It’s been another long period of hard work, and I’ve briefly come up for air before tackling the core chapters of my thesis that will present Péladan’s cosmology and the most significant symbolic motifs and techniques through which he deployed it. The more I get to grips with his works, the more fascinated I must admit to becoming with his singularity of purpose and vision: the construction of his cosmology is remarkably coherent, and though derivative of a variety of sources, it is becoming apparent that his originality lay in the synthesis of those sources into this coherent whole.
One element that never ceases to surprise me is the number of signposts that Péladan left his readers – and the extent to which these were blatantly ignored by his earlier biographers. In the critical biography by Christophe Beaufils, as well as in earlier biographies and critiques of his work, such details are repeatedly skimmed over and summarily dismissed as indications of his eccentricity and instability. Yet, upon taking a closer look, the coherence is immediately evident, and he makes the effort to point his readers to the connections between his fictional and theoretical works, taking great pains to explain his rationale in each case. His novels were never meant to be read as fiction by the discerning reader; designed as éthopées – a figure of speech stemming from the Greek ethologia or ethopoiia, literally meaning study or creation of ethos (understood as customs or mores). As a rhetorical device it is a kind of portrait or tableau (painted or written) with a moral teaching, based on Aristotle’s Poetics.
Péladan used the byline éthopée to define all of the novels in his La Décadence Latine cycle, and these books are indeed a perfect example of the genre, since they use stylized figures and venues from real life in order to highlight what he perceived as the decadence of Western civilization, while also proposing his alternative vision for society. It is this factor more than any other, that distinguishes Péladan’s novels from being seen as a simple series of literary fiction. In the context of Symbolist theatre of Péladan’s period, it has been noted that the discourse of performance itself was theatricalised, whereby the symbolist actor was perceived as ‘a depersonalised sign’ before ‘an audience that dressed and behaved very much like fictional dramatic characters.’ This resulted in the performance being completed by the participation of both audience and actors, with ‘the theatricalisation of literary discourse… enacted in the space between the stage and the auditorium, between two groups of players…. Just as the symbolist actor in his role aspired to be a sign, many in the audience… aspired to be artistic signs as well.’1 Essentially, Péladan’s books, plays, and characters, were themselves both artistic and occult ‘signs’ for esoteric meaning, drawing on several centuries of universalist esoteric thought, and the perceived power of the written word to manifest change in the material world.
Péladan’s choice of symbolism rested on his occult beliefs and cosmology, and he went so far as to rewrite Genesis, partly following the counter-Enlightenment “tradition” of analogical analysis as found in the work of Athanasius Kircher, Antoine Court de Gébelin, Pierre-Simon Ballanche, Delisle de Sales, Fabre d’Olivet as noted, and Eliphas Lévi. A very central part of this cosmology was his rehabilitation of Lucifer, which is not as shocking as it may seem: from the late eighteenth century, and particularly in the early to mid- eighteenth century, Lucifer – and interestingly, a redeemed, heroic, Promethean Lucifer – became a central figure in French poetry, literature and art. This trend began with the English Romantic poets Blake, Shelley, and Byron, and quickly crossed the Channel. The evolution of this motif in French literature is beautifully detailed in Max Milner’s Le Diable dans la Littérature Francaise: De Cazotte a Baudelaire, 1772-1861 (1960; 2007), but Milner, like so many other authors, dismisses the occult treatment of Lucifer and focuses solely on the literary usages of the motif. The redemption of Lucifer in this context is read as a result of the French Revolution:
While Christian mythology had banned Satan to Hell and blamed him for evil, Literary Satanism to a greater or lesser degree rehabilitated the fallen angel and proclaimed that he had stood in his right after all. Secondly… they resurrected him from the burial the Enlightenment had given him… In traditional Christian theology, Satan’s fall had been associated with proud, unlawful insurrection against divine authority. The philosophes and French Revolution however, had given ‘insurrection’ a wholly new, positive meaning for substantial parts of Europe’s intellectual elite; and this revaluation reflected on the myth of Satan as well…. Satan as noble champion of political and individual freedom remained the most important theme of Literary Satanism throughout the nineteenth century.2
Péladan’s view of Lucifer had less to do with Revolutionary fervour (he decried it), and far more to do with his theology, which betrays strong Neoplatonic influences. Following Pseudo-Dionysius, he believed that “Absolute evil does not exist; evil is an accident of goodness.” He also believed that the world was created by angels, led by Lucifer himself prior to the fall, and that the fall resulted from the desire of some angels (those of the Book of Enoch, aka. Enoch I), to imbue material humanity with spiritual properties. In this Péladan followed Fabre d’Olivet,
For Fabre d’Olivet, the man and woman of Genesis together form universal man and constitute a single androgynous individual.’ 3 The fall occurred when Adam sought to become equal to God, by taking full generative control of ‘the very principle of his existence.’ This would have set him up as a rival to God, but in not permitting him to do so, he would have been condemned to an eternity of suffering as a lesser being without full volition. Therefore, as an act of mercy, ‘Adam was taken out of eternity where he would have remained in eternal anguish and suffering, and placed in time’.4 By making Adam and his descendants mortal, with lives governed by time, the suffering caused by his limited ability to control the creative principle of his existence would be diffused through time and the generations, until it eventually disappeared entirely. This residual desire is the foundation of evil, which, according to Fabre d’Olivet, would eventually be resolved by the very passage through time, at which point time would end and ‘universal man will return to his former state of “indivisible and immortal unity.”’5 God is perceived in terms of a divine ‘tetrad’ that encompasses the three principles of Providence (represented in man by intelligence), Destiny (instinct), and Will (understanding), the last of which is the point of contact between man and God. While in “universal man”, the triad is complete and in harmony, following the Fall, the three principles were divided among Adam’s three sons, with Cain representing Will, Abel as Providence and Seth as Destiny.6 They became the progenitors of humanity, each giving birth to one of the human races, in a reflection of Mosaic genealogy, a popular theory of the time.
7
Péladan followed this theory in part, grafting on Platonic, Neoplatonic, and some Catholic elements, though his explanations of his views reveal a far more eclectic approach to Catholicism than his usual professions of faith would appear to allow for. The short excerpts that follow, in English translation for the first time, demonstrate his perspective on Lucifer and the Fall, and it is these, among many other references throughout his oeuvre, that I shall be unpacking over the next few weeks. There is also a lot to say about daemons… but that will have to wait for a future post.
As always, please respect the work that has gone into these translations, and do not use or reuse without due attribution. The title links to the original text, available from Gallica (French National Library online).
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Comment on devient Artiste (Ariste), 1894, pp. xi-xiii.
To the Devil
By the lowest of names they have inflicted on you: Satan, Lucifer, – Demon, Devil, I salute you with my pity. How art thou fallen, Lucifer? Regardless of your crime, it is not one that man can judge. Regardless of your damnation, it is not something that man can conceive. Whatever you have become by your sin, you were the most perfect of created spirits: and that is enough for me, respecting your ancient brilliance, to approach you with compassion.
Having suffered more insult in my petty sphere than anyone else this century, I have sometimes dreamed of clearing the mountain of calumny that humanity has heaped on your name; and three lines from the Areopagite have sufficed to render your figure guilty, moving me to pity without frightening me.
In plain terms, we send to the devil what bores us; in sacred terms, alas! We attribute to the Demon all of human malice.
Oh! Why have you paid, through the centuries, the sad price of unworthy humanity? It has been said that you push the assassin’s hand: do you also push armies? It has been said that you pour all poisons: so you inspire Gréard8 and all the teachers of atheism.
Ah! Poor Lucifer, man has attributed to you, through his villainy, all his stupidity.
It is you who speaks through tables, it is you who commands all the crooks of spiritism. Father Ventura9 has said that no magnetist can work without you,10 and the abbé Le Canu11 has written your history, and that of the war that you have made against God (sic) and man.
So obscured are you in your principality of spirits, that you have managed to deceive yourself and lose yourself, but you have not deceived yourself about your Creator. The rage of the insult, in touching you, goes so far as to blaspheme against God.
When Christianity was founded on pagan ruins, there was such a habit of pantheist thought, and a conception of spiritomorphism [sic] of nature, that the first Fathers with great urgency, attributed to deviltry every superstition that was too hard to explain, and you inherited a discredited paganism; the lyricism and comedy of the middle ages drew you into a caricature. But the brutish villains conceived the idea of an evil God and you had scoundrels, crime, and ignorance for your faithful, you, ancient prince of spirits.
Now you are forgotten: science, little by little, is discovering illness where for four hundred years they had seen your claws.
And I, a lucid Platonist and fervent Catholic, I visit you in my thoughts, as it is said in the works of mercy, imprisoned spirit, punished spirit; and as I feel the daemonic blood palpitate within me, I try to clean your face of the mud that human wickedness has thrown there.
If you are nothing but a villain deprived of all intelligence, I do not fear you: what is a spirit that has become an idiot, is it wicked? If you are, as I believe, a great sinner, but lucid in your atonement, then receive the consolation of my thought and the refreshment of my charity.
Humanity is that son of Noah who turned away in derision from their father’s decline; I am Shem, I respect you in your misfortune, as I admire you in the splendour of your origins.
The Bené-Oelohim were the sons of your will and I would like to believe that I am descended from them, this one here, who is seen as the confused élan of the most humble, to the grandest, and to the most unlucky of the same race.
Arcanum of Lucifer, or of Birth (p. 41.)
Before the horned, clawed, terrible devil of the medieval imagination, the smile of St. John and the Vanity of Leonardo [da Vinci] suffice.
But I am doing more than rejecting the grotesque from religion as from aesthetics: because in this, each individual conceives of God and the devil, in their own image.
I deny demonology as it is taught in the seminaries…. and I deny it, based on my faith in a Greek, and Orthodox phrase: my authority, oh naïve curates, is His Majesty Saint Dionysius the Areopagite.12 “Absolute evil does not exist; evil is an accident of goodness.”
Demons are not essentially evil, they have lost angelic goodness, but they maintain their natural forces.
Were they evil to themselves, they would corrupt themselves. If they are evil for others, then who do they corrupt?
Substance, power, or operations: they corrupt that which is susceptible to corruption.
THEN, EVIL IS NOT THERE FOR EVERYTHING AND IN EVERYTHING, they weakened in upholding their principle, they forsook divine goodness in habit and operation: they were named evil, due to the debilitation of their natural function.
Evil is not among the demons in the form of evil, but as a defect and lack of perfection in their attributes.
Finally, [according to] St. Thomas Aquinas:
“The demon wants to obtain this similarity with God that comes from grace by virtue of its nature, and not with divine help.”
That the ignorant Sulpicians should struggle against St. Dionysus and St. Thomas! These Fathers of the Church authorise me to pity those who are cursed to bear the load of human sin, an easy and ridiculous way to flatter mankind; I have never seen in my sins, or in those of others, any other explanatory necessity beyond the malice of the individual.
Onto this serious and healthy notion of the demon [as] obscured angel, I have grafted the occult idea of involution and evolution; there are two series of beings here below: beings who, born of the earth, attempt to rise, and others, born of the spirit, for whom earthly life is a fall and an expiation of some mysterious crime of the beyond.
True to the Bereschit [Genesis] and to the sepher [book] of Enoch, in the genius of a Plato, of a Dante, of a Wagner, I see a daimonic descent: psychologically I find them in the intimacy of a Litz, of a d’Aurevilly, to note personalities I have penetrated, [this is] the conflict of angelic nature enclosed within the human condition.
I believe, along with Pythagoras and Plato, that the genius is never a man, but a d[a]emon, that is to say, an intermediary being between the spiritual and the earthly hierarchy: and it would take a papal bull, ex cathedra, to change my opinion.
“The enchanters, the egregores of all times, of all lands, mages, saints, artists, poets, aristes, mystagogues, are all the obscured or shining offspring of angelic descent.” (Istar, p. 41, 1887). (NB. Here is one of the many signposts I spoke of earlier. Péladan connects his éthopées to his theory throughout his work).
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1 Frantisek Deak, ‘Kaloprosopia: The Art of Personality. The Theatricalization of Discourse in Avant-Garde Theatre,’ Performing Arts Journal , 13:2 (May, 1991), 6-21 (p. 8).
2 Ruben van Luijk, ‘Sex, Science, & Liberty: The Resurrection of Satan in 19th Century (Counter) Culture,’ in The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity ed. by Per Faxneld & Jesper Aa. Petersen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 41-52 (p. 44).
7 Trautmann, Aryans and British India, pp. 41-57, cited and discussed in Harvey, Beyond Enlightenment, pp.50-1.
8 Octave Gréard, 1828-1904, responsible for reforming the French (secular) educational system in the mid- to late- nineteenth century. See: P. Bourgain, Gréard, un moraliste educateur (Paris: Hachette, 1907).
9 Gioacchino Ventura di Raulica (1792-1861), a Jesuit priest and philosopher, who held that the existence of the devil was a necessary foundation for Church dogma. Cited and commentated in H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Volume IX, 1888, (Quest Books, 1966), p. 18.
11 Auguste Francois Le Canu (1803-1884), ordained in 1826, he held a variety of ecclesiastical positions and rose in the ranks of the clergy. An ecclesiastic historian, he wrote extensive church histories whose main purpose was to strengthen Catholic faith. His strong interest in occultism became apparent with the publication of his Dictionnaire des prophéties et des miracles (1852); les Sibylles et les livres sibyllins, étude historique et litteraire (1856); and the book to which Péladan is no doubt referring to here: Histoire de Satan (1861), in which he attempted to demonstrate incontrovertible proof for the existence of the devil. The book became highly controversial and was censored and destroyed in the same year as publication, but a few copies survived. See: François Laplanche : article « Auguste François Lecanu », in Jean-Marie Mayeur (ed.), Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine, vol. 9 : Les sciences religieuses: le XIXe siècle : 1800-1914 (Paris: éd. Beauchesne, 1996) p. 400-401.
12 Here Péladan, like others before him, is conflating Dionysius the Areopagite, an early Christian convert, with Pseudo-Dionysius of the 5th or 6th century CE. See: Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A commentary on the texts and an introduction to their influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Rorem, Paul and John C. Lamoreaux, ‘John of Scythopolis on Apollinarian Christology and the Pseudo-Areopagite’s True Identity’ Church History, 62,4 (1993), 469–482.
Brilliant! Sic lux lucet!
Thank you!!