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Cults and Societies in Fin De Siècle Literature

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Cults and Societies in Fin De Siècle Literature SUMMARY Summary of Thesis submitted for Ph.D. degree by Sarah Jane Berry on Seeking God by Strange Ways: Cults and Societies in fin de siècle literature The general consensus regarding the role of Christianity at the fin de siècle is that while it did not cease to exist, technological and scientific advances had eroded the faith of many educated Victorians. Here, the term “seeking” suggests a spiritual journey with the aim of attaining a true understanding of the universe, which in occult circles is called esoteric knowledge or “gnosis”. One of the purposes of this thesis is to demonstrate how “seeking God by strange ways” in fin de siècle literature is a spiritual rite of passage to locate God in man and involves “lifting the veil” between this world and the spiritual realm. The late nineteenth century traveller seeking God enters a “period of margin” or transitional phase between two fixed states. As liminality is characterized by transformation or a process of “becoming”, some liminal beings live outside their normal environment and raise questions concerning their self, the existing social order and “the new hedonism”. The novels and authors featured here have been chosen to illustrate this thesis because they describe alternative religious cults and societies and spiritual rites of passage, while exploring social and cultural transitions. This exploration often brings with it abjection, marginalization and alienation. In addition to raising questions of “gender inversion”, sexual equality with notions of the “equalization of women and men” and “psychic androgyny”, the occult and mystical revival laid great stress on individual evolution and perfection. The novels chosen illustrate that the goal of the occult journey was to transcend humankind and to become superlative human beings endowed with higher and divine genius. This advancement of humanity is linked to social and political reform; new opinions with regard to sexual equality, and the condition of women, evidenced in the term “the New Woman”. The thesis also examines physical excess, the recognition of sin and “unorthodox sexuality” as expressions of occult, spiritual and mystical desire. THE UIVERSITY OF HULL Seeking God by Strange Ways: Cults and Societies in fin de siècle literature being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Hull by Sarah Jane Berry, MEd TESOL (Edinburgh), M.A. (Hull) B.A. Joint Honours (Hull) August 2012 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................4 CHAPTER ONE: The Victorian Crisis of Faith and “Mystical Revival” in Context ...........16 CHAPTER TWO: Christianity versus the “Unveiling of Isis” in The Beetle (1897) and Scarabaeus: The Story of an African Beetle (1892)........................................................43 CHAPTER THREE: The Rosicrucian Order, Marie Corelli and the “Heliobas” Novels ............................................................................................................................68 CHAPTER FOUR: “An Isolated Phenomenon”: Spiritualism, Apotheosis and the Religion of Detection.......................................................................................................95 CHAPTER FIVE: Victorian Paganism and Occult Science in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894) ..................................................................................................121 CHAPTER SIX: Occultism and Religious Tensions in Dracula (1897)..........................147 CHAPTER SEVEN: Satanism and Luciferianism in Wormwood (1890) and The Sorrows of Satan (1895)...............................................................................................172 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................198 BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................................208 APPENDIX ...................................................................................................................239 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for the help received from the following people: Professor Valerie Sanders, the staff of the Department of English and the Brynmor Jones Library, the University of Hull and, especially, my supervisor Dr. Jane Thomas. Thank you Mum, Dad, Kevin and Robbie for your constant love and support. 3 INTRODUCTION The fin de siècle Gnostic quest The world must look for the final solution of the various problems concerning the nature and conduct of existence, which now - more than at any previous time - exercise the human mind. […] Representing the triumph of free-thought […] it represents also the triumph of religious faith, in that it sees in God the All and in All of Being; in Nature, the vehicle for the manifestation of God; and in the Soul - educated and perfected through the processes of Nature - the individualisation of God. (Maitland, 1895: xviii) The above quotation is taken from the essay “The Hermetic System and the Significance of its Present Revival” included in Edward Maitland’s The Virgin of the World (1885) which was co-written with Dr Anna Kingsford. Maitland discusses the significance of the revival of mysticism, esotericism and occult science at the fin de siècle and finding alternative paths to God. He describes a Gnostic quest that involves the evolution of the human mind and the recognition of the divine potentiality of man and the immortality of the soul. Others had different views concerning the “mystical revival” and the fin de siècle Gnostic quest. In 1893 Arthur Symons published an article in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine entitled “The Decadent Movement in Literature” in which he refers to Ernest Hello’s definition of the Decadents as: “Having desire without light, curiosity without wisdom, seeking God by strange ways, by ways traced by the hands of men; offering rash incense upon the high places to an unknown God, who is the God of darkness” (Symons, 1893: 859). The term “seeking God by strange ways” describes fin de siècle alternative religious groups and societies that chose to accept a spiritual view removed from Christianity and orthodox ritual. Christianity did not cease to exist in the late 1890s, but advances in science and technology had eroded the faith of many educated Victorians. In his memoirs Arthur Conan Doyle commented: “My mind fell out 4 continually into the various religions of the world. I could no more get into the old ones, as commonly received, than a man could get into his boy’s suit” (1924; 1989: 146). Similarly when Holbrook Jackson published his retrospective study The Eighteen Nineties in 1913, he refused to view the fin de siècle as an era of degeneration, but rather one of necessary regeneration. He observes that the decadence that Max Nordau and others had claimed was the arch-villain of the period was actually a “form of soul-sickness and the only cure for the disease was mysticism” (1913; 2008: 132). In the introduction to The Virgin of the World , Maitland discusses the late 1880s and observes that the revival of “Occult Science and Mystical, or Esoteric Philosophy […] is due no less to the character of the period of its occurrence, than to the subject itself”. He argues that the late Victorian period was ruled by materialism which had resulted in “the extinction of man’s spiritual consciousness” that only the revival of mysticism and occult science could restore (1885: ix). He also suggests that the “mystical revival” was a reaction to orthodox religion and the simple fact that some Victorian individuals were looking for other paths to God in the hope that “the passing away of old forms of faith is wont to be the prognostic and condition of new and higher manifestations” (1885: ix-x). At the centre of these “new and higher manifestations” of faith was the belief in the “Spirit of Humanity” which “being […] real and divine, would, in its own good time, make effectual protest against the extinction threatened” (1885: x). Numerous fin de siècle cults including the spiritualists, theosophists, Rosicrucian societies, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its various offshoots embraced the concept of the higher evolved or “Divine Self” and promoted a Gnostic quest. This “will” to attain mystical knowledge and understanding, which in occult terms is referred to as “gnosis”, is linked to the divine potentiality of man, as Maitland suggests: Gnosis […] derives all things from pure and absolute Being, itself unmanifest and unconditioned, but in the infinity of its plenitude and energy, possessing and exercising the potentiality of manifestation and conditionment, and being 5 [sic], rather than having [sic] life, substance, and mind, comprised in one Divine Selfhood, of which the universe is the manifestation. (Maitland, 1885: xii) The “Divine Selfhood” is therefore the desire to go beyond human existence and to locate God in man and this is the core of my thesis. The “mystical revival” describes the need of late Victorian society to break away from orthodox religion, but at the same time to follow and worship something bigger than itself. The spirituality that Christianity catered for appeared to be in decline, leaving for some Victorian individuals a gaping void. Other versions of God that were compatible with modern advances and sensibilities were
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