SONS OF HERMES - 8

The Qabalah - Secret Tradition of the West – 2

I don’t know if anyone noticed that despite Eliphas Levi saying he was listing twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in fact he only gave twenty one!? The missing one is Shin –  which in his system of correspondences in the Tarot section of his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic (Chapter 22 of Transcendental Magic)  is allocated to Trump 0 – the Fool.

This card and image should also give us pause for thought when at the beginning of his next lesson he tells his student to take up his Tarot pack and lay out the sequence of Trumps “in two lines of ten... from one to twenty one”.  This is a mathematical impossibility. He must intend two lines of eleven – with Trump Zero included in there somewhere. The question is – “Where?”

The answer is plain to see in the book – which he later advises the student to study. It falls between Trumps XX and XXI – the Last Judgement and The Universe. As we shall see from Eliphas Levi’s lessons, and also from the evidence of other French occultists who follow him, they like to see the sequence of Tarot Trumps as the story of a typical initiate (represented by Trump I – the Juggler) going through a series of initiatory experiences that conclude with the final judgement of his suitability for resurrection to the higher life  (Trump XX)  leading him to final achievement in the balanced harmony of Trump XXI. However  –  should the Last Judgement go against him, then he shows himself to be the Fool – worth nothing!  Or to quote from the book: “A man in the garb of a fool, wandering without aim, burdened with a wallet, which is doubtless full of his follies and vices; his disordered clothes discover his shame; he is being bitten by a tiger and does not know how to escape or defend himself.”

This is a far cry from the Golden Dawn conception of the Fool, placed at the start of the sequence of Trumps and representing a newly created innocent spirit entering material life or  initiatory experience. However, it is not our intention to become entangled in the webs of differing ideas of symbolic correspondence between one school of esoteric thought and another. Even if – and indeed precisely if – those who hold to them consider them to be the one and only true vouchsafed to them on the highest authority. Suffice to say, that for the comparative beginner, any reasonable system is likely to work, and they do best to stick to it – right or wrong – until such time as they are mature enough and practised in the ways of esoteric symbolism to be able to work with any – or to forge their own without being distracted by academic party poopers.  

There is, back of Levi’s magical symbolism, a profound religious interpretation within the line of the visionary Biblical books of Ezekiel and of the Apocalypse. As he plainly spells out in Lesson Three – the Tarot is “the great key to the hieratic hieroglyphs. We find there the symbols and numbers in the prophecies of Ezekiel and St John. The Bible is an inspired book, but the Tarot is an inspirational one.”

So much for Lesson Three. In the fourth lesson he raises the question of two great Kabbalistic traditions:  Bereshith, which means genesis or beginning, and Mercavah, which means chariot or throne. Bereshith and the Mercavah contain knowledge of God and of the world. 

Bereshith is the first word of the Old Testament, and usually translated into English as ‘In the beginning’. The opening pages of the Zohar (the Kabalistic Book of Splendour) analyse it and its implications at great length. The symbolism of the Throne of God, or its wheeled version as a Holy Chariot, comes from the first three chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, written soon after 600 BC with the exile of the Jews to Babylon. It is a book of visions and symbolic actions, beginning with the appearance of God in human form, throned  in glory and  surrounded by a rainbow and four winged cherubim. Apart from the Tarot figure of the Chariot one might speculate how far seated figures in the Tarot Trumps may reflect various elements of Throne mysticism.

Levi concludes the lesson with a rundown of the symbolism of the ten spheres of the Tree of Life seen as expressions of God, a great harmony of physical and moral worlds revealing and demonstrating the existence of eternal wisdom, eternal principles and eternal laws, emanating from an infinitely active creative intelligence. A wisdom and  understanding that are inseparable from each other, resting upon a supreme power called the Crown. Not a king, for that would imply an idol. The supreme power is, for kabalists, the Crown of the universe. And the whole creation is the kingdom of the Crown, or the Crown’s domain.

God is thus the power or supreme Crown (Kether) that reposes on eternal wisdom (Chokmah) and creative intelligence (Binah); in which are goodness (Chesed) and justice (Geburah) which are the ideal of beauty (Tiphareth). In Him are ever victorious movement (Netzach) and great eternal rest (Hod). His will is a continual childbearing (Yesod) and His kingdom (Malkuth) the immensity that peoples the universe.

“Let us stop here!” says Eliphas, “For we know God!

In the fifth lesson he tells how this rational knowledge of divinity is spread over the ten figures from which all numbers are composed, which gives the whole method of kabalistic philosophy.

This method is composed of thirty two instruments, or means of knowledge, called the thirty two paths; and the fifty subjects to which knowledge can be applied are like fifty gates.  This synthesising universal knowledge is thus like a temple to which thirty two ways lead and which one can enter by fifty doors. The fifty gates or doors are a classification of all beings into five series of ten that embrace all possible knowledge. This is sometimes depicted as five Trees of Life depending from each other, representing the four manifest worlds of the Kabalists and the Limitless Light behind them.

This numerical system, called decimal because it has the number ten as its base, establishes by analogies an exact classification of all human knowledge. In Levi’s view, nothing is more ingenious, nothing more logical or exact.

This high knowledge acquired, one can pass to the final revelations of the transcendental Kabala, and the study of the schemhamphorasch, a 72 letter name of God that also figures in traditions of angelology, and is said to be the source and reason for all dogmas. 

“There, my friend,” says Eliphas Levi, “ is what we have to learn. See if it does not frighten you. My letters are short, but they are very concise résumés that speak much in few words. I have left quite a long gap between my first five lessons to leave you the time to reflect on them, and I can write to you more often if you wish.

“Believe me, sir, with the ardent desire to be useful to you, your totally devoted one in the sacred science.” – Eliphas Levi.

SONS OF HERMES - 7

The Qabalah - Secret Tradition of the West [part 1]

Whether or not the Tarot has its roots in the Jewish Qabalah as Eliphas Levi assumed, there is no doubt that this Jewish secret tradition, however spelled, has long and almost universally been regarded as a source of esoteric wisdom in the West.

It was not for nothing that S.L.MacGregor Mathers went to the trouble of translating the Latin of Knorr von Rosenrath’s Kabbalah Denudata (The Kabbalah Unveiled) into English, even if the veil might still seem pretty opaque. Or Gérard Encausse rendering the ancient Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formations) into French, making an early appearance in L’Initiation magazine in 1887.  His academic biographers André and Beaufils find it difficult to understand how he managed this without any proven  knowledge of the original language and hint that he might actually have done it from an already translated Spanish version.

Be this as it may, in 1892 he came out with a book on the subject, called La Kabbale – for which he sought the blessing of Adolphe Franck, (1809-1893) a distinguished scholar who had produced an academic work on the subject back in 1843. The gentleman concerned, perhaps slightly surprisingly, came back with an encouraging letter, although one in which he kept his options open by saying he had not yet had time to study Papus’ work in detail.

I accept with the greatest pleasure the dedication you wish to offer me in your book on the Kabbale, which is not an ‘essay’ as you choose to call it, but a book of great importance.

I have only been able to run through it quickly, but I know it enough to tell you that, in my opinion, it is the most curious, instructive, and knowledgeable that has appeared so far on this obscure subject.  

As Papus remarked at the head of his translation of the Sepher Yetzirah: “All the scientific, philosophical or religious teachings of the Kabbale are taken from two fundamental books, the Zohar and the Sepher Yesirah. It is translated into Latin in the Kabbala denudata and into English in the Kabbala Unveiled of M.A.Matthers.” (sic)  It is interesting to see this acknowledgement by Papus of one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, even if mispelled.

 Papus’ book of 1892 was succeeded, in 1903 by a much expanded version, retitled La Cabbale, Tradition secrete de l’Occident (Secret Tradition of the West) considerably augmented by contributions by friends and colleagues such as Stanislas de Guaita, Paul Sédir, Marc Haven and others – of whom more later.

It included an interesting set of personal lessons from the pen of Eliphas Levi, recently discovered, and which seem interesting enough also to  reproduce here. Letters 1 and 2  include a list of Levi’s symbolic correspondences which devoted symbolists may like to ponder.

 The numbers 1 to 10 accord fairly well with generally accepted attributions of the ten spheres of the Tree of Life, but when it comes to the Hebrew alphabet there is plainly a difference of perspective between adepti on one side of the English Channel and the other. Rather than taking sides you may find profit in meditating on what your own might be – and why! You can then start calling yourself a Kabbalist!

 But whatever your conclusions, there is much good sense in the general teaching of Eliphas Levi who was far more experienced mystically and magically than most of his contemporaries and many who came after. It is certainly worth pondering.

ELEMENTS OF THE KABBALA

FIRST LESSON

Dear Sir and Brother,

I can address you like this since you seek the truth in the sincerity of your heart and are ready to make sacrifices.

The truth is not difficult to find, being the  essence of all that is. It is within us and we are within it. It is like a light that the blind cannot see.

Being is. That is, incontestable and absolute. The exact idea of Being is truth; its knowledge is science; its ideal expression is reason; its activity is creation and justice.

You want to believe, you say. For that, it is enough to know and to love truth. For true faith is the unshakable adherence of the spirit to the necessary deductions of science in the conjectured infinite. 

The occult sciences alone give certainty, because they take reality for their base and not dreams.

They make true and false discernable in each religious symbol. Truth is the same everywhere, but the false varies according to place, time and people.

The occult sciences are three in number: the Kabbale, Magic and Hermeticism.

The Kabbale, or traditional science of the Hebrews, could be called the mathematics of human thought. It is the algebra of faith. It solves all problems of the soul by identifying the unknown, like equations. It gives to ideas the clarity and rigorous exactitude of numbers; its results are infallible for the spirit (relative, all the same, to the sphere of human consciousness) and peace profound for the heart.

Magic, or the science of the magi, has had for its representatives in antiquity the disciples and also perhaps the  Zoroastrian masters. It is the knowledge of secret and particular laws of nature that produce hidden forces. The magnetism, whether natural or artificial, that can exist beyond the world of metals. In a word, to use a modern expression, it is the science of universal magnetism.

Hermeticism is the science of nature hidden in hieroglyphs and symbols of the ancient world. It is research on the principle of life, with the dream (for those who have not yet arrived) of accomplishment of the great work. The reproduction, by man, of the natural and divine fire that creates and regenerates beings.

There you have, sir, the things that you wish to study. Its circle is immense, but the principles are so simple that they are represented and contained in the forms of numbers and letters of the alphabet. “It is a labour of Hercules that is like a children’s game” say the masters of the sacred science.

The dispositions to be successful in this study are: great rectitude of judgement, and great independence of spirit. It is necessary to abandon all prejudice and all preconceived ideas, which is why Christ said: “If you do not come with the simplicity of a child, you will never enter Malkuth,” which is to say, into the kingdom of knowledge.

We will start with the Kabbale – which can be divided into Bereshith, Mercavah, Gematria and Lemurah.

Yours in the holy science, Eliphas Levi.

 

SECOND LESSON

THE KABBALE – AIM AND METHOD

That to which one aims in studying the Kabbale is to arrive at peace profound through the tranquillity of the spirit and a peaceful heart.

Tranquillity of the spirit is a consequence of certainty; peace of heart of patience and faith.

Without faith, knowledge leads to doubt; without knowledge, faith leads to superstition. United, the two give certainty –  but uniting does not mean confusing them. The object of faith is a hypothesis, and it becomes a certainty when the hypothesis is necessitated by evidence or by the demonstrations of science.

Science consists of facts. The repetition of facts suggests laws. The generality of facts in the presence of this or that force demonstrates the existence of laws. Intelligent laws are necessarily wanted and directed by the intelligence. Unity in laws leads us to suppose the unity of a legislative intelligence. This intelligence, that we are led to suppose because of its manifest works, is impossible for us to define. It  is what we call God!

You receive my letter, which is an evident fact. You recognise my writing and my thoughts, and conclude from that that it is truly me who has written to you. This is a reasonable hypothesis, but the necessary hypothesis is that someone has written that letter. It could be counterfeit, but you have no reason to suppose that. If you suppose it anyway, you make a very doubtful hypothesis. If you claim that the written letter has fallen from the sky, you make an absurd hypothesis.

Here then, following the kabbalistic method, is how certainty is formed:

            Evidence....................................................certainty

            Scientific demonstration............................certainty

            Necessary hypothesis................................certainty

            Reasonable hypothesis..............................probability

            Doubtful hypothesis..................................doubt

            Absurd hypothesis.....................................error

In following this method the spirit acquires real infallibility, since it affirms what it knows, believes what it must necessarily suppose, admits reasonable suppositions, examines doubtful suppositions, and rejects absurd suppositions.

All Kabbale is contained in what the masters call the thirty two Paths and fifty Doors or Gateways.

The thirty two paths are thirty two absolute and real ideas attached to the signs of the ten arithmetical numbers and the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Here are these ideas:

NUMBERS

1 Supreme power

2 Absolute wisdom

3 Infinite intelligence

4 Good

5 Justice or rigour

6 Beauty

7 Victory

8 Eternity

9 Fecundity

10 Reality

LETTERS

Aleph                       Father

Beth                         Mother

Ghimel                     Nature

Daleth                      Authority

Hé                            Religion

Vau                          Liberty

Dzain                       Propriety

Cheth                       Repartition

Theth                      Prudence

Iod                           Order

Caph                        Force

Lamed                      Sacrifice

Mem                        Death

Nun                          Reversability

Samech                    Universal Being

Gnain                       Equilibrium

Phè                          Immortality

Tsade                       Shadow and reflection

Koph                       Light

Resch                       Recognition

Thau                        Synthesis

 

SONS OF HERMES - 6

 “PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]

The Tarot of the Bohemians

Papus, along with the Tarot, came to the attention of English readers in 1896 through a translation of his 1889 book Le Tarot des Bohémiens. Whether or not it can be considered a classic work it was certainly a pioneering one, reproducing line drawings of Marseilles Tarot originals of the 22 Trumps along with ‘esoterically improved’ versions by Oswald Wirth, a Swiss freemason and budding Tarot authority. A.E.Waite’s fully illustrated coloured cards, drawn by Pixie Coleman-Smith, that have become classics in their own right and usually unacknowledged pattern for dozens of latter day Tarots, did not appear for another fourteen years.

The originality of Papus’ subject brought a number of  problems, and not only esoteric ones. Although a professional translator had been engaged  he plainly suffered from complete  ignorance of his subject including even the common nomenclature of playing cards. For instance, the word in French for playing card suits is ‘couleurs’ which he blithely rendered as ‘colours’ although presumably most readers realised what was meant. And  when it came to occult matters, anyone interested in spiritual topics is called a ‘spiritualist’; initiations are referred to as ‘initiatives’; the Theosophical Society renamed the Theosophite Society and the Egyptian god Ammon rechristened ‘Amen’. Most fundamental was, however, the translation of the title. Le Tarot des Bohémiens means ‘The Tarot of the Gypsies’ so to call the English version The Tarot of the Bohemians was to name it the Tarot of the Inhabitants of Bohemia or alternatively members of the Parisian artistic community, like Mimi in La Bohème.  I don’t think she shuffles the cards to tell fortunes in the opera.

None of which probably matters in the longer view as there is considerable doubt as to whether the Gypsies had anything to do with the Tarot anyway!  The idea began as a random speculation (among many) by Court de Gebelin, the late 18^th century originator of occult interest in the Tarot. The gypsies’ preferred method of fortune telling was palmistry. Oddly enough, although Gerard Encausse’s claim to gypsy blood was almost certainly spurious, he was quite good at palmistry. Soon after their first meeting, he showed Victor Émile Michelet his hand and said it foretold he would die at the age of 53. He was only a couple of years out. Papus died in 1916 at the age of 51 as a result of his medical work in the trenches of the 1^st World War.    

Like a number of his works, Papus’ Tarot book is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to the kind of number symbolism we found in his Traité Élémentaire de Science Occulte, and as he all but admits later on, we could probably just as well have done without it! It is a numerological analysis of the Jewish divine name Yod – Heh – Vau – Heh that will probably cause any kosher student of the Jewish Qabalah to cry aloud and leave the rest of us very confused. Those of long patience can try their luck with pages 243 to 251 of Professor Michael Dummett’s analysis in A Wicked Pack of Cards  –  a detailed work on the origins of the occult Tarot that contains a chapter on Papus.

With the second part of the book we are into the diagrams and lists of correspondences dear to the hearts of dedicated occultists. The only problem here will be, for those of us who have been brought up on Golden Dawn attributions, that the correspondences are all different to what we are used to. The reason for this being that Eliphas Levi, whose lead Papus follows, chose to list the Tarot Trumps in a different order.

We gave forewarning of this back in Sons of Hermes 2. There need be no problem at all if one takes to heart that the Tarot is a system of symbolism big enough and well integrated enough to stand on its own merits, without close correspondence with any other symbolic system – be it Qabalah, Astrology, or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Insofar that any magical symbol system is an attempt to describe elements of the inner worlds, it may have similarities with others insofar that each is trying to describe the same general landscape. However, such is the range and complexity of the interlocking spheres of the inner worlds, that expecting close correspondence between one system and another is doomed to disappointment. (But as a wise old teacher of mine once remarked – the way toward reality tends to be a process of shedding illusions – another word for which can be disillusionment.)

So to get the most from the Tarot my advice is to treat it as a stand alone system. It will work very well like that, without a lot of constricting webs. The same might be said for the Paths and Spheres of the Tree of Life, or the I Ching hexagrams, or the constellations of the Starry Wisdom of the Ptolemaic cosmos. If you come across what looks like a close correspondence of realities between one system and another, tip your hat in respect, reflect upon your good luck, or inherent wisdom if you should be so foolish, and then pass on. However, I grant that there can be fascinating speculation in juggling with correspondences and some occultists have come up with interesting alternatives. 

Actually Papus comes close to this in the third part of his book, which is a typical Papusian bran tub of bits and pieces gathered from here and there, including a long contribution from Albert Foucheux, otherwise known as Barlet (anagram of Albert) a civil servant who seems to have been a permanent fixture of Parisian occultism, and member of every committee, ever ready with words of wisdom on whatever subject required, and local representative of the Anglo-American H.B.L. or Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (Luxor being a Latin/Hebrew code for Light (Lux + Aur). As will later be seen, Papus and his circle had a great weakness for secret societies and their titles and paraphernalia.  

But more striking is Papus’ advice on how to read the Tarot – a long chapter consisting of seven lessons intended for lady readers. Successful card reading, he says, is largely a matter of intuition, the implication being that they need not bother about trying to understand all the difficult stuff in the rest of the book.

“The first part of our study of the Tarot, full of numbers, of Hebrew letters, and abstract deductions, is not calculated to attract the attention of ladies...and I hope that the pleasure gained by the fair inquirers will balance the scepticism of sterner intellects.”

For myself, I wonder how it is that for someone who from 1888 until the eve of his marriage in 1895 was very close to a prominent feminist, Anna Wolska, could not have had this arch chauvinism posing as gallantry knocked out of him. But he was at this time still only 23 and maybe he had only just met her.

SONS OF HERMES - 5

“PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]

An Elementary Treatise on Occult Science

One of the charms of buying examples of French occult publishing of a hundred years or so ago is that you are never quite sure what you will be getting. It was a period when Papus and his friends were learning the ropes of self publishing – which could lead to quite astounding surprises in quantity and quality. Not that one was ever likely to be short changed – their success meant that they had plenty of money and so new printings of books could be considerably expanded in extent.

So it is with my copy of Papus’ first book-sized book, the Traité Elémentaire de Science Occulte. First appearing in 1888, as a volume of 229 pages, it appears that my copy was in fact turned out to be of indeterminate date by which time it had become bloated to 625 pages. Bibliographic histories were not helped by their custom of calling reprints ‘new editions’. Thus the copy I have is called the 16^th edition but is apparently a reprint of the 7^th edition of 1903 by which time they had proudly logged up a sale of 10,000 copies. As Papus says in his Preface ‘its success had progressively grown with each new transformation of the volume.’

So, something of a dog’s breakfast in fact, but none the worse for that.

“Also,” he writes, “we have once more taken care to perfect our work, while conserving its elementary character which is one of the causes of its success.” I have to say I am not too sure about this ‘elementary character’. He launches off into some very erudite, not to say obscure, and even irrelevant, number theory. But perhaps the French esoteric mind differs somewhat from the Anglo-Saxon. We will return to this when we take a look at his book on the Tarot.

On the evidence of the number and extent of the quotations he uses it could be said that this is obviously a first book by an intellectual young man in a hurry. Of the original 229 pages about thirty percent of the text consists of extracts from other writers, fifteen of them, ranging from Mme. Blavatsky to Eliphas Levi with the lion’s share going to the early 19^th century savant Fabre d’Olivet and the contemporary esoteric recluse Saint-Yves d’Alveydre. The first, a great favourite of his, was author of a book on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and also La Langue hébraïque restitué (The Hebraic tongue restored) speculations on the origins of  Hebrew language in light of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, a fair amount of which was subsequently invalidated when the Rosetta Stone was discovered and translated.

The main drive of the young Papus’ original book, (the first 229 pages) is to emphasise the difference between the approach of modern with that of ancient science. In a telling and simple image he likens modern science to the close examination of a closed book.

“Let us first examine the way that moderns treat a natural phenomenon the better to know it, as opposed to the ancient way. What would you say to a man who described a book to you like this: ‘The book you have given me to study is placed on the mantelpiece at 2 metres 49 centimetres from the table where I am sitting; it weighs 545 grams 8 decigrams, and is formed of 342 small paper pages on which 218,145 characters are printed and which have used 190 grams of black ink.’

“If this example shocks you, open modern books of science and see if they do not correspond exactly to the way of describing the Sun or Saturn by an astronomer, who describes the position, weight, volume and density of stars, or a physicist who describes the solar spectrum by counting the number of lines.   

“Returning to the printed book that served as our first example, we note that there are two ways of looking at it, because we realise that the characters, the paper, the ink, that is to say the material signs, are only the representation of something that we cannot see physically – the ideas of the author.

“The visible is the manifestation of the invisible. This principle, true for this particular example, is so for all other things in nature, as we shall see. We will then see more clearly the fundamental difference between ancient science and modern science.

“The ancient is concerned only with the visible in order to discover the invisible that it represents. The modern is concerned only with the phenomenon itself without bothering about its metaphysical connections.

“The science of the ancients is the science of the hidden, of the esoteric. The science of the moderns is the science of the visible, the exoteric.

“The hidden science, the science of the hidden, the science which hides what it has discovered – is the triple definition of OCCULT SCIENCE.”

The rest of the book, and of all the books that he and his colleagues are destined to write, is concerned with solving this by no means easy problem.

SONS OF HERMES - 4

                                         “PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE [continued]

References to Martinism and Rosicrucianism had not been plucked from thin air by Papus. During 1888, the first steps had been taken to revive the activities of both these early western traditions. He himself the Martinist Order, founded toward the end of the 18^th century by Louis Claude de Saint Martin (1743-1803); and a Rosicrucian revival – l’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose+Croix  under the joint aegis  of an aristocratic young poet and intellectual Stanislas de Guaita  and a popular occult novelist and art critic Joséphin Péladan.  Mysterious initials began to appear after their names, such as S...I... (Supérieur Inconnu) or ‘Unknown Superior’ of the Martinist Order – or in the case of the Kabbalistic Rosicrucian Order the Hebrew letter Aleph with three dots in triangular formation signifying, for those in the know,  a  Rosicrucian Grand Master.

A manifesto for each organisation appeared in l’Initiation, a new monthly journal founded in October 1888, the financing of which Papus was inclined to regard as an act of Providence. For one day a young man had unexpectedly called on him, and thrusting a bundle of banknotes into his hands announced that observers on the astral plane were aware that he lacked the resources to start an important new work.

The source of the cash turned out to be a philanthropic industrialist with esoteric sympathies by the name of Jean Jacques Bourcart, who may have been stimulated by the prospect of a great Exposition Universelle, or World Fair, to be held in Paris from May to October 1889. A glorification of the 3^rd Republic, founded in 1870, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, and that saw the erection of the Eiffel Tower, considered by some a mark of technological progress, by others a supreme vulgarity.

In conjunction with this general celebration some spiritually minded enthusiasts seized the chance to launch a week long esoteric convention, Le Congrès spirite et spiritualiste international from  9^th to 15^th September 1889. Thirty four esoteric organisations took part, with the theme of ‘the survival of the conscious self and the possibility of communication between the living and the dead’.

In the mean time a confrontation had developed  between Papus and Mme Blavatsky on the meaning of the word ‘initiate’.  She insisted that the term applied only to a ‘hierophant’ or very high adept (no doubt with her own ‘mahatmas’ in mind). And as something of a put down said that for Papus to think it was anything else was an error ‘typical of Freemasons’. She wanted to know, with heavy sarcasm, if this brilliant young man, until now one of the most promising French recruits to Theosophy, had turned away from the light and was wandering toward the shadows?

The ‘recruit’ retorted by refusing to change his definitions, and referred to inconsistencies in her great work, the Secret Doctrine, recently published, in which, he said, the  terms ‘initiate’ and ‘adept’ were often referred to with the meaning that he himself had attributed to them. And if she was unaware of the fact (implying blind plagiarism, muddle headedness, or ignorance of her own work) he would be happy to provide details of the relevant passages.

Apart from this, the relative success of the esoteric convention in 1889 led him to think the time was ripe for a permanent centre devoted to the various aspects of occultism. Not having the resources to found one himself he put the idea to a friend, the mature law student Lucien Chamuel, who promptly hired a shop at 29, rue de Trévise and named it the ‘Librairie du Merveilleux’ (Bookshop of the Marvellous).

It included the facility of a circulating library and space for a meeting hall at the back and soon became a great success. And its appearance coincided with the foundation and growth of a remarkable organisation inspired and headed by Papus. Its work and aims were summarised in a small but significant publication, La science des mages et ses applications théoriques et pratiques (The Science of the Magi and its Theoretical and Practical Applications), and were as follows.

1. The impartial study, beyond the academic and priestly, of scientific, artistic and social evidence to be found in the symbolism of all cults and traditions.

2. The scientific study, by experiment and observation, of yet unknown forces within man and nature (spirit phenomena, hypnosis, magic and theurgy).

3. The grouping of all these scattered elements in view of the struggle against doctrines of materialism and atheism.

With regard to spiritualism (or spiritism) occultists did not deny the possibility of communicating with the departed but  doubted the number of genuine instances, as for much of the time it seemed more likely to be a matter of auto-suggestion or transcendent hypnosis, for which only the forces of the medium and those physically present were responsible.

Enquirers were advised, if unfamiliar with these matters, to study the theory and practice of spirit communication and if spiritualism with its essentially consoling doctrine seemed to provide them with a total expression of truth, and satisfied their hopes, then not to seek any further. However, the philosophically inclined would seek in vain for a cosmogony, or even an original metaphysic, in spiritualism and might do better to move on to occultism, which was more abstract and complex in its explanations of psychic phenomena. True occultists did not claim exclusive possession of the truth but were independent seekers, and, although some may have wanted to make occultists adversaries of spiritualism, those who ran the G.I.E.E. were persuaded that time would serve to bring everyone into agreement.

As for the Theosophical Society, if anyone desired to occupy themselves with Oriental occultism they would do better to consult the Guimet Museum in Paris which had more accurate information on Buddhism and the religions and philosophies of India. Or alternatively the Paris branch of the English language Buddhist Propagation Society.

 With this announcement, Papus had plainly shaken the dust of the Theosophical Society from his feet! Not only that, it has been estimated by some scholars that his activities set back the growth of the Theosophical Society in France by some twenty years!

Nor had Papus neglected his medical career, which he contrived to link with his esoteric interests. Although still a student, he produced an essay, as Gérard Encausse, on physiology relating to the theory and practice of animal magnetism, and was evidently doing well enough in his medical studies to be entrusted to write, together with Dr Luys, a professor at La Charité hospital, a report for the Annales de psychiatrie et d’hypnologie,  describing experiments with a form of clairvoyance at a distance by a hypnotised subject, aided by magnetic devices applied to the head.

Over the next few years the G.I.E.E. developed branches not only throughout France but also Europe, Egypt, and the Americas, issuing diplomas to successful students and eventually degrees and doctorates in Kabbalistic studies.

The organisation also encouraged and grew through the development of bright young newcomers who became its writers and lecturers, developing their writing, speaking, esoteric and organisational skills. Some of whom we shall later follow.

But first we would do well to examine the remarkable efforts of Papus himself, particularly through the written word.

[to be continued]

 

SONS OF HERMES - 3

“PAPUS” – DR GÉRARD ENCAUSSE

Dr. Gérard Encausse, (1865-1916) who wrote and taught under the name of “Papus” has been called “the Balzac of Occultism”. That is to say, comparable to the great 19^th century writer Honoré de Balzac who set out to write a series of  books describing the whole of French society.  Gérard Encausse, in his fashion, did much the same for the occultism of his day.  Not in fiction but in a great process of esoteric education of his fellows.

In the course of his life he was responsible for over a hundred brochures and books, was a prodigious public speaker, and also a great founder of organisations and of successful occult journals such as the monthly L’Initiation and weekly La Voile d’Isis. All this while studying to become a Doctor of Medicine with a particular interest in hypnosis and clairvoyance, and complying with three years military national service.

 He was born on 13^th July 1865 the eldest child of a French father and a Spanish mother, at La Coruña in Galicia, northern Spain, where his father Louis was trying to interest the authorities in his ‘Encausse Generator’ – a device he had invented for the absorption of medicaments through the skin. Until, having failed to make much progress, he moved on to Paris when Gérard was three years old, where the imaginative child grew up in the bohemian district of Montmartre with a tendency to fantasize about his family origins. That his father’s name was really Don Luis who had spent his life wandering through Spain in a caravan with a gypsy wife, living on his wits by selling things he had made. A story more or less based upon fact if considerably romanticised!

The struggle his father had had to be taken seriously by an extremely conservative and prestigious medical profession may have inclined Gérard to study medicine himself, although as an adolescent he was more interested in general philosophical ideas and at the age of 19 produced  a 51 page book called Hypothéses – a diversion that may have caused him to fail his baccalauréat and put his education  back a year, and even when accepted as a medical student he was hardly a model scholar. Instead of  studying his textbooks he was more likely to be found at the Bibliothèque Nationale reading works on magic, such as Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, L’Histoire de la Magie and Le Clef des Grands Mystères by Eliphas Levi. Indeed, so impressed was he by these works that he wrote a letter to the old mage, suggesting they meet to exchange experiences and ideas.

11^th January 1886

Monsieur l’Abbé, for more than three months I have looked for your address. If I have finally had the good fortune to have found it I beg you to reply to me. I very much want to make your acquaintance first because you have known a man whom I deeply admire and of whom I have written a biography: Louis Lucas; and then because, thanks to your works, I have been able to make great steps in the studies that I have already long pursued. If the astral light has truly not deceived me but guided me to you, please reply. I will then write to you about some experiences that it is impossible for me to mention in a letter that might not reach you. Please accept, Monsieur l’Abbé the greetings of one of your most fervent admirers wanting to become one of your disciples. Gérard Encausse, Hospital extern, 14, rue de Strasbourg, Paris.

 

Unfortunately Eliphas Levi had died eleven years before.  It is not recorded if the tyro magician tried to contact his hero by any other, psychic, means. (Louis Lucas, by the way was a scientist contemporary with Levi, author of La Chimie Nouvelle, with alchemical leanings).

A youthful poem written at the time also reveals Gérard’s convictions and romantic state of mind, beginning:

‘Hail to thee, light of the cosmos at the centre of all spheres...’

in which we also find the Qabalistic term of Kether as evidence of his current reading.

 

Notwithstanding his educational and national service commitments he sought further esoteric contacts by joining the Isis Lodge of the Theosophical Society, that had been founded in Paris in 1879 but had never really got going until 1887, when an idealistic young Breton, Felix-Krishna Gaboriau, sank his small personal fortune into launching a magazine for it, called Le Lotus. To establish the magazine and draw attention to the Isis Lodge a series of promotional meetings was laid on at the fashionable Grand Vefour café.

At an early one of these meetings an esoterically inclined poet, journalist and man about town, Victor-Émile Michelet, drifted in, and  half a century later, in 1938,  recorded the occasion in his memoirs Les Companions de la Hiérophanie.

His first impression was that the young man lecturing on ‘Contemporary Occultism’, striving to speak without a script and  groping for words with such difficulty, had absolutely no future as a public speaker! But then he had no idea of the prodigious will and drive of this young man, who was the remarkable 22 year old Gérard Encausse.

A few weeks later Michelet heard him speak again – this time with such charisma, clarity and skill that he decided he must get to know him. Calling at Gérard’s student lodgings one Sunday morning in a scruffy commercial area near the Gare de l’Est, he found an atmosphere that he described as like a ‘boiling cauldron’, brewed up by half a dozen young men intent on changing the world by restoring the wisdom of the ancients. Indeed it seemed to Michelet that Pythagoras himself would not have felt out of place in their company!

The May 1887 issue of Le Lotus contained a couple of articles by  Gérard Encausse under the pen name of ‘Papus’, a name he had chosen from the Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana, an ancient manuscript published as an appendix to Eliphas Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, containing a list of spirits of the hours along with their attributes, the first of which was ‘Papus, the spirit of medicine’.

One of Gérard’s articles was a commentary on the symbolism of the sigil of the Theosophical Society, and the other on alchemy – a subject that latter day occultists in France took very seriously.  And a number still do.

 In the next issue the young ‘Papus’ launched a strong attack against Freemasonry, on the grounds that, having forgotten the meaning of its traditional symbols it had become more of a social than an esoteric organisation. A criticism that had been raised by Eliphas Levi in his latter days, when he resigned from the organisation. Gérard Encausse took much the same line which was to cause him some difficulty when later he sought to become a mason himself.

In the meantime he launched into print with a 36 page version of his initial lecture – L’occultisme contemporain, attacking the intellectual and scientific establishment for failing to take occultism seriously. And, quite astonishingly, even foolhardy for a medical student, lambasting his chosen profession for concentrating on physical symptoms rather than inner causes for them.

As examples he chose two long standing nineteenth century controversies. That of “animal magnetism”, originating from Anton Mesmer and developed by a series of investigators over the years, and currently by Professor Luys at the La Charité hospital in Paris under whom Gérard was studying. The other was “spiritism” that under the more upbeat name of “spiritualism” had begun in the United States with the Fox sisters in 1848, and rapidly crossed the Atlantic.

He ended his book with praise for early 19^th century writers such as Fabre d’Olivet for his work on ancient languages, and two colleagues of Eliphas Levi, the Polish esoteric mathematician Hoene Wronski, who died of starvation, and also the neglected Louis Lucas, concluding with an honourable mention for various contemporaries.

From the start however, he seemed determined to cast his net wider than that of the Theosophical Society by emphasising occult lore that was indigenous to the West; and a quotation on the front cover of the booklet hinted at this: ‘The West is the fount of practice and the East the fount of theory’

Papus  soon became a regular speaker at Isis lodge meetings and a contributor to Le Lotus and the following year, 1888, he published a full length book, Traité élémentaire de science occulte (Elementary Treatise on Occult Science), that claimed “to explain to all the theories and symbols employed by the ancients, alchemists, astrologers, the E... de la V..., and Kabalists.”  The mysterious initials revealing a long standing interest in secret societies dispensing grades of occult initiation and the first indication of his impending involvement with the Martinist Order and other initiatory bodies. 

Originally 219pp in extent, by its 7^th impression ten years later the Elementary Treatise had swollen to 625 pages. True to form for a young man in a hurry, both original and later editions incorporated long quotations from other writers, including pages from Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled and paragraphs from A.P.Sinnet’s The Occult World quoting, with approval, the Theosophical Mahatma Koot Hoomi, all of which were retained despite his falling out with Mme Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society a couple of years later.

His exit from the Theosophical Society was sparked in March 1888 when the president of the Isis Lodge died unexpectedly. The post should have passed to the vice-president who, perhaps wisely, declined the honour by pleading youth and inexperience, although no such modesty afflicted either Gérard Encausse or Felix-Krishna Gaboriau. The succession seemed to hang in the balance between them, and soon developed into direct confrontation. 

Members of the Isis lodge soon split into opposing camps. Urgent action was needed and the situation  became serious enough for Colonel Olcott to travel from India to try to sort things out.

He promptly dissolved the Isis lodge and replaced it with a new one called the Hermes. He showed little sympathy for Gaboriau, who struck him as a ‘hypersensitive young man’ suspected of having recourse to hashish, (actually not uncommon in France in those days). A reliable middle aged gentleman, Arthur Arnolde, was appointed president, and a couple of similar mature members as vice presidents, whilst Gérard Encausse was appointed to the new post of ‘corresponding secretary’.

Gaboriau felt himself downgraded and expressed his bitterness by deploring the ‘typically American way’ in which Olcott had ‘thrown members to the fire’. In this state of mind he crossed the English Channel to complain personally to Mme Blavatsky, who was then living in London. He discovered that she too was very angry about Olcott, accusing him of having sacrificed Theosophy in the interests of ‘that wretched little **** Papus!’

An attempt was made to patch things up by offering Gaboriau a charter to start his own branch, but it appears he was unable to find the statutory seven initial members; all remained faithful to the new Hermes lodge. Gaboriau submitted his resignation, predicting that it would not be long before Papus tried to take over the whole Theosophical Society.

In the final issue of Le Lotus in March 1889 he bade farewell to his readers and, his small fortune spent, fell into poverty and obscurity, although he did later render valuable service by translating some Theosophical works into French.

Papus, however, had not been set on the acquisition of the Theosophical Society. He had wider ambitions.

[to be continued]