The Occult Art of L’ordre de la Rose+Croix du Temple et du Graal Sâr Joséphin Péladan’s R+C Salons, 1892–1897

Edmund B. Lingan

rench novelist, playwright, and occultist, Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918), was a champion of the international wave of symbolism that emerged in FEurope during the 1880s. Péladan believed that art had the potential to link humans with the divine, and he professed that all true art was essentially religious in nature. In 1892, Péladan established a fraternal Rosicrucian order: L’Ordre de la Rose+Croix du Temple et du Graal (R+C). Claiming the title Sâr Joséphin Péladan, he served as leader of the R+C from 1892–1897. It was in affiliation with the R+C that Péladan curated five interdisciplinary salons between 1892 and 1897. The R+C Salons presented the work of artists from various nations, including France, Belgium, Spain, the U.S., Java, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Many contemporary critics and artists have come to think of the R+C Salons as seminal events in the development of abstract and modern art. The Solomon R. Gug- genheim Museum in New York City acknowledged the significance of Péladan’s salons with an exhibit titled Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892–1897, which ran from June 30 to October 4, 2017.1 This exhibition included a wide selection of works that were exhibited in the five R+C Salons that Péladan curated.

Viewing the Mystical Symbolism exhibit revealed that no particular artistic style was used to create a sense of aesthetic unity. This stylistic variety in the Gug- genheim exhibit was not a curatorial miscalculation. Critics who viewed the R+C Salons in the late nineteenth century commented on their lack of aesthetic unity. Despite the variety of styles exhibited in R+C Salons, some critics who viewed the original R+C Salons claimed it was Péladan’s teachings—not aesthetic style—

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Like W.B. Yeats and Andrei Bely, Péladan’s passion for and belief in the occult was a defining aspect of his life and work. During his career, Péladan wrote several volumes dealing with occult theory and practice, including L’Occulte Catholique (1898) and L’Art Idéaliste et Mystique (1911). Before founding L’Ordre de la Rose+Croix, he was a member of the Rosicrucian Order that was founded by the poet Stanislas de Guaita. In addition to his works on occult theory, Péladan wrote plays and novels that gave expression to his esoteric principles. The R+C Salons were presented as an expression of the doctrines of the L’Ordre de la Rose+Croix. Péladan was so popularly associated with the occult in his time that Parisian journalist, Jules Huret, distinguished Péladan from other Symbolists artists and playwrights by placing him in a category of lesser known “magi” artists who all shared an understanding of “the occult as a synthesis of philosophy, science, and a way of life.”3 Many of Péladan’s contemporaries accepted his proclaimed belief in the occult.

Be they critics or collaborators, many of Péladan’s contemporaries acknowledged that occultism was central the curation of the R+C Salons. Exploring Péladan’s occult teachings today can provide a sense of thematic cohesion to the contem- porary viewer of the works that were presented at the Mystical Symbolism exhibit. Without an understanding of Péladan’s spiritual ideas, the Guggenheim’s collec- tion of works might appear to be little more than a discordant—albeit fascinat- ing—assortment of paintings, prints, architectural designs, and decorative objects.

THE CATHOLIC OCCULT

Learning about what Péladan referred to as “the Catholic Occult” will help twenty- first-century critics disentangle one of the most puzzling aspects of Péladan’s work: namely, the manner in which he linked Catholicism to his avant-garde agenda. In his Symbolist Theatre: The Formation of an Avant-Garde, Frantisek Deak comments on the consternation felt by critics who, on the one hand, recognize the impact of Péladan’s work on development of abstract and modern art and, on the other, struggle with the fact that Catholicism remains “as unpopular with modern artists and intellectuals” as it was in Péladan’s day.4

Anyone troubled by this paradox would have found no solace at the Mystical Symbolism exhibit, because Catholic imagery was in no shortage there. With its realistic depiction of Christ’s musculature, George Rouault’s depiction of The Holy Women Mourning Christ (1895) looks quite like an Italian Renaissance painting. Armand Point’s The Annunciation or Ancilla Domini (1895) makes direct reference

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00411 by guest on 28 September 2021 to Botticelli’s Annunciation (1485–1492). The content and style of Charles Filiger’s Madonna and Two Angels or Madonna of the Fireflies (ca. 1892), which depicts Mary with two winged-angels peering over her shoulder, brings to mind medi- eval Byzantine art and Gothic stained glass because of its two-dimensionality and its defiance of the laws of proportion. Jean Delville’s Portrait of the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians in Choir Dress, Joséphin Péladan (1895) depicts Péladan dressed in a vestment that resembles that of a Catholic priest. Saintly imagery was incorporated into Henri Martin’s Young Saint (1891) and Alphonse Osbert’s Vision (1892). Both paintings depict young women in open fields whose heads are illuminated by aureoles and whose hands are prayerfully folded. If viewed only from the standpoint of style and content, these Catholicism-infused pieces starkly contrast the images of Orpheus, demonic entities, and cultic temples that were also shown at Mystical Symbolism exhibit. Péladan’s occult approach to Catholicism, however, enables him to establish an occult relationship between Catholic and pagan symbolism.

In L’Occulte Catholique (1898), Péladan distinguishes the occult from any particular religious dogma by describing it as a method for probing dogma. Through occult methods, human beings are enabled to move from the known to the unknown, to move between the world of man and the world of God. Through this occult process, the divine awakens within the human being and manifests as spiritual wisdom. Artists, according to Péladan, can create work that facilitates this occult process within human beings and results in divine understanding. By doing so, such artists become occultists who point the way toward a truth that is catho- lic: that is, a truth that is universal, eternal, and transcendent of the restrictive understandings of any specific religious doctrine. Péladan explains that human beings do not have the ability to fully conceive this eternal truth, because of their intellectual and spiritual limitations. For Péladan, these human limitations are in no small part the result of the time and place in which a person happens to live. Thus, eternal truth, which is best understood within the spiritual mind of the human, passes from the occult-mind into the body of the enlightened artist, and from the body of the enlightened artist into the world through the creation of artistic forms. Péladan understands these artistic forms—such as Catholic paintings of angels and pagan statues of Pan—not as complete depictions of the eternal truth, but as individual attempts to adapt that eternal truth into a form that makes sense to people in a particular time and place.5 This is the occult function of art, in Péladan’s opinion, and it is a position that he shared with many of the other leaders of the Occult Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Catholic imagery of the paintings depicted in the R+C Salons do not repre- sent a traditional understanding of Catholicism, but rather the conviction held

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00411 by guest on 28 September 2021 by Péladan and his followers that these images were attempts to communicate an eternal truth in a way that could be understood by particular people living in a particular time and place. Péladan argued that such images had precedents in earlier, pagan forms. In particular, he states in L’Occulte Catholique that Catholic representations of angels have their roots in the depictions of spiritual beings that were incorporated into the dramatic initiation rites of the ancient cult of Eleusis. For Péladan, linking the representation of spirits in the cult of Eleusis to those of Catholicism was not an act of blasphemy or religious inversion. Péladan made these statements to suggest that some images, such as images of winged messengers from the beyond, are so effective at revealing eternal spiritual truth that they are re-used at many different points in human history. He was arguing that the efficacy of some representations of spiritual truth are so powerful that they transcend the time and place in which they were originally created.

ORPHEUS AND HIS LYRE

As was the case with many other symbolist artists, Orpheus was a significant figure to Péladan and the members of the R+C. For symbolists, the eternal cre- ative force of Orpheus was inseparable from the lyre that he played. Orpheus was so tenaciously attached to his lyre that—after being torn limb from limb by a group of enraged maenads—his head and his lyre became fused. The head and lyre continued playing and singing beautiful music as they floated to the shore of the Isle of Lesbos, where his head was buried. The Muses then took up the lyre and placed it among the stars in the sky. To nineteenth-century occultists and symbolists, Orpheus was an inspirational figure who represented the heroic mastery and transmission of hidden mysteries and esoteric arts. He was the supreme spiritual artist who possessed enough technical mastery and expression to hypnotize and overwhelm the very gods when he played.

Péladan identified Orpheus (along with Oannes, Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, Manu, and Zoroaster) as the keeper of a primordial religious doctrine that he introduced to entire races of human beings before the creation of the religions that exist today.6 For him, Orpheus represented a closer and more complete conception of eternal spiritual truth than was available to people in his own time, because the inspiration of Orpheus came straight from the ideal realm and was not filtered through the narrower understandings of modern religions. Because of the significance that Péladan and the members of the R+C placed upon Orpheus, representations of Orpheus and his lyre abounded at the R+C Salons. For the second salon in 1893, Edmond Aman-John created a lithographic poster titled Beatrix (ca. 1892–1893). On the poster, a lithe woman in a long gown is holding onto a lyre, which seems to be pulling her off the ground. The woman is hindered in her ascension by a robed angel, which seems to be pulling her

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00411 by guest on 28 September 2021 Top: Armand Point. The Annunciation or Ancilla Domini (L’Annonciation), 1895. Tempera on panel, 99 x 51 cm. Private collection, courtesy Sotheby’s. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby’s. Bottom: Charles Filiger. Madonna and Two Angels or Madonna of the Fireflies (Madone aux vers luisants), ca. 1892. Gouache and gilding on cardboard, 23.3 x 29.2 cm. Olivier Malingue. Photo: © Florent Chevrot. Courtesy Olivier Malingue.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00411 by guest on 28 September 2021 Top: Edmond Aman-Jean. Beatrix, ca. 1892–93. Lithograph, 124.4 x 81 cm. Barbara Leibowits Graphics, New York. Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Bottom: Jean Delville. The Death of Orpheus (Orphée mort), 1893. Oil on canvas, 79.3 x 99.2 cm. Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ SABAM, Brussels. Photo: © Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium, Brussels: J. Geleyns-Ro scan.

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More realistic in style and horrific in content is Pierre Amédée Marcel-Beronneau’s large oil painting, Orpheus in Hades (1897), which appeared at the final R+C Salon. In the image, a pale Orpheus plays his lyre for Pluto and the demonic and tortured denizens of Hades. Bright, white light from above illuminates Orpheus’s body and to a degree separates him from the hideous darkness around him, which teems with the horrible bodies and faces of countless human and non-human entities. Marcel-Beronneau’s ominous painting contrasts sharply with Alexandre Séon’s The Poet (1895), in which we see a youth ascending a rocky cliff overlooking a body of water. The youth extends one hand upward and his hand seems to be attempting to pull a star from the night sky. Below him, at the bottom of the rock upon which the youth stands, lays a golden lyre.

John Delville’s The Death of Orpheus (1893) depicts the legendary character’s transcendent final moments. Immersed in rich blue-green hues, the pale head of Orpheus sits peacefully atop his lyre. The gentle water upon which this strange relic floats reflects the shining stars in the sky, which, according to mythology, will soon be the permanent home of Orpheus’s famed instrument. His lyre is evoked once again in Armand Point’s elaborately drawn April or Saint Cecilia (1896). By placing the lyre in the hands of the patron saint of music, Point combines Greek mythology and Catholic hagiography. This fusion once again promotes the R+C teaching that an eternal, spiritual truth underlies certain religious images that have recurred in art from ancient times to the present.

THE ROSE AND THE CROSS

The Rose and the Cross are the most well-known symbols of Rosicrucian eso- tericism. During the Occult Revival that swept through Paris (and much of the rest of Europe) during the late nineteenth century, interest in the Rosicrucian tradition was widespread. Rosicrucianism started with the 1614 publication of Fama Fraternitatis, Deß Löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes, an alle Gelehrte and Häupter Europae geschrieben (The Fame of the Fraternity of the Praiseworthy Order of the Rose-Cross, Written to all the Learned and Rulers of Europe). This publication was followed by the 1615 publication of Confessio Fraternita- tis (Confession of the Fraternity) and, in 1616, Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreutz Anno 1459 (The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreuz in the Year 1459). Several Rosicrucian orders were established during the Occult

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For Péladan, the Rose and the Cross related to the process of creating art that is sent into the mind of the artist from the divine and then awakens awareness of the divine within the person who experiences that divine art. In L’Art Idéaliste et Mystique, Péladan identifies the Rose as the source of ideal forms that the artist receives from the Absolute, and he associates the Cross with the necessity to put aside selfish interests to create divinely inspired art. Péladan goes so far as to say that a piece of God resides in the abstract forms created by artists, because the abstract is delivered to the artist from the realm of the ideal forms. Rosicrucian art is not independently created, in Péladan’s view; rather, like an occult text or a communication from God, it is magically received by the artist. In Péladan’s estimation, anyone who channeled and communicated these divine forms was more than an artist: he was “a priest, a king, a magus” who had the authority to call the angels to assist him in his artistic endeavors.7 Receiving the ideal forms of the Rose and surrendering to the disciplinary demands of the Cross empowered artists to perform the sacred duty of revealing divine forms to the world through their creations.

Due to their significance as symbols in Péladan’s order, it is no surprise that the Rose and the Cross were featured prominently at the R+C Salons. The Rose and Cross emblem was placed on posters that were created specifically for the salons. Carlos Schwabe’s poster, which he created in 1892 for the first R+C Salon, depicted three women moving through the process of contacting the divine realm. One woman sits weakly in a pool of dark water: limp, lifeless, and shackled, she seems unable to move. Above her are two more women ascending a staircase toward a brightly lit sky. The lower woman on the staircase is dressed in dark colors and holds a lily. She is being guided up the stairs by another woman in white, who holds a flaming heart in her hand. Above the frame of this image floats the Rosicrucian Rose and Cross. The same emblem appears in Aman-Jean’s Beatrix. In this poster, the emblem floats directly above the arm of the woman who is being lifted upward by the lyre and pulled downward by the angel.

The Rose and Cross is featured with subtle numerousness in Delville’s Portrait of the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians in Choir Dress, Joséphin Péladan. Multiple roses and crosses adorn the frame of this portrait. They are featured in the wallpaper behind Péladan. A large Rose and Cross is placed at the center of the collar of Péladan’s dark robe, and many smaller versions of the emblem line the collar of the light robe he wears. One might overlook these details if they viewed the portrait too quickly, but careful examination of the piece reveals the foundation of Rosicrucianism upon which Péladan’s teachings were built.

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In L’Art Idéaliste et Mystique, Péladan refers to the mission of using art as a tool for facilitating connections between humans and the divine as “the Call of the Grail.”8 Péladan would settle for nothing less than this in the work that he exhibited at the R+C Salons. Those who attended the salons were not necessar- ily inclined to agree with Péladan’s assessment of the spiritual value of the work he presented. What did resonate—and continues to resonate—with other artists and critics, was the high value that Péladan placed on abstract forms. For future artists and critics, Péladan’s deification of the abstract was problematic. Kenneth Silver addresses this directly in the title of his essay, “Afterlife: The Important and Sometimes Embarrassing Links between Occultism and the Development of Abstract Art, Ca. 1909–1913,” which was included in the Guggenheim’s com- panion publication to the Mystical Symbolism exhibit. Despite Péladan’s refusal to separate spiritual and artistic motivations, the time has come to comfortably accept what he contributed to modern abstract art.

NOTES 1. Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris 1892–1897, an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, June 30–October 4, 2017. 2. Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, “The Reception of the Rose+Croix: A Symptom of the Réaction Idéaliste,” in Vivien Greene, ed., Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris 1892–1897 (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2017), 40. 3. Frantisek Deak, Symbolist Theatre: The Formation of an Avant-Garde (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/PAJ Books, 1993), 119. 4. Ibid., 128. 5. Sâr Mérodack J. Péladan, L’Occulte Catholique (Paris: Chamuel, 1898), 17, Internet Archive, www.archive.org.

6. Ibid., 70. 7. Joséphin Péladan, L’Art Idéaliste et Mystique: Précédé de la Réfutation Esthétique de Taine (Paris: E. Sansot, 1911), 330–334, Internet Archive, www.archive.org. 8. Ibid., 331.

EDMUND B. LINGAN is chair and associate professor in the department of theatre and film at the University of Toledo. He has published several works about the occult and performance, including his book The Theatre of the Occult Revival: Alternative Spiritual Performance from 1875 to the Present. Lingan is a theatre historian, playwright, director, actor, and songwriter.

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