I recently had the privilege to be invited to deliver a lecture as part of the “Aesthetic and Scientific Epistemologies of the Occult in the XIX Century,” a lecture series organised by ETH University – Zurich‘s ongoing project “Scientificization and aestheticization of esotericism in the long 19th Century” alongside esteemed colleagues. See the links above for more information, the full lecture follows below:

Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), or Sâr Merodack as he preferred to be called, was vital to the development of fin-de-siècle French Symbolism. He saw the creative process as the ultimate sacred act, whereby through emulating the act of creation, humanity could move back towards a reintegration with their divine origins. Artists had been gifted with the talent to create those works of art that could spark the spiritual evolution he believed necessary for this process, and his mission was to inspire them to do so, while also attempting to attract the general public. For Péladan, a perfect work had to conform to the two characteristics of idealism and mysticism. He wrote many long explanations arguing the philosophy of this point, summarized in his axiom that “A work that is real in form, and unreal in expression, is perfect”.

Sasha Chaitow is a British-Greek cultural historian, educator, writer and artist. Her Péladan Project is the result of her PhD research on his life and work (University of Essex, 2014). Chaitow has published extensively on Péladan, Symbolist Art and the French Occult Revival. She is presently working on the revision of her PhD thesis for publication with Brill Academic Press. She has also had thirteen solo art exhibitions across the UK, Greece, and Sweden and participated in various group shows. Her latest book, Atalanta Unveiled: Alchemical Initiation in the Emblems of the Atalanta Fugiens (2020), concerns the work of German doctor, diplomat and alchemist, Michael Maier (1568–1622).

Ever since beginning my research on Peladan’s life and work, I had always envisioned an art collection inspired by his esoteric-aesthetic theory. Organising my time has been challenging, since I continue to create exclusive collections for ICON Gallery, while also teaching and working on various art commissions. I had already created a series of draft illustrations towards this project, but the plan was always to come up with a full-scale exhibition.

This finally took the form of a collection of paintings exhibited in London and Northampton (within the framework of the enormously successful Trans-States conference at Northampton University) in September 2016. I accompanied the exhibition with lectures at three different venues, focusing on different aspects of Peladan’s thought.

The exhibition itself comprised 17 symbolist illustrations of concepts from Peladan’s cosmology – in essence they are my attempt to depict his ideas using the same aesthetic principles that he promoted.

The full exhibition preview, along with a fully browsable catalogue (the print version is available for sale though few copies now remain) is available here.

This video is the promotional teaser for the exhibition, and a selection of photos  follows.

Two lectures were also filmed and are available here. The conference paper from Trans-States will soon be available as part of a book, currently in preparation.

In the spring of 2015 I received an invitation to Aarhus University to speak on Péladan’s literature and “esoteric modernism” at a closed symposium with scholars doing some incredibly exciting work in this area, breaking new ground on possible interdisciplinary approaches between the disciplines of literary studies, art history, and esoteric studies.

This was quickly followed by a second invitation to Gothenburg University to deliver a guest lecture- also on Péladan. But this one came with an extra bonus: a further invitation to prepare a touring exhibition and accompanying artist lecture for two further venues in Sweden. See my personal website for more details about the Aarhus conference, where my paper “Return from Oblivion: Péladan’s Literary Esotericism” was very well received, and also for more information on my art and lecture tour in Sweden, where I delivered an extended version of this paper as a guest lecturer at Gothenburg University, and artist lectures in Gothenburg and Lund on Greek Orthodox Mysticism alongside the exhibitions of my work.

Update 2016: The papers from the Esoteric Modernism conference at Aarhus are due for publication with a well-known academic press. Announcements will follow in due course.

The news that this talk sold out days before the actual event came as a surprise to me, especially as Péladan is a little-known figure even in esoteric study circles. I was more than a little daunted about meeting the audience’s expectations, and even more nervous because my PhD viva was due to take place the day after my talk, but I couldn’t have received a warmer welcome.

I gave a brief account of Péladan’s story and the reasons for his obscurity – which boil down to the fact that he effectively did away with the notion of esoteric secrecy and used the media available to him to try to share esoteric knowledge with the general public, using a variety of “mass media” of the day. This was anathema to his esoteric contemporaries, since it pulled the proverbial carpet of power and influence out from under them. Péladan was no fan of ritual and mystery – for him esoteric “enlightenment” was an inner process that could be attained by anyone with enough willpower and self-discipline, and art was the supreme communication medium that could bridge intellectual and spiritual processes.

He used a curious synthesis of myth and Platonic philosophy as a vehicle for his teachings, unfurled in over a hundred books and hundreds of articles and pamphlets he produced throughout his lifetime. Although, thanks to the meticulous efforts of his contemporaries, his name sank into oblivion after his death and his work was plagiarised by better known occultists, his legacy survived both in the art produced by those artists in his circle, and in the influence it had on many authors, artists, and other creatives, including August Strindberg, Ezra Pound, Salvador Dali, Le Corbusier, and a number of South American writers and poets. It appears that Péladan’s message and work does have a place in our era, and is just waiting to be rediscovered.

The lecture was not recorded, but after the warm response from the audience, and the evident interest in Péladan’s work, I hope to at some point put together an online version of this talk. Stay tuned for details! In the meantime, for friends who were unable to attend, please visit my personal webpage for a handful of images from the powerpoint presentation, and a few photos from the Treadwell’s evening.

My warmest thanks go to Christina and the rest of the Treadwell’s team, as well as the fantastic audience for their hearty reception!

History has not been kind to Josephin Péladan. An enormously prolific author with a vision for societal reform through art, he is usually consigned to a footnote or a few lines in scholarly overviews of Rosicrucianism or the French occult revival. Portrayed as an eccentric oddity, his defining characteristic is that of contradiction and paradox. This is his story.