Studies in Western Esotericism

ANTOINE FAIVRE >

Translated by Christine Rhone
THEOSOPHY, IMAGINATION, ‘TRADITION
 SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions
David Appelbaum, editor

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Kirchberger et l’Illuminisme du XVII siécle. Den Hag: Martinus Nijhoff, series
International Archives for the History of Ideas, no. 16, 1966.
Eckartshausen et la théosophie chrétienne. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1969.
L’Esotérisme au XVIIIé siécle en France et en Allemagne. Paris: Seghers-Laffont,
series La Table d’Emeraude, 1973. Spanish edition: E/ Esoterismo en el
siglo XVII. Madrid: EDAF, 1976.
Mystiques, Théosophes et Illuminés au siecle des Lumiéres. 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
Circé (Cahiers de Recherche sur I’Imaginaire), nos. 10-11, 1978.
Acces de I’Esotérisme occidental. Paris: Gallimard, series Bibliothéque des
Sciences Humaines, 1986. Rev. Ed. 1996 (Accés de l’Esotérisme occidental I).
English edition: Access to Western Esotericism. Albany: SUNY Series in
Western Esoteric Traditions, 1994. Vol. I, Gallimard, 1996.
Toison d’Or et Alchimie. Paris and Milan: Arché Edidit, 1990. English edition:
The Golden Fleece and Alchemy. Albany: State University of New York
Press, SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Tradition, 1993.
L’Esotérisme. 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 sacrée et théosophie). Paris: Albin Michel, series
Idées Philosophiques, 1996.
 \A\e
/F SYS
2000

Theosophy,
Imagination,
Tradition
STUDIES IN WESTERN ESOTERICISM

Antoine Faivre
Translated by Christine Rhone

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

 LOUY
CLAREMONT SCHOOL OF THEO
4325 N. COLLEGE AVE.
CLAREMONT, CA 91711-3199

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2000 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Originally published as Acces de l’ésotérisme 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, 492 p. in-fol.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Faivre, Antoine, 1934—
[Accés de l’ésotérisme 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—de21 99-39479
“CIP
10:98 76054 3 a2eM
To Foscelyn Godwin
 CONTENTS

Provenance of the Articles Published in This Volume

Preface: Esotericism and Academic Research
Geneses
Universities
Criteriologies
Metheds

THEOSOPHIES
THE 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 of Theosophy and the Reasons for Its Success
_ The First Corpus and the First Critical Discourses
The Transitional Period (First Half of the Eighteenth Century)
Two Theosophical Families
Some Succinct Criticisms
Jacob Brucker, or the First Systematic Description
. From Pre-Romanticism to Romanticism, or the Second ken Age
Reasons for the Revival
Three Areas of the Theosophical Terrain
The Word “Theosophy” and a Few Criticisms
Effacement and Permanence (End of the Nineteenth to
Twentieth Centuries)
Factors in the Dissolution
A Discreet Presence
New Perspectives on the Theosophical Current
THEOSOPHY AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM
OF THE BAROQUE CENTURY IN GERMANY
(NOTE ON THE WORKS OF BERNARD GORCEIX) 49
Valentin Weigel 50
viii Contents

Johann Georg Gichtel

Mysticism and Theosophy in Baroque Germany
Theater, Kabbalah, and Alchemy
Society and Utopias
THEOSOPHICAL POINTS OF VIEW
ON THE DEATH PENALTY
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin
Joseph de Maistre
Franz von Baader

EXERCISES OF IMAGINATION
VIS IMAGINATIVA (A STUDY OF SOME ASPECTS
OF THE MAGICAL IMAGINATION
AND ITS MYTHICAL FOUNDATIONS) 99
From Jacob’s Sheep to the Magic Seed of Paracelsus 100
Ways, Byways, and Stakes in the Great Century 104
Pre-Romantic Versions
From Romantic Naturphilosophie to Occultist Spheres of Influence 116

THOUGHTS OF GOD, IMAGES OF MAN

(FIGURES, MIRRORS, AND ENGENDERING
INJ.BOEHME, F. C. OETINGER, AND F. VON BAADER) 137
I. Sophia and the Bildniss of Jacob Boehme 138
The Sophianic Mirror 138
The Image in Man: Greatness and Self-Effacement 139
The Image in Man: Paths ofRenewal 141
II. Mirrors and Engendering in Franz von Baader 143
The Theory of the Three Images 143
Images and Reflections in God, in Man, and in Nature 145

-FROM THE DIVINE FIGURE TO THE

CONCRETE FIGURE, OR TRANSPARITION
THROUGH MIRRORS 153
Introduction: Two Apocrypha, One Homily
I. The Isomorphy of the Image and of Its Model 156
Primacy of the Image for Access to the Model 156
Isomorphy ofLight and of the Eye LS?
Il. The Reciprocal Engendering of the Image and Its Model 158
The Personal Presence ‘
158
Reciprocal Engendering Through Seeing 159
Perspectives 161
 Contents

IN TERMS OF “TRADITION”
THE ROSICRUCIAN MANIFESTOS (1614, 1615)
AND THE WESTERN ESOTERIC “TRADITION” LZ
i; Medieval Esoteric Themes in the Manifestos 171
Literary Themes
Arithmology and Organon 172
The Philosophy ofNature 173
Presence of Renaissance Philosophia Occulta in the Manifestos 14.
Paracelsism 174
Esoteric Themes in Vogue in the Latin Renaissance 176
Presence of the New Hermes 178
. The Manifestos Between the Old and the New 180
Torchlight and Shadows 180
The Fortunes ofa Paradox 181
Literary Esotericism in the Wake of the Manifestos 184
Perspectives 186
ANALYSIS OF THE MEDITATIONS OF VALENTIN TOMBERG
ON THE TWENTY-TWO MAJOR ARCANA OF THE
TAROT OF MARSEILLES 191
Introduction: Bio-bibliographical Elements and Situation of the Work 19
Ls Christian Hermeticism and Traditions 195
The Tarot and Hermetic Symbolism 195
East and West 197
The Hermetic Balance: Mysticism, Gnosis, and Sacred Magic 201
Nature Philosophy and Anthropology 208
The Signature of Things and Universal Becoming 208
Living Polarities 210
Hermetic Points of View on Man 217
Regrets and Queries 229
RAYMOND ABELLIO AND THE WESTERN
ESOTERIC “TRADITION” 229
ie Esoteric Elements and Themes 229
Biographical Data and the Gnostic Tradition 220
Traditional Sciences and the “Primordial Tradition” Lbe
Il. Esotericism and Modernity 235
René Guénon and the Status of the West 235
Abellio and His Kin wep
Ill. Raymond Abellio’s Specific Contribution to Esotericism 240
Phenomenology and Absolute Structure 240
Universal Interdependence and Love
Perspectives 245
xi Contents

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE
TO 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

Index of names 261

 PROVENANCE OF THE ARTICLES
PUBLISHED IN THIS VOLUME

“Le courant théosophique (fin XVIe—XXe siécle): Essai de périodisation,” pp.

6-41 in Politica Hermetica, no. VII (Les Postérités de la théosophie: du théosophisme
au New Age), Paris, ’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.
“Théosophie et mystique spéculative du siécle baroque en Allemagne:
Note sur l’oeuvre de Bernard Goerceix,” pp. 53-77 and 153-183 in Revue de
Vhistotre des religions, October 1979 and January 1980, Paris, P.U.F.; new edi-
tion, updated, pp. 1-50, A.RIE.S. (Association pour la recherche et l'information
sur V’ésotérisme), no. V1, Paris, La Table d’Emeraude, 1985.
“Points de vue théosophiques 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
pensée philosophique et littéraire (Alexandre Zviguilsky, editor), Paris, Association
des amis d’Ivan Tourgueniev, 1980.
“L’imagination créatrice (fonction magique et fondement mythique de
l'image)”: the fourth article was published under this title, pp. 355-390, in Revue
d’Allemagne, vol. Il, no. 2 (Hommages a Eugene Susini), Strasbourg, Société
d’études allemandes, April-June 1981. Italian edition: “L’immaginazione crea-
trice. Funzione magica e fondamento mitico dell’immagine,” translated by
Gracia Marciano, pp. 230-261 in Conoscenza religiosa (Fascicolo speciale dedicato a
immaginario e immaginale), Florence, La Nuova Italia, April-June 1981.
“Pensées de Dieu, Images de |’Homme (figures, miroirs et engendre-
ments selon J. Boehme, F. Ch. Oetinger et Franz von Baader),” pp. 110-119
in Cahiers de Puniversité Saint-Fean de Férusalem, no. 12 (Face de Dieu et théo-
phanies), Paris, Berg International, 1986.
“De la figure divine a la figure concréte, ou la transparition par le
miroir,” pp. 38-58 in Cahiers du Groupe d’études spirituelles comparées, no. 2
(Images et Valeurs), Paris-Milan, Arché 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
Xll Provenance of the Articles Published in This Volume

anlasslich des Amsterdamer Symposiums 18-20 November 1986, Amsterdam, In de

Pelikan, 1988.
“Analyses des Méditations de 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) in La Tourbe des
philosophes, Paris, La Table d’Emeraude.
“Abellio et la tradition ésotérique”: the ninth article appeared with this
title, pp. 139-152 in Question de... , no. 72 (La Structure absolue—Raymond
Abellio, textes et temoignages inédits), Paris, Albin Michel, 1987.
 PREFAGE

Esotericism and Academic Research

In Access to Western Esotericism (SUNY, 1994), I gave an account of the creation,

at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Ftudes (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 dedi-
cation, 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 pre-
judices 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

xill
XIV Preface

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 Greco-
Latin 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 reason-
able limits a historical field that is already very vast, but also because it corre-
sponds to a new and specific phenomenon.

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 Renais-
sance 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
 Preface xv

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 reinterpre-
tations 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 meta-
physics and cosmology, with speculations tending to account for the relation-
ships 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 six-
teenth 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, sup-
posed to clarify that of the Revelation. But these works themselves were incor-
porated 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
xvi Preface

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, specu-
lative 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, byt 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 beginning 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 Martinés de
Pasqually, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, and
others. Then, at the beginning 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 comple-
mentary 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
 Preface xvii

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 consti-
tuted 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 perpetu-
ated 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, reinter-
pretations. Thus, the occultist movement that appeared in the second half of
the nineteenth century and whose figurehead was Eliphas Lévi, 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 illumi-
nism. 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 René Guénon (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
Xvill Preface

prior to Guénon 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.'

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 interchange-
able. 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 Christen-
thum, 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 philosopbiae (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 Gébelin 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.’ 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 wit-
ness the appearance of academic research properly said, encompassing wide
sectors. Thus, August Viatte’s thesis on illuminism marked, in 1928, an impor-
tant turning point, followed by the works of Will-Erich Peuckert on pansophia
and Rosicrucianism. Lynn Thorndike, with his monumental history of magic
 Preface xIx

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.
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
Kabbalah‘ 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,’ 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.’
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.LE.S., in
France, publishes methodological articles, accounts of works, positions of
theses, and the like, dedicated to the cutting edge of research.’ One sees con-
ferences 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.’ 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 Frangois 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
xXx Preface

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 cur-
rents”—academics for the majority, and it is one of the “Related Scholarly
Organizations of the American Academy of Religion” (AAR, the largest pro-
fessional 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 Devel-
opment.”? 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 mysti-
cism nor ancient gnosticism had been greatly 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 his-
torians 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."
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
 Preface Xx1

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 sub-
ject, but rather specialists engaged in focused research (for example, a mono-
graph 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
WouterJ.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 proposed” 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 dis-
course 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 eso-
tericism alone.
The six characteristics are as follows:
(1) The idea of correspondence. This is a matter of symbolic correspon-
dences—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
XXil Preface

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 illumi-
nate each other reciprocally, through a work of permanent hermeneutics.
(2) Living nature. The cosmos is not merely complex, plural, and hier-
archical, 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. To 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.”!? 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 suf-
fering 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” cap-
able 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
 Preface XXxill

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 trans-
mitters, 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 sup-
pression of images and intermediaries, of mediations, because they quickly
become obstacles for him to union with God. This, in contrast to the eso-
tericist, 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 esoteri-
cism among the mystics (let us think of Saint Hildegard), and one observes a
pronounced mystical tendency in some esotericists (Louis-Claude de Saint-
Martin, 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
theosophic 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
Zobar, 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
XXIV Preface

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, phil-
osopher’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. To these come to be associated two
others, “relative” to the extent that they are not indispensable to the defini-
tion. To present them as two new necessary conditions would limit the explor-
able 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. Uhis 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 promi-
nence 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—one among others,

like modern science, mysticism, theology, utopia . . . The specificity of each
 Preface XXV

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” main-
tains complex, often ambiguous, relationships with this, in which Nature
Philosophies are sometimes at issue. It is also interesting to observe the oppo-
sitions, 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.'* 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 initia-
tion. 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 reoc-
curred throughout the history of humanity. There is missing in this criteri-
ology 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 ques-
tion, 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
XXVi Preface

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 com-
parativism may be doubted, when “gnosis” or “mysticism” would do just as
well.'
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.!°
The propensity of the mind to amalgamation must incite us to vigilance.
To 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, socio-
logical, or psychological, which would bring out, it is believed, the illusory
 Preface XXVI11

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.”"? This empirical
method, as he describes it, corresponds exactly to the attitude of laicity (Jaitité)
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 meta-
empirical, whence our recourse to a “methodological agnosticism”—to take
up the expression of Jan Platvoet and WouterJ.Hanegraaff.'* 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 trans-
historical unity to the detriment of differences, too readily dismissed by them
as “secondary.” They are more interested in the essence than in the mani-
festation. “Esoterism” is a convenient term for the perennialists, above all con-
cerned 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.”
As Wouter J. Hanegraaff recently brought to my attention,” the empirico-
historical 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,
XXVili Preface

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).”? I 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 him-
self 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 type” would be totally inadequate to
our field of research—there are almost as many doctrines as there are cur-
rents 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 myth-
ologies 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,” and this*despite an actual
 Preface XXix

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 his-
torical 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.** Its point of reference is mental habits. For example, the idea of immut-
ability, 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.”
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 acces-
sible to them,” and to trace the map of migratory routes followed by them’”—
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 inves-
tigation on the multi- and interdisciplinary levels. But the very form of eso-
teric thought itself can be considered to be of a transdisciplinary nature par
XXX Preface

excellence. Indeed, while multidisciplinary thinking remains horizontal, and

interdisciplinarity consists in identifying, in bringing to light, certain possibili-
ties 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.”* 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,” 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.” To 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.
 Preface XXXi

NOTES
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 recently
pointed out: two sociologists studying contemporary occultism—astrology in particu-
lar—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 greatly 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. Tiry-
akian, “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 Truzzi,
“Definitions and Dimensions of the Occult: Towards a Sociological Perspective,” in
ibid., pp. 245 ff.).
2. Cf. notablyJ.G. Herder, vol. XV of Sémtliche Werke, published in Berlin by
Bernhard Suphan, 1877-1909. A. Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, Paris, 1773-84,
8 vols. “Esotérisme” appears in Jacques Matter, Histoire critique du gnosticisme et deses
influences, Paris, Levrault, 1928, p. 83 (mentioned by Jean-Pierre Laurant, L’Esotérisme
chrétien en France au XIXe siécle, Paris, L’Age d’homme, 1992, pp. 19, 42). The volumes
of Kleiner Wunderschauplatz der geheimen Wissenschafien, Mysterien, Theosophie [. . .]
appeared in Stuttgart, published byJ.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 hermetic
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-Theéosophie (1770-1820), Paris,
Champion, 1928. (Many facsimile reprints, same publisher.) Vol. I, Le Préromantisme.
Vol. 2, La Génération de I’Empire. Will-Erich Peuckert, Pansophie. Ein Versuch zur
Geschichte der weissen und schwarzen Magie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1936. New edition,
Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1966. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and the Experimental
Science. 8 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. (First edition, 1923-58).
W.-E. Peuckert, Die Rosenkreutzer. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation. Jena: Diederichs,
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 and
London: The University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprints, 1979. First edition:
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Francois Secret, Les Kabbalistes chrétiens de la
Renaissance. Paris: Arma Artis and Milan: Arché, 1985. Illustrated (new expanded
edition). First edition, Paris: Dunod, 1964.
5. Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach to
Romanticism. London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1982. Massimo
Introvigne, I/ Cappello del Mago (I nuovi movimenti magict, dallo Spiritismo al Satanismo).
Milan: SugarCo, 1990. Abridged French edition: La Magie (Les Nouveaux Mouvements
Magiques). Paris: Droguet et Ardent, 1993.
XXXil Preface

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 title, 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 title (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 ofReligion, op. cit., where he discusses and differentiates “pre-
esoteric 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’Esotérisme (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 foun-
dations, 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 l’Esotérisme, 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 XXXI11

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 je
Hanegraaff, Leuven (Belgium): Peeters, Series “Gnostica,” 1998, pp. 1-10.
13. “Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhalt / Schau’ alle
Wirkenskraft und Samen” (vv. 381-383).
14. Pierre A. Riffard, L’Esotérisme: Qu’est-ce que Vésotérisme? Anthologie de
Vésotérisme 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), Férusalem, la Cité spirituelle, no. 2 of Cahiers de
PUniversité Saint-Fean de Férusalem, 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 probléme de |’ésotérisme comparé des religions
du Livre,” in Henry Corbin et la Spiritualité Comparée, edited by Antoine Faivre and
Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron; Paris: Arché, series “Cahiers du Groupe d’Etudes
Spirituelles Comparées,” 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.
544, A.R.LE.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 per-
spectives 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 neces-
sarily implying an axiomatic agenda; cf., for example, Ivan Strenski, Religion in Relation
(Method, Application and Moral Location), Columbia, University of South Carolina Press,
1993, chap. II: “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 Hanegraaff’s 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 the
recent important article by Monika Neugebauer-Wolk, “Esoterik im 18. Jahrhundert -
Aufklarung und Esoterik. Eine Einleitung,” in Aufkdrung 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. 7 ff., Religion, no. XIX, 1989.
20. W. J. Hanegraaff, “Empirical Method .. . ,” art. cited, p. 110. A dossier on
perennialism was published in A.R.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.
XXXIV Preface

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,
“Fsotérisme occidental (Doctrine de 1’),” pp. 630-633 in Dictionnaire des religions
(directed by Cardinal Paul Poupard), Paris, P.U.F., 1993. The very title of this article is
already misleading; unfortunately, it is the aa entry on “Esotérisme” in this
dictionary. See the cogent review of that entry by Jérd6me Rousse-Lacordaire, pp.
50-55, ARLES., no. XVII, 1994.
24. The Dictionnaire critique de PEsotérisme (cf. supra, n. 11) too often offers
examples of such infringements or overlappings. As for the term “imaginary”
(Pimaginaire 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 l’itmaginaire, 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 imfra), which are mental attitudes,
are more directly 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 Guénonian
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 sufficiently 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,
Frangois Azouvi; cf. his article, “Pour une histoire philosophique des idées,” pp. 17-28
 Preface 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 l’Etre: la Nature, aujourd’hui,” pp. 145-160,
Science et Gnose (Proceedings of the A.R.LE.S. Colloquium at the Sorbonne, June
1993), no. XVII of A.RIE.S., 1994. And by the same author: “Errances et Con-
vergences,” 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 con-
tribution “Histoire de la notion moderne de Tradition dans ses rapports avec les
courants ésotériques (XVé-XXé siécles),” in Symboles et Mythes dans les mouvements
initiatiques et ésotériques (XVII@-XX¢ siécles): filiations et emprunts,” Paris: Arché and La
Table d’Emeraude, Series “ARIES,” 1999, pp. 3-48. Italian edition of this contri-
bution: Esoterismo e tradizione. Leumann (Turin): Elledici, Series “Religione e
Moviment,” 1999, 80 pp.
 —

Pike nlLae
» ©
ponepvetegelate
2p ee
shed
"
~ ht iy
ee e
REIN
rae
one
ot;
wely
ie
‘ad
So 8g :

a iesii appetite gi os sabi ’Were A RT aE

“ipa. opus ae Bint anil et hha D
" : ‘ eeaowly ae Be hah ae? aie
@ satan Pe a se aay, May ee a AT RRC

le Ged 9
Ad pea hte iNet eb, og ere ee theater tbat }3 shes &
d
: neha: Maula e Bees is Aan Tyen ee el oeceaapraiteititie
ihre deel smi ws tae ater nrty cenit. We ase Wi ey EH ed
7 stots pins Ooo ee Ye ee ee ee a Aenit SA, tes" HAG OR ooh
ae Rohe lea dh : a iti Np; ‘a tg nee peas t fs

Mayne 2 rnb aeDY Tonal reine IA aca Rw

ee, Agee satsPahl
a NG er F x ee ie cin SALES Heyes ee tus Si ate® yal A Se Be

ee oe pate ta Line PO et aie ON TRE a

RMLE Rr lie eres nega nna ps RENE HERAT
aes, vy = % ; yt ot a ahNEE cit Se
nacht a ir

Hyaee eau sion eyheighhd lee asd reais varie Besos i “Se
Tig (2 cg aap taal fT. ghean
eon al
Ay 4 RS ate. Ve ae haus ‘3 ake at
So WH TR her a ae tiers eee is
CEecw sulbadth fy hes
5 cs

mt ‘saree! ahem, teaprited 3BY

ec. 2 Smear! apna ed SN tenia
A ee a ieai oo ieee) mapagent
ao a a Ae ABO 9 ‘nctiGl Soetaaee ys oe ;
~ io a > xs 2)aA Tear tee Bie “ae. ror
_ 2 en
Se
ae cages reergs
_ ea <a 3 ae Sa we
« j Pe iit > tars it
At rm date
bal
i >
A ah eS. jee tT , Vagier

" =] U $ S34 ie
- ¥
a 7s
; : i
4 qry- ia < "7 of
: - ee Li

; =
‘ oa al
she aa. ® :
Sy pono a
moms: =

fo heart ¥ 4 Vie WHat - 4 te wi a

a a is . dy

ie a st a ‘ i jhe pe ea rt; Yee emitapne shoe

gy >t Kore yeaa icra! Lee We isc. « ee)
7 tad ju teberee ce ws esvate waka
a
Q i i! als Re Lie eo ‘wthhe utd oi AAR
oa

rage seeares) a saa Bom a cuca ae a

7 ~
:
ar ‘an
‘ ae eyes er
» “i . I

7 :

7 . +
» Ma J
, ne -

= dal Pg
: : =) =o
Pd $ e

if

: fi a
‘ i 9"
THEOSOPHIES
 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.' In 1987, James
Santucci and Jean-Louis Siémons published the results of their respective
research on the use of the word “theosophy” during late antiquity and the
Middle Ages.” 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 phil-
osopher, an artist, and a priest of the highest order.’ Iamblichus (250-330)
spoke of “the divinely inspired Muse” (theosophos Mousé); 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 Pseudo-
Dionysius, 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.’
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
4 Theosophies

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 data® 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 cur-
rents 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 others’ 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 late-
sixteenth-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 insti-
gation of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), which has pursued rela-
tively 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 com-
mon elements among the material used by both trends are in evidence: for
 The Theosophical Current 5

example, borrowings from the theosophical current by the Theosophical

Society are not unknown.
In Politica Hermetica (cf. supra, n. 2) Jean-Louis Siémons 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, Siémons 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 romanti-
cism” (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 sub-
jectivity 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:’ (I) From the
end of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth, the development of a
specific textual corpus that would be deemed “theosophic” 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. (II) Its revival in the pre-romantic and
romantic era (i.e., the second “Golden Age” ). (IV) Its decline, and also its
endurance, from the mid-nineteenth century until the present.

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

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
6 Theosophies

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 “prin-
ciples.” 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 Para-
celsian synthesis, which would not become known in Germany until after the
Peace of Augsburg.”® 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 Biicher vom wabren
Christenthum, Johann Arndt (1555-1621), also the alleged author of an inter-
esting commentary on four plates of the Amphiteatrum, formulated (particu-
larly 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. To these three names we must add two more: first, that of Aegidius
Gutmann (1490-1584), whose 1575 Offenbahrung gottlicher 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
 The Theosophical Current 7

currents. Second, that of the German heterodox Caspar Schwenckfeld (1490-

1561), 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).'°
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 aware-
ness 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
8 Theosophies

Scripture (it is through active imagination that one is made capable of appre-
hending 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 Ezekie], 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."!
(c) Direct Access to Superior Worlds. Man possesses in himself a generally
dormant but always potential faculty’? 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."
Taken by themselves, these three traits are not outside the field of eso-
tericism.'* 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 suc-
cessful 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
 The Theosophical Current 9

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 politico-
religious type that were linked to Lutheranism, and two of a philosophico-
scientific type.
Originally, theosophy emerged from Lutheran soil. First of all, Luther-
anism allows free inquiry (whether theoretically or by definition), which in
certain inspired souls can take a prophetic turn. Second, Lutheranism is char-
acterized 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. To 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
10 Theosophies

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.'’ 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 co-
penetration of literature and science and by virtue of this contributed to the
development of the popularization of science.

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 edi-
tions and translations,'¢ we find, first of all, in Germany: Johann Georg Gichtel
(1638-1710), Theosophia Practica (published in 1722, but written a long time pre-
viously); Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651-1689), Kiihipsalter, 1677; Gottfried Arnold
(1666-1714), Das Geheimnis der gottlichen Sophia, 1700. Sometimes, the lists also
include Aegidius Gutmann (1490-1584), Offenbahrung gottlicher Majestat (cf.
supra) and Julius Sperber (?-1616), Exemplarischer Beweiss, 1616. In Holland, we
have Johann Baptist Van Helmont (1618-1699), The Paradoxical Discourses con-
cerning 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 ternal 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 (1646—
1719), L’Economie Divine, ou Systeme universel et démontré des euvres et des devoirs
de Dieu envers les hommes, 1687; and Antoinette Bourignon (1616-1680), Oeuvres
(edited by Pierre Poiret in 1679 and 1684).
 The Theosophical Current 11

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 advan-
tageous than Latin for the expression of visions and feelings. The same can be
said of the “proto-theosophers,” with the exception of Khunrath. And along-
side mention of writings proper, it is appropriate to call attention to the exis-
tence 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 beautifully 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)" 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-divinizing through knowledge or appropriate exer-
cises. 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.
12 Theosophies

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 mis-
leading 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 ofMystical Theology . . . (1703).'* 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;'? 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 seven-
teenth 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.”° 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.” 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 anthroposophia.”
It was perhaps under the influence of Arbatel that Heinrich Khunrath
used the term theosophia a few years later, thereby becoming chiefly respon-
sible 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 Kbunrath Lips, Theosophiae Amator.”
 The Theosophical Current 13

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.’ 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.** 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 (1586—
1654), 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.”
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.”
14 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.””” 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 Bohmens (. . .) 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
Polybistor (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, Pseudo-
Dionysius, 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 pre-
dict the future, like certain astrologers or Nostradamus. The third is repre-
sented by Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Johann Reuchlin, Cornelius
Agrippa, Guillaume Postel, Thomas Campanella, and the magnetisers and
alchemists.”* Nevertheless, in Colberg’s Platonic-hermetic Christianity and in
Arnold’s great History (cf. supra), the word is almost never used.?? 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 Pseudo-
Dionysius (“the Trinity is the overseer of Christian theosophy or the Wisdom
of God”), and commented that some Protestant theologians are not afraid of
 The Theosophical Current 15

using it’*—of course, in the sense of good theology. This is a far cry from the
meaning used by Morhof.

II. THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (FIRST HALF OF THE

EIGHTEENTH 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 facob
Bohmens, 1731) and whose theosgphical 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 Appeul 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 transla-
tions 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 Mystére de la Croix (1736) by the German Douzetemps was pub-
lished, and so was Explication de la Genése (1738) by the Swiss Hector de Saint-
Georges 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
16 Theosophies

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 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)! 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” attutude 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 Kuhl-
mann. 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 uni-
versal elixir; (d) he or she holds that there are three parts in the human being:
the body, the soul, and the spirit.
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 Jsagoge (1727).3 He wrote that
 The Theosophical Current 17

“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 agree-
ment 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.** Later, he cited some titles (not only names): Fludd (Philosophia
Moysaica and Utriusque Cosmi Historia), Gutmann (Offenbabrung gittlicher
Majestat), and Kuhlmann (Der neubegeisterte Bébme). 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!}5

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 sys-
tematic 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 cur-
rents 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-Platonic-
Kabbalistic philosophy” 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. To 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
18 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.”
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.’ Brucker reproached
them for showing themselves to be generally ignorant of the history of phil-
osophy. Except for Franziskus Mercurius Van Helmont, they do not even
know the true Kabbalah.*? Having a systematic mind himself, Brucker also com-
plained that one could not find any doctrinal unity among the theosophers
(“there are as many theosophical systems as there are theosophers”)* 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 com-
manding the spirits (i.e., magical astrology, alchemy, theurgy, etc.); and (f) the
tripartite division of the human being (divine spark, astral spirit, and body).”!
Brucker recognized that, contrary to the followers of Spinoza, theosophers do
not conflate God and the world,” but for all that, they are no less aphilosophoi;
their theosophy is an asophia.®
A few years after Brucker’s book, Diderot’s Encyclopédie devoted a twenty-
six-page entry to Théosophie. Essentially, as Jean Fabre has shown, the author—
 The Theosophical Current 19

that is, Diderot himself—plagiarizes Brucker.“ 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
Encyclopédie 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 Theosophic Room of the Marvels of the Superterrestrial King Magniphosaurus
very much enamoured of the Incomparable Beauty of Queen Funo (1709), or even
Theosophic Meditations of the Heart, written by the grandfather of Goethe’s
princely friend.** By giving his edition of Boehme’s complete works a title
that includes the word “theosophic” (cf. supra, “The First Corpus”), Gichtel
himself may well have played a part in the success of the term as we under-
stand it or in reference, more vaguely, to a host of esoteric ideas. Johann
Otto Gliising and Johann Wilhelm Ueberfeld followed in this vein in pro-
ducing new editions of the Boehmean corpus under the similar, but more
eye-catching title of Theosophia Revelata. Das ist: Alle Gottliche Schriften des
Gottseligen und Hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Facob Bohmens (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. Zinzendorf’s 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.”** Zinzendorf himself used the word in a positive sense, for
“theology”: he then went on to speak of theologische Theosophie. To 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.”’
20 Theosophies

Ill. FROM PRE-ROMANTICISM TO ROMANTICISM, OR THE

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 experi-
enced 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 Enlightenment 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.*® That myth was explicated through secularized art forms and in
political projects, as well as in theosophical discussions. Many Masonic or para-
Masonic 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 con-
cerned 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 experi-
ments 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 theosophic scene that stretches over these eight-odd decades, one can
distinguish three relatively different areas that overlap on more than one side.
 The Theosophical Current 72)|

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 Martinés 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
verité (1775), partly inspired by the teachings of his master, Martinés de Pas-
qually (1727-1774). The latter, a Portuguese or Spanish theosopher and theur-
gist and author of Traité de la Réintégration des Etres créés dans leur primitives pro-
priétes, 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. There-
after, Saint-Martin wrote his Tableau naturel des rapports qui unissent Dieu,
Vhomme et Vunivers (1781), and then discovered Boehme’s work during the
years 1788—91—writings that neither he nor Pasqually had known. Hence-
forth, 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 désir, 1790; Le Ministére de l’homme-
esprit, 1802; De Vesprit 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, appliquée aux lumieres naturelle, magique,
astrale, surnaturelle, céleste, 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 Zauberkriifie der Natur, 1819; and Ueber die wichtigsten Mysterien der
Religion, 1823. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817), in Marburg: Blicke in
die Geheimnisse der Naturweisheit, 1787. Frédéric-Rodolphe Salzmann (1749-
1821), in Strasbourg: Ales wird neu werden, 1802-12, and the Swabian, Michael
22 Theosophies

Hahn (1758-1819), with his Betrachtungen (1820-26). Yet the two most impor-
tant 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 theoso-
phers 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 Sweden-
borg) and Kabbalistic (e.g., Lebrtafel [der] Prinzessin Antonia, 1763), the out-
standing precursor of Naturphilosophie (with its theosophical propensity), and a
remarkable popularizer of esoteric ideas (e.g., Biblisches und Emblematisches
Worterbuch, 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 nineteenth-
century 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 theo-
sophical family. Thus we have Bathilde d’Orléans, duchess of Bourbon (1750-
1822), 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 Naturphil-
osophie, some other writers representative of the latter have shown that they,
too, were influenced by theosophy and pansophy.” This family of Naturphil-
osophen 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 Carus (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
 The Theosophical Current 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 postu-
late 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 celestia (1745-58), followed by many other books (e.g., De Nova
Hierosolyma, 1758; Apocalypsis revelata, 1766; Apocalypsis explicata, 1785-89; etc.)
All of this work was written prior to the period under discussion here; how-
ever, 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 preemi-
nence 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 reinte-
gration, 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
théosophiques (1822), Jean-Jacques Bernard would attempt to unite Sweden-
borg’s thought with Saint-Martin’s theosophy, after admirers of Swedenborg,
such as Edouard Richer, and then Le Boys des Guays (1794-1864), and
24 Theosophies

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 Jeast 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 organi-
zations, 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 Martinés de Pasqually and Saint-Martin), which was created in
Lyons around 1768 by Jean-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.

The Word “Theosophy” and a Few Criticisms

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
 The Theosophical Current 25

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).” In a long poem
entitled Theosophie des Fulius (1784), Friedrich Schiller used the term in an
imprecise way, which in any case bore no reference to the theosophical
current.” In 1786, J. G. Stolls’s Judgement on Theosophy, Kabbala and Magick,
was published; it is a superficial text, yet still bears witness to the fashionable
nature of the term itself.** Nevertheless, some authors, such as Henri Coqueret
(Théosophie 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.”* ;
At the same time appeared an anonymous essay, entitled “Recherches sur
la doctrine des théosophes” (published in 1807 in Saint-Martin’s Oeuvres
Posthumes).** Written “by one of the friends” of the author, it was originally
intended to serve as an introduction to those posthumous works.’ 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. Moreover, it provided an insight into the
referential corpus of this “doctrine”:
Parmi les ouvrages de ces Théosophes, on remarque ceux de Rosencreuz,
Reuchlin, Agrippa, Francois Georges, Paracelse, Pic de la Mirandole,
Valentin Voigel [sic], Thomassius, les deux Vanhelmont, Adam Boreil,
Behemius or Boheme, Poiret, Quirinus {sic], Kulman, Zuimerman, Bacon,
Henri Morus, Pordage, Jeanne Léade, Léibnitz, Swedenburg, Martinez de
Pasqualis, St. Martin, etc.*’
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.”
A short time later, in 1810, in a book that enjoyed a wide and lasting
audience (De /’Allemagne), Madame de Staél 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.”? And in his Opuscules théosophiques, Jean-Jacques
Bernard thanked Madame de Staél for having cast “an approving glance at the
26 Theosophies

theosophical doctrine—thereby proving that she was able to appreciate it.”

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 Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, which had been
published in 1822.% :
If the word “theosophy” is seldom to be found in Baader’s writings,” his
immediate disciples made wide use of it. Above all, Friedrich von Osten-
Sacken, in a long presentation of Baader and Saint-Martin, wrote that “the
theosophic 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 founda-
tion.”® Franz Hoffman, whom we have already quoted, also used the term
“theosophy,” but in a vaguer sense.* Julius Hamberger—another close disciple
(cf. supra)—published an anthology entitled Voices From the Sanctuary of Christian
Mysticism and Theosophy® 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,® 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.”

IV. EFFACEMENT AND PERMANENCE

(END OF THE NINETEENTH TO TWENTIETH 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
 The Theosophical Current Za

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 Gérard 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 Martinés 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 cen-
tury, 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. Guénonism,
that is to say the thought of René Guénon (1886-1951), and the numerous
discourses that it has inspired ever since, played a role here—a role that cannot
be overemphasized. Guénon himself was not interested in the Western theo-
sophical corpus (were it only because of its Germanic roots) nor in the various
forms of Western hermeticism. But Guénonian thought has become synony-
mous with esotericism in the minds of rather many people. To the best of my
knowledge, the single text in which Guénon 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.® Obviously, in that book the traditional theosophical current only
served as a foil: Guénon almost never mentioned it anywhere else, and prob-
ably 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, 1832-
1907; 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 reli-
gions, 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
28 Theosophies

its members are supposed to subscribe (although what H. P. B. called “theoso-

phy” 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 name® 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 confes-
sional 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 abso-
lutely 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, “Introduc-
tion”) and that alongside this name, we find under her pen other representa-
tives 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 pro-
vide 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 “illu-
minated” by the study of all the religions of the world—in that, perhaps, lies
the positive, fruitful contribution of the Theosophical Society.

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), Conférences sur la théantropie, 1877-81, La beauté de la Nature,
 The Theosophical Current 29

1889, and Le Sens de l'amour, 1892-94; Serge Boulgakov (1877-1945), The

Wisdom of God, 1937, and Du Verbe Incarné, 1943; and finally, Nicolas Berdiaev
(1874-1945), Etudes sur Facob 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 tradi-
tional theosophical current.” 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 Méditations 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 Esotérisme de la Genése, 1946-48. 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.

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 literature”
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 Koyré, 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
30 Theosophies

Serge Hutin and Bernard Gorceix (the latter is also the author of an important
thesis on Weigel), and more recently of Arthur Versluis. Numerous mono-
graphs 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 Frédéric 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 thorough-
ness. Prior to these writers, Ernst Benz (1907-1978) produced an abundant
bibliography (notably on Swedenborg and Jung-Stilling) and was the preemi-
nent German specialist of this current. Benz took part in the Eranos group in
Ascona (Switzerland), which occasioned the eclectic Eranos fahrbticher (1933-88)
containing a certain number of interesting articles about the theosophical
current.
The reputed Islamicist, Henry Corbin (1903-1978), who was also a mem-
ber of the Eranos group, was deeply interested in Western theosophy, particu-
larly 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, Shitism, 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 the-
osophy” of the three great religions of the Book (cf., for example, L Imagination
créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi, 1958; Terre céleste et corps de résurrection,
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 felici-
tous 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 consti-
tuents 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.” 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.” By the same token, the theosophical
 The Theosophical Current ad

current has now become the object of still another kind of attention. A medita-
tion 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 l’Evolution: Essai sur Fakob 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:”* the word is now employed mostly for designating
either the current that has been examined here or the teachings of the Theo-
sophical 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 “Théosophie”: 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 spiritualité ascétique et mystique;
and in Dictionnaire critique de théologie (cf. infra, note 73).
2. Jean-Louis Siémons, Théosophia. Aux sources néo-platoniciennes et chrétiennes
(I-VI: siécles), Paris, Cariscript, 1988, 41 pp. James A. Santucci, “On Theosophia and
Related Terms,” Theosophical History, vol. Il, 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. Siémons, “De |’usage du mot théosophie par
Madame Blavatsky,” in Politica Hermetica, no. 7: Les Postérités de la théosophie: du
théosophisme au Nouvel Age (Paris, L’Age d’homme, 1993):-pp. 125-134.
3, J.-L. Siémons, Théosophia, p. 11 ff.
4. Ibid., pp. 13-18, 21-23, 26 ff. As regards John Scottus Eriugena, commen-
tator of Pseudo-Dionysius (around 862), cf. more particularly Migne, Patrologre latine,
yolni22) p17
5. Summa Philosophia Roberto Grosseteste ascripta, in Baumker’s Beitrage zur
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.
$2 Theosophies

7. In addition to alchemy and astrology, obviously present before in various

guises, the other esoteric currents in early modern Western thought are: Neo-
Alexandrian hermetism, Christian Kabbalah, Paracelsism, philosophia occulta (which
takes various forms), 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 Ia théosophie allemande (Université de Lille
Ill, 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 Kabbala Denudata (1677). Besides, neither
Bengel’s works nor Christian Kabbalah form part of the theosophic current understood
stricto sensu (even though Kabbalah is indeed a kind of theosophy). Finally, the “Sweden-
borgian inovement” 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
outlook, exemplified by authors like Quercetanus or Severinus who do not belong to
the esoteric field, 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 Koyré, Mystiques, Spirituels, Alchimistes du XVI siécle 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. 221 ff.) 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 theosophic spec-
 The Theosophical Current 33

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 (noiis)
according to the Corpus Hermeticum, and with the spark of the soul (Seelenfunken) found
in Meister Eckhart.
13. This world is imbued with the same nature as the mundus imaginalis men-
tioned 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 natiirliche Mensch, or der psychische Mensch
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 ésotérique de Zinzendorf (1700-1760)
{Paris: Klincksieck, 1969], p. 443) justly 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 mostly with the life of this soul. As for the theosopher, he makes us
more forgetful of his own person. He presents himself mostly 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 of four basic components (the idea of universal corre-
spondences); (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,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 169), pansophia does not originate in Patrizi him-
self but could have been derived from his own terminology (panarchia, panpsychia, pan-
cosmia) or directly 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 religidse und kulturelle Krise seiner Zeit,” pp. 57-137 in Basler
Zeitschrift fiir 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 same
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 title of the Dutch
34 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 fakob Bobme
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 Facob Boehme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985).
17. Ehregott Daniel Colberg, Das Platonisch-Hermetische Christenthum, begreiffend
die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vierlerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen
Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quacker, Bohmisten,
Wiedertauffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten und Quietisten, 2 vols. (Frankfurt and Leipzig,
1690 and 1691, reprinted in 1710).
18. Gottfried Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, vom Anfang des
neuen Testaments bis auf das fabr 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 title,
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
ad perfectionem 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 Aristotle (the document has been published by Paola
Zambelli, in Testi umanistici su Vermetismo (Rome, 1955], p. 158). See also the letter to
Erasmus of 13 November 1532, in Opera, vol. II, p. 1016: “Coeterwm, quod te scire volo,
bellum mihi est cum Lovaniensibus Theosophistis.”
21. Frangois Secret has already called attention to this book; cf. “Du De Occulta
Philosophia 4 Yoccultisme du XIXe siécle,” in Revue de Histoire des Religions (Paris:
 The Theosophical Current 35

P.U.F., vol. 186 July 1974], p. 60. A new, expanded version of the same article
appeared in Charis. Archives de [Unicorne, no. I, Arché, 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. Budé
recommends religio christiana. Henri Etienne, in his Thesaurus linguae Graecae, gives
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 Angelos quos Scriptura vigiles
vocat”) 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 partly 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 Arbate?s scheme of
theosophy-anthroposophy was taken over by Wolfgang Hildebrand (Magia Naturals,
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, filiorum Doctrinae .. . ut sophistice non moriantur sed
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’énigme de la Hanau, 1609 (Enquéte bio-
bibliographique sur “L’amphithéatre de l’éternelle sapience . . .” de Heinrich Khunrath [Paris:
J.-C. Bailly, 1990]). In Vom Hylealischen, das ist Pri-materialischen Catholischen oder
Allgemeinen Natiirlichen Chaos (Magdebourg, 1597), several reprints (Latin edition:
Confessiv de chao physico-chemicorum catholico . . . [Magdebourg, 1596]) and a recent
facsimile edition (Graz, Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1990, with an
introduction by Elemar R. Griiber), Khunrath writes (in the preface): “So vermoge
Zeugniissen vieler Philosophischer guter Schrifften; aus (Gott Lob) unverriickter Vernunfft:
erfahrner Leute Cabbalisschen Traditionen; Zum Theil auch beydes Theosophischer in
Oratorio, und Naturgemdass-Alchymischer in Laboratorio, eygner Ubungs Confirmation; und
also auss dem rechten Grunde dess Liechts der Natur, nicht allene Wahr sondern auch so viel
ibre Eygnschafften Gottlicher und Natiirlicher Geheimnussen in jetziger verkebrten Welt
offentlich an Tag zu bringen zu lassen Klar herfiir gegeben.” Further, he says this about the
“Gott-Weisslich Gelehrte,” that is, the erudite theosopher: “Alleine der Gott-Weisslich
gelebrte und von dem Liecht der Natur erleuchte auch sich selbst recht erkennende Mensch kan
Gott-weisslich Naturgemiiss und christlich darvon schliessen, Sonst niemand.” Also in the
preface: “Von den Wortlein Theosophus, Theosophia, Theosophice, ein Gott-weiser—Gottliche
36 Theosophies

Weissheit—Gott-weisslich——bab ich p. 28. Confessionis hujus, in scholiis kiirzlich mich

genugsam erklaret. Will ei ander lieber darfiir sagen Philotheosophus, Philotheosophia,
Philotheosophice, das lasse ich auch geschehen. Ich will tiber 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:
“Theosophicé, Gott-Weisslich (wann Gott der Hochste Jehovah, der Herr Herr will denn seine
Gnade wibret von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit tiber die so Ihn fiirchten kan, gesagter gestalt, wo
ferne wir uns selbst in die Sache nur recht Christlich schicken, dasselbe auch Uns (sowohl als den
Alten Theosophis vor uns) eroffnet und bekant werden. Dann Gott der Herr schencket auch
noch wohl heutigen Tages einem einen Trunck aus fosephs Becher. Oder aber auch seine
Natiirlichen Signatura, das ist Bezeichnung welche auch eine Warheits-Stimme und
Geheimniss-reiche recht lebrende Rede Gottes mit uns aus der Natur durch die Creatur ist:
oder auch aus Schriffilicher oder Miindlicher Anleitung und Unterweisung eines erfahren
guten Lebrmeisters 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: Poétam 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 shelfmark 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 (Encyclopédie, 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 philosopbia), 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 title 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 lobwiirdige Briiderschafft der Theosophen vom
RosenCreutz ..., 1612, s. |.) has just been rediscovered by Carlos Gilly (cf. his study
 The Theosophical Current 37

Adam Haslmayr, Der erste Verkiinder der Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer, Amsterdam, In de
Pelikaan, 1994). Haslmayr also uses the word elsewhere (cf. ibid.). Concerning Andreae’s
use of it, cf. Christianopolis, heading no. 60 (in Richard Van Diilman’s edition, Stuttgart,
Calwer Verlag, 1972, pp. 140-142): “De Theosophia: Hoc idem auditorium superiori adbuc
contemplation: servit. Haec theosophia est, nihil humanae inventionis, indagationisve agnoscens,
omnia Deo debens. Ubi natura desinit, haec incipit, et a superno numine edocta mysteria sua
religiose servat. . . . Imprudentes nos qui Aristotelem nobis praeferimus, homuncionem nobiscum,
non Dei admiranda amplectimur, quae illum pudefaciunt. Dei FIAT, angelorum servitium, ignis
auram, aquae spissitudinem, aeris depressionem, terrae elevatione, hominis infinitatem, bruti
loquelam, solis remoram, orbis terminum non potuit ille credere an noluit, quae nobis certa sunt.
Si Deum audimus, longe maiora his apud eum expedita sunt. . . . Scrupuletur philosophia,
theosophia acquiescit; opponat illa, haec gratias agit: haesitet illa, haec secura ad Christi pedes
recumbit.” ‘Thus, theosophy means humility, obedience, submissive receptivity. It starts
where Nature itself ends, is attributed the same “auditorium” as dialectics and meta-
physics, but it is taught by God. See also the remarks by Roland Edighoffer, p. 363 ff. and
419 of his Rose-Croix et Societé idéale selon 7.-V. Andreae, Paris, Arma Artis, 1982. Again, in
De Christiani Cosmoxeni genitura judicium (Montbéliard, 1615), the theosophic 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
nostro Iudictum Theosophicum, id est, Hominis in his terris veré Hospitantis, et in coelesti itinere
promouentis Imago expresa.” Cf. also ibid. p. 186, and Roland Edighoffer, op. cit., p. 364.
But in Turris Babel, stve judiciorum de Fraternitate Rosaceae Crucis Chaos (Argentorati, 1619),
one reads these words put in the mouth of the character called Impostor: “Sed meminetis,
esse Philosophum, Philologum, Theologum, Theosophum, Medicum, Chymicum, eremitam,
Fraternitatis invisibilis Coadjutorem, Antichristi hostem intractabilem, et quod ad rem maximé
facit, etiam Poetam” (pp. 23 ff.). Finally, in a fourth writing by Andreae entitled De
Curiositatis pernicie syntagma ad singularitatis studiosos (Stuttgart, 1620), the author ridicules
an occult philosophy which adorns itself with the name “theosophy” whereas it is but a
dubious and impious magical speculation: “Jtaque jam caracteres, conjurationes, constellationes
synchronismi tuto adhibentur. Postquam Daemonomania in Theosophiam mutata audit. Visiones,
apparitiones, revelationes insomnia, voces auguria, sortes ac omne genus false Divinitatis
exiguntur fiuntque horrendae incantationes, in alis supplicto digna, filis tamen huius dubiae
lucis, licita” (pp. 22 ff.). 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 Rosi-
crucians in his Pegasus Firmamenti. Sive Introductio brevis in Veteram Sapientiam (s.1., 1618)
urges (p. 21) the theosophiae studiosi to drink from the true wellspring of hermetic, Rosi-
crucian, and Paracelsian philosophy and pansophy.
26. “Ich schreibe nicht heidnisch, sondern theosophisch, aus einem hoberen Grunde als
der dussere Werkmeister ist, und dann auch aus demselben” (Aurora, chap. 8, §56). The
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
38 Theosophies

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 titles 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, I, 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, I, p. 143), and is found again under the
same translator’s pen in 177 Theosophick Questions (1661) and Theosophic Letters (same
year; Buddecke, II, pp. 61 ff.), as well as in fakob Boehmen’s Theosophick Philosophy
Unfolded by another translator, 1691. In German, we find a 1658 edition under the title
Eine Einfaltige Erklarung . . . aus wahrem Theosophischen Grunde (Buddecke, I, p. 212)
and the expression Theosophische Fragen appears in the title of Quirinus Kuhlmann’s
Neuebegeisterter Bohme, 1674 (Buddecke, I, p. 86). Little wonder, then, to see the word
featured in the title itself of Gichtel’s 1682 edition and, even more predictably, in that of
the first 1686 complete edition in Dutch (Ale de Theosoophiche of Godwijze Werken Van...
Jacob Boehme; cf. Buddecke, I, p. 5).
27. Ocdipt Aegyptiact 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 IH, 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 dictmus, qui de rebus sublimibus, arcanis, mirabilibus scripti, suos sibi lectores
postulant, neque omnibus ad lectionem concedi solent, neque ab omnibus intelligi possunt” (p. 87).
Ibid., p. 88: “Theosophicos nunc eos vocant, qui de rebus divinis atque abstrusiora quaedam
docent, quales apud Gentiles Theurgici dicebantur, quibus doctrina de Deo, Daemonibus, geniis,
deque ceremonus, quibus illi colendi, tradebatur. Alii magiam divinam hanc Theurgiam vocant.
Haec ceterum Metaphysica fuit.” And p. 93: “Hebraeorum Theosophici libri, quos illi Cabalae
nomine vocarunt.” On the same page, he adds, after mentioning the names of Pico,
Postel, Reuchlin: “Christianorum jam a primis temporibus mystici quidam in Theosophia libri
fuerunt. Principem in his locum sibi vendicant decantata illa Dionysii Aeropagitae opera.”
29. Still, Arnold does quote the extract from the Arbatel in its German version
(Unparthetische, op. cit., I, p. 457).
30. Historie und Beschreibung . .. , op. cit., pp. 5-7: “Und eben diesem wahren
Verstand des Wortes Theologie ist nun gleichmassig das Wort Theosophia, welches die Weissheit
Gottes oder von Gott anzeiget. Weil die geheime Gottesgelehrheit also eine Gabe des H. Geistes
von Gott selbst herriihret mit Gott umgehet und auch Gott selbst und seinen Heiligen gemein
ist wie diss Wort erkliiret wird. ... Es haben aber auch die protestantischen Lehrer dieses Wort
Theosophte 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. Funius Lib. de Theologia
 The Theosophical Current 39

Cap. I p. 18 qui fatetur, orthodoxis Patribus Theosophiam, dictam esse Theologiam) also
Lutheranern (foh. Frid. Mayer Theol. Mariana Artic. I, p. 24. Quid ad has blasphemias
Theosophia Lutherana? Conf. Observationes Halenses ad rem literariam spectantes Tomo I.
Observ. I. de Philosophia Theosophia—§2) zu sehen. Dahero die Beschwerung derselben iiber
andere denen als Layen man kein Recht im Gottl. Erkantniss gemeiniglich zustehe, will billig
hinweg fillt nachdem es auch bey denen Schul-Lebrern offenbahrlich ein grosser Missbrauch
dieses wichtigen Tituls ist so offt er der zanksiichtigen und gantz ungottl. Schul-Theologie bey-
geleget wird.” In his Impartial History (part IV, sect. II], no. 18 and 19, ed. 1729, vol. I,
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 ibnen von Gott gegeben, gesetzet und beygeleget, recht
im gottlichen licht emmsehen, abzehlen, ponderiren, numeriren, componiren, dividiren und
resolviren kan, das impurum und unnothige davon abschneiden, und das beste, wie die chimici,
davon extrahiren und purificiren kan, und also eines ieden dinges circulum cum exclusione
heterogeneorum concludiren kan, in einem lexico-lexicorum alles concentriren, und gleichwie
eine biene in seinen apiariis digeriren oder methodice und harmonice zusammen fassen, alles
was heut zu lernen und zu wissen vonnothen ist, der ist ein rechter Theosophus, und daftir
miissen dann alle unniitze und unvollkommene biicher fallen und von selbst zu grund gehen”
(p. 113, col. 1). A little further on, he writes in his rather flamboyant style: “Nun sind
wir bis an die Apccalypsin kommen, welche denen, die in Pathmo mit Johanne exuliren, und
von Gott in Geist erhohet, und gewtirdiget werden, di interiora velaminis zu beschauen mit
einer offnen thiir in geistlichen nach eroffnung der sieben siegel und tiberwindung aller feinde
des creutzes, nach inhalt der sieben sendbrieffe wird geoffenbahret werden, dass sie als geistliche
adler aufliegen, und aller dinge penetralia intima bis ins centrum durchschauen mogen, und
also Theosophi per crucem et huem, per ignem et spiritum werden, welche die Welt nicht
kennen noch vertragen mag, weil sie mit Christo und Christus in ihnen kommen, ein licht und
feuer zum gericht der welt anzuziinden, daran alles stroh sich selbst mit ihren verfolgern
offenbabren, im rauch auffliegen und verbrennen muss” (p. 113, col. 2).
31. Friedrich Gentzken, Historia Philosophiae, in qua philosophorum celebrium vitae
eorumaque hypotheses... ad nostra usque tempora . . . ordine sistuntur, Hamburg, 1724.
32. Ibid., p. 249: “Porro observandum est, nostrum Paracelsum originem dedisse
philosophiae, mysticae et Theosophicae, quae dogmata philosophica ex cabala, magia,
astrologia, chymia et theologia imprimis mystica eruit et illustrat. Vocatur autem hoc
philosophiae genus mysticum ideo, quoniam obscurior tradendi ratio in illis obtinet et
theosophicum, quoniam citra specialem illuminationem neminem ejusmodi sapientiam capere
posse praesumunt. Exstitit autem ab illo tempore haut exiguus Theosophorum numerus, qui
phantasticis suis imaginationibus delusi ex theologia et philosophia mixtum et foedum
aliquod chaos confecerent, inter quos praecipui 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 non sanae
rationis, sed tamultuariae imaginationis ductum sequuntur, inter se consentire nequeunt, sed
quisque ferme corum singulares et monstrosas fingit e defendit opiniones. Accedit, quod ut
plurimum contorto ac sumoso sermonis genere utantur, unde quid velint, nec ipsi, multo minus
alii intelligunt. Plerumque tamen in his momentis consentiunt, (1) Theosophum rerum
40 Theosophies

omnium naturam plenius nosse, ac occultas rerum vires intelligere, qualem cognitionem
vocant Magiam naturalem. (2) Theosophum influxum siderum in haec terrena scrutart
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.”
33. Johann Franciscus Buddeus, Isagoge*historico-theologica ad theologiam untversam
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 hanc aut cognito ipsa
rerum diuinarum, quie et alias ita vocatur, aut doctrina de tisdem, designetur; per illam autem
facultas, siue virtus, bona a malis discernendi, et illa 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, tum theologica
tum philosopbica venditantes, theosophorum sibi nomen 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 deprebendisse, cur auctores corum, specialiort quadam ratione,
theosophi vocari debeant. Si quid enim habent, quod cum veritate convenit, nec 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 tam 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 ac pretium concilaturi.”
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 nec Most, nec aliis, scriptoribus, sacris in mentem venerunt. Referendi huc Robertus
Fluddius, in philosophia Moysaica, etc. item in microcosmi et macrocosmi historia
physica. Iacobus Boehmius, in mysterio mago, alique scriptis Aegidius Guthman, in
Offenbahrung goettlicher Maiestaet Quirinius Kuhlmann, in dem neubegeisteren
Boehmen, alique, 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; quem similiter admittunt, qui itidem prae religuis Mosaice videri volunt,
Conradus Aslachus, in physica et ethica Mosaica, Ioan, Amos Comenius in physicae ad
lumen diuinum reformatae synopsi, Joannes Bayerus, in ostio, seu atrio naturae, et si qui
alii sunt ejusdem generis.”
36. Jacob Brucker, Kurze Fragen aus der Philosophischen Historie, von Christi
Geburt biss auf unsere Zeiten. Mit ausftihrlichen Anmerkungen erlautert, 1730-1736, Vth
part (Ulm, 1735), cf. chap. III: “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.sII of vol. VI: “De
Theosophicis,” pp. 644-750. Vol. IV, chap. IV, pp. 353-448: “De Restaurationibus
Philosophiae Pythagoreo-platonico cabbalisticae” (on Christian Kabbalists and various
writers: Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa, Patrizi, Thomas Gale, Ralph
 The Theosophical Current 41

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 entitled 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. II,
§38 of Aurora): “Nun merke: Gleichwie vom Vater und Sohn ausgehet der Hl. Geist und ist
eine selbstdndige Person in der Gottheit und wallet in dem ganzen Vater, also gehet auch aus
den Kraften deines Herzens, Adern und Hirn aus die Kraft die in deinem ganzen Leibe wallet,
und aus deinem Lichte gehet aus in dieselbe Kraft, Vernunft, Verstand, Kunst und Weisheit,
den ganzen Leib zu regieren und auch alles, was ausser dem Leibe ist, zu unterscheiden. Und
dieses beides ist in deinem Regiment des Gemiites ein Ding, dein Geist, und das bedeutet Gott,
den Hi. Geist. Und der HI. Geist aus Gott hersschet auch in diesem Geiste in dir, bist du aber
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 aegri
sommia) theosophica [sunt], quot sunt 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” (J.
Brucker, Historia, op. cit., p. 743). -
43. Ibid., p. 747.
44. Encyclopédie, vol. XVI, article “Théosophes,” 1758 and 1765, pp. 253 ff. Jean
Fabre, “Diderot et les théosophes,” pp. 203-222 in Cahiers de l’Association Internationale
des études francaises, no.-13, June 1961. Again in Lumiéres et Romantisme, Paris, Klincksieck,
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 the
context of the confrontation between the new science and ancient wisdoms; that
comparison forms an essential element of what Oetinger’s thought would be some-
what later, and, more generally, of pre-romantic and romantic Naturphilosophie.
Promotoris Edlen Ritters von Orthopetra. K. S. und F .S. R. Theosophischer Wunder-Saal
des in die unvergleichliche Schonheit der unterirdischen Konigin Funo inniglich verliebten
Uberirdischen Konigs Magniphosauri. Das ist: Theosophischer Schauplatz / des entdeckten
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 hichsten alleinigen Jehovah gerichtete theosophische Herzens Andachten
oder Fiirstliche selbstabgefasste Gedanken, wie wir durch Gottes Gnade uns von dem Fluch
des Irdischen befreyen und im Gebet zum wahren Licht und himmlischer Ruhe eingehen
sollen. Nebst einigen aus dem Buche der Natur und Schrift hergeleiteten philosophischen
Betrachtungen, von drey Haushaltungen Gottes, im Feuer, Licht, und Geist, zur Wieder-
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.
42 Theosophies

48. Among others, Léon Cellier, L’Epopée romantique, 1954; republished under
the title L’Epopée humanitaire et les grands mythes romantiques. Paris: S.E_D.ES., 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
sacrée et théosophie, 18éme—1 9éme siécles), Paris, A. Michel, 1996.
50. Anonymous (Deslisle de Sales), De Ja Philosophie de la Nature, vol. Ill
(Amsterdam, 1770), pp. 299-307. I thank Jean-Louis Siémons for drawing my atten-
tion to this passage.
51. In Friedrich Schiller, Philosophische Briefe, published in Thaha, 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. partic-
ularly in the recent edition of the complete works (known as Kritische Friedrich Schlegel
Ausgabe, Zurich: Thomas Verlag), vols. VI, XI, and XVIII (numerous notes written
during the years 1800-1804).
54. “Recherches sur la doctrine des théosophes,” in Louis-Claude de Saint-
Martin, 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 beginning of this volume; but we did not want to deprive
our readers of it.”
56. Ibid., pp. 148, 150, 154.
57. Ibid., p. 194. “Rosencreuz” relates evidently 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 De 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. Apart from Weigel, Boehme,
Pordage, Poiret, Kuhlmann, Leade, Swedenborg, Martinés de Pasqually and Saint-
Martin, who indeed represent the theosophic 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,
 The Theosophical Current 43

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 Aristotle
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 Rémond 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
JFungen 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 formsof 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 Gott-
fried Arnold, his contemporary (in Unpartheyische . . . , cited supra, n. 18; cf. vol. Il, B.
XXVIII. C. XIU, 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
apostle of the inner Church, but he is not a theosopher. Among his writings may be
quoted: Concatenatio aurea Christiana seu cognitio Dei ac Domini nostri Fesu Christi, 1677,
also published in Dutch the same year; Onderhandelinge noopende den Broederlyken
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 I/wminati (concerning him, cf. Eduard Bodemann, 7. G.
Zimmermann, sein Leben und bisher ungedruckte Briefe an denselben, Hanover, 1878). But
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. III, 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 title Recherches sur la doctrine des théosophes, introduction and notes by
Robert Amadou (Paris: Le Cercle du Livre, La Haute Science series, 1952). In his intro-
duction (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 an
44 Theosophies

appendix, he presents a bibiliographic notice (pp. 43-58) in which, concerning Zimmer-

mann, he hesitates betweenJ.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 Théosophes, 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 will finally become convinced that the
same bases and the same dogmas which have been generally accepted in places—how
ever farflung—and in times—however distant from one another, must have the same
principal character of truth” (pp. 167 ff.).
59. Madame de Staél, De /’Allemagne, vol. II, Bruxelles, 1820 edition, chap. V
(“De la disposition religieuse appelée mysticité”) “mysticism,” vol. II (Brussels, 1830),
p. 361: “The religious disposition called ‘mysticité’ is only a more intimate way of
feeling and conceiving Christianity. Since in the word ‘mysticité’ 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), entitled “Des
Philosophes religieux appelés Théosophes,” Madame de Staél 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 philo-
sophical 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 varia-
tions of these texts, vol. V of Madame de Staél’s works, in the critical edition procured
by the Countess Jean de Pange and Simone Balayé (Paris: Hachette, 1960), particularly
 The Theosophical Current 45

pp. 126-136 (“Des Philosophes religieux appelés Théosophes”), pp. 137-154 (“De
lesprit de secte en Allemagne”).
60. Anonymous (Jean-Jacques Bernard), Opuscules théosophiques, auxquels on a joint
une defense des soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg; par un ami de la sagesse et de la verité (Paris,
1822).
61. Joseph de Maistre, Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (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
... Thad 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, Samtliche 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 der
Kabbala beriihrt, die Verwandtschaft des Neuplatonismus mit der Kabbala ist nicht zu leugnen
und man kann mit Grund die christliche Theosophie eine erweiterte, bereicherte und (christlich)
modificirte Kabbala nennen” (vol. XI, 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): “F. Boehme’s Theosophie berubt ganz auf
dem Evangelium Fohannis I. 1-44? (I, 402). There exists a French translation of
Fermenta Cognitionis by Eugéne 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.—Wéir muiissen diese daher
als eine ganz besondere,. eigenthtimliche Stromung der geistigen Entwickelung betrachten.
Wahrend die Verstandes-Speculation in eigener Autonomte ibre Systeme gebaut hat, so hat die
Theosophie, von einer religiosen Erkenntniss ausgehend, sich stets in die absolute Wahreit des
Christenthums zu vertiefen gesucht und von diesem Standpuncte aus einer christlichen Specu-
lation reiche Elemente geboten. Fe mehr desshalb ein tieferer Blick in den Gang der neueren
Speculation uns erkennen lasst, dass diese Verstandesoperation nicht im Stande ist, die Tiefen des
Geistes und der Natur zu erfassen und dass dieser Formalismus in seiner Consequenz zu einem
vollstaindingen Bruch mit unserem tieferen Sein geftibrt hat, um so mebr thut es Noth, unsere
Aufmerksamkeit auf eine Richtung zu lenken, die dazu berufen scheint, eine Regeneration der
Speculation zu erzeugen. Diese Richtung einer theosophischen Anschauungsweise zieht sich gleich
nach der Reformation durch die deutsche Wissenschaft und wird in der grossartigsten Weise
repriisentirt durch Jakob Bohme” (p. 17). “Man kann freilich Franz Baader unter den Philo-
sophen als unsystematisch bezeichnen, dagegen muss man ihm das grosse Verdienst vindiciren, die
Theosophie auf ein bestimmtes Erkenntnissprincip zuriickgefiihrt und dadurch derselben eine fest
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 XI).
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
46 Theosophies

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 dem Heiligthum der christlichen Mystik und
Theosophie. Fiir Freunde des inneren Lebens und der tiefern Erkenntniss der gotthchen 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, im 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 mebr 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 tiberhaupt ei ernstes
Verlangen nach Einigung ihres Gemuithes mit der Gottheit in sich tragen, den Aufschwung zu
derselben wesentlich zu erleichtern, und da uns andererseits in der Vheosophie 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 gegenwiartige Verwirrung der Begriffe in der That gebieterisch erheischet” (p. iv). One
thus finds in this anthology, besides persons who are mystics strictly 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, Beitrége zu einer Geschichte der Theosophie. Mit besonderer
Beriicksichtigung auf Molitor’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 Worterbuch
(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 shortly 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. espe-
cially 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.
 The Theosophical Current 47

68. René Guénon, Le Théosophisme, histoire d’une pseudo-religion (Paris: Valois,

1921), pp. 1 ff. All traditional Western theosophy, “the basis of which is always Chris-
tianity,” 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 Siémons, 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 scien-
tific research” (H. S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Adyar, The Theosophical Publishing
House, 1974, Ist 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. Several times I 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 Guénon’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 through-
out the entire eighteenth century (with the notable exception of Diderot’s Encyclopédie),
and that it appeared more and more frequently beginning in the second half of the
nineteenth century, when its presence became almost obligatory. (See, for example, p.
28 in Real. Encyklopiddie fir protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vol. XVI [Gotha, 1962]
and the interesting article in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1983 edition) by Carl T.
Jackson.) The Dictionnaire de Spiritualité ascétique et mystique (fasc. 96-98, pp. 548-562,
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
48 Theosophies

present article; the other one is the Dictionnaire critique de théologie, 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 tradi-
tions; 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 phil-
osopher Jean-Jacques Wunenberger, “La pluralita delle figure teofaniche (Esperienza e
significato dell’immagine),” pp. 95-119 in Dalla Sofia al New Age (edited by the Centro
Aletti), Roma, Lipa Srl., 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. I
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, entitled “Theosophy and Theosophic
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 Mysticism
of the Baroque Century in Germany
(Note on the Works of Bernard Gorceix)

Thanks to the studies by Alexandre Koyré and then Eugéne Susini,! 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 under-
ground, 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 mysti-
cism of the fourteenth century is relatively well known, as is baroque literature
of the seventeenth century, not enough interest has been taken in the specula-
tive 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 pluridisciplinary 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 some-
times 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.

ao
50 Theosophies

VALENTIN WEIGEL

The academic thesis of Bernard Gorceix on Valentin Weigel, defended in

1972,? 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 René Hocke, André 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. Johann Arndt, then
Gottfried Arnold and Leibniz, contributed to spread Weigel’s influence and,
in 1765, Diderot’s Encyclopédie, 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 Luther-
anism”—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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism oul

while taking care to illuminate it on every page with commentary and historical
and geographical observations concerning Weigel’s life, while this simultane-
ously 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 ali over Germany: they are published and distributed, something the
Basel doctor had not seen during his lifetime. 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 self-
knowledge 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
by Theosophies

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 Schiiler 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 Naturphilosopben 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 pro-
claimed 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 53

(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
(Miitter) 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 maturans 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.
To this macrocosm corresponds the equally ancient concept of the micro-
cosm on which Paracelsus, in his Philosophia sagax, had conferred a philosophical
and poetic status. The ternary diyision 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 correspon-
dence, 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 ele-
ments. 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 (/eiblich).
Boehme would sometimes employ Leiblichkeit and Begreiflichkeit indiscrimin-
ately, and Saint-Martin, in his translation of Aurora, would render Leib by
54 Theosophies

“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 engen-
dering 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 perfec-
tion 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 contem-
poraneous 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 light 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.).
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 55

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 alleternity. 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 of Jacob Boehme.
Also the concept of free 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 medita-
tions 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
56 Theosophies

with the creative act, because every creation is the loss of a unity, the revela-
tion 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 con-
cept 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 assimi-
lation is nothing, if it is not associated with a corporeal assimilation, and in
faith the “corporeal cannot be without the spiritual” (p. 420). The identifica-
tion of the believer and Christ can be perfect only if the believer possesses the
whole Christ, Christ incarnated and Christ resurrected: “Man miisse 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 /imus naturae (corrupted matter) and Jimus 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 57

beings and things. Thus Gorceix can write: “Without the Paulinian forceful-
ness, the Boehmean genius, the abstract clarity of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger,
or the matured Baaderian art of expression, Valentin Weigel, through his con-
cept 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 contri-
bution 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 coagu-
lated 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 (/eiblich), just as Christ
had a bodily existence, not only spiritual” (p. 438).* 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. How-
ever, 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. More-
over, 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,
58 Theosophies

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 title 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 life: 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 rela-
tionship between the material and the spiritual, theosophy defines and develops
relationships of interaction, of form and nature: religious speculation is sup-
ported 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 opera-
tions of Divinity.” The sephiroth of the Kabbalah express the theogonic process
not as an intellectual act, a simple coming 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 apis (which many
texts identify with Christ) is not merely the body but just as much spirit.
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism sy)

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, system-
atically so to speak, blended into a single thinking the Rheno-Flemish tradi-
tion, 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.

JOHANN GEORG GICHTEL

The work that the same author has devoted to Gichtel’ opens with an intro-
duction where he recalls that the neglect into which a whole area of contem-
porary 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 (Engelsbriider, 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
60 Theosophies

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 Gemiit” (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 light 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 61

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), for having 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. To 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 efful-
gence 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 syn-
thesis constitutes life, is the foundation of the speculations of Gichtel for
whom, in God Himself, the structure of being is dialectic. But the two theoso-
phers 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 intro-
spection, 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
62 Theosophies

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
, the theosopher was not content to
have merited a particular developmentfor
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 seat—
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 Gemiit 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 Gemit 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 63

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 fiancée (Sophie). But
the Gichtelian Sophia conceived-as a principle, thus independently of her pos-
sible “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 philoso-
phers 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 re-
create 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 participa-
tion 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 con-
ceived as Ende der Wege Gottes, how would Schelling have developed his phil-
osophy of the Spirit and Nature? Without Gichtel’s Sophia, would the way
leading to Hymns to the Night have been sufficiently prepared? Rather many
64 Theosophies

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 Gérlitz 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 indirectly, “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 pre-
dominate 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).

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, Flambée et agonie.° Not that the theosophical element is always
absent among these mystics, but mysticism is not theosophy. To 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 conclu-
sions 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 65

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 Flambée 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 Ja 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 four-
teenth century. In the beginning, he analyzes the causes of the mystical blaze
in seventeenth century Germany. Then he considers the authors that repre-
sent 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 con-
straining 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”). To the spiritual demands are added political and social ones; the
mystical renewal is born of their very coincidence. Moreover, the ascetic and
66 Theosophies

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 Défense et illustration de la
langue francaise, 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 mys-
tical 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 tradi-
tion 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 67

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 Phil-
osophy 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). To 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 pro-
cess is identical to the life of Nature, the seeking of mystical union is compar-
able to creation. Three principles govern germination: 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 illus-
trating 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.’
Under the title “Mystique, louange, nature et poésie,” 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 Giildenes 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 fail, 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 under-
standing predominates over organized meditation, with a marked taste for
trust, confession, and sentimentality. One sees appearing here a psychology of
68 Theosophies

worry and an aesthetic of sentiment. Spee distances himself by this from Rheno-
Flemish 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 inter-
vention 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 Gezstliche Sonnette Lieder und
Gedichte (Nuremberg, 1672) and Der Teutschen Uranie Himmelabstammend
(Nuremberg, 1672)—according to strictly literary methods, or again by com-
paring 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 impres-
sion 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 estab-
lish 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,’ 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,
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 69

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 titles, 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 Bibme), 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
(Kibipsalter), 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 hisilluminations. 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 anagram-
matisiert oder buchstabenwechselt”), 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 Kiihipsalter does not have the limpid serenity of that of Rheno-
Flemish mysticism: the endless Deity becomes God one and trine, no longer
by luminous flowing, effusion-diffusion, but by pure boiling, ardent effer-
vescence, 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
70 Theosophies

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 con-
dition 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. To 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 conver-
sion, 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
XVIIth 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 desig-
nating both the vehicle of the operation—mercury alone—and its term, the
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 71

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 wit-
nesses” of this period of flame and agony that is the baroque seventeenth cen-
tury. 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 fesum verliebten
Psyche, 1657), The Cherubic Pilgrim (Der Cherubinische 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 Flambée 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 distinc-
tion—also present in Bonaventure—between “cherubic” mysticism and “sera-
phic” mysticism; the first—that of the Pi/grim—is an intellectual manner of
approaching God, the second—that of Holy Foy—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 appre-
ciate the delights of this union for they do not know what it is to be without it.
Weare therefore more favored than angels, and we must love like the seraphim,
We Theosophies

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, mer-
cury, 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 unformlich 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,” Il,
198). Moreover, speculation on the Eckhartian ganster, the seelenfiinklein, 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 exis-
tence 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 pre-
ceding 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 scin-
tillation, 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 mys-
ticism, that is, of the realized union. It is not a matter of relating a unitive
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 73

experience, but of representing the pleasure and perfection promised to Man

when Jesus will have answered. Now, in the Holy oy 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 T’schech, 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 Ger-
many 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 pre-
viously 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 devel-
oped. 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 Flambée 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 pos-
sible 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
74 Theosophies

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 Him-
self, 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 fasci-
nated 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 specu-
lation seems to us to inform and underlie contemplation itself. We experience
some difficulty also in accepting with Gorceix that it is “very vague and ambig-
uous” (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 contempla-
tion of Nature by Man, but of speculation of a theosophical character. Simply,
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 75

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 tradi-
tional; “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 cen-
tury and its epigones (Ruysbroek, the Theologia Germanica, Weigel); further-
more, 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 neverthe-
less little marked in the seventeenth century. Then, the nuptial mysticism
(Brautmystik) that views the relationships of the soul and God as love rela-
tionships (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 com-
plete 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).
76 Theosophies

Finally, three principal themes allow German mysticism to be reposi-

tioned 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). To 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 gener-
ating 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
XVIlIth 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 phenom-
enon 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism TT.

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 char-
acters 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 spiritu-
alities and forgets all too often the hidden riches, too long repressed, of
Christianity and of Europe” (p. 339). Flambée 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.

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 théatre au XVIle siécle en Alle-
magne” 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 Patladis oder die/durch Phoebi et Palladis Vermiablung/erfundene Fort-
pflantzung 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 Kuhipsalter 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 Frank-
furt starting from 1670. We find here once again the essence of the themes of
European mysticism: tranquillity and repose (Sabbath and peace), the imitation
78 Theosophies

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 pre-
sents 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 confes-
sional 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 littérature au XVIle siécle en Allemagne”? 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 Dreifaltigkeit, of which
perhaps the oldest copy, magnificently illustrated, is conserved in the German-
isches 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 Ger-
many. 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 79

immediately after this article.'' An account of this work having appeared

through our care, it does not seem necessary to comment on it again.” 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 Rosi-
crucian novel. As the title may perhaps indicate, this was a spectacular chemical
play (chymisches Pracht-Spiel) 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 Aurelic Augurelli, whose alchemical books enjoyed con-
siderable 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; move-
ment 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 pro-
vince 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 Adchimie." These include, on the one hand, three
writings that are signed: Caspar Hartung (Das Kunstbiichlein (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
80 Theosophies

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 “Intro-
duction,” 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.'* 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 Akchimie 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 médicales 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.'* This work is followed, in the same book,
by his article: “Paracelsisme et Philosophie de la Nature au XVIe et XVIle
siécles en Allemagne (A propos d’un traité de 1575: Des secrets de la création).”'*
It is again Paracelsus, but also Boehme, that are the subjects of his study: “La
mélancolie aux XVIe et XVIle siécles: Paracelse and J. Bohme.””” As for
Boehme, he is the subject of two good publications provided with commen-
taries by our author. To the French reader are henceforth available the Theo-
sopbical 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."
Among his contributions to the study of the mystics also appear not only a
work on Caspar Schwenckfeld,” 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 Miiller): 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 article” on the angel in seventeenth-century Germany completes this
set of works relating to theosophy and mysticism. Had the angel, “shaken by
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 81

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
of Duino, 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
Silestus understood the foundation, the value, the greatness of human possi-
bilities” (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 Flambée 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 disap-
pear 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
of God and Man” (p. 28).

SOCIETY AND UTOPIAS

Since the works of Karl Viétor, 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 société.” J-B. Neveux had also
approached it in his masterly and prolific works. Gorceix first points out that
the social group to which the baroque mystics belonged or were related
82 Theosophies

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 siécle
et au début du XVIle siécle,”** 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? j
The New statuten die Psitacus gebracht hat uss dem land Wolfaria, by the Fran-
ciscan Ginzburg, 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
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 83

Ausgewahlte 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 Christianopolis descriptio of Andreae”’ 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 Cam-
panella, who still had a taste for the fantastical, only refined Lutheranism.
Andreae, in contrast to Giinzburg, nonetheless adopts the form of the “story-
context,” 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 Biicher 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
84 Theosophies

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 state-
ments (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 pro-
gress and a living religion.
We note, among almost all of these utopians, tendencies in counter-
current: 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. . . . To understand
these theosophical co-respondences one must have symbolic intelligence,
whose organ is the creative imagination. The authors that have just been dis-
cussed 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 Mallarmé, “le commentaire des signes purs, & quoi obéit toute la litté-
rature, jet immédiat de lesprit”’ (“the commentary of pure signs, which all of
literature obeys, immediate fountainhead of spirit”).

NOTES

1. Cf. notably A. Koyré, La Philosophie de Facob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929

(reprint 1980); and E. Susini, Franz von Baader et le romantisme mystique, Paris, Vrin,
1941:
 Theosophy and Speculative Mysticism 85

2. La Mystique de Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) et les origines de la théosophie

allemande, Université de Lille III, Service de reproduction des théses, 1972, 500 pp.
3. Paracelsus, Oeuvres médicales, translated and introduced by Bernard Gorceix,
Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, “Gallien” series (Histoire et philosophie de la
biologie et de la médecine), 1968, 259 + xvi pp. Moreover, the appearance of Kasmosophie,
published by Kurt Goldammer, Wiesbaden, 1962-71 (3 vols.), was the subject of a sub-
stantial account by Gorceix: “Paracelsus redivivus,” pp. 326-330, in Etudes germaniques,
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, théosophe d’Amsterdam, Paris, L’Age d’homme, “Delphica”
series, 1975, 174 pp.
6. Flambee et agonie. Mystiques du XVIIe siécle allemand, Sisteron, Présence, 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 théatre au XVIle siécle en Allemagne: La Comédie spirituelle des
noces du Christ et de lame, 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 littérature au XVIle siécle 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 4 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, théosophes et Illumines au siécle
des Lumiéres, Hildesheim, Olms, 1977.
13. Akhimie. Textes allemands du XVIe siecle, traduits et présentés par Bernard
Gorceix, Paris, Fayard, series “L’Espace intérieur,” 1980, 234 pp. “Présentation”, pp.
12-64; notes, pp. 222-233.
14. Paris, Arma Artis, 1982, xliv + 183 pp.
15. Paracelse (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, “Cahiers de |’Hermétisme”
series, 1980, pp. 233-247.
16. Ibid., pp. 249-267.
17. Recherches germaniques, Strasbourg, Université des sciences humaines, no. 9,
1979, pp. 18-29.
86 Theosophies

18. J. Boehme, Quarante questions sur Vame. Traduction de Louts-Claude de Saint-

Martin (Paris, 1807), facsimile introduced by B. Gorceix, Paris, Arma Artis, 1984, 349
pp. Gorceix is the author of the Epilogue, pp. 305-347. J. Boehme, Les Epitres
théosophiques, translated and introduced by B. Gorceix, Paris, Ed. du Rocher, “Gnose”
series, 1980 (“Présentation” by Gorceix, pp. 11-110).
19. “Le culte de la Sophia dans |’Allemagne baroque et piétiste. A propos du
Mystere de la Sophia divine du piétiste Gottfried Arnold (1700),” pp. 195-214 in Sophia et
VAme du Monde (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, “Cahiers de |’Hermétisme”
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’bistoire 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, “Spiritualités Vivantes” series, 1982 (cl pp. by Gorceix,
and 217 pp. of translation).
22. “L’Ange et l’homme en Allemagne au XVIle siécle,” Recherches germaniques,
Strasbourg, Université des sciences humaines, no. 7, 1977; reprint pp. 140-156 in
L’Ange et l’Homme (collective work), Paris, Albin Michel, “Cahiers de |’Hermétisme”
series, 1978.
23. “Mystique et Société. 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 XVIle siécle,
Paris, Klincksieck, 1967.
25. “L’utopie en Allemagne au XVIe siécle et au début du XVIle siécle,” 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: “Littérature 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 représentants de la ‘poésie
pure’ dans |’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
mélancolie aux XVIe et XVIIe siécles (Paracelse et Jacob Boehme),” pp. 18-29 in
Recherches germaniques, Strasbourg, Université des sciences humaines, no. 9, 1979.
 Theosophical Points of View
on the Death 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 simple-
minded, 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 prac-
tice, at least in theory, on the side of the defenders of capital punishment. Two
identical ballots can be found inthe same ballot box; however, it is not imma-
terial 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 serious-
ness 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 verité,' 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
88 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 corrup-
tion.”? 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 bis 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 ts 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.4
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. To this “inestimable advantage,” as well
as to other means, Man remains susceptible: “They all originate from the
 Theosophical Points of View on the Death Penalty 89

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 admin-
istration of civil or criminal justice in society.”* 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.” 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”:
I am speaking of these monstrous ideas that make ofMan a being ofmatter;
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. To 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
90 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.?

How, then, could a judge “be at peace with himself’? The capital punish-
ment 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; never-
theless, 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.'°
Twenty years later, the problem of capital punishment still interests
Saint-Martin, who notes in his journal:

Coming back from the central Bureau to have my passport countersigned on

the 11th of Thermidor in the year 5, 29 Fuly 1797, I 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 composure from which most find themselves
defenseless. I nevertheless felt a heavy suffocation at the sight of this
appalling spectacle. It is truly the picture ofbell."'

In the same year (1797) he publishes his little work Eclair sur 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
 Theosophical Points of View on the Death Penalty 91

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,”"? 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."
(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;'* 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.”'’ 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 trans-
formed this divine power into a criminal arbitrariness: they have judged, con-
demned, and killed, but while taking “the mere memory of this divine right
for the right itself.”' ©
(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 spirit-
source, 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.”””

JOSEPH DE MAISTRE
It does not seem that Joseph de Maistre has shown himself as specific as Saint-
Martin 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
92 Theosophies

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 ofthe 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."*
This is to add shortly afterward: “There is no punishment that does not
purify.”"° 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 zmztiates
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”??? 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 ofthe sufferings ofinnocence to the benefit of
the guilty.”*! 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.”
In the first conversation of the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, 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 pre-
ferred to any of the agreeable professions, lucrative, honest, and even honor-
able [. . .] 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 com-
mitted 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.> The apology of the executioner is what he
has very much at heart, for at the beginning of the seventh “soirée” or conver-
sation, 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.
 Theosophical Points of View on the Death Penalty 93

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 1836.5 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.* 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.” To 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.”8

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
94 Theosophies

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.”
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.”° In a short work composed during the same
period,*! 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.22
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. Julius Hamberger, another theosopher, a friend of Baader’s, rose to
his defense in the same columns. If the lifetime of the victims, explains Ham-
berger, 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
 Theosophical Points of View on the Death Penalty 95

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.**

One could ask oneself whether Saint-Martin and Baader, living in our era,
would not have somewhat corrected their positions. We have seen that Saint-
Martin 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 greatly
believed, as a conspicuous limitation of responsibility. An unaccountable indi-
vidual 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 retribu-
~ tion, and that, more sentimental, of the pain felt by those close to the victim.

NOTES

1. Des erreurs et de la vérité, ou les hommes rappelés au principe universel de la

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 Louis-
Claude de Saint-Martin, théosophe révolutionnaire,” pp. 209-224 in Dix-Huitieme
siecle, 1974, no. 6.
2. Des erreurs ..., pp. 331 ff.
96 Theosophies

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. Décote has already done, the
attitude of Saint-Martin and that of Jacques Cazotte, who perished on the gallows
himself (cf. Georges Décote, L’Itinéraire de Facques Cazotte: de la fiction littéraire au
mysticisme politique, Academic thesis, University of Nanterre, 1979, pp. 874 ff., 904 ff.
Published under the same title, Geneva, Droz, 1984; cf. notably pp. 432 ff).
18. Considérations sur la France, in Oeuvres completes, Paris, Vitte, 1884-87, vol. I,
peo:
19. Ibid., p. 40.
20. Sur les Sacrifices, in Oeuvres completes, op. cit., vol. V, p. 349. Colossians 1:20;
Ephesians 1:10.
21. Considérations sur la France, op. cit., p. 39.
22. Ibid.
23. Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, in Oeuvres completes, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 32 ff.
24. Ibid., vol. V, p. 5.
25. Ueber die Todesstrafe, in Samtliche 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
Betreff der 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. XTV (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 Fustinus Kerner (1863), in Sémtliche Werke, op. cit., vol. TV, 1853,
pp. 423-432. Romans 9:22: “Sine sanguinis fusione non fit remissio.”
33. Cf. nos. 321, 322, 338.
34. Cited in Ueber die Todesstrafe, op. cit., p. 329.
EXERCISES OF IMAGINATION
 aa ‘

te ae j 4 in
‘= - ;

=)

ACTA
Oe ereANteeTQ 23RIOK
a etege ae
A A ; f ja" ; f -

“4
ACT AAPA j
TO Cae ASRS aa ed ; = tS is ie -

‘. "a. ‘ [ se o 7 — _ e; s -

‘er | n | wees! yin By a

we AY a) : ‘ 4

' ) oy - ® i 4 ; ve

i as -
£ y i‘ ¥ fl

i x a ce

4 a 3
\ g “4 “J t a} 7

a ¥ ¥ FA a |
M rx i. . * ty

his y
vie
w.
meu : 7
ee A
=e
‘ We 4 —
Seon i erin A Ay
a x ; lied :. —
4G ¢ a ih : a se Ta £ qa ¢

rie = Sey
r - se

ie
a ss :
a
5 et ang 7 7
¢ * a y —— —— 7

is
at :ee s f SOA uP ou. SY .pa:
.
m ac a 8 7
4 at) gile “4 es 5A
p 35) Rao: AS Lao vy), W- PRS Gute ee
oe Za ara | alt ee - ant : i ‘i oe. vil 7 -
or we i cs ' a ry

eres fag erlang -s

4f ie .
Ch ee Tal
epg i}
! 1h. é
pry _. J uv *
) i 4 eg 9) ae : ~*~" 1 tee
w +t} : =
haven MT, ate wes Abas le Lapeinrs diyolee
;wala,
of
vos petits Re a le A
eri ie
a Mets oy. a Sian. ge
RRM 8 AINE Se
 Vis Imaginativa
(A Study of Some Aspects
of the Magical Imagination
and Its Mythical Foundations)

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 com-
pletely different status, whether it be in Neo-Platonism, in Arab phil-
osophy, 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.! 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). To 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.’

99
100 Exercises of Imagination

FROM JACOB’S SHEEP TO THE 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.} 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.* 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.’ This was already the concept of magical imagination as a
plastic mediator (cf. infra); perhaps it is also in this fashion that we can under-
stand 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.° This way of thinking was frequent starting from the high Middle
Ages.’ 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” explana-
tion 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.’ 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 olject of ber
 Vis Imaginativa 101

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 dif-
ferent 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.”

Prominent among those who drew inspiration from Ficino’s text were
Pomponazzi and Agrippa.'° 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 natur-
alium 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 IIrd 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 greatly 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 inter-
‘mediary 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.”
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
102 Exercises ofImagination

markings, but also by the imagination alone, this third method being the prin-
cipal one.”
Outside Italy, let us bring out two French references and especially the
German contribution. In the great literature of the century an appealing allu-
sion of the intransitive type appears in Ronsard: his poem “J’avois ésté saigné”
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:
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."*
Montaigne contributed to the popularization of this idea of the intransi-
tive vis imaginativa in his essay De Ja force de Vimagination, which opens with
this sentence: “Fortis 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: “Never-
theless, 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.”!’
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 anthropo-
centric orientation, led the role of the imagination to its ultimate consequences.
He made it the intermediary between thinking and being, saw in it the incar-
nation of thought in the image. The soul (Gemiith), faith, and imagination
represent the three great faculties at the disposal of humanity. The Gemiiith is
the “bursting of sidereal power into us, the preeminent connection of our
opening to the invisible world, which governs us from inside, ourselves.”!* Faith
“produces imagination, this produces a star, and this in turn an effect. Faith
produces imagination in God.”!’ Paracelsus saw in the soul a center of plastic
and magical power that was capable of creating the body, of forming it, that is,
 Vis Imaginativa 103

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 expres-
sions 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 pro-
duces 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. To conceive is to engender;
every concept is organic'*—and it is in an organic manner that images are born
in our Gemiith. Paracelsus makes frequent use of solar and igneous symbols:
“What then is the imagination, if not a sun in Man?”? 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 impos-
sible 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 color-
ful 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.”
Hence the need to discern the false imagination from the true (vera), or the
authentic. Through the false, or extravagant—fantasia—one has but a pale reflec-
tion 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 imagi-
nation 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! 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 ima-
gining 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.”
It is known that this Paracelsian thinking found a persistent and formid-
able enemy in Erastus (alias Thomas Liebler), who was striving to refute
104 Exercises of Imagination

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 imbilden (“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.””

WAYS, BYWAYS, AND STAKES IN THE GREAT CENTURY

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.*
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 seven-
teenth century, Cartesianism was set forth as a critical instrument that was
effective in another manner.”
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
 Vis Imaginativa 105

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, Com-
mentaria 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, Frankfart,
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.”
A last one will suffice, characteristic in that it compares imagination and faith
in a manner recalling certain theosophic discourses. In his celebrated book
Curiosites inouyes sur la sculpture talismanique des Persans, horoscopes des patriarches,
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.”
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 our spirit into the Trinity is identical to what animates
God and all of Nature: this principle is the imagination.”*
106 Exercises of Imagination

In the case of Boehme, desire and the imagination are linked. “Well
before Leibniz’s appetitio, Schellingian Sehensucht, or Schopenhauer’s will-to-
live, we find in Boehme’s theosophy the first example of a metaphysics founded
on desire.”*’ 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.*° 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 F147, the universe, which is a
real image (figzirliches Gleichniss) of the one that God has imagined, and which
is eterna]."! God imagines im 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.” In
expressing Himself, God incarnates in a universe situated between pure spirit
and concrete reality, that is, in a mesocosm,® 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.* In other words, to imagine is to reveal oneself, it is to create;
to unite oneself with God means to transform oneself in Him. And just as He
has created the world through His imagination, so can we find God through it
and become capable of working wonders.’ Magia and imagination are two
words that Boehme associated: everything that Man imagines (sich ein-bildet)
he can make real. “Imaginatio macht Wesenbeit”—the imagination creates the
essence.
Johann Georg Gichtel, one of Boehme’s great disciples in the seven-
teenth 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
 Vis Imaginativa 107

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 imagina-
tion a theogonic and cosmogonic foundation.
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 création
de Homme, on l'on découvre l’Origine, la Nature, et les Propriétés des ses Facultés
Spirituelles et Corporelles (1687). In his chapter entitled “On the Imaginative,
and on the excelience 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 also to the imaginative faculty in man, inasmuch
as God wanted Man, as Hts Image, to represent Him in this respect as well,
lke 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 ofthe world.’’

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.”*
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 is the truth, that God had given him this
power so that he would represent as closely as possible bis Original, namely,
the Imagination of God, of which he is the living copy; and I advance as a
fact, that although things have fallen far from the state ofpower 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 1s
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 ofmatter to which it is most intimately united.”
i
The author then went on to speak of the “universal principle,” according to
which
108 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 His impressions among all things.®

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).*! But even in the state
we are in, the imagination still has “so much power over the formation of the
body!”
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 vis
imaginativa the very center of his system by declaring that Man possesses a
sidereal body potentially capable of embracing the entire cosmos. The imagi-
nation 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, “wut sciunt secretiores theosophoi.”*® The other
author is Johann Baptist Van Helmont, whose Ortus mediciniae (1648) repre-
sents 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.*
In many respects Croll and Van Helmont were connected to the alchem-
ical 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 quin-
tessence of all human powers—vital, moral, and physical—this quintessence,
 Vis Imaginativa 109

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. The Paracelsian astrum meaning more or less “quintes-
sence,” 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.”#
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 level’ 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 interpre-
tative understanding, and the autonomous movement of fantasy.** 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. injra). Michel Sendivogius made himself the interpreter of this
hermeticism when he wrote toward 1616 that what the soul imagines is pro-
duced 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.””
Let us not leave the seventeenth century without a foray into the liter-
ature 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
états 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.
110 Exercises ofImagination

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:
You do not know that the power of the imagination is able to combat all
illnesses [. . .] because ofa 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 ttself as a
sharpsighted eagle to put itself aright. |. . .| You people are incapable of
doing these things, because of the weightiness ofyour mass, and the coldness
ofyour 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 |. . .] a center activity that
could divert matter from the movement that this imagination impresses
upon it [. . .], could make unmiraculously all the miracles that it bad 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.*?

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.
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 stories without taking
 Vis Imaginativa 111

the thing seriously enough to provide any philosophical comments. Shortly

afterward, the article Imagination in volume VII of Diderot’s Grande Encyclo-
pédie 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.** And the occa-
sionally 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.” At
the same period the Marquis de Feuquiéres, in a short work rediscovered by
Annie Becgq, 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,”*” while Johann Joachim Winckelmann, however little sus-
pected of illuminism, affirmed in his The History ofAncient Art (1764):
Supreme Beauty is 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 the first reasonable
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.” 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 editions” and in which the young Goethe would be
interested. Commenting on Hebrews 11:1, he said that faith is wahrhafte
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 is 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
112 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 his
hand cut off; and she then gave birth forthwith to a child without a hand, as
if it had been freshly cut 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
his hand, or did not, or whether he lost it through the fact of the strong
impression caused by his mother’s imagination? and so then, where did thts
hand go? In brief, the radiation (Strahlung) exercised on any given olyect
(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 oftrue and offalse or diabolical magia?”
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 emblématique) 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 itself substance, and it is no longer a nothing but a something
that has developed organically while having engendered itself. Therefore be
on your guard.©

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 is but a Shadow.

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.”® It is this last meaning that is of interest to us. Blake wrote in
Jerusalem: “Imagination, the Divine Body,”® and elsewhere:

All things are comprehended in these Eternal Forms in the divine body of
the Saviour, the True Vine ofEternity, The Human Imagination.
 ‘Vis Imaginativa 113

‘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 imagi-
nation, of which the notion of “magism” provides us with an overall under-
standing. 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.” 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 ofnature also has its magism; for
each one in particular, such as a flower, a salt, an animal, a metallic
substance, is 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 this medium that everything
which must issue from each production is developed and prepared; yet it is
this place of preparation, it is this laboratory, finally, that we cannot
penetrate without also destroying, and which is a true magism for us for
this reason, however much we may know the number of motivating
114 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.®

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.” 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.” 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.”’! 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, pub-
lished in 1793 a Philosophie de l’Univers that in some respects belongs undeni-
ably 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,””
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
 Vis Imaginativa 115

order.”” 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.”* 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, miscible
with those that we call organized, just as alcohol is 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.”

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.”’”* 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 phenom-
enon 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.”” Such is
the magical idealism of Novalis, if to this we add the idea of reciprocity:

Tfyou do not succeed in making ofyour thoughts exterior things, then act so
as to make exterior things—at least—become thoughts: ifyou cannot trans-
form 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 is, they comprise a dialectical unity). He who has a
perfect mastery of both is the magical idealist. Would not the perfection of
each one ofthese two operations depend on that of the other?’
116 Exercises of Imagination

FROM ROMANTIC NATURPHILOSOPHIE TO

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 cap-
able of manifesting these correspondences: the ball follows us like the planet
follows the Sun. In his work on siderism (Der Siderismus, 1808), Ritter devel-
oped the idea that such rotations and “nutations” are forms of manifestations
by which an inorganic body gives itself an appearance of life in the presence of
Man. He calls these imitations of the course of the planets “prophetic hiero-
glyphs” 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 Harden-
berg—Novalis’s brother—on the Ist of February 1807: “The point claimed by
Archimedes has been found. We will make the Earth really move.”” A few days
later (the 11th of January 1807), Schelling, interested in the experiment, had
written to Hegel:

That ts 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 existed until now.®

Certain works of Schelling allow us to understand this enthusiasm. His

Philosophy of Art is in fact inspired from the Boehmean concept of the imagi-
nation understood as the faculty of incarnating the idea, rendering it visible,
and thus realizing the synthesis of the infinite with the determination of form.*!
However, Schelling did not really retain the Paracelsian Einbildungskraft any
more than the Boehmean imagination; he transformed it into Kraft der Ineins-
 “Vis Imaginativa 117

bildung, auf welcher alle Schopfung berubt—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.”®? Magic
resulted less from an intention than from a natural harmony or process. Cur-
iously, 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.® 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
Tena’s romanticism, with its own internal oppositions that are so characteristic
of it. For if one accepts in accordance with the Wissenschaftslebre (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 conscious-
ness. 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 mono-
logue 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 repre-
sentatives 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
118 Exercises of Imagination

imagination in general. In the train of Paracelsus and Boehme, he distinguishes

powerless, sterile imagination from the creative (schopferische Einbildung),
which is really productive as much inside the subject as outside it. 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 phos-
phorescent, the Sun from the Moon, nerves from ganglia. He is surprised that
the Naturpbilosophen of his times, however much inclined to search everywhere
for polarities, were not concerned with this. To 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.”® Thus there exists in Nature itself an active and creative imagi-
nation, 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 conjunc-
tion 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 imagina-
tion 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;® 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).*’ Everything that exists has a magical origin and comes
from the imagination, that is, from the entrance of the imagination into
mirrors.*
In various parts of his work, he explains what he means by “mirror.” A
mirror possesses in potential all possible forms. An 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
 ‘Vis Imaginativa 119

engendered in me, will “originate themselves” mutually in a process of reci-

procity. 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 imagina-
tion, 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):®
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.” 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 gen-
eration.”! 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 (/eibhaft) of God’s image, His mirror, in order to com-
municate 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 crea-
tures 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 direc-
tion, a consistency. Henceforth, Man’s passive or reactive imagination in God
had to correspond to his active imagination in (in die) Nature, the very founda-
tion of his original magical powers.” 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.
120 Exercises of Imagination

Such is the process of what Baader calls imagination, either Inbildung, or

Einbildung als Hineinbildung.® The prefixes In, Ein, Hinein allow him to posit
the synonymy of imagination and of information, of Ein-bildung and of In-
bildung, because both indeed convey the meaning “forming in,” for thinking as
well as nonthinking creatures: all have their imaginativum”™ because the
“imagining desire” (imaginierende Begierde) exists everywhere, not only in God,
in Man, or in animal: the whole of Nature is nothing but Imaginieren and
Begebren. 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.” Baader
sees the effects of this power to form, creative and plastic, which is the imagi-
nation, 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. To imagine is to “act per
imaginem.”*°
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, mon-
strous 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 com-
mon mother will always be more noble than the mother and less noble than
the father.” 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 con-
ceived, just as it is even more difficult to get rid of a child than to have an
abortion.”
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 unbeimliche Gast (published in the anthology Die
Seraptonsbriider, 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,
 Vis Imaginativa 121

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.” Carl August
von Eschenmayer teaches one not to confuse Phantasie and Einbildungskraft,'
while his pupil, Philipp Heinrich Werner, gives a rather beautiful definition of
the creative imagination;'' they call it “Phantasie,” reserving the word Einbil-
dungskraft for the noncreative faculty.'° Joseph Ennemoser, in whom Albert
Béguin had already noted a taste for occultism and the fantastic,’ made his
own the idea of the creative image, associating Magnet, magia, imago'™ 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) és 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 this same sphere, in a manner as obscurely
conscious as it acts on the nearest muscular fibers and on the limbs.'°*

Ennemoser nevertheless did not believe that the imagination is able to

create exterior objects plastically and without an intermediary.'% 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 canceived as a creative power. The Night Side of
Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost Seers (1848),'” of a romantic and fantasic inspira-
tion, 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 from" in order to fulfill the promise of such an ambitious and a
Schubertian title. Of course, the magical function of the image does not com-
prise 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, I do not simply mean to convey the common notion implied
by that much-abused word, which is only fancy, but the constructive
122 Exercises of Imagination

imagination, which is 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.'”

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,’”!"° one is dealing with an imagination that is more pas-
sive 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?”"!
To 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.!
“Even by the force of imagination, human beings can injure other things; yea,
even to the slaying of a man.”'" 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?!'* 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 for-
gotten their origin, and disowned their birthright.”!"®
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,”!'° 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.”'!’ 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?).”!'* 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-
 ~ Vis Imaginativa 123

figures.'"” 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 Lévi comes out of
a chaotic body of work, ambitious but very engaging. In “The Magnetic Mys-
teries,” 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.”!?° 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.””! The great plastic mediator is light.'* A great
many wonders operate by means of a single agent, called “Od” by the Hebrews
and which Lévi 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.”' Thus “the universal
light is like the divine imagination. [. . .] Man creates light by his imagination”!
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.”!” A fortiori:

- Our will, by acting directly upon our plastic medium, that is to say, upon
the portion of astral life which is 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." And to finish, this com-
ment 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 volun-
tary nightmare with one’s blood, with one’s life, with one’s intelligence and
one’s reason, without ever satisfying them.”!”’ ;
In Isis Unveiled (1877), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky quoted Eliphas Lévi
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 and fructified by the eternal idea, or imagination—the
124 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, ifhe knows his powers, could,
to a degree, do the same.'**

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.° Frohschammer conceives this as “objective” on the level of
organic and living nature, that is, as a “principle of teleologico-plastic forma-
tion.”3° 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 pro-
cess as a whole that is magism, the cause and the result of an imagination con-
ceived as the root and origin of all things and a close relation to the World
Soul according to the Stoics."?!
One might ask whether the surrealist concept of the imagination bears
any relationship to the vis imaginativa. André 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. Never-
theless, 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.!2?
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 uncon-
scious minds of the visitors, the star thus synthesized for their intention the
 ~ Vis Imaginativa 125

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
mans of which our images and our desires project themselves in forms, sub-
stances, 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 vis 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 intersub-
jective relationships, whence the incarnationist aspect of this tradition that
encompasses so many texts, including those that have been discussed. A tradi-
tion 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.'3* To
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
126 Exercises of Imagination

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 Fewess 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.'”°

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 della filosofia, Rome, 1898 (new edition, Padua,
1959). F. Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology, Oxford, 1952. Religious Imagination (col-
lective work), directed by James P. Mackey, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press,
1986. Jacques Marx, “Le concept d’imagination au XVIIIe siécle,” pp. 148-159 in
Themes et figures du siecle des Lumiéres, 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 l’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 poétique et imagination
créatrice,” pp. 187-206 in Les yeux de chair et les yeux de feu, no. V of Cahiers de
PU.SFF., Paris, Berg International, 1979. Robert Avens, Imagination is Reality
(Western Nirvana in Fung, Hillman, Barfield and Cassirer), Dallas (Texas), Spring
Publications, 1980; and Imaginal Body (Para-Fungian 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 entitled Nun was ist die Imagination anderst als ein Sonn im
Menschen. 1 was only able to mention it in a footnote. 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 Adminis-
tration und Druck AG, 1982; text, pp. 1-128; notes, pp. 129-281) under the same title
 Mis Imaginativa 127

(subtitle: Studien zu einem Zentralbegriffdesmagischen 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 l’Aréopagite (introduced by Maurice de Gandillac),
Paris, Aubier, “Bibliothéque philosophique” series, 1943 (reprint 1980).
4. Cf. Henri Crouzel, Théologie de image de Dieu chez Origene, Paris, 1956, pp.
58, 94. Francois M. Sagnard, La Gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de saint Irénée, Paris,
1947, pp. 527, 561. Cited and commented on by Pierre Deghaye, La Doctrine ésotérique
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?-8737?), 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’aprés son
oeuvre As-Sifa’, published by Jean Bakos, Prague, 1956); and Avicenna, Livre des
directives et remarques, introduced by Amélie 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 II, chap. CII. But Thomas himself recognizes
the effect of the intransitive imagination in pregnant women (cf. ibid., and Summa
theologica, 1, 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. fra) 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 spiritus phantasticus or ochema, the supreme point of the human faculties,
because it represented a theologically and philosophically satisfying link between the
128 Exercises of Imagination

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 title 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 III, chap. LXIII.
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 subsequently.
13. Cf. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London,
Routledge, 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, Routledge, 1966. And Robert
Klein, “L’imagination comme vétement de |’4me chez Marsile Ficin and Giordano
Bruno”, pp. 18-39 in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, January 1956. A. Godet’s
evaluation (op. cit., pp. 63 ff.) 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 V’ame obeyssante/
A laissé 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, I, 1929.
15. Les Essais, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothéque de la Pléiade” series, pp. 122, 124,
132-4.
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 Sémtliche
Werke, section I, ed. by Karl Sudhoff, Berlin and Munich, 1929-33): VU, 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; XIV (“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, XIV (“De occulta philo-
sophia,” text perhaps Pseudo-Paracelsian), 527, 529. On the imagination of pregnant
women, IX, 297, 349; XIV, 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 Koyré, Mystiques, spirituels
et alchimuistes du XVIe siécle allemand, Paris, Armand Colin, 1955, pp. 58 ff.
19. On this formula, cf. supra, p. 126, n. 2.
20. Cf. Walter Pagel, Paracelse. Introduction & la médecine philosophique de la
Renaissance, Paris, Arthaud, 1963, pp. 121-124 (English original ed., 1958).
 ~ Vis Imaginativa 129

21. On the well-known distinction that he makes between imagination and

fantasei, cf. for example Samtliche Werke (op. cit. supra, p. 128, n. 16), XI, 484. And L.
Braun, art. cited, p. 69.
22. Cf. also, on this point, A. Koyré, op. cit. (supra, p. 128, n. 18), p. 58.
23. “Diese Imaginatio ist der Syderische Geist / sie ist das Gestirn im Menschen / sie ist
alle Sternen und wircket auch dem Firmament gleich / davon lise Theophrastum was er
schretbt” (Der giildene Griff, p. 20, cited by Bernard Gorceix, La Mystique de Valentin
Weigel (1533-1588) et les origines de la théosophie allemande, Lille, University of Lille III,
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.1. (Vratislaviae),
1595, chap. XVII. Hieronymus Nymann, Oratio de imaginatione, speech of 1593, pub-
lished in Taudler, De fascino, Wittenberg, 1606-18 (for Weinrich it is an impious idea,
and for Nymann it is chimerical and dangerous). Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance
des mauvais anges et démons, Paris, 1618, cf. p. 281. 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. 97 ff. John Webster, The Dis-
playing of Supposed Witchcraft, London, 1677. Bento Pereira, Adversus fallaces et super-
stitiones artes, Venice and Ingolstadt, 1591, book I, chap. II, 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
(VII, 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, “Méditation sixiéme,” and “Méditation 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 métaphysique et
la religion, Il, §VII; V; §XII, in Oeuvres completes, ed. by André Robinet, Paris, 1965,
XII, pp. 68, 126 ff., 191 ff. (Malebranche strives to demystify the vis immaginativa 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. VII and VIII (index of vol. VII).
27. Cf. edition of 1650, pp. 123 ff.
28. Cf. especially Bernard Gorceix, Flambée et agonie. Mystiques du XVIIe siecle
allemand, Sisteron, Présence, 1977 (subject index: “Imagination”.
29. Jean-Francois Marquet, “Désir et imagination chez Jacob Bohme,” pp.
77-97 in Facob Bohme ou Vobscure lumiére de la connaissance mystique (Colloquium of
Chantilly, September 1975), Paris, Vrin, 1979.
30. Cf. ibid., the article as a whole.
31. Cf. Alexandre Koyré’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 Facob Boehme, Paris, Albin Michel, 1985.
130 Exercises of Imagination

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. Koyré, op. cit. (supra, n. 2), pp. 110, 214, 481 ff.
36. Cf. Bernard Gorceix, Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710), théosophe d’Amsterdam,
Paris, L’Age d’homme, 1975. Cf. also (paranomasis) infra, p. 207.
37. Pierre Poiret, L’Oeconomie de la Création de l’Homme ..., Amsterdam, 1687,
7 vols., cf. vol . I, 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 Admonitoria” of Basilica chymica, a theoretical
preface which is presented as a compendium of Paracelsus’s thinking. A. Godet (op. cit.,
pp. 94 ff.) has already drawn attention to this preface in relation to the vis zmaginativa.
44. The son of J. B. Van Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius, is the editor of this
compilation (Ortus medicinae, Amsterdam, 1648), which reappeared under the title
Opera omnia (Frankfurt, 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 Philosophorum, in
Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant, Basel, 1593, I, 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 new foundations or 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, shelfmark 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
 Vis Imaginativa 131

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 Encyclopédie, vol. VII, pp. 559-565.
56. Ibid., p. 564. Cf. also Benjamin Bablot, Dissertation sur le pouvoir de
Vimagination des femmes 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, Genése de
Vesthétique francaise moderne. De la raison classique a |‘imagination créatrice (1680-1814),
Paris,J.Touzot (and Pisa, Pacini), 1984, 2 vols.
57. Marquis de Feuquiéres, Phantasiologie ou Lettres philosophiques a Madame de
XXX sur la faculté imaginative, “A Oxfort, et se trouve a Paris,” 1700, p. 153 (cited by A.
Becgq, op. cit., pp. 664-669). Cf. also Annie Becq, “L’imagination créatrice et la tradi-
tion ésotérique,” 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 Aufkiarung is con-
cerned, 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 asso-
ciations of ideas).
58. Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764). Quoted from the French translation
Histoire de l’Art chez les Anciens, vol. 1, Paris, 1766, pp. 243 ff.
59. De la Philosophie de la Nature ou Traité de morale pour le genre humain, tiré de la
philosophie fondée 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 Worterbuch, 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, daftir hiite dich.” During the
period when cases of vampirism caused ink to flow most abundantly, 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 Grabern ..., 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 |’Hermétisme”
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 specu-
lation 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 ésotérique de Zinzendorf, Paris,
Klincksieck, 1969, pp. 591 ff.
132 Exercises ofImagination

63. Ferusalem, 71, 17, cited by Jacques Roos, Aspects littéraires du mysticisme
philosophique et Vinfluence de Bohme et de Swedenborg au début du romantisme: Wilham
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 > Ministére de V'Homme-Esprit, Paris,
Migneret, 1802 (cf. notably pp. viii, 82, 396); De Vesprit des choses, Paris, Laran, year
VIII (cf. notably pp. 32, 45 ff., 50, 128). Cf. the commentary given on these texts by
Annie Becgq, op. cit. (supra, p.131, n. 56), pp. 865-873.
68. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Le Ministére de l’Homme-Esprit, pp. 82 ff.
69. ID., Des erreurs et de la verité, Edimbourg (Paris), 1775, p. 502; Le Ministere
de l’Homme-Esprit, pp. 30, 392; De Pesprit des choses, pp. 190 ff., 199.
70. ID., De Pesprit 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
Bénédiction, 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 l’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, [luminat,, Muslims, and Magi”; his work
speaks for itself nonetheless.
73. Wid., p. 152.
74. Cf. Annie Becq, op. cit., pp. 666 ff.; “La tradition ésotérique,” in Histoire
littéraire de la France, vol. VII, pp. 213-214; and “Dupont de Nemours,” in Dictionnaire
universel de la Franc-Maconnerie, Paris, P.U.F., 1974.
75. Dupont de Nemours, Philosophie de Univers, pp. 171 ff.
76. Ibid., pp. 173 ff. It would seem that it is nevertheless not a question of “rein-
carnation,” for the same spirit takes on a body differently 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 willkiirlich, wie seinen Leib,
zu behandeln.” Cited by Walter D. Wetzels, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Physik im Wirkungs-
feld 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 Koyré, La Philosophie de Jacob Boebme, op. cit, p. 506.
82. Lucien Braun, art. cited, p. 67.
83. A. Koyré, La Philosophie de Facob Boehme, op. cit., pp. 505 ff. Let us also men-
tion a passage in which Schopenhauer expresses himself on the creative imagination, in
 "Vis Imaginativa 133

a closely related sense: pp. 319 ff. in Ueber den Willen in der Natur (vol. IL of Werke,
Insel Verlag).
84. Cf., for example, Samtliche Werke, Leipzig, 1851-60, published by Franz
Hoffmann, anastatic reprint, Aalen, 1963, IV, pp. 307 ff. (text of 1837).
85. Ibid., IV, pp. 307 ff.; IX, pp. 218 ff. (text of 1838). “Es ist dieselbe Natur,
welche den Lowen creatiirlich gestaltet, und welche in das Imaginativum des Menschen den
Typus dieses Thieres projicirt” (VIL, p. 411; text of 1836).
86. Ibid., IX, pp. 218 ff. (text of 1838).
87. Ibid., X, pp. 30 ff. (text of 1839). Cf. also supra, p. 107.
88. Ibid., IX, pp. 218 ff. (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. 227 ff. (text of 1841); II, p. 511 (text of 1833).
91. Ibid., X, p. 16 (text of 1830).
92. Ibid., XII, p. 127 (text of 1833).
93. Ibid., XIU, p. 216 (text of 1833).
94. Ibid., IV, pp. 307 ff. (text of 1837).
95. Ibid., I, pp. 266 ff. (text of 1822-24).
96. Ibid., LX, pp. 182 ff. (text of 1838).
97. Ibid., VIL, p. 371 (text of 1836); I, pp. 266 ff. (text of 1822-24).
98. Ibid., U, pp. 259 ff. In 1847, Baader cited Michael Petécz, 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 (Samtliche Werke, I, pp. 378-380). Baader says also that a work of art exists
only to the extent that he can reproduce it: ibid., XII, p. 139. Commenting on Petdcz,
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
Tiibingen, 1833, pp. 567-568, 580. He distinguishes schopferische, erfindende, and repro-
duzierende Einbildungskraft. :
100. Carl August von Eschenmayer, Versuch, die scheinbare Magie des tierischen
Magnetismus aus physiologischen Gesetzen zu erklaren, Stuttgart and Tiibingen, 1816, pp.
4448.
101. Philipp Heinrich Werner, Die Schutzgeister oder merkwiirdige Blicke zweter
Seherinnen in die Geisterwelt, nebst der wunderbaren Heilung einer zehn fahre stumm
gewesenen durch den Magnetismus, und einer vergleichenden Uebersicht aller bis jetzt
beobachteten Erscheinungen desselben, Cotta, 1839, p. 28: “Die Phantasie, innig verwandt
mit dem hoheren Geftibl, kinnte man die Sprache desselben nennen. Sie ist das Vermogen der
Ideale, der Symbolisierung der Thatigkeiten des Geistes, der diese durch sie im Bilde immer als
vollendetes Ganzes, nicht als verstandig 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
134 Exercises of Imagination

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 Beriicksichtigung
des Somnambulismus, Stuttgart and Tiibingen, 1841, pp. 18 ff. And Richard Beilharz,
“Fantaisie et imagination chez Baudelaire, Catherine Crowe and leurs prédécesseurs
allemands,” in Baudelaire, Proceedings of the Colloquium of Nice (1967), Annales de la
Faculté 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, “Distinc-
tions between Fancy and Imagination,” Modern Language Notes, LX, 1945, pp. 8-15).
103. Albert Béguin, L’Ame romantique et le réve, Paris, Corti, ed. of 1963, p. 66.
104. Geschichte der Magie, first part 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 Verhiiltnisse 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 beriihmter Physiker am Ende des XVI. und am
Anfange des XVII. Jahrhunderts, als Beytrage 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 Cétés obscurs de la nature, ou fantomes 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,
Ocuvres completes, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothéque de la Pléiade” series, vol. II, 1976,
pp. 623 ff. Cf. also the notes by Claude Pichois, in ibid., pp. 1393 ff. C. Crowe pre-
cedes 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, ~einforced by the strong faith that it can be done”
(French ed. cited supra, n. 107), p. 228.
 Vis Imaginativa 135

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 Vigée, “La conception de l’imagination chez Baudelaire,” in
L Imagination créatrice, 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 Vigée, art. cited, p. 34.
119. Ibid., p. 35.
120. La Clef des grands mystéres, new ed. Paris, La Diffusion scientifique, 1976, pp.
101, 113 (original ed. Paris, Bailliére, 1861); Dogme et rituel de haute magie, Paris,
Bailliére, 1855-56, p. 175. Cf. also the article by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin, “L’Anankiatre,
ou l’occultisme 4 l’épreuve de la fiction,” pp. 57-76, in Revue des sciences humaines, Lille,
1979, no. 176; and that of Annie Becgq, pp. 43-55, ibid.
121. E. Lévi, 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 Lévi and Péladan was pointed
out by N.Jacques-Chaquin, in “L’Anankiatre . . . ,” art. cited supra, n. 120 (cf. p. 63).
127. E. Lévi, La Clef... op. cit., p. 198.
128. H. P. Blavatsky, Isis 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, Denoél, series “Présence du Futur,” 1966. The cinematographic adap-
tation 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 André 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
136 Exercises of Imagination

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 real’ (La Méthode, I, La Nature de la Nature, Paris, Le Seuil, 1977, p. 341).
135. “Umgeben sind wir rings von Zaubereien/ Allein wir selber sind die Zauberer/|. . .]
Und in der Welt, voll offenbarer Wunder/Sind wir das grosste aller Wunder selbst.” (v. 1429
ff. (English translation by Arthur Burkhard, The Jewess of Toledo, Yarmouth Port
[Mass.], 1953).
 Thoughts of God, Images of Man
(Figures, Mirrors, and Engendering
in J. Boehme, F. C. Oetinger, and F. von Baader)

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 rela-
tionships. 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
138 Exercises ofImagination

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.

I. SOPHIA AND THE 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
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 189

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.’

The Image in Man: Greatness and Self-Effacement

Everything is born of this divine mirror’ 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,’ 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.’ 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. 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.’
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
140 Exercises of Imagination

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.’
By its nature and in accordance with the divine economy, Adam was thus
destined to become an image, a symbol, of God? 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
(.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.!° 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.!' 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 is 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 is the will of God which
has replaced that of the virgin. [. . .] She had no body, no substance, no
essence: at the time of ber 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
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 141

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. {. . .]."*
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,” 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
wil, in the habits and senses. It has neither the power, nor the under-
standing 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 wmage exists—but entirely hidden, unless there be a rebirth by
water and in the Holy Spirit of God.'*
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.'’
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 .'

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 Gemiith, 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.'’ 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:
142 Exercises ofImagination

A false will can suffice to destroy the image, for the will is the root of the
image, it attracts into itself the mystery of God. And the spirit of this
mystery opens up this image in its beauty, attracts the divine mystery to it
as the substance of God, or ifone prefers: as the celestial body of Christ.'®

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 occu-
pations! 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!”!”
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:?°

Just as fire engulfs substance, but giving the spiritual in return, so the
divine fire shows to us in spirit our works and our celestial joys, as in a clear
mirror like the wonders ofDivine 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 humanity’’—at least, one may
dare say, as a void that is always desirous of being filled. Through an imagi-
nation 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.” 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, or, if one prefers, between three
different modes of existence: igneous life, divine life, and earthly life?’ 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.” Then the stars become subject to
us, we regain our lost status:
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 143

The tmage of God in Man is so full ofpower and strength that, ifit throws
itself in totally with the will of God, it tames nature, to such a point that
the astrum obeys it and finds joy 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.?”

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 ofdivinity without shining
with a borrowed light.. The new image is the fuel and the Bae to be burned
by the igneous soul.”

Il. MIRRORS AND ENGENDERING IN FRANZ VON 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.” 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 Naturphilosoph finds it 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 (Bi/d), 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).*°

The Theory ofthe Three Images

Baader gleans the theosophical heritage while orchestrating it in his own
manner. Interested in theories of light,*' 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.” Similarly,
he differentiates two sorts of imagination, one active, the other reactive.’? But
144 Exercises ofImagination

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 entitled Toward a Theory of the Image.** Let us distinguish, proposes
Baader, three sorts of images: the catoptric, the plastic copy or simple “por-
trait,” and the “substantial” (wesenbaft). 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 indepen-
dent 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
“umage” (Bild) are often employed indiscriminately by Boehme:* 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 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.”
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
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 145

sound is emanating is in a relationship of connaturality with the matter on

which the sounds draw their hieroglyphs.;*
The image is conferred with a mediating role between producer and pro-
duct, 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 pro-
jects 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.”
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.”” 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 sym-
bolic image (Gleichniss—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.

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 this 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.*! It was the beginning
of an organicist philosophy, but here no more than a duality is revealed. His
146 Exercises of Imagination

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.” To be, is to “be formed” (gestaltet sein). No 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 rela-
tionship 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 relation-
ship in the Hebraic language.”
Same mediation between the knower and the known. The first inhabits
the second (énnewohnt) 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.*
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.* 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
creaturis”? 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 the filiogue—
beginning with the Father and Son.* 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 pro-
ceeds 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.*
“God cannot think without engendering his image,” Saint-Martin had
written.” 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.* Similarly, Saint-Martin
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 147

said that we know the extent of our own thinking by the images that we
produce in ourselves.” 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. To 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. But Nature remains Godless, thus in shadow, as long as God does not
manifest in Man.*'! 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 béings 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
thatit still had to acquire life and corporeity (Leb- und Leibhafwerden) through
an act of inner birth (Eimgeburt). 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, “Evitis sicut Dei!,” thus
appears as a caricature of the true formula, “Evitis 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.® 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 deforma-
tion (Verbilden, Umbilden) contrary to our ontological vocation.*» 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
148 Exercises of Imagination

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.”

“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. To 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 mascu-
line 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.*°
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. To 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
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan 149

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.° The composer Olivier Messiaen has given us, in Quartet for the
End of Time, a theological rainbow in the part entitled “Explorations of rain-
bows 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
of Time.]

NOTES

* Lecture given at the XIIth colloquium of the Université Saint-Jean de

Jérusalem, “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 Koyré (La Philosophie de Facob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929, reprint
1971), and the study by Pierre Deghaye (“La Sagesse dans |’oeuvre de Jacob Boehme,”
in Sophia et VAme du Monde, Paris, Albin Michel, “Cahiers de I’Hermétisme” series,
1983, pp. 154-194). This “Cahier de |’Hermétisme” contains many essential biblio-
graphical elements on sophiology.
3. Menschwerdung, book II, Il, 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 “/ebende 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
fesu Christi, 1, XII, 3).
5. Cf. at the end of Vierzig Fragen; diagram reproduced in a recent edition,
Quarante questions sur PAme, 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 Facob Boehme, Paris, Albin Michel, 1985, p. 163. Bild and Bildniss are not
necessarily interchangeable. Example: “Der Geist [ist] die theure edle Bildniss, die Gott
schuf zu seinem Bilde” (XVII, 9).
6. Schutzschrift wider B. Tilken, 1, 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 chezJ.Boehme,” in L’Androgyne, Paris, Albin Michel, “Cahiers de
l’Hermétisme” series, 1986 .
150 Exercises of Imagination

9. “Ein Bild und auch ein Gleichniss Gottes” (De Tribus Principiis, X, 9, XIV, 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 Ul, X, 3.
11. Ibid., book I, II, 16.
12. De Triplici Vita, XVII , 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 Zabl; sie ist von Ewigkeit in Gottes Weisheit gestanden, als eine Jungfrau ohne
Gebiren oder ohne Willen, denn Gottes Wille ist in ihr der Wille gewesen [. . .] Aber ste war
ohne Leib, ohne Wesen, ohne Essentien: die Essentien wurden aus dem ewigen Centro in ihr
mit ibrer Schopfung rege, als in dreien Miittern, nach den dreien Principien. Das war die
Schopfung, dass Gott wollte in allen 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
begab, und das Aeussere ins Mittlere.”
13. De Tribus Principits, 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 Gottes figuriren; 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 auf alle 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 prin-
cipes de Vessence 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 HI, IV, 6: “Auch zerstoret 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 ibm das gottliche Mysterium an, als
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 1H, 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, als ein heller Spiegel, gleich dem Wunder der Weisheit Gottes.”
22. “In allen Menschen liegt das Himmelsbild, welches in Adam verblich” (Vom
Irrthum der Sekten Stiefels, 292).
23. “Durch die Imagination und ernstliche Begierde werden wir, wieder der Gottheit
schwanger, und empfahen den neuen Leib im alten” (Unterricht an Kaym, Il, 8).
24. De Tribus Principiis, XVI, 41.
25. Ibid., XVI, 47. Menschwerdung, book II, VIL, 5.
 Thoughts of God, Images ofMan ity

26. “Die Seele mag nicht Gott sehen, als nur in ihrer neugehornen Bildniss, nur durch
und in Jungfrau Sophien” (Mysterium magnum, LI, 10).
27. De Triplici Vita, XI, 49: “Denn die Bildniss Gottes im Menschen ist so machtig
und kraftig, dass, wenn sie sich ganz in Gottes Willen wirft, sie die Natur bandiget, dass ibr
das Gestirn gehorsam ist, und sich hoch in der Bildniss erfreuet; denn sein Wille ist auch von
der Extelkeit los zu sein, und wird also in der Bildniss in Sanftmuth entziindet, dessen sich der
Himmel freuet.”
28. Bedenken uber Stiefel, 119-120: “Darum heisset’s Neugeborenwerden, einen neuen
Sohn aus dem alten aus sich selber gebaren, nicht eine neue Seele, sondern eine neue Bildniss aus
der Seele, in Kraft des H. Geistes, einen Zweig aus seiner eigenen Essenz in Christi Geist
ausgrinend, und im Licht der Gottheit innestehend, nicht anscheinend, sondern aus sich selber
leuchtend.”
29. Biblisches und emblematishces Worterburch, dem Tellerischen Worterbuch und
Anderer falschen Schrifterklarungen entgegen gesetzt, s.l., 1776. Facsimile reprint, Hilde-
sheim, 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: “Eznigen, die grossen Ernst brauchen, wird (das verborgene Bild] offenbar,
wie D. Clemm es in seiner Theologie bemerkt von Elia Camerario, welcher mit offenen und
geschlossenen Augen das Bild der Seele gesehen. Elias Camerarius aber, mit dem ich, als
meinem nichsten Anverwandten, viel conversirte, machte nichts daraus.”
31. Cf. “Ténébre, Eclair et Lumiére chez Franz von Baader,” in A. Faivre,
Philosophie de la Nature. Physique sacrée— théosophie, Paris, Albin Michel, 1996.
32. Samtliche Werke, vol. Il, 362 ff. (Fermenta Cognitionis IV, 1822-24).
33. Ibid., 379 ff.
34. “Zur Lehre vom Bilde,” in Vorlesungen tiber spekulative Dogmatik (zehnte
Vorlesung), VII, 93-106.
35. Il, 260 (Fermenta Cognitionis III, 1822-24). On image, magnet, magic, imagine,
etc., cf. ibid., I, 268.
36. Ibid., II, 315.
SFriXk 197:
38. VILL, 134 ff. (XVte Vorlesung): “Dass alles Wirkliche nur durch eine Con-
junction eines Aeusseren und eines Inneren, eines Descensus und eines Ascensus zu Stande
kommt, davon gibt uns auch die Ton—oder Wortsetzung ein lehrreiches Beispiel. Die
Chladnischen Klangfiguren (welche tibrigens schon Hooke kannte) beweisen nemlich, dass die
Tongebende Substanz nur durch eine Selbstconfiguration (Figurbeschreibung) den Ton erzeugt,
ohne Zweifel, indem durch die hiedurch bewirkte Oeffnung (gleichsam Fluidisirung) der festen
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 Métaphysique du Feu chez Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776-1810),” in A.
Faivre, op. cit. infra p. 165, n. 6.
39. VIII, 93 ff.
40. XI, 211, 6-9 (“Der Geist soll sowenig das Wachsthum im Herzen aufstoren, als
die Sonne in die Wurzel scheinen soll’).
152 Exercises ofImagination

41. XI, 61: “Form, Figur, sichtbare Bildung, Gestaltung ezmes Dinges! Nur am
lebendigen (organischen) Wesen wird sie uns sichtbar. Ist sie etwas anderes, als Buchstabe setnes
inneren Wesens, Hieroglyphe?”
42. XIII, 170 ff. (De occulta philosophia: “Prae omnibus linguarum notis Hebraeorum
scriptura omnium sanctissima est in figuris characterum, 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. I, 53 (Fragmente zu einer Theorie des Erkennens, 1809): “Das sich so findende,
Spiegelnde, spricht sich nur in jenem seinem Bilde aus, und dieses Bild ist sen Name, bei dem es
gennant, und durch welchen es allein nur gekannt ist.”
44. XII, 186.
45. “Zur Lehre vom Bilde,” in VII, 96 ff.
46. II, 223 ff. (Fermenta Cognitionis II, 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. VIL, 34 ff. (Ueber den Urternar, 1816).
49. XII, 278, manuscript note in the margin of p. 47 (vol. I) of the book by
Saint-Martin, De esprit des choses: “Ganz richtig bemerkt Saint-Martin, dass wir den
eigenthtimliche 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 leistet), 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.
522 1X,.198:
53. Il, 339 ff. (Fermenta Cognitionis IV, 1822-24).
54. TX,\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 Oeuvres posthumes, Tours, 1807, vol. IL.
 From the Divine Figure
to the Concrete Figure,
Or Transparition Through Mirrors
(For Friedhelm Kemp)

INTRODUCTION: TWO 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 his majesty
on the holy mountain, I, with the children of Zebedee, saw the brightness of
his light, and fell down as though dead. |. . .| And he [Christ] gave me his
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
154 Exercises of Imagination

In the second Apocrypha appears a narrative on the vocation of the

apostles, when John and James return with their boat after a night at sea. James
says to John:
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 1s
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 Fames said to me: It is not he that I see, my brother, but let
us leave this 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, bis head somewhat balding, with a thick and very long beard,
but fames saw him as a young man with a new beard. So we were both
intrigued, wondering what this 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 shortly 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 greatly 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 1272.3
The three stories were of such interest to Henri-Charles Puech that he
devoted three years of seminars to them at the F.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
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 155)

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 view-
point 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
imaginalis 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 imaginalis and leaving aside Phantasey—
figments of the imagination, the sickly imagination or imagination functioning
by mere automatism—lI would say that there are four forms of active imagi-
nation. 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 correspon-
dences 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 imaginalis 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 imaginalis. This fourth
form of imaginative activity will be dealt with further on.
The reading of the three ancient texts and these methodological distinc-
tions seem to me to call for a few comments that complement one another.
156 Exercises of Imagination

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.”

I. THE ISOMORPHY OF THE 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 com-
plementary, 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 experi-
ment 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.° 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 instantly 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 autin akribesteroi marturés” (the eyes are surer wit-
nesses than the ears), a fragment of Heraclitus tells us.’ 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.®
The imaginal world is by nature a “luminous” mesocosm as well. So,
then, the fact of actualizing the luminous nature of our eyé, 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
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 157

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:

One is only losing one’s way ifone asks, as has been done with respect to the
figure of Beatrice in Dante: is this a concrete figure, or is it an allegory?
Because ifa divine Name can be known only in the concrete form that is its
theophany, similarly any archetypal divine Figure can be contemplated only
in a concrete tangible Figure or an imagined one—awhich makes it
outwardly or mentally visible.°

Isomorphy ofLight and ofthe 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 Geschopf des Lichts,”
says Goethe).'° 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 ofa 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.”"' 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
158 Exercises of Imagination

constant use of the adage that like is only known by like.” 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:
If the eye were not suntike,
How could we perceive light?
If God’s own strength did not live in us,
How could the divine delight us?"
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!”!* 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!”'*

Il. THE RECIPROCAL ENGENDERING

OF THE 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 light in the eye itself. It can also
seem scandalous to posit the existence, in our being, of a specific entity poten-
tially 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 is first necessary to conquer a habit of thinking entrenched by centuries of
philosophy and rationalizing theology, and discover that the totality of our
being is not only this part that we presently call our person, because this
totality also includes another person, a transcendent counterpart who remains
invisible to us, what Ibn ‘Arabi spoke ofas our “eternal individuality”—our
“divine Name”—what old Iran called Fravarti. To feel its presence, there is
no other place or proof than to experience its attraction, in a sympatheia
expressed so well in its own manner by the prayer ofthe heliotrope.'*
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.
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 159

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:

The theophanic concept (by 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 ofperceptible data, but on the plane
ofthe Light which transfigures them, that is, 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."’

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 Schopenhauer'*—so the
imaginal world seems to require our visionary seeing. Thus it would project
itself into our imagination as intoa 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 imaginalis 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
160 Exercises ofImagination

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 imagi-
nation 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,” 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.” “All of nature is
the prism of the divine ray of light,” he writes.?! 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.” 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 ’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.” 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
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 161

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, per-
haps, of a Swedenborg, the Western theosopher that Henry Corbin preferred.”*
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
indirectly to illustrate my purpose. It is that of the Order of Elect Cohens,
developed toward 1750 by Martinés 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 hiero-
glyph—supposed to correspond to the character, both in a type of writing
known as “ring-letters” (écrituve 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 pro-
voked 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 opera-
tion, will draw the character of this other spirit and it is that one he will
invoke.2> No 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: “I//um vidi, quem capere potut.”

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
162 Exercises of Imagination

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
little 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.”° Similarly, the fact that the gods are symbols of human realities does
not necessarily imply that they are no more than that,” 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:
Even ifChrist 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-Martin??—
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
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 163

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. To 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.”*°
Let us here recall the Earth Spirit (the Erdgeist), who in Goethe’s text
appears to Faust in a terrifying form. But this is so only because Faust does not
sufficiently resemble this spirit, or not yet sufficiently. And it says to Faust:
“You look like the spirit that you understand—but not like me!”?! Which can
have two complementary meanings. On the one hand: “You are not yet suffi-
ciently 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 percep-
tible 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,” 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 testi-
monies 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.
164 Exercises of Imagination

NOTES
1. Acts of Peter, XX-XXI, in Neutestamentliche Apocryphen, introduced by
Wilhelm Schneemelcher, 5th ed., Tiibingen,J.C. B. Mohr, 1989, vol. I, 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 l’Ecole
Pratique des hautes études (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 Patriar-
chate of Jerusalem (description in Papadopoulos Karameus, [Jérosoluamitiké Bibliothéke],
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 distinctly
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 repre-
sented 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.HLE. (the research kindly undertaken in the
Millet bequest by my colleague Professor Claude Lepage, in May 1993, proved fruitless).
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.). InAnnuaire .
1966-67, p. 134, H.-C. Puech cites “le Livre arménien de l’Enfance, c. XI, 17-21
(translation in Paul Peeters, Evangiles apocryphes, Il, 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 ismaélienne,”
in Eranos fabrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. XXIII, 1955 (republished under the
same title: Paris, Berg International, 1982, cf. pp. 71 ff.); Avicenne et le récit visionnaire,
Société des monuments de I’Iran, collection du Millénaire, “Bibliothéque iranienne,”
1954 (reprint Paris, Berg International, 1979, cf. p. 104); “Face de Dieu et Face de
Homme,” in Eranos Fabrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. XXXVI, 1967, pp. 198 ff.
(reprint in Face de Dieu, Face de ’Homme: Herméneutique et Soufisme, Paris, Flammarion,
“Idées et Recherches” series, 1983, cf. pp. 278 ff.); En Islam iranien, Paris, Gallimard,
 coor From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 165

“Bibliothéque des Idées” series, 1971, vol. I, p. 165, n. 135, and p. 329; “Théorie de la
connaissance visionnaire en philusophie islamique,” Nouvelles de l'Institut catholique de
Paris, February 1977.
6. On the “sound figures” of Chladni (1787) and the context of his experiments,
cf. my paper: “Physique et métaphysique du Feu chezJ.W. Ritter (1776-1810),” Les
Etudes philosophiques, special number Romantisme allemand, I, Paris, P.U.F., April-June
1983, pp. 47 ff. Republished in Philosophie de la Nature (Physique sacrée et théosophie),
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 Présocratiques, edited by J.-P. Dumont, Paris,
Gallimard, “Bibliothéque de la Pléiade” series, 1988, p. 169. I owe the idea of this
reference to Friedhelm Kemp, whose excellent lecture inspired the present essay; this
lecture is entitled 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 créatrice dans le soufisme a’lbn ‘Arabi, Paris, Flam-
marion, 1958, p. 106.
10. “Das Auge als ein Geschopf des Lichtes leistet alles, was das Licht selbst leisten
kann”: paralipomena to the Farbenlehre of Goethe, quoted in Goethes Werke, Munich,
C. H. Beck, vol. XIII, 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. XII, p. 323:
“Das Auge hat sein Dasein dem Licht zu danken. Aus gleichgiiltigen tierischen Hiilfsorganen
ruft sich das Licht em Organ hervor, das seinesgleichen werde, und me bildet sich das Auge am
Lichte fiirs Licht, damit das innere Licht dem dusseren entgegentrete.”
12. “Hterbei erinnern wir uns der alten ionischen Schule, welche mit so grosser Bedeut-
samkeit immer wiederholte: nur von Gleichem werde Gleiches erkannt” (Goethes Werke, op.
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 konnt uns Gottliches entzticken?” (Goethes Werke,
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, Traité 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 Fupiteraugen mich anblickend, das Licht sollte
nur da sein, insofern Sie es sehen? Nein, Sie waren nicht da, wenn das Licht Sie nicht sabe”
(Goethes Gespriche, 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
néo-platonisme 4 la philosophie de la nature en Occident,” pp. 91-132, in Eranos
Jahrhiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag, vol. III, 1970 (lecture of 1969), cf. notably p. 116.
15. I am here alluding to the saying that Baader was so fond of: “Cogitor (4 Deo),
ergo sum.”
166 Exercises ofImagination

16. H. Corbin, L’Imagination créatrice ... , 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 “Ténébre, Eclair et Lumiére chez
Franz von Baader,” in A. Faivre, Philosophie de la Nature. Physique sacrée—théosophie,
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, vielmebr aber ist die Spiegelung eine Erzeugung. Wenn ein Lichtstrahl hingebt, so
geht er als Farbe zur tick. So kann man die ganze Natur das Prisma des Gottlichen
Lichtstrahles nennen” (Franz von Baader, Samtliche Werke, VIII, Leipzig, 1855, p. 82,
text taken from Vorlesungen tiber 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 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 ismaélienne (1982), op. cit., p. 71. On the question of Corbin’s
interest in Swedenborg, cf. notably his study: “Herméneutique spirituelle comparée: I)
Swedenborg. II) Gnose ismaélienne,” in Eranos Fahrbiicher, Zurich, Rhein Verlag,
1964, vol. XXXII, 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 imagina-
tion). Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, who pertinently 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: “Ecritures4 lunettes et théurgie. De l’origine de certains caractéres
extraits du manuscrit Registre des 2400 noms du fonds Prunelle de Liére (XVIIe
siécle),” 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” |.. .]
ContributionaPétude des écritures & lunettes, E.P.H.E. dissertation, Sorbonne, 1996.
26. Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative. Contemporary Possibilities of Religious
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 entitled
“In dir muss Gott gebohren werden.” The first edition dates from 1657.
29. Cf. the title of his work: Le Ministére de l’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!” (Faust, I, vv. 512-513).
 From the Divine Figure to the Concrete Figure 167

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, eine
jeweils durch die Herausforderung zur Unterscheidung und Entscheidung modifizierte
Gewohnheit—oder besser: Uebung—unserer produktiven Denk- und Einbildungskraft.”
are
2) So Rey
Whe nae)_
As
mu : 7 "*
7 : 4 ce’ iy osTecdeiune ! mah need \,
4st
‘tile —

ae a=
=

om > aAt A, Vinay eA

- orl ’ uletinngy er
: : ae
pay a! 2 = ibis

sais pwr Moat» ye ee ee oe sole te

2 ivanee low, yh why obit tabsBin ——
_

, +

» «* “? heyod

pare ie cial
= | ee P +" = wii forte A

~ 7 oy
- : ¢

7 oe @ : > & ae etal ie»

fl by * : P tore mae Ss ‘sv I.

de ; hin! he Nests aoa 16)

ail PO oe =. ioe © 7 . 7)ne arin
IN TERMS OF “TRADITION”
 :
20 :
7 = a) ¥ &

7.» = “AOITKIART” 40 eMaaT Vilas Tae

patee te RN —
: G

wi on <= i - : : aa cal i -

; a. =

| : We
2 at, Mi ee
; un
aan -

as
a

-
a
; iv
=
’ a)
—_

-
- :

a i
«
tal
7

iY ant
er
-
te

Hy

= 5
: 2

ay, a

ee
;‘ M ot

ae
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos (1614, 1615)
and the Western Esoteric “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 for-
tunes until today.! 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 Fraternitatis (1614) and the
Confessio Fraternitatis (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 con-
sidering 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 THE MANIFESTOS

A variety of elements of medieval esotericism are found incorporated in the
Manifestos: two themes coming 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 excep-
tional being, with a biography rich in initiatory experiences, in journeys during

171
172 In Terms of “Tradition”

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”
and who will assure the survival of his work and his undertaking; they con-
stitute a fraternity or a brotherhood. Marginal to official monasticism, this is
presented, well before Julius Sperber in whom the idea also appears,’ 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,”* 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,”’ that is, the Book of the World. Andreae, on his
side, was certainly sufficiently 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.”* The letter T., which one is tempted to interpret as the initial
of “Thesaurus,”’ 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.”? 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.”!° His
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos tS

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 tradi-
tion 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 instru-
ments of knowledge. At least twice, the mathematics in question is given as
“axiomatic” whose “immutability until the Last Judgment”! 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.” 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.”!? 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 sum-
marized 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 ofNature

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 hominis, 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 (Clavis 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”"* that Christian sets off for Damcar. According to the authors of the
174 In Terms of “Tradition”

Confessio, “the great Book of Nature” is “open to anyone’s eyes, but can be
read or understood by only a few.” 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.”'s 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.” According to the very
beginning of the text of the Fama, Man, as microcosm, is capable of acquiring
the art of penetrating'® Nature, that is, of making spring forth from it, of
knowing—in the sense of gndsis—its meaning, its secret provinces, its naturans
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.”!° 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.”2°

Il. PRESENCE OF RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHIA OCCULTA

IN THE MANIFESTOS
All these medieval elements, retained and assimilated in the Manifestos, obvi-
ously also continue to feed, in parallel to Rosicrucianism, other esoteric cur-
rents of the Renaissance. Now, our two texts draw directly from three of these
currents or are related to them. These are, first, Paracelsism, second, a Neo-
Joachite 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
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 175

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 i
is enough to show: “tinctures,” “characters,” “impres-
sions.” 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. To know oneself is at the same time to
know the universe, on condition of knowing how inwardly to develop a sym-
pathetic 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.?!
The great Book of Wonders, Nature, “agrees with the Bible,” 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 prac-
tice is emphasized: the character that is Christian is indeed the wise and omnis-
cient 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 consider-
ations heavy with consequences. His four books Vier Biicher vom Wabren
Christenthum were all published by 1610. In the wake of this, the names of
Aegidius Gutmann (Offenbahrung gottlicher Majestat, 1619) and of his contem-
porary 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
176 In Terms of “Tradition”

naturphilosophisch variety, one must distinguish, according to our text, the avid
puffers. If “the art, sullied and imperfect,”” 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 inJohann Arndt’s fourth
book on the “true Christianity.” It is known that Paracelsus distinguished “light
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 sys-
tematized 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 fruitlessly** the analogical rela-
tionships 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.”> 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
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 177

by the Manifestos. In a spirit of free investigation, these emphasize the indi-

vidual 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 “tradi-
tion,” the Manifestos would appear to reflect a similar aim, albeit less system-
atically 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 explicitly, 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 cabbalistica
(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.’* Moreover, the axiomatical system so intensely spot-
lighted 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 fali 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.””” 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 mer-
curial sign published in Monas bieroglyphica (1564) and taken up again in the
Chemical Wedding.”*
As for Alexandrian hermetism, revived a century and a half earlier by the
Florentine Renaissance, it occupies a rather unobtrusive position. The instru-
ments 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
178 In Terms of “Tradition”

Edighoffer thought he recognized a sort of Pseudo-Pimander.” 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 neverthe-
less invokes it implicitly by alluding “to the functions of the angels and the
spirits.”®° Then, in Christian’s tomb, the inscription “emptiness does not exist”
could be read by Bernard Gorceix as a reference to the Corpus Hermeticum.?!
Close to the Alexandrian hermetic teaching appears finally what Renaissance
esotericism called the Art of Memory, so well studied by Frances A. Yates.*
The author of the Confessio teaches us in fact that the the rule of the Rosicru-
cians “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.” 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.**

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 Bocchi** 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, disciplina 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 Rosy-
Cross as given to us by the Fama: “The brotherhood must remain unknown
for one hundred years.”** Christian’s disciples lived “in the utmost secrecy.”3”
For a long period, no adept “obtained the slightest detail on R. C. and his first
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 179

brethren.” 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.”3?
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.”#° Indeed, “the
low-minded, the dull and stupid, cast them aside, or else do not make the
effort.”*' 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.”” 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”—a religious and scientific irenicalism—among the
seekers of the world.
All this especially pertains to Mercury. But Hermes, as the Trismegistus,
is also implicitly 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 perennis. 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.¥
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.”** Thus, what is true in philosophy is also
true in theology. “What has been established by Plato, Aristotle, and Pytha-
goras, 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.”*
180 In Terns of “Tradition”

Ill. THE MANIFESTOS BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW

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 Philoso-
phies; the Jewish and Christianized Kabbalah; spiritual alchemy; arithmology;
and the Neo-Lullian axioms, which would reappear in France as a plan of
totalization in Hoéné 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 pro-
phecy, 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 implicitly, 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 intel-
lectual 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 author-
ities. 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,”*” Christian’s contribu-
tion 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
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 181

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 pre-
ceding 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 Rosi-
crucian 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.”** 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 of a Paradox

On the doctrinal plane the two Manifestos do not innovate. It would be diffi-
cult 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 contradic-
tion 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 per-
haps be seen in the disappearance, or at least the relative eclipse, of one of the
182 In Terms of “Tradition”

touchstones of the philosophia perennis 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 of loss came about as soon as a tear appeared in a crucial spot in the fine
tunic that was the philosophia perennis, 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.”
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 atten-
tion to Islam, and implicitly to Judaism—as witnessed by the references to the
Kabbalah. Behind the Lutheran facade of the Manifestos would thus be out-
lined an “Abrahamic” tendency whose gnostic syncretism would associate
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
If such a tendency is perhaps betrayed in the Manifestos, they are none-
theless 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. To
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 indirectly 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 imhabitatio 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
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 183

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 (recently 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 con-
sists 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 doc-
trinal unity in the Corpus Hermeticum was due to the juxtaposition of hetero-
clite 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 perennis 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 organiza-
tions, 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.”*°
Western esotericism would retain from then on, much more than pre-
viously, 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,”*! one can only be struck by its similarities
with Freemasonry, distinct from those relating it to the guilds and corpora-
tions before 1717. In the association described by the Manifestos, and in Free-
masonry, we find the same idea of constructing a new society organized
around a citadel of truth; comparable triangular symbols; similar subdivision
184 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 abstrac-
tion 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. To 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
GurdjiefPs meetings “with remarkable men” or the belief in an Agartha located
somewhere in Asia on a precipitous peak, to which René Guénon has con-
tributed some unexpected developments. Also a literary theme.

Literary Esotericism in the Wake ofthe Manifestos

To 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 dis-
tinction 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 directly 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
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 185

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 Rosy-
Cross, 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 cen-
turies of works referring implicitly or explicitly to Christian’s tomb. Let us
mention the most recent: as late as 1986, a great Portuguese artist, José 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.’ 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 Geheimmnisse 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
186 In Terms of “Tradition”

may have closely contemplated it, remains forevermore impregnable, intact,

unknown, carefully hidden from the eyes of the impious world.”** This idea of
a society controlled by masters who would be manipulating the destiny of cer-
tain 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 Lebrjabre (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.

PERSPECTIVES
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 Rosi-
cruciana in Anglia, founded in London in 1867, masonic in its principle and
whose works are almost always inspired, closely or distantly, 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. To various degrees they tend toward
a form of new Naturphilosophie. Some have participated in the conferences at
 ale: The Rosicrucian Manifestos 187

Cordova and Tsukuba or other similar meetings. Their orientation differs,

however, from what is known as the “Princeton gnosis”**—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
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 Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, Chymische Hochzeit,
Stuttgart, Calwer, 1973.

1. The most important of the recent general works is by Roland Edighoffer,

Rose-Croix et société idéale selon Johann Valentin Andreae, Paris, Arma Artis, vol. I, 1982,
vol. IT, 1987. Cf. also, from the same author, the short but very valuable work, Les Rose-
Croix, 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 européenne au XVIIé siécle, Paris: Dervy, series “Bibliothéque de l’Hermétisme,”
1998. Forthcoming is a great scholarly edition of Johann Valentin Andreae’s complete
works (Gesammelte Schriften, Stattgart Bad-Cannstadt: Fromann-Holzboog Verlag):
vol. III (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. I
will also be published separately). Many works by Carlos Gilly, bearing on the Rosy-
Cross 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 Verkiinder der
Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer), Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Allein-
vertrieb durch F. Fromann, Stuttgart), 1995. Analyses and accounts of most works
from the 1970s and 1980s on the Rosy-Cross are to be found in the periodical ARLES.
(1987), no. 6; and (1988), no. 7 (Paris, La Table d’Emeraude).
2. BG, p. 23. “Unser geliebter Christlicher Vatter” (VD, p. 34).
3. Will-Erich Peuckert, Das Rosenkreutz. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation, léna,
Diederichs, 1928. Reprint: Das Rosenkreutz, Berlin, E. Schmidt, 1973, with a long intro-
duction 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 gebracht”
(VD, p. 18). On the subject of texts discovered in a tomb, B. Gorceix has already men-
tioned the Tabula chemica of Ibn’ Umail (twelfth century), which Julius Ruska had intro-
duced, 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 T genandt” (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. 18).
188 In Terms of “Tradition”

9. BG, p. 24. “Das sechste Candelabrum” (VD, p. 35).

10. BG, p. 8. “Sol er eine gute Zeit mit der Mathematik zugebracht und vieler schoner
Instrumenten ex omnibus hujus artis partibus zugerichtet haben” (VD, p. 21).
11. BG, p. 9. “Dass unsere Axiomata unbeweglichen werden bleiben, biss an den
Fiingsten Tag” (VD, p. 21).
12. BG, p. 8. “Mit einem weitleufftigen Vocabulario” (VD, p. 21).
13. BG, pp. 33 and 17. “Schlechte einfeltige und gantz verstendliche Ausslegung |. . .]
das kimmet zusammen und wird eine sphera oder globus, dessen omnes partes gleiche weite vom
Centro” (VD, pp. 41 and 29).
14. BG, p. 5. “Wie ibnen die gantze Natur entdekt were” (VD, p. 18).
15. BG, p. 39 “Ob wol das grosse Buch der Natur allen Menschen offen stehet, dennoch
sehr wenig verhanden, die dasselbe lesen und verstehen kinnen” (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 Geschopff Himmels 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 Gebaw
Himmels und der Erden 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 welcher just mit der
gantzen Welt Harmonia concordiert, auch allen 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 und Melodey mit Gott, Himmel und Erden ginge” (VD, p. 19).
21. Cf. Gnothi Seauthon, of Valentin Weigel, published in 1615 only; and BG, p.
Xxxi.
22. BG, p. 17. “Das grosse Wunderbuch der Biblia concordiret” (VD, pp. 28 ff.).
23. BG, p. 3. “Die zum theil verunreinigte unvollkommene Kunst” (VD, p. 17).
24. BG, pp. 31 ff. VD, pp. 40 ff. Pierre Deghaye, “Johann Valentin Andreae et
V’Hermétisme,” A.R.IE.S., 1987, no. 6.
25. BG, p. 7. “Mit so grosser Commodion schwanger [. . .| und in der Geburt
gearbeitet” (VD, p. 20). One thinks obviously of the Epistle to the Romans 8:19-22.
26. BG, p. 10. “Er war in der Cabala sehr fertig und besonders geleehrt” (VD, p. 22).
27. BG, p. 30. “Von welchen Buchstaben wir denn unsere Magische Schrifften
entlehnet und uns ein newe Sprache erfunden 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 société idéale, 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, Routledge and K. Paul, 1966.
33. BG, p. 31. “Dass kein Buchstabe in der Welt seyn soll, welcher nicht wol gefasset
und in acht genommen werde” (VD, p. 39).
 The Rosicrucian Manifestos 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 hundert Jabr verschweigen bleiben” (VD, p.
22).
37. BG, p. 10. “In groster Verschweigenheit gelebt” (VD, p. 22).
38. BG, p. 12. “Keiner das wenigste von R.C. und seinen ersten Mitbriidern gewust”
p. 23).
(VD,
39. BG, p. 23. “Ein jeder auch wisse, dass wir zwar solche Arcana und Geheimnusse
nicht geringe achten, und es aber doch nicht unrecht sey, dass die Kundtschafft und Wissen-
schafft derselben wielen gemein gemacht werde” (VD, p. 34).
40. BG, p. 25. “Wir sagen gleichwol so viel, dass unsere Arcana und Heimligkeiten
keines weges geheim und bekandt gemacht werden, obwohl die Fama in fiinff Sprachen
ausgangen und jeder manniglich kundt gethan worden” (VD, p. 36).
41. BG, p. 25. “Die. grobe unverstandige und stupida ingenia sich deren nicht
annehmen oder hoch darumb bektimmert worden” (VD, p. 36).
42. BG, p. 29. “Nun ist noch tibrig, dass mit Abktirtzung der Zeit, der Zungen auch
thre Ehre gegeben und durch dieselbe, was man vorzeiten gesehen, geboret und gerochen hat,
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
Platonism from the 15th to the 18th Century), London, G. Duckworth, 1972.
45. BG, p. 17. “Unser Philosophia ist nichts newes, sondern wie sie Adam nach seinem
Fall erhalten und Moses und Salomon geiibet, also solle sie nicht viel Dubitiren oder andere
meinungen widerlegen, sondern weil die Warheit eynig, kurtz und ibr selbst immerdar gleich”
(VD, p. 28).
46. BG, p. 17. “Worrinen es Plato, Aristoteles, Pythagoras und andere getroffen, wo
Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Salomo den ausschlag geben, besonders wo das grosse Wunderbuch der
Biblia concordiret, das kimmet zusammen und wird eine sphera oder globus, dessen omnes,
partes gleich weite vom Centro” (VD, pp. 28 ff.). On Orpheus, cf. BG, p. 25, n. 1.
47. BG, p. 24. “Ob schon alle Biicher solten umbkommen und durch dess Allmachtigen
Gottes Verhengnuss aller Schriften et totius rei literariae interitus oder Untergang firgehen
solte” (VD, p. 34).
48. BG, p. 22. “Als welche ist Caput et Summa, das Fundament und Inhalt aller
Facultaten, Wissenschaften und Kiinste [. . .| mehr wunderbahre Gehetmnuss bey uns finden
werden, als sie bissher erfahren, erkundigen, glauben und aussprechen konnen” (VV, p. 34).
49. Rolf Christian Zimmermann has already observed: “Der Gedanke ware zu
erwagen, wie weit gerade die Datierung Casaubons die Hermetik zur eklektischen Geheim-
tradition zurtickverwandelte, und damit die Rosenkreuzer-Idee inspiriert hat. Denn nur so liess
sich dem Hauptargument Casaubons die zermalmende Wirkung nehmen” (Das Weltbild des
jungen Goethe, vol. 1, 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.20ndi.
52. BG, p. 12. “Philosophische Bibliotheca,” “Axiomata,” “Rotae Mundi,” “Proteus”
(VD,
p.23).
190 In Terms of “Tradition”

53. BG, p. 19. “Es soll auch wohl unser Gebaw, da es auch hundert tausendt Menschen
hetten von nahem gesehen, der gottlosen Welt in Ewigkeit obnberiihret, ohnzerstoret,
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.
 Analysis of the Meditations of
Valentin Tomberg on the
Twenty-Two Major Arcana
of the Tarot of Marseilles

INTRODUCTION: BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS AND

SITUATION OF THE WORK
In September 1974 I received from Father Marcel Régnier (SJ.), director of
the journal Archives de Philosophie, a voluminous packet containing an anony-
mous typescript entitled Meéditations sur les vingt-deux Arcanes Majeurs du
Tarot. This text was submitted to me in view of possible publication.' It had
been handed over to Fr. Marcel Régnier 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.? Written originally in French, this book had
already appeared two years earlier in 1972? 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. A publisher having accepted the pro-
ject,’ 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 “Bibliothéque de l’Hermétisme.”
The publisher had, alas, to file for bankruptcy;° 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

19]
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 informa-
tion. The author was born in 1901 (in reality, the date was 1900) in Saint Peters-
burg, 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. To the preceding information, let us
add a little 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, espe-
cially between 1930 and 1939, most of which were subsequently published.’
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)."° 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 conspira-
torial 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," and in the
English edition of Lazarus, komm heraus,8 which announces a “Translator’s
Foreword” in the table of contents that does not appear in the book.'* 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,'* 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. To 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.{uthor]) are in the same vein as the great con-
tributions made by Pico della Mirandola and Baader, “although they do not
spring from them directly” because his sources were highly varied. Von
Balthasar justly remarks that the A. is more “profound” than Eliphas Lévi 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 incar-
nation 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
194 In Terms of “Tradition”

meditations are distributed in twenty-two chapters, each preceded by the repro-

duction 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.'¢
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 com-
plete as possible a cooperation between spirituality and intellectuality” (p. 715).
Indeed, the “classical” philosophers do not refute it, and unlike many hermeti-
cists 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 theoso-
phers, 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 repre-
sentative 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,
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 195

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 signifi-
cant 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 revo-
lutionary spirits of our century such as Lenin have brought me nothing.” He
learned a lot through them, but he learned nothing from them (p. 335).

I. CHRISTIAN HERMETICISM AND TRADITIONS

The Tarot and Hermetic Symbolism

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 icono-
graphical 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 systema-
tized 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 dis-
coveries (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”

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 [Vth trump is a/so 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 imagi-
nation 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 intel-
lectuality and imagination companions equal to will that is graced by revelation
from on high. To arrive at this, thinking is “moralized” through its substitu-
tion 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 inter-
mediary stage of a logic that is organic; one introduces “moral warmth” into
the realm of “cold thought”; at the same time the imagination is intellec-
tualized through discipline and submission to the laws of moral logic—which
is a form of asceticism. That is what Goethe understood by “exact imagina-
tion” (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 imagina-
tive 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 197

hermeticism, which is founded on the harmony of three methods of knowl-

edge: 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 incar-
nation 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 contem-
plation 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 this
second method of bypassing the intellect—but, this time, while rendering it
active—that hermeticism chooses; also it includes not only mystical experi-
ences 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).

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
198 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 creden-
tials (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 /ife 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 pro-
found 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-wisdom-
symbolism” 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 con-
tinuity 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.397).
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 tradi-
tion one regards the marriage of the two as indissoluble; both of them
together must achieve the work of reestablishing “likeness to God” (p. 530).
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 199

While Christianity—the true one—says, “May nothing perish and may all be
saved,” Sémkhya 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 devel-
oped 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, recog-
nizes 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 pro-
cess of involution and evolution are incompatible with the hermeticist doc-
trine, 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 redemp-
tion. 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.
200 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 intel-
lectuality 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 “adul-
tery.” 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 adul-
tery” 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 Budd-
hism, 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. To 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 illu-
minated 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 201

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.).

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 earth-
heaven 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 Aristotle—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 indi-
vidual consciousness and the whole universe that contains them only “in poten-
tiality” (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 List der Vernunft,
according to Hegel). These “Greeks” are generally worshipers of Wisdom. ‘To
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
202 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 realiza-
tions and miracles (Martinés de Pasqually, Eliphas Lévi). 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 arch-
way spanning the Church and the Academy. An intimate and personal syn-
thesis 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 apostles, 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 some-
how “between” Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (author of the Archéomeétre) 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 intel-
lectuality 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 situ-
ated 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 never-
theless 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.). To these three elements
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 203

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 beau-
tiful dynamic balance, one could say, because without grace hermeticism “is
no more than historicism and sterile erudition,” without effort it is but “senti-
mental 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 /ength).”
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 conscious-
ness 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, Péladan, Eliphas Lévi, and
Claude de Saint-Martin” (pp. 468 ff.). Basically, what he says here about sym-
bolism is just as applicable to traditional theosophic 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: “I am unable not to aspire to the depth, height and breadth of the com-
prehensive truth of the whole of things. [. . .] Iknow that the truths of salvation
revealed and transmitted by the Magisterium of the Holy Church are neces-
sary 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
204 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 implicitly, 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 dis-
tinct 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 inex-
pressible 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 imple-
mentation 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, renuncia-
tion 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 hermet-
icism, in living experience, is the Tree and not the Tower (of Babel). Thus
 Analysis of the Meditions of Valentin Tomberg 205

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 mech-
anisms like certain machines, certain philosophical systems, certain rituals of
ceremonial magic. Similarly, every human soul must choose between libera-
tion 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 Archéomeétre, like the Aristotelian systems in use among the scho-
lastic 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 substi-
tuting 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 anti-
clericalism (in the negative sense of the term) is to be found in him. He pro-
claims 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. The first form, called “experience of union
with nature,” obliterates the distinction between individual psychic life and the
natural environment (one is reminded here of Lévy-Bruhl’s “mystical partici-
pation”), the subject and the object having the tendency to fuse. This sort of
206 In Terms of “Tradition”

experience underlies shamanism and primitive totemism, but also, says the A.
quite rightly, “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 second form, the “experi-
ence of union with the transcendental human Self,” corresponds to an experimenta-
tion 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 is God. The third form 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 207

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 sub-
conscious 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 “inspiration-
vision-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 XIV) 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 iden-
tical to that of Eliphas Lévi, of Péladan 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. Guénon 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 Guénon’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 explicitly what we can only infer. For the A.,
meditation is developed in the contemplation of mysteries that lend themselves
208 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 hermeti-
cist’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 hermeti-
cism—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 “he 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.

Il. NATURE PHILOSOPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

The Signature of Things and Universal Becoming

To 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 wor/d, its structure, its forces, its beings, their reciprocal relation-
ships, 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, inter-
preted 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). To 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). To 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 209

space. The symbols here are expressing the correspondences between the
prototypes—and no longer the archetypes—above, and their manifestations
below. The Magician (Arcanum J), a typological symbol, reveals to us the pro-
totype of Man the Spirit (“/’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 rela-
tion to the two symbolisms), just as the author of the Zohar had well under-
stood 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 con-
cepts. He is challenging emanationism without saying that he is here in disa-
greement with Saint-Martin. Less surprisingly, he is also challenging the
“pantheist” and “demiurgic” doctrines. Pantheism, he says, denies the indepen-
dent existence of creatures; emanationism attributes to creatures and the world
merely a passing, thus ephemeral, existence; and demiurgism teaches a sub-
stance 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
nibile 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
210 In Terms of “Tradition”

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”), Martinés 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 gold-
plated 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 sub-
stantial 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 Phénoméene 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). To Teil-
hard, “the hermeticist of our time by the gracé 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).

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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 211

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—irradi-
ation, agent of magic—agent of growth, enfolding—radiance.
The first of these bipolarities obviously recalls the Schellingian Naturphil-
osophie. 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, significantly, 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 under-
stood 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 con-
fusion 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. To 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 Judeo-
Christian tradition in this, regards Nature—as science defines it—not as a work
directly 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
212 In Terms of “Tradition”

“the Manicheans, the Cathars, the Albigensians,” who could not distinguish
9

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 con-
trasts 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 quin-
tessence of the Good News. Radiance, the principle of light, is opposed there-
fore to enfoldment, the principle of shadows. Thus the atom is the enfoldment,
but atoms are associated in molecules and everywhere association and coop-
eration 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. Lévi,
Stanislas de Guaita, and others. But it is not the only Agent. There is a con-
sciousness 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 prin-
ciples 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 apostles, 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 rela-
tion 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-
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 213

lized” into sacred magic. It is “crystallized mysticism,” while Gurdjieffs “mater-

alist occultism” replaces and abolishes mysticism with crystallized materialist
science (p. 432). The resurrection is the triumph of irradiation over crystalli-
zation (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. Lévi, 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 differ-
entiates 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). To these two electricities correspond respec-
tively two kinds of “life.” Zoé is vivifying life, 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 Zoé, “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.).
214 In Terms of “Tradition”

But this fatigue and this death are ultimately the fruit of the Tree of the Knowl-
edge 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 Zoé, 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 dis-
charges, 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 manifesta-
tion; 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).
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 215

However, Leibniz had known even better how to reveal the rainbow of con-
tinuity, 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 of Thoth—The Major Arcana
of the Tarot),'’ 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 “collec-
tive 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 consider-
ations on the spiral. While the circle of ceremonial magic is closed in principle,
the “door” is the image of opening. The Christic 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). To 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 Martinés 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 infinity 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 trans-
formation 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 hascarried 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).
216 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 infra-
light (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 (Traité éémentaire 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:
n

A) above (synthesis): the

neutral term is on a plane
higher than the plane of i
the binary itself.
B) on the horizontal (compromise):
a median term between the two
terms of the binary on the plane At. |
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.
n

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 maxi-
mum differentiation, corresponds to neutralization in the horizontal; the black
tip at the very bottom is where the colors are lost in darkness (neutralization
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 217

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 syn-
thesis: “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 phe-
nomena 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.). To 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 consid-
erations, especially those concerning Nature Philosophy. However, this vol-
uminous 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
218 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 Fuifs
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 little by little, 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 accom-
panies 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, imagi-
nation, and will) with God in action. A polarity where we simultaneously find
that of gnosis and of divine magic (p. 459). To find the just measure (Temper-
ance, Arcanum XIV) 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 preacempicd 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 pro-
foundly understand, that is, intuitively grasp, only what one loves (pp. 482 ff).
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 219

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 com-
posed 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 Lévi
already believed, are “engendered subjectively, they become independent
forces of the subjectivity that had generated them”; they are “magical crea-
tions” 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 nour-
ishment 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
220 In Terms of “Tradition”

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. To
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
subtle 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 “elec-
trical 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).
To 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
little 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: “he 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 221

the adjective in the Jungian expression “collective unconscious” and prefers to

say that whoever remembers an experience is also the one who has experi-
enced it. Furthermore, deems the A., “the facts that Jung has brought together
and presented lend themselves at /east as easily to the reincarnationist inter-
pretation as to the collectivist one [sic]” (pp. 309 ff.).
We fortunately do not have dealings with ghosts every day, and rein-
carnations, 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 chal-
lenges, 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 emo-
tions, 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 our-
selves 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).
Dep In Terms of “Tradition”

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. To 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 /ife, 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 amasculine 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 imagina-
tion 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 223

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).

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 “indi-
vidualization” (Jungian) for “individuation” (only once, it is true, p. 40). And
“Quaita” instead of “Guaita” (p. 469); “Lévy for “Lévi” (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 currently
accepted version of well-known titles (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
224 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 justi-
fication (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 Récits d’un pélerin 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 criti-
cized for referring to the Egyptian Book of the Dead through a mediocre book
by Marqués-Riviére (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 rela-
tion 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
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 225

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 pejora-
tive 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 theosophic 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 “neutrali-
zation 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.'*

NOTES
1. Letter from M. Régnier to A. Faivre, 20 September, 1975.
2. Letters from M. Kriele to A. Faivre, 29 January and 15 July 1975.
3. Meditationen tiber die Grossen Arcana des Taro. 22 Briefe an den unbekannten
Freund. Nach der Abschrift eines franzosischen Manuscripts tibersetzt von Gertrud von Hippel,
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
226 In Terms of “Tradition”

French to me: “Having finished his 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 out-
standing 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 “Bibliothéque de l’Hermétisme” started in 1980; nineteen volumes
published until 1999 (Editions Albin Michel and Dervy).
7. Meditations sur les 22 Arcanes Majeurs du Tarot. Par un auteur qui a voulu
conserver l’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, partly 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. I 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-viil) in German the preface by Robert Spaemann of the French edition, as well as
(pp. ix-xv) the foreword (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. I, 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 entitled; Meditations on the
Tarot. A Fourney 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.
 Analysis of the Meditations of Valentin Tomberg 227

9. Assembled and published under the titles: Anthroposophische Betrachtungen

liber das Alte Testament, edited by Willi Seiss and Martin Kriele, Schénach (Bodensee),
Achamoth* Verlag, 1989, 240 pp. Anthroposophische Betrachtungen tiber 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 Méditations. Cf. also Lazarus,
komm heraus!, by Tomberg, published by Martin Kriele, Basel and F reiburg, 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. Zeitschrift fiir Anthroposophische 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 Fesuitismus, Dornach, Goetheanum, 1995 (new edi-
tion, expanded, 1996, with an extensive bibliography; English translation: The Case of
Valentin Tomberg: Anthroposophy or Fesuitism?, 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 Anthropo-
sophical 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 Méditations). He gave an expanded version of this chapter, entitled
“Valentin Tomberg und die grossen Arcana des Tarot,” pp. 239-258 of his book
Spirituelle Meister des Westens. Leben und Lehre, Munich, Diderichs, 1995 (French trans-
lation: Maitres spirituels de l’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 Volkerrechts 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 para-
graph, the author of the foreword eliminated, for the second edition, criticisms he had
228 In Terms of “Tradition”

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. Chisupra,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 fourth 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 the first edition (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 title 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).
 Raymond Abellio and the
Western Esoteric “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 phil-
osopher that he had wanted te 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 posi-
tion 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 enlight-
enment 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 chiffré (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 impres-
sion 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
230 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 phenome-
nology 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 improb-
able place, but at the right time, because this started off a period of gestation,
which takes place at the beginning of an initiatory scenario: conception-
birth-baptism-communion (SJ, 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 So/ 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 him-
self. 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 operi to the wonders
of the spirit”—as he announces to us in this remarkable passage. Combas used
 ‘ Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 231

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 transfig-
uration 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 Montségur (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
eveni, 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 Epistles 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).
232 In Terms of “Tradition”

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.
To which one could add, although they appear only implicitly 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 mnemotech-
nique 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 criti-
cized for calling “absolute structure” is not without recalling the Absolute that
Ho6né 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 Naturphil-
osophie 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 outline or a simple plan, as in the case of
the first Rosicrucians, whose Manifestos of 1614 and 1615 teach us that they
 Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 238

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 posi-
tions: “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. Cer-
tainly, 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 l’ésotérisme, 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 avail-
able 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,
234 In Terms of “Tradition”

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, irresis-
tibly 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 pro-
cess 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. Guénon, fortun-
ately, 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 distinc-
tion 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
 ‘ Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 235

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 reli-
gions, 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 inexor-
able 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” (SJ, 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.”

II. ESOTERICISM AND MODERNITY

René Guénon and the Status of the West

To speak of “Tradition” “as a definitive given” . . . Many are the currents, and
especially the individuals, targeted here. In the very first place, René Guénon,
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 hodge-
podge (FE, p. 15). He understands and praises Guénon’s demand for rigor, his
submission to a simple metaphysical order, clearly expressed. Guénon was the
first “to trace the lines of division.” But he did not go far enough in this direc-
tion; 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 esoteri-
cism, for he does not dialecticize enough; the conclusions of his premises are
drawn in an automatic fashion, his triadic structure itself cannot be dialecticized.
236 In Terms of “Tradition”

The negative consequences are not lacking. Instead of generating creators,

Guénon generates only schoolmasters for whom any novelty is mere degrada-
tion 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). Guénon 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 Guénon constantly 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 blatantly in Guénon
and the Guénonians, is to have known Husserl and the epistemological revo-
lution 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: “Guénon has had hardly
any influence on me”—and thanks to Pierre de Combas, “I could almost have
done without reading him” (PG, p. 53).
Incessantly Abellio returns to these invectives in opposition to the grave-
diggers 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 exactly 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
 ‘ Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 237

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 his-
toric 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 esoteri-
cism, 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 phe-
nomena and quantifying them. Finally, 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 acces-
sion of philosophy to the rank of a hard science (FE, pp. 73-80).

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 medita-
tions 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
238 In Terms of “Tradition”

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 origin-
ality, 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
lightning 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 André 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 Stéphane 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. No 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-
 ~ Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 239

tionships—the raw material of gnosis not being, Abellio insists, the relation-
ship, 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 explicitly, 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 sub-
ject 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 esoteri-
cists are “scholars, not philosophers” (SA, p. 18). His eclecticism, such a com-
mon 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 aggra-
vating circumstance and the alibi of a particularly suffocating erudition.” Suffo-
cating, 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 IChing, represent, as far as their compre-
hension 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 fundamen-
tally “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 Stéphane Lupasco, occupies the place of such a structure—but which
Lupasco never named as such. In the Cahier de ’Herne devoted to Abellio,
240 In Terms of “Tradition”

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; both 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 oper-
ative technique, the specificity of both organons seems to be of a religious
nature—in both etymological senses—or else gnostic. Abellio seems to con-
struct 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 Aufbebung. 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 hemis-
pheres 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).

IN. RAYMOND ABELLIO’S SPECIFIC CONTRIBUTION

TO ESOTERICISM

Phenomenology and Absolute Structure

“In the beginning,” confides Abellio to Marie-Thérése 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
 ' Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 241

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—different from ratio, 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 entitle one of his major
writings Cartesian Meditations?). Abellio goes so far as to say that Husserl recon-
quers the unity lost at the Edenic exile, that his transcendental Nodis fulfills
Western philosophy, and that the world “then enters into a period of reinte-
gration” (FE, pp. 70 ff.).
To 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 inten-
sify 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 in 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” distin-
guishable from Aurobindo’s supranatural or the illuminative intuition of
which Guénon speaks (FE, p. 61).
To 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).
242 In Terms of “Tradition”

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, insufficiently
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 strictly formalist nor figurative, this axiomatics occupies an original
and uncomfortable position in the human sciences, and one should not be sur-
prised 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
 ' Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 243

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 Yetsirab 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. To 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.

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 imbri-
cations. 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 micro-
cosm 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 grate-
ful 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 sym-
pathy of the monads but a heavy postulate, which remains short of universal
interdependence (CH, p. 301). Certainly, the latter concept gives the impression
ot In Terms of “Tradition”

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 (4pproches, 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.” Hence-
forth, 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 (SJ, 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
insufficiently human in the eyes of many readers. One hardly finds in him
spontaneous descriptions of the eminently 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 Guénonian 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 appli-
cation to the minds and bodies of today (PG, p. 146).
Impossible, therefore, to deny the essential place held by living concrete-
ness 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 Nodis 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 (SJ, 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.).
 ; Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 245

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 little
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 orienta-
tions which those proclaiming themselves the proponents of this “Tradition”
seem to follow today. First, a purist way, “severe,” elitist—of the Guénonian
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 Guénonian, besides the fact that Guénon’s
thinking does not seem to him to be sufficiently dialecticized. The very per-
sonality 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 René Guénon. Indeed, the work of Abellio
has more affinities with other types of thinking than with Guénonism, 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
246 In Terms of “Tradition”

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, Honé Wronski, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, or certain German
Nature philosophers. Perhaps ineluctably, such projects are stamped with sub-
jectivity. 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 appropria-
tion 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 pluridisci-
plinary 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 enumer-
ation 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, methodologi-
cally 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 syn-
chronic 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
 Raymond Abellio and the Western Esoteric “Tradition” 247

this word is taken in the Husserlo-Abellian sense. Absolute structure transforms

the natural and human datum as though directly, it transfigures it in incandes-
cent 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 legi-
timately 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 subtle
body, of the second birth, of reintegration.
That is why one sees,‘as though paradoxically, Abellio united with Guénon
in his disinterest—less marked than in Guénon 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 con-
tribution, 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 bétin, (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 insufficiently rigorous, not to succumb to fascination,
this obstacle to an admiration, a love and knowledge, that are authentic.
248 In Terms of “Tradition”

NOTES
* Jnitials and abbreviations used:
Approches Approches de la nouvelle gnose, Paris, Gallimard, “Les Essais” series, 1981.
CH Raymond Abellio (Cahier de l’Herne, collective work), Paris, Editions de
Herne, 1979.
CRA Cahiers Raymond Abellio, Paris, Media Pluriel, nos. 1 (1983) and 2 (1984).
Et. A. Etudes Abélliennes, Paris, Editions Axium, nos. 1-4 (1979-82).
FE La Fin de lésotérisme, Paris, Flammarion, 1973.
PG De la politique a la gnose. Entretiens avec Marie-Thérese de Brosses, Paris, P.
Belfont, 1987 (1st ed., 1966).
SA La Structure absolue. Essai de phénoménologie génétique, Paris, Gallimard,
“Bibliothéque des Idées” series, 1965.
SI Ma derniére mémoire LII: 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 témoignages inédits, 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 GUIDE TO RESEARCH

(Continued)

In my previous book (decess to Western Esotericism, 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 titles 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:
I] simbolismo dei numeri. Rom: Arkeios, 1999, 148 pp. The best introduc-
tion to the history of arithmology.
Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann. Paris: Dervy, 2 vols. (forth-
coming). Series “Cahiers de l’Hermétisme.” A selection of articles by
Deghaye on Paracelsism, theosophy, esotericism, romantic literature,
and the like.
Dictionnaire critique de Vésotérisme, 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 WouterJ. 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
250 A Bibliographical Guide to Research

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 ésotériques (XVIleme—XXeme
siécles): filiations et emprunts. Edited by Roland Edighoffer, Antoine Faivre
and WouterJ.Hanegraaff. Paris: Dervy and Arché-Edidit, 1999, 160 pp.
Series “ARIES.” Proceedings of the [Vth Congress of A.R.LE.S., Sor-
bonne, October 1996. This series of articles will serve as a good source
of references.
Wehr, Gerhard. Esoterisches Christentum. Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Stutt-
gart: Klett-Cotta, 1995, 359 pp. New edition, interestingly expanded (Ist
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
17th Congress of the International Association for the History of Reli-
gions, Mexico City, August 1995. Highly recommended, mostly 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 Frédérick Tristan. Paris: Dervy, 1996,
258 pp. Illustrated. New edition (on Ist ed., 1978, see Access... , p.
306), mentioned here because of the extensive bibliography (publica-
tions in French, 1900-1995) set up by Richard Caron.
Alchimie. Art, histoire et mythes. Edited by Didier Kahn and Sylvain Matton.
Paris: S.E.H.A., and Milan: Arché, 1995, 847 pp. Proceedings of the
symposium in Paris at the Collége de France (March 1991).
 A Bibliographical Guide to Research 251

Aspects de la tradition alchimique au XVII siécle. Edited by Frank Greiner. Paris:

S.E.HLA., and Milan: Arché, 1998, 518 pp. Proceedings of the sym-
posium at the University of Reims (November 1996).
Crisciani, Chiara. L’arte del sole e della luna: Alchimia e filosofia nel 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 Institu-
tion Libraries, 1990, x + 36 pp. Illustrated.
Emblems and Alchemy. Edited by Alison Adams and Stanton J. Linden. Glas-
gow: University of Glasgow, 1998, 215 pp. Series “Glasgow Emblem
Studies.”
Gebelein, Helmut. Alchemie. Munich: E. Diederichs, 1991, 496 pp. Illustrated.
Haage, Bernard D. Alchemie im Mittelalter: Ideen und Bilder, von Zozimos bis
Paracelsus. Zarich: 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 fewish Alchemists. A History and Source Book. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994, xvi + 617 pp.
Principe, Lawrence M. The Aspiring Adept. Robert Boyle and his 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 of Joachim Becher.

FREEMASONRY AND FRINGE MASONRY

Le Forestier, Remé. La Franc-Maconnerie templiere et occultiste aux XVIIleme et

XIXeme siecles (1970, new ed. 1989, cf. Access..., pp. 311 ff.) has been
published in German in 4 vols.: Die templarische und okkultistische
Freimaurerei im 18. und 19. fahrhundert, Leimen (Germany): Werner
Kristkeitz, 1987 (1, 381 pp.; I, 384 pp.; II, 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.
250 A Bibliographical Guide to Research

FROM THE SECOND (CORPUS HERMETICUM)

TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

Barton, Tamsyn. Ancient Astrology. London: Routledge, 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. I/ risveglio della gnosi ovvero 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 ofEssays. 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,
19945 23:35 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 follow-
ing one to a lesser extent, are mentioned here because of the accom-
panying critical material.
 A Bibliographical Guide to Research ASS)

. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translation of 1651 by James Freake,

edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. Saint Paul: Llewellyn, new
ed. 1995, (Ist 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 ofMonastic
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 Crisis of Renaissance Thought (1965, cf.
Access . . . , p. 321) is forthcoming in French translation (Paris: Dervy,
1999. Series “Bibliothéque de |’Hermétisme”).
Opus Magnum. Kniha 0 sakralni geometrit, 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 his
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 (1590-
1687). Binghamton (N.Y.): Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts
and Studies, 1989, xi + 233 pp. On G. Bruno, M. Pohio, T. Campanella,
G. Schott.
. Renaissance 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.”
24 A Bibliographical Guide to Research

Zambelli, Paola. L’apprendista stregone: Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico

della Mirandola e seguact. Venice: Marsilio, 1995, 227 pp.

B) Reception ofAlexandrian Hermetism

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.
Dal dio greco al mago alchemico, Rome: Atanor, 1999.
Secret, Francois. Hermétisme et Kabbale. Naples: Instituto Italiano per gli Studi
Filosofici, 1992, 146 pp.

C) Christian Kabbalah
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 als asthetisches Paradigma: Die
Konstruktion einer dsthetischen Kabbala seit der friiben Neuzeit, Stuttgart-
Weimar:J. B. Metzler, 1998, 403 pp.
Secret, Francois. Hermeétisme et Kabbale (cf. supra, B).
. Postel revisité. Nouvelles recherches sur Guillaume Postel et son milieu
(Premiére série). Paris: S.E.H.A. and Milan: Arché, 1998, 260 pp. Series
“Textes et Travaux de Chrysopoeia.”

D) Paracelsism and Naturphilosophie

Analecta Paracelsica. Studien zum Nachleben Theophrastus von Hohenheims im
deutschen Kulturgebiet der Friiben Neuzeit. Edited by Joachim Telle.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, 590 pp. Illustrated.
Debus, Allen G. Paracelso e la tradizione paracelsiana. Naples: La Citta del Sole,
1996, 126 pp.
Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works).
Il Medico, VArte, 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 his Reputation, His 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.”
 A Bibliographical Guide to Research 255

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. Paracelsus-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.”

E) Rosicrucianism
Akerman, Susanna. Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in
Northern Europe. Leiden etc.: EJ. Brill, 1998, vii + 263 pp. Series
“Studies in Intellectual History.”
Cimelia Rhodostaurotica. Die Rosenkreuzer im Spiegel der zwischen 1610 und 1660
entstandenen Handschriften und Drucke. Edited by Carlos Gilly, intro-
duced by Carlos Gilly, Frans A. Janssen, and Joost R. Ritman. Amster-
dam: 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 Wolfenbiittel.
Dickson, Donald R. The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret
Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century. Leiden etc.: EJ. Brill, 1998, x
+ 293 pp. Series “Studies in Intellectual History.”
Edighoffer, Roland. Les Rose-Croix et la crise de la conscience européenne au
XVIleme siécle. Paris: Dervy, 1998, 315 pp. Series “Bibliothéque de
! Hermétisme.”
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 als dsthetisches Paradigma. Cf.
supra, Renaissance, C.
Secret, Francois. Hermétisme et Kabbale (cf. supra, B).

F) Theosophy
Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse 4 Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works).
Gibbons, B. J. Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Develop-
ment in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xi +
247 pp. Series “Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.”
256 A Bibliographical Guide to Research

Versluis, Arthur. Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity. Hudson (N.Y.):

Lindisfarne Press, 1994, 223 pp.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Aufklirung und Esoterik. Edited by Monika Neugebauer-Wolk. Hamburg: F.
Meiner, 1999, 477 pp. Series “Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert.”

ROMANTICISM AND NATURPHILOSOPHIE

Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works).
Faivre, Antoine. Philosophie de la Nature (Physique Sacrée et Théosophie,
XVII]e—XIXe siécles). Paris: Albin Michel, 1996, 349 pp. Series “Idées
Philosophiques.”
McCalla, Arthur. A Romantic Historiography: The Philosophy of History of Pierre-
Simon Ballanche. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996, 464 pp. Series “Studies in
Intellectual History.”
Méheust, Bertrand. Somnambulisme et médiumnité. Vol. 1, Le défi du magnétisme.
Vol. II, Le choc des sciences psychiques. Le Plessis-Robinson: Synthélabo,
1999, 620 et 598 pp. Series “Les Empécheurs de Penser en Rond.”

FROM THE NINETEENTH THROUGH THE TWENTIETH

CENTURIES
Carlson, Maria. “No Religion Higher than Truth”: A History 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 Symbolism
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: Dervy, series “Bibliothéque de
!Hermétisme”).
Godwin, Joscelyn. The Theosophical Enlightenment. Albany (N.Y.): State
University of New York Press, 1994, xiii + 448 pp. Series “Western
Esoteric Traditions.” Illustrated.
 A Bibliographical Guide to Research VW)

Gomes, Michael. Theosophy in the Nineteenth Century. An Annotated Bibli-

ography. New York and London: Garland, 1994, 582 pp.
Graal et Modernité. Edited by Robert Baudry, Gérard Chandés, and A. Faivre.
Paris: Dervy, 1996, 231 pp. Series “Cahiers de l’Hermétisme.” Pro-
ceedings 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 History of a
Magical Order 1887-1923. Wellingborough (U.K.): The Aquarian
Press, 1985, xxi + 305 pp. (Ist ed. 1972).
Il ritorno della 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.”
Il Santo Graal. Edited by Franco Cardini, Massimo Introvigne, and Maria
Montesano. Florence: Giunti Gruppe Editoriale, 1998, 183 pp.
Introvigne, Massimo. I/ ritorno dello gnosticismo. Carnago (Varese): SugarCo,
1993, 264 pp. Series “Nuove Spiritualita.”
———.. La sfida magica. Milan; Ancora, 1995, 238 pp. Series “La Bussola.”
New ed. under the title I/ 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-satanisti dal seicento ai nostri giorni.
Milan: A Mondadori, 1994. French edition: Enquéte sur le satanisme.
Satanistes et antisatanistes du XVIIe siécle a nos jours. Paris: Dervy, 1997,
414 p.
Klatt, Nate Theosophie und Anthroposophie. Neue Aspekte zu ihrer Geschichte
aus dem Nachlass von Wilhelm Hiibbe-Schleiden (1846-1916) mit einer
Auswahl von 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-Phanomen (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.”
258 A Bibliographical Guide to Research

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 (N.Y.): State University of
New York Press, 1997, 384 pp. Series “Western Esoteric Traditions.”

ESOTERICISM, LITERATURE, AND ART

Alchemical Poetry (1575-1700). From Previously Unpublished Manuscripts. Edited
by Robert M. Schuler. New York and London: Garland, 1995, lvii +
647 pp. Series “English Renaissance Hermeticism.”
Berk, M. F. M. van den. “Die Zauberflote”: Een alchimistische allegorie. Vilburg:
Tilburg University Press, 1994, 463 pp. Illustrated.
Deghaye, Pierre. De Paracelse a Thomas Mann (cf. supra, General Works).
Dohm, Burkhard. Poetische Alchemie. Oeffnung zur Sinnlichkeit in der Hohelied-
und 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.”
Erfabrung 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’ésotérisme d’Edgar Poe. Editions Mézarek (s./.), 1998, 327 pp.
Leighton, Lauren G. The Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature
(Decembrism and Freemasonry). The
’ Pennsylvania State University Press,
1994224 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 modernité en Allemagne autour de 1900 (Mystik, Mystizis-
mus und Moderne in Deutschland um 1900). Edited by Moritz Bassler
and Hildegard Chatellier. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Stras-
burg, 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.”
 A Bibliographical Guide to Research 259

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.”

JOURNALS AND SERIALS

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 titles since that guide was written.

Cahiers du Groupe d’Etudes Spirituelles Comparées (Paris: Arche): Fémininité et

Spiritualité (1995); La Géographie spirituelle (1997); L’Esprit et la Nature
(1997); Animus et Anima (1998); L’Un et le Multiple (1999).
Politica Hermetica (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme): Prophétisme et Politique (1994);
_ Esotérisme et socialisme (1995); L’Histoire cachée entre Histoire révélée et
histoire critique (1996); Pouvoir du symbole (1997); Les contrées secretes
(1998).
B21 Fe 7y "ie a iF
en ee es e
¢

; . ; ;
rT 7 e - 2
ie, ca & éa j Ay mi
is“seri 2aoe
we r

: ; ; j ’ j -
me 7 ia es 7 ' 1'¢ ‘ Any i SY Orr te
edie — eons
tie nt iseTiS4

nS meet iis pee ‘ - é, fa) if Raeaes rae -ai ate

Re

2 a teeOe ad ae zlon
_, o : 7 A

ee sl Aw nth ss A - a \ Sais feo

ee
"is
x ulin a Aat AUK. +a
ee a “ fied

eh vegies ae Oy oemeaemeg
“ hiey 4 t *) — - ’ ea vie: sal! § ae ra A ship
elo L.¢

sie be wr ey fain A A bet thimtiois wr by wits Sa ATED ,td

Neat
| in | dk r AY , esr 2 =r
oak

ha ners Acsomaiigeea
my? AN wos

§ a ie OP athe reels AAS awa 7

} a, ‘oma © eal ‘Work |
bite TL Ae a ¥en or we
ali. tar Lh Te ith “ bit dite le) “a deems DM
"a tar Hoty ie aeeds ¢ stint ids
dha 7
bat
+
Pp
r

A)

Nishaa Och MOE Nace scone as

a : al 4 se aaa ns - wea nit tlk
Plas bres Se 37 2—..- ad i

i
-
Pate Actes RMER
ey
—s : ete
F :
‘ b ‘
at
‘ye

= : 1 : ‘ vi) WMG, 027 sae

ld ve «3 ae . True
, pagyane ne
| | pargt:
7 wi

a e | ul7 »
Ege lant fom
i a, : ) dp
-_— - & _ = .
=- => yw 7 a ite & Po

HT
t

Sale gage
z 7 a oe

;
ir ’ a

ame
} » ie a“ aie wer
4 -7tF

S i afeimar wea te- ;

900 Brey r oti
: S gin cng techs 1Mpetra
Cis abe
7
wie 7

is
 INDEX OF NAMES

Abellio, Raymond, xxx, 180, 229-248 Arnold, Gottfried, xviii, 10, 12, 14, 16,
Abraham, Lyndy, 250 34, 36, 38-40, 43, 50, 55, 61, 63, 64,
Adler, Alfred, 238 73, 80
Agreda, Maria of, 33 Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio, 79
Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, xv, xviii, Augustine, Saint, 46, 104, 202, 210
12, 14, 17, 25, 26, 40, 42, 101-102, Aurobindo, Sri, 199, 200, 241
127, 146, 252 Avens, Robert, 126
Akerman, Susanna, 255 Avicenna, 100, 127, 128
Alabri, Johann Arboreus, 12 Azouvi, Francois, xxxiv
Alain de Lille, 173
Alexander the Great, 173 Baader, Franz von, xvi, 22, 26, 45, 46, 30,
Al Gazzali, 100, 127 32, 50, 54, 56, 58, 64, 87, 93-96,
Algeo, John, 47 115-121, 125, 133, 137, 143-148,
Al Kindi, 100, 127 151, 152, 156, 160, 165, 166, 193,
Amadou, Robert, 29, 43, 96 211, 224
Ambelain, Robert, 194 Bablot, Benjamin, 131
Ambrosi, Luigi, 126 - Bachelard, Gaston, 99
Andreae, Johann Valentin, xvii, 13, 37, Bacon, Francis, 42, 82, 83, 104, 129
66, 78, 82, 83, 86, 172, 176, 181, Bacon, Roger, 36, 44, 127
183, 184, 186, 187 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 192, 193, 226,
Andrew of Crete, Great Canon, 154 jpy}
Angelus Silesius, Johannes Scheffler, - Balzac, Honoré de, 24, 232
known as, 65, 70-75, 77, 81, 82, Barlet, Albert Faucheux, known as, 27
162 Barnetson, Margaret, 227
Anglicana, Maria, 63 Bartholomew of England, 173
Anthony, Saint, 204 Barton, Tamsyn, 252
Apollonius of Tyana, 172 Bate, W. Jackson, 134
Arboreus, Johann. See Alabri Bathilde d’Orléans, 22
Archimedes, 116 Baudelaire, Charles, 24, 121, 122, 132,
Aristotle, 34, 43, 74, 99, 146, 179, 201, 134, 135, 155
217,231 Becq, Annie, 111, 131, 132, 135
Arndt, Johann, xvi, 6, 11, 32, 36, 46, 50, Begemann, W., 34
60, 83, 84, 175, 176, 182 Béguin, Albert, 121
Arnim, Achim von, 120 Beigbeder, Marc, 240

261
262 Index of Names

Beilharz, Richard, 134 Breton, André, 124, 135, 238

Bellay, Joachim du, 66 Breymayer, Reinhard, 30
Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 22, 32 Broek, Roelof van den, xxxii
Benz, Ernst, xix, 30 Bromley, Thomas, 12, 34
Berdiaev, Nicolas, 29, 210, 231 Brosses, Marie-Thérése de, 240
Berger, Peter L., 162, 166 Brucker, Jacob, xviii, 16-19, 40, 41
Bergson, Henri, 194, 210, 215, 225 Bruno, Giordano, xv, 13, 36, 101-102,
Berk, M. F. M. van den, 258 128, 134, 177
Berkeley, George, 117 Buber, Martin, 193
Bernard, Jean-Jacques, 23, 25, 26, 45 Buddecke, Werner, 34, 38
Bernard, Saint, 80 Buddeus, Johann Franciscus, 16, 17, 40
Bernard Silvester, 173 Budé, Guillaume, 35
Bernaud, Nicholaus, 36 Bullitt, John, 134
Beyerland. See Van Beyerland Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George, 184,
Bideau, Paul-Henri, 165 230
Blake, William, 112 Bundy, Murray Wright, 126
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 4, 5, 27, 28,
47, 123, 135, 200, 210, 212, 218, Calvin, John, 202
225 Camerarius, 105
Blondel, 131 Camillo, Giulio, 101
Bocchi, Achilles, 178, 189 Campanella, Thomas, xvi, 14, 36, 82, 83,
Bodemann, Eduard, 43 84, 104, 129
Boethius, 53, 54, 101 Canseliet, Eugéne, 230
Boehme, Jacob, xvi, 5, 7-19, 21, 22, 25, Carlson, Maria, 256
26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 41-47, Carton, Paul, 194
49, 50, 53-55, 57-64, 66-70, 73, Carus, Carl Gustav, 22, 45
80-82, 86, 93, 105-107, 113, Casaubon, Isaac, 182, 183
117-120, 125, 131, 132, 137-140, Cattani, Andrea, 128
142-144, 146-150, 159, 175, 177, Cazotte, Jacques, 96
181, 193, 210, 216, 224, 225, 229, Cellier, Léon, 42
247 Chanel, Christian, 256
Boerhaave, Hermann, 110, 130, 131 Charles IV, King of Bohemia, 102
Bonaventure, Saint, xxv, 71, 75, 173, 193, Chastel, André, 50
208, 231, 237, 247 Chauvet, Auguste-Edouard, 29
Boreel, Adam, 25, 42, 43 Chladni, Ernst Friedrich, 144, 151, 156,
Borges, Jorge Luis, 185 165
Bosch, Hieronymus, 57 Chmakoyv, Vladimir, 207, 215
Bosson, Henri, 105, 127, 128, 129 Cippus, 110
Bossuet, 55 Clapton, G. T., 135
Boulgakov, Serge, 29 Clement of Alexandria, 3
Bourignon, Antoinette, 10-12, 22, 46, 65 Cliteur, Eva, 225, 226
Brach, Jean-Pierre, xxxii, 249 Colberg, Ehregott Daniel, xviii, 11, 12,
Brann, Noel L., 253 14, 16, 17, 34 \
Braun, Lucien, 128, 129, 132, 135 Combas, Pierre de, 230, 236, 237, 245
Breckling, Friedrich, 39 Comenius, Jan Amos, 9, 40, 83
Brenz, Johann, 182 Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 48
 tee ofNames 263

Copernicus, Nicolaus, 52, 242 Douzetemps, 15

Coqueret, Henri, 25 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre-Samuel,
Corbin, Henry, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 30, 33, 47, 11451159192
48, 99, 106, 154, 155, 157-161, 165, Durand, Gilbert, xxxiv, 126, 242
166 Diirer, Albrecht, 81
Cordevius, B., 36 Dutoit-Membrini, Jean-Philippe, 21, 46
Corsetti, Jean-Paul, xix
Coudert, Allison P., 254 Eamon, William, 252, 253
Court de Gébelin, Antoine, xviii, xxxi Eckartshausen, Karl von, 21, 32, 46, 47,
Crisciani, Chiara, 251 185
Croll, Oswald, 36, 108 Ecker- und Eckhoffen, Heinrich von, 24
Crouzel, Henri, 127 Eckhart, Johann, known as Meister
Crowe, Catherine, 121-123, 134, 135 Eckhart, 33, 51, 54, 60, 65, 71-74,
Cudworth, Ralph, 17, 41 146, 194, 231, 237, 238, 241, 247
Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien, 109, 110, Eco, Umberto, 35
130 Edighoffer, Roland, 37, 178, 186-188,
Czepko, Daniel, 65-67, 73-76, 82, 85, 255
105 Eliade, Mircea, xvii, 48, 68, 238, 239, 246
Emmerich, Catherine, 122
Dagobert, King, 102 Ennemoser, Joseph, 121
Damascene, John, 154 Erasmus, Desiderius, 34
Darwin, Charles, 210 Erastus, alias Thomas Liebler, 103, 104
Daub, Karl, 93, 96 Eschenmeyer, Carl August von, 22, 121,
David-Neel, Alexandra, 219 13552100024
Debus, Allan G., 253, 254 Etienne, Henri, 35
Décote, Georges, 96 Evola, Julius, 236, 244
Dee, John, 177 Ezekiel, 209
Deghaye, Pierre, 19, 29, 33, 34, 127, 129,
131, 139, 140, 149, 176, 182, 185, Fabre, Jean, 18, 41
188, 249, 254-256, 258 Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine, 198, 202, 210,
Delacroix, Henri, 50 216-218
Delisle de Sales, J.-C. Isoard, known as Fabry, Jacques, 30
24, 42, 111 Faivre, Antoine, xxxii, 42, 85, 131, 151,
Descartes, René, 129, 231, 241, 243 152, 166, 190, 225, 254, 256, 258
Deveney, John P., 256 Fara, Patricia, 256
Deussen, Paul, 194 Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 22
Dickson, Donald R., 255 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 162
Diderot, Denis, 18, 19, 36, 41, 47, 50, Feuquiéres, marquis de, 111, 132
bel Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 64, 112, 117
Dietze, W., 85 Ficino, Marsilio, xiv, xvii, 14, 35,
Dionysius the Aeropagite. See Pseudo- 100-102, 127, 158, 163, 177, 180,
Dionysius 182, 233
Dobbs, BettyJo Teeter, 251 Fictuld, Hermann, 15
Dodds, E. R., 127 Fienus, Thomas, 105
Dohm, Burkhard, 258 Filoramo, Giovanni, 252
Dorn, Gerhard, xvi, 7, 17, 32, 79 Finsterlin, Hellmut, 227
264 Index ofNames

Flint, Valeria I. J., 252 Gorski, WilliamJ., 258

Fludd, Robert, xvi, 10, 11, 16, 17, 19, 25, Greer, Mary K., 257
35,42 Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina von, 65,
Foix de Candale, Frang¢ois, xv 67, 68, 73, 74, 75, 85
Franck, Sebastian, 43, 51, 54, 55, 60 Grillparzer, Franz, 126
Franckenberg, Abraham von, 38, 66, 82 Grimm, Jacob, 149
Francis, Saint, 102 Grimm, Wilhelm,149
Franciscus Georgius Venetus. See Giorgi Grosseteste, Robert, 3
Franke, August Hermann, 77 Griinewald, Matthias, 81
Freher, Dionysius Andreas, 15 Guaita, Stanislas de, 203, 212, 223
Freitas, José Lima de, 185 Guénon, René, xvii, xviii, 27, 47, 184,
Freud, Sigmund, 162, 222, 238 207, 234-236, 241, 245, 247
Frick, Karl R. H., xix, 46 Ginzberg, Johann Eberlin von, 82, 83
Fronzonius, Hieronymus, 105 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, 184, 212,
Froschammer,J., 124, 125, 135 213
Fulcanelli, 230 Gutmann, Aegidius, 6, 10, 11, 16, 17, 26,
39, 40, 175, 185
Gaffarel, Jacques, 105 Guyon, Jeanne Bouvier de la Motte, 65,
Gale, Thomas, 17, 40 74
Ganivet, Jean, 100
Gebelein, Helmut, 251 Haage, Bernard D., 251
Gembloux, Guibert de, 80 Hadot, Pierre, 165
Gence, Jean-Baptiste, 43 Haering, Theodor, 132
Gentzken, Friedrich, 16, 39 Hahn, Michael, 22, 46, 64
Gerhard, Johann, 81, 83 Hahn, Philipp Matthaus, 32, 46
Gibbons, B.J., 255 Haller, Albrecht von, 110, 130
Gichtel, Johann Georg, xvi, 10, 11, 14, Hamberger, Julius, 22, 26, 46, 94
15, 19, 21, 38, 47, 59-65, 70, 71, Hanegraaff, WouterJ., xx, xxi, xxv—xxvil,
73=16782,85, 106; 107 xxix, xxxl-xxxiv, 249, 257
Gilbert, Robert A., 256 Hardenberg, Karl von, 116
Gilly, Carlos, 33, 35, 36, 187, 255 Hart, Ray L., 126
Giorgi, xv, 17, 25, 34, 40, 42, 180 Hartung, Caspar, 79
Gliising, Johann Otto, 19 Harvet, Israel, 36
Gnosius, D., 36 Haslmayr, Adam, 13, 36, 37
Goedelmann, Georg, 104, 129 Haugwitz, Christian August Heinrich, 24
Godelman, Johann Georg, 13, 36 Hegel, Friedrich, 64, 116, 201, 225, 238
Godet, Alain, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130 Heidegger, Martin, 99, 231
Godwin, Joscelyn, xix, 256, 258 Helvetius, Johann Friedrich, 19, 41
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, xxi, 19, Heraclitus, 156, 210, 214
76, 111, 157-159, 161, 163, 165, Herder, Johann Gottfried, xviii, xxxi
185, 186, 196, 214 Hermes Trismegistus, xv, xxiii, 14, 41,
Gomes, Michael, 257 172, 176-180, 183, 184, 233, 241
Gorceix, Bernard, xxx, 30, 32, 49, 50, 52, Hesse, Hermann, 186
53, 56-64, 66-68, 70-86, 129, 130, Hildebrand, Wolfgang, 35
178, 179, 187, 188 Hildegard of Bingen, xuii, 33, 80
Goerres, Joseph, 134 Hillman, James, 130
 Index ofNames 265

Hippel, Ernst von, 225 Keyserling, Hermann, 231

Hocke, Gustav René, 50 Khunrath, Heinrich, 6, 11-14, 17, 28, 35,
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 120 36, 176, 181
Hoffmann, Franz, 22, 26, 45, 46 Kieckhefer, Richard, 252
Holanda, Francisco de, 177 Kies, Cosette N., 250
Honorius Augustodunensis, 173 Kieser, Franciscus, 79
Howe, Ellic, 257 Kilcher, Andreas, 254, 255
Hugues, R., 135 Kircher, Athanasius, 14, 69
Hugo of Saint Victor, 31 Kirchweger, A. J., 15
Husserl, Edmund, 231, 236, 238, 241 Klatt, Norbert, 257
Hut, Serge, 30 Klein, Robert, 128
Kleuker, Johann Friedrich, 32, 45
Iamblichus of Chalcis, 3, 14, 35 Knorr Von Rosenroth, Christian, 32, 73,
Ibn ‘Arabi, 30, 158 77-79, 85
Ibn ‘Umail, 187 Konig, Peter-R., 257
Introvigne, Massimo, xix, xxi, 257 Koyré, Alexandre, 29, 32, 49, 84,
Iunius, Francisco, 40 128-130, 132, 149
Krause, Wilhelm, 121
Jackson, Carl T., 47 Kriele, Martin, 191, 225-227
Jacques-Chaquin, Nicole, 95, 135 Kriidener, Julie de, 22
Jambet, Christian, 126 Kuehn, Sophie von, 63
Jansenius, Cornelius, 104 Kuhlmann, Quirinus, xvi, 10, 12, 16, 17,
Joguin, Odile, 258 19, 21, 25, 38-40, 42, 63, 65, 68-71,
John Christostome, Saint, 100 73-75, 77, 82
John of the Cross, 60, 194 Kiintz, Darcy, 257
John Scottus Eriugena, 31, 34, 36, 146,
213 Lacan, Jacques, 132
Jerome, Saint, 100 Laffly, George, 236
Judge, William Quan, 27 Lampe, G. W. H., 31
Juhasz, Joseph B., 126 Lancre, Pierre de, 104, 129
Jung, Carl Gustav, 79, 109, 130, 193, Largeault, J., 239
199, 212, 219, 221-223, 238, 239, La Tour Georges de, 65
246 . Laurant, Jean-Pierre, xix, xxi
Jungmayr, Petra, 131 Law, William, 15, 47
Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich, 21, 30, Lazarelli, Ludovico, xv
46, 57 Leade, Jane, xvi, 10, 21, 22, 25, 42, 47,
60, 61
Kafka, Franz, 236 Le Boys des Guays, Jacques-Francois-
Kant, Emmanuel, 99, 194 Etienne, 23
Keckermann, B., 36 Lecour, Paul, 233
Keleph Ben Nathan. See Dutoit- Le Forestier, René, 251
Membrini Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 25, 42, 43,
Keller, Jules, 30 50, 58, 69, 74, 106, 215, 243
Kemp, Friedhelm,153, 165, 166, 167 Leighton, Lauren G., 258
Kepler, Johann, 105 Lem, Stanislaw, 124, 135
Kerner, Justinus, 121, 122 Lenin, 195
266 Index ofNames

Leon-Jones, Sylvia de, 253 Meyrink, Gustav, 184

Le Pape, Gilles, 166 Migne, Jacques-Paul, 31, 36, 80
Lévi, Eliphas, xvii, 123, 135, 193, 202, Milch, Werner, 66
203; 2072 1252139219,223 Moller, Martin, 83
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 205 Montaigne, Michel de, 102, 112
Libavius, Andreas, 36, 104, 129 Montmort, Rémond de, 43
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 151 More, Henry, 10, 11, 17, 25, 41, 104, 129
Linden, Stanton J., 258 More, Thomas, 82, 83
Lippius, Johann, 36 Morgante, James, 227
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips, 185 Morhof, Daniel Georg, 14, 15, 17, 38, 40
Lovejoy, Arthur O., xxix, xxxiv Morin, Edgar, 135
Loyola, Ignatius of, 68 Morsius, 36
Lull, Raymond, 25, 69, 173, 205, 232, Muckle,J.T., 127
246 Mintzer, Thomas, 177
Lupasco, Stéphane, 238, 239, 240 Musset, Alfred de, 5
Luria, Isaac, 65, 209
Luther, Martin, 57, 61, 182, 202 Nauert, Charles G., 253
Lyra, Nicholas de, 100 Nemesius, bishop of Emesa, 173
Neugebauer-Wolk, Monika, xxxili
Maas, Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich, 131 Neveux, Jean-Baptiste, 81, 86
Maier, Michael, xvi Newman, William, 251
Maistre, Joseph de, 26, 45, 87, 91, 92, 95 Newton, Isaac, 20
Malebranche, Nicholas de, 99, 129, 131 Nicholas of Cusa, 53, 241
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 84 Nicolescu, Basarab, xxxv, 31
Marcianus, 204 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 162
Marco Polo, 154, 161, 164 Nollius, Henricus, 34
Marcouville, 127 Nostradamus (Michel de Nostre-Dame),
Marqués-Riviere, Jean, 224 14
Marquet, Jean-Francois, 129 Novalis, Friedrich von Hardenberg, 5,
Marvell, Leon, xxxiv 22, 63, 74, 113, 115=117; 121, 185,
Marx, Jacques, 126, 131 224
Marx, Karl, 162, 238 Novikov, Nicolas, 24
Marzio, Galeotto, 127 Nymann, Hieronymus, 104, 129
Matter, Jacques, xxxi
Maximos the Confessor, 173 Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, xvi, 15,
McCalla, Arthur, 256 19, 22, 26, 30, 32, 41, 46, 50, 56-58,
Mead, George Robert Stow, xviii, xxxi 61, 64, 112, 131, 143, 144, 151, 183,
Meakin, David, 258 209, 224
Méheust, Bertrand, 256 Olcott, Henry S., 27, 47
Mercurius, Franciscus, 130 Opitz, Martin, 66
Mersenne, Marin, 129 Origen, 60, 92, 100, 210
Merswin, Rulman, 172 Osiander, 182
Messiaen, Olivier, 149 Osten-Sacken, Friedrichvon, 26, 45, 46
Messias, Petrus, 102, 127 Ostwald, Wilhelm, 216, 217
Meyer, Johann Friedrich von, 22, 30, 46,
121 Pagel, Walter, 128
 Index ofNames 267

Papus, Gérard Encausse, known as, 27, Postel, Guillaume, 14, 34, 38, 46
194, 202, 203, 207, 216, 230 Prester John, 172, 177
Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombastus von Principe, Lawrence M., 251
Hohenheim, xv—xvii, xxi, 6, 7, Proclus, 3, 35
10-12, 14, 16-19, 25, 26, 28, 34, 36, Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, 3, 6,
46, 50-57, 59, 62, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81, 14, 31, 33, 36, 127, 210
84, 85, 93, 102-104, 108, 112, 113, Puech, Henri-Charles, 154, 155, 164
116-118, 120, 121, 123, 125, 130, Pythagoras, xv, 14, 179, 234
134, 147, 173-176, 178, 180
Pascal, Blaise, 74, 99 Quercetanus, 32
Pasqually, Martinés de, xvi, 21, 24, 25, Quinn, William W., Jr., xxii, 258
27, 42, 161, 202, 210, 215 Quispel, Gilles, 250
Patai, Raphael, 251
Patrizi, Francesco, xv, 13, 17, 33, 36, 40 Rabelais, Francois, 173, 175
Paul, Saint (the apostle), xxii, 45, 58, 92, Racine, Jean, 74
93, 119, 125, 157, 214, 231, 241 Rahman, F., 126
Paulus, Julian, 255 Ranft, Michael, 131, 134
Péladan, Joséphin, 135, 203, 207 Rathmann, Herman, 40
Pereira, Bento, 104, 129 Régnier, Marcel, 191, 225
Perna, Pietro, 35 Rembrandt, Paul, 81
Pernety, Dom Joseph-Antoine, 24 Renatus, Christian, 19
Petécz, Michael, 133 ; Reuchlin, Johann, 12, 14, 17, 25, 38, 40,
Peuckert, Will-Erich, xviii, xix, xxxi, 34, 42,177
35, 50, 84, 183, 187, 189 Rhodes James, Montague, 164
Philippe of Lyons, 202, 230 Rhodiginus, Caelius, 102, 127
Philo of Alexandria, 33, 202 Ricchieri. See Rhodiginus
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, xiv, 6, Richer, Edouard, 23
14, 17, 25, 26, 38,-40, 42, 177, 193, Richter, Samuel. See Sincerus Renatus
233 Riemenschneider, Tilman, 81
Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 128 Riff, Hermann, 128
Peter the First, 69 Riffard, Pierre A., xix, xxi, xxv, xxxili
Pierre d’Aban, Pietro d’Abano or Pierre Rilke, Rainer Maria, 81
de Padoue, 127 Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 22, 116, 121,
Plato, xv, 43, 179, 201, 217, 221, 231, 224
234, 240 Rocholl, Rudolf, 22, 26, 46
Platvoet, Jan, xxvii, xxxili Romanus, Morienus, 172
Pliny, 128 Ronsard, Pierre de, 102
Plotinus, 156, 158, 163 Roos, Jacques, 132
Poel, Max van der, 253 Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, 257
Poiret, Pierre, 10, 12, 17, 25, 42, 64, 107 Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio, 46
Pomponazzi, Pietro, 101, 103-105, 127, Rothe, Johannes, 69
128 Rudnikova, 207
Pontus, Aemilius, 35 Rousse-Lacordaire, Jér6me, xxxiv
Pordage, John, xvi, 10, 19, 25, 42, 46 Rousset, Jean, 79
Porphyry, 3, 45, 100 Rudolph, K., xxxiii
Porset, Charles, 251 Rudrauff, Kilian, 40
268 Index ofNames

Ruland, Martin, 130, 179 Shanks, Michaél, 135

Rulandus, Martinus, 109 Shumaker, Wayne, 253
Ruska, Julius, 187 Siémons, Jean-Louis, 3, 5, 31, 42, 47
Ruysbroek, Jan Van. See Van Ruysbroek Sincerus Renatus, alias Samuel Richter,
15,19
Sagnard, Frangois M., 127 Smith, Pamela H., 251
Saint-Georges de Marsais, Hector de, 15 Smoller, Laura A., 252
Saint-Germain, Count of, 185 Snoek, Jan, xxxii
Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de, xvi, xxiii, Soloviev, Vladimir, 28, 210, 228
21-27, 29, 42, 44-47, 50, 53, 58, 64, Smoller, Laura Ackerman, 252
75, 81, 87-91, 93, 95, 96, 113-117, Spaemann, Robert, 191, 226
120, 132, 134, 146, 148, 150, 152, Sparrow, John, 37, 38
160, 162, 163, 194, 202, 203, 207, Spee, Friedrich, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 82
209, 210, 215, 216, 224, 225, 238 Spener, Philipp-Jacob, 60, 77
Saint-Victor, Hugues de. See Hugues de Sperber, Julius, 10, 11, 19, 34, 172, 175
Saint- Victor Spinoza, 18, 231
Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Alexandre de, Staél, Anne-Louise-Germaine, baronne
180, 202, 205, 218, 232, 246 de, 25, 44
Salzmann, Frédéric-Rodolphe, 21, 30 Steiner, Rudolf, 29, 47, 192, 210, 218,
Santucci, James A., 3, 31, 47, 48, 257 237
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 99 Stellatus, Josephus, pseudonym of
Schaller, K., 34 Christoph Hirsch, 37
Scheffler, Johannes. See Angelus Silesius Steuco, Agostino, 179
Scheible, Joseph, xviii Stoll,J.G., 42
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, 22, 46, 63, Strenski, Ivan, xxxiii
64, 116, 117, 224 Stroumsa, Guy G., 252
Schiller, Friedrich, 25, 42, 222, 224 Studion, Simon, 173, 176, 181
Schlegel, Friedrich, 22, 25, 42, 46 Sturm, Diether, 134
Schlepper, Werner, 228 Suchten, Alexander von, 36
Schmidt, Albert-Marie, 50, 78 Susini, Eugéne, 30, 45, 49, 84
Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, 164 Suso, Henri, 73
Scholem, Gershom, 32, 58 Swedenborg, Emanuel, xvi, 20, 22, 23,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 106, 132, 158, 25, 26, 30, 42, 47, 57, 161, 166
159 Synesius, 100
Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich, 22, 46, 54,
121, 133 Taudler, 129
Schulitz, John, 34 Tauler, Jean, 32, 33, 54, 73, 74, 76, 105
Schuon, Frithjof, xxvii Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 194, 210,
Schwenkfeld, Caspar, 7, 80, 81 215,225
Sclei (or Scleus), Bartholomaiis, 26, 33, Thales, 214
34 Theophrastus. See Paracelsus
Scot Erigene. See John Scottus Eriugena Thomas, Saint, 74, 80, 101, 127, 194,
Sculteus, Andreas, 73 202, 210, 231 S
Secret, Francois, xix, 254, 255 Thomasius, Christian, 25, 42, 43
Sendigovius, Michel, 109, 130 Thorndike, Lynn, xviii, xxxi, 105, 127
Severinus, 32 Tilliette, Xavier, 191
 Index of Names 269

Tiryakian, Edward A., xxxi Webster, John, 104, 129

Tolstoy, Leo, 69 Wecker, Johann Jacob, 35
Tomberg, Valentin, xxx, 29, 192, 193, Weeks, Andrew, 255
225, 227, 228 Wehr, Gerhard, xix, 29, 30, 46, 227, 250
Tomlinson, Gary, 253, 259 Weigel, Valentin, xvi, 6, 10, 16, 17, 25,
Tostato, Alphonse, 105 30, 32, 34, 39, 42, 50-62, 66, 72, 74,
Trithemius, Johannes, xv 75, 81, 84, 85, 104, 105, 175, 181,
Truzzi, Marcello, xxxi 188
Tschech, Johann Theodor von, 73, 82 Weimar, Karl August von, 41
Tuveson, Ernst Lee, xix, xxxi, 126 Weinrich, Martin, 104, 129
Welling, Georg von, alias Salwigt, 15,
Ueberfeld, Johann Wilhelm, 19, 60 Odes si
Werner, Philipp Heinrich, 121, 133, 134
Valentinus, Basilius, 100, 187 Westcott, Willian Wynn, xxxi
Van Beyerland, Abraham Willemszon, Westfal, Johann Caspar, 131
37, 38 Wetzels, Walter D., 132
Van Diilmen, Richard, 37, 83, 86, 187 Willermoz, Jean-Baptiste, 24
Van Helmont, Franziscus Mercurius, 17, Williams, Charles, 193
18, 25, 34, 42, 130 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 111
Van Helmont, Johann Baptist, 10, 11, 16, Wirth, Oswald, 194, 224, 226
17, 19, 25, 28, 34, 42, 108, 109, 130, Wirz, Johann Jakob, 63
134 - Wolff, Christian, 58
Van Heer, Henricus, 34 Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 126
Vanini, 105 Wronski, Honé, i180, 202, 232, 246
Van Ruysbroek, Jan, 75, 194 Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques, 48, 126,
Vernette, Pierre, xxxili 166
Versluis, Arthur, 30, 256, 259
Viatte, Auguste, xviii, xix, xxxi, 29 Xella, Lidia Processi, 152
Viétor, Karl, 81
Vigée, Claude, 135 Yates, Frances A., xix, xxxi, 33, 128, 178,
Vincent de Beauvais, 173 188
Voelker, Klaus, 134
Voss, Karen-Claire, xxxii Zambelli, Paola, 34, 253
Zeller, Winfried, 50
Waite, Arthur Edward, xviii, xxi Ziegler, Leopold, 29
Walch, Johann Georg, 129 Zimmermann, Rolf Christian, x0, 25,
Walker, Daniel P., 189 42-44, 85, 187, 189
Warrain, Francis, 194 Zinzendorf, Niklaus Ludwig von, 19, 131
Webb, James, xix Zoroaster, xv, 179, 233
 hae ta
wi tial
ations /
pera

aaa he< 22"

oe aett
iy »foathy a rer

= E20.t

Capron* 5 =

net
nA ese vide ri
} Deak hae ou, eaboneds'
he, 4 be Shy ata

‘ars sans a alae lonediet bis)antl

omnes =) 0? th, TH, 7%: oF ‘2
Tea
. SIU Atiti (ytd pa
Macc ogrs neefybib Te hiféiro a te,
ov 5 B23) ie, oS ae
ot 28 (PO debe nenlatinn ,
Wy «tere nr wlasiant eaters aoes
:
cbs, OLE LRA t Sa 2
At 10778 pbaalt Amit on —
, ’ es.
a a. a ep, <" pate

Pu swab acry
4¢
goonsfor (Self s

Pe Ses ‘a8. 5 Peden SeyPate el e20)4

G” be : Rat _ Ay See
\ (x vs rw Sh aidltwh ede :
a a Li Tes ae at wren ; i? tle AT tne .

ere ‘
ie) EE ee | seed iy 32, OHSSrt Bete er
a
ap ia n a - her!
eek! Rie nh. see, i ai Mire Toke ne 13
i i 4. r ‘

: ; wo Y Cae. v? ape oy
. a : i

4 =
,

' ' eR a Be l a cere

ines ” TPE yey, Me

‘ 7 Pig RR a ip
‘ ‘f CRUMAGE ID
7 f
? ;
) aad r

ey ”
iy

as
f ° ,
\ > YS
Y oat | ee
al 1 1] (©)Ooo NO]B)| te)

TREOSOPAY
AV ANGIINE-VE
ON!
TRADITION Studies ham aVaiiaga' Esotericism

PANNGTO@)INoeeAVAVAnte
Translated by Christine Rhone

Not only does this book present the current state of research in esotericism, but it
also explores three main aspects of the field from the Renaissance to the twentieth
century. Previously published in French and now available in English for the first
time, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition traces the history of the theosophical
current, its continuity and shifts, against the background of social and cultural
events. The book also covers the Paracelsian course, the romantic Philosophies of
Nature and the Occultist movement. The book provides glimpses into the notions
and practices of the so-called “active” and “creative” ” imagination, and questions
how they serve as a bridge into certain kinds of mystical experience. It also
examines the place that the notion of “tradition” occupies in some major exponents
of western esotericism.

“A pinnacle of achievement. A colossal work. Before such an accomplishment, one

hesitates between the Titanesque and the Benedictine. A remarkable book in every
respect that may be consulted as individual essays, each of which may be read with
pleasure and interest...” —Pierre Zimmer, Sources et Méridiens

“A true history of western esotericism was sorely lacking, and a large gap is now
being filled thanks to the important work of. Antoine Faivre. He has endeavored
to open up many fascinating areas of research. Through this scholarly work, an
entire long-neglected domain of the western imagination is brought to light by
Antoine Faivre.” —Francois Sturel, L’Action Francaise

Antoine Faivre is Professor at the EPHE. (Religious Studies), Sorbonne. He has

published extensively, including Access to Western Esotericism, also published by
SUNY Press. :
A volume in the SUNY series in
Western Esoteric Traditions
David Appelbaum, editor ISBN 0-7914-4436-8
90000>

STATE UNIVERSITY |
OF NEW YORK PRESS oS
Visit our web site at http://www.sunypress.cdi 9 78079 1"444368" Hn