imagination
Vis Imaginativa
markings, but also by the imagination alone, this third method being the principal one.13 Outside Italy, let us bring out two French references and especially the German contribution. In the great literature of the century an appealing allusion of the intransitive type appears in Ronsard: his poem "J'avois este saigne" relates that, after the doctor had left, a friend who had come to see him noticed that his blood was black, and he had her say:
of suggesting to it through imagination a design to manifest. If this were strong enough, we could change our outer appearance as easily as we do the expressions on our face. Desire and thought incarnate in the image which, once formed, serves as a mold for the soul that pours itself into it, which manifests itself in it. The imagination functions as a seed; the images that our soul produces are not the simple modification of this soul, but body, incarnation, thought, and will; they become autonomous and then develop according to their own laws, like the children that we conceive. T o conceive is to engender; every concept is organic18—and it is in an organic manner that images are born in our Gemtith. Paracelsus makes frequent use of solar and igneous symbols: "What then is the imagination, if not a sun in Man?"19 Through imaginative speculation the vital fluid (semen) is converted into active seed, like the sun that sets wood aflame. All of the heavens are but imagination, for they act on Man, can unleash scourges, not only through the mediation of corporeal vehicles but through their very composition, their form (Gestalt) (that is, through the structure of the constellations). This is because the Einbildungskraft goes through all things, the small world and the great. All of matter and the whole spirit of the sky and of the earth are found concentrated in the Man-microcosm, who is thereby capable of creating wonders. What is more, nothing is impossible for a sufficiently strong imagination because, as the very principle of all magic, it can transform our body, act on the heavens. Since we are composed of celestial matter, the celestial world is open to being touched by us just as we are by it. We see that Paracelsus is especially concerned with transitive vis imaginativa, whose power and effects go far beyond adding to a supply of colorful tales. But neither does he neglect to speak of the intransitive, for example, when he attributes the fact that women can give birth to monsters to an unruly, badly oriented imagination, or when he explains that the gender of an unborn child is determined by that of the parent with the stronger imagination.20 Hence the need to discern the false imagination from the true (vera), or the authentic. Through the false, or extravagant—fantasias-one has but a pale reflection of visible things instead of an encounter with the power of unfathomable nature. It is the seed of madness; it lacks the anchoring that binds together imagination and magic, lacks the rooting of the image in our sidereal being—just as a plant is rooted in the soil. The true image gives body to our thought, transforms it into desire; it is the very body of this thought and this desire, which incarnate themselves in it.21 The mythical foundation of this concept, so grandiose and elaborate, of the vis imaginativa is comparable in its principle to that given by Pomponazzi during the same period: God having created the universe by imagining it, Man in his turn, created in God's image and epitomizing the whole of creation, has analogically similar powers at his disposal—at least potentially.22 It is known that this Paracelsian thinking found a persistent and formidable enemy in Erastus (alias Thomas Liebler), who was striving to refute
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Too much thinking in you had a power so vast On the imagination, that the soul yielded And left your natural warmth too cold and feeble To cook, to give nourishment, to fulfill its tasks?4
(I »it
Montaigne contributed to the popularization of this idea of the intransitive vis imaginativa in his essay De la force de I'imagination, which opens with this sentence: "Forth imaginatio generat casum, say the scholars." And Montaigne gave examples that almost all were already to be found in Cornelius Agrippa, Caelius Rhodiginus, and Petrus Messias. He thus repeated that some attributed to the power of imagination the wounds brought about by the fear of gangrene in King Dagobert, and the stigmata of the crucifixion in Francis of Assisi, but declared that he himself scarcely believed in "miracles, visions, enchantments"— that is, he believed rather in the powers of illusion. Nevertheless, "All this may be attributed to the narrow seam between the soul and body, through which the experience of the one is communicated to the other," and so some troubling facts remained: "Tortoises and ostriches hatch their eggs just by looking at them, a sign that their sight has some ejaculative virtue." And similarly: "Nevertheless, we know by experience that women transmit marks of their fancies to the bodies of the children they carry in their womb." Charles, the emperor and king of Bohemia, saw a girl from near Pisa who was "all hairy and bristly, who her mother said had been thus conceived because of a picture of Saint John the Baptist hanging by her bed."15 But an author of German expression, the great Paracelsus, went much further than Ficino, Bruno, or Agrippa in his concept of vis imaginativa. While Agrippa still remained rather cosmocentric, Paracelsus, of a very anthropocentric orientation, led the role of the imagination to its ultimate consequences. He made it the intermediary between thinking and being, saw in it the incarnation of thought in the image. The soul (Gemtith), faith, and imagination represent the three great faculties at the disposal of humanity. The Gemtith is the "bursting of sidereal power into us, the preeminent connection of our opening to the invisible world, which governs us from inside ourselves."16 Faith "produces imagination, this produces a star, and this in turn an effect. Faith produces imagination in God."17 Paracelsus saw in the soul a center of plastic and magical power that was capable of creating the body, of forming it, that is,
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Pomponazzi as well. Erastus was unable to accept that the imagination could ever produce or modify a real object (cf. his Disputationes de medicina nova Paracelsi, Basel, 1572-73). But Paracelsus's influence was considerable starting from the end of the sixteenth century and, on the point concerning us here, it was to nourish theosophical speculation. First that of Valentin Weigel, the pastor of Zschopau, one of the fathers—or pioneers—of German theosophy. He also speaks of the power of the imagination to inbilden ("to form in"); he notes that it is "the sidereal spirit, the star in man; it is all the stars, it acts similarly to the heavens" and carries in itself its own light. A star, or rather "all the stars together, it works like the firmament."23 WAYS, BYWAYS, AND STAKES I N T H E GREAT CENTURY
t
In the seventeenth century, stories about pregnant women with overheated imaginations continued to circulate; but, more interestingly, we also see a blossoming of new theoretical discourse on this vis imaginativa, intransitive as well as transitive. It had no lack of detractors, who sometimes drew inspiration from the refutations to which Erastus had proceeded. Among them were Andreas Libavius and Georg Goedelmann, doctors such as Martin Weinrich and Hieronymus Nymann, demonologists such as Pierre de Lancre, and, more unexpectedly, Thomas Campanella. His warmest supporters were naturally recruited from among the theosophers (cf. infra). Henry More, the Cambridge Neo-Platonist, who was not really a theosopher, showed himself rather receptive in regard to the vis imaginativa, for it agreed with his master idea of the World Soul, a plastic mediator between the Spirit and matter. And John Webster, a theoretician of magic, accepted the transitive effects of this vis imaginativa, which seemed to him to provide a "natural" explanation for sorcery, in fact, to constitute the very seed of all magia. It also happened that some authors, however little influenced by esoteric currents, supported it, such as the Jesuit Bento Pereira. Francis Bacon's attitude was qualified; while this anti-Paracelsian intended to rid natural magic of its superstitions and an occultism that he despised, judging it to be morally dangerous, he nevertheless remained open to any inquiry relative to the reality of this vis imaginativa?4 Generally, while Aristotelianism had been able to serve as a critical basis for the magical theory of imagination in the sixteenth century, it had not managed to define the boundaries of magic and correspondences. Now, in the seventeenth century, Cartesianism was set forth as a critical instrument that was effective in another manner.25 The effects of the imagination on the physical appearance of unborn children continued to preoccupy many minds during the seventeenth century. According to Jansenius, the author of the Augustinus (1640), since Augustine himself said that the imagination can change the color and the shape of the
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parts of a fetus, how could anyone doubt that the stain of original sin could also be transmitted by generation? Kepler also recognized that a mother's imagination could transform the being that she bore in her womb. Similarly, Thomas Fienus (De viribus imaginationis tractatus, Louvain, 1608). Camerarius mentioned three extraordinary children born of the same mother: a "moor," a "curly-head," and an "imp," supposedly begotten by their father upon his return from a procession where he had been disguised as a demon. Vanini, in De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (Paris, 1616), examined all the relevant passages in Pomponazzi's book, and also took a stand for a "natural" explanation for miracles. Alphonse Tostato (Opera omnia, I, Commentaria in Genesim, 1613, p. 606) made a commentary on Genesis 30:37-39 that was not lacking in subtlety. Toward 1630, by order of the Parliament of Grenoble, a child was declared legitimate, who the mother claimed had been conceived during her husband's absence through the power of imagination, by representing to herself that her husband was still with her. Let us also mention Hieronymus Fronzonius (De divinatione per somnum et de prophetia, Frankfurt, 1632), who affirmed that people with powerful imaginations could transform their own blood in such a way as to become able to produce prodigies around themselves. Let us not carry on with any further examples; more can be found, along with many others, in the studies by Henri Bosson and Lynn Thorndike.26 A last one will suffice, characteristic in that it compares imagination and faith in a manner recalling certain theosophie discourses. In his celebrated book Curiosites inouyes sur la sculpture talismanique des Persans, horoscopes des patriarch e et lecture des estoilles (Paris, 1629), Jacques Gaffarel wrote that Jesus "is found among those who speak his name with faith, because in speaking of someone affectionately, we imagine him as he really is," so much could resemblance work marvels on the very Son of God, but "this should be conceived with both piety and humility, and proffered with the saintliness that is requisite when one is to speak of such an adorable subject." Which naturally incited him to speak of the imagination of pregnant women by repeating a few anecdotes.27 But more significant appears to us the treatment of the vis imaginativa by this century's theosophy, that is, by the particular form that baroque mysticism took at that time. Feeling and imagination appeared in this era as the two new powers to which religious literature in Germanic countries accorded an ever more assured acceptance. The imagination, which the fourteenth century Dominicans had wanted to banish, came to replace the Gelassenheit, while Tauler's bildnerinne, synonymous here with fantasia, and which a person wishing to realize mystical union had to reject, was rehabilitated by Jacob Boehme and his disciples after having been so, albeit more timidly, by Valentin Weigel in the preceding century. Already in Daniel Czepko's last treatises, the generating principle that transports pur spirit into the Trinity is identical to what animates God and all of Nature: this principle is the imagination.28
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In the case of Boehme, desire and the imagination are linked. "Well before Leibniz's appetitio, Schellingian Sehensucht, or Schopenhauer's will-tolive, we find in Boehme's theosophy the first example of a metaphysics founded on desire."29 More than anyone else before him, Boehme gave the imagination an ontological foundation. At the level of Lust—pleasure, or desire that has not yet lost its object—the imagination coincides with desire; once the paradisial unity of pleasure is broken, it ceases to coincide with desire, which Boehme then designates as Begierde. The unity was destroyed when Adam's desire became thick, coagulated, was "imagined" in a gross form. Thus the original fall was nothing more than a perversion of desire by the imagination; one only need reconvert this same desire, send it back in its own direction, to find the initial situation once again. The apple eaten by Adam symbolizes the image generated by the encounter of his desire with Satan's. Inversely, when our faith is sufficiently exalted to meet with Grace from on high, then, "durch Gottes Imagination und Anztindung," flashes forth the sacred flame. The effective image is formed at the intersection of God's desire descending on humanity and our desire going toward its encounter.30 The imagination so conceived has a model for itself: that of God. Because divine imagination, which is a thought, incarnates itself in forms and figures, becomes real in perceptible images. God manifests Himself by engendering, through His FIAT, the universe, which is a real image (figtirliches Gleichniss) of the one that God has imagined, and which is eternal.31 God imagines in the Sophia; but "to imagine in" means that this imagination makes the subject participate in the quality of its object, and simultaneously changes this object according to the subject's imagination.32 In expressing Himself, God incarnates in a universe situated between pure spirit and concrete reality, that is, in a mesocosm,33 hence an intermediary place, but at the same time the seat of the supreme creative imagination, where the Shi'ite theosophers placed what Henry Corbin called the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world.34 In other words, to imagine is to reveal oneself, it is to create; to unite oneself with God means to transform oneself in Flim. And just as He has created the world through His imagination, so can we find God through it and become capable of working wonders.35 Magia and imagination are two words that Boehme associated: everything that Man imagines (sich ein-bildet) he can make real. "Imaginatio macht Wesenheif—the imagination creates the essence. Johann Georg Gichtel, one of Boehme's great disciples in the seventeenth century, also saw a magia divina at the origin of creation. In the heart of divine nature exists an archetypal model of the outer world. God's desire allows the divine imagination to manifest itself, and this projects uncreated forms by means of divine magic. Like Boehme, the first fall of Adam, as Gichtel saw it, took place on the plane of the imagination. He described its process and its consequences at length. Adam tasted the fruit of the tree of
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knowledge, and this freed the principles, notably that of the shadows, which exercised itself freely and shattered the divine image. One finds in Gichtel the paronomasia: imagination, magic, Magnet. This author brought to completion one of Boehme's most daring and original undertakings: to give the imagination a theogonic and cosmogonic foundation.36 Gichtel wrote and published his works in Amsterdam. In this same city and during the same period appeared Pierre Poiret's L'Oeconomie de la creation de l'Homme, oil Von decouvre I'Origine, la Nature, et les Proprietes des ses Facultes Spirituelles et Corporelles (1687). In his chapter entitled "On the Imaginative, and on the excellence of the human body in general" we read: God wanted to see Himself figuratively (or to see His material portraits) in a way exterior to and outside Himself. This divine will has given birth not only to the existence of matter, to its movement, and to its order and varieties of conduct; but abo to the imaginative faculty in man, inasmuch as God wanted Man, as His Image, to represent Him in this respect as well, like in the other ways that have already been noted. [. . .] things existed and matured at the same time from the very beginning by virtue of God's strong desire and powerful thought, which represented things as being present and in movement; this thought I have elsewhere called the Imagination of God, which is also the Creatrix of the world?1 Poiret then asked himself whether Man could have "received from God the power to increase matter through the power of his Imagination." He admitted "ingenuously" that he had no answer, "either by affirmation, or by negation."38 But he quickly added: While it is true that the created spirit cannot make matter increase, there is nothing in the least easier to understand that he can very well increase, decrease, and determine its movement by the power of his desire and Imagination, supposing, as it b the truth, that God had given him this power so that he would represent as closely as possible his Original, namely, the Imagination of God, of which he b the living copy; and I advance as a fact, that although things have fallen far from the state of power and Glory in which God created them, and in comparison with their original state they are no more than a rotten and lifeless cadaver, nevertheless, it is impossible to explain the faculty of the imagination, without recognizing that the soul has the power to move and to determine according to its choice in a thousand ways, very different from the laws of mechanics and of movements, the portion of matter to which it is most intimately united?9 The author then went on to speak of the "universal principle," according to which
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Exercises of Imagination all things are communicative, or tend to impress their forms and character on things with which they have some connection; since like these they are representations of God, they imitate the manner of acting of their first Author, who makes and circulates Hb impressions among all things?0
As God's plan was that Man should be the "Head" and the perfect sum of all His works, He gave him a body that was like a little world, a microcosm, of the whole universe. The fall rendered us powerless at the same time as it corrupted all of Nature (Genesis 3; Romans 5 and 8).41 But even in the state we are in, the imagination still has "so much power over the formation of the body!"42 To some extent marginal to theosophy, but within the Paracelsian sphere, two names deserve to appear on our inventory. The first is Oswald Croll, author of Basilica chymica (Frankfurt, 1609), perhaps known as much for its beautiful frontispiece illustration as for the contents. Croll made the vb imaginativa the very center of his system by declaring that Man possesses a sidereal body potentially capable of embracing the entire cosmos. The imagination is connected to it, the foundation of all magical operations, and possesses the power of engendering and producing visible bodies. Like a magnet, the "sidereal spirit" shows itself capable of attracting to it the forces hidden in the stars, to act powerfully but invisibly on the outer world. Imagination thus embodies, so to speak, the spirit of the represented thing—and also allows us to raise ourselves toward God, "ut sciunt secretiores theosophoi?"*1 The other author is Johann Baptist Van Helmont, whose Onus mediciniae (1648) represents the imagination as a prime agency in the process of creation, of the engendering and the maintenance of life. It allows the seed to take on body because, by virtue of an imagination that is proper to it, each thing and object in Nature produces the seminal principles that correspond to it. But it is reserved for Man, the image of God, to create "ideas" that differ from his specific being. Croll compared the effects of the vis imaginativa to those of a spark flashing forth from the clash of a stone on steel, tiny but nevertheless able to cause a great fire; similarly, a simple but intense movement of the imagining will can act on remote objects through the mediation of astral virtues. It is certain that this faculty is dormant in Man, but it still exists in a potential state, for the fall has not annihilated it.44 In many respects Croll and Van Helmont were connected to the alchemical current. Now, the alchemical practices—both spiritual and material—of the seventeenth century would deserve a lengthy development here, because the transmutation was one not only of the experimenter but also of Nature. Many were the alchemical treatises inspired by Paracelsus. And while for the preparers of the Great Work the imagination traditionally remained the quintessence of all human powers—vital, moral, and physical—this quintessence,
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according to Paracelsian tradition, became concrete in the astrum, a true subtle body. The imagination is "Astrum in homine, coeleste sive supracoeleste corpus," as Rulandus has written.45 The Paracelsian astrum meaning more or less "quintessence," the imagination is thus a concentrated extract of corporeal and spiritual energies. It is often difficult to know whether such a hermetic author meant that the work must necessarily produce a material result or if it is a question of a purely spiritual realization. However, to impose this either/or alternative would be to falsify the problem, as Jung has pointed out; what is essential is the affirmation, implicit or explicit, of the existence of an intermediary world (Zwischenreich) between matter and spirit: this is the sphere of subtle bodies. The Rosarium Philosophorum affirms that the Work must be realized "according to nature" (secundum naturam) with the "true imagination," and not with the "fantastic."46 Jung noted that this imagination must be taken in the classic sense of Einbildungskraft, by opposition to the empty phantasia, and that the imaginatio, the active evocation of interior images, functions "according to Nature" so that thought does not function aimlessly but attempts to grasp the inner datum in representations that are the faithful representation of Nature. This activity is called the Opus, the Work. Let us add that, as alchemy presents itself not only as a technique of illumination but also as a process of transforming concrete nature—organic and inorganic—here the imagination also lays claim to performing its creative role at the most concrete level47 and is not limited to what Jung himself calls the "active imagination," an expression that would express a subtle equilibrium among three faculties: an active will, an interpretative understanding, and the autonomous movement of fantasy.48 The magical and creative imagination does not, however, define alchemy as a demiurgic activity comparable with the merry activities of the sun-dwellers met by Cyrano (cf. infra). Michel Sendivogius made himself the interpreter of this hermeticism when he wrote toward 1616 that what the soul imagines is produced only in the spirit ("exequitur nisi in mente"), while what God imagines occurs in reality. In other words, the active imagination does not have a direct action, it merely puts—and yet this is possible only through it—a process of interior and exterior transmutation in a condition of effective realization. "The soul," wrote Sendivogius, "has the absolute and independent power to act beyond what the body can understand; but it has, if it so wishes, the greatest power over the body. Otherwise, our philosophy would be in vain."49 Let us not leave the seventeenth century without a foray into the literature of fiction. Inspired by the speculations of his times, Cyrano de Bergerac put them in the service of his eloquent and baroque pen: in L 'autre monde ou les etats et empires de la lune et du soleil (1648, the same year as J. B. Van Helmont's Ortus medicinae), he drew the most extreme and whimsical consequences from this idea without thereby risking foolhardy theosophical speculations.
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Traveling on the moon, he speaks of miracles and medicine with a Selenite who refuses to believe in miraculous healings, and who says to him:
the thing seriously enough to provide any philosophical comments. Shortly afterward, the article Imagination in volume VII of Diderot's Grande Encyclopedie did not even list examples of this sort; it only mentions von Haller's references but constitutes a good example of the reductive treatment to which the image and the imagination were then generally submitted.55 And the occasionally provocative irony of the "philosophical spirit" will be recognized in this comment: our sensations, wrote the author of the article, "do not resemble the objects that cause them," which is very fortunate indeed, because "there would be male children almost exclusively; all women, for the great majority, are affected by the ideas, the desires, and the objects that relate to males."56 At the same period the Marquis de Feuquieres, in a short work rediscovered by Annie Becq, still wished "to establish that the imagination is an active and creative faculty, without which all the other faculties, I do not say of the soul in general, but of the spirit in particular, are dead and inanimate, and like simple passive mirrors,"57 while Johann Joachim Winckelmann, however little suspected of illuminism, affirmed in his The History ofAncient Art (1764):
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You do not know that the power of the imagination is able to combat all illnesses [. . .] because of a certain natural balsam extended throughout our bodies containing all the qualities contrary to all those of every disease that attacks us?" The imagination works on states of health. Visiting the Sun, Cyrano meets beings who are capable of metamorphosing into anything. This is not a miracle, one of them says to him, but "no more than pure natural effects." The imagination of the Solarians does not meet with any obstacle in the matter that composes them and so arranges this matter as it wishes: So my eagle having had its eyes put out, needed only to imagine itself as a sharpsighted eagle to put itself aright. [. . .] You people are incapable of doing these things, because of the weightiness of your mass, and the coldness of your imagination?' Cyrano then understands that the imagination of this solar people, which must be a more heated one because of the climate, and their bodies, which for the same reason must be lighter, and their individuals more mobile, not having [ . . . ] « center activity that could divert matter from the movement that this imagination impresses upon it [. . .], could make unmiraculously all the miracles that it had just produced. He then remembers stories that he had heard on earth: Cippus, the king of Italy, having attended a bullfight, fell asleep and the next day found that his forehead was horned; several pregnant women gave birth to monsters for having imagined monsters during their pregnancy, which was possible on account of the "hot" and "mobile"—malleable—matter of the fetus.52 PRE-ROMANTIC VERSIONS Beaten back by the progress of rationalism, magical thinking survived as best it could during the eighteenth century and sought new foundations for itself.53 But it remained distinctly present in discourse of the theosophical type, which was not exhausted and which enjoyed, on the contrary, a second golden age at the end of the century. Albrecht von Haller criticized the belief in the effects of the imagination of pregnant women in the abundant commentaries by which he enriched Hermann Boerhaave's medical writings in 1745. The latter believed in the effects, but von Haller took pleasure in telling these stories54 without taking
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Supreme Beauty b in God. The idea of human Beauty becomes the more perfect the more closely it approximates the thought that God Himself has of it, which teaches us to differentiate it from matter. One can therefore say that the idea of Beauty is like a spirit produced by the fire of matter which endeavors to form a creature according to the original of thefirstreasonable creature projected in the wisdom of Divinity. The features of such a figure combine variety with unity, and the result is that they are harmonious?% Delisle de Sales, who was to find this passage a bit bold, would write in De la Philosophie de la Nature (1770), after having cited it: "It would be up to the Sphinx, that this antiquarian has so well described in his book, to provide the key to this enigma," and further he would mock the "so-called influence of the mother's brain on the fetus."59 One must once again turn toward the keepers of the esoteric flame to find specific commentaries concerning the magical image, toward Georg von Welling (alias Salwigt), for example, the author of Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum published in 1719, which was to go through several editions60 and in which the young Goethe would be interested. Commenting on Hebrews 11:1, he said that faith is wahrhafie Einbildung, or impressio imaginationis, things that one does not see. He added: Everyone is attracted, after death, by the rays of his imagination as though by a powerful magnet, toward what he had imagined during his lifetime, and it will happen to him then what b written in the Apocalypse 14:13, "And their works do follow them." [. . .] the effects of our imagination are unfathomable and almost incomprehensible, as we are taught by the daily experience ofpregnant women. What strange effects has their imagination
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Exercises of Imagination (Imagination oder Einbildungskraft) not had on the fruit of their wombs. Among other examples, I can tell of one who had seen a man having hb hand cut off; and she then gave birth forthwith to a child without a hand, as if it had beenfreshlycut off, and the stump was still bleeding. The hand could not be found, either before the birth, or afterward. Other examples of this kind could be given, yet more terrible and more incredible, but it would be impossible to repeat all of them. One wonders whether the child ever had hb hand, or did not, or whether he lost it through the fact of the strong impression caused by hb mother's imagination? and so then, where did this hand go? In brief, the radiation (Strahlung) exercised on any given object (Vorwurf), these are the powers (Krafte) of our spirit and of our souls, and one who understood them well, would he not be capable of performing marvels of true and of false or diabolical magia?61
Welling here revealed himself, as in many other places in his book, as a disciple of Paracelsus. It also seems significant that he mixed an exegesis of a Paulinian passage on faith with a little tale of the sort that had charmed Montaigne and the Renaissance doctors of the seventeenth century. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, too speculative to be much interested in this type of anecdote, gave in 1766 (Dictionnaire biblique et emblematique) a definition of the imagination that is relevant to our discussion: The imagination can be in the beginning a thought without substance; but then it makes itselfsubstance, and it is no longer a nothing but a something that has developed organically while having engendered itself. Therefore be on your guard..62 With William Blake, romantic thought is not far off; there is occasionally in him something like a stepping toward Fichte's theory on the creative imagination: in your own Bosom you hear your Heaven and Earth; and all you behold, tho'it appears Without, it is Within in your Imagination, of which this World ofMortality b but a Shadow.61 As is often the case among these authors, in Blake the word "imagination" takes on different meanings according to the context. It can denote "faculty of vision" (clairvoyance), "spirit of prophecy," but, also "spiritual existence" or "spiritual body."64 It is this last meaning that is of interest to us. Blake wrote in Jerusalem: "Imagination, the Divine Body,"6S and elsewhere: All things are comprehended in these Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine ofEternity, The Human Imagination.66
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The imagination is thus the spiritual part of Man, the part that, having come from God Himself, possesses the vision of all things. It was to be the role of Saint-Martin and of Novalis to draw the inferences of this. For the Unknown Philosopher, the imagination could be "the faculty of representing to oneself strange beings and composite monstrosities" that are "chimerical beings or made up of unrelated parts." It is, if one likes, fantasia, the false imagination according to Paracelsus. Saint-Martin does not dwell on this secondary aspect; rather, he develops a theory of the creative imagination, of which the notion of "magism" provides us with an overall understanding. First, on the divine level, God manifests Himself ad extra through the Sophia, but additionally through other mirrors, requiring in their turn new mirrors in which they are reflected, and these "millions of spirit beings" allow God to know Himself, while He simultaneously "keeps His own belly enveloped in his ineffable magism." This divine magism tends to "reveal to us the reflections of the eternal magnificence," but only "by letting pierce through as many of His rays as are needed to inspire love for it," and in such a way that Man cannot "acquire and appropriate the principle for himself." Then, on the level of Nature, there is also a triple magism. The first is more or less identical with divine magism, since it is divine generation itself, or the "veil of things" that allows as much as the spirit can sustain to filter through (Lucifer, according to closely related traditions, succumbed to excessively powerful rays). This is the capacity that Nature has to manifest God, the permanent means of passing from the state of dispersion or of indifference— "abysmal," as Boehme described it—to that of sensitization. But the fall has distorted the original universe, and that is why another magism must be exercised, the universal-present, which acts as a protective bulwark against the Enemy of humankind and removes "from our sufferings the realm of horror and of infection" subsequent to the fall.67 The principle of these two natural magisms—that of the real or original nature and the present universe—is nevertheless the same: In this sense, every individual production of nature also has its magbm;for each one in particular, such as a flower, a salt, an animal, a metallic substance, b a medium both between the invisible and intangible properties that are in its root, in its principle of life, or in its basic essences, and between the tangible qualities that emanate from this production and which are manifested to us by means of it. It is in thb medium that everything which must issue from each production b developed and prepared; yet it is thb place of preparation, it b this laboratory, finally, that we cannot penetrate without abo destroying, and which is a true magism for us for thb reason, however much we may know the number of motivating
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Exercises of Imagination elements that concur to produce it, and even the law that directs its effect. The principle of this hidden process is founded on divine generation itself, where the eternal medium serves forever as a passage to the infinite immensity of the universal essences [. . .] thus every medium of present nature, and all those of spiritual nature are but images of this eternal and original medium.62
Unfortunately, there is a third natural magism, a consequence of the fall, and that is called the astral. Because of it, our spiritual being can take on "disorderly and irregular images"; this "active and powerful region," whose physical properties also act on the body, can make us deviate from our true destination.69 Now, it is the human form of divine magism that Saint-Martin calls the imagination, and he even uses the expression "magical imagination" in this context. Its role was to make more and more beautiful the sphere wherein Man lived, to bring it ever further to greater perfection. Since the fall, part of this imagination has remained with us, which manifests itself by our mission of regeneration. The activity of Man is thus analogous to that of God in the sense that the universal work has as its aim the search for unity, the passage from the imperceptible to the perceptible.70 Therefore one must cast sidereal magism aside, the generator of works that stand against the plan of harmony and universal restoration. God needs us, and so does Nature, "because it is a truth that there is not a single being who is not responsible for engendering his father." So, let us be the mirror of God and of Nature; by "mirror," we must not think of something that reflects only passively, but of something that can concentrate and focus, that can cause germination and growth, the passing from dispersal to the unity of the human being. The body of beings, "instead of being a prison for them, should be like a mirror that helps them to reassemble and to develop their wonders."71 Mirror, magism, imagination—three almost synonymous terms that attempt to express in a complementary way, and to clarify, a basic notion of Martinian anthropology: the imagination is not one faculty among others, but a primary vocation as the duty and power of reflecting, of making real, of propagating and re-creating; a demiurgic power, by all means, but theogonically and anthropogonically founded. Dupont de Nemours, a contemporary of Saint-Martin and the guardian of a spark, at least, of this esoteric flame that Saint-Martin bore so high, published in 1793 a Philosophie de I'Univers that in some respects belongs undeniably to the illuminism of the era. After some unexpected considerations about oysters that are ignorant of our presence just as we are ignorant of the presence of spirits superior to us, and of which some may "travel from globe to globe,"72 he states that the imagination may be conceived as "a mediating sense, like a bridge spanning the earthly animal realm and the other realms of a higher
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order."73 In truth, it finds there its role of magical mediator between spirit and matter, extending reason more than really supplanting it, and making it accessible to an over-nature.74 While Dupont de Nemours does not use the expression "plastic mediator," the idea is certainly there nonetheless. In fact, it is "very natural" that created intelligent beings should feel the need to animate bodies, for formed in the bosom of Matter, the only Spouse of GOD, they were made for bodies, and perhaps with a sort of very light and subtle body, mbcible with those that we call organized, just as alcohol b with water, endowed with a voluntary and spontaneous expansibility, that impresses on the organized bodies with which they are united, a movement in appearance contrary to the laws of mechanics; as the expansibility of air imprisoned in niter, suddenly excited by the igniting of sulphur and carbon, shoots a cannonball in "'a manner which appears, to those that do not know the theory, greatly to contradict the laws ofgravity.11 Basically, every "intelligent" being suffers when deprived of a body and, when so deprived, unceasingly incarnates again and again; at death—at the loss of the body—the being survives his envelope but remains in the state of a "monad," retaining the memories of all his past while waiting "to administer a body of some kind."76 The imagination is here associated with the notion of incarnation, and this could not be in greater agreement with Christian hermeticism. Before Baader, who would take up the image of the mirror from Saint-Martin and that of the plastic mediator from Christian hermeticism in general, other German romantics were to speak of the magical imagination. For Novalis, Man is in synchrony with the rhythm of the universe, and this renders him able to change it. If one intensely wants something that one distinctly represents to oneself, it is possible to transform it into a phenomenon of the outer world. In other words, one can materially and visibly influence this world through an intense will: "The physical magus knows how to animate Nature, and to treat it at will, as he does with his body."77 Such is the magical idealism of Novalis, if to this we add the idea of reciprocity: If you do not succeed in making of your thoughts exterior things, then act so as to make exterior things—at least—become thoughts: if you cannot transform a thought into an autonomous soul, proceed—then at least—inversely with exterior things and transform them into thoughts. The two operations are identical (that b, they comprise a dialectical unity). He who has a perfect mastery of both b the magical idealbt. Would not the perfection of each one of these two operations depend on that of the other?ls
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FROM ROMANTIC NATURPHILOSOPHIE T O OCCULTIST SPHERES OF INFLUENCE Between Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Novalis on the one hand, and Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Franz von Baader on the other, the break is only chronological: all four share a mental attitude that is comparable on essential points. Furthermore, what is known as eighteenth century illuminism, in its esoteric sense, extended well beyond the First Empire. Let us discuss a few of the most outstanding discourses on the vis imaginativa starting from the early nineteenth century, beginning with Ritter. A disciple and friend of Novalis, the discoverer of the ultraviolet region of the spectrum and of several theories in physics, Ritter was also, chronologically, one of the very first German romantic Naturphilosophen. In 1808, he attempted to demonstrate scientifically that Novalis's magical idealism had become a reality. Let us observe, he explained, a ball of zinc in the hollow of a moist and motionless hand; we will observe that it describes, if the experimenter wills it, circles similar to those that Earth describes around the Sun. Thus, concluded Ritter, while it had previously been known that the organism of the universe is reflected in the human body, it is now demonstrated that through conscious action it is capable of manifesting these correspondences: the ball follows us like the planet follows the Sun. In his work on siderism (Der Siderismus, 1808), Ritter developed the idea that such rotations and "nutations" are forms of manifestations by which an inorganic body gives itself an appearance of fife in the presence of Man. He calls these imitations of the course of the planets "prophetic hieroglyphs" and sees in them an attempt of the inorganic world to express itself. Through magical idealism, Man can thus give life to Nature; bodies are able to respond to us through their "planetism." Ritter wrote to Karl von Hardenberg—Novalis's brother—on the 1st of February 1807: "The point claimed by Archimedes has been found. We will make the Earth really move."19 A few days later (the 11th of January 1807), Schelling, interested in the experiment, had written to Hegel: That is a true magic of the human being; no animal is capable of doing the same thing. Man really stands out from all other beings, like a sun among them, they are all his planets. And here begins the Physica coelestis or uranis, after the terrestris that exbted until now.m Certain works of Schelling allow us to understand this enthusiasm. His Philosophy of Art is in fact inspired from the Boehmean concept of the imagination understood as the faculty of incarnating the idea, rendering it visible, and thus realizing the synthesis of the infinite with the determination of form.81 However, Schelling did not really retain the Paracelsian Einbildungskraft any more than the Boehmean imagination; he transformed it into Kraft der Ineins-
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bildung, auf welcher alle Schopfung beruht—formative energy in the One and on which all of creation rests. Subjectivity barely existed in the case of Paracelsus and Boehme; it appeared, with the German romantics, mixed with their concept of genius, of expressivity, of originality. For Paracelsus and for Boehme, to imagine was "to correspond in the light of Nature, and in an experience sui generis, to the invisible fullness of the world, of Man and of things."82 Magic resulted less from an intention than from a natural harmony or process. Curiously, Fichte's thinking, however devoid of any magic in this sense, retained from Boehme not only the idea of a will-tendency that becomes aware of itself by experiencing resistance, but also that of the creative imagination giving birth to the perceptible world and translating the spirit "into forms and colors." That is why Novalis believed he had discovered in Fichte's doctrine of the imagination the key to a forgotten concept through which he found echoes of Boehme and of Paracelsus, although the Kantian imprint was too deep in Fichte for Novalis to see in him a genuine continuator of Boehme.83 It remains that, according to Fichte, if empirical reality is only the product of an almost all-powerful imagination of the Self, of the subject, there is no more magic as soon as everything is magic. There are no longer any magical actions. The extraordinary nature of this claim of an imagination giving birth to the entire perceptible world, less hypothetically formulated and more concretely defended than in the case of Berkeley, combined with the intense activity of this thinking reactivated by the thought of Schelling, who returned over and over again to Fichte: all this contributed powerfully to create the incomparable climate of Iena's romanticism, with its own internal oppositions that are so characteristic of it. For if one accepts in accordance with the Wissenschaftslehre (1794) that the object is no longer determined starting from itself but from the subject, then the universe becomes spiritual, reality is the world-mirror of consciousness. A theory which, it cannot be sufficiently stressed, is nevertheless from the perspective of a Novalis like that of a Baader irremediably stained with abstraction, an impression that Fichte's very style confirms as well—for there is ultimately too much "spirituality" and not enough incarnation. Schelling then reestablishes the reality of the exterior world by transforming the monologue of the Fichtean Self into a dialogue of this Self with the preliminary "objective" stages of consciousness, which themselves correspond to the diverse and successive forms of Nature. But Baader could say that there was too much naturalism in Schelling. Indeed it would be Baader's role to resolve the problem theosophically by referring to Christian hermeticism, whose two main representatives had been, according to him, Paracelsus and Boehme, before his beloved Saint-Martin. Baader speaks often of the imagination in very scattered texts, of which each would deserve an individual study and, what is more, one can hardly separate his reflections on the vis imaginativa from those relating to the creative
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imagination in general. In the train of Paracelsus and Boehme, he distinguishes powerless, sterile imagination from the creative (schbpferbche Einbildung), which is really productive as much inside the subject as outside it.84 Above all, he presents a genuine theory of the imagination. Baader first distinguishes a twofold imagination in Nature and in Man: the active and the reactive (this should not be confused with powerless and sterile imagination). Hence there is Man's active desire, and his nostalgia (Sehnen, Sucht) or, outside Man, the sidereal imagination (active) and the imagination of the elementary world (reactive); in a similar way, radiant light can be distinguished from the phosphorescent, the Sun from the Moon, nerves from ganglia. He is surprised that the Naturphilosophen of his times, however much inclined to search everywhere for polarities, were not concerned with this. T o illustrate this thesis he gives the example of an artist who paints a lion and generally succeeds in his painting. This is so, says Baader, because psychic-plastic nature (active), the producer of real lions, has continued its work, not just in animal creation but this time in the artist's imagination (reactive): "It is the same Nature that creates the natural forms of the lion and which also projects this animal type in Man's imagination."85 Thus there exists in .Nature itself an active and creative imagination, the root and beginning of all production, primus motor creans. But how does this articulation between the two imaginations function? Here the Baaderian symbolism of the mirror comes into play. For there to be creation in any domain, a conjunction of two elements (active and reactive) must be operant, like hunger and nourishment, the desire of man and woman— or, on the divine level, the eternal Father and the Sophia. From this conjunction there will result a genitus: the child, the offspring, or the positive effect of food on the body. Now, this conjunction happens only if the active imagination manifests its power, that is, if "will enters into its mirror." My desire must project itself into the coveted object, mirror itself in it first;86 then the object sees me, by means of my looking it becomes a living image that sees and experiences itself in me. Baader founds his notion of "magic" on.this process, for he compares through paronomasis: mirror, admire, miracle, magnet, mag, vermag (I love, I can).87 Everything that exists has a magical origin and comes from the imagination, that is, from the entrance of the imagination into mirrors.88 In various parts of his work, he explains what he means by "mirror." A mirror possesses in potential all possible forms. Ah image will be reflected in it: it is desire (Begierde) that will create it, make it substantial (wesentlich). Our eye, itself a mirror, is the potentiality of all possible forms. The corporeal image that will be reflected in it will engender there an interior form, "magic," which in its turn, if there is desire and not just a simple visual perception, will "originate" (ist Ursache) the perceived object. Thus the image of the object that is initially outside myself, and the inner form inside myself that the image has
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engendered in me, will "originate themselves" mutually in a process of reciprocity. What Baader calls "imagination" is therefore a reciprocal engendering, a magical formation (Gestaltung) that tends toward its own realization as soon as this desire has the mediation by means of which the magical form passes from potentiality to action. Indeed, all of reality is the result of this imagination, that is, of this reciprocal engendering that is the mediation without which the subject and object remain separate. The imagination is the entrance of the will into a mirror: as soon as this occurs, we have on the divine level what the Hebrews call "Sophia," the Hindus "Maya," and the Greeks "Idea," which correspond to the same concept of "reflection" (Spiegelung; speculatio)-?9 Boehme said that God "imagines" in the Sophia. And on the human level, I am also a mirror into which God looks and through which the shadowy realm simultaneously covets me. I can then respond to the look, to the imagination, of God, or to that of the powers of shadow. By contemplating—by imagining— the Glory of the Lord who is looking at us—imagining us—we are transformed in Him.90 For to imagine, or to desire, in something, is to give oneself to that into which one enters. One forms oneself to the image of what one can look at, of what one loves, of whom one loves, which makes possible love and generation.91 This "plastic power" which is the imagination thus acts not only on the outer world to form it or to transform it, it also changes us magically. Such a concept of the creative image naturally has great implications on the cosmic level. Baader subscribes to the Boehmean idea according to which, by virtue of the "law of reflection," two entities can know one another and can create something new from this reciprocal knowing, only if they both "enter" into a mirror that is superior to them, which surpasses them—a third mirror, therefore, that is added to those of the two entities, but upon which they will depend. Always concerned with bringing hierarchies into play, he establishes one between the two initial entities. Thus Man before the fall must have been the corporeal bearer (leibhaft) of God's image, His mirror, in order to communicate to the whole of Nature the divine light that he was receiving. Nature itself was hence the mirror of Man; while it was also that of God, it needed that of Man. The original Adam entered into this Nature, into all the creatures situated below him, to find himself in them as though in a mirror through projecting his power into them. This active projection is a FIAT that delivers the perceived form from its "daedalic" form, confers a meaning on it, a direction, a consistency. Henceforth, Man's passive or reactive imagination in God had to correspond to his active imagination in (in die) Nature, the very foundation of his original magical powers.92 It was Adam's role to serve simultaneously as a mediator between God and created Nature, and as a prison to the demons. Man fell in his turn but kept, at least in potentiality, a part of his lost powers, and Nature itself, as Saint Paul said (Romans 8:19-22), still awaits its deliverance through humankind.
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Such is the process of what Baader calls imagination, either Inbildung, or Einbildung als Hineinbildung.91 The prefixes In, Ein, Hinein allow him to posit the synonymy of imagination and of information, of Ein-bildung and of Inbildung, because both indeed convey the meaning "forming in," for thinking as well as nonthinking creatures: all have their imaginativum94 because the "imagining desire" (imaginierende Begierde) exists everywhere, not only in God, in Man, or in animal: the whole of Nature is nothing but lmaginieren and Begehren. For example, the conjunction of "the imagining formative instinct" (imaginierender Bildungstrieb) of a star with that of the Earth produces a spiritual substance, an idea formatrix, which can change the earthly elements.95 Baader sees the effects of this power to form, creative and plastic, which is the imagination, in talismans, because they contain and enclose the signature of the spirit of which they are like an organic body. Magical objects, in the current sense of the term, are the result of this faculty. T o imagine is to "act per imaginem."96 Every being bears in itself the image of what is superior to it; by means of this image the latter possesses the former like its own organ or "name-bearer," and the dependence of the inferior in relation to the superior takes place through the intermediary of an Inbildung of the superior in the inferior. If the superior depends on the inferior, one will have an abnormal Inbildung, monstrous and very much alive, by all means a substance that is spiritual but not necessarily intelligent, which Paracelsus and then Boehme called an evestrum and which torments us (tubiren) after death by keeping us far from the realm of light; this is the result of a blighted imagination. Essentially, Adam's fall created a gigantic evestrum, of which our present state bears the mark. It always remains possible, alas, to create such a spiritual substance in a lower region through the imagination, just as the child of a noble father and a common mother will always be more noble than the mother and less noble than the father.97 So let us keep watch on this queen of faculties, for it is easier to avoid the magical marriage that creates an evestrum than to kill this once conceived, just as it is even more difficult to get rid of a child than to have an abortion.98 Have there been, since Saint-Martin, any other esoteric views on the imagination as interesting as Baader's? It can be doubted; nevertheless German romantic literature—both poetry and fiction—has no dearth of examples of the magical imagination, an inquiry that we have not yet undertaken. In Achim von Arnim's fantastic novel Isabelle of Egypt, Isabelle and Braka bring up the history of Bearskin, a character of popular folktale. Bearskin then appears to them and accompanies them throughout their own story until the end of the novel. And in the story Der unheimliche Gast (published in the anthology Die Serapionsbrtider, 1819-21), E. T. A. Hoffmann speaks of a psychic force that is powerful enough to weave a net of fire around a victim. This having been said,
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the theme of the vis imaginativa is relatively .rare among the Naturphilosophen, with the exception, of course, of Ritter, Novalis, or Baader. Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert would be disappointing in this respect, even though according to him the human imagination greatly resembles the creative faculty of God and this distinguishes the "creative" imagination from the "reproductive," the latter being directed toward what is terrestrial or has become corporeal.99 Carl August von Eschenmayer teaches one not to confuse Phantasie and Einbildungskraft,'00 while his pupil, Philipp Heinrich Werner, gives a rather beautiful definition of the creative imagination;101 they call it "Phantasie," reserving the word Einbildungskraft for the noncreative faculty.102 Joseph Ennemoser, in whom Albert Beguin had already noted a taste for occultism and the fantastic,103 made his own the idea of the creative image, associating Magnet, magia, imagom in History of Magic, and considered Man as a creator because he imitates God through his imagination. Ennemoser wrote: Magical influence upon others, and at a distance, is the active pole of the soul and vital power, just as instinctive perception in sensible vision (Sinnesanschauung) is its passive pole. The former is no more miraculous than the latter. And just as the soul, feeling impressions obscurely, arrives at representation and thought in a sphere whose bounds are not exactly the same as its own, and where the light of the sensible—the natural—and of the suprasensible—the supernatural—breaks through, so does the autonomous energy [of an individual], unshackled by the mechanical and the material, come to exercise its action in thb same sphere, in a manner as obscurely conscious as it acts on the nearest muscularfibersand on the limbs?05 Ennemoser nevertheless did not believe that the imagination is able to create exterior objects plastically and without an intermediary.106 But Catherine Crowe, in her voluminous work written and published almost at the same time, which was to be of such great interest to Baudelaire, reaffirmed the mythical foundation of the imagination conceived as a creative power. The Night Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost Seers (1848),107 of a romantic and fantasic inspiration, made large borrowings, which she openly acknowledged, from German authors. Paracelsus, Franz von Baader, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, Philipp Heinrich Werner, Carl August von Eschenmayer, Joseph Ennemoser, Justinus Kerner, Johann Friedrich von Meyer, Wilhelm Krause, and others are also liberally drawn from108 in order to fulfill the promise of such an ambitious and a Schubertian title. Of course, the magical function of the image does not comprise the essence of the author's purpose. Let us mention only the passages that are of interest to us here; in 1856, Baudelaire was to extract an outstanding one: By imagination, / do not simply mean to convey the common notion implied by that much-abused word, which is only fancy, but the constructive
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Exercises of Imagination imagination, which b a much higher function, and which, inasmuch as Man is made in the likeness of God, bears a distant relation to that sublime power by which the Creator projects, creates, and upholds his universe?09
When, in a passage written under the influence of Kerner's narratives on the seeress of Prevorst, Catherine Crowe speaks of this "power, be it what it may, whether of dressing up an ethereal visible form, or of acting on the constructive imagination of the seer, which would enable a spirit to appear 'in his habit as he lived,'"110 one is dealing with an imagination that is more passive but always magically receptive. We are part spirit and part matter, she says further, allied by the spirit to the spiritual world and to the absolute spirit; and as "nobody doubts that the latter can work magically, that is, by the mere act of will"—hasn't everything been created by it, isn't it due to its "constant exertion" that all things are sustained?—and so for "we who partake of the Divine nature, and were created after God's own image," why should we be astonished that "we also partake, within certain limits, of this magical power?"111 T o the inevitable allusions to "signatures of the fetus" she adds that, if a mother's mind can thus act on another organism, there is no reason why the minds of the saints or that of Catherine Emmerich couldn't act on their own.112 "Even by the force of imagination, human beings can injure other things; yea, even to the slaying of a man."113 In fact, since there is between all things in Nature "an unceasing interaction, we being members of one great whole," why couldn't the power that can be exerted on our own organism be extended to others?114 Our faculties, "though limited in amount, . . . are divine in kind, and are latent in all of us"; here and there they come through to "amaze and perplex the wise, and make merry the foolish, who have nearly all alike forgotten their origin, and disowned their birthright."115 These seem to be all the passages in this lengthy work that are relevant to our purpose. But they are important, for the book was widely read, and we have just seen the inspiration drawn from it by Baudelaire for whom the imagination was "an almost divine faculty." He wrote: "I wish to illuminate things with my spirit, and cast its reflection onto other spirits,"116 and showed himself sensitive to this transcendent side of the imagination, which thus for him is not just an earthly, immanent faculty: if one does not have "a soul that throws a magical and supernatural light onto the natural darkness of things, fantasy is of a horrible uselessness.""7 The poet sees that universal mythical images have issued from the "sacred hearth of primordial rays" and participate in the creative imagination, "this cardinal faculty (does its richness not recall ideas of purple?)."118 What Baudelaire says of the first imagination thus converges with theosophical ideas: first there is the explosion of the primitive imaginative energy, then this contracts and concentrates, ascending or descending the degrees of materiality that it illuminates, animates, and trans-
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figures."9 And so due to imagining desire, the. fall of creation is as though temporarily healed and Nature then knows no other sun than the poet's "eyes filled with flame." The more didactic poetry of his contemporary Eliphas Levi comes out of a chaotic body of work, ambitious but very engaging. In "The Magnetic Mysteries," the most important chapter of The Key to the Great Mysteries (1860), the father of modern occultism worked to popularize the notion of "plastic mediator"—more or less the "astral body," according to Paracelsus—a sort of magnet that attracts or repels light under the pressure of will: "It is a luminous body that reproduces the forms corresponding to ideas with the greatest of ease"—it is, above all, "the mirror of the soul."120 Like the soul, it is made in the image of our body and can communicate its sensations to our nervous system; "the imagination then seems to triumph over nature and produces really strange phenomena."121 The great plastic mediator is light.122 A great many wonders operate by means of a single agent, called "Od" by the Hebrews and which Levi does not define clearly in relation to its mediator but which "receives and transmits the impress of the imaginative power which is the image and resemblance of the creative verb in man."123 Thus "the universal light is like the divine imagination. [...] Man creates light by his imagination"124 and "human thought creates what it imagines; the ghosts of superstition project their real deformity into the astral light and live off the very terrors that beget them."125 A fortiori: Our will, by acting directly upon our plastic medium, that b to say, upon the portion of astral life which b specialized in us, and which serves us for the assimilation and configuration of the elements necessary to our existence; our will, just or unjust, harmonious or perverse, shapes the medium in its own image and gives it beauty in conformity with what attracts us. For the astral mediator, a true "inner architect of our bodily edifice" enlarges the belly and the jaws of the greedy, thins the lips of the miser, makes the glances of impure women shameless, and so on.126 And to finish, this comment of such a Paracelsian tone: "When one creates phantoms, one is putting vampires into the world, and one will have to feed these children of a voluntary nightmare with one's blood, with one's life, with one's intelligence and one's reason, without ever satisfying them."127 In Isis Unveiled (1877), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky quoted Eliphas Levi and Catherine Crowe on the subject of the magical imagination and, like the former, did not neglect to draw a parallel between that of Man and that of the Creator: From whatever aspect we view and question matter, the world-old philosophy that it was vivified andfructifiedby the eternal idea, or imagination—the
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Exercises of Imagination abstract outlining and preparing the model for the concrete form—is unavoidable. [. . .] As the creator, breaking up the chaotic mass of dead, inactive matter, shaped it into form, so man, if he knows his powers, could, to a degree, do the same.m
Also published in 1877, the book by J. Frohschammer, a professor of philosophy at Munich, was of a different style. It was not aimed, after all, at the same readership. Written in a rather abstract language, devoid of any concessions to readers fond of quaint anecdotes, it did not fail to appear for what it is nonetheless: the very intellectualized form of a theosophy—in the classic sense of the term—which does not declare itself as such. The title is already evocative: The Imagination Considered as the Fundamental Principle of the Natural Process?29 Frohschammer conceives this as "objective" on the level of organic and living nature, that is, as a "principle of teleologico-plastic formation."130 This work is one of the most important attempts to rehabilitate the imagination that modern philosophy has known since the advent of scientific rationalism. Frohschammer did not say explicitly that Man disposes of an imagination of magical effects, but for him it is the natural and universal process as a whole that is magism, the cause and the result of an imagination conceived as the root and origin of all things and a close relation to the World Soul according to the Stoics.131 One might ask whether the surrealist concept of the imagination bears any relationship to the vis imaginativa. Andre Breton, in White Haired Revolver, proclaimed that "the imagination is what tends to become real," for analogous imagery allows, he said, the broken "primordial contacts" to be reestablished, and to make the flux in the communicating vases circulate afresh. Nevertheless, if surrealism intended to combine knowingly dream symbols that emerged from the unconscious with mythical thinking, most of the authors that have believed in the creative image generally adhered to a myth—the Christian, theosophically lived and thought—and differentiated two types of imagination: the true, creative in the noble sense, which creates works but can also call forth things magically, and the false, the inauthentic and sterile that is sometimes capable of begetting real and concrete monsters. Let us finish up this chronological survey with an incursion into the area of the novel. From an excellent science fiction novel, Solaris (1961), written by the Pole Stanislaw Lem, a fine Soviet film was made a short time afterward.132 Earthly astronauts on a distant star, Solaris, composed essentially of a gaseous and liquid mass, were surprised to see that it emanated, after their arrival, beings of a perfectly human appearance, each corresponding to a perfect match with the astronauts' own individual desires. In relationship with the unconscious minds of the visitors, the star thus synthesized for their intention the
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woman of their dreams; or rather, each man, as though naturally, engendered this creature himself through his imagination, which found there at last a ground that was favorable to the incarnation of the images that it forms. Could a better illustration be conceived of this plastic mediator that is used by the vis imaginativa or is incorporated with it? The planet Solaris is such a one indeed, gigantic and visible (its mode of operation itself remaining mysterious), by m^ans of which our images and our desires project themselves in forms, substances, colors, "are converted into earth"—as The Emerald Tablet says ("Et vix ejus integra est, si conversa fuerit in terram"). Also interesting is the way the novel and the film portray the psychological consequences of this magic in action: being unable to stand living for long with these creatures that are both imaginary and real, and not knowing how to accept them as a gift from Nature, the Earthlings finally destroy them. Thus the vb imaginativa, a particular aspect of this wider field that is the creative imagination, is often rooted in a concept of divinity and of humanity conceived as imagining powers. This characteristic comes from a tradition distinct from Platonism and nearer to the Neo-Platonic current, connected also with the antique theory of correspondences considered not as static, but as dynamic, the individual here acting as a sound-box—a co-resonator—or a magus-mediator. While phenomenological analyses have accustomed us to speaking of the imagination in terms of intention, in the case of Paracelsus, Boehme, Baader, or, closer to us, Frohschammer, we are not dealing with an intentionality of the subject which would be seeking first to abstract itself from the world, to turn its spirit away from the universe of the senses (abducere mentem a sensibus)'" and then to create original images inside itself. What is to be seen is rather a desire to "correspond" concretely to, and in, the fullness of the world, of humanity, and of things, in a network of living and intersubjective relationships, whence the incarnationist aspect of this tradition that encompasses so many texts, including those that have been discussed. A tradition which is supported, as we have seen, by the idea that the human being was conceived in God's image, and since God is Himself imagination, the human has something of the divine and thus is not devoid of magical power. These texts may seem to be of the past, to be mainly of historical interest, but equally they may challenge us in an era when interpretation is exhausting itself in formal and abstract discourses, the witnesses to our disincarnation.134 T o awaken doubts on the latter point could induce fresh thinking on the function of what the apostle Paul seemed to recognize in Man (Romans 8:19-22), a being who is not only created but also a creator, a transformer of an awaiting Nature. Faced with the strangeness of the problems raised by many aspects of contemporary science, the epistemological rifts in almost all branches of
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knowledge, and the metamorphoses of the very notion of humanity, one may be tempted to read as of the present day, in their very datedness, these verses of Grillparzer in The Jewess of Toledo: We are encompassed round by conjured works And yet we are the conjurers ourselves. [. . .] And in a world where miracles abound, We are the greatest miracle ourselves."5 NOTES 1. Cf. for example, Murray Wright Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought, Studies in Language and Literature XII, nos. 2-3, Urbana (Illinois), University of Illinois, 1927, chap. IX; and "Invention and Imagination in the Renaissance," pp. 535-554 in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, no. 29, 1930. Joseph B. Juhasz, "Greek Theories of Imagination," pp. 39-58 in Journal of the History of Behavioral Science, no. 7, Brandon, 1971. Harry Austryn Wolfson, "The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophical Texts," pp. 66-133 in Harvard Theological Review, no. 28, 1935. Luigi Ambrosi, La psicologia del'immaginazione nella storia deltafilosofia,Rome, 1898 (new edition, Padua, 1959). F. Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology, Oxford, 1952. Religious Imagination (collective work), directed by James P. Mackey, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1986. Jacques Marx, "Le concept d'imagination au XVIIIe siecle," pp. 148-159 in Themes etfiguresdu siecle des Lumieres, collective work, directed by Raymond Trousson, Geneva, Droz, 1980. Ray L. Hart, Unfinished Man and the Imagination (Toward an Ontology and a Rhetoric of Revelation), New York, Seabury Press (Crossroad), 1980. Ernst Lee Tuveson, The Imagination as a Means of Grace (Locke and the Aesthetics of Romanticism), New York, Gordion Press, 1974. Among works on the evaluation and rehabilitation of the imagination, cf. Gilbert Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de I'imaginaire, Paris, Bordas, 1960 (several reprints), and L'Imagination symbolique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, "Quadrige" series, 1964 (several reprints). Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, L'Imagination, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, series "Que sais-je?," 1991. Christian Jambet, "Imagination poetique et imagination creatrice," pp. 187-206 in Les yeux de chair et les yeux de feu, no. V of Cahiers de I'U.S.J.J., Paris, Berg International, 1979. Robert Avens, Imagination is Reality (Western Nirvana in Jung, Hillman, Barfield and Cassirer), Dallas (Texas), Spring Publications, 1980; and Imaginal Body (Para-Jungian Reflections on Soul, Imagination and Death), New York, University Press of America, 1982. 2. The first version (published in Revue d'Allemagne, April 1981) of the present study was about to be delivered to the printers, when I received from Alain Godet the typescript of his work entided Nun was ist die Imagination anderst als ein Sonn im Menschen. I was only able to mention it in afootnote.With a view to the publication of the present work, I revised this first version of my article of 1981, taking A. Godet's work into account, which was published in the meanwhile (Zurich, ADAG Administration und Druck AG, 1982; text, pp. 1-128; notes, pp. 129-281) under the same tide
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(subtide: Studien zu einem Zentralbegriff des magischen Denkens) and treats the subject of the vis imaginativa to the end of the eighteenth century. 3. Dionysius the Aeropagite, "Of the Celestial Hierarchy," pp. 282 ff. in Oeuvres completes du Pseudo-Denys I'Are'opagite (introduced by Maurice de Gandillac) Paris, Aubier, "Bibliotheque philosophique" series, 1943 (reprint 1980). 4. Cf. Henri Crouzel, Theologie de I'image de Dieu chez Origine, Paris, 1956, pp. 58, 94. Francois M. Sagnard, La Gnose valentinienne et le temoignage de saint Irenee, Paris 1947, pp. 527, 561. Cited and commented on by Pierre Deghaye, La Doctrine e'sote'rique de Zinzendorf, Paris, Klincksieck, 1969, pp. 590 ff 5. E. R. Dodds, The Elements of Theology (edition and translation of texts of Proclus), Oxford, 1933, app. 11, p. 319. 6. On the imagination in Al Kindi (796?—873?), cf. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1923-58, 8 vols.; reprint, New York, Columbia University Press, 1984, vol. I, pp. 643 ff. And A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 6 ff. (Al Kindi professes a theory of rays, according to which each individual emits rays throughout the whole world). Avicenna (980-1037), De anima, IV, chap. IV, in Opera, folios 20 a', 20 b' (Arabic text in Psychologie d'Ibn Sina, d'apres son oeuvre As-SiftV, published by Jean Bakos, Prague, 1956); and Avicenna, Livre des directives et remarques, introduced by Amelie Marthe Giochon, Beirut and Paris, 1951, pp. 512 ff, 521. The refutation of this vis imaginativa in Thomas Aquinas is to be found in Summa contra Gentiles, book III, chap. CHI. But Thomas himself recognizes the effect of the intransitive imagination in pregnant women (cf. ibid, and Summa theologica, I, chap. CXVII, art. 3). Avicenna's position is affirmed even more by Algazel (1059-1111) (cf. J. T. Muckle, Algazel's Metaphysics, Toronto, 1933, pp. 170, 189 ff, 193 ff, which cites the Venice edition of 1506). Several of the examples given by Algazel, in particular that of the camel, were later falsely attributed to Avicenna (cf. Godet, op. cit, p. 135). One finds references to these three authors (Al Kindi, Avicenna, Algazel) among many defenders of the vis imaginativa, and notably Roger Bacon (cf. A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 19 ff). 7. Cf. Thorndike, op. cit, vols. I and II, index (see: "Imagination"). Pierre d'Aban, in his Conciliator (1303), takes up several examples given by Avicenna. It was indeed especially doctors who transmitted the notion of magical imagination (thus, Galeotto Marzio, De Incognitis vulgo, 1477, and De doctrina promiscua, 1488). 8. Thorndike, op. cit, vol. IV, pp. 136 ff 9. Latin text in Pietro Pomponazzi, Opera Omnia, Henricpetri, 1576, pp. 284 ff. (cf. also pp. 298 ff). 10. Henri Bosson, op. cit, "Introduction": Ficino was copied, on this point, in three different ways: (a) In 1516 by Caelius Rhodiginus (or Ricchieri), Antiquarum lectionum ..., book XX, chap. XV, cf. ed. of 1599, pp. 940 ff; (b) in 1520 by Pomponazzi; (c) in 1533 by Agrippa. Then the popularizers took over the theme: Pierre Messie in 1542 devotes a whole lesson to it that seems inspired by Agrippa, and later Marcouville (1564) copies Messie. Almost all the examples taken up by Montaigne (cf. infra) are to be found in Agrippa, Rhodiginus, and Messias. More generally, the imagination had occupied an important place in Florentine Neo-Platonism; it was there considered materially, like a spiritusphantasticus or ochema, the supreme point of the human faculties, because it represented a theologically and philosophically satisfying link between the
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faculties of the soul and the superior energies of the cosmos. This is how, for example, Andrea Cattani presents it (Opus de intellectu et de causis mirabilium effectuum, Florence, 1505, cf. especially Tractatus III), who draws on Avicenna and upholds the idea of the magical imagination. But already at this time the latter was not without detractors, such as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (cf. his De imaginatione, written toward 1500, published at Wittenberg in 1588 under the tide De phantasia, and studied by A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 46-49 and 183 ff). 11. Cited in H. Bosson, op cit, pp. 128 ff. Pomponazzi defends the idea of an intransitive action of the imagination, that is, affecting the imagining subject only. 12. De Occulta Philosophia, 1533, book I, chap. LXV ff; book HI, chap. LXHI. Cf. also the Commentarius (1548), by Hermann Riff, from Pliny's Natural History, text inserted in vol. IV of De Occulta Philosophia (editions of 1559 and 1565), perhaps by the Basel publisher Pietro Perna, and often subsequendy. 13. Cf. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London, Roudedge, 1964 (several reprints), p. 335. Bruno had already propounded the essence of his theory in Explicatio triginta sigillorum, and especially in Magia (1590 or 1591). Cf. also F. A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, Roudedge, 1966. And Robert Klein, "L'imagination comme vetement de l'Sme chez Marsile Ficin and Giordano Bruno", pp. 18-39 in Revue de metaphysique et de morale, January 1956. A. Godet's evaluation (op. cit, pp. 63ff.)of the importance of the imagination in Bruno tends to minimize it. 14. "Le trop penser en vous a peu si bien mouvoir / L'imagination, que I'ame obeyssante/ A laisse la chaleur naturelle impuissante/De cuire^ de nourrir, de faire son devoir." Cited by H. Bosson, op. cit, "Introduction," and his article "Rabelais et le miracle," pp. 385-400 in Revue des cours et conferences, 15, II, 1929. 15. Les Essais, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliotheque de la Pleiade" series, pp. 122, 124, 1 3 2 ff
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16. Definition suggested by Lucien Braun, in "L'imagination chez Paracelse," in Cahiers internationaux du symbolisme, Geneva, nos. 35-36, 1978, p. 69. Principal passages on the imagination in the works of Paracelsus (referenced starting from the Sdmtliche Werke, section I, ed. by Karl Sudhoff, Berlin and Munich, 1929-33): VH, 329; IX ("De causis morborum invisibilium"), 265 ff, 285 ff, 296 ff, 577 ff, 597; XI, 190, 349, 376 ff; XII ("Astronomia magna"), 57, 175, 183 ff, 187, 196, 228, 473, 481 ff, 495; XIII ("Liber de imaginibus"), 383 ff; XTV ("De virtute imaginativa"), 310-317 (where one finds the famous sentence "Nun -was ist die Imagination anderst als ein Sonn im Menschen"). On the imagination considered as responsible for the plague, XTV ("De occulta philosophia," text perhaps Pseudo-Paracelsian), 527, 529. On the imagination of pregnant women, IX, 297, 349; XTV, 314-317. 17. "Der glauben gibt imaginationem, die imagination gibt ein sidus, das sidus gibt effectum, also glauben in got gibt imaginationem in got; got gibt den ausgang und das werk" (XII, 473; cf. also 475). 18. Cf. on this subject the commentary of Alexandre Koyre, Mystiques, spirituels et alchimistes du XVIe siecle allemand, Paris, Armand Colin, 1955, pp. 58 ff. 19. On this formula, cf. supra, p. 126, n. 2. 20. Cf. Walter Pagel, Paracehe. Introduction a la medecine philosophique de la Renaissance, Paris, Arthaud, 1963, pp. 121-124 (English original ed, 1958).
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21. On the well-known distinction that he makes between imagination and fantasei, cf. for example Sdmtliche Werke (op. cit. supra, p. 128, n. 16), XII, 484. And L. Braun, art. cited, p. 69. 22. Cf. also, on this point, A. Koyre, op. cit. (supra, p. 128, n. 18), p. 58. 23. "Diese Imaginatio ist der Syderische Geist /sie ist das Gestirn im Menschen /sie alle Sternen und wircket auch dem Firmament gleich / davon Use Theophrastum -was schreibt" (Der guldene Griff, p. 20, cited by Bernard Gorceix, La Mystique de Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) et les origines de la theosophie allemande, Lille, University of Lille II service of reproduction of theses, 1972, pp. 113 ff. 24. Andreas Libavius, Variarum controversiarum . . . , Frankfurt, 1600, and Examen philosophiae novae, Frankfurt, 1615. Georg Goedelmann, Tractatus de magis, Frankfurt, 1591. Martin Weinrich, Deo ortu monstrosum commentarius, s.l. (Vratislaviae), 1595, chap. XVII. Hieronymus Nymann, Oratio de imaginatione, speech of 1593, published in Taudler, Defascino, Wittenberg, 1606-18 (for Weinrich it is an impious idea, and for Nymann it is chimerical and dangerous). Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de I'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, Paris, 1618, cf. p. 2 81. Thomas Campanella, De sensu rerum et magia, Frankfurt, 1620, book IV, chap. II, p. 269. Henry More, Antidote against Atheism, cf. several references in A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 97ff.John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, London, 1677. Bento Pereira, Adversus fallaces et superstitiones artes, Venice and Ingolstadt, 1591, book I, chap, m, reprinted in his Opera, Cologne, 1620. Francis Bacon, Sylva sylvarum, London, 1627, chant X, no. 945, and The Advancement of Learning, London, 1605, book III (cf. detailed references in A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 95 ff). Cf. also the article "Einbildungs-Krafft" in Zedler's Lexicon (Vni, fo. 535), article already published in 1740 by the author, Johann Georg Walch, in his own Philosophisches Lexicon in Leipzig. Walch draws inspiration from Webster. For more details, cf. A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 99-101. 25. Cf. Descartes, "Meditation sixieme," and "Meditation seconde"; and letter to Marin Mersenne, March 1637, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery, vol. I, p. 350. Cf. also Nicolas de Malebranche, Entretien sur la metaphysique et la religion, III, §VIII; V; §XUI, in Oeuvres completes, ed. by Andre Robinet, Paris, 1965, XII, pp. 68, 126 ff, 191 ff. (Malebranche strives to demystify the vis imaginativa while recognizing an intransitive reality; references in A. Godet, op. cit, pp. 103 ff.). 26. Cf. Henri Bosson, op. cit, "Introduction." And Lynn Thorndike, op. cit, vols. Vn and VIE (index of vol. Vffl). 27. Cf. edition of 1650, pp. 123 ff. 28. Cf. especially Bernard Gorceix, Flambee et agonie. Mystiques du XVIIe siecle allemand, Sisteron, Presence, 1977 (subject index: "Imagination"). 29. Jean-Francois Marquet, "Desir et imagination chez Jacob Bohme," pp. 77-97 in Jacob Bohme ou I'obscure lumiere de la connaissance mystique (Colloquium o Chantilly, September 1975), Paris, Vrin, 1979. 30. Cf. ibid, the article as a whole. 31. Cf. Alexandre Koyre's synthesis in La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929 (reprint, 1971), p. 263. 32. Ibid, p. 218, n. 4. 33. Cf. the excellent study by Pierre Deghaye, La Naissance de Dieu ou la doctrine de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Albin Michel, 1985.
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34. It is nevertheless useful to differentiate mundus imaginalis (this imaginal) from the Boehmean mesocosm. It appears to lie in two opposed concepts of the notion of incarnation (cf. in this book my study "From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure, or Transparition Through Mirrors"). 35. Cf. A. Koyre, op. cit. (supra, n. 2), pp. 110, 214, 481 ff. 36. Cf. Bernard Gorceix, Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710), theosophe d'Amsterdam, Paris, L'Age d'homme, 1975. Cf. also (paranomasis) infra, p. 207. 37. Pierre Poiret, L'Oeconomie de la Creation de l'Homme . . . , Amsterdam, 1687, 7 vols, cf. vol. II, pp. 587 ff. 38. Ibid, pp. 589 ff. 39. Ibid, pp. 590 ff. 40. Ibid, p. 593. 41. Ibid, p. 594. 42. Ibid, p. 612. 43. Cf. especially the "Praefatio Adrnonitoria" of Basilica chymica, a theoretical preface which is presented as a compendium of Paracelsus's thinking. A. Godet (op. cit, pp. 94ff.)has already drawn attention to this preface in relation to the vis imaginativa. 44. The son of J. B. Van Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius, is the editor of this compilation (Onus medicinae, Amsterdam, 1648), which reappeared under -the tide Opera omnia (Frarikfurt, 1682); in this second edition, cf. §16, 18, 90 ff, 100, 104, 106, 123-126,128-134,139 ff, 152 ff, 164, 168, 170, 172. The example of the spark ("prout ex chalybe et silice oritur scintilla, unde incendium maxime operativum") is given in §18, p. 558 a. Already cited by A. Godet, op. cit. pp. 90-93. 45. Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae, Frankfurt, 1612 (reprint, in facsimile, Hildesheim, Olms, 1987), p. 264. 46. "Et vide secundum naturam de qua regeneratum corpora in visceribus terrae. Et hoc imaginare per veram imaginationem et non phantasticam" (Rosarium Philosophorurn, in Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant, Basel, 1593, II, p. 214). 47. C. G.Jung, Psychologie und Alchemie, Zurich, 1944, p. 234. 48. Definition suggested by James Hillman, Le Mythe de la psychanalyse, Paris, Imago, 1977, p. 147. 49. Michel Sendivogius, Novi luminis chemici tractatus alter de Sulphure, published in Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt, 1677, pp. 601 ff. and 617 ff. (anastatic reprint, Graz, 1970). 50. Cyrano de Bergerac, L Autre Monde . . . , text established and introduced by Claude Mettra and Jean Suyeux, Paris, Club du Livre, 1962, p. 117. 51. Ibid, p. 194 ff. 52. Ibid, pp. 195 ff. There is a beautiful passage in "Etats du Soleil" on the allegory of the three rivers (Memory, Imagination, and Judgment). 53. Among these newfoundationsor these attempts at justification appear what is called in German aufgeklarte Magie ("enlightened magic"). Cf. A. Godet on this subject, op. cit, pp. 108 ff. 54. Hermann Boerhaave, Praelectiones academicae in proprias institutiones rei medicinae, published by Albrecht von Haller, vol. IV, 1745, division 693, pp. 262-266 (B.N. of Paris, shelfrnark T 30. 112A). The stories told by Boerhaave are juicy, and Haller's notes provide more references on the effects of the imagination of pregnant
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women than anywhere else. Cf. also the work of Johann Caspar Westfal, Pathologia daemonica, Leipzig, 1707, pp. 40, 42, 52 ff, 131 ff. 55. Cf. Grande Encyclopedie, vol. VII, pp. 559-565. 56. Ibid, p. 564. Cf. also Benjamin Bablot, Dissertation sur le pouvoir de l'imagination desfemmes enceintes, 1788, cited by Jacques Marx, p. 151, in art. cited supra, p. 126, n. 1. After Malebranche it is a certain Dr. Blondel who is cited in reference, the author of a "dissertation in the form of a letter," translated from the English into French (1745), then Boerhaave (cf. supra, p. 130, n. 54). On the treatment of the imagination and the imaginary in the genesis of modern aesthetic theories, cf. Annie Becq, Genese de I'esthetiquefrancaisemoderne. De la raison classique a l'imagination creatrice (1680-18 Paris, J. Touzot (and Pisa, Pacini), 1984, 2 vols. 57. Marquis de Feuquieres, Phantasiologie ou Lettres philosophiques a Madame de XXXsur la faculte imaginative, "AOxfort, etse trouve a Paris," 1700, p. 153 (cited by A. Becq, op. cit, pp. 664—669). Cf. also Annie Becq, "L'imagination creatrice et la tradition esoterique," Revue des sciences humaines, Lille, 1979, no. 176, pp. 43-55. As far as the treatment of the image and the imaginary in the mind-set of the Aufklarung is concerned, let us mention the rather characteristic work of Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maass, professor of philosophy at Halle, Versuch iiber die Einbildungskraft, Halle and Leipzig, 1797 (new ed.), where the author tries to deduce a priori the general law of association of representations (there is also an interesting bibliography on the associations of ideas). 58. Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764). Quoted from the French translation Histoire de VArt chez lesAnciens, vol. 1, Paris, 1766, pp. 243 ff. 59. De la Philosophie de la Nature ou Traite de morale pour le genre humain, tire d philosophie fondee sur la Nature, 7th ed, vol. X, 1804, pp. 73, 338. 60. On Georg von Welling, cf. Petra Jungmayr, Georg von Welling (1655-1727), Stuttgart, F. Steiner, 1990. 61. Georg von Welling, op. cit, ed. of 1784 (Frankfurt and Leipzig), p. 258. 62. F. C. Oetinger, Biblisches und Emblematisches Wbrterbuch, Stuttgart, 1776, p. 354 (anastatic reprint, Hildesheim, Olms, 1969): "Die Bildungs-Kraft kan Anfangs seyn als ein Gedank ohne Wesen; hernach aber macht sie sich Wesen, und ist nicht ein Nichts, sondern ein erwachsenes doch selbst gebohrnes Etwas, dafiir hiite dich." During period when cases of vampirism caused ink to flow most abundandy, that is, in the 1730s, some vampirologists attributed to them the magical effects of an imagination proper to the vegetative soul of the deceased. Cf, for example, Michael Ranft, Tractat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Grdbern . . . , Leipzig, 1734, pp. 140 ff. (cf. on this subject A. Faivre, "Du vampire villageois aux discours des clercs," in Les Vampires [collective work], Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme" series, 1993, pp. 58 ff). In a completely different context (Oetinger being something of a bridge between the two) the Count of Zinzendorf confers on the imagination a power similar to what it had in Boehme, but limited, it seems, to divine creation (God "imagines" in Wisdom), in any case he is not explicit about Boehmean speculation on the imagination, with respect to intradivine life; above all he gives it a primordial place in the life of the faithful ("Substantial faith and the imagination are but one," he wrote); cf. Pierre Deghaye, La Doctrine esoterique de Zinzendorf, Paris, Klincksieck, 1969, pp. 591 ff.
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63. Jerusalem, 71, 17, cited by Jacques Roos, Aspens litteraires du mysticisme philosophique et finfluence de Bohme et de Swedenborg au debut du romantisme: William Blake, Novalis, Ballanche, Strasbourg, Heitz, 1951, pp. 69 ff. 64. Ibid, p. 70. 65. Ibid, p. 70. Jerusalem, 74, 13. 66. Catalogue 1810, cited in ibid, p. 70. 67. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Le Ministere de I'Homme-Esprit, Paris, Migneret, 1802 (cf. notably pp. viii, 82, 396); De I'esprit des choses, Paris, Laran, year VIII (cf. notably pp. 32, 45 ff, 50, 128). Cf. the commentary given on these texts by Annie Becq, op. cit. (supra, p. 131, n. 56), pp. 865-873. 68. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Le Ministere de I'Homme-Esprit, pp. 82 ff. 69. ID, Des erreurs et de la verite, Edimbourg (Paris), 1775, p. 502; Le Ministere de I'Homme-Esprit, pp. 30, 392; De I'esprit des choses, pp. 190 ff, 199. 70. ID, De I'esprit des choses, p. 31. 71. Ibid, pp. 36 ff, 45 ff, 140, 267. A. Becq (art. cited, pp. 423 ff.) suggests comparing these mirrors to those of Baudelaire: "the dim and plaintive mirrors" of Benediction, the "tarnished mirrors" of La Mort des amants. In connection with passing to the "person," she evokes Boehme's personalism and compares this to the role of the mirror of which Jacques Lacan speaks in regard to the constitution of the subject. 72. Dupont de Nemours, Philosophie de I'Univers, Paris, ed. of Fructidor, year VII (it is this second edition that I am using here), pp. 128-133. He denies, of course, being of the "modern Christians, Cabalists, Illuminati, Muslims, and Magi"; his work speaks for itself nonetheless. 73. Ibid, p. 152. 74. Cf. Annie Becq, op. cit, pp. 666 ff; "La tradition esoterique," in Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. VII, pp. 213-214; and "Dupont de Nemours," in Dictionnaire universelde la Franc-Maconnerie, Paris, P.U.F, 1974. 75. Dupont de Nemours, Philosophie de I'Univers, pp. 171 ff. 76. Ibid, pp. 173ff.It would seem that it is nevertheless not a question of "reincarnation," for the same spirit takes on a body differendy each time, as Dupont de Nemours suggests by the examples of purgatory or the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. 77. "Der physische Magus weiss die Natur zu beleben, und willkurlich, wie seinen Leib, zu behandeln." Cited by Walter D. Wetzels, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Physik im Wirkungsfeld der deutschen Romantik, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter, 1973, "Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Volker" series, N.F. 59, vol. 183, p. 118. 78. Cited by Theodor Haering, Novalis als Philosoph, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1954, p. 380. 79. "Der Punkt, den Archimedes forderte, ist gefunden. Wir werden die Erde wirklich bewegen." Cited, along with the experiment summarized here, by Walter D. Wetzels, op. cit. 80. Translated from W. D. Wetzels, ibid. 81. Cf. Alexandre Koyre, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, op. cit, p. 506. 82. Lucien Braun, art. cited, p. 67. 83. A. Koyre, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, op. cit, pp. 505ff.Let us also mention a passage in which Schopenhauer expresses himself on the creative imagination, in
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a closely related sense: pp. 319 ff. in Ueber den Willen in der Natur (vol. Ill of Werke, Insel Verlag). 84. Cf, for example, Sdmtliche Werke, Leipzig, 1851-60, published by Franz Hoffmann, anastatic reprint, Aalen, 1963, IV, pp. 307ff.(text of 1837). 85. Ibid, IV, pp. 307 ff; IX, pp. 218 ff. (text of 1838). "fir ist dieselbe Natur, welche den Lbwen creaturlich gestaltet, und -welche in das Imaginativum des Menschen Typus dieses Thieresprojicirt" (VII, p. 411; text of 1836). 86. Ibid, IX, pp. 218ff.(text of 1838). 87. Ibid, X, pp. 30ff.(text of 1839). Cf. also supra, p. 107. 88. Ibid, IX, pp. 218ff.(text of 1838). Cf. also infra, in the following chapter. 89. Ibid, XIII, pp. 139 ff; IX, pp. 218 ff. (text of 1838). Every speculatio is imaginatio, and if it succeeds in being effective it is a true inner Eingeburt. 90. Ibid, X, pp. 227ff.(text of 1841); H, p. 511 (text of 1833). 91. Ibid, X, p. 16 (text of 1830). 92. Ibid, Xin, p. 127 (text of 1833). 93. Ibid, XIII, p. 216 (text of 1833). 94. Ibid, IV, pp. 307ff.(text of 1837). 95. Ibid, II, pp. 266ff.(text of 1822-24). 96. Ibid, IX, pp. 182ff.(text of 1838). 97. Ibid, VII, p. 371 (text of 1836); II, pp. 266ff.(text of 1822-24). 98. Ibid, II, pp. 259 ff. In 1847, Baader cited Michael Petocz, the author of Die Welt aus Seelen (1838), for whom the productive imagination implies a magus entering inside what he is seeing, so as to awaken in himself the idea of this contemplation and then to repeat in himself, genetically, the becoming of this thing seen: Scimus quae facimus (Sdmtliche Werke, III, pp. 378-380). Baader says also that a work of art exists only to the extent that he can reproduce it: ibid, XIII, p. 139. Commenting on Petocz, Baader adds that contemplation does not suffice, and that one must not confuse the idea, still mute and magical, with the speaking idea, real and alive (the Word), nor with the envelope, or body, of this speaking Word (this envelope is the pronounced Word, the exterior representation) [ibid. III, pp. 378-380]. 99. Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, Die Geschichte der Seele, 2nd ed, Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1833, pp. 567—568, 580. He distinguishes schopferische, erfindende, and reproduzierende Einbildungskraft. 100. Carl August von Eschenmayer, Versuch, die scheinbare Magie des tierischen Magnetismus aus physiologischen Gesetzen zu erklaren, Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1816, pp. 44-48. 101. Philipp Heinrich Werner, Die Schutzgeister oder merkwiirdige Blicke zweier Seherinnen in die Geisterwelt, nebst der -wunderbaren Heilung einer zehn Jahre stumm gewesenen durch den Magnetismus, und einer vergleichenden Uebersicht aller bis jetzt beobachteten Erscheinungen desselben, Cotta, 1839, p. 28: "Die Phantasie, innig verwan mit dem hoheren Gefiihl, konnte man die Sprache desselben nennen. Sie ist das Vermogen Ideale, der Symbolisierung der Thdtigkeiten des Geistes, der diese durch sie im Bilde imme vollendetes Ganzes, nicht als verstdndig zusammengeklauftes Aggregat der Seele vorhalt." 102. Both of these, writes Werner, belong to the soul, mediator between the spirit and the body, and are capable of receiving "material" from these two regions. But as Phantasie is closer to the Spirit and to God, its images are more profound, less
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turbid, less sensual, than the Einbildungskraft. This is only the reflection, the copy, of the former, which is the tongue of God. Phantasie can show us only what is "given by God." Cf. also, by P. H. Werner, Die Symbolik der Sprache mit besonderer Berucksichtigung des Somnambulismus, Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1841, pp. 18 ff. And Richard Beilharz, "Fantaisie et imagination chez Baudelaire, Catherine Crowe and leurs predecesseurs allemands," in Baudelaire, Proceedings of the Colloquium of Nice (1967), Annales de la Faculte des lettres et sciences humaines de Nice, 1968, 4-5, p. 32. Beilharz notes also that the usage of Phantasie as superior to the Imagination was current during the Middle Ages and in the Germany of 1800 (cf. also John Bullitt and W. Jackson Bate, "Distinctions between Fancy and Imagination," Modern Language Notes, LX, 1945, pp. 8-15). 103. Albert Beguin, L'Ame romantique et le reve, Paris, Corti, ed. of 1963, p. 66. 104. Geschichte der Magie,firstpart of Geschichte des thierischen Magnetismus (2nd ed. 1844), Introduction; B.N. of Paris: shelfmark 8 T b 62q. Cf. also, from the same author, Der Magnetismus im Verhaltnisse zur Natur und Religion, 1842, and Der Geist des Menschen in der Natur oder die Philosophie in Uebereinkunft mit der Naturkunde, 1849 (B.N. of Paris: shelfmark R. 35118). 105. Geschichte der Magie, op. cit, pp. 277 ff. The translation of that book by William Howitt, The History of Magic, vol. 1, p. 167 (London, 1854) is not accurate enough to be reproduced here. 106. "Der Mensch kann durch seine Imagination nicht plasticiren, aber das Geschaffene dominirend imaginiren" (ibid, pp. 275 ff). During the period of the Naturphilosophen appears the work Leben und Lehrmeinungen beruhmter Physiker am Ende des XVI. und am Anfange des XVII. Jahrhunderts, als Beytrdge zur Geschichte der Physiologie in engerer und weiterer Bedeutung, new edition by Thadda Anselm Rixner and Thadda Siber, Sulzbach, 1824-29 (reprint), where the imagination is broached in Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Giordano Bruno, etc. Let us also mention a particularly inspired—and haunting—text, in which Joseph Goerres interprets cases of vampirism as a phenomenon of postmortem imagination (produced from the vegetative soul), thus taking up in his account a type of discourse already illustrated by Michael Ranft a century earlier (cf. supra, p. 131, n. 62): Joseph Goerres, "Ueber Vampyre und Vampyrisirte," 1840, text reproduced pp. 495-501 in Diether Sturm and Klaus Voelker, Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern (Dichtungen und Dokumente), Munich, Carl Hanser, 1968. 107. Published in London, and reprinted several times (let us mention the facsimile: London, The Aquarian Press, 1986, with introduction by Colin Wilson). French translation: Les Cotes obscurs de la nature, ou fantbmes et voyants, par Mistress Crowe, translated by Z, Paris, Leymarie, 1900. 108. The quotations she makes from P. H. Werner have been identified by Beilharz (art. cited supra). Saint-Martin is cited by her on pp. 242 ff. 109. C. Crowe, English ed, p. 182, quoted accurately by Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliotheque de la Pleiade" series, vol. II, 1976, pp. 623 ff. Cf. also the notes by Claude Pichois, in ibid, pp. 1393 ff. C. Crowe precedes this sentence with a comment on the desire and intense will of the dying person, which act on the nervous system of the distant friend, whose imagination then projects a form that he sees as objective, "while the far-working of the departing spirit seems to consist in the strong will to do, reinforced by the strong faith that it can be done" (French ed. cited supra, n. 107), p. 228.
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110. C. Crowe, English ed, p. 238. Reference is made several times to this "constructive imagination of the seer," which C. Crowe sometimes hesitates to distinguish from palingenesy (ibid, pp. 238 and 414 ff). 111. Ibid,p.431. 112. Ibid, p. 435. 113. Ibid, p. 449. 114. Ibid, p. 433. 115. Ibid, p. 251. 116. Cited by Claude Vigee, "La conception de l'imagination chez Baudelaire," in L'Imagination creatrice., Colloquium of Poigny (October 1970), Neuchatel, 1971, p. 17. Following the studies on Baudelaire and C. Crowe by G. T. Clapton and R. Hugues, Michael Shanks writes that the passage quoted by Baudelaire "takes up Coleridge's distinctions rather closely" (cf. Annie Becq, art. cited, p. 48). 117. Baudelaire, op. cit, p. 797. 118. Ibid, p. 776. Commentary on the passage by Claude Vigee, art. cited, p. 34. 119. Ibid, p. 35. 120. La Clef des grands mysteres, new ed. Paris, La Diffusion scientifique, 1976, pp. 101, 113 (original ed. Paris, Bailliere, 1861); Dogme et rituel de haute magie, Paris, Bailliere, 1855-56, p. 175. Cf. also the article by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin, "L'Anankiatre, ou roccultisme a l'epreuve de lafiction,"pp. 57-76, in Revue des sciences humaines, Lille, 1979, no. 176; and that of Annie Becq, pp. 43-55, ibid. 121. E. Levi, La Clef..., op. cit, p. 114. 122. Ibid, pp. 154, 165. 123. Ibid, p. 168. 124. Ibid, p. 181. 125. Ibid, p. 193. 126. Ibid, p. 222. This notion of "modeling" in Levi and Peladan was pointed out by N. Jacques-Chaquin, in "L'Anankiatre . . . , " art. cited supra, n. 120 (cf. p. 63). 127. E. Levi, La Clef..., op. cit, p. 198. 128. H. P. Blavatsky, his Unveiled. A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, New York, J. W. Bouton, 1877 (many reprints), vol. I, p. 396. Page 398, she cites C. Crowe on stigmata. Cf. also pp. 385 and 394 (on the imagination of pregnant women). 129. J. Frohschammer, Die Phantasie als Grundprinzip des Weltprozesses, Munich, 1877. 130. Cf, for example, ibid, p. 192. 131. Ibid, pp. 205 ff. 132. Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, translated from the Polish into French by J.-M . Jasienko, Paris, Denoel, series "Presence du Futur," 1966. The cinematographic adaptation was produced by Andrei Tarkovski (1972). 133. A phrase mentioned again by Lucien Braun, art. cited supra (p. 128, n. 16), p. 67. 134. From a point of view both sociological and political, how can one miss seeing how much the imaginary tends, as Andre Breton says, to become real? Edgar Morin expresses this in a few concise sentences: "Dreams have programmed the social praxis, and of this the naive are ignorant, for whom the economy is only the economy
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and a dream is but a dream; they do not know of the transmutations of negative entropy, the conversions of the imaginary to the 'real,' from the 'real' to the imaginary, from fantasy to the praxis (the airplane), from praxis to the fantasy (the cinema). Society manipulates its myths less well than its myths manipulate it. The imaginary is at the active and organizational core of social and political reality. And, when, by virtue of its informational characters, it becomes generative, it becomes henceforth capable of programming the 'real' and, through a practical process of negative entropy, it becomes the rear (La Methode, I, La Nature de la Nature, Paris, Le Seuil, 1977, p. 341). 135. "Umgeben sind wirringsvon Zaubereien /Allein wir selber sind die Zauberer/ [...] Und in der Welt, voll offenbarer Wunder/Sind wir das grb'sste aller Wunder selbst." (v. 1429 ff. (English translation by Arthur Burkhard, The Jewess of Toledo, Yarmouth Port [Mass.], 1953).
T h o u g h t s of G o d , I m a g e s of
M a n
(Figures, Mirrors, a n d E n g e n d e r i n g in J. B o e h m e , F. C. Oetinger, a n d F. v o n B a a d e r )
The title of our conference, "The Face of God and Theophanies,"* can call to mind two orders of reality. First of all, the aspects in which it is believed one sees the divine manifesting itself in the universe: the faces that God shows us of Himself in terms of our ability to perceive them, the angels and celestial hierarchies (for the angel, it is believed, is the face of God), or else images, such as icons, humanly created but in which the Spirit makes its dwelling. Such are the tangible forms of the face of God and of theophanies. There is, in addition, the reality in which these forms would originate, and this precedes any apparition or manifestation. How can this reality be made a subject of discourse, when by its nature it would be the hidden order and situated beyond our experience? Inspired hermeneuts, the theosophers, apply themselves to this; with the aid of the Spirit, they attempt to give an account of the internal processes of divinity and the relationships uniting God, humanity, and the universe. Unique is the very concrete manner in which they describe these processes, explain these relationships. The Kabbalah, the theosophy of Jewish thinking, could illustrate this purpose, but the theosophies of Islam could do just as well. The Christian tradition is no less rich in this area; let us examine it, through a few examples taken from the work of its major representatives in Germany, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) and Franz von Baader (1765-1841). Figures, mirrors, and engendering occupy an important place in what these authors reveal to us of the divine and of the visible or invisible universe. The concept of Face is then expressed through the image of the mirror, whose meaning goes beyond mere metaphor. We can begin to apprehend this type of thinking when we realize that for the spiritual thinkers we are considering, these mirrors are alive, organic, and complementary. From their reciprocal play springs forth what exists, what makes possible the manifestations of the divine in the created universe. Let us remind ourselves here that this tradition 137
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is bound up with another concept, that of the imagination. The "creative" imagination, that is, one that is capable of generation. Queen of the faculties, it appears in this context primarily as an attribute of God; that of created beings is only its derived reflection, though concrete and very real in its nature and effects.1
which, however troubled, aspires to incarnate her—more than she aspires to incarnate herself in it. Sophianic action is limited to setting in motion in our universe the action of the essences, with the cooperation that humanity is willing to give her. We are called upon to espouse her and to second the whole of Nature, submitted to exile and to vanity in its reascent to this Sophia with whom it aspires painfully to be identified. Thus, the universe, the distorted reflection of this archetypal and original mirror, tends to fulfill its model, its Vorbild, its Idea, of which nothing, says Boehme, is a better symbolic representation than a beautiful meadow covered with flowers. The mirror of God, the mirror of creation groaning in pain (cf. Romans 8:19-22), Sophia is also the promised beloved of Man, who is himself her mirror. Adam was to "imagine," that is, project himself, into this divine reflection through the power of his active and creative imagination, the essential faculty handed down to the species that God had destined to repair a universe perturbed since the fall of the angels. Our promised beloved Sophia, the supreme mediating and "magical" entity, awaiting the return of the lover who has left her, casts him her look, deep as a mirror reflecting the starry sky; a mirror whose function is to transform our image, and that of all of Nature, into a body of substance, of eternity, the body of Paradise regained.2
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I. SOPHIA AND T H E BILDNISS OF JACOB BOEHME Two key notions could serve as a guide in the volcanic and baroque thinking of the Teutonic Philosopher: those of the image and the mirror. Throughout the course of his torrential work, he attempts to express, by means of both, what the divine and the human imagination consists of. The Sophianic Mirror Of the Deity Himself one can scarcely speak without having recourse to a negative theology. But a theogonic discourse, or more specifically in this case a theosophical one, relating to processes can be founded on a meditation on the first "event," the event that took place starting from the Ungrund. It is in issuing forth from this unutterable Ungrund that God conceives Himself as a subject, opposes Himself to Himself, engenders in Himself an infinity of ideas and of thoughts. A taking or seizing that is possible due to a mediating element—the first among all mediations— a mirror which no longer is exactly God, which is somehow outside Him, but which allows Him to know Himself in his multiplicity through the infinity of objects that already incarnate Him, revealing His infinite fertility. This mirror, or this eye, is Sophia, Divine Wisdom. The Objectum, the Gegenwurf, in relation to God, she is also the ideal image of the world, of the universe, for she contains the ideal images of all individual beings. The first theophany on the ontological plane, the first face of the One, which the One needs so as to be revealed in multiplicity, she is also the first manifestation of the infinite in the finite, of the Absolute in a thing which, in a certain manner, is already concrete. In the heart of divinity therefore exists a separating power (a Schiedlichkeit, a Separator), which is first manifested in the form of the Sophianic mirror. Having mirrored Himself in the Sophia, God "imagines" by projecting Himself into her, actualizes in finite forms the infinite richness of his creative potentiality. Then Sophia translates the divine Word into forms and colors, that are already semi-real, that is, distinct from God who, by means of them, knows Himself as a person and will in His turn be knowable. One thinks of this beautiful verse from Koranic esotericism, which has the Lord say: "I was a hidden treasure, I aspired to be known." Boehme tells how our universe, devastated since the fall, remains despite everything a mirror of Sophia and
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The Image in Man: Greatness and Self-Effacement Everything is born of this divine mirror3 that makes possible the birth of fire and light. As it contains the totality of ideal images and occupies a major place in Boehme's theosophy, one can understand how often he makes use of the word "image." This is almost always Bildniss, generally in the feminine with the sense of image-reflection or divine image, "reflection" here taking on a substantive character. It is known that in this period Bild meant not only "image," but also "body," forma,4 which is confirmed by Boehme's constant intention to give this word a concrete meaning. Often, he even employs "image" and "substance" (Wesen) without distinction to suggest that every image is the substance for what it has become the image of. Bildniss features prominently in his theosophical scheme.5 The first image (Bild) of the divine manifestation is the symbol (Gleichniss) of God. It was formed according to the divine Trinity and God dwelt in it. It is none other than the Spirit springing forth from the magical fire of the soul and which appears in the energy of light.6 In this image resides Christ, in it he has become a man in the bosom of the eternal Virgin ("for no mortal virgin is pure"). Christ is the "virginal image" received by the image of the first Adam.7 Perfection fulfilled exists as visibility. God Himself tends only to make Himself visible. The primordial Adam, writes Pierre Deghaye in discussing Boehme, "not only resembles the original form, he has taken on a body
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identified to it by participation." God "incorporates himself as substance in the image that he produces of Himself." On the human level, "Boehme's God is always the God born in the soul," but more generally it can be said that "the whole end of the divine economy is in the full manifestation of the image." A manifestation in three tempos: first in the heaven of angels; second in the glorious body of Adam; third in the person of Christ and those of his brothers. The first two times, the image is manifested, then obfuscated. The third time, it is the crowning of the divine works in the perspective of the consummation of time: the glory of God will be fully radiant. Pierre Deghaye has also justly noted that the implied limitation in the notion of the body is not "a restriction imposed from the outside," but "the term of an accomplishment," and that the primordial heavens represent this circumscribed space. The heavens which "are at one with paradise, or the enclosed garden, hortus conclusus." Similarly, the symbols of the Temple and the New Jerusalem represent an enclosed space. But ultimately all these symbols come down to the human form, already given to the angels and designated by the term Bildniss, which represents the Christ in us, for we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. An image that is latent in us, but which is the very Christ from that moment when the image takes on body. "It is the form taken on by a divinity which is formless in itself, like the breath or the Spirit." It is the body of the soul, or the "true soul," that is, the place where God makes His dwelling; the place of theophanies, which is at one with the world of the angels.8 By its nature and in accordance with the divine economy, Adam was thus destined to become an image, a symbol, of God 9 so that God could dwell in him, manifest through him, and through the intermediary of eternal Wisdom— Sophia—manifest His wonders. He had been endowed, from the beginning, with a divine substance (Wesenheit); his soul, issued from the First Principle (i.e., from the "quality of the Father"), had to advance in imagination into the heart of the Father so as to be fertilized by Him in its turn.10 His body was a symbol of divine nature—it is still potentially so today, the fall notwithstanding. His body, his soul, his spirit symbolize the Trinity.11 He was "the true Man" (der rechte Mensch): The true Man, he who is in the celestial image, is not cognizant of time. What substitutes for time is like a round crown or a complete rainbow, with no beginning or end. Because the image that b the symbol of God has neither beginning nor shadow. It has dwelt for all of eternity in the Wisdom of God, like a virgin who has no children and no will, for it b the will of God which has replaced that of the virgin. [. . .] She had no body, no substance, no essence: at the time of her creation, the essences were excited starting from the eternal centrum in her, as though in three Mothers, according to the three Principles. God wanted to manifest in the three Mothers, and this
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was the creation. The government of the image did not remain in order, and this was death, for the middle passed to the exterior, and the exterior to the middle. [.. .]?2 Indeed, the Serpent, by "penetrating" Adam, has caused this divine image—identified more or less with Sophia herself and who resided and lived freely in him—to flee. The demon has "infected" (inficiret) Adam, inoculating him, as it were, with another image,13 or rather inoculating him with the mirror living inside it. A new image, therefore, which made him receptive to the attractions, to the glamour, of the animal world, and which placed him in dependence of the astrum. However, their action remains limited, even in our current state: The astrum never forms a human being [. . .], but only an animal, in the will, in the habits and senses. It has neither the power, nor the understanding necessary to create in image a symbol of God. And even when it manages to stretch its will to the utmost and produce a symbol of God, it then generates but an amiable and cunning animal, only that—as much in Man as in other creatures. The eternal essences, transmitted by Adam to all men, continue to dwell in Man only, with the hidden element. It is therein that the image exists—but entirely hidden, unless there be a rebirth by water and in the Holy Spirit of God?4 It remains that our body is no longer the one that was created originally. From the time when Adam's will and imagination projected themselves into the perceptible world, the kingdom of this world imposed its image on us.15 Preceding it, the other divine image in us became as fragile and destructible as our body. It remains hidden in the eternal will of the Father, so that it can hardly save us until we have experienced a second birth .'6 The Image in Man: Paths ofRenewal A mere potentiality, therefore, but one that aspires to achieve actualization. In the fire of the heart's soul, of our Gemtith, dwells the beautiful divine image, our living mirror, like the luminous aura surrounding a flame, consubstantial with it but nevertheless separate from it. But this Bildniss, near and far, is hardly ever visible to us, because in the course of its earthly life the human soul remains exposed to the action of the demon. Through its "imagination," it hurls forth its rays at the sidereal and elementary spirit, constantly seeking to take possession of the fire of the soul by infecting it unceasingly with earthly and demonic passions.17 With a will that is never discouraged, the demon strives to make his own "tincture" pass into us. Now, the will and the imagination have a related role:
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Even if, with no blameworthy intention, we introduce the "heart of the soul" and the "will of the soul" into this outer mirror that is the world, let us beware that it does not capture, does not entrap, does not infect our inner image thus projected. It would become not only stained as a piece of clothing can be, but steeped with a tincture whose substance would eventually supplant its own nature. Even if we act in such a way so as not to mix the fire of our soul with the substances of the outer kingdom, we will not prevent our will from being mixed in with it, for the power of the will has something eminently magical. Boehme warns his readers against projections. Beware, he tells them, not to merge, like into shadow, into the mirror of your actions, of your occupations! For greed (Geiz), inseparable from our will, would destroy the image of God, a magical image, subtle as a spirit, so much more subtle and more delicate that the soul itself. In the image dwells the Holy Spirit, who by means of it is expressed by voices, languages and wonders, who sings and resonates. "Bring your own wonders into this image which is in you, so as to be faithful!"19 More especially as the will, aided by the imagination, from which it sometimes difficult to distinguish anyway, generates forms and concrete figures, endowed with substances, that the soul retains with its own image at the moment of the death of the body. This is then burdened with everything that has "infected" it during the lifetime:20 Just as fire engulfs substance, but giving the spiritual in return, so the divinefireshows to us in spirit our works and our celestialjoys, as in a clear mirror like the wonders of Divine Wisdom?' Although it has become far fainter since the fall, our celestial image, our living mirror, has not ceased to live on in all of humanity22—at least, one may dare say, as a void that is always desirous of being filled. Through an imagination directed by a strong desire, we are capable of impregnating our inner image, that is, of rebirthing divinity and acquiring at the same time a new spiritual body.23 For that, our "spirit of will" must pass through fire, and the image through the trial of a fiery confirmation. A violent struggle is required to get the image out of its uncomfortable position, crushed as it is between the empire of hell and that of the animal world,24 or, if one prefers, between three different modes of existence: igneous life, divine life, and earthly life.25 It is only once its inner Bildniss has been renewed that our soul can see God. Yet it can only perceive Him through the Sophia.26 Then the stars become subject to us, we regain our lost status:
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The image of God in Man is so full of power and strength that, if it throws itself in totally with the will of God, it tames nature, to such a point that the astrum obeys it andfindsjoy in the image: for the will of the astrum is also to be delivered from vanity, so that in the image it is tempered to gentleness, and of this the heavens rejoice.21 The mysticism of the inner image finds its apotheosis in a passage like this one: To be born again is to give birth to a new son starting from the old one; not to a new soul, but to a new image come from the soul, by the virtue of the Holy Spirit—to a branch pulled from its own essence, becoming green in the spirit of Christ, and standing solidly in the light of divinity without shining with a borrowed light. The new image is the fuel and the wood to be burned by the igneous soul?8 H. MIRRORS AND ENGENDERING IN FRANZ V O N BAADER Between Boehme and Baader, the theosopher Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), perhaps the greatest in Germany of his period, provided the relay of Boehmean esotericism. Let us mention no more than the entry that he devotes to Bildniss in his astonishing "Biblical and Emblematical" Dictionary of 1765.29 There one learns that the soul, the intermediary between the flesh and the spirit, is itself first without an image though it "bears" it. The spirit, which has the image in it, forms the image of truth in the soul through the intermediary of the Word. This Naturphilosophfindsit important that sap, or a plant's "oil of growth," contains the image of the flower before it blossoms. He compares this property of living beings with the palingenetic experiments in which he was not the first to be interested: the visible image of a calcinated flower still exists somewhere, ready to actualize itself in a figure. Similarly, the human breath, the "lamp of Jehovah," contains an image (Bild), including that of the impious. As Oetinger adds that the devil and his cohorts are deprived of it, we will see further in this Bild a synonym of "body" in the sense that Boehme understood it. Some men succeed in making this image more or less manifest in themselves by means of an intense desire (durch heftige Begierde)?0 The Theory of the Three Images Baader gleans the theosophical heritage while orchestrating it in his own manner. Interested in theories of light,31 and thus in the problems of optics, he notes that the sense of sight presupposes both the existence of a passive mirror in the eye, and a function that is active, formative, and completing.32 Similarly, he differentiates two sorts of imagination, one active, the other reactive.33 But
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as he always aims to transcend the binary, he postulates the existence of a third term, more distinctly creative than the second and of which he informs us in a short paper entided Toward a Theory of the Image?4 Let us distinguish, proposes Baader, three sorts of images: the catoptric, the plastic copy or simple "portrait," and the "substantial" (wesenhaft). The first is a simple reflection in a mirror. Here, the form has not yet "deposited" any substance, and vice versa; there is not yet anything organic. The second is passive like the first, but is already witness to the potential presence of a substance: examples are the specter of a rose in the lens of a concave ardent mirror (allusion to the experiments in palingenesis mentioned in relation to Oetinger), the apparition of a deceased or absent person, the evestrum, the mirage; the Sun at its rising or setting, when it is hidden by the horizon and appears to us "as a figure," gives an idea of this second kind of image. It is no more "substantial" than the first, no freer in relation to its model. Similarly, the pronunciation of a noun is not independent of what is named; magic, magical image, and magnet are "identical" in the sense that they imply a relationship of absolute dependence. In these first two cases, one will say that the image remains separate from its original. There is no communion, or consubstantiality, with the model: such is, in a manner that is not merely metaphorical, the situation of Man wandering among the reflections of things, separated as he is from his divine model. One then conceives of the necessity of a third sort of image, which would be neither a catoptric reflection nor even a palingenetic specter of flowers previously reduced to centers. Baader recalls that "substance" (Wesen) and "image" (Bild) are often employed indiscriminately by Boehme:35 every image, as we have seen in his case, is the substance for what it has become the image of and, by the same token, it is submitted or subordinated to this entity.36 And what is more, if it is spiritual, it requires a substantive image to become actual, to become "effective." Inversely, the image does not become substantive without this spirit that it reflects.37 Nature is lavish in providing demonstrative lessons. If water reflects the Sun, it is because it already has a solar nature—which is not true of the Earth. One will see in this reflection an active exchange of substances: the rays excite the solar substance of water to "project the image" (einbilden) of the star into it. A comparison that aids in the understanding of the processes of all growth and vegetation as well as the mysteries of temporal and eternal life. The principle at work here is that of the active conjunction of an "inner light" and an "outer sun." If in the Earth, in matter, there were nothing solar, celestial, and if there were nothing earthly in the Sun, neither would be able to interpenetrate the other. Nothing can become "real" without effecting this conjunction, which can be described as a descent and an ascent (Baader often speaks of ascensus and descensus). Chladni's sound figures prove that the substance whence the
sound is emanating is in a relationship of connaturality with the matter on which the sounds draw their hieroglyphs.38 The image is conferred with a mediating role between producer and product, as soon as the former accepts active participation in the creative exchange. A very Boehmean concept, in truth. But Baader, unlike his preecessor, does not look down on schematic explanations that are somewhat abstract. In the short piece Toward a Theory of the Image, he is at pains to schematize. Let there be B (the Sun, or God), who sends His ray to A (to water, or into Man). Then the moment of Desire appears: B fertilizes A by projecting its ray (its image) into it. "Sensitized" in B, A then projects its own seed into B. Having received it, B "finishes the image" and "forms the body" of this, which B sends back to A. It is thus that the woman (B) stimulates the seed in man (A), which he projects into woman—and this seed becomes a child. It is the same process in the negative: first one sins in the imagination, then in the will, and finally in action. We may thus distinguish three phases in the formation of an image. The first is "spiritual," it is that of the Geistbild. The second corresponds to the will of A, which allows the image to rise to the level of substance; hence the ray that water sends back to the Sun manifests in the form of the seven colors, which are not the mere refraction of a luminous ray but something like a septiform image that is already potentially substantive. The third phase is the finishing of the image, which by means of B achieves the status of corporeity (Leiblichkeit), that is, of "reality" in the theosophical sense.39 We see that A always remains free to respond to B's desire or to remain deaf to its call. B's silence is described by Baader in another narrative: "The spirit must not disturb the process of growth at work in our heart, any more than the Sun must come and shine in the roots."40 Let us remember above all that to become the image of God does not mean to reduce oneself to a mere portrait of Him, passive and lifeless. God feels joy in participating in his symbolic image (Gleichnbs)—Man—who has become active substance, not in being reflected in him in a catroptic manner without feeling anything himself. God feels and experiences only if the human image has become substance.
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Images and Reflections in God, in Man, and in Nature As early as 1786, Baader wrote in his journal: Visible form, figure, formation and organization of a thing! Only living (organic) substance makes thb figure visible to us. Is it anything other than the letter of the inner substance, its hieroglyph? He went on to add that we "spell" in the Book of Nature.41 It was the beginning of an organicist philosophy, but here no more than a duality is revealed. His
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later thinking, of his maturity, was oriented toward a philosophy of becoming, or rather of "formation." As we have seen, it is not so much a question of "entering" into Being or into existence, as of "forming" oneself, of "giving form." T o be, is to "be formed" (gestaltet sein). N o place for a nondefined or abstract being who would not be Dasein. Baader notes that since Aristotle the notions of form and of matter have been conceived abstractly and dualistically. It is better to consider forma and formatum as two terms that imply a relationship made possible through the intervention of a third mediating term, the formans, or the spirit, which distinguishes them without separating them, unites them without making them identical. It did not escape Baader, in any case, that Cornelius Agrippa had seen an example of this three-term relationship in the Hebraic language.42 Same mediation between the knower and the known. The first inhabits the second (innewohni) through a spiritual image, the guarantor of "organic" and dynamic knowledge, while in "mechanical" knowledge the knower only goes through (durchwohnt) the known, without the two terms having the experience of reciprocal joy. The known is always an image, a living reflection: "What is thus found there is reflected, is expressed only by its speech image, or the name that names it, and only by means of which it can be known.43 Thus the painter or sculptor produces an image in which he endlessly loses himself while finding himself, and through it, ceaselessly renews himself in producing.44 Which is equally true on the divine level, as we have seen with respect to Boehme. Has John Scottus Eriugena not said: "Deus est in se, fit in creaturb"? Before Boehme, Meister Eckhart, to whose rediscovery Baader strongly contributed, considered that God, or the absolute monad, feels the desire proper to every monad not only to pour (Erguss) into itself (the Father in the Son, or as the Son), by a direct birth as it were, but also eternally to operate the indirect engendering of the Holy Spirit—allusion to thefilioque— beginning with the Father and Son.45 It may be noted in passing that Christian theosophy is well able to accommodate this Roman dogma of filioque. But the essence, here, is that according to Boehme and Baader the absolute Spirit proceeds first by an "architectonic" self-contemplation—it mirrors itself, reflects itself—a self-formation as it were, or the first magical representation that the Absolute has of itself. And then that the Spirit seizes itself, fixes itself, by "suspending" (aufheben) this representation: it comes out of the mirror to go back into itself—Selbstbegriff, which is none other than the Word. Baader has devoted many pages to the Sophia.46 "God cannot think without engendering his image," Saint-Martin had written.47 That is why, adds Baader, the Son, the Word, and the Spirit mean the same thing. Analogically we become aware of ourselves only through the intermediary of a Gedankenbild engendered in us, the mediator assuring our outer activity that actualizes and executes this image.48 Similarly, Saint-Martin
said that we know the extent of our own thinking by the images that we produce in ourselves.49 God possesses His inner mirror, the guarantor of all reascensus, of all reascending into Himself. So a tree generating seeds because it comes from a seed. T o effectively reflect the Spirit, this divine mirror—the Idea, the Sophia—must have at its disposal a basis in which it can mirror itself in its turn and which it submits to itself. This basis is Nature, which is mirrored and finds its autonomy in the infinite richness of ideal images displayed by the Sophia.50 But Nature remains Godless, thus in shadow, as long as God does not manifest in Man.51 Thus, God, Sophia, Man, and Nature are situated in relation to one another in a relationship of dependency and of freedom made possible through the nearly infinite possibilities of combinations that this Game of the four mirrors allows. Every thing, every being, is thus created to be the image of what is superior to it. But two entities reflected in one another become creative only if they both "enter" into a third mirror on which they will depend. Nature was the mirror of Man, Man was the bearer of an image of God which he had to send into Nature. Form, image, envelope are thus situated below what lives in them and manifests through them, that is, below the Spirit. We are not above the Spirit that is in us. In the case of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son (homoousia) there is no distinction between the image and its substrate, contrary to the status of the beings emanated from the divine Spirit or created by Him. When the Scriptures say that Man was created in the image of God, this means that Man was not yet this image, had not "fixed" it (fixiert), and that it still had to acquire fife and corporeity (Leb- und Leibhafwerden) through an act of inner birth (Eingeburt). While sin laid heavy hindrances on this generation, all creatures nevertheless remain destined to become the image of God; especially the human being, who can and must render it "creatural." The deceptive and ironic promise of the Serpent, "Eritis sicut Dei!" thus appears as a caricature of the true formula, "Eritis Dei imago?' Satan wanted to make Adam believe that he should not seek to become an imago of God participating in divine life, but a God for himself, a God producing his own image and not that of his creator. And Baader exhorted the theologians not to ignore Boehme and Paracelsus, when they wish to discourse on the imago Dei?2 Another sin consists in taking for our God an element inferior to us and submitting ourselves to it. The first (wanting to be God), demonic, actualizing the monstrosity of the shadowy image, while the second is rather of animal nature—"brutal," in the etymological sense. Playing on the possibilities of the word Bild, Baader urges his fellow-men to let themselves be "formed" (bilden) by objects worthy of contemplation, not to engage themselves in a deformar tion (Verbilden, Umbilden) contrary to our ontological vocation.53 He warns against the error of those who believe they are dealing only with themselves in forming, in "making perceptible," their ideas. Indeed, wherever we direct our
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desire there is always a form to send our image back to us, whether it be the divine or its caricature. Let us thus be attentive to the choices of our "attractive" inner mirrors, let us not sow them with just anything! A very Paracelsian idea, which sees in our psychological projections substances that have become autonomous, separated from ourselves, very real, capable of turning against us, of poisoning us—or else of leading us to our true vocation. Saint-Martin had seen that the task of Man is to give form, corporealization, to ideas; what the verse of the Emerald Tablet expresses so well: "Vis ejus Integra est, si conversa fuerit in terram." He also had taught, in Man of Aspiration, that our soul is the natural ground of the Word of God, in which this "Man of Aspiration" must sow. It is a question of finding in the core of oneself the place that can make the living seed of our ideas germinate without needing to entrust this germination to a domain foreign to our true nature.54
keyboard of their creative or re-creative imagination, variations on the symbol that is the rainbow, so fitting for descriptions of an imagination entering into its mirrors.56 The composer Olivier Messiaen has given us, in Quartet for the End of Time, a theological rainbow in the part entided "Explorations of rainbows for the Angel who announced the end of time." On this Messiaen has written: "The piece is dedicated to the angel and especially to the rainbow that arches over it—the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom and of every vibration of light and sound." [The lecture was followed by an extract from Messiaen's Quartet for the End ofTime.]
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"The spirit of Man can live only by admiration, and his heart can live only by adoration and love." This sentence of Saint-Martin, quoted several times by Baader, is illuminated in the theosophical context that belongs to it. Mirror, mirroring, admiration, miracle do not express a passivity here but a very active operation. T o admire is to recognize, to accept, an otherness, to posit the just relationship between subject and object, to rediscover unity in diversity. Through the mediation of the mirror an androgyny is constituted, since the superior as a masculine tincture admires himself in the inferior where he finds his image, and calls forth from this very mirror, which is the feminine tincture, a masculine aspect. The inferior submits to the superior which is inside it and which is not thereby annihilated; the superior in turn uplifts inside itself the inferior which admires and unites with it without so denying itself.55 Admiration is part of the cult, celebrated by the Man of Aspiration, whose purpose is to endow us once again with our original function as a divine image. "Render to God what is God's!" means for Baader "Render to God his image!" Thus it is the task of humans to be mirrors that reassemble the debris of a shattered world and transform dispersion into unity. T o practice the divine cult is to let God use us to accomplish the descent and ascent to which He unceasingly aspires. Because the heavens aspire to descend into humanity and through humanity over the entire Earth. The Earth, to raise itself toward the heavens. The angels, to go to and fro along the ladder glimpsed in Jacob's dream. A double movement, like the two component and complementary parts of love—nobility and humility—and which the human will can cause to deviate if it shuts itself off in its own Self. Our will to further the divine activity in us, through us, with us, reestablishes the free interplay of these organic reflections, dynamic and creative—the play of the imagination entering into its mirrors. Reflections whose scintillations, vibrations, interplay, and generation have been expressed by the theosophers in various ways. Playing, at times, on the
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NOTES * Lecture given at the XHth colloquium of the Universite Saint-Jean de Jerusalem, "The Face of God and Theophanies," which was held in Paris in 1985. 1. On the notion of the creative imagination, but focused on its magical function, cf. the essay "Vis Imaginativa ..." in the present work. 2. Sophiological literature already being plentiful, this page is obviously no more than than a brief recall. Besides my readings of Boehme, it was inspired by: the thesis of Alexandre Koyre (La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929, reprint 1971), and the study by Pierre Deghaye ("La Sagesse dans Poeuvre de Jacob Boehme," in Sophia et I'Ame du Monde, Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme" series, 1983, pp. 154-194). This "Cahier de l'Hermetisme" contains many essential bibliographical elements on sophiology. 3. Menschwerdung, book II, III, 4. 4. Pierre Deghaye has already drawn attention to a passage in J. and W. Grimm's German dictionary relating to the word Bild (cf. his article: "Realiter und idealiter: Zum Symbolbegriff bei Fr. Chr. Oetinger," in Pietismus und Neuzeit, Gottingen, Van den Hooke and Ruprecht, 1984, vol. X, p. 78, n. 42). The Grimms attribute to Bild, among other meanings, those of "lebende Gestalt, Figura, Persona," supported by Genesis 5:3 (in Luther's Bible: "Und Adam [. . .] zeugete einen son, der seinem bilde ehnlich war"). Boehme often employs Bild for Leib (cf. notably Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi, I, XII, 3). 5. Cf. at the end of Vierzig Fragen; diagram reproduced in a recent edition, Quarante questions sur I'Ame, Paris, Arma Artis, 1983 (reprint of Saint-Martin's translation published in 1802), and in Pierre Deghaye, La Naissance de Dieu ou la doctrine de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Albin Michel, 1985, p. 163. Bild and Bildniss are not necessarily interchangeable. Example: "Der Geist [ist] die theure edle Bildniss, die Gott schufzu seinem Bilde" (XVII, 9). 6. Schutzschrift wider B. Tilken, I, no. 209. 7. Menschwerdung, book II, X, 2. 8. Pierre Deghaye, op. cit. (cf. n. 5), p. 76; and from the same author: "L'homme virginal chez J. Boehme," in L 'Androgyne, Paris, Albin Michel, "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme" series, 1986.
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9. "Ein Bild und auch ein Gleichniss Gottes" (De Tribus Principiis, X, 9; XTV, 57). "Bild Gottes, nach dem Gleichniss Gottes" (ibid, XVII, 12; XXII, 19). "Die rechte wahre Bildniss und gleichniss Gottes" (Bedenken iiber Stifel, 27), etc. 10. Menschwerdung, book II, X, 3. 11. Ibid, book I, III, 16. 12. De Triplici Vita, XVIII , 3: "Der rechte Mensch in der himmlischen Bildniss hat keine Zeit; seine Zeit ist gleich einer runden Krone, oder einem ganzen Regenbogen, der keinen Anfang hat, auch kein Ende. Denn die Bildniss, welche die Gleichniss Gottes ist, die hat weder Anfang noch Zahl; sie ist von Ewigkeit in Gottes Weisheit gestanden, als eine Jungfrau ohne Gebdren oder ohne Willen, denn Gottes Wille ist in ihr der Wille gewesen [. . .] Aber sie war ohne Leib, ohne Wesen, ohne Essentien: die Essentien wurden aus dem ewigen Centro in ihr mit ihrer Schopfung rege, als in dreien Miittern, nach den dreien Principien. Das war die Schopfung, dass Gott wollte in alien dreien Miittern offenbar -werden: und das war der Tod, dass das Regiment der Bildniss nicht in seiner Ordnung blieb, dass sich das Mittlere ins Aeussere be gab, und das Aeussere ins Mittlere." 13. De Tribus Principiis, XVII, 27; XX, 84. 14. Ibid, XVI, 24: "Sondern ein Thier im Willen, Sitten und Sinnen: es hat auch keine Macht oder Verstand darzu, dass es konnte ein Gleichniss Gottesfiguriren; und wenn's sich's gleich aufs hochste erhebet im Willen nach der Gleichniss Gottes, so gebieret es ein freundlich und listig Thier und nichts mehr, im Menschen so wohl als in andern Kreaturen. Allein die ewigen Essentien, von Adam aufalle Menschen geerbet, bleiben mit dem verborgenen Element im Menschen stehen; darinnen die Bildniss stehet, aber ganz verborgen, ausser der Wiedergeburt im Wasser und heiligen Geist Gottes." I translate Gestirn by "astrum" rather than by "star." It is indeed a matter of the spiritus mundi, or the sidereal spirit, the "soul of the world" in the negative sense understood by Boehme (cf. infra, "The. Image in Man: Paths of Renewal," 1). Saint-Martin translates by "constellation" (Des trois principes de I'essence divine, Paris, 1802, vol. I, p. 339). 15. Ibid, XXIII, 33. 16. Ibid, XXII, 22-23. 17. Menschwerdung, book II, VI, 11. 18. Ibid, book III, IV, 6: "Auch zerstbret ein Falscher Wille die Bildniss; denn der Wille ist die Wurzel der Bildniss, denn er zeucht das Mysterium Gottes in sich; und der Geist desselben Mysterii eroffnet das schone Bild, und zeucht ihm das gbttliche Mysterium an, ak Gottes Wesenheit, verstehe Christi himmlischen Leib." 19. "In diese Bildniss bringest du deine Wunder, so du treu bist" (Psychologia Vera, XII, 23 ff). 20. Menschwerdung, book III, IV, 2 ff. 21. Ibid, book II, V, 15: " Wie das Feuer die Wesenheit verschlinget, giebt aber Geist fiir Wesen: also werden uns unsere Werke im Geiste und himmlischer Freuden aus dem Feuer Gottes dargestellet, ab ein heller Spiegel, gleich dem Wunder der Weisheit Gottes." 22. "In alien Menschen liegt das Himmelsbild, welches in Adam verblich" (Vom Irrthum der Sekten Stiefels, 292). 23. "Durch die Imagination und emstliche Begierde werden wir wieder der Gottheit schwanger, und empfahen den neuen Leib im alten" (Unterricht an Kaym, II, 8). 24. De Tribus Principiis, XVI, 41. 25. Ibid, XVI, 47. Menschwerdung, book III, VII, 5.
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26. "Die Seele mag nicht Gott sehen, als nur in ihrer neugehornen Bildniss, nur dur und in Jungfrau Sophien" (Mysterium magnum, LII, 10). 27. De Triplici Vita, XI, 49: "Denn die Bildniss Gottes im Menschen ist so mdchti und krdfiig, dass, wenn sie sich ganz in Gottes Willen wirft, sie die Natur bdndiget, dass das Gestirn gehorsam ist, und sich hoch in der Bildniss erfreuet; denn sein Wille ist auc der Eitelkeit los zu sein, und wird abo in der Bildniss in Sanftmuth entzundet, dessen sich Himmel freuet." 28. Bedenken uber Stiefel, 119-120: "Darum heisset's Neugeborenwerden, einenneue Sohn aus dem alten aus sich selber gebdren, nicht eine neue Seele, sondern eine neue Bild der Seele, in Kraft des H. Geistes, einen Zweig aus seiner eigenen Essenz in Christi G ausgriinend, und im Licht der Gottheit innestehend, nicht anscheinend, sondern aus sich leuchtend." 29. Biblisches und emblematishces Worterburch, dem Tellerischen Wdrterbuch Anderer falschen Schrifterkldrungen entgegen gesetzt, s.l, 1776. Facsimile reprint, Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1969, Cf. pp. 75-77, article "Bildniss, Bild Gottes, ikon, morphe." 30. Ibid, Oetinger calls on the Scriptures: 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 4:23; Romans 12:2; Titus 3:5; Galatians 4:19; James 1:18; Proverbs 20:27. And adds this curious testimony: "Einigen, die grossen Ernst brauchen, wird [das verborgene Bild] offen wie D. Clemm es in seiner Theologie bemerkt von Elia Camerario, welcher mit offenen geschlossenen Augen das Bild der Seele gesehen. Elias Camerarius aber, mit dem ich, meinem nachsten Anverwandten, viel conversirte, machte nichts daraus." 31. Cf. "Tenebre, Eclair et Lumiere chez Franz von Baader," in A. Faivre, Philosophie de la Nature. Physique sacre'e— theosophie, Paris, Albin Michel, 1996. 32. Sdmtliche Werke, vol. II, 362ff.(Fermenta CognitionisIV, 1822-24). 33. Ibid, 379 ff. 34. "Zur Lehre vom Bilde," in Vorlesungen iiber spekulative Dogmatik (zehnte Vorlesung), VIII, 93-106. 35. II, 260 (Fermenta Cognitionis EI, 1822-24). On image, magnet, magic, imagine, etc, cf. ibid, II, 268. 36. Ibid, II, 315. 37. IX, 197. 38. VIII, 134 ff. (XVte Vorlesung): "Dass alles Wirkliche nur durch eine Conjunction eines Aeusseren und eines Inneren, eines Descensus und eines Ascensus zu Sta kommt, davon gibt uns auch die Ton—oder Wortsetzung ein lehrreiches Beispiel. Die Chladnischen Klangfiguren (welche iibrigens schon Hooke kannte) beweisen nemlich, Tongebende Substanz nur durch eine Selbstconfiguration (Figurbeschreibung) den Ton e ohne Zweifel, indem durch die hiedurch bewirkte Oeffnung (gleichsam Fluidisirung) der Substanz die innere Luft mit der dusseren in Conjunction tritt?' Chladni's experiments on "sound figures," in 1787, consisted in spreading quartz sand on plaques, which were then exposed to vibrations. Straight lines, colors, and hyperboles could be seen being drawn on this sand. To be compared with Lichtenberg's experiments in 1777. Cf. "Physique et Metaphysique du Feu chez Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810)," in A. Faivre, op. cit. infra p. 165, n. 6. 39. VIII, 93 ff. 40. XII, 211, 6-9 ("Der Geist soil sowenig das Wachstbum im Herzen aufstbren, al die Sonne in die Wurzel scheinen soit').
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41. XI, 61: "Form, Figur, sichtbare Bildung, Gestaltung eines Dinges! Nur am lebendigen (organischen) Wesen wird sie uns sichtbar. 1st sie etwas anderes, als Buchstabe seines inneren Wesens, Hieroglyphe?" 42. XIII, 170ff.(De occulta philosophia: "Prae omnibus linguarum notis Hebraeorum scriptura omnium sanctissima est infigurischaracterum, in punctis Vocalium, et in apicibus accentuum, velut in materia, forma et spiritus consistens"). The quotation is taken from Agrippa, B. I, chap. 74 (the text says "sacratissima," not "sanctissima"). 43. II, 53 (Fragmente zu einer Theorie des Erkennens, 1809): "Das sich sofindende, Spiegelnde, spricht sich nur in jenem seinem Bilde aus, und dieses Bild ist sein Name, bei dem es gennant, und durch welchen es allein nur gekannt ist." 44. XII, 186. 45. "Zur Lehre vom Bilde," in VH, 96 ff. 46. II, 223 ff. (Fermenta Cognitionis 11, 1822-24). On Baader's sophiology, cf. A. Faivre, "Love and Androgyny in Franz von Baader," in Access .. , p. 201-274. 47. Ecce Homo, Paris, 1792, p. 18. 48. VII, 34ff.(Ueber den Urternar, 1816). 49. XII, 278, manuscript note in the margin of p. 47 (vol. I) of the book by Saint-Martin, De I'esprit des choses: "Ganz richtig bemerkt Saint-Martin, dass wir den eigenthiimliche Umfang unseres Denkens erst durch die Bilder kennen lernen, welche wir in uns erzeugen. Wenn aber wirklich diese Bilder die Spiegel sind, in denen unser Geist sich beschaut, wenn man also sagen darf, dass unsere Gedanken uns den Dienst der Sophia leisten (das Analoge leisten, was die Sophia Gott lebtet), so muss auch eine Natur in uns dieser Sophia als Spiegel dienen, wie die ewige Natur in Gott der Sophia zum Spiegel dient." 50. Ibid, 277 ff. 51. "Zur Lehre vom Bilde," in VIII, 93. 52. IX, 198. 53. II, 339ff.(Fermenta CognitionisW, 1822-24). 54. IX, 145. 55. Cf. "Love and Androgyny in Franz von Baader," pp. 201-274 in A. Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, Albany, SUNY Press, 1994. And for a Jungian reading of Baader: Lidia Procesi Xella, Filosofia erotica (introduction, translation, and notes by L. P. Xella), Milan, Rusconi, 1982, p. 53. 56. Cf, for example, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, "Rapports spirituels et temporels de l'arc-en-ciel," pp. 247-268, in Oeuvresposthiimes, Tours, 1807, vol. II.
From the Divine to the Concrete
Figure Figure,
Or Transparition Through
Mirrors
(For F r i e d h e l m K e m p )
INTRODUCTION: T W O APOCRYPHA, ONE HOMILY Let us first listen to three brief stories. The first is taken from the Acts of Peter (second century), the second from the Acts of John (second century), and the third from a homily (dated from 744) on the Nativity. The first of the two apocryphal Acts describes Saint Peter healing a blind person in the house of a certain Marcellus. After this miracle, Peter tells the people who are present of the vision with which he was blessed on Mount Tabor: Each one among us, in his capacity to contain the vision, saw as he was capable of seeing (Unusquisque enim nostrum sicut capiebat videre, prout poterat videbat). Our Lord, wishing that I contemplate hb majesty on the holy mountain, I, with the children ofZebedee, saw the brightness.of his light, and fell down as though dead. [. . .] And he [Christ] gave me hb hand and raised me up. And upon arising, I saw him again, as I was able to conceive him (eum talem vidi, qualem capere potui). The same day, in the great room of this house, elderly widows who are unbelievers implore Peter to give them too the ability to "see" (in both a physical and spiritual sense, it would seem). So everyone began to pray, and "the room in which they were shone as though it were illuminated," but with an "invisible light." Then Peter asks them: Tell what you have seen. And they said: We have seen a young man. And others said: We have seen an old man ofsuch beauty that we cannot describe him. But others said: We have seen a young boy gently touching our eyes and our eyes were opened.' 153
~T~
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From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure
In the second Apocrypha appears a narrative on the vocation of the aposdes, when John and James return with their boat after a night at sea. James says to John:
providing any lengthy developments. The quotation that is often repeated in his writings and his courses at the E.P.H.E. is taken from the Acts of Peter: "Eum talem vidi, qualem capere potui."$ Indeed, I know of no other situating of these passages in a hermeneutic perspective than his. Even in the referential corpus of modern Western theosophy (the one compiled since the Renaissance), these, or other examples of the same sort, appear to be absent. My purpose here is to attempt to explore the scope of and the issues in these three stories. Henry Corbin has opened the way, and it is no coincidence that a philosopher— a theosopher—such as he has deemed them worthy of attention. These visions represent a form of the imaginary in the sense that, proper to the men and women who experience them, they take on forms adapted to each one's individual imagination. Perhaps they could be read from the viewpoint of a psychologist. Let us be content with approaching them in their context, not just a historical and philological one—H.-C. Puech has already accomplished this very well—but also a spiritual one, that is, as experiences of the imaginal type. Indeed, they put the subject into relationship with the mundus imaginalb in the sense that Corbin understood it, the region of the Malakut or the mesocosm "situated" between the divine world and our corporeal world: it is the place of divine mirrors, inhabited by angelic spirits; there bodies are spiritualized and spirits become corporeal. Starting with this notion of mundus imaginalb and leaving aside Phantasey— figments of the imagination, the sickly imagination or imagination functioning by mere automatism—I would say that there are four forms of active imagination. The first two are not of an imaginal nature. First there is the one that, beginning with elements at its disposal, establishes new symbolic relationships, unprecedented ones. Hence most works of fiction, of poetry, of painting, and the like. Then there is the imagination that plays on the universal correspondences supposed to exist in the universe—that of "second causes"—thus the "Correspondences" spoken of by Baudelaire in his well-known sonnet. It presides, of course, in the creation of works of art as well, but by its nature also in forms of natural magic that put into play these networks of correspondences for the ends of knowledge, such as astrology, or of action, such as the science of pentacles and talismans. The two other forms of imaginative activity are connected with the imaginal. One could be called "passive" in the sense that it is the irruption of the mundus imaginalb into the consciousness of a subject that has not sought to bring on this imaginal experience. Into this category seem to fall the visions reported above. But the other could be called "active," in the sense that the subject has voluntarily put his active imagination into play in view of entering into relationship with the mundus imaginalb. This fourth form of imaginative activity will be dealt with further on. The reading of the three ancient texts and these methodological distinctions seem to me to call for a few comments that complement one another.
John, what does this child want of us who is on the shore and who has called us? And I [John] said: what child? And he said to me: The one who is signaling to us. And I answered: Because we have been on watch for a long time at sea, your eyes are deceiving you, my brother James. Do you not see the man standing over there, well-built and handsome, with a noble bearing? And James said to me: It is not he that I see, my brother, but let us leave thb place, we shall indeed find out what this means. And then, when we had touched shore, we saw [the person] helping us make fast the boat. And when we left the shore, meaning to follow him, he appeared to me again, hb head somewhat balding, with a thick and very long beard, but James saw him as a young man with a new beard. So we were both intrigued, wondering what thb meant. [. . .] And often, after that, he appeared to me sometimes as a short man, not very well-built, and at others like someone as tall as the sky. And there was in him another extraordinary thing: when I was seated at table, he took me in his arms, and I held him close to me, and then Ifelt his chest sometimes gentle and tender, sometimes hard as stone, so that I was perplexed? The third story is found in a homily written in 744, perhaps by John Damascene, on the Nativity. It was taken up again in a commentary attributed to the Great Canon Andrew of Crete (composed shordy after 1204). The subject is the Three Wise Kings: And these [the Magi], having glorified her [having glorified the Virgin] as was fitting, went to the place where they were lodging. They spoke together of the child and of the manner in which it had appeared to them. The first said: I saw him as a little child; the second: I saw him as a man of thirty years of age; the third: I saw him as an old white-haired man. And they marveled at the change of appearance, of the metamorphosis of the new-born babe. This extract from the homily is accompanied by an illustration. But the text that contributed most gready to make this story known is Marco Polo's Description of the World, where he tells the story as it had been set down in Persia in 12 72 ? The three stories were of such interest to Henri-Charles Puech that he devoted three years of seminars to them at the E.P.H.E. 4 His approach having remained intentionally philological, it then fell to Henry Corbin to extract a spiritual meaning that would lend itself to a hermeneutic. He made frequent use of them, giving them as examples of theophanic experience, but without
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From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure
They concern, in essence, the nature of the relationships between the image and its model: on the one hand, their mutual isomorphy; on the other, their reciprocal engendering. I shall finish with a few remarks concerning the "education of seeing."
become a mirror that will reflect the imaginal world in its manner. Whence the theophanic character of the vision that can result from it. Obviously, for the outside observer, a nonvisionary, such as myself, this vision has at first glance an ambiguous status: a concrete, real figure? an allegory? Henry Corbin puts us on track:
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I. T H E ISOMORPFIY OF T H E IMAGE AND OF ITS MODEL Primacy of the Image for Access to the Model It is known that there is a tradition—notably the biblical—which emphasizes the primacy of hearing in matters of spiritual education and initiation, which has not always been unrelated to some forms of iconoclasty. But in parallel there exists another one, not only Hellenic, which insists on the primacy of sight (of the image, of vision). On an imaginal plane both are in truth complementary, the imaginal world not being populated with photographable entities: one supposes it to be inhabited by sounds as much as by forms, or rather by entities that are neither, but which, to make themselves perceptible to us, must pass through the channels of our senses. A physics experiment attracted the attention of certain German romantic philosophers, notably Franz von Baader, who saw in it a revealing example of the relationship between the image and its model. This was Chladni's experiment with what are known as "sound images." If sounds (music) are channeled through a horizontal glass tube along which is laid a layer of sand, one will see, so it seems, geometrical figures appearing in the sand.6 One is tempted to interpret these figures as a material translation of musical sounds, but only as one translation among other possible ones: the experiment could just as well be done with water and different figures would then be obtained—and which one would have to film instandy in order to study! But when we dream, it is mostly in images, and sight is generally more precise than sound—even if the imaginal can open up to us through music perchance. "Ophtalmoi ton auton akribesteroi manures" (the eyes are surer witnesses than the ears), a fragment of Heraclitus tells us.7 It is known what major importance was attributed by the three religions of the Book to the symbols of light and shadow, with all the metaphors that are associated with them. The Logos is light. This, the ontologically original and active principle, tends to produce its likeness in the world of bodies. And if the eye is itself luminous, as Plotinus said, then the fact of seeing is also an action, never a merely passive perception.8 The imaginal world is by nature a "luminous" mesocosm as well. So, then, the fact of actualizing the luminous nature of our eye, that is, letting it become light (which it is potentially, but the tendency is to let it become tarnished or foggy), comes down to allowing our spirit—our imagination—to
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One b only losing one's way if one asks, as has been done with respect to the figure of Beatrice in Dante: b this a concretefigure,or b it an allegory? Because if a divine Name can be known only in the concrete form that b its theophany, similarly any archetypal divine Figure can be contemplated only in a concrete tangible Figure or an imagined one—which makes it outwardly or mentally visible.9 homorphy ofLight and of the Eye Let us maintain the formal parallelism between light and the imaginal world, and let us complement it with another: the parallelism between the eye and the imaginal vision. Hence, the eye would be to light what the imaginal vision is to the imaginal world. And the eye itself is no more light (it is only of a luminous nature) than the imaginal vision, with which the characters in our three stories would have been graced, is the imaginal world itself. It is only one possible reflection of it. In fact, in the context that I have chosen to refer to here, the eye is only a creature of light ('Das Auge als Geschbpfdes Lichts," says Goethe).10 Just as the Sun is the the eye of the world, not the world itself, so the imaginal vision is like an incarnation, a precipitate, of the imaginal world come to reflect itself on a mirror ready to receive it according to the laws that governed the making of this mirror. Saint Paul says that here below we can see only in image. It is indeed Christ that the Wise Kings "see," but each one in a different form adapted to the images already recorded in their personal memory. Each one of us, supposing that we were granted such a grace, would perceive another image, but which would maintain the same relationship with its imaginal model, by virtue of the inner light proper to every human being, a light of the same nature as the divine light. In the didactic part of his Sketch of a Theory of Colors, Goethe writes: "The eye owes its existence to light. Using any auxiliary animal (biological) organ it can find, light produces for itself an organ that may become similar to itself. And thus, the eye is formed by light and for light, so that the inner light can respond to the outer light."11 Similarly, we would be tempted to add, the light of the imaginal world would have created the human imagination like an organ, a mirror, in which it could be reflected in images which in their turn are sent back toward it as though to confer on it a thousand new forms. On the same page, Goethe also writes: "The ancient Ionian school [. . .] made
Exercises of Imagination
From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure
constant use of the adage that like is only known by like."12 And in the treatise of Plotinus "On Beauty," which Goethe read in Marsilio Ficino's translation, we read: "Necque vero oculus unquam videret solem, nisi factus Solaris esset" ("Never did eye see the Sun unless it had first become Sunlike"). As we know, Goethe put into verse this thought of Plotinus in this manner:
We are not dealing with a static correspondence between what is above and what is below. In the same way, the isomorphy of light/eye and the world/ imaginal vision (or the isomorphy of light/imaginal world and eye/imaginal vision) does not refer to a simple parallelism, in the way that Platonic Ideas or archetypes are reflected in the phenomenal world, but to dynamic and creative processes. It implies a personal relationship which is the search for the Other, made of reciprocity and love, as though the imaginal world had as much need for Man, as Man has for it. One thinks here of the hadith of the Prophet: "I was a hidden treasure, I aspired to be known." But one is never known except by another, who sees us through his own looking. If I am only a duplicate of the other, then nothing has happened. It is also necessary that in reflecting me he re-create me—re-engender me, as it were. Henry Corbin, in the work already mentioned, speaks of "transparition" in relation to this:
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If the eye were not sunlike, How could we perceive light? If God's own strength did not live in us, How could the divine delight us?u Goethe, furthermore, said to Schopenhauer: "What then? [. . .] Light would only exist to the extent that you would see it? No, quite to the contrary, it is you who would not be here, if the light did not see you!"14 Going further, and following the parallelism suggested earlier, we could say: "And so? The imaginal world would exist only to the extent that you would see it? No, it is just the opposite, it is you who would not not be here, if the light did not give you life. You are thought, imagined (by God or by the Gods), therefore you are! " But one could add: "He thinks you, He imagines you, so that in your turn you think Him, imagine Him, ceaselessly!"15 n . T H E RECIPROCAL ENGENDERING OF T H E IMAGE AND ITS MODEL The Personal Presence A relationship between light and the eye is not surprising, but it is more difficult to accept that we could be dealing with one and the same nature, that is, that we are proposing the existence of a fight in the eye itself. It can also seem scandalous to posit the existence, in our being, of a specific entity potentially oriented toward the imaginal world and maintaining with it, in addition, a person-to-person relationship. In his book on Ibn 'Arabi, Henry Corbin writes: It b first necessary to conquer a habit of thinking entrenched by centuries of philosophy and rationalizing theology, and discover that the totality of our being b not only this part that we presently call our person, because this totality also includes another person, a transcendent counterpart who remains invbible to us, what Ibn 'Arabi spoke of as our "eternal individuality"—our "divine Name"—what old Iran called Fravarti. To feel its presence, there b no other place or proof than to experience its attraction, in a sympatheia expressedso well in its own manner by the prayer of the heliotrope?6 One of the specific characteristics of the religions of the Book is indeed the idea of a personal relationship between Man and his God—or his angel.
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The theophanic concept (fry no means limited to some speculative scholars, but shared by all the spiritual circles where the Apocrypha flourished) is that of an Apparition which is the transparition of divinity through the mirror of humanity, in the way that light only becomes visible by taking shape and showing through the figure of a stained glass window. It is a union that is perceived not on the plane of perceptible data, but on the plane of the Light which transfigures them, that b, in the "imaginative Presence." Divinity is in humanity as the image is in its mirror. The place of the Presence is the consciousness of the believing individual, or more exactly the theophanic Imagination invested in him.'1 Reciprocal Engendering Through Seeing Just as the world is not a mere representation but is a substrate that takes form by means of our seeing—as Goethe pointed out to Schopenhauer18—so the imaginal world seems to require our visionary seeing. Thus it would project itself into our imagination as into a prism so that this would in turn send its own image back to it in forms and colors. But even more, it would seem, than do the Islamic traditions studied by Henry Corbin, modern western theosophers—mainly since the seventeenth century, emphasize the voluntary aspect of this imaginative activity. They do not know, and for good reason, of the terms mundus imaginalb and imaginal, but what these words convey has as much reality for them as for the Islamic esotericism of which Henry Corbin speaks. Furthermore, this Western theosophy places greater emphasis than does the other on the possibility or the necessity of an active reciprocity. In the case of Jacob Boehme and most of the many theosophers more or less situated in the Boehmean stream, one finds the idea, often present in spiritual alchemy also, that a luminous substance dwells in us—the eye would be like its
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physical concretization—that is always potentially reactivatable despite the original fall. But in their case, more so than among the theosophers of Islam, this idea is found associated with a process of incarnation: the Spirit aspires to "fix" itself in a body of light, that is, in a human who is worthy to receive it because he himself has become light. One might say here that the human soul is like a female womb ready to receive a spiritual seed with a view to a double pregnancy: not only that of the receiver (the human being), but also that of the giver of seed, who finds himself, by the same token, as though reengendered. Similarly, in the traditional theosophy of the modern West, the Sophia is the eye, the mirror, that the Ungrund "imagines" in order to introduce itself into it, to take form so to speak, by means of the images that this living mirror will send back to it. Adam in his turn is—or was—destined to become the image of God so that God could establish His dwelling in him, manifest His wonders through him. Thus the vocation of the human soul is to direct itself in imagination into the Father to be fertilized by Him in turn and, at the same time, to reengender Divinity in a creative manner that is always fresh. "God cannot think without engendering his image," writes Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin,19 who also insists on the reengendering of this image by Man. And Franz von Baader, the great heir and continuator of this current in the nineteenth century, speaking of the rays falling on a surface that are sent back in the form of colors, sees in this refraction an engendering.20 "All of nature is the prism of the divine ray of light," he writes.21 There is, he also reminds us, a solar substance in water which calls for and attracts the rays of the Sun. The Sun then projects its own image in the water (ein-bilden), which then allows the water to send this image back to the Sun while reengendering it. The metaphor is also valid for a relationship of the same nature between the Sun and the Earth: there is Earth in the Sun and Sun in the Earth.22 It is always the same active and fertile conjunction of an inner light and an outer sun. If we apply this metaphor (which is much more than an allegory) to the visions reported in our three texts, one will say, for example, that the Three Wise Kings receive from Christ an image in which Christ sees himself every time and that, as though fertilized by this seeing, they will then leave gold, incense, and myrrh at the feet of the Child, three different gifts which would be like the symbol of a triple birth. In Face de Dieu, Face de l'Homme . . . , in mentioning the examples of visions that we began with, Henry Corbin writes: "They all belong, and for good reason, to the gnostic families."23 Indeed, he always cites them in a docetist context, that is, in the context of a form of spirituality toward which he was inclined by preference. Thus Henry Corbin willingly followed the mention of these texts with a reference to the passage in the Acts of John where it is a matter of the cross of Light. Jesus said: "But, it is not the wooden cross that you will see coming back down here, any more than I am he who is
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on this cross." Passage of an extreme docetism. Now, while the theophanic visions reported in the Acts of Peter and the Acts of John may indeed refer to a historical context of a docetist type, this perhaps does not apply to the homily of the year 744 taken up by Marco Polo. And above all, even while accepting that our three stories lend themselves to a docetist reading, this in no way implies that this reading should be the only one possible, and even less that any theophanic vision necessarily refers to an imaginary of this kind. It is thus that modern Western theosophy, also fertile in descriptions of such visions, and open to the imaginal world, presents itself as strongly incarnationist, turned as it almost always is toward a Philosophy of Nature. With the exception, perhaps, of a Swedenborg, the Western theosopher that Henry Corbin preferred.24 There are several domains in the great mirror of theophanic visions. There are also several domains in Western theosophy. Thus, from theosophy as an esoteric hermeneutic to theurgy, the distance is sometimes not great. A form of ceremonial magic of a theurgic character can serve indirecdy to illustrate my purpose. It is that of the Order of Elect Cohens, developed toward 1750 by Martines de Pasqually. It is based, among other elements, on a "register" of 2,400 names of angels, archangels, and the like. With each of these entities is associated a character, and a sign—or hieroglyph—supposed to correspond to the character, both in a type of writing known as "ring-letters" (ecriture a lunettes). If the theurgist draws a character on a linen carpet and invokes the name of the angelic entity corresponding to this character, there is some chance, we are told, of seeing the corresponding hieroglyph drawn, in a luminous fashion, in the chamber of operation (a provoked theophany, called a "pass"). Now, if instead of the expected hieroglyph, it is that of another spirit that appears, then the theurgist, in the next operation, will draw the character of this other spirit and it is that one he will invoke.25 N o room here, certainly, for a possible plurality of images referring to a same entity in the imaginal world. But just as each person is not "fit" to receive, to "see," just any entity, it could be said, transforming the sentence from Saint Peter: "Ilium vidi, quern caperepotui." PERSPECTIVES The texts and the references presented here have been drawn from a corpus that is fairly extensive, but also rather specific (Christian apocryphal literature, Neo-Platonism, Islamic theosophy, the works of Goethe, of Corbin). All of them convey incitement to reflect on an education of seeing. Of the many thoughts that they inspire, it seems to me that a few could be inserted here, accompanied sometimes by appropriate citations, by way of final comments. The first comment has to do with an interpretation of certain miracles of the Virgin. Bernadette and other little girls having described their visions by
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means of images corresponding to those that these children could have seen in their churches, there was no lack of "clever" minds to draw the conclusion that everything, from that point on, was easily explainable and that any "miraculous" hypothesis could be put aside. Now, considering with even a litde attention and an open mind the stories of the theophanic visions spoken of earlier, one realizes the poverty of this kind of approach. In what form could the Virgin in fact be seen, assuming that she can be seen, if not through the images that each one of us already has of her? And who indeed would recognize her if she chose to show herself in the physical form that was "historically" hers? Already Ludwig Feuerbach considered religions as simple "projections" of human concerns. Certainly, no one today casts any doubt on the need to "situate" every religious tradition, and every theophanic image, in its social and historical context—to place them in their Sitz im Leben, as the New Testament exegetes say. Thus one can always understand them better by studying the economic circumstances (Marx), emotional frustrations (Freud), and collective resentments (Nietzsche) associated with their manifestation, and it is not a question of denying the validity of such research. But, as the sociologist Peter Berger says: "The point is, quite simply, that this is not the whole story." One can always define an analytical parameter to "explain" a traveler's tale, it nonetheless remains true that the country visited really exists.26 Similarly, the fact that the gods are symbols of human realities does not necessarily imply that they are no more than that,27 and the fact that a theophany individualizes each witness does not imply by the same token that it lets itself be dissolved in the analysis of these singularities. Second comment: by nature these texts lend themselves to a hermeneutic understood here in the sense of an anagogical renewal—what they often already are of themselves in an explicit manner. They are bearers of gnosis, that is, of knowledge that is not only speculative but active, transmutative. They illuminate the well-known distich of Angelus Silesius:
prompt to become autonomous. Hence the danger that some of them may pollute our mind, that of others, the natural surroundings, and in truth the entire universe. It would thus be a question of remaining vigilant in the choice and the use of our inner mirrors, beginning with not letting the one in which we are like an image of God become opaque; to cultivate an attention apt to receive the light while not seeding this mirror with just anything. "The spirit of Man," Saint-Martin says further, "can live only from admiration, and his heart can live only by adoration and love." Here, spirit and heart do not go separately and "admiration" must be taken in its etymological sense: admirare, "reflect toward," or "reflect in," actively, dynamically. T o this education of seeing we are invited by Marsilio Ficino who, having quoted the sentence by Plotinus on the solar nature of the eye, adds: "In the same way, no soul can see Beauty, if it has not become beautiful. Let him therefore first become completely like God, and completely beautiful, he who would contemplate God and Beauty."30 Let us here recall the Earth Spirit (the Erdgebt), who in Goethe's text appears to Faust in a terrifying form. But this is so only because Faust does not sufBciendy resemble this spirit, or not yet sufficiently. And it says to Faust: "You look like the spirit that you understand—but not like me!"31 Which can have two complementary meanings. On the one hand: "You are not yet sufficiently educated to perceive me, I do not find in you the images that I could take on to make myself be seen by you, and it is what you perceive that makes you so afraid." But one can also read: "I do not wish strongly enough to clothe myself for you, or I cannot manage to do it, hence the fear I arouse in you." In the second case the speech of the Earth Spirit also conveys a teaching: one does not show oneself naked to people, that is, without clothing appropriate to their seeing, through which and thanks to which our person would be perceptible to them—as is suggested an etymology of the word "person": personare, "to resound through." We do not accede to the world, natural and spiritual, and to beings, except through the molds that structure our physical eye and our inner eye. But if our inner eye remains passive, routine, lazy, then it runs the risk of "degenerating into a doctrinaire blindness," for example, in ideologies and reductive visions, totalitarian,32 or simply into a blurred mirror reflecting no more than lifeless forms. It is perhaps not given to everyone to partake of a theophanic vision. But between the Book of Nature, or an authentic work of art, and the imaginal world, there is perhaps not so much a gap as discrete degrees linking levels of reality. And while to most of us the imaginal world can appear too remote or inaccessible, the few stories, thoughts, and testimonies here brought together can at least serve as a horizon line that may orient us, spiritually or culturally, toward a spirit of openness to these levels of reality that are, perhaps, awaiting our seeing.
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Even if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem, But not in you, you would still be lost for all eternity?8 One can read here that Jesus aspires to be reborn a thousand times in the heart of Man, never in exactly the same form. One can also read that, in the exercise of his "ministry," the "Man the Spirit"—to take up once more the beautiful expression of Saint-Martin29— closes his senses to enchantments and images, to all the "glamours" of the deadly seductive sirens, so as to allow his active imagination to work on objects that are worthy of it. In old German, as we saw in the preceding article, Bild means both "image" and "body," whence the intuition—very widespread in modern Western theosophy—according to which our images tend to "take on body" really, that is, by forming them we create at the same stroke entities that are
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NOTES 1. Acts of Peter, XX-XXI, in Neutestamentliche Apocryphen, introduced by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, 5th ed, Tubingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1989, vol. II, pp. 275-277. Cf. also The Apocryphal New Testament, introduced by Montague Rhodes James, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924 (corrected edition, 1953, cf. pp. 321-323). 2. Acts of John, 88-89, in W. Schneemelcher, op. cit, p. 164. M. Rhodes James, op. cit, p. 251. 3. Cf. account of the lectures of Henri-Charles Puech, in Annuaire de I'Ecole Pratique des hautes etudes (Vth Section, Religious Studies, Sorbonne), 1966-67, vol. 74, -p. 135 (my source for the quotation of the text of the homily). Puech gives the following description of the illustration of this text: it is the "third of the miniatures that decorate, at the bottom of folio 106 V, manuscript no. 14 (XI th c.) of the library of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (description in Papadopoulos Karameus, [Ierosolumitike Bibliotheke], I, p. 57; photograph belonging to the collection of Christian and Byzantine archeology of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Vth Section). The Three Magi, of distincdy different ages, are here shown in the presence of the Virgin, the closest one bending over Jesus represented as a haloed child, the two others standing and each holding in his arms a small character whose head is, similarly, surrounded by a halo, and the chin bearded (black, in one case; white, in the other), in other words: Christ seen and represented in the appearance, here of an old man and there of an adult. The explanation was, moreover, provided and specified by the Greek text that such an image is meant to illustrate and which may be read on the following page (folio 107r, lines 13-27)" (the text that I quoted above follows). Unfortunately, this illustration has disappeared from the holdings of the collection of the E.P.H.E. (the research kindly undertaken in the Millet bequest by my colleague Professor Claude Lepage, in May 1993, proved firuidess). 4. Cf. the accounts of the lectures of H.-C. Puech, in Annuaire .. . (cited supra, n. 3): 1965-66, vol. 73, pp. 122-125; 1966-67, vol. 74, pp. 128-138; 1967-68, vol. 75, pp. 157-161. The research of H.-C. Puech was conceived as preliminary to an explanation of chapters XXXI-XXXII of Milione (Description of the World) of Marco Polo, where a tradition is reported relating to the vision that the Three Magi would have had of the child Jesus in three different appearances, according to the respective age of each one of them (cf. Annuaire ..., 1965-66, vol. 73, pp. 122 ff). In Annuaire ..., 1966-67, p. 134, H.-C. Puech cites "le Livre armenien de I'Enfance, c. XI, 17-21 (translation in Paul Peeters, Evangiles apocryphes, II, Paris, 1914, pp. 142-147), where Jesus manifests in turn to the Three Magi in different forms, in particular, according to paragraph 20, to Balthazar in the form of a 'son of an earthly king,' to Gaspar as a child lying in the manger, to Melkon as 'Christ enthroned, God made flesh.'" 5. Cf, for example, in Henry Corbin: "Temps cyclique et gnose ismaelienne," in Eranos Jahrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. XXIII, 1955 (republished under the same tide: Paris, Berg International, 1982, cf. pp. 71 ff); Avicenne et le recit visionnaire, Societe des monuments de l'lran, collection du Millenaire, "Bibliotheque iranienne," 1954 (reprint Paris, Berg International, 1979, cf. p. 104); "Face de Dieu et Face de l'Homme," in Eranos Jahrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. XXXVI, 1967, pp. 198 ff. (reprint in Face de Dieu, Face de l'Homme: Hermeneutique et Soufisme, Paris, Flammarion, "Idees et Recherches" series, 1983, cf. pp. 278 ff); En Islam iranien, Paris, Gallimard,
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"Bibliotheque des Idees" series, 1971, vol. I, p. 165, n. 135, and p. 329; "Theorie de la connaissance visionnaire en philosophie islamique," Nouvelles de I'lnstitut catholique de Paris, February 1977. 6. On the "sound figures" of Chladni (1787) and the context of his experiments, cf. my paper: "Physique et metaphysique du Feu chez J. W. Ritter (1776-1810)," Les Etudes philosophiques, special number Romantisme allemand, II, Paris, P.U.F, April-June 1983, pp. 47 ff. Republished in Philosophie de la Nature (Physique sacre'e et theosophi Paris, Albin Michel, 1996. And cf. "Thoughts of God, Images of Man," pp. 144 ff. in the present work (cf. n. 38). 7. Cited according to Les Presocratiques, edited by J.-P. Dumont, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliotheque de la Pleiade" series, 1988, p. 169. I owe the idea of this reference to Friedhelm Kemp, whose excellent lecture inspired the present essay; this lecture is entided Blick um Blick—Auge und Welt bei Goethe and was published, without a publisher's name, in 1992 (15 pages, unpaginated). For the quotation, cf. p. 4. 8. This is why it would be appropriate to refine the presentation, suggested above, of the third category of the imagination (this presentation is of course only of methodological interest). 9. H. Corbin, L'Imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d'Ibn 'Arabi, Paris, Flammarion, 1958, p. 106. 10. "Das Auge als ein Geschbpf des Lichtes leistet alles, was das Licht selbst leis kann": paralipomena to the Farbenlehre of Goethe, quoted in Goethes Werke, Munich, C. H. Beck, vol. Xffl, 1982 (9th ed.), p. 642 (note by E. Trunz). Cf. also the lecture of F. Kemp (cited supra, n. 7). 11. J. W. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, in Goethes Werke, op. cit, vol. XHI, p. 323: "Das Auge hat sein Dasein dem Licht zu danken. Aus gleichgiiltigentierischenHulfsorgan ruft sich das Licht ein Organ hervor, das seinesgleichen werde, und so bildet sich das Au Lichtefurs Licht, damit das innere Licht dem dusseren entgegentrete." 12. "Hierbei erinnern wir uns der alten ionischen Schule, welche mit so grosser Bed samkeit immer wiederholte: nur von Gleichem werde Gleiches erkannt' (Goethes Werke cit, vol. XIII, p. 324). This sentence by Goethe immediately follows the one previously cited. 13. "War nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,/Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken?/Lebt nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft,/Wie k'onnt uns Gbttliches entziicken?" (Goethes We op. cit, vol. XIII, p. 324). These verses follow the sentence previously cited. Like it, they are also quoted by Friedhelm Kemp, op. cit, p. 3. Goethe attributes this thought (which he has put into these four verses) to a "mysticism of times past." Paul-Henri Bideau (Goethe, Traite des couleurs, selected texts introduced by Paul-Henri Bideau, Paris, Triades, 1980, pp. 80 ff, note) thinks that this refers to Boehme. 14. "Was, sagte er mir einst, mit seinen Jupiteraugen mich anblickend, das Licht so nur da sein, insofern Sie es sehen? Nein, Sie waren nicht da, wenn das Licht Sie nicht s (Goethes Gesprdche, ed. Flodoard von Biedermann, Zurich-Stuttgart, Artemis, 1969, vol. II, p. 937). Text quoted, and well situated in its context, by Pierre Hadot, "L'apport du neo-platonisme a la philosophie de la nature en Occident," pp. 91-132, in Eranos Jahrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. Ill, 1970 (lecture of 1969), cf. notably p. 116. 15. I am here alluding to the saying that Baader was so fond of: "Cogitor (a Deo), ergo sum."
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16. H. Corbin, L'Imagination creatrice ..., op. cit, p. 131. 17. Ibid, pp. 205 ff. To be compared with 2 Corinthians 3:18: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (King James translation). 18. Cf. supra, n. 14. 19. Ecce Homo, Paris, 1792, p. 18. 20. Idea already communicated in my paper "Tenebre, Eclair et Lumiere chez Franz von Baader," in A. Faivre, Philosophie de la Nature. Physique sacre'e—theosophie, Paris, Albin Michel, 1995. 21. "[Einen] mechanischen Begriff haben die Physiker von der Lichtbrechung. Sie meinen, ein materieller Strahl falle auf die Ebene auf und werde zuriickgeworfen und gebe so das Bild, vielmehr aber ist die Spiegelung eine Erzeugung. Wenn ein Lichtstrahl hingeht, so geht er als Farbe zur tick. So kann man die ganze Natur das Prisma des Gbttlichen Lichtstrahles nennen" (Franz von Baader, Sdmtliche Werke, VIII, Leipzig, 1855, p. 82, text taken from Vorlesungen uber speculative Dogmatik of Baader, Vth notebook, 1828-38). 22. Cf. also my essay "Thoughts of God, Images of Man," supra, p. 144. 23. Face de Dieu, Face de l'Homme ... (1983), op. cit, p. 278. 24. The docetist passage concerning the cross of light is quoted by H. Corbin in Temps cyclique et gnose ismaelienne (1982), op. cit, p. 71. On the question of Corbin's interest in Swedenborg, cf. notably his study: "Hermeneutique spirituelle comparee: I) Swedenborg. II) Gnose ismaelienne," in Eranos Jahrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, 1964, vol. XXXni, pp. 72-176. Republished in Face de Dieu, Face de l'Homme (1983), op. cit, pp. 41-162. The imagination presiding over practices of "natural magic" hardly seens compatible with a docetist attitude, in contrast to the imagination of the "passive" visionary type (cf. supra, in relation to the four forms of the active imagination). Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, who pertinendy makes the distinction between these two forms, also notes that they have the tendency to be blended together (L'Imagination, Paris, P.U.F, 1991, pp. 22-24). This is sometimes the case, in particular, in Western theosophy, of which I am here describing one of the aspects. 25. Among the most recent studies on this ritual of the Elect Cohens, cf. that of Gilles Le Pape: "Ecritures a lunettes et theurgie. De l'origine de certains caracteres extraits du manuscrit Registre des 2400 noms du fonds Prunelle de Liere (XVIIIe siecle)," pp. 29-132, in Les Cahiers de Saint-Martin, Editions du Palimpseste, 1988, vol. VII. Enlarged version: De H C. Agrippa aux "caracteres" du "Registre des 2400 noms" [...] Contribution a l'etude des ecritures a lunettes, E.P.H.E. dissertation, Sorbonne, 1996. 26. Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative. Contemporary Possibilities ofReligious Affirmation, New York, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980, p. 112. 27. Ibid, p. 113. 28. "Wird Christus tausendmahl zu Bethlehem gebohrn/Und nicht in dir: du bleibst noch Ewiglich verlohrn." Cherubinischer Wandersmann, 1675, book I, distich 61 entided "In dir muss Gott gebohren werden." The first edition dates from 1657. 29. Cf. the tide of his work: Le Ministere de I'Homme-Esprit, Paris, Migneret, 1802. 30. Cited by Friedhelm Kemp (text cited supra, n. 7), p. 4. 31. "Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst, /Nicht mir.1" (Faust, I, w. 512-513).
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32. F. Kemp, art. cited, p. 4: "Welt-Ansicht, Welt-Anschauung ist deshalb, wo sie nicht zur Bequemlichkeit, zu Routine und Faulheit, gar zu doktrindrer Blindheit entartet, e jeweils durch die Herausforderung zur Unterscheidung und Entscheidung modifiziert Gewohnheit—oderbesser: Uebung—unsererproduktiven Denk- undEinbildungskraft."
I N T E R M S
O F
" T R A D I T I O N "
The Rosicrucian Manifestos (1614, a n d the Western Esoteric
1615)
"Tradition"
Over the past few years, there have been many serious works devoted to the appearance and the history of Rosicrucianism. In essence, light has been shed on the circumstances surrounding its birth and on the vicissitudes of its fortunes until today.1 Many as well have been the proponents of the Western "Tradition" understood as esotericism in the broader sense, who refer to this early-seventeenth-century Rosicrucianism, where they see a radically new point of departure, or at least one of the outstanding manifestations of a philosophia perennis, that is, of a traditional thinking that is as ancient as humanity. It appeared publicly for the first time, as we know, with the two texts currently called the "Manifestos," that is, the Fama Fraternitatb (1614) and the Confessio Fraternitatb (1615), which are sometimes considered an integral part of this philosophia perennis that is also known as "Tradition." But there has been, perhaps, insufficient examination of the relationships that may exist between the Manifestos and the Western esoteric currents taken as a whole and considering their principal themes. This could perhaps clarify the nature of a contribution that was made in mutual directions: from esotericism to the Manifestos, and inversely. I. MEDIEVAL ESOTERIC THEMES IN T H E MANIFESTOS A variety of elements of medieval esotericism are found incorporated in the Manifestos: two themes coining out of fictional literature, and two areas of investigation. Literary Themes Here we have fictional elements that serve to introduce a teaching, which are already known from medieval hermeticism. The first topos is the Master around whom chosen disciples are grouped. This spiritual leader appears as an exceptional being, with a biography rich in initiatory experiences, in journeys during 171
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which he meets remarkable men through whom he is initiated into sublime knowledge. In the twelfth century, the book published by Morienus Romanus (Liber de compositione alchemiae) contributed to spread this kind of narrative in an alchemical context. Christian Rosencreutz, having found his way, gathers around himself a few adepts for whom he is the "Beloved Christian father"2 and who will assure the survival of his work and his undertaking; they constitute a fraternity or a brotherhood. Marginal to official monasticism, this is presented, well before Julius Sperber in whom the idea also appears,3 as a form of spiritual chivalry recalling the Friends of God grouped round Rulman Merswin in Strasbourg: he was said to have received his instructions from a mysterious character called the "Friend of God, from Oberland,"4 whom one might be tempted to compare to Prester John. The second topos also serves as a framework, and it introduces into the scene one or several characters who discover, under a stela, a statue, or a tomb, a tablet covered with inscriptions, held in the hands of a venerable Sage, living or dead, hidden there for decades or centuries. In medieval hermeticism, the best known example is provided by the story-context introducing the famous text of the Emerald Tablet and its extension, the Book of Secrets. We are dealing with a universal topos, spread through the Latin world via the mediation of Islamic esotericism. Now, it is the Arabs of Damcar who initiate Christian; we learn in the Fama that he had translated from the Arab "into good Latin Book M in the space of a year,"5 that is, the Book of the World. Andreae, on his side, was certainly sufficiendy familiar with medieval alchemy to have known some of these hermetic texts, adapted from the Arab into Latin, describing an "emerald tablet" as a stone or a parchment held by Hermes Trismegistus or Apollonius of Tyana in a tomb discovered by an enlightened seeker. When our Rosicrucians lift the thick copper plaque which covers Christian's body, they find him holding "in his hand a little book of parchment, with golden letters, called T." 6 The letter T , which one is tempted to interpret as the initial of "Thesaurus,"7 recalls the Tabula of this Greco-Arab hermetism passed into Latinity. Arithmology and Organon An extension of Neo-Pythagoreanism, medieval arithmology is present in the Manifestos, primarily by the place that it seems to occupy in Book M. It is indeed at Damcar that Christian "acquired his knowledge of physics and mathematics."8 Arithmology is associated with the Ages of the World according to the Apocalypse, since it also comes into play with the wonders of the sixth time and the "sixth candlestick."9 The Fama reports that Christian, having returned to Germany, "was engaged in mathematics for a long period, and that he made a number of beautiful instruments applied to various aspects of this art."10 His
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tomb is built according to the numbers 8, 5, 4, 7. Also symbolic is the number of reasons to make the revelations of the Rosy-Cross known to the public. In the twelfth century, the Romance of Alexander described the tent of Alexander the Great as a summary of all worldly knowledge; represented there were the seasons, months, days, planets, hours, and geographies, which also heralded the Art of Memory described further on. Simon Studion's Naometria (1604, cf. also infra), a title that means "measure of the Temple," contains speculations on numbers in relation to historical events; it is made the heir to a long tradition and appears to have been known by the authors of the Manifestos. The brothers of the Rosy-Cross remain, in the seventeenth century, the guardians of this science that could produce mysterious objects whose exact nature is not revealed, but one is given to understand that they result from the application of a theoretical knowledge, and that once made they serve as instruments of knowledge. At least twice, the mathematics in question is given as "axiomatic" whose "immutability until the Last Judgment"11 is assured. Christian gives to men of science in Spain this new set of axioms, which allow every problem to be solved absolutely and which is connected with the composition of a language and a magical writing "endowed with a wealth of vocabulary."12 A "science of secrets," therefore, "clear, simple, absolutely comprehensible," and representable by "a sphere or a globe, all of whose parts are equidistant from the center."13 One finds this again in Rabelais, and in Paracelsus in his great work Astronomia magna. How not to be reminded here of the similar undertaking by Raymond Lull, whose Ars magna (1305-08) would be more or less summarized in the statements describing the axioms of the Rosy-Cross? The Lullian art in fact consists of a set of figures useful for theological, medical, and astrological ends, inspired from a dynamized Neo-Platonism and in close kinship with the Kabbalah. The Philosophy of Nature Around the correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm is crystallized the essence of medieval esoteric speculations relative to Nature. Let us mention, for memory, Nemesius (De natura hominb, toward 400), Maximos the Confessor (seventh century), the School of Chartres (notably Bernard Silvester, De mundi universitate sive megacosmus et microcosmus, 1147), Alain de Lille (De planctu naturae), Honorius (Clavb physicae and Elucidarium); in the thirteenth century, Saint Bonaventure, the School of Oxford, the Summae of Vincent de Beauvais, and Bartholomew of England. During these periods, the Philosophy of Nature had not yet been forced to take refuge in the hothouses of an esotericism that was marginal to the Churches. It was for having heard speak of "revelations made [to the Arabs] on all of Nature"14 that Christian sets off for Damcar. According to the authors of the
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Confessio, "the great Book of Nature" is "open to anyone's eyes, but can be read or understood by only a few."15 The Confessio remains faithful to the Bible-Nature concordism: "These characters and these letters that God has ceaselessly incorporated into the Holy Bible have also been imprinted by Him in all clarity in the marvelous creation that are the heavens and earth and all the animals."16 In the wake of this medieval tradition the Rosicrucians see the whole of Nature in the light of analogy, that of microcosm-macrocosm relationships: the universe is presented as a text to be deciphered, the great challenge is to be able to read in it "the great letters that God, the Lord, has engraved on the edifice of the sky and the earth."17 According to the very beginning of the text of the Fama, Man, as microcosm, is capable of acquiring the art of penetrating18 Nature, that is, of making spring forth from it, of knowing—in the sense of gnosis—its meaning, its secret provinces, its natur ans side. "Microcosm" is taken here in the sense of "summary of the universe," as indicated by the statement, which has remained celebrated, found on Christian's tomb: "A. C. R. C. In my life, I gave myself as a tomb this summary of the universe."19 The resulting concordism: at Fez, Christian "reaffirmed his faith in the concordant presence in the universe of harmony, marking with its marvelous imprint every period of history. From this he drew the beautiful synthesis that follows: just as every seed contains the tree or fruit completely whole and flourishing, the microcosm contains the fullness of number; religion, politics, health, members, nature, language, speech and the works of speech are in musical and melodic harmony with God, with the heavens and with the earth."20 II. PRESENCE OF RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHIA OCCULTA IN T H E MANIFESTOS All these medieval elements, retained and assimilated in the Manifestos, obviously also continue to feed, in parallel to Rosicrucianism, other esoteric currents of the Renaissance. Now, our two texts draw directiy from three of these currents or are related to them. These are, first, Paracelsism, second, a NeoJoachite movement specific to the dawn of Modern Times, and finally, the Florentine synthesis that associated or married the Kabbalah with Alexandrian hermetism. Paracelsism The image of the seed is Paracelsian. Indeed, the great Theophrastus, whose works had just been published when the Manifestos appear, is in many respects the heir to this Philosophy of Nature. But he imbued it with a particular coloration, whose specificity the Manifestos inherited. What does this consist of? On the one hand, Paracelsus applied the theory of correspondences
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between microcosm and macrocosm to a systematic exploration of Nature. With him, the theory of signatures is enhanced with a spiritual panvitalism which, more so than in the Middle Ages, makes way for a concrete reality, as the choice of vocabulary is enough to show: "tinctures," "characters," "impressions." The signatures in the Manifestos, thus understood in a Paracelsian manner, foreshadow Jacob Boehme's De Signatura rerum (1622). Additionally, and in the same movement, Paracelsus pushed to its extreme consequences the idea that Man can find in himself, in a parallel or complementary way, the possibility of knowing this Nature. T o know oneself is at the same time to know the universe, on condition of knowing how inwardly to develop a sympathetic attraction between external things and their representatives inside oneself. Thus, for the author of the Fama all of Nature can open itself to our eyes, just as the tomb of Christian opened itself to his disciples. The light of Nature, which can be enkindled by the Holy Spirit, resides in us; it is God Himself and comes to increase the light of grace. The union of these two luminaries was already a pillar of Christian wisdom according to Valentin Weigel.21 The great Book of Wonders, Nature, "agrees with the Bible,"22 Paracelsus and the Fama remind us. In this also reappears the very Paracelsian notion of specific time, here associated with cosmic time and the growth of metals, then, in the Confessio, with the knowledge of the periods and Ages of the World. One also notes the references to medicine, to the health of the body; these relate to this Paracelsism to the extent that the thaumaturgic aspect of medicinal practice is emphasized: the character that is Christian is indeed the wise and omniscient magus whose arrival Paracelsus announced. By all means, Christian could not have known Paracelsus, contrary to the authors of the Manifestos, who could have been inspired also by the disciples of their beloved Theophrastus. In his religious treatise, Liber de resurrectione et corporum glorificatione, Paracelsus uses the symbol of the rose seventeen times to describe the regeneration of humanity. Johann Arndt, as well, devoted to a Nature so conceived considerations heavy with consequences. His four books Vier Bticher vom Wahren Chrbtenthum were all published by 1610. In the wake of this, the names of Aegidius Gutmann (Offenbahrung gbttlicher Majestdt, 1619) and of his contemporary Julius Sperber spring to mind, for whom wisdom and knowledge are simultaneously revealed by the Creator and by Nature. However, while the Fama is infused with a magical panvitalism, it would not be easy to find the same inspiration in the Confessio, more inspired by a search for causes and origins and a reading of the Bible in a millenarian light. On the latter point, Germany shares with the Latin countries the same worries and hopes. It also shares with them a strong interest in alchemy, which at the beginning of the seventeenth century enjoys a success touching every sector of society. The Fama does not condemn it, because from this mirror of speculations of the
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naturphilosophisch variety, one must distinguish, according to our text, the avid puffers. If "the art, sullied and imperfect,"23 mentioned in the first part of the Fama, appears indeed to be alchemy, it is especially important, according to the Confessio, to know and to follow Nature before initiating oneself into the tincture of metals. This preoccupation perhaps reflects the teaching in Johann Arndt's fourth book on the "true Christianity." It is known that Paracelsus distinguished "fight of grace" from "light of nature." Now with Arndt, medieval mysticism is united with alchemy, because he sees in the latter a "light of grace." Nor did Arndt spurn commenting on the Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of Heinrich Khunrath. While Arndt does not neglect the practical aspect of Christianity (the religion "in acts"), he also attempts, in parallel, to elaborate and specify what, from his time on, would be called "mystical theology." This integrates the Paracelsian heritage and alchemy with theology, and would later be systematized with pietism. If this integration is possible, it is due to a faculty, attributed to the individual, to accede to a "second birth" understood as the acquisition of a new body in the elected soul. One then understands the importance of alchemy in this process of regeneration. Here, the symbols of the Great Work could not be simple metaphors; it is appropriate to understand them not as idealiter, but as realiter. Perhaps one must see in this "mystical theology" the hidden link that, according to Pierre Deghaye, connects the Manifestos to Johann Valentin Andreae's Chemical Wedding. It implies, in any event, a noble and demanding interpretation of alchemy, which henceforth has a spiritual beacon for its journey. One also understands all the better that the Confessio warns against the temptation to abuse fruitlessly24 the analogical relationships between the alchemical processes and divine symbols: in this respect, the text contrasts with the relatively uncritical attitude of certain adepts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and reflects at the same time the concern for rigor in many treatises devoted to the art of Hermes. Esoteric Themes in Vogue in the Latin Renaissance Prominent among the traditions in vogue during the Latin Renaissance is the belief in an imminent and general reform of the world; this characteristic applies to the Germanic countries as well as the others, in a context where -Neo-Joachist dreams and plans for political and religious reform are sometimes confusedly mixed. Indeed, the representatives of esoteric currents are often "reformers" in the sense that they propound or hope for changes that are spiritual as well as social or political. The Fama sees contemporary history as "ready for a great reversal" and feeling "the pains of childbirth."25 Simon Studion's Naometria (cf. supra) certainly could have been known by our authors, even though it was unpublished. It is the harbinger of a new Age, evoked later
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by the Manifestos. In a spirit of free investigation, these emphasize the individual liberty of every human soul, which is capable of discovering by itself, with the aid of the Spirit, certain meanings hidden since the beginning of the world, and to which attention has been drawn by the prophecies of the Lion of the north. Certainly, evaluations of this kind were known from the Middle Ages, but the dawn of Modern Times saw them flower forth again as new blossoms, whether as the Ages of the World according to the Portuguese Francesco de Holanda or Giordano Bruno's declarations on the imminence of a general reform. It is tempting to compare the fifth monarchy according to Thomas Miintzer with the Portuguese dream of a fifth empire, just as Christian may bring to mind Prester John. Also, while Renaissance Italian esotericism, especially in its Florentine form, is characterized by an attempt to connect the three branches of "tradition," the Manifestos would appear to reflect a similar aim, albeit less systematically than in, for example, Pico della Mirandola. Of course, the celebrated Oratio de homini dignitatae, which exalts human powers either potential or to be reclaimed, seems to find an evident and vibrant echo in the Fama. Above all, the authors of the Manifestos are comparable to Pico in the innovative and fresh conjunction of the three "traditional" branches (magic, Kabbalah, and Alexandrian hermetism). Their Paracelsism or pansophia occupies the place attributed to magia in Pico and Ficino. Our authors also reserve a place that is not minor, implicitly or explicidy, for the Kabbalah and hermetism. Just as magic (magia) enables us to discover God in the world, so the Kabbalah reveals Him to us in His Word. Johann Reuchlin had introduced this concept in the Germanic countries in his two writings, De arte cabbalbtica (1517) and De verbo mirifico (1494). A few Germans followed this example during the sixteenth century. Christian was said, without further details, to be versed in the Kabbalah.26 Moreover, the axiomatical system so intensely spotlighted in the Fama recalls Jewish procedures of reasoning and knowledge, with which it is tempting to connect the theme, so Kabbalistic and so pervasive in both Manifestos, of the lost Word, of the Edenic language vanished since the fall or the successive falls. The Confessio indicates "magical writings" as having "served as a base to the development of a new language that allows us to express and explain the nature of all things simultaneously."27 The urgency of this new language meant to replace the confusion of Babel is a recurrent theme in Jacob Boehme. Also Kabbalistic, in a certain way, is John Dee's mercurial sign published in Monas hieroglyphica (1564) and taken up again in the Chemical Wedding?8 As for Alexandrian hermetism, revived a century and a half earlier by the Florentine Renaissance, it occupies a rather unobtrusive position. The instruments made by Christian are lost, as are most of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus. In the Liber M., all the same, it is with good reason that Roland
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Edighoffer thought he recognized a sort of Pseudo-Pimander?9 But there is more. On the doctrinal plane, the Gestirn or Astrum, the Soul of the World according to Paracelsus, seat of intermediary spirits, the soul of the universe placed between God and the world, corresponds to the human soul situated between spirit and body. This Gestirn can be, according to the Manifestos, the subject of an interiorization through our mental activity; this characteristic is comparable to the interiorization of exterior representations by the mens, as taught by the Trismegist in the Corpus Hermeticum. The Confessio claims to be a source of knowledge surpassing this hermetic teaching itself, but nevertheless invokes it implicitly by alluding "to the functions of the angels and the spirits."30 Then, in Christian's tomb, the inscription "emptiness does not exist" could be read by Bernard Gorceix as a reference to the Corpus Hermeticum.31 Close to the Alexandrian hermetic teaching appears finally what Renaissance esotericism called the Art of Memory, so well studied by Frances A. Yates.32 The author of the Confessio teaches us in fact that the the rule of the Rosicrucians "is epitomized in and entirely reduced to that all the letters of the world, without any exception, are carefully retained and kept in our memory."33 This characteristic proper to both currents—the Rosicrucian and the Alexandrian hermetic—reveals one of the aspects of Christian's tomb to us, conceived as a "summary" of the universe.34 Presence of the New Hermes The Trismegistus is not the only Hermes on the Renaissance scene. Besides the books and the portraits depicting him, one also sees those of Mercury, thus Hermes-Mercury himself, whose murder of Argus and deliverance of Io are not the meanest feats. The presence of these two complementary figures, Hermes Trismegistus and Hermes-Mercury, is tangible in many teachings and works, identifiable by an attitude of spirit and by a form of activity. Secrecy and revelation: such is the paradox, dynamic and rich in potentialities, which inspires esoteric thinking at the moment when it takes on its modern form. An emblem of Achilles Bocchi35 portrays it brilliantly: Hermes, the god of speech, is shown holding a seven-branch candlestick in one hand, and raising to his lips the forefinger of the other. In a striking paradox, the god of discourse, of communication, is associated with the very gesture of Harpocrates. Hermetic silence and speech, dbciplina arcani and exchange, are entwined like the two serpents of the caduceus. Indeed, Bocchi has no need to include the image of Mercury's staff here. Same internal oppositions comprising the RosyCross as given to us by the Fama: "The brotherhood must remain unknown for one hundred years."36 Christian's disciples lived "in the utmost secrecy."37 For a long period, no adept "obtained the slightest detail on R. C. and his first
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brethren."38 However, say the authors of the Confessio, "despite the high esteem we have for these arcana and these secrets so profound, their revelation, their being known, their dispensation to a wider public do not seem to us contrary to justice."39 Only those apt to grasp the meaning of the esoteric teachings understand: "Our arcana and our mysteries never reach the common Man, even though the Echos, published in five languages, have been known to all."40 Indeed, "the low-minded, the dull and stupid, cast them aside, or else do not make the effort."41 Also the moment has come to let speech or discourse, that is, Hermes, make itself manifest: "Language has yet to receive the honor that is its due, and now that time is getting shorter, it finally remains for one to speak of what, in times past, has been seen, heard, and felt."42 The era is in fact given to attempts at great summarizing syntheses, so to dictionaries, to "vocabularies": Martin Ruland's Lexicon alchemiae (1612) is one sign among many others of this lexicographical fashion, whose importance has been shown by Bernard Gorceix. Hermeneutic speech, but also eclectic discourse, since it has to do with reassembling and circulating knowledge. The Arabs made their sciences available to Christian and through his mediation they would circulate, mixed with other knowledge, molten in the crucible of a universal set of premises through an "agreement"43—a religious and scientific irenicalism—among the seekers of the world. All this especially pertains to Mercury. But Hermes, as the Trismegistus, is also implicidy evoked in the Manifestos. Indeed, it is known that one of the characteristics proper to Renaissance esotericism is the emphasis on the idea of philosophia perennb. Made fashionable by Agostino Steuco in 1540, this expression serves to designate a succession of sages, or of initiates, who would have relayed the torch of true knowledge throughout the ages. The list of these characters always includes the name Hermes Trismegistus, generally associated with those of Zoroaster, Orpheus, Moses, Plato, and a few others.44 Because of its predeliction for initiatic filiation, the Fama immediately situates itself in this perspective: "Our philosophy is nothing new: it agrees with what Adam inherited after the fall and was practiced by Moses and Solomon. It must not cast doubt upon, refute differing theories: because the truth is unique, succinct, always identifiable to itself."45 Thus, what is true in philosophy is also true in theology. "What has been established by Plato, Aristode, and Pythagoras, and confirmed by Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Solomon, where the great book of marvels is in agreement with the Bible, corresponds and describes a sphere. [. . .]. All the way to Orpheus who is present because the Confessio incites the reader to become the emulator of this most renowned musician of Antiquity."46
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In Tarns of "Tradition "
III. T H E MANIFESTOS BETWEEN T H E OLD AND T H E N E W Loyal to certain features of Western esotericism, the Fama and the Confessio leave others neglected. But at the same time they innovate: on the one hand, they associate two apparently contradictory notions in a living paradox, that of an inner Church with no organized form, and that of an esoteric society; on the other, they create or contribute to set a literary genre that was to have a brilliant future. Torchlight and Shadows All the elements that the Manifestos borrowed from esotericism have in turn continued to nourish it until today: Paracelsism, in the form of Nature Philosophies; the Jewish and Christianized Kabbalah; spiritual alchemy; arithmology; and the Neo-Lullian axioms, which would reappear in France as a plan of totalization in Hone Wronski, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and today Raymond Abellio. What is more, while messianism remains a relatively secondary aspect of esoteric literature, Joachism, in contrast, because of the directions it took, has never ceased to inspire Western theosophers through its accent on prophecy, considered as open-ended. The spirit is thus communicated to those able to hear it, who transmit the message in their turn: prophecy, hermeneutics, the living and communicative word pass through inspiration and through a culture, due to the mediation of Hermes who returns again as a central figure, although implicidy, in the illuminism of the eighteenth century, in romanticism (especially German), and in contemporary epistemological writings inscribed by his caduceus. In exchange, important traditional elements are forgotten or overlooked. Despite the reference, and that not very explicit, to a list of antique Sages, the very notion of "Tradition" in the sense that Ficino Understood it (by intellectual filiation or uninterrupted initiation from a very remote era), is of very little interest to the authors of the Manifestos, who aside from a few biblical names mention only Paracelsus. In this they distance themselves from the humanists of the preceeding century who are so bounteous in lists of authorities. The author of the Confessio affirms that "even if every last book were to be doomed to disappearance and even if the judgment of almighty God were to decree the ruin of all writings and of all literature,"47 Christian's contribution would not be any less worthy as a new foundation for posterity, replacing, as it were, everything that would have preceded it. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the name Hermes Trismegistus does not appear. Similarly, the presence of Alexandrian hermetism is manifest here only extremely discreetly, the works of a Marsilio Ficino or a Giorgi of Venice apparently not having much influenced our authors, perhaps because the study of hermeticism is the
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business of humanists, esotericists or not, and humanism penetrated into Germany very little because of the opposing barrier of Lutheranism. The Kabbalah itself is not presented in its Jewish or Christianized specificity, and the word appears to serve only as a common denominator for descriptions of an organon or axiomatical system. At the time of the publication of the Manifestos, Jacob Boehme was developing the most momentous theosophical work that the Christian West has known until today. At the time of their writing, Andreae and his group may have been still unaware of his first book, Aurora (1612). While Germanic theosophy already has a history, inaugurated by Valentin Weigel in the preceding century, the works of this visionary pastor, most of whose manuscripts were published between 1609 and 1621, are nevertheless not the subjects of obvious references in our two writings. The name Heinrich Khunrath is mentioned in the first edition (in Latin) of the Confessio, but is accompanied by a disparaging note, and it disappears from the second (in German). Theosophy indeed has not yet clearly distinguished itself from Paracelsism and pansophy, as would be the case from the 1620s on, when it would come to complete but not supplant them. Presented "as the chief and the sum, the foundation and the substance of all the faculties, of all the sciences, of all the arts," the Rosicrucian philosophy enables those who engage in it to find "more marvels and mysteries than they had heretofore been able to acquire, elucidate, admit as dogma, and express."48 A pansophic declaration beyond any doubt, but not a theosophical one, for our authors are interested in the exploration, not of the hidden mysteries of divinity itself, but of this world here, whose signatures and "tinctures" must be deciphered and brought out. The Fortunes ofa Paradox On the doctrinal plane the two Manifestos do not innovate. It would be difficult to find any really original theoretical points in them. The novelty of the message resides elsewhere. First in its conciseness, its brevity. In contrast to Simon Studion, whose voluminous work could not find a publisher, our authors have gathered in a few pages, orchestrated with ease, and blended with a consummate art of ambiguity, messianic, Joachic, and reformist themes. The importance of the message seems inversely proportional to the number of pages. If paradox there be, it comes out especially in the juxtaposition of two themes that are contradictory at first glance; however, this apparent contradiction could be partly responsible for the extraordinary success of the two writings. These themes are the inner Church and initiatic society. If European esotericism at the time of these first Rosicrucians invents new forms of sensitivity and expression, one origin of this mutation may perhaps be seen in the disappearance, or at least the relative eclipse, of one of the
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touchstones of the philosophia perennb as it had been defined in the Renaissance. This is Alexandrian hermetism, of which the Corpus Hermeticum, rediscovered in 1460 and translated into Latin by Ficino, was thought to be as ancient as the writings of Moses. Now, when Isaac Casaubon in 1614 had demonstrated that the Corpus Hermeticum did not predate the second or third century of our era, suspicions of inauthenticity were cast on the teachings it contained. A sense ofloss came about as soon as a tear appeared in a crucial spot in the fine tunic that was the philosophia perennb, which many had believed and wished to be seamless. It is perhaps permissible to see in this one of the reasons for the popularity of the Rosicrucian message, as the bearer, whether or not its authors had intended it, of two compensating factors.49 The first of these corresponds more or less to what would later be called the "inner Church." It does not seem necessary to take literally the Manifestos' repeated allegiances to the Lutheran religion, any more than their statements smacking of nationalism. True wisdom or gnosis is, according to the Manifestos, the work of all truth seekers, something that the importance attributed to a synthetic and totalizing knowledge, and to the Arabic contribution, would be enough to demonstrate. In an era when Egyptomania had not yet invaded the whole cultural climate of the Western imagination, one sees a shift in attention to Islam, and implicidy to Judaism—as witnessed by the references to the Kabbalah. Behind the Lutheran facade of the Manifestos would thus be outlined an "Abrahamic" tendency whose gnostic syncretism would associate Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If such a tendency is perhaps betrayed in the Manifestos, they are nonetheless the work of Christians for all that—but Christians in whom one would easily suspect a sort of indifferentism in the matter of constituted religions. T o this already tended Johann Arndt's "mystical theology," mentioned earlier in regard to Paracelsism and alchemy. It is known that Arndt, five or six years prior to the Manifestos, had differentiated "religion in acts" from this "mystical theology" constituted indirecdy by means of the "second birth." Now he also makes a distinction between "justification" (in the Lutheran, classical, sense of the term), which is valid for the collectivity, and the "second birth," which concerns only the individual (a new body, alchemically understood, in the elected soul). The second birth guarantees, starting from this Earth, the possibility for this individual not only of "regenerating" himself, but also of contemplating the mysteries. It is the guarantor of a theosophy. Through knowledge—gnosis, alchemy—the individual is elevated, while divine grace descends toward him. As Pierre Deghaye has pointed out, already in Luther's time, Osiander had defended a comparable idea, that of the inhabitatio of God in Man, which Luther rose up against in distrust of anything resembling the divinization of a created being. But Johann Brenz, a partisan of Osiander, nevertheless marked in this sense, and in a profound fashion, the origins of
Wurtemberg pietism, that is, the spiritual circles wherein Johann Valentin Andreae would move and later Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. More significant in the Manifestos than an allegiance to a specific exoteric religion thus appears a mental attitude. This, marked by "mystical theology," by nature cannot be presented as a set of rules applicable to a collectivity. But paradoxically it hangs onto the nostalgia of a form of authority. Yet neither could it be defined by reference to a chain of initiates (recendy broken, in any case, with the "demystification" effected by Casaubon): it therefore substitutes the authority of the ancient founding fathers, who were "historical," with that of a fictitious character, Christian, situated in a fairly recent period. This thinking runs the risk of seeming abstract in the minds of readers. How, in so few pages, could one avoid being too allusive? One solution consists in advancing Christian, founding Father or Brother, as the origin of a movement, of an association. Here we see the difference with the Friends of God: the new element, which was to be a feature of Western esotericism until the twentieth century, consists in painting a complete biography of this founder while showing him in his historical decor, as a character incomparably more "real" than the Trismegistus had ever been. One feels a tangible will to specify, to localize, this association, to give it a sort of status. While the lack of doctrinal unity in the Corpus Hermeticum was due to the juxtaposition of heteroclite elements, that of the Manifestos would rather be attributable to their eclecticism and style of propaganda; but this is, so to speak, compensated for by the description of the secret society, which acts as a substitute like the inner Church: the role for both of them is to fill in for a philosophia perennb struck by suspicion to its very roots, or to its "filiationist" pretentions, and to affirm that "Tradition" can begin anew on fresh foundations nonetheless. Henceforth and for a long time, fellowships conceived in a variety of frameworks according to the cultural contexts (Freemasonry, para-Masonry, neo-chivalric organizations, etc.) would correspond to a need for association in Men of Aspiration and would ensure support for various branches of "Tradition." Philosophical or theosophical principles alone could well have become powerless to create this, owing to cultural upheavals and the crumbling of "Tradition" itself. This perhaps throws some light on the meaning of this passage in the Confessio: "even if every last book were to be doomed to disappearance."50 Western esotericism would retain from then on, much more than previously, the idea of a secret society among the elements that were to delineate its later history. If the Rosy-Cross is indeed, as Peuckert has specified, the first of the "bourgeois secret societies,"51 one can only be struck by its similarities with Freemasonry, distinct from those relating it to the guilds and corporations before 1717. In the association described by the Manifestos, and in Freemasonry, we find the same idea of constructing a new society organized around a citadel of truth; comparable triangular symbols; similar subdivision
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and compartmentalizing, not only of grades, but also of "provinces" where the various branches of the Rosicrucian Order are established according to the Confessio. Must one, finally, see in Hiram a son of Christian? Another mythical founder, the former would then be a Christian reduced to the relative abstraction of a ritual metaphor and would meet up again with the Trismegistus in the gallery of the great hieratic figures of "Tradition." More than even Hiram himself, it is the "Hidden Masters" of the Masonry of the eighteenth century who refer us back to Christian. In reality, most of them were purely imaginary, but that many Brothers had believed in their existence is a very real fact. The inability to identify them makes one feel the need all the more, in the last third of the seventeenth century, to turn to the figure of Christian as a paradigmatic model of the Unknown Master. T o this endless quest, to this desire always tantalized, sometimes identified with the noblest aspirations of illuminism in this era, the history of the German Order of the Gold and Rosy Cross bears testimony. A story whose echoes follow the meanders of the esoteric pathways of the twentieth century, whether they be Gurdjieffs meetings "with remarkable men" or the belief in an Agartha located somewhere in Asia on a precipitous peak, to which Rene Guenon has contributed some unexpected developments. Also a literary theme. Literary Esotericism in the Wake of the Manifestos T o speak of literary esotericism is justified to the extent that esoteric and occultist doctrines have furnished certain themes of inspiration to the novel, to the theater, and to poetry. It is sometimes not easy to make a very clear distinction between literature and esotericism, in particular when authors of fiction aim primarily to make use of literature to broadcast a message instead of simply employing esoteric elements, like accessories, for esthetic ends. Thus, in the view of some critics, Gustav Meyrink is a traditional Rosicrucian thinker, for others he is above all a novelist. A modern distinction, certainly, which perhaps corresponds to the advent of a profane art. As for interest in the Manifestos, once the waves and eddies they caused in the first half of the seventeenth century were becalmed, it seems largely due to the existence of Johann Valentin Andreae's novel, The Chemical Wedding, a bridge between pansophy and the baroque. This is not the place to brush a panorama of initiatic literature direcdy inspired by the first Rosicrucianism, from descriptions of the character of Christian in the seventeenth century to Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni (1842) and even beyond. It will be enough to bring out, in order of increasing importance, four themes that seem to have caught the attention of many authors, and not the least among them. First is that of wealth, of youth, and of ubiquity. It was already part of the repertory of a popular alchemy. One sees it taken up again with insistence in
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1616 in the work, already mentioned, of Aegidius Gutmann, perhaps inspired by the Manifestos. Another manifesto, posted in 1623 in the streets of Paris, contributes to propagate this theme, whose fantastic presence reemerges in the image that a wide public held of the mysterious Count of Saint-Germain. A theme also close to that of Faust, whose Volksbuch appeared only a little more than twenty years before the Manifestos. But while there is a perceptible resemblance between this magician Doctor and the Brothers of the RosyCross, the Christian of The Chemical Wedding, on the other hand, would be rather an "anti-Faust," as Pierre Deghaye has justly noted. Then there is the topos, mentioned earlier, of the tomb that is discovered and opened. Here, the Fama innovated in describing it in luxuriant detail, while in the medieval texts a few words had sufficed. The way is from then on open to the very literary descriptions of Eckartshausen, Novalis, and others. Many would be the examples from the literature and art of the last two centuries of works referring implicidy or explicidy to Christian's tomb. Let us mention the most recent: as late as 1986, a great Portuguese artist, Jose Lima de Freitas, produced a painting showing the tomb of Christian; faithful to the indications and descriptions furnished by the text, he enriched these with geometrical representations and thus gave us a vision of a Neo-Pythagorean hermeneutic of the description given in the Fama. The third theme would be that of the mysterious book giving access to extraordinary and sublime knowledge, indeed to knowledge of the entire universe. Sometimes there are several books, as one sees in the Fama which, in addition to Book M, speaks highly of the Philosophical Library, the Axiomatics, the Cycles of the World, the Proteus?1 A theme that fantastic literature was to pick up again later—and that one already finds in Rabelais—from Lovecraft (with the famous Necronomicon) to Jorge Luis Borges, but in works of great philosophical scope as well, such as Goethe's Faust: in his famous monologue, Faust has recourse to a book by means of which he thinks he can gain access to the knowledge of what maintains the universe in its innermost cohesion ("Was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhalt. . ."). Now, Goethe was familar with the Manifestos, to which his celebrated poem Die Geheimnbse seems to pay homage. Employed many a time, the fourth theme has enjoyed a success that it seems to owe above all to its use, mentioned earlier, in Freemasonry. It is that of the Hidden Master. Not only does it correspond to an aspect of Masonic life and practice, but, as might be expected, it has made inroads into great literature. Christian, hearing of the Sages of Damcar in Arabia, the wonders they could work, and the revelations imparted to them on the whole of Nature, then tries to enter into relationship with them. He himself would become in turn the Hidden Master, whose successors would be sought out by earnest candidates for discipleship. But the Master, if he really is hidden, eludes all investigations: "our dwelling-place, even if a hundred thousand men
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may have closely contemplated it, remains forevermore impregnable, intact, unknown, carefully hidden from the eyes of the impious world."53 This idea of a society controlled by masters who would be manipulating the destiny of certain people, in truth, of a large part of human society, was to know the success we are well familiar with. It is Goethe once more who describes this, through the Society of the Tower, in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796). The theme of an intellectual and spiritual government by hidden or secret elites is found again in a number of initiatic novels. And closer to our times, in Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel (1943). Many more examples could easily be given.
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Cordova and Tsukuba or other similar meetings. Their orientation differs, however, from what is known as the "Princeton gnosis"54—also all at once mythical and real, like the Rosy-Cross was in Andreae's time—, in the sense that they integrate a spiritual dimension into the range of their thinking. NOTES
PERSPECTIVES
In the notes that follow, the initials BG refer to the French edition of the Manifestos procured by Bernard Gorceix, La Bible des Rose-Croix, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1970; and the initials VD, to the German edition procured by Richard Van Diilmen: J. V. Andreae, Fama Fraternitatb, Confessio Fraternitatis, Chymische Hochze Stuttgart, Calwer, 1973.
From Johann Valentin Andreae's era until today, there have been many Men of Aspiration claiming to be of the Rosy-Cross, as though this were a path of initiation or of association with other traditions having a similar aura of prestige. Some see in it an Order duly constituted from the seventeenth century or even long before, but historians have no means of justifying them on the latter point. Others refer to it as though to a direction whose original spirit they are attempting to grasp; for them the Manifestos are not a point of origin come out of the void, nor a spiritually constraining revelation, but a model of thought and contemplation that is still relevant. They can also read the Fama and the Confessio, a fortiori The Chemical Wedding, as an "epiphany"—to make use of Roland Edighoffer's felicitous word—that is, the living presence, made real, of a system of permanent themes of the human spirit which at certain times in history manifest in transcendent forms that are wellsprings of meaning. This is not the place to list all the secret societies, or the associations, or the initiatic grades that bear this name. It will be enough to distinguish two areas placed under the Rosicrucian banner. They are distinct by nature, but it is not by any means rare that the same Men of Aspiration belong to both. The first is that of initiatic societies proper. Let us mention only the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded in London in 1867, masonic in its principle and whose works are almost always inspired, closely or distandy, by the teachings of the original Rosy-Cross. And the Lectorium Rosicrucianum (1924), whose activity and publications bear witness to a Rosicrucian inspiration as well, open to a living understanding of this tradition. The second area is not easy to define, because there the allegiance to Rosicrucian thought is generally all the more implicit as it is represented by individuals and not by organized groups. But its influence does not exert itself any the less on contemporary thought. This area is that of the proponents of a pansophia in the sense that the Manifestos already understood it. They are physicians, astro-physicians, and biologists. T o various degrees they tend toward a form of new Naturphilosophie. Some have participated in the conferences at
1. The most important of the recent general works is by Roland Edighoffer, Rose-Croix et societe ideale selon Johann Valentin Andreae, Paris, Arma Artis, vol. I, 198 vol. II, 1987. Cf. also, from the same author, the short but very valuable work, Les RoseCroix, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, "Que sais-je?" series, 1991 (1st ed, 1982). And his latest important contribution to the subject: Les Rose-Croix et la Crise de la Conscience europeenne au XVIIe siecle, Paris: Dervy, series "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme, 1998. Forthcoming is a great scholarly edition of Johann Valentin Andreae's complete works (Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart Bad-Cannstadt: Fromann-Holzboog Verlag): vol. Ill (in two books) will be dedicated to a new edition of the Rosicrucian texts, with a very detailed introduction, notes, and commentaries, by Roland Edighoffer (vol. Ill will also be published separately). Many works by Carlos Gilly, bearing on the RosyCross of the seventeenth century, have made research advance considerably in the course of the past few years; let us cite only his Adam Haslmayr (Der erste Verkunder der Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer), Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Alleinvertrieb durch F. Fromann, Stuttgart), 1995. Analyses and accounts of most works from the 1970s and 1980s on the Rosy-Cross are to befoundin the periodical A.R.I.E.S. (1987), no. 6; and (1988), no. 7 (Paris, La Table d'Emeraude). 2. BG, p. 23. "Unsergeliebter Christlicher Vatter" (VD, p. 34). 3. Will-Erich Peuckert, Das Rosenkreutz. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation, Iena Diederichs, 1928. Reprint: Das Rosenkreutz, Berlin, E. Schmidt, 1973, with a long introduction by Rolf Christian Zimmermann. Cf. index of names. 4. Cf. especially the fine study by Bernard Gorceix, Amis de Dieu au siecle de Maitre Eckhart, Paris, Albin Michel, 1985. 5. BG, p. 5. "In folgendem Jahr das Buch und librum M. in gut Latein gebrachi' (VD, p. 18). On the subject of texts discovered in a tomb, B. Gorceix has already mentioned the Tabula chemica of Ibn' Umail (twelfth century), which Julius Ruska had introduced, and the legend of the writings of Basilius Valentinus discovered under the main altar of a church at Erfurt (cf. BG, p. 13, n. 1). 6. BG, p. 15. "In der Hand hielt er ein Biichlein auff Bergament mit Goldt geschreiben, so Tgenandt" (VD, p. 26). 7. Or "Totum." Cf. BG, pp. xxiv and 15; VD, p. 26. 8. BG, p. 5. "Diss ist der Ort, da er seine Physic und Mathematic geholet" (VD, p. 1
188
The Rosicrucian Manifestos
In Terms of "Tradition"
9. BG, p. 24. "Dassechste Candelabrum" (VD, p. 35). 10. BG, p. 8. "Sol er eine gute Zeit mit der Mathematik zugebracht und vieler schbner Instrumenten ex omnibus hujus artispartibus zugerichtet haben" (VD, p. 21). 11. BG, p. 9. "Dass unsere Axiomata unbeweglichen werden bleiben, biss an den Jiingsten Tag" (VD, p. 21). 12. BG, p. 8. "Mit einem weitleufftigen Vocabulario" (VD, p. 21). 13. BG, pp. 33 and 17. "Schlechte einfeltige undgantz verstendliche Ausslegung [. . .] das kbmmet zusammen und wird eine sphera oder globus, dessen omnespartes gleiche weite vom Centro" (VD, pp. 41 and 29). 14. BG, p. 5. "Wie ihnen diegantzeNatur entdektwere" (VD, p. 18). 15. BG, p. 39 "Ob wol das grosse Buch der Natur alien Menschen offen stehet, dennoch sehr wenig verhanden, die dasselbe lesen und verstehen konnen" (VD, p. 39). 16. BG, p. 30. "Solche Characteres und Buchstaben, wie Gott hin und wider der heiligen Bibel einverleibet, also hat er sie auch dem wunderbahren Geschbpff Himmeb und der Erden,ja aller Thiere gantz deutlich eingedruckt" (VD, p. 39). 17. BG, p. 27. "Die grossen Buchstaben und Characteres, so Gott der Herr dem Gebdw Himmels undderErden eingeschreiben" (VD, p. 37). 18. BG, p. 4. "Wie weit sich sein Kunst in der Natur erstreket" (VD, p. 17). 19. BG, p. 13. "A.C.R.C. Hoc Universi Compendium Vivus Mihi Sepulchrum Feci" (VD,p.25). 20. BG, p. 6. " [Er] befand noch bessern grund seines Glaubens, als welcherjust mit der gantzen Welt Harmonia concordiert, auch alien periodis seculorum wunderbarlichen imprimirt were und hierauss schlossen sich die schone Vereynigung, dass gleich wie in jedem Kernen ist ein guter gantzer Baum oder Frucht, also die gantze grosse Welt in einem kleinen Menschen were, dessen Religion, Policey, Gesundheit, Gleider, Natur, Spraache, Worte und Wercke, aller in gleichem tono undMelodey mit Gott, Himmel undErden ginge" (VD, p. 19). 21. Cf. Gnothi Seauthon, of Valentin Weigel, published in 1615 only; and BG, p. xxxi. 22. BG, p. 17. "Dasgrosse Wunderbuch derBiblia concordiret" (VD, pp. 28 ff). 23. BG, p. 3. "Die zum theil verunreinigte unvollkommene Kunst" (VD, p. 17). 24. BG, pp. 31ff.VD, pp. 40 ff. Pierre Deghaye, "Johann Valentin Andreae et l'Hermetisme," A.R.I.E.S., 1987, no. 6. 25. BG, p. 7. "Mit so grosser Commodion schwanger [. . .] und in der Geburt gearbeitef' (VD, p. 20). One thinks obviously of the Episde to the Romans 8:19-22. 26. BG, p. 10. "Er war in der Cabala sehrfertig und besonders geleehrf (VD, p. 22). 27. BG, p. 30. "Von welchen Buchstaben wir denn unsere Magische Schrifften entlehnet und uns ein newe Sprache erftinden und zuwege gebracht haben, in welcher zugleich die Natur aller Dinge aussgedrucket und erklaret wird' (VD, p. 39). 28. VD, p. 46. 29. R. Edighoffer, Rose-Croix et societe ide'ale, op. cit, vol. I, p. 250. 30. BG, p. 24. "Der Engel und Geister Dienst" (VD, p. 34). 31. BG, p. 14, cf. note by Bernard Gorceix. 32. Frances A. Yates, The Art ofMemory, London, Roudedge and K. Paul, 1966. 33. BG, p. 31. "Dass kein Buchstabe in der Welt seyn soil, welcher nicht wol gefasset und in acht genommen werde" (VD, p. 39).
189
34. BG, p. 13. "Compendium Universi" (VD, p. 25). 35. Achilles Bocchi, Symbolicarum quaestionum [...] libri quinque, Bologna, 1555. 36. BG, p. 10. "Die Briiderschafft sol ein hundertjahr verschweigen bleiben" (VD, 22).
37. BG, p. 10. "Ingrbster Verschweigenheitgelebt" (VD, p. 22). 38. BG, p. 12. "Keiner das wenigste von R.C. und seinen ersten Mitbrudern gewu (VD, p. 23). 39. BG, p. 23. "Ein jeder auch wisse, dass wir zwar solche Arcana und Geheimnu nicht geringe achten, und es aber doch nicht unrecht sey, dass die Kundtschafft und W schafft derselben wielen gemein gemacht werde" (VD, p. 34). 40. BG, p. 25. "Wir sagen gleichwol so viel, dass unsere Arcana und Heimligkei keines weges geheim und bekandt gemacht -werden, obwohl die Fama infiinffSpra ausgangen undjeder mdnniglich kundt gethan worden" (VD, p. 36). 41. BG, p. 25. "Die grobe unverstdndige und stupida ingenia sich deren nic annehmen oder hoch darumb bekummert worden" (VD, p. 36). 42. BG, p. 29. "Nun ist noch iibrig, dass mit Abkiirtzung der Zeit, der Zungen auc ihre Ehre gegeben und durch dieselbe, was man vorzeiten gesehen, gehbret und geroch nun entlich einmal ausgesprochen -werde" (VD, p. 39). 43. BG, p. 6. "Eynigkeit" (VD, p. 16). 44. Cf, for example, D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology (Studies in Christian Platonismfromthe 15th to the 18th Century), London, G. Duckworth, 1972. 45. BG, p. 17. "Unser Philosophia ist nichts newes, sondern wie sie Adam nach se Fall erhalten und Moses und Salomon geiibet, abo solle sie nicht viel Dubitiren oder meinungen widerlegen, sondern weil die Warheit eynig, kurtz und ihr selbst immerdar g (VD, p. 28). 46. BG, p. 17. "Worrinen es Plato, Aristoteles, Pythagoras und andere getroffen Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Salomo den ausschlag geben, besonders-wo das grosse Wund Biblia concordiret, das kbmmet zusammen und wird eine sphera oder globus, dessen partes gleich weite vom Centro" (VD, pp. 28 ff). On Orpheus, cf. BG, p. 25, n. 1. 47. BG, p. 24. "Ob schon alle Bticher solten umbkommen und durch dess Allmdcht Gottes Verhengnuss aller Schrifften et totius rei literariae interims oder Untergang fiir soke" (VD, p. 34). 48. BG, p. 22. "Als welche ist Caput et Summa, das Fundament und Inhalt aller Facultaten, Wissenschafften und Kunste [. . .] mehr wunderbahre Geheimnuss bey un werden, als sie bissher erfahren, erkundigen, glauben und aussprechen konnen" (VD, p. 49. Rolf Christian Zimmermann has already observed: "Der Gedanke ware zu erwagen, wie weit gerade die Datierung Casaubons die Hermetik zur eklektischen G tradition zurUckverwandelte, und damit die Rosenkreuzer-Idee inspiriert hat. Denn nur sich dem Hauptargument Casaubons die zermalmende Wirkung nehmen" (Das Weltbi jungen Goethe, vol. I, Munich, Fink, 1969, p. 317). 50. BG, p. 24. Cf. supra, n. 47. 51. Will-Erich Peuckert, Geheimkulte, Heidelberg, 1951. Chapter "Geheime Kulte in der biirgerlichen Welt," pp. 549-622. Already cited in BG, p.xxxii. 52. BG, p. 12. "Philosophische Bibliotheca," "Axiomata," "Rotae Mundi," "Pro (VD, p. 23).
190
In Terms of "Tradition'
53. BG, p. 19. "Es soil auch wohl unser Gebdw, da es auch hundert tausendt Menschen hetten von nahem gesehen, der gottlosen Welt in Ewigkeit ohnberuhret, ohnzerstbret, unbesichtigt und wohl gar verborgen bleiben" (VD, p. 30). 54. Cf. A. Faivre, "The Metamorphoses of Hermes: Neognostic Cosmologies and Traditional Gnosis," pp. 275-296 in Access to Western Esotericism, Albany (N.Y.), State University of New York Press. A n a l y s i s o f t h e Meditations Valentin Tomberg on Twenty-Two Major of the Tarot of
of the
Arcana
Marseilles
INTRODUCTION: BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS AND SITUATION OF T H E WORK In September 1974 I received from Father Marcel Regnier (S.J.), director of the journal Archives de Philosophie, a voluminous packet containing an anonymous typescript entitied Meditations sur les vingt-deux Arcanes Majeurs du Tarot. This text was submitted to me in view of possible publication.1 It had been handed over to Fr. Marcel Regnier by Fr. Xavier Tilliette (S.J.), who in turn had received it from Mr. Martin Kriele, a professor of law in Cologne, and Mr. Robert Spaemann, a professor of philosophy at Munich. Having read the work and being convinced of its interest, I made contact, in January 1975, with Professor Kriele, a spiritual disciple of the author. He requested me to accept it for editing.2 Written originally in French, this book had already appeared two years earlier in 19723 in a German translation made from a typescript not free of transcription errors—and I soon learned that several versions existed, more or less correct, but fortunately differing from one another only in points of detail.4 A publisher having accepted the project,5 Professors Kriele, Spaemann, and I met in Vittel, in August 1975, to consult on methods for the work to be accomplished. At that time I intended to open a new collection with this book, the "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme." The publisher had, alas, to file for bankruptcy;6 so as not to retain unduly the document that had been entrusted to me, I returned it to Professor Kriele and suggested to him that he contact two other French publishers, of which one was Aubier-Montaigne—who finally published it in 1980, and then in 1984.7 A second German edition, corrected, came out in 1983 (reprinted in 1993) and an English edition in 1985.8 191
192
In Terms of "Tradition "
The foreword of the French edition was entrusted to Hans Urs von Balthasar. While endeavoring to respect the author's anonymity, the theologian nevertheless did provide (in the first edition only) some biographical information. The author was born in 1901 (in reality, the date was 1900) in Saint Petersburg, of Lutheran parents. His father, of Baltic German origin, was an official of the Tzar, and in his home Russian, French, and German were spoken. His mother was shot during the October Revolution. At the age of twenty-five he began to preside over the Estonian branch of the Anthroposophical Society. He married a Catholic, the daughter of a Polish railroad engineer and a French countess, and converted to Catholicism during the Second World War. He spent the final years of his life in London, where he had obtained a professional position at the B.B.C, and in Reading. He died in January 1973. After finishing the Meditations, adds von Balthasar, he wrote in German "three other works also planned for publication. Another manuscript is still fragmentary." These indications would be enough for a reader fairly familiar with the history of the Anthroposophical Society to identify the person. But, even independently of these data, the secret was transparent, in Germany, as soon as the German edition of 1972 appeared. T o the preceding information, let us add a litde more. Valentin Tomberg—for that is his name—proved to be a very active anthroposopher in the heart of the Society founded by Rudolf Steiner, which he left in 1940, having given many lectures in German, especially between 1930 and 1939, most of which were subsequendy published.9 But he is also known as the author of juridical works, also in German, notably Degeneration and Regeneration of Law (1946) and Foundations of the Law of Peoples Considered as the Law of Humanity (1947).10 In the former, Tomberg preaches in favor of abandoning nominalism in juridical matters, a notion to which he would return in the text analyzed here (cf. infra). Around this interesting figure floats something like an aura of conspiratorial mystery. A few significant facts bear witness to this. Indeed, besides the preservation of anonymity in all the successive editions of the Meditations and the pure and simple elimination, in the second French edition (1984), of the two pages of biography written by von Balthasar (which had appeared in the edition of 1981)," the other recently published texts are accompanied by introductory notices that teach us practically nothing about him: this is true of the two books, signed with his name, published in 1989 and 1991,12 and in the English edition of Lazarus, komm heraus,'1 which announces a "Translator's Foreword" in the table of contents that does not appear in the book.14 A printer's error, perhaps. But further testimony on this stand for secrecy is also the sad case of a student who, in 1991, had decided to prepare a thesis on Tomberg at the E.P.H.E. under my direction. He gave up his project after being intimidated by persons in control of documents, who claimed that much of the truth concerning Tomberg should be hidden, and that in any case the
Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
193
student would not have the right to speak of the Meditations in his thesis. Similar intimidations and shilly-shallying are characteristic of a state of mind that has certainly not ceased to be rife. But these Meditations, having been praised in reviews by the most knowledgeable or serious readers,15 not to mention the relative bookshop success they have already enjoyed, the man and his work will perhaps arouse an increasing curiosity which will finally render the Geheimnistuerei inoperative. The choice of Hans Urs von Balthasar as author for the preface of the French edition is easily explained: it was a matter of providing a reassuring Catholic guarantee of approval; not an "imprimatur," certainly, but at least an intelligent testimony of support. And von Balthasar acquitted himself of this delicate task by situating Tomberg's book in the general context of Western esoteric traditions. T o these he was able to devote only a few lines, in which he attempted to bring out what he calls the triple "repatriation" of hermetic and Kabbalistic wisdom to the biblical Christian tradition: the Hassidism of Martin Buber (marked by the Kabbalah); the theosophy of Baader, who "incorporated" Jacob Boehme's christosophy with the Catholic concept of the world; and the work of C. G. Jung, which transferred some of the depths of alchemy and hermeticism to the spheres of psychology. The meditations of Tomberg (designated hereafter as the A.futhor]) are in the same vein as the great contributions made by Pico della Mirandola and Baader, "although they do not spring from them direcdy" because his sources were highly varied. Von Balthasar jusdy remarks that the A. is more "profound" than Eliphas Levi who also, in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854), tried to assimilate Kabbalistic science and the Tarot with Catholic doctrine; he also draws our attention to a work, not cited by the A, with which these Meditations are comparable: The Greater Trumps (1932) of Charles Williams, where the "cosmic principles" of the Tarot are also brought to the fore; for there, just as in the Meditations, the "archetypes" of the Arcana "can be understood as the principles of the objective cosmos, thus touching on the sphere of what the Bible calls the dominations and the authorities." In the A. especially, these "principles" or "archetypes" are "only the cosmic material in which the unique Christian revelation is ultimately incarnated," the incarnation of divine love set forth as the final goal of all cosmic events; thus, in these Meditations, no concrete indications are to be found that would allow the so-called occult sciences to be practiced, but rather a course comparable to that of Saint Bonaventure, the author of the treatise De reductione artium ad theologiam, who, having made an inventory of profane and practical theoretical knowledge, had shown that everything converges toward the incarnation of the Logos and the divine archetype. We are not dealing with a book on the Tarot, but indeed of "meditations," inspired in Valentin Tomberg by the twenty-two Major Arcana. These
In Terms of "Tradition "
Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
meditations are distributed in twenty-two chapters, each preceded by the reproduction of one of the cards. Unfortunately, the first French edition is marred by a poor choice of Tarot pack: the publisher gives us the pack by Oswald Wirth— and even worse, in its most questionable edition—instead of reproducing the cards of the Tarot of Marseilles on which the A. had meditated. It is also spoiled by a number of transcription and typsetting errors.16 The author cites his sources. Let us mention only some of them, either because they are unusual or because they seem characteristic. His purpose is to rehabilitate scholasticism from the hermeticist standpoint. In the mystical surge of the late thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, he does not see a mere reaction to scholastic intellectualism, but rather the "fruit" or "result" of scholasticism, prefigured in the spiritual biography of Saint Thomas. In Eckhart, Ruysbroek, and John of the Cross, there was no opposition to this teaching; scholasticism was also for them "like straw," but they were aware that this straw was an excellent fuel (pp. 639 ff.). It is especially to the Dominicans that the spiritual history of humanity owes the gradual reconciliation of spirituality and intellectuality, a stage which is precisely that of scholasticism, a "great human effort maintained in the course of centuries, tending toward as complete as possible a cooperation between spirituality and intellectuality" (p. 715). Indeed, the "classical" philosophers do not refute it, and unlike many hermeticists he knows what a certain spirituality owes to Kant. In fact, Kant had put an end to the metaphysics of autonomous understanding and opened the way to a mysticism that nonautonomous understanding or "practical reason" is capable of, that is, understanding united with moral wisdom or intuition. "I had the opportunity to observe, on many occasions, the fact that the Kantians evolved, in time, toward mysticism"; thus the German philosopher Paul Deussen who put forth a synthesis of Kantism, Platonism, and Vedanta (p. 644). And then, whatever its "abandonment in relation to grace" may be, the human soul bears in itself Kant's categorical imperative, the immanent moral law— the A. compares it to the dharma of the Indian Sages—which causes it to think and act as if it were eternal. Kant thus bears witness to the nobility of human nature. He has faith in Man. Faith in God and faith in Man must remain inseparable (pp. 718 ff.). It is not surprising to see the A. juxtapose long extracts from the works of Bergson and lengthy quotations from John of the Cross. It is more so, at least at first, to see the value he places on Teilhard de Chardin. Among the theosophers, it is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin who claims the right to his particular veneration. He knows how to pay tribute to Francis Warrain and to Paul Carton, all too often forgotten (p. 635). What he writes on Papus is well representative of the A.'s position in regard to a good number of thinkers. Robert Ambelain has criticized Papus "for having an affection for Catholicism," and some Freemasons have called him a "Jesuit": "But the evolution of Papus,
whatever one may say and whether or not it is pleasing, is no more than the Faustian trial crowned with success" (p. 707). We will encounter other significant names in the course of this analysis. But the A. warns us that there are entire domains to which he owes nothing: "I owe nothing to the doctors of Protestantism of the sixteenth century, and the doctors of the Revolution and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century have taught me nothing. Nor do I owe anything to the militant scientists of the nineteenth century; the revolutionary spirits of our century such as Lenin have brought me nothing." He learned a lot through them, but he learned nothingyrowz them (p. 335).
194
195
I. CHRISTIAN HERMETICISM AND TRADITIONS The Tarot and Hermetic Symbolbm A reader who wishes to be instructed about the history of the Tarot of Marseilles, presented with the various "technical" interpretations of the trumps previously made by many authors, or informed on the divinatory practice of this set of cards, may well be disappointed, for the Meditations are indeed, as the word indicates, spiritual exercises, and only that. The A. has subdivided his book into twenty-two chapters, each corresponding to a trump, but this is just an excuse to offer the fruits of his meditations springing from a given iconographical aspect, which gave him the opportunity to express, without following a strict plan, his concepts on hermeticism, Tradition, Nature Philosophy, meditation (there are many Meditations on meditation), and anthropology. He spells out at the end of the book what one realizes from the start, namely, that for him the Major Arcana are not "a program of teaching of the occult sciences but indeed a school of meditation aiming to awaken awareness of the laws and the forces that are at work under the intellectual, moral, and phenomenal surface, that is, of the Arcana." As for the Minor Arcana, which he practically does not discuss but suggests studying in the same spirit, they "are a systematized summary of the experiences obtained by meditating on the Major Arcana in the form of an expansion—analysis and synthesis pushed to the extreme—of the Major Arcanum The World—the XXIst" (p. 771). They are merely the application of the XXIst Arcanum in the realm of consciousness which arises from the plane of action to that of emanation. The Major Arcana, therefore, since it is these we are dealing with, are above all spiritual exercises whose practice alone teaches what is "arcane" in each Arcanum, that is, what one must know so as to be capable of making discoveries (pp. 236 ff, 268, 563). They teach us not to dress up an abstract idea in an allegory, and to seek practical spiritual experience of the truth and reality by means of abstract ideas as well as concrete images. "For the Tarot is a system or organism of spiritual exercises; it is above all practical" (p. 220); its
196
In Terms of "Tradition"
Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
Major Arcana are symbols and not the allegorical expression of theories or concepts of the occult sciences. Rather, it is the doctrines of the occult sciences that are derived from the symbols; it is these doctrines that must be considered as the "allegorical" intellectual experiences of the symbols and arcana of hermetic esotericism. Let us not say: "The Emperor is the symbol of the astrological doctrine on Jupiter," but: "This IVth trump is also revealed in the astrological doctrine on Jupiter" (pp. 120 ff.). It is thus a matter of "seeing" the world from a multidimensional point of view. "Esotericism is not a system of extraordinary and unknown things, it is above all a manner of seeing ordinary and known things in a way that is little ordinary and known, to see their depth" (p. 614). For this, intuition and imagination are necessary. Without "the visible cement of intuition," hermeticism is only a heteroclite collection of scientific and religious elements. It was the Star that guided the Three Magi, not the straw of the manger or the animals; likewise, the Star of hermeticism exists only through intuition, without which one will find but straw and animals (p. 640). What is more, while theology rationalizes the content of mystical experience by deriving rules and laws from it, hermeticism aims at making thought and imagination participate in this experience. This is why the spiritual event known as "hermetic initiation" corresponds to the equal participation of faith and knowledge, of thought and imagination, and of will. Authentic hermeticism cannot be in contradiction with authentic faith; it can contradict only the opinions of theologians, that is, not faith itself but the reliance one has in their statements (p. 385). As the A.'s method consists in never losing the concrete and the practical from view, he tells us further that the goal of "practical" hermeticism consists in making intellectuality and imagination companions equal to will that is graced by revelation from on high. T o arrive at this, thinking is "moralized" through its substitution with a logic that is moral, that is, material and substantial, which introduces values (for example, stating that a part can be greater than the whole) into a logic which is formal, that is, general and abstract, passing through an intermediary stage of a logic that is organic; one introduces "moral warmth" into the realm of "cold thought"; at the same time the imagination is intellectualized through discipline and submission to the laws of moral logic—which is a form of asceticism. That is what Goethe understood by "exact imagination" (exakte Phantasie), a state of the imagination where it leaves behind the free play of arbitrary association and begins to work with association dictated by moral logic and the laws of "symbolism," because this is at once imaginative and logical (p. 388). Two trumps are of special help to the A. in drawing the profile of the true hermeticist: The Hermit (Arcanum IX) and The Fool (the only Arcanum without a number). The Hermit represents not only the wise and good Father who is a reflection of the Heavenly Father, but also the method and essence of
hermeticism, which is founded on the harmony of three methods of knowledge: the a priori knowledge of the intelligence (the lamp), the harmony of the whole through analogy (the cloak), and immediate authentic experience (the staff). Hermeticism is thus a triple synthesis of three philosophical antinomies: the synthesis of the idealism-realism antinomy (the word "realism" taken here in its current sense); the synthesis of the realism-nominalism antinomy (the word "realism" taken here in the scholastic sense: the realism of universals); the synthesis, finally, of the antinomy of faith and empirical science. The number of Hermeticism is 9, for it crowns each antinomy with its third term. The A. suggests the adjective "logist"—founded on the Logos—to qualify the synthetic position that crowns the idealism-realism antinomy; this is the position that is supported as much by experience as by speculative thinking, as much by facts as by ideas. Facts and ideas are here only two aspects of the same reality-ideality, that is, of the same truth (p. 119). He thinks that the second synthesis resolves the problem of universals through the fact of the Incarnation, since the fundamental Universal of the world, the Logos, was Jesus Christ, who is the fundamental Individual of the world. The substance of baptism—the waters of life and the fire that does not consume the individual but makes him participate in eternity—issues forth from the work of the incarnation and the redemption. Baptism is the union of realism and nominalism, of the head and the heart (pp. 249, 255 ff.). Another characteristic of The Hermit: he is walking. That is, he is immersed neither in meditation, nor in study, nor in action alone; he is manifesting a third state, beyond contemplation and action (both are united in his heart). He transcends, so to speak, on the one hand, the efforts and will of those in charge of running the ship and the spiritual welfare of the crew and, on the other, the enjoyment of those having chosen the pole of being onlookers, that is, the passengers (pp. 278 ff.). The Fool also teaches a form of transcendent consciousness and warns of its inherent danger. This bears on the two modes of sacrificing the intellect: it can simply be abandoned (many a mystic, Christian or otherwise, chooses this path), or else put into the service of transcendent consciousness. Now, it is diis second method of bypassing the intellect—but, this time, while rendering it active—that hermeticism chooses; also it includes not only mystical experiences but gnosis, magic, and esoteric science (pp. 712 ff.). It has as a historical mission, a philosopher's stone, the union of spirituality and intellectuality; its vocation is to be the crest of the wave of contemporary human efforts aspiring to such a "fusion of intellectuality and spirituality" (p. 716).
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East and West The frequent recourse to past masters and the affirmation of a historical mission that is hermeticism's duty to fulfill are meant to remind us that there
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is no hermeticism without a tradition. But the A. states that he places little value on organized esoteric societies and that the problem of filiations is unimportant to him. "Hermeticism is not exclusivity, but depth." The chain— or the river—of a tradition is not constituted by an "initiatic legitimacy," but by "the depth and authenticity of the spiritual experience," by the depth of the thinking that comprises it. Authentic knowledge can take the place of credentials (p. 500). The A. goes so far as to beseech that no Order drawing authority from any aspect of his teaching be founded, "because Tradition lives, not through organizations, but despite them. One must be content with friendship pure and simple to preserve the life of a tradition; one must not entrust it to the embalmers and mummifiers par excellence that are organizations, save those founded by Jesus Christ" (p. 673). He recognizes, in contrast, the importance of collective work carried on from generation to generation, that is, the "living Tradition" where each person continues the work of his predecessors, notably in relation to what A. calls "esoteric historicism." No one, he believes, should start over again from the beginning in this area today, "whether the most profound of visionaries and the greatest of thinkers, for isolated strokes of genius are less important finally than the continuous effort of Tradition, which means the slow, but continuous growth, of the light whose dawning was the work of Fabre d'Olivet" (p. 673). Continuing the Tradition basically amounts to serving "the cause of ennobling and spiritualizing what exists, that is, what is living as a tradition"; it is to convey the impetus that renews and intensifies it, whereas "arbitrary missions," which always come "from the outside," only substitute heterogeneous innovations for what is living as a tradition. Hermeticism's real mission is to perfect the family, civilization, culture, religion (p. 424). The A. also recognizes the specificity of a Western hermetic tradition; thus, just as the Old and New Testaments comprise all of Scripture, so do the "faith-wisdomsymbolism" of the Jews (the Zohar) and the "faith-wisdom-symbolism" of the Christians together constitute Christian hermeticism. "Just as one would not neglect the Old Testament in Christian theology, so in Christian hermeticism one would not do without the Kabbalah." It is, in essence, this law of the continuity of living Tradition that is expressed by the commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother." Now, if the mother of Christian hermeticism is the Kabbalah, its father is Egyptian hermetism (the Corpus Hermeticum is the Egyptian and Hellenic pendant of the Jewish Zohar and the Jewish Kabbalah in general) (p.3 97). But all these traditions are not identical. The A. takes the greatest care to specify the nature of the principles that necessarily separate East and West, Christianity from non-Christian religions. In the Eastern tradition one aspires to divorce the true Self from the empirical self. In the Western tradition one regards the marriage of the two as indissoluble; both of them together must achieve the work of reestablishing "likeness to God" (p. 530).
While Christianity—the true one—says, "May nothing perish and may all be saved," Samkhya and yoga, as philosophies, have recourse to the surgery of separating the true Self from the lower self (like, in the West, those without faith) (p. 541). Moreover, the intuitive experience of the transcendent Self, so much preached in the East, does not alone allow us to perceive the spiritual world and make us aware of it; this experience may even remain on the level of the spiritual macrocosm. The Easterner makes quick work of identifying his own transcendent Self with God, whereas according to Christian teaching, there are other transcendent Selves besides ours, and many degrees between God and us, degrees that are the "stars," or the ideals, of our transcendent Self. The Apocalypse even specifies the number of these: twelve, the twelve stars of the crown on the woman's head. One must, to attain to the One God, rise successively to the degrees of consciousness of nine spiritual hierarchies and the Holy Trinity. "The Vedantine conclusion Aham Braham asmi, which posits the identity of the transcendent Self and the One God, is thus an error due to a confusion of values." By all means, so many mistakes remain possible this way! Everything transcendant and immortal is not God, for the very devil is also transcendent and immortal. C. G. Jung himself almost identified his psychological experience of the Self with what religions call God, but his great prudence made him withdraw in time from such an identification (pp. 646 ff.) The spiritual life of the West, its mysticism, gnosis, and magic, is developed above all under the sign of the principle of grace. Those of the East, under that of the principle of "technology," that is, "the empirical scientific principle of the observation and use of the chain of cause and effect, of efforts and their realities." Thus Patanjali's Yogasutra, the classical text on yoga, recognizes the devotion to a personal God as being "useful for concentration," but so as to drop it later, when it will have lost its usefuless (p. 611). Finally, the Eastern and Eastern-leaning doctrines relative to the almost automatic process of involution and evolution are incompatible with the hermeticist doctrine, biblical and Christian, of the fall and salvation. The former see in the involution-evolution circle a purely natural process similar to biological respiration, while our tradition sees in it a tragedy and a cosmic drama laden with dangers and supreme risks allied with the notion of perdition and redemption. Evolution appears to us as a natural process when one looks at it from the viewpoint of the passenger on the ship, and as a drama when one sees it through the eyes of the crew (pp. 288 ff). Sri Aurobindo, commenting on the passages of the Bhagavad Gita bearing on the doctrine of avatars (or periodical incarnations of the divine), writes that an avatar is the manifestation of divine nature in human nature through Christ, Krishna, and Buddha. A tolerance, certainly, that reminds one of the Roman temple dedicated to all the gods of the Pantheon where an honorable place was reserved for Jesus Christ next to Jupiter, Osiris, Mithra, and Dionysius.
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But the teachings of the Buddha stem from humanism, pure and simple, and have nothing to do with avatars, any more than a revelation from above. The A. nevertheless does justice to Aurobindo: "he has a notion of Jesus Christ infinitely more elevated and closer to the truth than that of the so-called Christian theologians of the Protestant school, known as liberal" (pp. 719 ff.). What will characterize the work of the coming Buddha is the fusion of intellectuality and spirituality, to the great indignation of the partisans of pure faith and those of pure religion, who will waste no time in objecting to the question of a hazardous obliteration of the borderline between faith and science (p. 726). If the A. is at pains to bring out the differences between East and West, it is because he aims above all at cautioning against what he calls spiritual "adultery." Placing the West under the sign of Virgo as a source of the creative impulse and spiritual longevity, he declares that by turning away from the Virgin the West is aging. The commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" must be understood in the spiritual sense: "Thou shalt not replace the Virgin with another goddess" (Reason, Evolution, Economy) (pp. 356 ff.). One is adulterous when "one embraces, for example, the Vedanta or Buddhism, while having been baptized and sufficiently instructed to have access to the experiences of the sublime Christian mysteries." He is not presuming to speak here, of course, of the study or the adaptation of the technical means of yoga, Vedanta, or Buddhism, but of cases in which one changes faiths, whereby the same token one substitutes for the ideal of love that of liberation, for a personal an impersonal God, for the Kingdom of God a return to the state of potentiality (nirvana), for the Savior a wise teacher, and so on. One can very well adapt the technical methods of yoga to Christian spiritual practice (p. 360), but "one cannot change faiths without becoming more or becoming less. A black fetishist who embraces Islam gains moral values, a Christian who converts to Islam loses some. Regrettable or not, it is a fact that the religions constitute a scale of moral and spiritual values" (p. 361). In other passages, the A. allows his exasperation to explode. T o prefer, he writes while alluding to the mysterious Masters of Madame Blavatsky, the Himalayan mahatmas, whose astral bodies are visible at great distances by means of astral projection, "to the Master who has never ceased to teach, to inspire, to illuminate and to heal among us, very close to us," to this Master who said: "I am with you until the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20), what madness! Why search for a guru among the Hindu yogis or Tibetan lamas without taking the slightest trouble to seek in our own monasteries, in our spiritual orders, or among our lay brothers and sisters, a director who is illuminated by experience? The reason, according to the A , does not have to be sought very far. It is very simply "the search for mastery in our own name." Jesus had said: "I have come in the name of my Father, and you do no receive me. Let another come in his own name, and you would receive him" (John
5:43). In other terms, the spiritual adultery so commonly practiced today is due to the fact that "the Superman has more attraction for some than the Son of Man and to the fact that he promises them a career of increasing power, while the Son of Man offers only the career of a washer of feet." It is not a matter, in saying this, of thereby lacking in respect for other religions, but of pointing out a "purely psychological tendency" that the A. "observed a bit everywhere" (p. 192). One could add that simple ignorance also has a big part to play in this. Surely, how could one not bow down before the sages, the righteous, the prophets, the saints of every continent and every era? How could one not be prepared to learn from them in their own contexts? "But we have but one Initiator or Lord. Of this we must be certain" (pp. 168 ff.).
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The Hermetic Balance: Mysticism, Gnosis, and Sacred Magic It is important also to bring out other pieces of evidence from the core of Christianity itself. The A. rejects Pelagianism and "Protestantism" by setting them back to back: neither works or efforts alone, nor higher Grace alone (p. 173). Similarly, neither election from above by itself (Calvinism) nor faith from below by itself (Lutheranism) fulfills the requirements of the earthheaven equilibrium (p. 224). One can say, all the same, that he shows himself to be rigorously "incarnationist" and fiercely antidocetist, a firm and resolute attitude expressed through a few well chosen examples. Thus, Plato did not know how to appreciate "the magical fact of a living spiritual moment" and gave it an interpretation—later refused by his disciple Aristode—that was not "magical" but "rational," by postulating a world of Ideas above the world of phenomena; now, it is a mistake to hypostasize "ideas," for they live in individual consciousness and the whole universe that contains them only "in potentiality" (the "symbolism of facts" expresses them) (p. 321). He clearly discerns in Greek thought a natural tendency toward docetism and calls "Greeks" those Christians who say, in relation to the parable of the prodigal child for example, that the Son would return (would be resurrected) because the Father had no other choice. The drama of the redemption—and the fall—is for them mere appearance. Therefore the way in which the Father acted would have been merely a "ruse of reason" (the Lbt der Vernunft, according to Hegel). These "Greeks" are generally worshipers of Wisdom. T o them he opposes the "Jews," that is, those among the Christians who would say: "It was the power of the Father that acted in the soul of the prodigal son and irresistibly commanded him to return to the paternal home." The "Jews" are worshipers of Power. But the true Christians, the worshipers of the Love of God, understand that this story is a real drama of real love and real freedom. The complete victory of "realism" (in the scholastic sense) with its faith in what is general would have suffocated Christianity in rigidity and
In Terms of "Tradition "
Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
cruelty (the Inquisition); that of nominalism would have drowned it in the relativity of opinions (multiplicity of Protestant sects). Calvin was a realist, Luther a nominalist. The A. finds the same distinction again in people who are engaged in esotericism: the "Greeks" aspire to an absolute theory which would be to the exoteric philosophies what algebra is to arithmetic (Wronski, Fabre d'Olivet, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre). The "Jews" look for magical realizations and miracles (Martines de Pasqually, Eliphas Levi). But the example of the true Christian is, here, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (pp. 227-230). Ora et labora. The true hermeticism is the open door between oratory and laboratory. It is not "another" oratory or "another" laboratory, but the archway spanning the Church and the Academy. An intimate and personal synthesis for every hermeticist. It is the balance between "prayer" and "work" made possible by faith in "the Uniqueness of the divine incarnation which is Jesus Christ." The A. notes the tendency that is "very pronounced, if not prevalent, in contemporary hermeticist circles," to be more concerned with the "cosmic Christ" or the Logos than with the human person of the Son of Man, of Jesus of Nazareth. Far greater importance is attributed to his divine and abstract aspect than to his human and concrete one. Now, declares the A , it was not the knowledge of the cosmic Logos that founded the spiritual impetus of the first aposdes, but indeed the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ. The miracles were not performed in the name of the Logos. Moreover, Saint John did not articulate a new theory of the Logos—the Stoics and Philo had said nearly everything—but bore witness to the fact that the Logos "was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Jesus Christ had given warmth, magic, to the idea of the Logos. Papus—highly esteemed by the A , as we have seen—was somehow "between" Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (author of the Archeometre) and Master Philippe of Lyons, that is, between the master of panlogism and the master of divine magic. His friendship for Philippe did not incite him to turn his back on Saint-Yves but he remained faithful to hermeticism, which is "the Athanor erected in the individual human consciousness where the Mercury of intellectuality undergoes the transmutation into the Gold of spirituality." Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas transmuting into Christian thought, the one Platonism and the other Aristotelianism, "fulfilled the sacrament of baptism with respect to the intellectual heritage of Greece" (pp. 239 ff.). One understands henceforth on what level—or on what levels—is situated what he calls "hermeticism"; one could do without his definitions all the less when their functional advantage is to allow one to put in its rightful place each of the three areas that, together, comprise this hermeticism. Let us nevertheless note that in his case it is almost always Christian hermeticism he is dealing with. As he does not tire of repeating in a great many passages, it is mysticism, gnosis, and magic that Christian hermeticism synthesizes or bridges (cf, for example pp. 119, 173, 218, 353, 437, 540 ff). T o these three elements
he sometimes adds science (p. 218). The hermeticist is the "whole Man," for he is at once religious, contemplative and intelligent (p. 68). It is he who "guards the common soul of all true culture"; he listens, and sometimes hears, "the heartbeat of the spiritual life of humanity"; in the organism of this spiritual life he himself seems like a stimulant, a "ferment," or an "enzyme" (p. 25). A beautiful dynamic balance, one could say, because without grace hermeticism "is no more than historicism and sterile erudition," without effort it is but "sentimental aestheticism"; moreover, the Work is the child of grace and of effort (p. 173). He says further that hermeticism is "the bridge between mysticism, gnosis, and magic expressed by symbolism, which is the means of expression of the dimensions of depth and height (thus of ecstasy and enstasy) in everything universal (which corresponds to the dimension of breadth) and everything traditional (corresponding to the dimension of length)." Hermeticism is the "vertical aspect" of symbolic activity, that of the depth and the height of the Church (pp. 173 ff.). "Just as in the universal Church there are vocations to the priesthood, to monastic life, to religious chivalry, so there also remains a vocation, as irresistible and irrevocable as the others, to hermeticism." This vocation consists in wanting to experience in consciousness the unity of the cult (divine sacred magic), revelation (divine sacred gnosis), and the authentic spiritual life of all of humanity considered in a christocentric fashion. In writing this, he feels "the fraternal embrace" of his hermeticist friends of the Tradition, "including Papus, Guaita, Peladan, Eliphas Levi, and Claude de Saint-Martin" (pp. 468 ff.). Basically, what he says here about symbolism is just as applicable to traditional theosophie activity. There are people— he is one of them—incapable of not aspiring to what, precisely, founds and defines this activity. In finishing his meditations on Arcanum X (The Wheel of Fortune) he addresses, "like in the confessional," a priest—fictitious—and confides in him at the same time as he does to us this profession of theosophical faith: "/ am unable not to aspire to the depth, height and breadth of the comprehensive truth of the whole of things. [...] I know that the truths of salvation revealed and transmitted by the Magisterium of the Holy Church are necessary and sufficient for salvation; I do not doubt that they are true and I apply myself to the utmost to practice them. But I cannot stop the flow of the river of Thought that carries me toward the mysteries reserved perhaps for the saints, perhaps for the angels, what do I know, in any case reserved for beings perhaps more worthy than I" (p. 322). But what does this gnosis consist of, what comprises this magic? And this mysticism? Curiosity in itself, or art for art's sake, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, this is not true gnosis. Nor do usefulness alone (our inventions, our modern medicine), knowledge meant to be of better service to others, any more suffice to encompass gnosis, which is "knowledge the better to love God," a knowledge for His Glory. "Now hermeticism, its soul and life, is, in
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human history, the millenarian current of knowledge for the Glory of God" (pp. 232 ff.). But this gnosis, as the A. understands it, has nothing to do with the method that consists in borrowing teachings from gnostic narratives to make them articles of faith (p. 440). Nor is it a question for him of declaring himself the disciple of one or more gnostics of the first centuries (that is, gnosis in the strict historical sense). All its teachings moreover challenge implicidy, but totally, the doctrine of a Marcianus. The gnosis in question here is only "the contribution of mystical experience to understanding and memory." It is distinct from pure mysticism in that this is an experience where the will, purified and illuminated, is in union with the divine, while understanding and memory are excluded and remain outside the threshold to mystical experience. While mysticism does not participate in understanding and memory, making it inexpressible and incommunicable, gnosis by contrast is this mystical experience matched with the participation of understanding and memory; these, because of the training pursued by means of symbolism, serve as a "mirror" that enables us to participate in the mystical experience without failing in strength. Gnosis is the expression and communication of the understanding and memory that have received the imprint of the mystical experience. Thus gnosis is any mysticism that can communicate its experiences to others. A mystical statement would be: "God is love; and whoever dwells inside love dwells in God, and God dwells in him." Or else: "I am One with my Father." A gnostic statement would be: "God is the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Or else: "There are many mansions in the house of my Father" (pp. 440 ff.). As for magic, which he willingly calls "sacred magic," it is the implementation of what mysticism contemplates and what gnosticism learns by revelation (p. 441). What is this "implementation"? He answers this question in the following manner. Since what is above is like what is below, renunciation below mobilizes powers of accomplishment above, and renunciation of what is above brings into play forces of accomplishment below. Thus it is not desire that conveys magical realization, but rather the renouncing of desire. "Desire, and then renounce"—such is the practical meaning of the "law" of reward, which in essence is the practice of the three vows of Obedience, Poverty and Chastity outside of which there is neither sacred magic, nor gnosis—or hermeticism; all three are not hard through "effortless concentration" (pp. 188 ff). An example of sacred magic: Saint Anthony and his temptations; these are not so much trials putting his salvation at stake, as "acts of healing" of demonic obsession for the benefit of the people of his time. The saint put the demons into the light of his consciousness illuminated from on high and thus reduced them to impotence (p. 505). The A. makes a ready distinction between the images of The Tree and The Tower (notably in relation to Arcanum XVI, The Tower). Practical hermeticism, in living experience, is the Tree and not the Tower (of Babel). Thus
alchemy, or rather "the alchemical principle," is the soul of hermeticism, by virtue of the principle: "May nothing perish and may all be saved!" Not to separate the true Self from the lower self; not to compensate for the faults in our faculties or strengths by resorting to artifice, that is, by fabricating mechanisms like certain machines, certain philosophical systems, certain rituals of ceremonial magic. Similarly, every human soul must choose between liberation by spiritual surgery, power by constructing one mental mechanism or another, and resurrection through the cross which is the law of spiritual power (pp. 540 ff). That is why Raymond Lull's Ars combinatoria and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's Archeometre, like the Aristotelian systems in use among the scholastic thinkers, do not spring from true hermeticism, whose purpose is not to employ any "instrument"; its questions are crises, the answers it seeks are states of awareness produced by these crises. We are thus indeed dealing with the image of The Tree, for hermeticism is the art of becoming, of transformations, of transsubstantiations. Symbols, which are the fermenters or enzymes of thought, must not be considered as instruments but as guides and masters, just as the Credo is not an instrument of thinking but a kind of stellar constellation above it (p. 543). The strict reason pressing the Church to take a negative attitude toward initiatic brotherhoods is the danger they incur, by which they sometimes are overcome, of substituting the "building" for "growth," action for grace, paths of specialization for the way of salvation. This is how the A. explains—a bit simply—the opposition of the Church to Freemasonry (p. 540). Now, not the slightest trace of anticlericalism (in the negative sense of the term) is to be found in him. He proclaims very loudly that he belongs to the Roman Catholic Church: "The path of hermeticism, as solitary and intimate as it may be, includes authentic knowledge from which it follows that the Roman Catholic Church is indeed the repository of the Christian spiritual truth" (p. 341). Better yet, it is because the Church is alive that hermeticism is alive. If every churchbell were reduced to silence, every human mouth wishing to serve God's glory would also be silenced. "We live and we die with the Church." We have only one alternative moreover: to live as parasites of the Church (but thanks to which we can live as hermeticists), or to live as the friends and faithful servants of the Church (if we understand what we owe it and have begun to love it) (p. 235). On mysticism, the third basic element of what he calls hermeticism— with gnosis and sacred magic—the preceding comments on the differences between Western and Eastern traditions have already partially informed us. As a matter of fact, the A. distinguishes not just two mysticisms, but three, a received and convenient arrangement. Thefirstform, called "experience of union with nature," obliterates the distinction between individual psychic life and the natural environment (one is reminded here of Levy-Bruhl's "mystical participation"), the subject and the object having the tendency to fuse. This sort of
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experience underlies shamanism and primitive totemism, but also, says the A. quite righdy, "mythogenic consciousness," which is the source of natural myths. This desire for union with Nature is symbolized by the gesture of Empedocles throwing himself into the Aetna; it is connected with intoxication, with various forms of Dionysianism, it can be with drugs (p. 201). The secondform, the "experience of union with the transcendental human Self," corresponds to an experimentation with a "higher Self conceived of as immortal and free, during which the ordinary empirical self is separated from this higher Self. It is not intoxication, this time, but the reverse, a progressive wasting, complete sobriety. It is the teaching that is given by, for example, the Indian school of Samkhya, which is neither a religion nor an atheism. The Vedantas add to this teaching the belief that the higher Self ir God. The thirdform of mysticism, known as the "experience of union with a living God," is that of the Christians, of the Bhagavad Gita, of Ramanuja, of Madhva, of Chaitanya. The union with God in love implies a duality that is not dualism but essential attunement. The characteristic of this third form of mysticism is the synthesis of the intoxication felt by the "nature mystics" and the sobriety maintained by the adherents of the mysticism of the higher Self. On this level, to speak of beatitude or beatific visions comes down to considering in their unity the duality of the seer and the seen, to positing from the start the possibility of their intrinsic harmony in love (p. 241). The A. could have added to this triple distinction the existence of a "Nature mysticism" in the Paracelsian or pansophic sense of the term, which is not identical to the first of the three forms mentioned; here Nature is considered as a language or mediator between God and Man. The A. is by no means ignorant of this form, as witnessed by his whole Philosophy of Nature (cf. infra). But if we set aside the problem of Nature, we find ourselves face to face with two nearly irreconcilable mysticisms, that of Being and that of Love. The first aspires to the peace of Being, the subject ends up being unable to cry ("An advanced disciple of yoga and Vendanta," writes the A , "has eyes that are forever dry"). The second, that of union with the divine, does not absorb us but gives us the experience of the breath of divine love; also, mention is made of the gift of tears: "Fire meets fire," so that nothing is extinguished in us even when everything is aflame, because we are dealing with—"legitimate" binary— two separated substances in the unique essence (pp. 58 ff.). The mysticism of Love—the third form, the third way—traditionally includes three stages: purification (divine breath, faith), illumination (divine light, hope), and union (divine fire, love), which are like the apices of a triangle in whose center would be "life" (p. 99). The A. gives us several good recipes for inner gardening, often presented in triads. Thus, meditation is possible through concentration, purification, and obedience (p. 546), where once more we find—a ternary which he holds dear—the vows of Poverty ("solarization of thinking"), of Chastity ("selenization of the imagination" which can henceforth
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reflect the truth), of Obedience ("zodiacalization of will") (p. 390). There are in these Meditations several magnificent passages on chastity (there are also others on tears), of which one aspect has been mentioned earlier in regard to the ill-considered infatuation with Eastern religions. The A. also says that to "take" from the Tree of Knowledge is to lack chastity, because "the spiritual world does not suffer experimenters." One knocks, one does not open by force (p. 171). The spirit of chastity excludes all "experimentation," that is, what the Bible understands as "fornication," which is for example "to prefer the subconscious to the conscious and superconscious, instinct to law, the world of the Serpent to the world of the Word." Jesus' temptation in the desert, when Satan suggests that he throw himself down below, is a trial of chastity, because to see whether there will be angels to uphold us is to "attempt to find the destroying and preserving powers in the [deep] and dense layers of the forces of natural evolution with less effort than in the heights and rarified air of the crown of the temple of the revealed God" (pp. 182 ff). Another example of a spiritual ternary in this inner garden is "inspirationvision-intuition," which are not sequential stages (pp. 470 ff). The first, which takes place in crying, is the simultaneous collaboration of the superior eye and the inferior eye. The second, which occurs in sweating, means that the lower self passively receives an imprint from above. Intuition, which happens in the blood, corresponds to the identification of the lower self with the higher self to which it arises, in which it is effaced. The first, inspiration, corresponds to Temperance (Arcanum XTV) because of the two vases, held by an angel, out of which flows the living water: "It is the hope and the chance of survival of hermeticism in the centuries to come" (pp. 470 ff.). A tripartition that alludes once more to other distinctions dear to the A.: Pelagianism and quietism are exaggerated forms of "intuition," on the one hand, and of "vision," on the other. Hence the counsel that he gives us: "Read Claude de Saint-Martin, you will find there neither Pelagianism, nor quietism, but everywhere the double faith in God and in Man, in grace and in human effort." A profession of faith identical to that of Eliphas Levi, of Peladan and Papus "in their maturity"—as well as, adds the A, that of Chmakov and Rudnikov, two authors who lived in Russia before the Revolution of 1917 (p. 476; on Chmakov, see n. 17). Prayer and meditation are inseparable although distinct. Prayer results in the mystical union of the soul with the divine, meditation in direct awareness of the eternal and immutable principles. Guenon calls this experience of the union of the individual intellect with the universal intellect "metaphysics," as well as the doctrines that result from it (p. 731). But the A.'s thinking has scarcely any points in common with Guenon's, who in any case is not the target of particular criticisms in the Meditations, which we may regret since it would have been interesting to find explicidy what we can only infer. For the A, meditation is developed in the contemplation of mysteries that lend themselves
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to infinite knowledge (p. 733), but it also leads to furthering the progress of the work of the alchemical transformation of spirit and Nature. The hermeticist's task is to bring the soul and matter, from the state of primordial purity of before the fall, to that of after the fall. The meditation of Christian hermeticism—of theosophy, I would say—-proceeds, for example, the A. explains, from the seven days of Creation to the seven stages of the fall, from the seven miracles of the Gospel of John, to the seven declarations of Jesus Christ about himself, to the seven words of the resurrected Christ (p. 732). The hermeticist is a theologian of a Holy Scripture called "The World" (Arcanum XXI) (pp. 232 ff). There are therefore two complementary kinds of theologies; the second is that of hermeticism and it is ultimately a Philosophy of Nature.
space. The symbols here are expressing the correspondences between the prototypes—and no longer the archetypes—above, and their manifestations below. The Magician (Arcanum I), a typological symbol, reveals to us the prototype of Man the Spirit ('I'Homme-Esprit?' as Saint-Martin says). The vision of Ezekiel also comes out of the symbolism as the "symbolic revelation of the world archetype" (so the A. does indeed employ the word "archetype" in relation to the two symbolisms), just as the author of the Zohar had well understood it, who saw in this vision of the celestial chariot a "central symbol of cosmic knowledge" (pp. 32-35). God Himself is as "alive" as this world, which must be decoded, in fact saved. The A. interprets the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no strange gods before me") as the prohibition of substituting the spiritual reality of God with the intellectual abstraction of God; of substituting the fiery and luminous Being, vibrant with life, with the principle or abstract idea of the Primary Cause or Absolute, which are no more, admittedly, than mentally "graven images" or idols constructed by the human intellect (p. 219). This living God has created the world by a "magical act" that the A. identifies with a creation ex nihilo; the concept thus relates to the doctrine of theosophers like F. C. Oetinger but the A. does not cite anyone here, not even the representatives of the other concepts. He is challenging emanationism without saying that he is here in disagreement with Saint-Martin. Less surprisingly, he is also challenging the "pantheist" and "demiurgic" doctrines. Pantheism, he says, denies the independent existence of creatures; emanationism attributes to creatures and the world merely a passing, thus ephemeral, existence; and demiurgism teaches a substance co-eternal with God, which God employs as a material for His work as an artisan (pp. 71 ff.). All the same, the A. attaches himself expressly to the most recent cosmogony of the Jewish Kabbalah, that of Isaac Luria, whose doctrine known as Tsimtsum seems to him the only explanation of creation ex nihilo that is weighty enough to act as a counterbalance to simple pantheism; it has the additional advantage of being a profound link between the Old and New Testaments by illuminating the cosmic scope of the "sacrifice" (p. 114). This universe in which we find ourselves has a dramatic history, as described by almost all the Judeo-Christian theosophers, with whom the A. is in essential agreement. The relatively original characteristic in his case is the interest he demonstrates in the problem of evolution, a subject to which he returns several times with insistence. What, after the fall, replaced the world created in "Paradise"? It was "the method of so-called natural evolution," which proceeds tentatively from form to form, attempting and rejecting, then trying again. One must see in the world of evolution the work neither of Wisdom nor of absolute goodness; it is nevertheless the work of a very vast intelligence and a very resolute will pursuing a very determined goal by the method of "trial and error." In the end, what the world of biological evolution
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II. NATURE PHILOSOPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY The Signature of Things and Universal Becoming T o posit in this way the existence of a double theology does not mean to consider the two as negatively competitive. The truths of salvation, revealed and therefore absolute, are in the care of the magisterium of the Church. "But the immense domain where salvation is operant—the physical, vital, psychic, and spiritual world, its structure, its forces, its beings, their reciprocal relationships, their transformations and the history of their transformations—all these aspects of the macrocosm and microcosm and many others, are they not the field of the work to be accomplished for the Glory of God and usefulness to our neighbor by all those who do not wish to bury in the earth the talents given them by the master (Matthew 25:14-30) and be useless servants"? (p. 236). It is true that there has been no dearth of theologians, of church fathers, to take an interest in Nature. Saint Bonaventure, in Signatura rerum, interpreted the visible world as the symbol of the invisible world and saw in it "like a single mirror full of lights showing Divine Wisdom, or like a burning coal emitting light" (Bonaventure, quoted by the A , p. 37). T o follow the teaching of the Emerald Tablet, highly valued by the A , must be the program of the hermeticists and they will do it "in good conscience like philosophers, like scientists, and like Catholics" (p. 37). T o decode the signature of things in this way is one of the two complementary directions of theosophy, which proceeds analogically—or rather, I should say, homologically. The "analogy" applied to time is the basis of mythological symbolism, that is, of symbols expressing the correspondences between the archetypes in the past and their manifestation in time. Thus, Adam and Eve are inscribed in a myth. The myth expresses, in the form of a story about an individual case, an "eternal" idea relative to time and to history, not to space and its structure. Space and its structure, on the other hand, come out of typological symbolism because its basis is analogy applied to
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reveals to us is the Serpent and not God; it is the Prince of this world, "the author and director of purely biological evolution after the fall" (pp. 181 ff). The A. finds penetrating views on this in Heraclitus, the gnostics, Saint Augustine ("the father of the philosophy of history"), Martines de Pasqually, Fabre d'Olivet. He even adds, to this procession, not only Madame Blavatsky, who "added and opposed to the material evolution of Charles Darwin a breathtaking vision of the spiritual evolution of the universe," but also Rudolf Steiner, "who throws into relief the center of gravitation of cosmic spiritual evolution," a center which is not far from the Omega Point of Teilhard de Chardin. All these people "live" together in the contemporary synthesis of evolution and salvation. This is how "alchemy has today come out of the dark alchemical kitchens where its adepts often spent entire fortunes and the best years of their lives, to occupy a laboratory more worthy of it, the vast expanse of the universe. It is now the world that has become the alchemical laboratory, just as it has become the mystical oratory" (p. 566). Only the wedding of the intuition of faith and understanding, or the marriage of the Sun and Moon which it is hermeticism's duty to celebrate, makes possible this comprehension of the becoming and the nature of the universe. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Henri Bergson, and Teilhard de Chardin each say in his own way that this marriage is possible; in them the intuition of faith and understanding act like an "engaged" couple; they do not form a true alloy, but are silver-plated gold in the case of Thomas Aquinas, and goldplated silver in most of the occultist authors. Origen, Dionysius the Aeropagite, Jacob Boehme, Claude de Saint-Martin, Vladimir Soloviev, and Nicolai Berdiaev, for example, "manifest in their works a notable progress in the substantial reconciliation of understanding and the intuition of faith. The same must be said of Henri Bergson and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin" (p. 599). But Father Teilhard gives "the best interpretation" of evolution that the A. knows; the author of Le Phenomene humain has shown better than anyone else that the world of evolution is the work of the Serpent of Paradise, and it has been only since the prophetic religions (there have been several) and Christianity that the Good News existed of a way other than that of the Serpent (p. 182). T o Teilhard, "the hermeticist of our time by the grace of God, we owe the synthesis—or a road toward the synthesis—of the What and the How of the world, of religion and science, which is the task and the mission of hermeticism" (p. 565).
polarities, which associates him with the great current of alchemy, as well as with the French esotericism of the nineteenth century, and even more so with the German Naturphilosophie—which he nevertheless barely refers to. It can be a question of tripolarities or quadripolarities, but his thinking springs primarily from bipolarities. Thus: fall-gravitation, life-electricity, crystallization-irradiation, agent of magic-agent of growth, enfolding-radiance. The first of these bipolarities obviously recalls the Schellingian Naturphilosophie. The whole world manifests to us, according to the A, in the form of a system of gravitation resulting from individual systems of gravitation, such as atoms, cells, organisms, planets, individualities, communities, hierarchies. The word "fall" is taken, significandy, from the realm of gravitation; the original fall is the passing from the system of spiritual gravitation, whose center is God, to the system of earthly gravitation whose center is the Serpent or "principle of electricity." Thus, the original fall as a phenomenon "can indeed be understood as the passing from one field of gravitation to another" (p. 368). There are two sorts of elevation or bodily levitation, a distinction that dispels confusion between that of the saints and that of some magicians. The first is due to celestial attraction, the second to an electrical action directed downward, a difference comparable to the flight of an ascending hot air balloon and a flying rocket thrust forward by means of its emission (p. 376). The law of gravitation, of evolution, of earthly life in general, is an enfolding, a form of "falling," because it is the coagulation of the mental, psychic, and physical fabric around centers of gravity (earth, nation, individual, organism), while the law of gravitation, of evolution, of spiritual life in general, is a radiance, that is, the extension of the mental, psychic, and physical fabric, starting from an absolute center of gravity ("Then the righteous will radiate like the sun in the kingdom of their Father," Matthew 13:43) (p. 378). One understands that it is a mistake to consider Nature an inseparable unity, that is, not to see two natures before us, two contradictory aspects: benign nature and cruel nature, that of intense struggle and that of cooperation, wise nature and blind nature, the loving mother and the cruel, malicious one. T o confuse them, as do most scientists, is as astonishing as if a doctor would declare that the process of cancer and the circulation of the blood were, in the same capacity, two normal aspects of life and the organism (p. 299). Hermeticism, agreeing with JudeoChristian tradition in this, regards Nature—as science defines it—not as a work directiy created by God but as the field where the created world encounters that of the Serpent. A science rightly understood should differentiate between Nature leading to orthogenesis or cooperation, and Nature leading to genetic impasses or producing parasites (p. 300). Here, the A. takes up an idea dear to many Naturphilosophen such as Baader or Eschenmayer, of whom, incidentally, he does not seem to have read the relevant passages. Above all, he insists on the fact that by not making this distinction science makes the same mistake as
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Living Polarities When he queries himself on the What and the How of the world, his method nevertheless draws inspiration not so much from the Teilhardian process as from thinking inspired by the Nature Philosophies honored in Western hermeticism. Evidence of this is especially his tendency to think in terms of
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"the Manicheans, the Cathars, the Albigensians," who could not distinguish between a "virgin Nature" and a "fallen Nature." While this science refuses to see Satan in Nature, the radical dualists see him only (p. 300). Now, Satan is the Serpent, thus the winding inward. The most obvious characteristic of our world is precisely this coiling inward, not radiance, as one sees in the form of the brain and animal intestines, while in plants the leaves, branches, and flowers "radiate"; they are—homologically, I would say— deployed lungs. "Lotus flowers" are blossoming glands, the endocrine glands of the lotus flower precipitates in the microcosm, just as the planets are the precipitates of the planetary spheres in the macrocosm. The A. similarly contrasts the Sun in its radiance with the planets in their condensation (p. 300) and his interpretation of the prologue of the Gospel of John posits that the Light was not caught up by the whirlwind of the enfoldment, the reason why it cannot be obscured and continues to shine in the shadows. Such is the quintessence of the Good News. Radiance, the principle of light, is opposed therefore to enfoldment, the principle of shadows. Thus the atom is the enfoldment, but atoms are associated in molecules and everywhere association and cooperation want to predominate over dissociation and isolation. The brain is the work of the Serpent, the "Great Magical Agent," as it is called by E. Levi, Stanislas de Guai'ta, and others. But it is not the only Agent. There is a consciousness and an experience other than those owed to the brain; opposite the Serpent is the Dove that descended on Jesus in the Jordan, before the miracles— which are in no way the result of the work of the Serpent. Why, then, asks the A , have the occultists not put their zeal, their fervor, and their ability in the service of the cause of the Dove? Madame Blavatsky refused to see two principles of cosmic energy, but if the book Dzyan makes no mention of it, is it the only source of truth? "And the witnessing of the prophets, the aposdes, and the saints during thirty centuries, don't they count for anything?" (pp. 303 ff.). With the Serpent principle of enfoldment, the A. narrowly associates the phenomenon that he calls crystallization. That is what allows, for example, resistance to physical death. Crystallization is achieved through "friction," in other words, by the energy that the struggle between yes and no produces in Man. The school of Gurdjieff is a school of crystallization (pp. 424 ff.). This is not good, because it aims merely to make the corporeal immortal, notably by means of the "astral body." According to Gurdjieff, "ghosts" (cf. infra, in relation to anthropology) have many points in common with this "astral body." But there is another form of crystallization, qualified by the A. as "normal"; it takes place when the spiritual becomes psychic and the psychic corporeal. The crystallization "from below to above," taught by Gurdjieff, is not compatible with Jung's process of individuation, nor with the crystallization from above to below taught by Christian hermeticism. For this is a product of philosophy and knowledge, it is a mysticism "crystallized" into gnosis, gnosis itself "crystal-
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lized" into sacred magic. It is "crystallized mysticism," while GurdjiefPs "materialist occultism" replaces and abolishes mysticism with crystallized materialist science (p. 432). The resurrection is the triumph of irradiation over crystallization (p. 434). In relation to Strength (Arcanum XI), the A. recalls further that Strength, or "virginity," of which the Emerald Tablet speaks, penetrates everything solid. How does it achieve this? By "emollient action," not by "explosion." It is what sometimes succeeds in liquefying our crystallized mental formations (p. 348). It is cooperation, life, Virgin. But here again two principles are opposed, for there is another force, which is struggle, electricity, or the Nahash (Serpent). Curiously E. Levi, the A. judiciously points out, speaks only of the second, which he calls an "astral plastic agent." He and his school wanted to develop a modern science of the raw materials of occultist traditions and experiences. They would have done better to write a modern Christian Zohar'. And if the West is aging it is because it has rejected the Virgin, the only true source of rejuvenation. It is to commit adultery again to sacrifice her to other goddesses (the goddess Reason, the goddess Biological Evolution, the goddess Economy) (pp. 351 ff). It seems that this dual force can be identified with the electricity-life opposition which the A. discusses elsewhere. As in crystallization, he differentiates two kinds of electricity. The "terrestrial" originates from the Dragon opposing the higher spheres. This is the "technique of electricity," but it is also hypnosis, demagogic propaganda, and revolutionary mass movements. This kind of electricity lends itself admirably to the will for power. "Celestial" electricity originates from the hierarchies (including the Archangel Michael) who resist the Dragon. It manifests through the miracles of divine wrath, as one sees in the Old Testament (the example of Uzza—struck down on the spot for having touched the ark). T o these two electricities correspond respectively two kinds of "life." Zoe is vivifying fife, natura naturans, she is the source, fulfilling the individual in prayer, meditation, or acts of sacrifice, she quickens the vertical direction from above. Bios is derived life, natura naturata, in the sense of John Scottus Eriugena; it is what flows because it has come from the source; it flows onward from generation to generation. It is the vitality issued out of the same source above, out of Zoe, "but passed to the horizontal" from generation to generation. Also it flows "in the realm of the Serpent," who is himself thus "inextricably mixed in with electric energy." The A. indeed clearly distinguishes Bios from the Serpent or earthly electricity. For it is this, and not Bios, that exhausts the resources of the organism. Electricity is fed by chemical decomposition, the opposition of contraries, internal friction in the organism, it causes fatigue and death, while Bios does not tarry, is not exhausted, never dies, repairs overnight the harm caused to the organism by electricity; thanks to Bios a tree never dies of old age, it is always killed, struck, or cut down (pp. 336 ff).
In Terms of "Tradition "
Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
But this fatigue and this death are ultimately the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or the polarity of opposites, or else of electricity as the price to pay for this knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve introduced physical, psychic, and mental electricity and along with it the whole of animated Nature, from the time when this electricity entered into communion with "the tree of contraries," that is, with the "principle of electricity." In other words, death entered into animated nature at that moment. One finds oneself wishing that the A. had been a bit more precise on this point, which is presented rather obscurely, and that he had provided a few references. But his thinking becomes more understandable when he adds that the soul of animated nature, whose Bios is subordinated to electricity, is none other than the "woman of Babylon" spoken of in the Apocalypse. Animated nature, where Bios and electricity are in balance, is the suffering creature spoken of by Paul and who is hoping for deliverance (allusion to Romans 8:19-22). Animated nature where the Bios, which is dominated by Zoe, dominates electricity, is unfallen nature, whose soul is the celestial Virgin, the great priestess of natural religion. The A. also sees two agents at work in Nature, the "magical agent" and the "agent of growth." The first affects the passing of the imagination to reality, the second the passing of the potential state to maturity. He evokes the first in relation to The Tower (Arcanum XVI, which reminds him of the Tower of Babel), the second in relation to The Star (Arcanum XVII). Growth is continuous, while the "construction" proceeds by leaps and bounds. Just as there exists a "magical agent," a mysterious intermediary that affects the passing of imagination to reality (or to action, or to objective evolutionism), similarly there exists an "agent of growth," which makes the potential state pass to the mature, and which the A. calls the transforming agent of the ideal into the real. The magical agent is of an electric nature, either terrestrial or celestial; it manifests essentially in the form of electric fulguration, by discharges, emission of sparks, or bolts of lightning. Dry and hot, it has the nature of fire. The Tower of Arcanum XVI corresponds to the meeting of two drynesses, and the Arcanum of The Devil (XV) represents the encounter of the heat of Evil with that of the Good. In the human spirit this corresponds to creationism (ex nihilo), surgery, prothesis, and revolution. The thinking of Heraclitus is marked by it. But the agent of growth, which the A. compares with angelic inspiration, flows, so to speak, does not act by way of collisions and discharges, because continuous transformation is its essential manifestation; it corresponds to transformism, evolution, progress, education, natural therapy, the living Tradition- It characterizes the thinking of Thales. The A. sees the union of these two agents in the Walpurgis night of Goethe's Faust, with the predominance in Goethe of the element of water, which represents the agent of growth. It is indeed known that Goethe was more sensitive to transformism, to continuity, to metamorphosis, than to "fire" (pp. 554 ff).
However, Leibniz had known even better how to reveal the rainbow of continuity, of water, in spite of contradictory theses, and this had enabled him to discover the bases of differential calculus which, like infintesimal calculus, is a liquid and noncrystallized way of thinking. The engineer Chmakov, in his work published in Russia in 1916 (The Sacred Book ofThoth—The Major Arcana of the Tarot),'1 made use of differential and integral calculus on almost every page to deal with a great number of problems (p. 557). The work of Bergson is completely permeated with this principle of water (pp. 558 ff.). But just as there are two fires, that of electricity due to friction, and that of divine Love or celestial Fire, there are two waters: the lower, of instinctiveness, of the "collective unconscious," of the submerging collectivity, deluges, and drownings, and that of the sap of growth or the celestial water (p. 560). One can compare these comments of the A. on fluidity with his considerations on the spiral. While the circle of ceremonial magic is closed in principle, the "door" is the image of opening. The Christie formula "I am the door" teaches the means of avoiding "captivity of the spirit": "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture" (John 10:9). T o find pasture is to move in a spiral. Thus, Teilhard was not "captivated" by the closed circle of science that he entered; Saint-Martin was not "captured" by the closed circle of the ceremonial magic of Martines de Pasqually. The "open heaven" of John 1:51 ("hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man") is the path of the spiral in mfinity that is opening. The theme of the spiral, which the A. discovers in Arcanum XVII (The Star), is "the arcanum of growth," as much spiritual as biological. The genealogy of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:17) is a spiral of three circles or "steps" of each of the fourteen generations (pp. 475 ff). That is why the A. relates the image of the spiral to that of the agent of transformation or growth that "adapts" the existence of all things to their essence, or what is born to its created prototype. The Emerald Tablet provides a good example of this spiral agent of growth: the verse "Its Father is the Sun, its Mother is the Moon, the Wind has carried it in its belly, the Earth is its nurse" means that it is engendered by the spontaneous light of Hope (Sun), reflected in the movement of the lower waters (Moon), which produces the general impetus (Wind); this bears the primordial Hope toward its realization in the material realm (Earth) which lends it constituent elements ("nourishes" it). The text, as we know, continues: "This is the Father of all, the completion (Thelemos) of the whole world. Its strength is complete if it be turned into (or: 'toward') earth." Thelemos, the A. points out, means "willing," "spontaneous" in Greek; the Emerald Tablet thus lays out the component factors of the active transforming agent that underlies evolution, an agent also described in the hermetic treatise Asclepios to King Ammon, where one finds again the image of the spiral, the movement of ascent and descent described in the Emerald Tablet (p. 581).
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One can speak here of Hermesian dialectic all the better because, in a rather striking passage, the A. puts forth a formalization of the notion of polarity that deserves our close attention. Every antinomy, he writes, means: the light that I possess has been polarized on two poles between which there are shadows; now, it is from these shadows that the solution of the antinomy, the "synthesis," must be drawn. But there are two sorts of shadows: the infralight (ignorance, passivity, laziness) and the ultra-light (obscurity of superior knowledge, of intense activity, of effort still unmade). What to make of the opposites? Occultist litterature of the last two centuries readily takes into account what it calls the "neutralization of the binaries" (a Russian term), by which a third term—neutral—neutralizes the positive pole and the negative pole. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are basically only the reaffirmation of the intellectual aspect of this neutralization of the binaries, which one finds in the alchemical treatises, in Jacob Boehme, Saint-Martin, Fabre d'Olivet, and so on. It is a matter of the intelligence leaving its prison and raising itself to "objective knowledge" by means of intellectual intuition (pp. 269, 618). It is, for example, what one finds in Papus (Traite elementaire de science occulte): Father-Mother-Child; Light-Darkness-Shadow; Sun-Moon-Mercury. But what these authors are far from having always perceived is that a binary can be neutralized in three different manners:
A) above (synthesis): the neutral term is on a plane higher than the plane of the binary itself. B) on the horizontal (compromise): a median term between the two terms of the binary on the plane of the binary. C) below (mixture): one reduces the binary to a third term on a plane lower than the plane of the binary by means of mixing.
A very concrete example is provided by the "body of colors" imagined by Wilhelm Ostwald at the beginning of the century: it consists of a double cone shaped like a top. The white tip, at the top of the upper cone, is the synthesis of all the colors; the equator (circle common to the two cones), the area of maximum differentiation, corresponds to neutralization in the horizontal; the black tip at the very bottom is where the colors are lost in darkness (neutralization
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below). This corresponds respectively to wisdom, to the range of the sciences of human wisdom, and to ignorance (pp. 269 ff). If we replace the colors of Wilhelm Ostwald with something else, such as mathematics or descriptive science, phenomenalism, we obtain three formulas: (1) the transcendent synthesis: "God geometricizes; numbers are the creators of phenomena" (formula of Plato and the Pythagoreans; the Hermit's lamp in the Tarot); (2) equilibrium: "The whole world is order, that is, phenomena show limits due to the balance of what we call measure, number, and weight" (formula of the peripaticians, Aristotle, etc, the Hermit's cloak); (3) indifference: "Our mind reduces phenomena to numbers with a view to making the task of their handling easier" (formula of the skeptics; the Hermit's staff) (p. 271). Let us end these considerations on Nature Philosophy in the A. with the profession of faith that he delivers to us in relation to Arcanum IX (The Hermit). Put, he says, the Serpent—the scientific creed—on the cross of religion and science, and the metamorphosis of the Serpent will ensue. The scientific creed will then become what it is in reality: the mirror reflection of the creative Word, for it will no longer be truth but a method. One must try and transform the scientific dogmas of science into methodic postulates, which is the best way here to practice docta ignorantia. The A. hopes that science will one day be devoted to the constructive life forces of the world with as much zeal and intensity as it is today to the forces coming from destruction (heat from combustion, electricity from decomposition or friction, nuclear energy from atomic destruction, etc.). T o achieve this, the bronze Serpent must be placed on a pole (Numbers 21:5-9), which means creating a synthesis of science and religion (pp. 266 ff.). Hermetic Points of View on Man An anthropology already becomes apparent from most of the preceding considerations, especially those concerning Nature Philosophy. However, this voluminous book contains yet more spiritual pearls on the situation of Man and his future; the A. presents these, as he almost always does, by using striking imagery and polar schemes. Hence, death that saves us from the impasse where the organization of our body ends is the action of the lightning of divine love, and the birth that gives us the possibility of participating actively in the earthly history of the human species is due to the action of compassion for this Earth and those who inhabit it (p. 548). Of this history he readily retains what Fabre d'Olivet says, whose triad of Destiny-Will-Providence seems right to him. Fabre d'Olivet introduced the true esoteric philosophy of history, because before him its mystical aspect (the great alchemical work, the inner work of the new Man and that of sacred magic) played the main role in hermeticism. But through him a current of "esoteric history" was launched, whose representatives
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Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg
are Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner (pp. 311, 672 ff). The A. has a weakness for Saint-Yves d'Alveydre and his Mission des Juifs because in him at least the "anti-Christian bias" is absent, which is untrue of Fabre (p. 311). All the same, the Meditations do not give an overly pessimistic idea of the evolution of human history. The free world, in the presence of its judge and indefatigable rival, will gradually eliminate social injustices, and the communist world will be liberalized litde by litde, restoring the freedoms that it will recognize as inviolable postulates of human nature. Science and religion will still have to suffer from one another, but there will always be more scientists who are believers and priests who are scientific (p. 545). However, the passages relating to humanity in general or its historic becoming are relatively rare compared with those devoted to the individual person. It is not surprising to find rather long ones on the spirit that accompanies every human being, that is, on the guardian angel, and also on angels in general. These pages are among the most beautiful in the whole book and would make a good extract for an anthology (pp. 450 ff). The A.'s purpose is to show that the angel allows us to better know the person. We must know how to make our guardian angel live, who is like a "luminous cloud of maternal love" above us, that supports, protects, visits, and defends us, because "an angel that exists for nothing is a tragedy in the spiritual world" (pp. 450, 454). One wing keeps him in contact with divine understanding, the other with imagination or divine memory: the contemplative and creative aspects of God, which correspond to the traditional divine image and likeness in Man. By "image" we must understand the analogical structural relationship of the human being's core (his higher Self, his monad in the Leibnizian sense) with God in repose (let us recall the Self of the Orientals), while "likeness" is the analogical functional relationship of the human being (understanding, imagination, and will) with God in action. A polarity where we simultaneously find that of gnosis and of divine magic (p. 459). T o find the just measure (Temperance, Arcanum XTV) between image and likeness is to find the basic principle of spiritual, psychic, and bodily health, the balance between eternity and the present, the absolute and the relative, contemplation and action, the ideal and the phenomenal. Martha and Mary must work together: Ora et labora (p. 463). This same concern for creative and paradoxical equilibrium incites the A. to preach mistrust in regard to any observation that is too isolated from a living and complex context, because these tend to become hallucinatory. Thus, the anthroposophers were so preoccupied with the problem of Evil that it "clipped the wings of the movement," which since the death of its founder has confined itself to cultural reformism (art, pedagogy, medicine, agriculture), without mysticism, without gnosis and without magic. Much distance and measure must be maintained when one is studying Evil, because one can profoundly understand, that is, intuitively grasp, only what one loves (pp. 482 ff).
Furthermore, trump XV (The Devil) does not suggest the metaphysics of Evil but a lesson in practical anthropology; it shows how beings can forfeit their freedom and become the slaves of a monstrous entity which causes them to degenerate by making them become like it (p. 484). All the same, Evil is composed not only of celestial entities but also of beings of "nonhierarchical" origin, such as microbes, bacilla, and viruses of infectious illnesses, which, according to scholasticism, owe their origin to neither the first cause nor the secondary causes but the tertiary causes, those of "the abusive arbitrariness of autonomous creatures." We have already encountered earlier this idea of a double nature, in relation to genetic impasses and parasites. It is all the more fertile anthropologically because the A. extends it to the "germs of Evil" or the artificial entities created by incarnated humanity. These germs are demons whose soul is a particular passion and whose body is all the "electromagnetic" vibrations produced by this passion. Human collectivities can raise up such demons; thus the Caananite Moloch, or Quetzalcoatl in Mexico (p. 485). The Tibetan tulpas of which Alexandra David-Neel speaks, in which Eliphas Levi already believed, are "engendered subjectively, they become independent forces of the subjectivity that had generated them"; they are "magical creations" because magic is the objectivization of what originates in subjectivity. Likewise, the A. sees in the psychopathological complex according to Jung a demon in the state of gestation, who, engendered by the patient, takes nourishment from his psychic life. For these magical creatures to be born, they need a father and a mother, which are the will and the imagination (the two demons surrounding the devil of Arcanum XV). The esoteric injunction "be silent" means among other things that one must abstain from generating such demons (pp. 486-499). The A. shows himself severe with the egregores, which many initiatic societies value so highly. One cannot, he affirms, engender "positive egregores" because there are no good artificial demons. Indeed, to generate a psychic or astral entity the psychic and mental energy produced by us must coagulate, coil inward; now, as we have seen, it is always Evil that enwinds and coagulates. Certainly, Catholicism possesses an egregore, but whose "negative double" is named fanaticism, cruelty, pretention, "diplomatic wisdom" (p. 502). All this has nothing to do with holy places, relics, statues and miraculous icons, which are not depositories of the psychic and mental energy of pilgrims but indeed places and objects where "heaven is open and where the angels can ascend and descend." They are "points of departure of the spiritual radiance" that, in order to act, presuppose faith, but do not draw from this faith the energy that they radiate. The law of relics is that the more one takes from them, the more they radiate power; they are open windows to heaven, and this is the opposite of the law of things that are fluidically magnetized, notably talismans (p. 503). Holy water is not a depository of beneficial power but has been made receptive
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to the presence of heaven (p. 504). The "natural" demons, that is, the entities "of the left," or fallen angels, are obviously of a totally different nature. The A. gives advice and directives for exorcising them (p. 506). That the human imagination is able to create beings that can become autonomous is less surprising to those aware of the stratified nature, having multiple layers, of the human being according to traditional hermeticism. T o the Self is added the astral body to which is joined the etheric body, to which is joined the physical body (p. 412). There definitely exists an egregore of our cells; this is a phantom of an electromagnetic nature that can continue to resist decomposition after death for some time, and can manifest, for example, in haunted houses. "But this ghost has nothing to do with the soul itself or with subde bodies (the etheric and the astral, or the vital body and the animic body) whose soul is layered on top of the physical body" (p. 177). Haunting, finally, is only a phenomenon of crystallization and ghosts demonstrate these three common traits: (a) the ghost "is an entity made up of psychophysiological electric energy and a consciousness inferior to that of a normal human being"; (b) the consciousness revealed by a ghost's actions is very limited and focused, with a "maniacal" side to it, because it crystallizes an- exclusive passion, single habit, or fixed idea-, (c) the energy constituting the ghost weakens over time; before it has stopped being active, its effects can be received in oneself through certain practices, but this is dangerous and the experience, which is an "electrical shock," would tend to prove "that the ghost is not the soul of the departed and that it is a burden belonging to him"; it is connected to it "by a difficult bond of responsibility" (p. 429). T o read these lines, one could believe that the A. is professing the belief in an immediate change of life of the Self after death; but one is more than a litde surprised to hear him elsewhere declare himself the defender of the idea of reincarnation. We come back to earth in other bodies, however, not indefinitely: "The body of resurrection ripens from incarnation to incarnation, although in principle it is possible that a single incarnation would be enough" (p. 686). There are people who cannot believe in this, in spite of "precise and concrete memories" (p. 418). If one objects to him that his cherished Roman Church has always been hostile to this idea, this is in order, he tells us, that humanity does not yield to the temptation of preparing itself—a negative crystallization—for a future earthly life instead of preparing itself for the purgatory of heaven: "it is a hundred times better to know nothing of the fact of reincarnation and even to deny it than to turn all one's thoughts and desires toward future earthly life," and thus to substitute one immortality for another (pp. 432 ff). In a rather obscure and unconvincing passage he explains that acquired qualities do not disappear, but are relegated to another place, and that the fruits of experience are reincarnated through heredity: "It is thus that one is called upon to postulate the principle of reincarnation." He criticizes
the adjective in the Jungian expression "collective unconscious" and prefers to say that whoever remembers an experience is also the one who has experienced it. Furthermore, deems the A , "the facts that Jung has brought together and presented lend themselves at least as easily to the reincarnationist interpretation as to the collectivist one [sic]" (pp. 309 ff). We fortunately do not have dealings with ghosts every day, and reincarnations, even for those who believe in them, are limited in number. The Hermesian psychology of the author is not lacking in insights of more routine interest, although just as well founded on the theoretical plane. For example, who is this Man, integrated, master of himself, vanquisher of challenges, to whom he often refers as though to an ideal? Placed in the middle of these challenges, this Man is the master of the four elements that comprise the vehicle of his being. In his thinking, he is creative, clear, fluid, and precise. In his emotions, he is warm, generous, tender, and faithful. In his will, he is intense (a Man of Aspiration), wide-ranging and open, supple and adaptable, firm and stable. He is therefore a man of initiative, knowledge, mobility, and firmness. And the A. compares the four theological virtues (Prudence, Strength, Temperance, Justice) to the four cardinal virtues of Plato (Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice) to say finally that we have here the four elements of the Tetragrammaton in human nature (p. 208). We also know the importance of the traditional triad Thought-Feeling (Imagination)-Will. Thinking plays the role of stimulator and educator: before acting, people think; then they imagine and feel; and finally they decide and take action. But in the case of spiritual Man it is his will that exercises the stimulating and educational function for feeling and thinking. He acts first, then he decides, then he feels the value of his act, finally he understands it. Abraham, in leaving his native country, acted as though he knew what would result from his decision, while in his thinking and imagination there was neither a plan nor a program. Instead of gravitating around "I" as the center, the will can therefore orient itself to the center "Thou." This transformation operated by love is called obedience (pp. 381 ff). The A. agrees with a very current tendency in modern psychology, namely Jung's, when he teaches us that one must not seek to destroy in ourselves what could be the origin of certain faults and vices in our soul, but that it matters far more to channel them. These defects and vices are not so much monsters as "lost sheep." Hence the desire to dominate, to submit others to one's own will; for at the root of this desire is a dream of oneness, union, the "harmony of the heart." This is why we are missionaries in the area of our own soul, charged with the conversion of our desires and our ambitions. One must seek to "persuade" them that they are on the wrong track, that they are only losing their way. The way of meditation deep within us will end by showing the "other way" to every sheep lost in ourselves (p. 546).
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Does a technique of prayer and meditation exist? If by "technique" one understands something like the Tibetan prayer wheel, that is, a minimum effort for a maximum effect, then one must reject technique. T o this word the A. prefers "rhythm," which suggests the repetition of ages and of generations, the celebrations of cult rituals, the repetitive prayer of the Rosary (is it not like the beating of a heart?), hesychasm. It is rhythm that makes prayer move from the realm of psychology to that of life, from the domain of tendencies and personal moods to that of the basic and universal pulses of Life itself (p. 613). The reader cannot avoid comparing these considerations with those relative to games, because liturgy is basically a superior game: "First learn concentration without effort; transform work into play; make it so that everything that you have accepted is sweet and that the burden that you bear is light!" (p. 26). Concentration without effort is like a fire without smoke or crackling, because in order to dare to stand ever straighter the soul must be serene and the body completely relaxed (pp. 64 ff). The A. cites in this respect Schiller's famous "Spieltrieb" and observes that little children do not work, they play; a child is concentrated as he plays; his attention is whole and undivided (pp. 39 ff.). We have already brought out a few Jungian traces as we went along. The A. makes explicit reference to the psychologist of Zurich in more than one place, but he complements him by adding to analytical psychology a dimension of "transconsciousness" which one wishes he had made more explicit. He shares with Jung, of course, in refusing Freudian reductionism. The wholeness of love, he writes, understood in the sense of "Adam-Eve," is to sexual desire what white light containing the seven colors is to red light. The Adam-Eve love includes the scale of distinctive colors, while Freud's libido is only a single color isolated and separated from the whole. Now, the principle of chastity is this whole; that of unchastity is the separation from the whole. In other words, impudicity is none other than the autonomy of carnal desire, it reveals a decay of the wholeness of the human being that is at once spiritual, animic, and corporeal. Sexual desire constitutes only the "seventh part" of the human psychophysical organism, and Freud neglects the six others, but "Jung has reestablished the principle of chastity in psychology" (pp. 164 ff). One sees in what manner the A. converges with the Jungian polarities while still going beyond them in his own way, when he affirms, for example, that if man is habitually more intellectual than is woman, it does not mean that intellect is a masculine principle. Man being masculine physically, he is feminine from the animic point of view. Woman, feminine physically, is masculine (active) in her soul. Now, the intellect is the feminine side of the soul while the fertilizing imagination is its masculine principle. Unfertilized by an imagination guided by the heart, the intellect remains sterile; it depends on the impetus that it receives from the heart by means of the imagination. The A. is thus
grateful to Jung for having rightly evaluated the role of the unconscious, at once a compensator, a corrector, and a director, and warns of the severity of the danger that is incurred by a consciousness that undergoes its influence without restraint, for this can be beneficient or maleficient; this corresponds to the teaching of hermeticism on the two spheres, that of the Holy Spirit and that of mirage (p. 761). But the results of Jung's work leave the hermeticist unsatisfied. The "metaphysics" of the collective unconscious has been barely developed by Jung (p. 310); furthermore, what is essential is not the results of this work but its method, that of "free association," which brings to the A.'s mind the message contained in the first Arcanum (The Magician) (p. 634).
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REGRETS AND QUERIES This work contains, among many stimulating thoughts, a certain number of beautiful passages. Besides the pages devoted to tears, to angels, let us mention the exegesis of the resurrection of Lazarus (pp. 417 ff), the opposition of the mason and the gardener (p. 539), without counting many good comments on poetry and inspiration, such as: "Poetic inspiration is the union of the blood from above—of Hope—and the blood from below—of Continuity. Poetic experience is the vibration of this meeting" (p. 569). Why must the physical presentation of the French edition leave so much to be desired? The A. had not put the finishing touches on his work; undoubtedly he would have changed at least the presentation of his references, often only scarcely allusive. He would in any case have corrected the proofs more carefully. One feels that he lacked an "editor" to put the final material touches on the work It is regrettable and surprising, to say the least, that a work of this quantitative and especially qualitative importance would not be accompanied by an index, at least of the proper names. The misprints are far more numerous than in the other books published by this press; toward the end of the book they even tend to increase in a maddening way. I find "individualization" (Jungian) for "individuation" (only once, it is true, p. 40). And "Quaita" instead of "Guaita" (p. 469); "Levy for "Levi" (Eliphas), several times. Many typographical errors in the German or Latin quotations (for example, pp. 556, 649). There is no respect for the principle of giving the currendy accepted version of well-known tides (p. 746). One wonders whether the proofs had even been looked at, when one sees (pp. 769, 653) that diagrams have been left out and in their place are only blank spaces. Proper names are printed either in uppercase or in lowercase, with great arbitrariness; words did appear this way in the original manuscript, but an author always corrects this sort of detail before giving his manuscript to the printer, and the A. deserved someone to take on this task for him. It is the same for the biblical references, where the chapters are left out and only the verses given (pp. 517, 714); paragraphs
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printed all of a sudden in italics though they are not quotations (pp. 543 ff.); parts of sentences omitted (p. 536, §2); ridiculous abbreviations with no justification (p. 671, German quotation after Schiller) except in a rough draft; and especially texts given with no edition references (pp. 581 ff, 644) or with whimsical references in the sense that they concern very late reprints (p. 613: Les Recits d'un pelerin russe . . . , 1930!). And as I have already pointed out, by a curious error the figures of the Tarot illustrating the work are those of Oswald Wirth, not the Tarot of Marseilles, whereas the latter is the one that the A. is discussing. He is naturally not to blame for so many mistakes; he would certainly have corrected them, some in rough draft, others in page proofs. There are practically no real author's errors to be found. At the most he might be criticized for referring to the Egyptian Book of the Dead through a mediocre book by Marques-Riviere (p. 438); and in one place, of not following through his previously announced reasoning (p. 443, he loses the train of thought begun on p. 437). Sometimes one would also like to understand whether he is speaking for himself or borrowing; when he discusses the numbers twelve, seven, and three (p. 391), where is his knowledge coming from? From his meditations, or from his reading? He has enormously read, studied, and assimilated; however, the eclectic range of his culture is surprising as much by what he leaves out as by what he uses. One notes that this theosopher, who preaches a complete and balanced hermeticism, practically never gives himself to meditations of a theogonic order: the shadows in God, the Ungrund, the relationships between deity and divinity do not seem to concern him much, while he holds the highest opinion of Boehme all the same. His criticism of the emanationist doctrine is rather cursory. We have seen that it shares common points with that of Oetinger and differs from that of Saint-Martin; but why does he not criticize Saint-Martin, whom he knows well? More refutations, reasoned and founded, even in relation to his favorite authors, would have enhanced the value of the work. It is also surprising that this German speaker, whose solid German culture is beyond any doubt—and who was Steinerian—seems to be so unfamiliar with pre-romantic and romantic Naturphilosophie; he quotes Schelling, of course, and especially Baader, but he says nothing of Oetinger, Novalis, Ritter, Eschenmayer, and the like. Indeed, there was an array of intuitions there close to those of the A , of which he did avail himself. He seems to be much more familiar with French occultism of the nineteenth century, of which he retains hardly more than what is still valid for us today; this is perhaps because he likes to separate the wheat from the chaff, isolate the significant element from the dustheap, from the matrix the rare or genuine pearl. But since he is himself a theosopher in the traditional sense of the term, why does he not employ the word "theosopher," except in reference to the
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disciples of Madame Blavatsky? As he speaks of "theosophers" only in relation to the Theosophical Society, it even happens that the word takes on a pejorative meaning, for example, when he says that "the theosophers have much muddied the idea of waiting for a new Buddha and a new Avatar" (p. 724; cf. also p. 192). Only once does he specify (the "modern" theosophers of the school of Blavatsky, p. 239). One is even more ill at ease with his adherence to the idea of reincarnation, to the extent that it is so little in conformity with the Western theosophie tradition—which is also that of the A.—that is, to the thinking of a Boehme, of a Saint-Martin, and of many others. It is not a matter here, certainly, of criticizing an author for his beliefs, but of mentioning that he could have taken the trouble to argue point by point against those who, among the great hermeticists that he admires, are not in agreement with him on this matter. The A. is not very combative. With respect to Hegel, when he says that thesis, antithesis, and synthesis reaffirm the method of the "neutralization of binaries" found again throughout the hermetic tradition (p. 618), he fails to make this essential point: the Hegelian synthesis eliminates the first two terms, makes them quite simply vanish, while hermeticism conserves them. One would have expected comments on this subject, in relation to Arcanum VI and Arcanum VII (The Lovers and The Chariot), which figuratively set the problem. Finally, this man who writes such fine pages on the reconciliation of science and religion scarcely mentions, on this issue, anyone but Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin, completely passing in silence over the epistemological rifts already introduced at the time when he was writing. One does not, by any means, have to speak of quantum physics in a work of spirituality, but when, throughout so many pages, one is discussing Nature and the marriage of science and religion, it would be desirable to bring up certain facts. These criticisms of content apply to minor points. Above all, they should serve better to bring out, by contrast, the value of a book that may be destined to be included among the major works of what is now generally called the modern Western esoteric currents.18 NOTES
1. Letter from M. Regnier to A. Faivre, 20 September, 1975. 2. Letters from M. Kriele to A. Faivre, 29 January and 15 July 1975. 3. Meditationen uber die Grossen Arcana des Taro. 22 Briefe an den unbekann Freund. Nach derAbschrift einesfranzosischenManuscripts ubersetzt von Gertrudvon Hipp herausgegeben von Ernst von Hippel, Meisenhain am Glau, Anton Hain Verlag, 1972, vii + 525 pp. (pp. v-vi, preface by Ernst von Hippel). Clothbound. This is the translation of the original French text. The Tarot cards, one of which should normally have preceded each chapter, do not appear. 4. Letter from Miss Eva Cliteur to A. Faivre, Amsterdam, 3 July 1975. This person, who was then in possession of several versions of Tomberg's text, wrote in
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French to me: "Havingfinishedhis work [the Meditations], the author went to Holland to see an old friend. He asked him to make him several typewritten copies. [. . .] The friend was delighted to have been chosen and set about copying the manuscript with a great deal of enthusiasm. But unfortunately, while copying he had to answer the telephone and take care of visitors—and when he had finished a "Letter," he reread it without comparing what he had written with the original text. [. . .] Finally, he made duplicate copies and distributed them to a few people whom the author had named." Then follows a series of comments concerning the transcription errors in the German edition of 1972. Miss Cliteur adds, further on, these interesting lines: "I would very much like to do everything that I can for the successful publication of this work in the language in which it was written. Perhaps the author had his reasons for writing it in French. It was not only because of 'tradition' as he called it. He had the idea that the French language has a special quality to awaken certain 'layers' in the soul. He chose his expressions with care. Never once was I able to persuade him to change a single word so as to achieve a more appealing or more comprehensible style (in my opinion): he was adamant on this point. All the same, he was the most amiable person one could imagine. I also very much liked his wife. She was very modest, but she was also an outstanding personality, who was very involved in mysticism and hagiography, and who helped her husband as much as she could." 5. Letter from the publisher to M. Kriele, 7 January 1975; and from M. Kriele to the publisher, 7 March 1975. 6. The "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme" started in 1980; nineteen volumes published until 1999 (Editions Albin Michel and Deny). 7. Meditations sur les 22 Arcanes Majeurs du Tarot. Par un auteur qui a voulu conserver I'anonymat, foreword by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1980, 775 pp. and line ill (the twenty-two Major Arcana according to O. Wirth). The second edition, pardy revised and corrected, and accompanied this time by the Major Arcana of the Tarot of Marseilles, came out by the same publisher in 1984 (same number of pages), but with two pages less for the foreword (bibliographical part by von Balthasar, present in the first edition, eliminated in the second) and, in addition, a four page preface, by Robert Spaemann, edifying but of a very general character. 8. Der Anonymus d'Outre-Tombe: Die Grossen Arcana des Tarot. Meditationen, Basel, Herder, 1983, reprint 1985 (?) and 1993.1 have consulted the edition of 1993 (2 vols, xxv + 269 pp. and xi + pp. 369-748), admirably presented. It is a new translation from the French manuscript, done collaboratively by Franz Oesig, Eva Cliteur and Hans-Hermann Peschau, under the responsibility of Martin Kriele. It reproduces (pp. v-viii) in German the preface by Robert Spaemann of the French edition, as well as (pp. ix-xv) theforeword(according to its second French version, that of 1984) by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Each "Letter" is the subject of explanatory or bibliographical notes, usefully completed by a glossary (vol. II, pp. 723-731) and then (by Agnes and Reinhold Klein) an index of names of people and a thematic index. The jacket of the two volumes provides a few meager biographical indications on the author, but without his name being mentioned. The English edition, published in 1985, is entided: Meditations on the Tarot. A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, New York, Amity House, ix + 658 pp. Translated from the original French manuscript. Bound. Jacket representing a statue of the Virgin (Notre-Dame de Chartres). No introductory text.
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9. Assembled and published under the tides: Anthroposophische Betrachtungen iiber das Alte Testament, edited by Willi Seiss and Martin Kriele, Schonach (Bodensee), Achamoth Verlag, 1989, 240 pp. Anthroposophische Betrachtungen iiber das Neue Testament und die Apokalypse, edited by Willi Seiss and Martin Kriele, same publisher, 1991, 320 pp. In his afterword to each of the two volumes, M. Kriele presents the history of these texts by Tomberg without alluding to the Meditations. Cf. also Lazarus, komm heraus!, by Tomberg, published by Martin Kriele, Basel and Freiburg, Herder, 1985; English translation (by Robert Powell and James Morgante): Covenant of the Heart, Meditations of a Christian Hermeticist on the Mysteries of Tradition, Rockport (Mass.), Element Inc., 1992, ix + 255 pp. In the core of the Anthroposophical Society, the work and the character are the subject of controversy. On this controversy, see, for example, the following references: Hellmut Finsterlin, "Valentin Tomberg und seine Gegner," pp. 31^44 in Erde und Kosmos. ZeitschriftfiirAnthroposophische Natur- und Menschenkunde, 12. Jahrgang, no. 1, 1986, article followed by the correspondence between Martin Kriele and Hellmut Finsterlin, ibid, no. 2, 1986, pp. 34-43, and no. 3, 1986, pp. 24-25. James Morgante, "The Tomberg Controversy," pp. 9-11 in Newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America, St. John's Issue, 1990, pp. 9-11 (followed by a text by Margaret Barnetson, pp. 11-13). Elisabeth Vreede and Thomas Meyer, Die Bodhisattvafrage, Basel, Pegasus, 1993. Christian Lazarides, "Le probleme Tomberg," p. 66-86 in Esprit du Temps, no. 12, 1994. Very informative, albeit anthroposophically oriented and partial, is the book by Sergej O. Prokofieff and Christian Lazarides, Der Fall Tomberg. Anthroposophie oder Jesuitismus, Dornach, Goetheanum, 1995 (new edition, expanded, 1996, with an extensive bibliography; English translation: The Case of Valentin Tomberg: Anthroposophy or Jesuitism?, London, Temple Lodge, 1997), and the discussion of that book in Novalis, nos. 11 and 12, with contributions by M. Kriele and S. O. Prokofieff. Apart from that controversy triggered by members of the Anthroposophical Society, and besides the well-documented Der Fall Tomberg, see also the more general approach by Gerhard Wehr. He has devoted a chapter to Tomberg in the second edition of his Esoterisches Christentum. Von der Antike zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1995, pp. 306-310 (without, for that matter, hesitating to present him as the author of the Meditations). He gave an expanded version of this chapter, entided "Valentin Tomberg und die grossen Arcana des Tarot," pp. 239-258 of his book Spirituelle Meister des Western. Leben und Lehre, Munich, Diderichs, 1995 (French translation: Maitres spirituels de I'Occident. Vie et enseignement, Paris, Le Courrier du Livre, 1997). See also Philippe-Emmanuel Rausis, chapter on "The Christian Model," in L'Initiation (a collective work), pp. 81-117, Paris, Le Cerf, 1993.
10. Degeneration und Regeneration der Rechtswissenschaft, Bonn, G. Schwippert, 1946 (2nd ed, Bonn, Bouvier, 1974), 72 pp. And Die Grundlagen des Vblkerrechts als Menschheitsrecht, Bonn, G. Schwippert, 1947, 195 pp. 11. Cf. supra, n. 7. In the second French edition (1984), the two existing pages of biography (pp. 15-16 of the edition of 1980) were replaced (p. 16) by these simple words (of Urs von Balthasar): "The author wanted to retain anonymity so as to let his work speak fully for itself and avoid any intervention of personal elements. These are reasons that we have to respect." One may well ask, then, why they had not been "respected" earlier, starting with the first edition? Moreover, in the preceding paragraph, the author of the foreword eliminated, for the second edition, criticisms he had
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expressed against Tomberg (these had to do, in particular, with reincarnation, p. 14 of the first edition), but this reference to reincarnation was reintroduced in the German edition of 1993 (vol. I, p. xv). 12. Cf. supra, n. 9. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. The text announced on page iv of Covenant of the Heart does not appear anywhere. Let us mention nevertheless a short notice six lines long, on Tomberg's biography, on the fourdr page of the front matter. Besides some indications already given in the present article, one finds there the following: Tomberg was "strongly influenced, early in his life, by Soloviev and by an experience of the Sophia in a cathedral in Holland," and he died on the island of Majorca. 15. Cf, for example, the detailed and laudatory book review by Werner Schlepper (S. J.), pp. 575-578, in Theologie und Philosophie, 48th year, journal IV, 1973 (on the subject of the first German edition, 1972). 16. My sending to the publisher Aubier-Montaigne the analysis (published in La Tourbe des Philosophes, nos. 14-17, 1981) of this work, along with various corrections, resulted in some improvements in the second edition, but unfortunately too few. N.B.: It is this analysis (1981) of thefirstedition (1981), which is reproduced here in a revised and expanded version. 17. This book (Moscow, 1916) quoted by Tomberg was reprinted in 1993 (twenty thousand copies!) under the tide Sviachtchennaia Kniga Tota—Vielikii Arkani Taro-Absolioutnia Natchala Sintetitcheskoi Philosophi Esoterisma, Kiev, Sofia Ltd, Orfival Edition. This book is, like Tomberg's, a series of reflections on the Major Arcana. It, too, is divided into twenty-two chapters, each of which is replete with quotations from a great variety of authors. 18. The analysis that has just been presented, let us remember, is related to the first French edition (cf. supra, n. 16).
R a y m o n d Abellio and Western Esoteric
the
"Tradition"
He gives us fair warning: "I never had the impression of being a pure esotericist. I wanted to be a philosopher. [. . .] Because esotericists are generally suspicious of philosophy, and draw firm boundaries on this subject. Now I have never liked boundaries" (PG, pp. 129 ff.).* And immediately stressing how important esotericism was in his life: "When I left politics, esotericism gave me not only a substitute intellectual occupation, but an ethical basis to justify and legitimize a profound life transformation." Ambiguous is Abellio's position in Western esotericism, but all the more appropriate to stimulate our thinking on the philosopher that he had wanted to be, and the esotericist that he was—just as on esotericism itself. What elements and current themes in literature and classical and Western esotericist thinking are to be found in Abellio? What is his position in relation to modernity? Finally, what does his originality in the history of esotericism consist of? I. ESOTERIC ELEMENTS AND THEMES Biographical Data and the Gnostic Tradition Abellio's experience in the spring of 1946 is described as a sudden enlightenment that reminds one of Pallas springing forth from Jupiter's brow—the result of a hatchet blow struck by Hephaistos, and here of a meditation on numbers. The story of this experience in La Bible, document chiffre (1950) or in Sol Invictus (1980) recalls that of Jacob Boehme contemplating a pewter pot suddenly illumined by beams of sunshine. But in Boehme one gets the impression that the experience is more "intuitive," less intellectual, than it is in Abellio's case. As far as Abellio is concerned, he did not choose to work always on his own. He showed himself sensitive and favorable to the advantages of discreet, rather than secret societies, although he recognized their legitimacy (PG, pp. 180 ff.). In 1946, he seriously contemplates setting up an assembly of "men of the ark" in view of the impending deluge; at first he sees it as a localized 229
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material institution, then understands that it can exist of itself without anyone's help: "And one would have great difficulty in naming and numbering the beings connected by this bond" (PG, p. 51). In 1953 again, he creates the Circle of Metaphysical Studies, yet which makes no claim to be an Order (PG, p. 52); this Circle exists for two and a half years, then is dissolved after achieving its main goal: "a clarification of our respective positions in relation to esotericism. After all, there is no need for an organized group: transcendental phenomenology is a gnostic community" (PG, p. 52). In accordance with the most classical initiatic destiny, Abellio did not fail to find his spiritual teacher, as though without having sought him; he liked to remember how the latter had replied to the question of what he was doing that evening, seemingly by happenstance, at a political meeting of little interest: "I have come to meet you." An instructor appearing in an improbable place, but at the right time, because this started off a period of gestation, which takes place at the beginning of an initiatory scenario: conceptionbirth-baptism-communion (SI, p. 429). Enigmatical, this Pierre de Combas; a character "with two faces, who could pass for a charlatan or for a great philosopher" (Et. A., 1980, no. 3, p. 9). One is tempted to recall what Master Philippe was for Papus, or Fulcanelli for Canseliet. With his healing side, he possessed "powers," knew how to create an astonishing atmosphere around himself. I had already been aware of what Abellio had revealed to me about the character, when one day in October 1976 (cf. CH, p. 368), he wrote to me that my questions had incited him to say more about him in Sol Invictus, which was to be published shortly afterward. This instructor, this Master, whom one would imagine in a description of the "meetings with remarkable men" variety, occupies a central place in Abellio's three novels, and it is known that the Pujolhac of Heureux les Pacifiques is Pierre de Combas himself. In Sol Invictus (p. 360), the author describes him for us as appearing to have little compassion for the suffering of others; but it is less on that, he adds, that one must judge a man, "than on the soul power that he opposes to his own [suffering]." Such an apparent detachment, under which charity is made silent and invisible, recalls that of many real or fictional characters, such as Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni. Abellio attributes "special symbolic meaning" to the fact that his meetings with Pierre de Combas and with Jane L. had both occurred simultaneously, within a few days of each other (SI, pp. 366 ff). In order to be receptive to Pierre de Combas's words and presence, something in him had to have already been purified shortly before; now it was owing to his encounter with Jane L. that Abellio was prepared for meeting Combas, with "a soul and a body already filled with wonder and therefore amenable to being freely open to the wonders of the spirit"—as he announces to us in this remarkable passage. Combas used
to say to him: "You are in God but God is also in you, the temple is Man"— and Jane did the same for the world, "she became the world in me." This synchronicity, this particular power of revealing the signs in the events that concern us, is also connected with esoteric tradition, for which there is no coincidence. Gnosis replaces it with a higher understanding of the relationships uniting the divine, the human, and the universe. What is this gnosis? It is "the endless ladder to Christ," Abellio tells us in an interview of January 1982. Gnostics are first those who refuse to separate reason and faith. In 1953-54, he reads a great deal of Hermann Keyserling, Nicolai Berdiaev, and Saint Bonaventure (PG, p. 53). He sees "gnostics" in the last two, but also in Meister Eckhart and Spinoza, and plunges into the works of Plato, especially of Husserl. Saint Thomas, Aristotle, Descartes, Heidegger are part of another family. "Gnosis," by the way, must not be confused with the gnosticism of the beginning of our era, almost entirely dualistic, while contemporary gnosis almost always results in a radical nondualism: the notions of incarnation, assumption, and transfiguration illuminate Abellio's position on this point. A gnostic could not be a dualist; this would contradict the very principle of universal interdependence. On the contrary, dualism often seems to go hand in hand with mysticism (FE, pp. 48 ff.). Nevertheless, Abellio has always shown himself fascinated by the Cathars, a trait that his family origins certainly accentuated, as he himself recognizes several times. For his play Montsegur (1945), he knew how to take from Catharism an evocation of the "conflict between power and knowledge"; he wanted to see in the martyrdom of the perfecti that of men of knowledge (Approches, p. 245)—but he does not, philosophically or esoterically, make Cathar dualism his own. Gnosis, according to Abellio, does not present itself as a theurgy, a possible contact with the angelic world. It is essentially related to the intimate event, to the permanent crisis of being; it is not a matter of attaining a state of fusion with our personal God, as it is in the case of the mystics, but of building in oneself the inner Man, of which Saint Paul speaks in his Episdes and Husserl in his phenomenology. A realization that entails a "concentration," or "enstasy," of the powers of the being: gnosis is not an escape from oneself, a surrender of the intelligence; it enables and develops the play of rationality, a basic requirement brought to the world by the West since the Greeks (PG, p. 51; Approches, p. 14). Perhaps more clearly than had been done before him, Abellio means to distinguish between gnosis and mysticism. The first, solar and maculine, is the affirmation of consciousness; the second, nocturnal and feminine, is the dissolution of this consciousness, it undergoes the profusion of discourse and the "construction of myths" (SA, pp. 32 ff). Gnosis integrates becoming, but the reverse is not true (CH, p. 376).
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Traditional Sciences and the "Primordial Tradition " Several of the traditional branches of esotericism are among the favored themes in Abellio's thinking: astrology, the Kabbalah, the Tarot, the I Ching. T o which one could add, although they appear only implicidy in his work, the teachings of Alexandrian hermetism. The Abellian distinction among influential, symbolic, and structural astrologies may have contributed to restoring, in France, a qualitative astrology freed from the notion of events. In the Tarot of Marseilles he sees no more nor less than an illustration of what esotericists call the "Primordial Tradition" (cf. infra), as similarly in the I Ching of the ancient Chinese or in the tree of the sephiroth of the Hebrew Kabbalah. And it is more as an esotericist than as a historian that he approaches these texts, affirming that their emergence in history in no way informs us on the occult mode of their conception by their authors. Finally, perhaps without realizing it, Abellio revives in his way the teaching of the Corpus Hermeticum according to which our mens must be capable of "interiorizing" the universe through the active imagination, owing to the connaturality of our spirit and of Nature. The hermetic illumination is not very different from the Abellian transfiguration. One is also reminded of the Art of Memory, practiced in the sixteenth century in the form of little "interiorizable" theaters, where all things knowable and known had their places in a concert of images arranged in tiers. Here, one sees at work a mnemotechnique of a gnostic type that seems to prefigure the concrete application of Abellio's absolute structure: one is dealing, in both cases, with a transcendental ratio where intelligence and the supramental come into play, while natural reason remains the field of the mental alone (FE, pp. 12 ff). Abellio is not the first philosopher or esotericist to have searched for and found an organon capable of unifying the kinds of knowledge, our relationship with them, and that which we maintain with others. What he has been criticized for calling "absolute structure" is not without recalling the Absolute that Hone Wronski, at the beginning of the last century, prided himself on having discovered. And while we are not surprised to learn that Abellio studied the work of this character who served as Balzac's model in The Search for the Absolute, our hunger remains a bit dissatisfied in reading his lines penned in 1951, saying he "very quickly dropped the study of Wronski," whose vocabulary he found too particular (CH, p. 340). One would have wished he had spoken of this more, as of Raymond Lull and his Ars Magna, of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre and his Magical Archidoxy, or again of the Quaternary dear to the Naturphilosophie of German romanticism. All the same, even when the organon is not so developed as to become, as among these authors, a truly operative instrument, it is also interesting in the state of an oudine or a simple plan, as in the case of the first Rosicrucians, whose Manifestos of 1614 and 1615 teach us that they
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had, under the impetus of their master C. R.-C, developed axiomata—a system of axioms—which were infallible. This gnosis, this knowledge, does not float about in an abstract emptiness cut off from every memory. Here the reference is clearly Judeo-Christian. Hindu tradition and Christian gnosis result in fundamentally different positions: "Christianity alone, as an absolute novelty in history, propounds a truly transcendental ethics, and in a way the ultimate term of the ethics as bestowed on the man of knowledge of the final era" (CH, pp. 137 ff). "My way in" to esotericism, he specifies, "was Christian esotericism"—that is, a "very personal esotericism that was a part of my life" (PG, p. 129). Is Abellio inscribed in the line of Christian esotericists? He would be on its fringe, because for him it is hardly a matter of faith, nor of vision making perceptible to our inner senses beings that really exist outside ourselves. His interest in Christianity, his real admiration of it, as a religion distinct from its exoteric organization, seem to concern not so much Christ as a human-divine person as the irruption of a new principle in history. Therefore, Christianity should have "remained a religion of the Son and not of the Father." Abellio readily repeats that the Father is omnipresent, the Son omniscient. Just as the principle interests him more than the person, the invisible Church appears to him far more essential than any organized Church. What Abellio understands by invisible Church, the "mystic theologians" and the theosophers call "inner Church." This, for Abellio, would be the place where men seek to develop their knowledge. Certainly, it is not the sole property of the West, nevertheless "it is at the present time taken in charge most consciously and most intensely by the Westerners" (PG, p. 60). A specifically esoteric trait, the idea of a "Primordial Tradition" is found very present in Abellian thought. It is known that there are three ways of looking at it. Either on the vertical plane only, without reference to history; it would then be a spiritual Orient toward which we attempt to orient ourselves, a magnetic pole never ceasing to guide Men of Aspiration. Or as a treasure effectively entrusted to humanity in remote times, but itself of nonhuman origin. Or finally as both at once—which appears to correspond to Abellio's thinking. In La fin de Vesoterisme, he declares that he is increasingly supporting "the hypothesis of one or several antedeluvian civilizations having lived and prospered at least 1,500 years before our era and even earlier"—and does not hesitate to have recourse to the authority of the highly contested Paul Lecour (FE, p. 20). "The primordial tradition," he adds, "was given to men all at once, all whole, but veiled. Or rather the men who received it did not yet have available the intellectual means necessary to translate it into clear notions." It may be noted that Abellio never gives a "chain" of names, as was done rather often in the Renaissance (according to Marsilio Ficino or Pico della Mirandola, the classical sequence was Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, Orpheus,
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Pythagoras, the Sibyls, Plato . . .) One conceives that Abellio has no need of a referential initiatic filum, and all the more so because he himself does not cite these names here. But his references to vanished civilizations can be surprising. On these, he assures us, that possessed extensive knowledge, at least in the matter of symbolism, the documents today are abundant and demand, irresistibly according to him, the idea of a "common source." Thus, "the primordial knowledge could have appeared to humanity [. . .] either by direct revelation, or through the mediation of more highly evolved beings come from elsewhere who then departed again" (FE, p. 23). At this point, one begins to worry. Would Abellio be succumbing to the siren song of the extraterrestrials? He seems to pull back in time, by recalling that the problem of the "Hidden Masters"—whose existence it is not a matter of denying all the same (PG, p. 166)—belongs to occultism and cannot be considered as a philosophical problem. Indeed, who then taught these instructors themselves? Shrewdly, he suggests that the "communication," having first slipped, so to speak, from the outside into the depths of the collective unconscious of humanity, would be found as though digested in every man's consciousness, and that it is the process of this elaboration and elucidation that would comprise the true message (FE, p. 26). On this elucidation, on this elaboration, Abellio barely ever stopped working for decades. Applied to the methods of the Kabbalah, they persuaded him that the composers of Genesis, for example, must have possessed "a power of synthesis going beyond human possibilities as we know them today." At that point, into his view loomed larger and larger "the notion of a peculiar and unknown origin" (PG, p. 139). The Tarot, at bottom, is an illustration among others of this "Primordial Tradition," that is, a "knowledge whose origins and means of revelation are lost in the mists of time." Their emergence in history, any more than that of the I Ching or of the sephiroth, does not inform us on the mode of conception that was occultly theirs in the course of the ancient millennia. All the same, the "Tradition" "has been encumbered in the course of ages with glosses and commentaries that were added on, which must be cleared away to bring out the vital center, the seed that alone is important"—whether it be a question of the sephiroth, the zodiac, or the Tarot (PG, p. 167). These glosses, these innumerable constructions, do not necessarily spring from basic principles but most esotericists have garnered them piously. Guenon, fortunately, has introduced a bit of order (PG, p. 139). Therefore, it is hardly the history of esotericism that is of interest to Abellio, but its "primary axiom," which he occasionally calls without distinction either "primordial unity"—here without any reference to the past—or "eternal philosophy." He describes "the possibility, as an experienced act in Man and in being, of a primordial unity, or in any case of nonduality as a state of active communion, the possibility among all beings of a unifying spiritual
influence." The passing of this into a being, its outpouring, creates a state of illuminative consciousness (PG, p. 139). Certainly, "the transcendent unity of all religions" remains an acceptable notion to the extent that religions possess "the same transcendent core," but every historical expression of it is completely distinct. There subsists, in any event, the great difference between eastern religions, those of fusion, and Christian religions, those of communion (cf. Et. A., 1980, no. 3). Above all, this "transcendent unity" is for Abellio less a revealed reference, or capable of being so by a God or His envoys, than a general will to surpass dialectically all the philosophies of "points of view"—which are, he thinks, of the university type—"and is thus epitomized in a tentative but inexorable ascent toward this vision in every direction which is, according to 'Tradition,' the eternal philosophy. Nor is it a question here of a vain and artificial syncretism, but indeed of an experienced fact, and as always, there is greater knowledge in life than in thought" (SI, p. 429). We would say that it is a matter of a basic need for rationality, in view of the conversion and the self-presence of the inner being—as he expressed it himself in 1952, differentiating this need from another one, that of direct access to the absolute being through detachment from the present world judged to be rotten by the outer powers (CH, p. 305). This is why it is not a question of opposing "Tradition" and the modern world: "Those who speak of Tradition as though it were a definitive given [. . .] thus retain of it only a part arbitrarily chosen by them."
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n . ESOTERICISM AND MODERNITY Rene Guenon and the Status of the West T o speak of "Tradition" "as a definitive given" . . . Many are the currents, and especially the individuals, targeted here. In the very first place, Rene Guenon, whom Abellio mentions by name on several occasions. We have seen that he credits him with the merit of having put a bit of order in the esoteric hodgepodge (FE, p. 15). He understands and praises Guenon's demand for rigor, his submission to a simple metaphysical order, clearly expressed. Guenon was the first "to trace the lines of division." But he did not go far enough in this direction; too often he was content with external criticism of the texts, while one must proceed to their internal critique, "that is, really reexperience esoteric teaching, and even finally, after having made use of it, render it useless and replace it with a truly creative act." Without this, the fundamental doctrines turn too easily to "dogmatism," leaving no room for dialectics. He who did so much to purify esotericism remains all the same a representative of dogmatic esotericism, for he does not dialecticize enough; the conclusions of his premises are drawn in an automatic fashion, his triadic structure itself cannot be dialecticized.
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The negative consequences are not lacking. Instead of generating creators, Guenon generates only schoolmasters for whom any novelty is mere degradation or decadence. They conceive of the succession of the ages in a linear mode, thus overestimating history to the detriment of the timeless content of illumination. They live in a forest of symbols, certainly, but which is hiding the tree (PG, pp. 135 ff). And like all the dogmatic Churches, this esotericism "transforms metaphysics into morality by an imperceptible downward path, and ends up by making rulings on good and evil" (PG, p. 145). Guenon thus finds himself forced to overemphasize the importance of uninterrupted "chains" of initiation; these indeed facilitate the transmission of spiritual influence, but do not possess for all that the exclusivity of pronouncing ordination, contrary to what Guenon constandy would seem to have us believe. "The discussion of the regularity of these chains is today taking on a rather offensive sectarian aspect" (PG, p. 145). Essentially, what is missing most blatandy in Guenon and the Guenonians, is to have known Husserl and the epistemological revolution of the twentieth century. And Abellio sets out, by the same token, sharply to criticize Julius Evola, who allowed himself to dispose of Husserl in a few pages, saying that phenomenology, for what good it has, does no more than "plagiarize" or "reflect" "Tradition." In fact, for Abellio "it guards it and re-creates it" (FE, pp. 61 ff). Finally he can declare: "Guenon has had hardly any influence on me"—and thanks to Pierre de Combas, "I could almost have done without reading him" (PG, p. 53).
esotericism. It is under the influence of Pierre de Combas that he learned to "clarify," to "classify," to "make the junction with the traditional current of esotericism as a whole, which did not prevent me from always remaining in a very Western line!" (PG, pp. 130 ff). "I do not much like," he also says, "to hear [. . .] that the West is less than nothing, and Western science an illusion or a danger" (PG, p. 144). "We are Westerners," he writes in 1954, "which means that we accept and assume this descent into matter which is the very condition of the ascent of consciousness, and that is the necessary means of all human realization" (CH, p. 376). It is a matter of "finding a really integrating Western yoga through which all bodies ascend together. This task is our historic task. It is the ultimate vocation of the West" (CH, p. 377). In this end of a historical cycle, which is having us enter into a phase of disoccultation of the hidden tradition, the West must effectively maintain an eminent role, have complete confidence in its prime vocation of rationality. Also, the key problem of esotericism is its fin (both "end" and "aim"); that is, the transfiguration of the world in Man (FE, p. 10). Rationality, and not rationalism; it is a matter of rehabilitating Western reason as an instrument of knowledge, "at a certain moment in its gnostic ascent," in other words, as an instrument of dialectics— and that is more or less what Rudolf Steiner already taught (FE, pp. 61 and 66). Today, it is the Westerners who are best able to penetrate all the ancient and traditional texts, and to experience them, precisely because, from their own genesis as Westerners, they are capable of reconstituting them dialectically. "The Westerner re-creates everything, even if he is unaware" (PG, p. 147). A striking synopsis of the genesis of the West, thus of Western esotericism, presents it to us as occurring in three phases. First, from the beginning to the Renaissance inclusively, is the "placental confusion": still being formed, the West is nourished by its Greek and Hebrew tutors. Then, the great Cartesian tabula rasa, "separated" science working on isolatable physical phenomena and quantifying them. Filially, the reintegration of metaphysics as an existential experience of global reality; this third phase will be a "reinsertion of transcendental subjectivity into the structure of the sciences"—and the accession of philosophy to the rank of a hard science (FE, pp. 73-80).
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Incessandy Abellio returns to these invectives in opposition to the gravediggers of the West. First, because the very notion of decadence seems false to him: then, because the West still has an essential role to play in the history of humanity. "It is too easy to denounce the modern world. This comes from a certain laziness or more exacdy from a fault in this very understanding one is supposedly defending" (PG, p. 92). In the Cahier de L'Herne, George Laffly noted that Abellio "departs from esotericism" on a major point when he refuses to speak of decadence (CH, p. 325; one would have to specify which esotericism one is discussing, as there is sometimes a tendency to extend to the whole of Western esotericism, from the Corpus Hermeticum to today, points of view characteristic of a form of esotericism born toward the late nineteenth century). It is certain that for Abellio there is no dark age—or at least that the latter is not a return to chaos or decomposition. What others call decadence, Abellio integrates, by readily quoting Husserl: "Every era, according to its vocation, is a great era"—and even Kafka: "If you want to destroy the world, reinforce the world" (PG, p. 145). Above all the notion appears simplistic to him; is every era not "always, in a sense, as though at the zenith of something?" (PG, p. 50). Every era, but also every civilization, and in this respect the Western has Abellio's predelictions. We have seen that his "way in" had been Christian
Abellio and His Kin Rarely does one hear Abellio allude to an ancient author as an authority or source of authentic knowledge. Besides a few references to Meister Eckhart or Saint Bonaventure, the models or supports that he provides for his meditations are always texts or sources that are anonymous and structured: the I Ching, the Tarot, the sephiroth of the Kabbalah. One quickly understands why, and by the same token the underlying reason for his being a marginal figure among the great representatives of Western esotericism. Let us take the
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example of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin: one would have thought that Abellio would have closely examined his arithmology; this author was our first topic of conversation, and I remember my surprise at the lack of interest that I saw him demonstrate for the Unknown Philosopher. A short time later, in one of his works, he reiterated what I had heard him say at that time: "Isolated numbers retain [Saint-Martin] more than the genetic structures in which they are taken" (FE, p. 42). Little passion for authors considered in their originality, little sensitivity, apparently, for the flavor of a period, for the esthetic aspect or the "local color" of the places of esotericism. One hardly imagines Abellio contemplating, simply for the pleasure of it, the baroque alchemical engravings of the seventeenth century; while he might have meditated on this kind of work, one has the feeling that it would have been in order to pull out the structures from it, and cast it aside once these structures had been found. On the other hand, one notes a marked taste for precepts or quotations of illuminative value or of universal scope. Four are his favorites: "It is the study of the Law that sustains the world." "It is not because two clouds meet that ughtning flashes forth, but it is so that lightning may flash forth that two clouds meet." "It is not our acts that sanctify us, it is we who sanctify our acts" (Meister Eckhart). "To conceal things is the glory of God: but the honor of kings is to search them out" (Proverbs 25:2). But let us return to the thinkers of modernity. Which of them would seem the closest, among his contemporaries, setting aside the case of Husserl? Surely not Andre Breton, who nevertheless led him to discover Hegel and Freud, and "despite a personal surrealistic experiment in automatic writing" carried on for four years (PG, p. 35). The surrealist experience is indeed situable and situated, in the absolute structure: entirely in the lower vertical line of the sphere. Rather one will think of Carl Gustav Jung, of Mircea Eliade, of Stephane Lupasco. In contrast to Freud, notes Abellio, Jung at least had the presentiment of Man's "sphericity," just as Adler did (SA, p. 293)^but he remains a man of the "second phase" (cf. supra) by his positivism, which he shares with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. For Jung "counts" his archetypes, just as Freud counts his complexes and symbols, "each individual is thus found artificially constituted in a closed but repetitive system related to the objectivity of a code of interpretation, as is appropriate to the sciences"—whereas for Abellio this dismemberment of the universal psychic globality is, at a pinch, acceptable only for the ill. N o truly ascendant dialectic comes here to organize and obliterate the psychic structures of the living experience of the formless. Certainly, the Jungian orientation is not reductive, it is "amplificatory"; but for Abellio this is hardly better since it remains in multiplicity, results only in the horizontal (FE, pp. 73 ff). Jung comes very close to gnostic knowledge; but for a symbolic relationship really to be open to it, it must be considered as the visible emergence of a hidden proportion, that is, of a relationship of rela-
tionships—the raw material of gnosis not being, Abellio insists, the relationship, but the proportion, that is, the Quaternary (FE, pp. 80 ff). And perhaps there is more similarity between the Quaternary according to Jung and the Quaternary according to Abellio than the latter is willing to say or admit. But when he notes that the fourth element, feminine, added by Jung to the Trinity, remains linear and ungenerative, Abellio refers back, more or less explicidy, to his absolute structure: Father-Mother correspond to the basic Quaternary, horizontal, and the Son—assumption, incarnation—to the vertical axis. The whole sphere corresponds to the Ungrund, to the En-Soph, or to the Deity (FE, pp. 90 ff). It remains that Abellio and Jung were always open to modernity. If one shares with them this attitude of openness to the world and to intellectual seeking, one will agree with J. Largeault that esotericism "can only be the subject of the same work of historialization to which we have to submit all the other facts of history. Otherwise, and unless understood in this manner, it represents something like a negation of the originality of the West." Too often esotericism takes on "the aspect of a prohibitive resurrection of reified representations" (CH, pp. 382 ff). However, Abellio regrets that most esotericists are "scholars, not philosophers" (SA, p. 18). His eclecticism, such a common characteristic among Western esotericists, goes hand in hand with a great severity toward reseachers in symbolism, toward almost everyone who studies the numinous or the sacred. One cannot avoid the impression that Mircea Eliade is here set up as a permanent and implicit target. Symbols, myths, and archetypes "have become the favorite area of exploration of a new category of professors of the so-called human sciences. As might be expected, one observes unfortunately that one remains here at the level of teaching, with the aggravating circumstance and the alibi of a particularly suffocating erudition." Suffocating, and truly regressive—pushing toward within, not beyond the limits of knowledge. There is no need for too much scholarship: ideograms such as the cross, the tree of the sephiroth, the I Ching, represent, as far as their comprehension is concerned, "a specially demanding problem of the all or everything" (CH, p. 135). It is known that Mircea Eliade insists on the necessity, for modern Man, of going through the written word, undergoing the culture, if he wants to be initiated. As for Abellio, though almost as eclectic, he distinguishes more carefully—and perhaps too much so—between, on the one hand, the fundamentally "different" mode of existence that is implied by traditional esotericism and, on the other hand, scholarship—or, which he curiously puts in the same box, occultism, considered here as practice divested of the spiritual and intellectual defenses of doctrine (FE, p. 12). Finally, it is instructive to compare Abellio's absolute structure with what, in Stephane Lupasco, occupies the place of such a structure—but which Lupasco never named as such. In the Cahier de I'Herne devoted to Abellio,
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Marc Beigbeder has undertaken this comparison felicitously. Its interest lies partly in the fact that there can be an organon, an "axiomatics," or an "absolute structure" without the author necessarily having to speak of esotericism or even consider referring to it in the least, which is true in the case of Lupasco, as of many Naturphilosophen of romantic Germany. Like Lupasco, they are easily appropriated—quite rightly—by esotericists because of their open systems. The similarities between Abellio and Lupasco are striking: a sort of "consciousness of consciousness" is the term of the operation; both require a topology that is cinematic, that is, "intensifying" as Abellio says; hoth systems can integrate everything, in a totalizing—not totalitarian—-fashion, even if Lupasco himself does not use his to integrate all the possible fields—which, through his own work, Marc Beigbeder has attempted to achieve in his stead. Beyond the operative technique, the specificity of both organons seems to be of a religious nature—in both etymological senses—or else gnostic. Abellio seems to construct his starting with a tradition prior to himself, which is not true of Lupasco. Moreover, he takes his position from the viewpoint of the spirit, of gnosis itself, while Lupasco "presents" himself in an objectivist manner (CH, p. 286). Lupasco would speak of education only, Abellio insists on transfiguration. The latter, Beigbeder has also noted, would give to the gnostic what the former would give rather to the mystic, although these terms are not permutable from one system to the other (CH, p. 296). While for both the consciousness of consciousness is a creative and vitalizing understanding of contradictions, these can never, according to Lupasco, vanish completely, while the Abellian transfiguration implies what one would be tempted to call their Aufhebung. It is because Abellio tends to value the high much more than the low, in the sphere of his absolute structure. Like Plato, he prefers the One to the many, while for Lupasco both have equal value, and he might not much know what to do with the qualitative difference between the higher and lower hemispheres in the Abellian absolute structure. It remains that at the present time there do not appear to be, remarks Beigbeder, any universal schemes of interpretation—that is, interpretative schemes having the aim to account for everything—"that have as much capacity or potential for integration, and by far, as these two here" (CH, p. 285).
enduring love. Among the great, Abellio is the only one nearly to identify gnosis with phenomenology. By its irruption in the twentieth century, he affirms, the transcendent phenomenology of the West "marks a decisive revolutionary change in the domain of initiatic transmission, in the same way as the advent of Christ, by substituting the ancient religion of paternity with a religion of fraternity, paved the way in the West for the potential access to the freedom of every individual" (CH, p. 134). It is tempting to consider Abellio, here, like a Saint Paul who would not yet have succeeded in mobilizing the crowds. It is true that while he was in his way the mouthpiece of Husserl, he behaved as an independent and original disciple; and perhaps one could just as well say that Husserl was his John the Baptist. Often, when Abellio speaks of phenomenology, it is the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus that springs to mind, for indeed in both it is a matter of the interiorization of the world in our mens. Abellio likes to recall Meister Eckhart's notion of "active and creative reason," and Nicholas of Cusa's notion of intellectus—differentfromratio, situated lower; for Abellio it is a question of putting natural (mental) reason into dialectical relationship with the intellectus (transcendental reason, the supramental), that is, to pass from Descartes to Husserl while making use of Descartes (did Husserl not entide one of his major writings Cartesian Meditations}). Abellio goes so far as to say that Husserl reconquers the unity lost at the Edenic exile, that his transcendental Nous fulfills Western philosophy, and that the world "then enters into a period of reintegration" (FE, pp. 70 ff). T o make Husserl pass from philosophy to esotericism, it was enough for Abellio to correct him with a nudge. Husserl had seen that all consciousness is intentional—that is, has an object—but this phenomenology had remained static; it fell to Abellio to declare that a genetic phenomenology was possible and to consider, besides the intentionality of consciousness, its power to intensify the self and to transfigure things beyond things themselves. Once arrived at this point, Abellio claims that he has not strayed from the line of "reason" but it is hi this line that he intends, as Husserl had done a little more timidly, to go beyond reason itself and to project a transcendental logic beyond "natural" logic, which agrees with esotericism without too much trouble to the point of merging with it; a transcendental logic that, he tells us, is "in no way" distinguishable from Aurobindo's supranatural or the illuminative intuition of which Guenon speaks (FE, p. 61). T o this initial intuition, verified, always renewed, and become a permanent exercise, an organon operative in every area, let us add, in an attempt to delimit the Abellian imagination, the image of the sphere. That absolute structure is a sphere seems to go without saying, once one knows this structure; nevertheless, it is indeed the sphere that haunts him, even if only as a radical escape from indefinite linearity. "Reality is spherical, the sentence is linear" (PG, p. 83).
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III. RAYMOND ABELLIO'S SPECIFIC CONTRIBUTION T O ESOTERICISM Phenomenology and Absolute Structure "In the beginning," confides Abellio to Marie-Therese de Brosses, "I was interested in phenomenology because I wanted to demonstrate esotericism" (PG, p. 141). Their meeting was a case of love at first sight, which became an
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Language itself is also linear in the sense that it unfolds in time; that is why, he says, "I have become a structuralist, essentially, in an attempt to dominate time and destroy this linearity" (PG, p. 76). A statement that may be completed with an image that can clarify or correct the impression of abstraction felt by every new reader of Abellio: two heterogeneous domains, represented by two columns; one of them, that of ideograms, structures, and numbers; the other, that of images and sounds. Between the two, let us imagine a third, a place of passage, that of the alphabet, of words, of language. For Abellio it is always a matter of seeking and following pathways or processes leading back to the first column. "The relationships between the terms are more important than the terms," he is fond of repeating; in this sense he is a structuralist. But Abellian structuralism, which points out that the arbitariness of the sign is essentially ungenerative through the inadequacy of language and of the real, results in a transfiguration, a gnostic experience different by nature from the abstract intellectualism of most anthropologists and linguists situated in the wake of structuralism. Abellio is not inscribed for all that in the current of figurative structuralism, nor of the mythanalysis of which Gilbert Durand has made himself the pioneer, because it is neither the "figurative" nor myth that interests him. This latter current still seems overly symbolistic or poetic, insufficiendy gnostic, to Abellio, who ceaselessly repeats that the symbols must be placed in structures, not only so as to interconnect them, but ultimately so as to efface them (PG, p. 144). Neither stricdy formalist nor figurative, this axiomatics occupies an original and uncomfortable position in the human sciences, and one should not be surprised that Abellio still has so few disciples. He interests the formalists when he declares, for example, that "mathematical formalization" will have science make a greater leap forward than those that marked the era of Copernicus. Or when he repeats that this world here is only a support, and that "it is the demand for rationality that is fundamental." But he causes them concern in assimilating this rationality with the inner world and in adding that all structuralism remains outside the pale of gnosis (CH, p. 135). The Absolute Structure interests the esotericists first by what it contains of references to "Tradition"; indeed, it imposes on art an eminent role, but well situated or controlled in that it must always result from the mixture of an intensity and an amplitude (cf. the two vertical vectors in the sphere of the absolute structure); now, today intensity is put in the service of amplitude, and not the reverse, a diagnosis that can only agree with that of the traditionalists in matters of art. Nevertheless Abellio takes care to specify that The Absolute Structure is not a work of esotericism, "on the contrary," because the references there to "Tradition" are not proofs of his thesis but illustrations of it. Well before the publication of this book, as early as 1951, Abellio wrote: "This need for rigor that took over me as my experience
as an esotericist, with the facility this provided, drew to a close, brings me back to philosophy and to the sciences" (CH, p. 340). His refusal to honor ancientness for itself, to take an interest in filiation or in the interpretative glosses sedimented during the course of centuries, is of a nature to displease the proponents of an esotericism concerned with affirming its "traditional" specificity. Because for Abellio, ancientness and the intrinsic value of "obscure texts," such as the Sepher Yetsirah and the Zohar, are connected not so much with "external proofs" as with the possibility of "disocculting" interpretations of these texts themselves, "that is, an updating to bring out their more or less strongly concerted cryptographical character " (SI, p. 167). The key suggested here is not among those taught in Kabbalah, nor even more generally in Judeo-Christian exegesis. T o a Jesuit reproaching him of striking down two thousand years of Christian exegesis, Abellio replied: "I am not striking down anything at all!" And he is right, certainly, to the extent that his discourse is situated in margin to exegesis. For that is not what interests him, it is the text itself, the return to the text. Abellio is a sort of protestant of esotericism. A protestantism at once disillusioned and gay, because "the immediate consequence of absolute structure is that there some positiveness everywhere," so that no more value judgment is possible (Approches, p. 18). Fascination "must become transfiguration" (or communion), a task always taken up again, without end, but which opens up to us a kind of Paradise.
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Universal Interdependence and Love A gnostic Paradise, but without the angels, without intermediary spirits. An Eden that has the name "universal interdependence," a term well suited to retain the attention of esotericists, since they rediscover in the expression, as in the content that Abellio puts into it, the notion of universal analogical imbrications. It is a doctrine of totality: "there the body, the soul, and the spirit are interwoven, the object is dissolved and transfigured in the subject" (FE, p. 16). Unlike esotericism, this interdependence makes no distinction between a microcosm and a macrocosm, because for Abellio it is rather in the core of one and the same "cosm" that everything plays itself out. But esotericists can be grateful to him for taking up philosophy where Descartes had left it: "Descartes demanded complete enumerations. Today let us ask for complete correlations" (Approches, p. 52). And he finds Leibniz too timid on the terrain that is theirs: this philosopher, perhaps the last of the great in the West to wish philosophy to remain the servant of theology, nevertheless set forth with his universal sympathy of the monads but a heavy postulate, which remains short of universal interdependence (CH, p. 301). Certainly, the latter concept gives the impression
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of correcting what absolute structure may have of a bit remote from the human: universal interdependence is the "only religious foundation of every life" (Approches, p. 249). It might serve as a corrective, for the thinking of our time, to the insufficient Sartrian concept of consciousness as an empty and noncommunicative form, just as to its negation of the transcendental Self. It has furthermore the advantage of resolving the irritating, and always badly posed, problems of Evil and of Freedom (Approches, p. 248), because it gives their full meaning to the Self of the Vedantists, but also to the reversibility of merits and the communion of the saints of the Christians. It is not, Abellio insists, an intellectual game, but this implies a "demanding incarnation." Henceforth, happiness and unhappiness "are given to us only to be illuminated by one another": Evil is an outrage only for whoever egotistically receives the Good that has been given him (SI, pp. 368 ff). Here one sees the relationship with Western-type gnosis: "The end of Man is in communion, not in fusion"—and mysticism can then be made gnosis. Whoever says incarnation and communion, also says brotherhood and love. One gets the impression that Abellio does much to correct what his totalizing system may have—and in fact possesses—of the abstract and the insufficiendy human in the eyes of many readers. One hardly finds in him spontaneous descriptions of the eminendy irreplacable and specific character of each human being, or of all true love between two beings, and its duration matters little to him; but one does see that he knew how to remain a man of his time, curious about the problems that are ours, in whatever area they may be, excluding none of them from his attention and thinking. Taking on the guardians of Guenonian type "Tradition," he writes: "One could say that the main problems of our time are of no interest to them, the problem of Woman, for example, or of the couple." Thus, Julius Evola does not pose that of woman in his dialectics, and one scarcely sees in his theories a possible application to the minds and bodies of today (PG, p. 146). Impossible, therefore, to deny the essential place held by living concreteness in Abellian thought. Impossible to speak, in relation to it, of absolute idealism, and this for several of the reasons already mentioned, also because Abellio teaches that the expansion of the Self in the Nous and in the Self first passes by the shortest route through the communion of the prime totality which is the couple of man and woman, whence the importance of physical love for many a gnostic (SI, p. 357). However, this couple, even if successful, should only be, he thinks, a passage to reach a higher plane, which Abellio does not hesitate to call by the name given it by traditional theosophers: the Sophia. "The meaning of love is to build inside the self the very being of love, that is, the impersonal knowledge that is traditionally the Sophia, the very being of femininity"—he explains in a passage which one would need to reproduce here in its entirety (PG, pp. 98 ff).
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PERSPECTIVES The life and thought of Raymond Abellio are inscribed in the history of Western esotericism—as this notion is intended in the present book—by the presence of the four constitutive elements of this form of thinking (the theory of correspondences, the idea of living Nature, of active imagination, and of transmutation—cf. supra, "Preface"). But to these may be added a few features which relate to them and complete them, such as the illumination of spring 1946, the meeting with Pierre de Combas, the renewed need to form litde groups of seekers, the interest in referential corpuses that particularly lend themselves to exegesis, a marked taste for astrology, interiorization of a gnostic type, ontological antidualism, the primacy of gnosis over mysticism—and eclecticism, also so characteristic of many modern esoteric currents. But this eclecticism, which is an openness to the world—an active, creative openness, to all the components of the modern world and of history— plus the fact that Abellio is far more attached to the West than to the Far East, here is what creates a problem in the view of certain purists of "Tradition." In Access to Western Esotericism (1994, pp. 37-40), I distinguished three orientations which those proclaiming themselves the proponents of this "Tradition" seem to follow today. First, a purist way, "severe," elitist—of the Guenonian variety; then, a more eclectic type but nevertheless oriented toward certain forms of perennialism; finally, a way called "alchemical" metaphorically, what its representatives criticize or condemn is not denied or repressed for all that, but represents the material necessary for a transmutation. Abellio falls into this third category; he recalls to the West its spiritual and specific vocations in a world that is not necessarily much worse now than in a distant past. Were it for this reason alone he could not be Guenonian, besides the fact that Guenon's thinking does not seem to him to be sufficiently dialecticized. The very personality of Abellio's two masters agrees with the eclecticism that is constitutive of his temperament and representative of his openness to modernity: on the one hand, a Neo-Pythagorean and obscure French initiate, who owes it to his disciple not to have been totally forgotten; on the other hand, one of the greatest names in German philosophy. These two adjectives ("German" and "modern") would have been enough, perhaps, to arouse the mistrust of a Rene Guenon. Indeed, the work of Abellio has more affinities with other types of thinking than with Guenonism, and which are not of an esoteric nature. Perhaps it is not a fact of chance, but the most significant of encounters, that it begins to shine most brilliantly at the time of the publication of The Absolute Structure (1965), that is, on the eve of the vogue of structuralism in France. That this work is a meeting place between the structuralist current and esotericism is not too surprising either: "absolute" schemes or abstract structures of universalist pretension, presented
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as keys of unification of all the fields of knowledge, mark the history of Western esotericism at intervals, whether they have as authors thinkers as different as Raymond Lull, Hone Wronski, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, or certain German Nature philosophers. Perhaps ineluctably, such projects are stamped with subjectivity. They differ from one another to the point of being barely reconcilable. Perhaps there is no "absolute" structure as soon as there are several of them. But one can always test the operative efficacy of each, and this experiment rarely fails to stimulate thinking, to give rise in our mind to the appearance of new relationships, unexpected ones, sometimes convincing, between different levels of reality. Esoteric or not, these instruments of knowledge claim to serve for all the sciences, "human" or "hard"—they appropriate all of them. Abellio will in any case have contributed to render the human sciences and epistemology receptive to the esoteric corpus. The process of appropriation of this by the human sciences had already begun before Abellio. Thus, in the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, as early as the 1930s. Later, in the work of certain anthropologists, such as Mircea Eliade. Finally, in the period when The Absolute Structure appeared, it was considered a matter of fact that this corpus is an integral part of the "imaginary," a new field of pluridisciplinary research in France, which developed its methods in the 1960s. While it seems that these three examples, especially the first and third, well illustrate a mode of thinking that is not devoid of formalization, one must say in exchange that each of the three manifests in its way a pronounced taste for the concrete and the figurative, each phenomenon studied being recognized as having a character of irreducible uniqueness, while in the case of Abellio pure intellect always tends to prevail. It is thus that Abellio reproaches Jung for enumerating, instead of integrating; one would be tempted to reply to him that this enumeration does not necessarily eliminate flesh and blood, the living icon, while the Abellian transfiguration would rather give an impression of sometimes depriving them of it. Corollarily, it would be instructive to question the nature of the interest that a mind like his can demonstrate for "sciences" such as alchemy or astrology. In the event, this questioning throws into relief an essential component of Abellian thought: he barely attends to alchemy, but rather much to astrology. The feature is significant. Indeed, just as one can, he teaches us, methodologically distinguish two forms of temperament, the mystic and the gnostic, so experience seems to show that inside the second another distinction is possible, according to whether the stress is put either on a single harmonic and synchronic interdependence (of which the diachronic is obviously not excluded), or on a becoming of a transmutatory type. In the first case, the Self tends to be dissolved in an interrelational tissue of correspondences, while in the second it is affirmed—as the Self, not as Ego—through a series of dramatic trials of which the metachronological succession is more important than "comprehension," if
this word is taken in the Husserlo-Abellian sense. Absolute structure transforms the natural and human datum as though directly, it transfigures it in incandescent light, but without engaging it in the initiatic journey of the heroes of stories and myths—even though our author's life was, itself, the hard journey of a warrior. It remains to know to what point this transformer of energy that is the six-branched Abellian sphere may sometimes incinerate more than transmute, and whether this transfigurative gnosis allows transmutation legitimately to be spared. In a word: can there always be a transfiguration without going through a process of an "alchemical" type? Certainly, interiorization is indeed a basic process of hermetism—in the Alexandrian sense—but the word "hermeticism" also refers back, in its polysemia, to the notion of the subde body, of the second birth, of reintegration. That is why one sees, as though paradoxically, Abellio united with Guenon in his disinterest—less marked than in Guenon nevertheless—in Germanic theosophy of the Boehmean, Gichtelian, Baaderian type, or French, of the Saint-Martinian variety. One would vainly search in him for a real testimony of admiration for authors having illustrated this form of "Tradition." And even neighboring forms: Saint Bonaventure is merely mentioned, without much commentary; if the name of Meister Eckhart, whose choice under the pen of Abellio and in his Entretiens is already significant, is found put to contribution, it is for only two or three sentences of the Dominican, always the same ones. Abellio's admiration and his choices tend by preference toward anonymous texts, structured by their very nature, bearers of veils which for him it is a matter of lifting in order to penetrate, and set ablaze with a luminous burst, the structure that they hide. But this is not a loving hermeneutics. And it could be that the Mysterium Magnum of Boehme, and his Aurora, prove refractory to the Abellian logos—like the Zohar, the Bible (which is perhaps a coded document, but surely something else besides), and the Tarot of which he is so fond of speaking. Abellio has no predeliction for myths of foundation or origin. Astrology, the I Ching, the Tarot retain and stimulate his mind more than the mysteries of the fall and reintegration. Much more, his procedure would be the "end" not only of esotericism, but also of hermeneutics itself, to the extent that he does not appear to admit that the bdtin, (in Arabic, cavern, matrix, or hidden reality) unceasingly escapes our "absolute" understanding. Escape there is, however, because the myths are endless, and rather than "grasping" them it is a matter, in Western esotericism of the theosophical type, of allowing oneself to be carried by them so as to make spring from them, through the exercise of an active imagination, ever-renewed fires. At least this Abellian "end"—"aim," that is, "finality"—of esotericism will have had as a function to help minds that demand too little, and are insufficiendy rigorous, not to succumb to fascination, this obstacle to an admiration, a love and knowledge, that are authentic.
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NOTES * Initials and abbreviations used: Approches Approches de la nouvelle gnose, Paris, Gallimard, "Les Essais" series, 1981. CH Raymond Abellio (Cahier de I'Herne, collective work), Paris, Editions de l'Herne, 1979. CRA Cahiers Raymond Abellio, Paris, Media Pluriel, nos. 1 (1983) and 2 (1984). Et. A. Etudes Abelliennes, Paris, Editions Axium, nos. 1-4 (1979-82). FE La Fin de I'esoterisme, Paris, Flammarion, 1973. PG De la politique a la gnose. Entretiens avec Marie-Therese de Brosses, Paris, P. Belfont, 1987 (1st ed, 1966). SA La Structure absolue. Essai de phenomenologie gene'tique, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliotheque des Idees" series, 1965. SI Ma derniere memoire III: Sol Invictus (1939-1947), Paris, Ramsay, 1980. Note: This text was published, mutilated, in the periodical Question de . .. (special issue: La Structure absolue.—Raymond Abellio, textes et temoignages inedits, Paris, Albin Michel, no. 72 , 1987, pp. 139-152), while its author was out of the country. The person responsible for the publication of this "Abellio special issue" had, without permission, removed from the manuscript of this article all the passages (with no exceptions) in which the author submitted Abellio's work to a critical look; this, perhaps, so that the whole "Abellio special issue" would resemble a hagiographical undertaking rather than a serious work. Abellio, so open to criticism, may well have turned over in his grave. What is more, none of these cuts (six pages in all) was indicated by the censor, so that the transitions introducing new paragraphs lost their meaning. A correction was published (cf. Question de...,no. 73,1988, pp. 198-200).
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL G U I D E TO RESEARCH (Continued)
In my previous book (Access to Western Esotericbm, SUNY Press, 1996) I provided an extensive bibliography ("A Bibliographical Guide to Research," pp. 297-348), divided into twelve sections. This was prepared in 1995 and from that time until now (June 1999) a number of relevant publications have appeared, which it is the purpose of the present addenda to mention. By the same token, I make reference to some works that had been omitted in the "Bibliographical Guide." The sections under which the following tides are presented correspond to those of the guide. GENERAL WORKS Brach, Jean-Pierre. La Symbolique des Nombres. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994, 128 pp. Series "Que Sais-je?". Enlarged edition in Italian: Ilsimbolbmo dei numeri. Rom: Arkeios, 1999, 148 pp. The best introduction to the history of arithmology. Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann. Paris: Deny, 2 vols, (forthcoming). Series "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme." A selection of articles by Deghaye on Paracelsism, theosophy, esotericism, romantic literature, and the like. Dictionnaire critique de I'esoterisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998, xxxv + 1449 pp. See my critical remarks in the present book, p. xxxii, note 11. Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times. Edited by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998, x + 402 pp. Proceedings of the Symposium held in Amsterdam in July 1994. A wide-ranging and most useful ensemble of specific studies. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, xiii + 580 pp. Series "Studies in the History of Religions." [U.S. Paperback edition: Albany: SUNY Press 1998]. This book of primary importance in the field of 249
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Western esotericism not only focuses on contemporary culture, but also discusses methodological issues pertaining to our field from the time of the Renaissance on. It should be on the reading list of any student of esoteric currents (and of religions). Kies, Cosette N. The Occult in the Western World. An Annotated Bibliography. London: Mamsell Publishing Ltd, 1986, xii + 233 pp. Not a very selective bibliography, albeit useful in some respects. Quispel, Gilles. Gnosis, de derde component van de Europese cultuurtraditie. Utrecht: HES Uitgevers B.V, 1988, 280 pp. Proceedings, edited by G. Quispel, of the symposium held in Amsterdam in October 1986. Various articles on ancient and medieval gnosis, but some also on theosophy, astrology, and the like. Symboles et Mythes dans les mouvements initiatiques et esoteriques (XVUeme-XXeme siecles):filiationset emprunts. Edited by Roland Edighoffer, Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Paris: D e n y and Arche-Edidit, 1999, 160 pp. Series "ARIES." Proceedings of the IVth Congress of A.R.I.E.S, Sorbonne, October 1996. This series of articles will serve as a good source of references. Wehr, Gerhard. Esoterisches Chrbtentum. Von derAntike bbzur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995, 359 pp. New edition, interestingly expanded (1st ed. 1975, see Access..., p. 305). Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion. Edited by Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Leuven: Peeters, 1998, xviii + 294 pp. Series "Gnostica. Texts and Interpretations." Selected papers presented at the 17 th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Mexico City, August 1995. Highly recommended, mosdy for the methodological developments it contains. ALCHEMY Abraham, Lyndy. A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 249 pp. Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Edited by Pyio Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, xv+ 208 pp. Alchimie. Edited by Antoine Faivre and Frederick Tristan. Paris: Deny, 1996, 258 pp. Illustrated. New edition (on 1st ed, 1978, see Access . . . , p. 306), mentioned here because of the extensive bibliography (publications in French, 1900-1995) set up by Richard Caron. Alchimie. Art, hbtoire et mythes. Edited by Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton. Paris: S.E.H.A, and Milan: Arche, 1995, 847 pp. Proceedings of the symposium in Paris at the College de France (March 1991).
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Aspects de la tradition alchimique au XVIIe siecle. Edited by Frank Greiner. Paris: S.E.H.A, and Milan: Arche, 1998, 518 pp. Proceedings of the symposium at the University of Reims (November 1996). Crisciani, Chiara. L'arte del sole e delta luna: Alchimia efilosofianel Medioevo. Spoleto: Centro Italiano degli Studi sull'alto Medioevo, 1996, 354 pp. Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. Alchemical Death and Resurrection. The Significance of Alchemy in the Age of Newton. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 1990, x + 36 pp. Illustrated. Emblems and Alchemy. Edited by Alison Adams and Stanton J. Linden. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1998, 215 pp. Series "Glasgow Emblem Studies." Gebelein, Helmut. Alchemic Munich: E. Diederichs, 1991, 496 pp. Illustrated. Haage, Bernard D. Alchemie im Mittelalter: Ideen und Bilder, von Zozimos bis Paracelsus. Zurich: Artemis und Winkler, 1996, 285 pp. Newman, William. Gehennial Fire. The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge (Mass.) and London: Harvard University Press, 1994, XIV + 348 pp. Patai, Raphael. The Jewbh Alchemists. A History and Source Book. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, xvi + 617 pp. Principe, Lawrence M. The Aspiring Adept. Robert Boyle and hb Alchemical Quest. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, 339 pp. Smith, Pamela H. The Business ofAlchemy. Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 308 pp., 1994 Illustrated. On the life ofJoachim Becher.
FREEMASONRY AND FRINGE MASONRY Le Forestier, Rente. La Franc-Magonnerie templiere et occultbte aux XVIIIeme et XLXeme siecles (1970, new ed. 1989, cf. Access . . . , pp. 311 ff.) has been published in German in 4 vols.: Die templarische und okkultbtbche Freimaurerei im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Leimen (Germany): Werner Kristkeitz, 1987 (I, 381 pp.; H, 384 pp.; Ill, 265 pp.; IV, 509 pp.). Porset, Charles. Les Philalethes et les Convents de Paris. Une politique de la folie. Paris: H. Champion, 1996, 777 pp.
Some references presented below in the section "From the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries" (books by J. P. Deveney, R. Gilbert, J. Godwin, M. Greer), notably those concerning the Golden Dawn, could find their place here as well. They are placed in the section below because their scope goes far beyond Freemasonry, or rather fringe Masonry, proper.
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FROM T H E SECOND (CORPUS HERMETICUM) T O T H E FIFTEENTH CENTURIES Barton, Tamsyn. Ancient Astrology. London: Roudedge, 1994, xxv + 245 pp. Series "Sciences of Antiquity." Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic. Edited by Claire Fanger. Phoenix Mill etc.: Sutton Publ, 1998, xviii + 284 pp. Series "Magic in History." Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature. Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 490 pp. L'Ermetismo nell'antichita e nel Rinascimento. Edited by Luiza Rotondi Secchi Tarugi. Milan: Nuovi Orizonti, 1998, 240 pp. Illustrated. Filoramo, Giovanni. II risveglio delta gnosi owero diventare dio. Rome: Laterza, 1990,235 pp. Flint, Valeria I. J , The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, xiii + 452 pp. Hildegard ofBingen. The Context of Thought and Art. Edited by Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke. London: Warburg Institute, 1998, 234 pp. Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press (U.K. and New York), 1989, x + 219 pp. Series "Cambridge Medieval Textbooks." Medieval Numerology. A Book of Essays. Edited by Robert L. Sturges. New York and London: Garland, 1993, 173 pp. Smoller, Laura Ackerman. History, Prophecy and the Stars. The Christian Astrology of Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994,233 pp. Stroumsa, Guy G. Hidden Wisdom. Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, xii + 195 pp. Series "Studies in the History of Religions." RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURY A) Varia Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres. Edited by V. Perrone Compagni. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992. 657 pp. Series "Studies in the History of Christian Thought." This publication, and the following one to a lesser extent, are mentioned here because of the accompanying critical material.
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. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translation of 1651 by James Freake, edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. Saint Paul: Llewellyn, new ed. 1995, (1st ed. 1993), xxviii + 938 pp. Illustrated. Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Edited by Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, xv+ 208 pp. Brann, Noel L. The Abbot Trithemius (1461-1516). The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981, 400 pp. . Trithemius and Magical Theology. A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, x + 354 pp. Debus, Allen G. Paracelso e la tradizione paracelsiana. Naples: La Citta del Sole, 1996, 126 pp. Eamon, William (cf. supra, From the Second [Corpus Hermeticum] to the Fifteenth Centuries). Johannes Trithemius: Humanism and Magic in Prereformation Germany. Edited by Richard Auernheimer and Franck Baron. Vienna: Profil, 1991, ix + 80 pp. Leon-Jones, Silvia de. Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, ix + 273 pp. Series "Yales Studies in Hermeneutics". Nauert, Charles G. Agrippa and the Crbb of Renaissance Thought (1965, cf. Access . . . , p. 321) is forthcoming in French translation (Paris: Deny, 1999. Series "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme"). Opus Magnum. Kniha o sakralni geometrii, alchymii, magii, astrologi, kabale a tajnych spolecnostech v Ceskych zemich (Magnum Opus. The Book of Sacred Geometry, Alchemy, Magic, Astrology, the Kabbala, and Secret Societies in Bohemia). Edited by Vladislav Zadrobilek. Prague: Trigon, 1997, 328 pp. In fol, richly illustrated. In Czech and English. Quoted here for the focus, in numerous contributions, on the Prague of the period. Poel, Max van der. Cornelius Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian and hb Declamations. Leiden etc.: E. J. Brill, 1997, xiv + 303 pp. Series "Brill's Studies in Intellectual History." Shumaker, Wayne. Natural Magic and Modern Science. Four Treatises (15901687). Binghamton (N.Y.): Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1989, xi + 233 pp. On G. Bruno, M. Pohio, T. Campanella, G. Schott. . Renabsance Curiosa. Binghamton (N.Y.): Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1982, 208 pp. On J. Dee, J. Trithemius, G. Dalgarno. Tomlinson, Gary. Cf. infra: "Esotericism, Literature and Art."
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L'Ermetismo nell'antichita e nel Rinascimento. Cf. supra, From the second to the 15. centuries. Faivre, Antoine. The Eternal Hermes. From Greek God to Alchemical Magus. Grand Rapids (Mich.): Phanes Press, 1995, 210 pp. Illustrated. Italian translation forthcoming (rev. and expanded ed.): L'Eternita di Hermete. Daldio greco almago alchemico, Rome: Atanor, 1999. Secret, Francois. Hermetisme et Kabbale. Naples: Institute Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 1992, 146 pp.
Paracelsus und seine internazionale Rezeption in der friihen Neuzeit. Edited by H. Schott and E. Zinguer. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998, xii + 274 pp. Paulus, Julian. Paracebus-Bibliographie 1961-1996. Heidelberg: Palatina, 1996, 147 pp. Reading the Book of Nature. The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution. Edited by Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton. Kirksville (Mo.): Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998, xvi + 280 pp. Series "16th Century Essays and Studies." Proceedings of the sessions held in St. Louis, October 1996. Weeks, Andrew. Paracelsus. Speculative Theory and the Crisis of the Early Reformation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997, xii + 238 pp. Series "Studies in Western Esoteric Traditions."
C) Christian Kabbalah
E) Rosicrucianism
Coudert, Allison P. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the 17th Century (The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury Van Helmont) (1614-1698). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997,418 pp. Kilcher, Andreas. Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala ab asthethches Paradigma: Die Konstruktion einer dsthetbchen Kabbala seit der friihen Neuzeit, StuttgartWeimar: J. B. Metzler, 1998, 403 pp. Secret, Francois. Hermetisme et Kabbale (cf. supra, B). . Postel revbite. Nouvelles recherches sur Guillaume Postel et son milieu (Premiere serie). Paris: S.E.H.A. and Milan: Arche, 1998, 260 pp. Series "Textes et Travaux de Chrysopoeia."
Akerman, Susanna. Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe. Leiden etc.: E.J. Brill, 1998, vii + 263 pp. Series "Studies in Intellectual History." Cimelia Rhodostaurotica. Die Rosenkreuzer im Spiegel der zwischen 1610 und 1660 entstandenen Handschrifien und Drucke. Edited by Carlos Gilly, introduced by Carlos Gilly, Frans A. Janssen, and Joost R. Ritman. Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 1995, xx + 191 pp. Illustrated. Commented catalogue of the exhibition organized by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel. Dickson, Donald R. The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century. Leiden etc.: E.J. Brill, 1998, x + 293 pp. Series "Studies in Intellectual History." Edighoffer, Roland. Les Rose-Croix et la crise de la conscience europeenne au XVIIeme siecle. Paris: Deny, 1998, 315 pp. Series "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme." Gilly, Carlos. Adam Haslmayr, der erste Verktinder der Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer. Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 1994, 296 pp. Illustrated. Series "Pimander. Text and Studies Published by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica." Kilcher, Andreas. Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala ak dsthetbches Paradigma. Cf. supra, Renaissance, C. Secret, Francois. Hermetisme et Kabbale (cf. supra, B).
Zambelli, Paola. L'apprendista stregone: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico della Mirandola eseguaci. Venice: Marsilio, 1995, 227 pp. B) Reception of Alexandrian Hermetbm
D) Paracelsbm and Naturphilosophie Analecta Paracelsica. Studien zum Nachleben Theophrastus von Hohenheims im deutschen Kulturgebiet der Friihen Neuzeit. Edited by Joachim Telle. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, 590 pp. Illustrated. Debus, Allen G. Paracelso e la tradizione paracebiana. Naples: La Citta del Sole, 1996, 126 pp. Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works). // Medico, I'Arte, la Scienza, la Virtu (Materiali per una ricerca bibliografia e iconografia su Paracelso nella Biblioteca Casanatense). Roma: Edizioni Paracelso, 1993, xv + 558 pp. Illustrated. Paracelse et les siens. Edited by R. Edighoffer, J. Fabry, and A. Faivre. Paris: La Table d'Emeraude, 1995, 152 pp. Series "ARIES." Proceedings of the Conference held in Paris (Sorbonne), December 1994. Paracelsus: The Man and hb Reputation, Hb Ideas and their Transformation. Edited by Peter Grell. Leiden, etc.: E. J. Brill, 1998, vii + 348 pp. Series "Studies in the History of Christian Thought."
F) Theosophy Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works). Gibbons, B. J. Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenbm and its Development in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xi + 247 pp. Series "Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History."
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Versluis, Arthur. Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity. Hudson (N.Y.): Lindisfarne Press, 1994, 223 pp. E I G H T E E N T H CENTURY Aufklarung und Esoterik. Edited by Monika Neugebauer-Wolk. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1999, 477 pp. Series "Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert." ROMANTICISM AND
NATURPHILOSOPHIE
Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracebe a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works). Faivre, Antoine. Philosophie de la Nature (Physique Sacree et Theosophie, XVIIIe-XLXe siecles). Paris: Albin Michel, 1996, 349 pp. Series "Idees Philosophiques." McCalla, Arthur. A Romantic Historiography: The Philosophy of History of PierreSimon Ballanche. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996, 464 pp. Series "Studies in Intellectual History." Meheust, Bertrand. Somnambulbme et mediumnite. Vol. I, Le defi du magnetbme. Vol. II, Le choc des sciences psychiques. Le Plessis-Robinson: Synthelabo, 1999, 620 et 598 pp. Series "Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond." FROM T H E N I N E T E E N T H T H R O U G H T H E T W E N T I E T H CENTURIES Carlson, Maria. "No Religion Higher than Truth": A Hbtory of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, ix +298 pp. Deveney, John P. Paschal Beverly Randolph. A 19th Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian and Sex Magician. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997, xxviii + 607 pp. Fara, Patricia. Sympathetic Attractions: Magnetic Practices, Beliefs, and Symbolbm in Eighteenth Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996,326 pp. Gilbert, Robert A. The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order. York Beach (Maine): Samuel Weiser, 1997, 200 pp. Illustrated. Godwin, Joscelyn, Christian Chanel, and John P. Deveney. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Initiatic and Hermetical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism. York Beach (Maine): Samuel Weiser, 1995, xiii + 452 pp. Forthcoming in French (Paris: Deny, series "Bibliotheque de l'Hermetisme"). Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany (N.Y.): State University of New York Press, 1994, xiii + 448 pp. Series "Western Esoteric Traditions." Illustrated.
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Gomes, Michael. Theosophy in the Nineteenth Century. An Annotated Bibliography. New York and London: Garland, 1994, 582 pp. Graal et Modernite. Edited by Robert Baudry, Gerard Chandes, and A. Faivre. Paris: Deny, 1996, 231 pp. Series "Cahiers de l'Hermetisme." Proceedings of the symposium in Cerisy-La-Salle of July 1995. Greer, Mary K. Women of the Golden Dawn. Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester (Vt.): Park Street Press, 1995,490 pp. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture . . . (cf. supra, General Works). Howe, Ellic. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn. A Documentary Hbtory of a Magical Order 1887-1923. Wellingborough (U.K.): The Aquarian Press, 1985, xxi + 305 pp. (1st ed. 1972). II ritorno delta magia. Una sfida per la societa e per la Chiesa. Edited by Massimo Introvigne. Milan: FdF Edizioni, 1992, 150 pp. Series "Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni." II Santo Graal. Edited by Franco Cardini, Massimo Introvigne, and Maria Montesano. Florence: Giunti Gruppe Editoriale, 1998, 183 pp. Introvigne, Massimo. // ritorno dello gnosticbmo. Carnago (Varese): SugarCo, 1993, 264 pp. Series "Nuove Spiritualita." . La sfida magica. Milan: Ancora, 1995, 238 pp. Series "La Bussola." New ed. under the tide II ritorno della magia. Milan: Ancora, 1998, 238 pp. Part of this work was published in French (La magie a nos portes, Montreal: Fides, 1994). . Indagine sul satanismo. Satanisti e anti-satanbti dalseicento ai nostri giorni. Milan: A Mondadori, 1994. French edition: Enquete sur le satanbme. Satanbtes et antbatanistes du XVIIe siecle a nos jours. Paris: Deny, 1997, 414 pp. Klatt, Norbert. Theosophie und Anthroposophie. Neue Aspekte zu ihrer Geschichte aus dem Nachlass von Wilhelm Htibbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) mit einer Auswahlvon 81 Briefen. Gottingen: N. Klatt, 1993, 303 pp. Konig, Peter-R. Der Kleine Theodor-Reuss-Reader. Munich: Arbeitsgemeinschaft fiir Religions- und Weltanschaungsfragen, 1993, 103 pp. Followed by Materialen zum OTO (1994, 335 pp.) and Das OTO-Phdnomen (100 Jahre Magische Geheimbiinde ind ihre Protagonisten von 1895-1994 (1994, 273 pp.), same publisher. Kiintz, Darcy. The Golden Dawn Source Works: A Bibliography. Edmonds (Wash.): Homes Publishing, 1996, 48 pp. This bibliography is not limited to the Golden Dawn. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997, vii + 468 pp. Santucci, James. La Societa Teosofica. Leumann (Turin): Elledici, 1999, 95 pp. Series "Religioni e Movimenti."
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CONCERNING TRADITION Faivre, Antoine. Esterismo e tradizione. Leumann (Turin): Elledici, 1999, 80 pp. Series "Religioni e Movimenti." Quinn, William W , Jr. The Only Tradition. Albany (NY.): State University of New York Press, 1997, 384 pp. Series "Western Esoteric Traditions."
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Tomlinson, Gary. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993, 291 pp. Versluis, Arthur. Gnosis and Literature. St. Paul (Minn.): Grail Publishing, 1996, 249 pp. Series "Studies in Religion and Literature."
ESOTERICISM, LITERATURE, AND ART
JOURNALS AND SERIALS
Alchemical Poetry (1575-1700). From Previously Unpublished Manuscripts. Edited by Robert M. Schuler. New York and London: Garland, 1995, lviii + 647 pp. Series "English Renaissance Hermeticism." Berk, M. F. M. van den. "Die Zauberflbte": Een alchimbtische allegorie. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1994, 463 pp. Illustrated. Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works). Dohm, Burkhard. Poetische Alchemic Oeffnung zur Sinnlichkeit in der Hoheliedund Bibeldichtung (17'. and 18. centuries). Munich: Niemeyer, 1999, 470 pp. Series "Studien zur deutschen Literatur," nr. 154. Godwin, Joscelyn. Music and the Occult (French Musical Philosophies 1750-1950). Rochester (N.Y.): University of Rochester Press, 1995, 261 pp. First published in French (1991), cf. Access..., p. 341. Gorski, William J. Yeats and Alchemy. Albany (N.Y.): State University of New York Press, 1996, 223 pp. Series "Western Esoteric Traditions." Erfahrung und System: Mystik und Esoterik in der Literatur der Moderne. Edited by Bettina Gruber. Opladen (Germany): Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997, 254 pp. Proceedings of the symposium in Iserlohn (1995). Joguin, Odile. L'esoterbme d'Edgar Poe. Editions Mezarek (s.l.), 1998, 327 pp. Leighton, Lauren G. The Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature (Decembrism and Freemasonry). The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994,224 pp. Linden, Stanton J. Darke Hieroglyphics: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996, ix +373 pp. Meakin, David. Hermetic Fictions: Alchemy and Irony in the Novel. Keele (U.K.): Keele University Press, 1995, 221 pp. On the nineteenth century. Mystique, mysticisme et modernite en Allemagne autour de 1900 (Mystik, Mystizbmus und Moderne in Deutschland um 1900). Edited by Moritz Bassler and Hildegard Chatellier. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasburg, 1998, 328 pp. Proceedings of the symposium in Strasbourg (November 1996). Secret Texts. The Literature of Secret Societies. Edited by Marie Mulvey Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lemon. New York: New York ASM Press, 1995, xiv + 349 pp. Series "AMS Studies in Cultural History."
The Hermetic Journal. Edited by Adam McLean. Quarterly. Edinburg, etc, 1978-1987. Then annual, Headington (Oxford), 1989-1992 (last issue 1992). Gnostika. A quarterly publication, edited by Hans-Thomas Hakl. Sinzheim (Germany): AAGW, since October 1996. The journals and/or serials cited in the "Bibliographical Guide" (pp. 342-346 in Access . . . , op. cit.) which devote their issues to specific themes have published the following tides since that guide was written. Cahiers du Groupe d'Etudes Spirituelles Comparees (Paris: Arche): Femininite et Spiritualite (1995); La Geographie spirituelle (1997); L'Esprit et la Nature (1997); Animus etAnima (1998); L'Un etle Multiple (1999). Politica Hermetica (Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme): Prophetbme et Politique (1994); Esoterbme et socialbme (1995); L'Histoire cachee entre Histoire revelee et hbtoire critique (1996); Pouvoir du symbole (1997); Les contrees secretes (1998).
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INDEX OF
Abellio, Raymond, xxx, 180, 229-248 Abraham, Lyndy, 250 Adler, Alfred, 238 Agreda, Maria of, 3 3 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, xv, xviii, 12,14, 17, 25, 26, 40,42,101-102, 127, 146, 252 Akerman, Susanna, 255 Alabri, Johann Arboreus, 12 Alain de Lille, 173 Alexander the Great, 173 Al Gazzali, 100, 127 Algeojohn, 47 Al Kindi, 100, 127 Amadou, Robert, 29,43, 96 Ambelain, Robert, 194 Ambrosi, Luigi, 126 Andreae, Johann Valentin, xvii, 13, 37, 66, 78, 82, 83, 86,172,176, 181, 183,184,186, 187 Andrew of Crete, Great Canon, 154 Angelus Silesius, Johannes Scheffler, known as, 65, 70-75, 77, 81, 82, 162 Anglicana, Maria, 63 Anthony, Saint, 204 Apollonius of Tyana, 172 Arboreus, Johann. See Alabri Archimedes, 116 Aristode, 34,43, 74, 99,146, 179, 201, 217,231 Arndt, Johann, xvi, 6, 11, 32, 36, 46, 50, 60,83,84,175,176,182 Arnim, Achim von, 120
NAMES
Arnold, Gottfried, xviii, 10, 12, 14, 16, 34, 36, 38-40, 43, 50, 55, 61, 63, 64, 73,80 Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio, 79 Augustine, Saint, 46, 104, 202, 210 Aurobindo, Sri, 199, 200, 241 Avens, Robert, 126 Avicenna, 100, 127, 128 Azouvi, Francois, xxxiv Baader, Franz von, xvi, 22, 26, 45,46, 30, 32, 50, 54, 56, 58, 64, 87, 93-96, 115-121,125,133,137,143-148, 151,152,156, 160, 165,166, 193, 211,224 Bablot, Benjamin, 131 Bachelard, Gaston, 99 Bacon, Francis, 42, 82, 83, 104, 129 Bacon, Roger, 36,44, 127 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 192, 193, 226, 227 Balzac, Honore de, 24, 232 Barlet, Albert Faucheux, known as, 27 Barnetson, Margaret, 227 Bartholomew of England, 173 Barton, Tamsyn, 252 Bate, W.Jackson, 134 Bathilde d'Orleans, 22 Baudelaire, Charles, 24, 121, 122, 132, 134,135,155 Becq, Annie, 111,131, 132, 135 Begemann, W , 34 Beguin, Albert, 121 Beigbeder, Marc, 240
261
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262
Index of Names
Beilharz, Richard, 134 Bellay, Joachim du, 66 Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 22, 32 Benz, Ernst, xix, 30 Berdiaev, Nicolas, 29, 210, 231 Berger, Peter L, 162, 166 Bergson, Henri, 194, 210, 215, 225 Berk, M. F. M. van den, 258 Berkeley, George, 117 Bernard, Jean-Jacques, 23, 25, 26, 45 Bernard, Saint, 80 Bernard Silvester, 173 Bernaud, Nicholaus, 36 Beyerland. See Van Beyerland Bideau, Paul-Henri, 165 Blake, William, 112 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 4, 5, 27, 28, 47,123,135,200,210,212,218, 225 Blondel, 131 Bocchi, Achilles, 178, 189 Bodemann, Eduard, 43 Boethius, 53,54, 101 Boehme, Jacob, xvi, 5, 7-19, 21, 22, 25, 26,28,29, 31,32,34,37, 38, 4L47, 49, 50, 53-55, 57-64, 66-70, 73, 80-82,86,93,105-107,113, 117-120,125,131,132,137-140, 142-144, 146-150,159, 175, 177, 181,193,210,216,224,225,229, 247 Boerhaave, Hermann, 110, 130, 131 Bonaventure, Saint, xxv, 71, 75, 173, 193, 208,231,237,247 Boreel, Adam, 25,42, 43 Borges, Jorge Luis, 185 Bosch, Hieronymus, 57 Bosson, Henri, 105, 127, 128, 129 Bossuet, 55 Boulgakov, Serge, 29 Bourignon, Antoinette, 10-12, 22, 46, 65 Brach, Jean-Pierre, xxxii, 249 Brann, Noel L, 253 Braun, Lucien, 128, 129, 132, 135 Breckling, Friedrich, 39 Brenz, Johann, 182
Breton, Andre, 124,135,238 Breymayer, Reinhard, 30 Broek, Roelof van den, xxxii Bromley, Thomas, 12, 34 Brosses, Marie-Therese de, 240 Brucker, Jacob, xviii, 16-19, 40, 41 Bruno, Giordano, xv, 13,36, 101-102, 128, 134, 177 Buber, Martin, 193 Buddecke, Werner, 34, 38 Buddeus, Johann Franciscus, 16, 17, 40 Bude, Guillaume, 3 5 Bullitt, John, 134 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George, 184, 230 Bundy, Murray Wright, 126 Calvin, John, 202 Camerarius, 105 Camillo, Giulio, 101 Campanella, Thomas, xvi, 14, 36, 82, 83, 84,104,129 Canseliet, Eugene, 230 Carlson, Maria, 256 Carton, Paul, 194 Carus, Carl Gustav, 22, 45 Casaubon, Isaac, 182, 183 Cattani, Andrea, 128 Cazotte, Jacques, 96 Cellier, Leon, 42 Chanel, Christian, 256 Charles IV, King of Bohemia, 102 Chastel, Andre, 50 Chauvet, Auguste-Edouard, 29 Chladni, Ernst Friedrich, 144, 151, 156, 165 Chmakov, Vladimir, 207, 215 Cippus, 110 Clapton, G . T , 135 Clement of Alexandria, 3 Cliteur, Eva, 225, 226 Colberg, Ehregott Daniel, xviii, 11, 12, 14,16,17,34 Combas, Pierre de, 230, 236, 237, 245 Comenius, Jan Amos, 9, 40, 83 Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 48
Index of Names Copernicus, Nicolaus, 52, 242 Coqueret, Henri, 25 Corbin, Henry, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 30, 33, 47, 48, 99, 106, 154, 155, 157-161, 165, 166 Cordevius, B, 36 Corsetti, Jean-Paul, xix Coudert, Allison P , 254 Court de Gebelin, Antoine, xviii, xxxi Crisciani, Chiara, 251 Croll, Oswald, 36, 108 Crouzel, Henri, 127 Crowe, Catherine, 121-123, 134, 135 Cudworth, Ralph, 17, 41 Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien, 109, 110, 130 Czepko, Daniel, 65-67, 73-76, 82, 85, 105 Dagobert, King, 102 Damascene, John, 154 Darwin, Charles, 210 Daub, Karl, 93, 96 David-Neel, Alexandra, 219 Debus, Allan G , 253, 254 Decote, Georges, 96 Dee, John, 177 Deghaye, Pierre, 19, 29, 33, 34, 127, 129, 131,139,140,149,176,182,185, 188, 249, 254-256, 258 Delacroix, Henri, 50 Delisle de Sales, J.-C. Isoard, known as, 24,42,111 Descartes, Rene, 129, 231, 241, 243 Deveney, John P., 256 Deussen, Paul, 194 Dickson, Donald R, 255 Diderot, Denis, 18, 19, 36, 41, 47, 50, 111 Dietze, W , 85 Dionysius the Aeropagite. See PseudoDionysius Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter, 251 Dodds, E. R, 127 Dohm, Burkhard, 258 Dorn, Gerhard, xvi, 7, 17, 32, 79
263
Douzetemps, 15 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel, 114,115,132 Durand, Gilbert, xxxiv, 126, 242 Diirer, Albrecht, 81 Dutoit-Membrini, Jean-Philippe, 21, 46 Eamon, William, 252, 253 Eckartshausen, Karl von, 21, 32, 46, 47, 185 Ecker- und Eckhoffen, Heinrich von, 24 Eckhart, Johann, known as Meister Eckhart, 33, 51, 54, 60, 65, 71-74, 146,194,231,237,238,241,247 Eco, Umberto, 35 Edighoffer, Roland, 37, 178, 186-188, 255 Eliade, Mircea, xvii, 48, 68, 238, 239, 246 Emmerich, Catherine, 122 Ennemoser, Joseph, 121 Erasmus, Desiderius, 34 Erastus, alias Thomas Liebler, 103, 104 Eschenmeyer, Carl August von, 22, 121, 133,211,224 Etienne, Henri, 35 Evola,Julius,236,244 Ezekiel, 209 Fabre, Jean, 18,41 Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine, 198, 202, 210, 216-218 Fabry, Jacques, 30 Faivre, Antoine, xxxii, 42, 85, 131, 151, 152,166,190,225,254,256,258 Fara, Patricia, 256 Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 22 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 162 Feuquieres, marquis de, 111, 132 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 64, 112, 117 Ficino, Marsilio, xiv, xvii, 14, 35, 100-102,127, 158, 163, 177, 180, 182,233 Fictuld, Hermann, 15 Fienus, Thomas, 105 Filoramo, Giovanni, 252 Finsterlin, Hellmut, 227
264
Index of Names
Flint, Valeria I.J, 252 Fludd, Robert, xvi, 10, 11, 16, 17, 19, 25, 35,42 Foix de Candale, Francois, xv Franck, Sebastian, 43, 51, 54, 55, 60 Franckenberg, Abraham von, 38, 66, 82 Francis, Saint, 102 Franciscus Georgius Venetus. See Giorgi Franke, August Hermann, 77 Freher, Dionysius Andreas, 15 Freitas, Jose Lima de, 185 Freud, Sigmund, 162, 222, 238 Frick, Karl R. H , xix, 46 Fronzonius, Hieronymus, 105 Froschammer,J, 124, 125, 135 Fulcanelli, 230 Gaffarel, Jacques, 105 Gale, Thomas, 17, 40 Ganivetjean, 100 Gebelein, Helmut, 251 Gembloux, Guibert de, 80 Gence, Jean-Baptiste, 43 Gentzken, Friedrich, 16, 39 Gerhard, Johann, 81, 83 Gibbons, B.J, 255 Gichtel, Johann Georg, xvi, 10, 11, 14, 15,19,21,38,47,59-65,70,71, 73-76, 82, 85, 106, 107 Gilbert, Robert A, 256 Gilly, Carlos, 33, 35, 36, 187, 255 Giorgi, xv, 17, 25, 34, 40, 42, 180 Glusing, Johann Otto, 19 Gnosius, D , 36 Goedelmann, Georg, 104, 129 Godelman, Johann Georg, 13, 36 Godet, Alain, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130 Godwin, Joscelyn, xix, 256, 258 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xxii, 19, 76,111,157-159,161,163,165, 185,186, 196,214 Gomes, Michael, 257 Gorceix, Bernard, xxx, 30, 32, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56-64, 66-68, 70-86, 129, 130, 178, 179, 187, 188 Goerres, Joseph, 134
Gorski, William J , 258 Greer, Mary K, 257 Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von, 65, 67,68,73,74,75,85 Grillparzer, Franz, 126 Grimm, Jacob, 149 Grimm, Wilhelm, 149 Grosseteste, Robert, 3 Griinewald, Matthias, 81 Guaita, Stanislas de, 203, 212, 223 Guenon, Rene, xvii, xviii, 27, 47, 184, 207,234-236,241,245,247 Giinzberg, Johann Eberlin von, 82, 83 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, 184, 212, 213 Gutmann, Aegidius, 6, 10, 11, 16, 17, 26, 39,40,175,185 Guyon, Jeanne Bouvier de la Motte, 65, 74 Haage, Bernard D , 251 Hadot, Pierre, 165 Haering, Theodor, 132 Hahn, Michael, 22, 46, 64 Hahn, Philipp Matthaus, 32, 46 Haller, Albrecht von, 110, 130 Hamberger, Julius, 22, 26, 46, 94 Hanegraaff, Wouter J , xx, xxi, xxv-xxvii, xxix, xxxi-xxxiv, 249, 257 Hardenberg, Karl von, 116 Hart, Ray L, 126 Hartung, Caspar, 79 Harvet, Israel, 36 Haslmayr, Adam, 13, 36, 37 Haugwitz, Christian August Heinrich, 24 Hegel, Friedrich, 64, 116, 201, 225, 238 Heidegger, Martin, 99, 231 Helvetius, Johann Friedrich, 19, 41 Heraclitus, 156,210,214 Herder, Johann Gottfried, xviii, xxxi Hermes Trismegistus, xv, xxiii,14, 41, 172,176-180,183,184,233,241 Hesse, Hermann, 186 Hildebrand, Wolfgang, 3 5 Hildegard of Bingen, xxiii, 33, 80 Hillman, James, 130
Index of Names Hippel, Ernst von, 225 Hocke, Gustav Rene, 50 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 120 Hoffmann, Franz, 22, 26, 45, 46 Holanda, Francisco de, 177 Honorius Augustodunensis, 173 Howe, Ellic, 257 Hugues.R, 135 Hugo of Saint Victor, 31 Husserl, Edmund, 231, 236, 238, 241 Hutin, Serge, 30 Iamblichus of Chalcis, 3, 14, 35 Ibn'Arabi, 30, 158 Ibn'Umail, 187 Introvigne, Massimo, xix, xxxi, 257 Iunius, Francisco, 40 Jackson, Carl T , 47 Jacques-Chaquin, Nicole, 95, 135 Jambet, Christian, 126 Jansenius, Cornelius, 104 Joguin, Odile, 258 John Christostome, Saint, 100 John of the Cross, 60,194 John Scottus Eriugena, 31, 34, 36,146, 213 Jerome, Saint, 100 Judge, William Quan, 27 Juhasz, Joseph B, 126 Jung, Carl Gustav, 79, 109, 130, 193, 199,212,219,221-223,238,239, 246 Jungmayr, Petra, 131 Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich, 21, 30, 46,57 Kafka, Franz, 236 Kant, Emmanuel, 99, 194 Keckermann, B, 36 Keleph Ben Nathan. See DutoitMembrini Keller, Jules, 30 Kemp, Friedhelm, 153,165, 166, 167 Kepler, Johann, 105 Kerner, Justinus, 121,122
265
Keyserling, Hermann, 231 Khunrath, Heinrich, 6, 11-14, 17, 28, 35, 36, 176, 181 Kieckhefer, Richard, 252 Kies, Cosette N , 250 Kieser, Franciscus, 79 Kilcher, Andreas, 254, 255 Kircher, Athanasius, 14, 69 Kirchweger, A. J , 15 Klatt, Norbert, 257 Klein, Robert, 128 Kleuker, Johann Friedrich, 32, 45 Knorr Von Rosenroth, Christian, 32, 73, 77-79, 85 Konig, Peter-R, 257 Koyre, Alexandre, 29, 32, 49, 84, 128-130,132, 149 Krause, Wilhelm, 121 Kriele, Martin, 191, 225-227 Kriidener, Julie de, 22 Kuehn, Sophie von, 63 Kuhlmann, Quirinus, xvi, 10,12,16,17, 19,21,25,38-40,42,63,65,68-71, 73-75, 77,82 Kiintz, Darcy, 257 Lacan, Jacques, 132 Laffly, George, 236 Lampe,G.W.H,31 Lancre, Pierre de, 104,129 Largeault,J, 239 La Tour Georges de, 65 Laurant, Jean-Pierre, xix, xxxi Law, William, 15,47 Lazarelli, Ludovico, xv Leadejane, xvi, 10, 21, 22, 25,42,47, 60,61 Le Boys des Guays, Jacques-FrancoisEtienne, 23 Lecour, Paul, 233 Le Forestier, Rene, 251 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 25, 42, 43, 50,58,69,74,106,215,243 Leighton, Lauren G , 258 Lem, Stanislaw, 124,135 Lenin, 195
266
Index of Names
Leon-Jones, Sylvia de, 253 Le Pape, Gilles, 166 Levi, Eliphas, xvii, 123, 135, 193, 202, 203,207,212,213,219,223 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, 205 Libavius, Andreas, 36, 104, 129 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 151 Linden, Stanton J , 258 Lippius, Johann, 36 Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, 185 Lovejoy, Arthur O , xxix, xxxiv Loyola, Ignatius of, 68 Lull, Raymond, 25, 69, 173, 205, 232, 246 Lupasco, Stephane, 238, 239, 240 Luria, Isaac, 65, 209 Luther, Martin, 57, 61, 182, 202 Lyra, Nicholas de, 100 Maas, Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich, 131 Maier, Michael, xvi Maistre, Joseph de, 26,45, 87, 91, 92, 95 Malebranche, Nicholas de, 99, 129, 131 Mallarme, Stephane, 84 Marcianus, 204 Marco Polo, 154, 161,164 Marcouville, 127 Marques-Riviere, Jean, 224 Marquet, Jean-Francois, 129 Marvell, Leon, xxxiv Marx, Jacques, 126, 131 Marx, Karl, 162, 238 Marzio, Galeotto, 127 Matter, Jacques, xxxi Maximos the Confessor, 173 McCalla, Arthur, 256 Mead, George Robert Stow, xviii, xxxi Meakin, David, 258 Meheust, Bertrand, 256 Mercurius, Franciscus, 130 Mersenne, Marin, 129 Merswin, Rulman, 172 Messiaen, Olivier, 149 Messias, Petrus, 102, 127 Meyer, Johann Friedrich von, 22, 30, 46, 121
Meyrink, Gustav, 184 Migne, Jacques-Paul, 31, 36, 80 Milch, Werner, 66 Moller, Martin, 83 Montaigne, Michel de, 102, 112 Montmort, Remond de, 43 More, Henry, 10, 11, 17,25,41, 104, 129 More, Thomas, 82, 83 Morgante, James, 227 Morhof, Daniel Georg, 14,15,17, 38,40 Morin, Edgar, 135 Morsius, 36 MuckleJ.T, 127 Miintzer, Thomas, 177 Musset, Alfred de, 5 Nauert, Charles G , 253 Nemesius, bishop of Emesa, 173 Neugebauer-Wolk, Monika, xxxiii Neveux,Jean-Baptiste, 81, 86 Newman, William, 251 Newton, Isaac, 20 Nicholas of Cusa, 53, 241 Nicolescu, Basarab, xxxv, 31 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 162 Nollius, Henricus, 34 Nostradamus (Michel de Nostre-Dame), 14 Novalis, Friedrich von Hardenberg, 5, 22,63,74,113,115-117,121,185, 224 Novikov, Nicolas, 24 Nymann, Hieronymus, 104, 129 Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, xvi, 15, 19, 22, 26, 30, 32, 41,46, 50, 56-58, 61,64,112,131,143,144,151,183, 209, 224 Olcott, Henry S, 27, 47 Opitz, Martin, 66 Origen, 60, 92, 100,210 Osiander, 182 Osten-Sacken, Friedrich von, 26, 45, 46 Ostwald, Wilhelm, 216, 217 Pagel, Walter, 128
Index of Names Papus, Gerard Encausse, known as, 27, 194,202,203,207,216,230 Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, xv-xvii, xxi, 6, 7, 10-12,14,16-19, 25, 26, 28, 34, 36, 46, 50-57, 59, 62, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 93,102-104,108,112,113, 116-118,120,121,123,125,130, 134, 147, 173-176, 178, 180 Pascal, Blaise, 74, 99 Pasqually, Martines de, xvi, 21, 24, 25, 27,42,161,202,210,215 Patai, Raphael, 251 Patrizi, Francesco, xv, 13, 17, 33, 36, 40 Paul, Saint (the aposde), xxii, 45, 58, 92, 93,119,125,157,214,231,241 Paulus, Julian, 255 Peladanjosephin, 135, 203, 207 Pereira, Bento, 104, 129 Perna, Pietro, 35 Pernety, Dom Joseph-Antoine, 24 Petocz, Michael, 133 Peuckert, Will-Erich, xviii, xix, xxxi, 34, 35,50,84,183,187,189 Philippe of Lyons, 202, 230 Philo of Alexandria, 33, 202 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, xiv, 6, 14,17,25,26,38,40,42,177,193, 233 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 128 Peter the First, 69 Pierre d'Aban, Pietro d'Abano or Pierre dePadoue, 127 Plato, xv, 43,179, 201, 217, 221, 231, 234, 240 Platvoet, Jan, xxvii, xxxiii Pliny, 128 Plotinus, 156, 158, 163 Poel, Max van der, 253 Poiret, Pierre, 10, 12, 17, 25, 42, 64,107 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 101, 103-105,127, 128 Pontus, Aemilius, 35 Pordage, John, xvi, 10, 19, 25, 42, 46 Porphyry, 3, 45, 100 Porset, Charles, 251
267
Postel, Guillaume, 14, 34, 38,46 Presterjohn, 172, 177 Principe, Lawrence M , 251 Proclus, 3,35 Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, 3, 6, 14,31,33,36,127,210 Puech, Henri-Charles, 154, 155, 164 Pythagoras, xv, 14,179, 234 Quercetanus, 32 Quinn, William W , Jr., xxxiii, 258 Quispel, Gilles, 250 Rabelais, Francois, 173, 175 Racine, Jean, 74 Rahman, F , 126 Ranft, Michael, 131, 134 Rathmann, Herman, 40 Regnier, Marcel, 191, 225 Rembrandt, Paul, 81 Renatus, Christian, 19 Reuchlin, Johann, 12,14, 17, 25, 38, 40, 42, 177 Rhodes James, Montague, 164 Rhodiginus, Caelius, 102, 127 Ricchieri. See Rhodiginus Richer, Edouard, 23 Richter, Samuel. See Sincerus Renatus Riemenschneider, Tilman, 81 Riff, Hermann, 128 Riffard, Pierre A, xix, xxi, xxv, xxxiii Rilke, Rainer Maria, 81 Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 22, 116, 121, 224 Rocholl, Rudolf, 22, 26,46 Romanus, Morienus, 172 Ronsard, Pierre de, 102 Roos, Jacques, 132 Rosenthal, Bemice Glatzer, 257 Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio, 46 Rothe, Johannes, 69 Rudnikova, 207 Rousse-Lacordaire, Jerome, xxxiv Rousset, Jean, 79 Rudolph, K, xxxiii Rudrauff, Kilian, 40
268
Index of Names
Index of Names
Ruland, Martin, 130, 179 Rulandus, Martinus, 109 Ruska, Julius, 187 Ruysbroek, Jan Van. See Van Ruysbroek Sagnard, Francois M , 127 Saint-Georges de Marsais, Hector de, 15 Saint-Germain, Count of, 185 Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de, xvi, xxiii, 21-27, 29, 42,44-47, 50, 53, 58, 64, 75, 81, 87-91, 93, 95, 96,113-117, 120,132, 134, 146,148, 150, 152, 160, 162,163, 194, 202, 203, 207, 209,210,215,216,224,225,238 Saint-Victor, Hugues de. See Hugues de Saint-Victor Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, Alexandre de, 180,202,205,218,232,246 Salzmann, Frederic-Rodolphe, 21, 30 Santucci, James A, 3, 31, 47, 48, 257 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 99 Schaller, K, 34 Scheffler, Johannes. See Angelus Silesius Scheible, Joseph, xviii Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, 22, 46, 63, 64,116,117,224 Schiller, Friedrich, 25, 42, 222, 224 Schlegel, Friedrich, 22, 25,42,46 Schlepper, Werner, 228 Schmidt, Albert-Marie, 50, 78 Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, 164 Scholem, Gershom, 32, 58 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 106, 132, 158, 159 Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich, 22,46, 54, 121,133 Schulitz, John, 34 Schuon, Frithjof, xxvii Schwenkfeld, Caspar, 7, 80, 81 Sclei (or Scleus), Bartholomaus, 26, 33, 34 Scot Erigene. See John Scottus Eriugena Sculteus, Andreas, 73 Secret, Francois, xix, 254, 255 Sendigovius, Michel, 109, 130 Severinus, 32
Shanks, Michael, 135 Shumaker, Wayne, 253 Siemons, Jean-Louis, 3, 5, 31, 42, 47 Sincerus Renatus, alias Samuel Richter, 15,19 Smith, Pamela H , 251 Smoller, Laura A, 252 Snoek, Jan, xxxii Soloviev, Vladimir, 28, 210, 228 Smoller, Laura Ackerman, 252 Spaemann, Robert, 191, 226 Sparrow, John, 37, 38 Spee, Friedrich, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 82 Spener, Philipp-Jacob, 60, 77 Sperber, Julius, 10, 11, 19, 34, 172, 175 Spinoza, 18, 231 Stael, Anne-Louise-Germaine, baronne de, 25, 44 Steiner, Rudolf, 29, 47, 192, 210, 218, 237 Stellatus, Josephus, pseudonym of Christoph Hirsch, 37 Steuco, Agostino, 179 StollJ. G , 42 Strenski, Ivan, xxxiii Stroumsa, Guy G , 252 Studion, Simon, 173,176, 181 Sturm, Diether, 134 Suchten, Alexander von, 36 Susini, Eugene, 30,45,49, 84 Suso, Henri, 73 Swedenborg, Emanuel, xvi, 20, 22, 23, 25,26,30,42,47,57,161,166 Syneshis, 100 Taudler, 129 Tauler, Jean, 32, 33, 54, 73, 74, 76, 105 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 194, 210, 215,225 Thales,214 Theophrastus. See Paracelsus Thomas, Saint, 74, 80, 101, 127, 194, 202,210,231 Thomasius, Christian, 25, 42, 43 Thorndike, Lynn, xviii, xxxi, 105, 127 Tilliette, Xavier, 191
Tiryakian, Edward A, xxxi Tolstoy, Leo, 69 Tomberg, Valentin, xxx, 29, 192, 193, 225,227,228 Tomlinson, Gary, 253, 259 Tostato, Alphonse, 105 Trithemius, Johannes, xv Truzzi, Marcello, xxxi Tschech, Johann Theodor von, 73, 82 Tuveson, Ernst Lee, xix, xxxi, 126 Ueberfeld, Johann Wilhelm, 19,60 Valentinus, Basilius, 100, 187 Van Beyerland, Abraham Willemszon, 37,38 Van Diilmen, Richard, 37, 83, 86,187 Van Helmont, Franziscus Mercurius, 17, 18,25,34,42,130 Van Helmont, Johann Baptist, 10, 11, 16, 17,19,25,28,34,42,108,109,130, 134 Van Heer, Henricus, 34 Vanini, 105 Van Ruysbroek, Jan, 75, 194 Vernette, Pierre, xxxiii Versluis, Arthur, 30, 256, 259 Viatte, Auguste, xviii, xix, xxxi, 29 Vietor, Karl, 81 Vigee, Claude, 135 Vincent de Beauvais, 173 Voelker, Klaus, 134 Voss, Karen-Claire, xxxii Waite, Arthur Edward, xviii, xxxi Walch, Johann Georg, 129 Walker, Daniel P , 189 Warrain, Francis, 194 Webb, James, xix
269
Webster, John, 104, 129 Wecker, Johann Jacob, 35 Weeks, Andrew, 255 Wehr, Gerhard, xix, 29, 30,46, 227, 250 Weigel, Valentin, xvi, 6, 10, 16, 17, 25, 30, 32, 34, 39, 42, 50-62, 66, 72, 74, 75,81,84,85,104,105,175,181, 188 Weimar, Karl August von, 41 Weinrich, Martin, 104, 129 Welling, Georg von, alias Salwigt, 15, 19,111,131 Werner, Philipp Heinrich, 121, 133,134 Westcott, Willian Wynn, xxxi Westfal, Johann Caspar, 131 Wetzels, Walter D , 132 Willermoz, Jean-Baptiste, 24 Williams, Charles, 193 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 111 Wirth, Oswald, 194, 224, 226 Wirz, Johann Jakob, 63 Wolff, Christian, 58 Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 126 Wronski, Hone, 180, 202, 232, 246 Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques, 48,126, 166 Xella, Lidia Processi, 152 Yates, Frances A, xix, xxxi, 33,128,178, 188 Zambelli, Paola, 34, 253 Zeller, Winfried, 50 Ziegler, Leopold, 29 Zimmermann, Rolf Christian, xxxi, 25, 42^+4, 85,187,189 Zinzendorf, Niklaus Ludwig von, 19, 131 Zoroaster, xv, 179, 233
