Léonce de Larmandie’s portrait.

In the collections of the

‘Archives Départementales de la Dordogne’.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, Part I of a sampler devoted to the memory of Count André Ludovic Marie Joseph Léonce Dieudonné de Larmandie (1851-1921), one of Joséphin Péladan’s closest collaborators during the tumultuous events surrounding the ‘Salons de la Rose+Croix‘ and the artistic and initiatory activities of the ‘Catholic Rose+Cross of the Temple and of the Graal’.

Two of his books are in our Via-Hygeia Library: the first one, ‘Eoraka‘ (1891), is as insider-witness memoire, and the second, ‘Magic and Religion‘ (1898), as more self-distanced, an ‘after the events’ like remembrance. They offer a unique description of the ideas and motivations of a specific French Christian Rosicrucian movement during the last years of the Nineteen century. Today’s Sampler Part I will be devoted to ‘Eoraka’, a forthcoming Sampler II to ‘Magie & Religion‘. A planned Part III will be devoted to a later memoir devoted to the ‘Salon de la Rose+Croix‘ per-se with recollections of the organizers and all of the participating artists: ‘L’Entracte Idéal‘ (1903).

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Sampler Part I –

From ‘Eoraka’ – (1891)

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Sâr Péladan’s ‘Nihil Obstat‘

or Imprimatur

SAR PÉLADAN, GRAND MASTER of the TEMPLE of the ROSE☩CROSS
TO HIS BELOVED AND LOYAL COMTE LÉONCE DE LARMANDIE
Commander of Geburah in the Temple of the  R☩C☩C☩

SALUTATION & PRAISE !

In Jesus only God, and in Peter only King,

Most beloved and admirable Peer,

The glorious symbol of the Rose☩Cross, long tarnished by Masonic cretinism, reappears for the first time in centuries, in its expressive splendor of individualistic adhesions to Roman Catholic Abstraction. It reappears radiantly upon your name and your work: a great fortune that you deserve, as much by the chivalrous temper of your soul as by your books of passionate, powerful, and traditional art.

Although contemporary evolution seems to prefer scientism, Art will always remain the supreme language of the Idea.

Papus, the highest of the eclectic hermeticists, did he not himself state on page 620 of his monumental ‘Treatise of Occult Science‘: ‘The artistic studies of the famous Sir James Tissot are more convincing in favor of the existence of Christ than all the combined works of contemporary critics.’

How much more compelling in favor of Catholicism is this consensus of masterpieces that begins in the literature of the fathers of the primitive Church and the catacombs, and culminates with the Constable of Aurevilly and Parsifal!

Despite a hundred years of political and clerical defeat, Catholicism still stands firm against all odds. The latest masterpieces—’Les Diaboliques‘ (note: by Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly), ‘Axel‘ (note: by Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam)—are they not stamped with Roman insignia? The masterpieces of tomorrow will bear the same motto, and someone, without a doubt, your name.

Following the supreme disdain for success bought at the price of baseness, which Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly exemplified, we have added a desire for a grouping that will soon create a third imperial order between the decaying century and Rome, which does not dare: The Intellectual Third Order.

None more than you, my beloved peer, is called to this revenge, the only one that matters to our humanism: to restore Theocracy in Art.

Sincere poet and youthful in your ‘Les Yeux d’un Enfant‘, the most finely crafted of your books, and the one that I see as filled with the essence of the soul; novelist of ‘Sang Pur‘, of ‘Le Reptile‘, of ‘La Patricienne‘, painter transforming pale mundanities, you are still the Adventurer of your coat of arms, the valorous pen that life’s providence would make a hero.

Therefore, it is only just that this mark of the Rose☩Cross should first flourish on your name and on your work. The implacable hierarchy restored by us compelled me to declare here that nothing in ‘Eoraka‘ was contrary to either Catholic orthodoxy or magical orthodoxy.

But I could neither write to you without friendship nor name you without admiration, even if only for a decorative rigidity.

I do not merely approve, my beloved peer, I applaud and exult at your formidable pages, your beautiful and sacred violence, at all the fire that is your entirety.

You are the one to whom I would like to give the standard of the double Cross, on the day of battle: Be the one who carries the Rose☩Cross to its first step into the light!

In your strong and loyal hands, it will fly higher, the black and white standard! And receive, beloved Count and noble Commander, the accolade of your brother in the Temple of the R☩C☩C☩.

‘Ad crucem per Rosam, ad Rosam per crucem, in eâ, in eis, gemmatus resurgam!’
(To the Cross through the Rose, to the Rose through the Cross, in it, in them, I shall rise jeweled!)

LE SAR PÉLADAN.

Given in Paris, this holy day of Pentecost, 1891.

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Léonce de Larmandie ‘s Book Dedication

to Sâr Mérodak Péladan

OBLATION (Offering) TO SAR MERODACK,

You are by right the first eponym of these pages where I wish, in the name of orthodox and Roman Catholicism, to justify and proclaim esotericism, in the face of the scatological and coprophagic generation that delivers to beasts the theory of Intellectuals.

When I came to know you through your fresco of the ‘Le Vice Suprême‘, that grand and terrible Last Judgment which is but the frontispiece of your work, I passionately wanted to know you completely. I saw you, and from that unforgettable day, a part of my soul, shrouded in doubt and penumbra, was illuminated.

From my first stammerings, I always sang the praises of Catholic grandeur, but my mind had not yet penetrated the arcana of dogma, while my enthusiasm celebrated the magnificence of universal religion.

In this waning era, where disgust accumulates like sewage in the gutters, where all philosophical and social formulas materially result in the external triumph of Prussia and the internal victory of excremental opportunism, I can only cling to a branch of hope by listening to the voice of your commandments and your prophecies.

The imprint of Teutonic boots is annihilated by the wind of your anathemas. When the giants of your ethos speak, the stammerings of our miserable Bourbon palaces seem to me like the revolutions of an ant-hill trampled and crushed under the feet of a bull.

Your height consoles us from the surrounding pettiness, your Word creates for us a higher plane, a sort of astral world where we can abstract ourselves in peaceful hours and drink to the full the oblivion of the world and the contempt of men.

They try to laugh, the pygmies, the Hilotes, the Myrmidons, but their hilarity clashes like the hissing of reptiles in the roar of a hurricane.

For the light you have imparted to us,
For the cerebral joy that came to us through you,
For our cherished pride as Thinker and warrior that you have elevated and fortified;

In full independence of Spirit and Will,
With the frankness of a Knight of the Rose+Cross who defies Error and whom Fear cannot touch,

I proclaim you today the highest, the noblest, the most serene Intellectual Entity of this end of the century!

Fraternally to you in the R.☩C.☩C☩.

LARMANDIE.

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Léonce de Larmandie’s

Book dedication to Abbé Alta

ABBE ALTA,

Before shaking your hand, I did not know if it would ever be given to me to see a Catholic priest fitting to that immense adjective, to that prodigious noun. I did not even have the courage to light my lantern like Diogenes to seek out this rare eagle among the crowd, almost always respectable, too often mediocre, of the elected members of the priestly Ministry.

Following the luminous hours that I had the good fortune to spend with you, I wished you the purple, not as a glittering bauble as many covet it, but to bestow a just elevation, a noble stature, to the pulpit of your teaching. I esteem you too highly to believe in the realization of my wish, for in our times, alas! the scarlet robe can only be worn in complicity with the Power of Darkness.

But, as a simple black Cardinal, you will put more than one red Cardinal to shame. At the moment when the loudest among them, ready, with great blasts of trumpets and drums, to take the constitutional oath, kissing the goat’s rump in recognition of its horned blows, your elevation appears to me as the equitable counterbalance to this fall.

The unknown priest, great by reason, strong by science, consoles the prince of the Church who peddles his tattered finery. You have illuminated the darkness of destiny for me; through the doubtful and unfathomable paths of absolute truth, you made the torch of Charity shine for me, which, dominating all speculations and all mysteries, can never be mistaken nor deceive us.

You said to me: ‘Seek the truth without being sure of attaining it, love the Beautiful without being certain of possessing it, only the Good can be fully practiced and its perpetual fulfillment will lead you, in a glorious assumption, towards Truth and Beauty.’

Next to the name of Mérodack, I want yours to be at the head of these lines. If against all secular science I can oppose a Magus, then against all theology I want to be able to say: I have a Priest!

Fraternally to you in the R.☩C.☩C☩.

LARMANDIE.

(Note: More about Abbé Alta here)

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‘The word ‘esoteric‘ technically means: hidden doctrine, and I will define it: the intimate meaning of symbols. Exoterism is on the other hand the vulgar or surface interpretation of a tradition or of a teaching.  From all times, parabolic and allegoric forms were used. Nowhere more than in the sacred books, that are used as the foundation and source to the diverse religious beliefs. The East, in particular, has always pleased itself in the usage of a figurative language, and the person who would take the Bible literally would reach a level of absurdity and grotesque never equaled. Also, what I will show later, any faith, similar to the god Janus, has a double aspect: the revelatory part for the crowds, and the initiatory part for the ‘brainy’ groups.

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High magic must not be mistaken for goetia, nor with sorcery, nor with the illusionists that blind the crowds with golden sand. During the Edenic epoch, when Man had acquired the science of Good & Evil-meaning the moral consciousness of his actions, Yahweh said: ‘Let’s cast away Man from the terrestrial paradise, in fear that he  taste the fruit of the tree of Life and that he therefore will reach eternal existence!‘ This tree of life, which we will never know the full bloom, is the aim of the strivings of our psychic faculties. It sums up the the supreme tendencies of created nature, its possession would make us almost alike God.

From all times, mechanically, the necromancers and the sorcerers had put their hands upon certain inferior points, where these forces intersect, and they have used their crippled discoveries in diverse aims of hate and selfishness. The true magus, the theurgist, must first start with a complete renouncement of all of his passions; moreover, his aim is necessarily altruistic. Hence, from this arises a first and primordial concordance: omnipotence, even in the material realm, is an attribute of sainthood and charity.

Here the scientific esotericism extends its hand to religious exotericism. As an example, you can take some of the most famous thaumaturgists, and notably Saint Francis of Assisi.

(A Via-Hygeia note: The word thaumaturgy derives from Greek θαῦμα thaûma, meaning ‘miracle’ or ‘marvel’ (final t from genitive thaûmatos) and ἔργον érgon, meaning ‘work’. In the 16th century, the word thaumaturgy entered the English language meaning miraculous or magical powers. The word was first anglicized and used in the magical sense in John Dee’s book ‘The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara‘ (1570). He mentions:  ‘An art mathematical called thaumaturgy… which giveth certain order to make strange works, of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at‘. Source:Dee, John (2020) [1570]. ‘The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara‘. Outlook Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7523-1583-7.  Also you may want to look for the works of Ramon Llull and Giordano Bruno with Scott Gosnell’s 2012 edition of some of Bruno’s works such as, ‘On mathematical Magic‘ and ‘Llulian Medicine‘.)

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The esoteric doctrine is universal. Take the initiates of the ancient rites and the orthodox Christian Gnostics; there has always been some in every country and epochs, whatever we may object. You will find a common well of elementary truths with an almost absolute identity of interpretation. You discover everywhere the involution of the Unity towards the Ternary and the evolution of the Ternary towards Unity. The Messianic Idea is universal; the Messiah been called Christ, Boudha or the Mahdi.

(A Via-Hygeia note: original word used is: ‘Mouley-Saha’, which we have not find anything about it. We used Mahdi, as it is told that He is coming from the line of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and ‘Mouley’ is a title use for the Morocan King, as being also a descendant of the Prophet.)

A Thaumaturgy of the highest level was practiced by the priests of all denominations, and we will soon demonstrate this, what we call miracles cannot be used to assess a logical supremacy of a religion against the others. We can observe everywhere, under more or less precise forms, the notions of original sin, of necessary expiation, of  a providential solidarity between the successive generations of humanity. Contrary to a widespread opinion, we ought not to believe that the doctrine of sacrifice, penance, forgiveness of  insults, and even of a Good for an evil are the exclusive tenets of Christianity. Indian Buddhism offers a similar morality. It is not, we will see this a bit later, through doctrinal purity that Christianity is, we believe, to dominate other beliefs, but through the greatest simplicity of its dogmatism, and especially through the superiority, historically established, of its social formula. It is nothing, but the best of the exotericisms.

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Two esoteric sources are studied in our Time, the Kabbalistic source, containing especially the dogmatic part, and the Hindu source, in which we find the poetry of the doctrine at its highest level. Péladan and Papus, who are both pillars of the contemporary hermetic science, the first as a thinker and a writer, and the second as teacher and exegete, they are both more kabbalists. Esoteric Buddhism possess a distinguished representative in Mrs. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Some claim she is a thaumaturgist, and i have no problem in believing this. Some have also said that she is very knowledgeable, which is even better, as thaumaturgy is not always indispensably associated with science. She was presented to the intellectual world as being in direct relationship with the Mahatmas of Tibet. Some people in the sarcastic mode have added the adjective ‘hypothetic’ to the word Mahatmas. Their existence wouldn’t surprise us. Twenty years ago-I was still in college-I have read with the outmost interest the travel stories of Father Huc and Father Gabet, two Lazarist missionaries whose expedition reached the ‘city of the Spirits’, Lhasa. Their efforts were successful, unlike the earlier Bonvalot and Prince of Orleans expedition. And, in this book relating their journey, is full of description and portraits of great Lamas and living Buddhas, with almost frightening revelation, that would be of the nature of confirming the reality and existence of the Mahatmas above mentioned. Father Huc and Father Gabet were the witness of unconceivable wonders and their good faith cannot be questioned. I recall reading the unforgettable description of ‘a thousand images tree’, a sort of sacred green oak, carrying upon its leaves, attached colored papers with scripts of old Tibetan painted on them, and the blowing wind would make them fret!

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Free-Masonry, originating from the Templars, was at its origin a sort of initiatic society. It had, once, power and might. Besides a few  serious and respectable loges of the Scottish Rite and of the Misraim Rite, most of the sect has become a gathering of imbeciles, of grotesques figures and nefarious scoundrels. Péladan used to say that they ignore the ‘aleph‘ of the symbols that they teach. Their regalia, once emblems, are now but a ridicule travesty without any significations left. The whole obedience of the French Grand Orient is nothing but an opportunistic electoral committee! It is of common knowledge, that after abolishing the mention of the ‘Supreme Grand Architect of the Universe’, and after professing a mere atheism, most of the foreign obediences had ostracized them.

‘Initiatic ceremonies’ are still being held, with wooden swords and cardboard daggers, and i cannot imagine how the hosting master of the loge welcoming the recipient could keep the necessary solemnity during the unbearable unfolding of obsolete antics and mimicry-the only ‘religiously’ transmitted tradition still preserved!

I am surprised that the few decent  governments we had along the centuries did not decree the peremptory dissolution of these political gambling dens!

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To the intellectuals or adepts, truth was always transmitted through initiation. It was from all time a direct teaching given to the people strong enough to bear the immediate intuition of certain great laws. I say some of them, because it is clear that among the primal notions or archetypes, there are that even the most capable and understanding human intelligences will never embrace and penetrate. As for the crowd, it has not been initiated at any time and will not be until the end of Time. Truth constantly came to it through the prism of revelation.

This word and this idea of revelation are generally distorted and explained contrary to common sense, even to the grammatical etymology. Some dare write that revelation is a discovery, an unveiling, while it is the opposite that is genuine. Revelare did not and cannot mean to unveil, but instead, to re-veil. Truth, did we say earlier, is naked, as it would have come out of the well of the Absolute, pre-existing above all epochs and glide above all contingences. Truth is not accessible to average intelligences. What is needed to the rudimentary intelligences of the crowd is ‘veiled’ through a symbolic form, an allegory, a parabola, a haggadian hermeneutic piece, even a myth-in another word, an exotericism proportional to the mediocrity of the average person.

These successive re-veilings, throughout the moral history of Humanity were the foundations of the world’s organized religions. But these exotericisms themselves were more or less coarse; the symbols followed a super-organic process elevating and purifying themselves. When a few centuries managed to wear a cloth of truth, another one is thought to fit truth in it again: this is called a re-velation. Christian revelation is the highest of what had come before, because it originator, under a human appearance, is a real and substantial emanation of God. It is also nonetheless true that, under the Christian era, some manifesting the outmost unblameable orthodoxy, were allowed-at their own risk-to go beyond the revelation and to seek Initiation. I say, at their own risk, because the proud, who has more vanity than mental health, endanger himself while traveling the path of the arcane and is prone to get lost in the entangled labyrinth and fatefully fall into bottomless pits. My those who do not feel up to this metaphysical task walk the more safer roads that will lead them to the kingdom of God.

The very little number of initiates is not destined to a broader portion of happiness, but invited to a larger intellection of the Truth. Their particular acuity of their philosophical views cannot be adapted to the use of the masses and in forcing them to do so, they would rebel immediately! The incommensurable Absolute will never be deciphered in plain by the crowd. When exotericism says: ‘In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.’ Let esotericism declare: ‘ When the archetypes came into being, the ministerial powers separated what was fixed with what was volatile.’

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As for what is related to the metaphysics of the highest level and hermeticism, the teaching in the Christian seminaries is notoriously deficient or rather scant; at the end of the last year of studies, during the teaching of the group of students called, ‘transitional deacons’ (who are confirmed to become priests), some incomplete notions, cropped and inaccurate of rudimentary magic is given. At the same time sexuality is casuistically discussed, under the 6&9 concept (Sexto & Nono) and this in a very reluctant manner. We can understand the embarrassed teacher in front of the exegesis of desire, where love and virtue are confronted to sex and lust!

But what surprises me is the complete lack of information given to the future priests of occult sciences as a whole, as their role already present is to grow at a greater rate. Miracles are casually admitted, but as a derogation to the laws of nature, which is an heresy, a direct intervention of God or his saints; which is factually wrong. Goetia or black magic is also admitted, as diabolical mystique.

But, the possibility of a higher magic, theurgy and gnosis are vehemently denied, which are the operating of the forces of nature by theosophers or wise men, who have nothing to do with the ‘spirit of deception’. Apollonius of Tyana was laughed at, so was Paracelsus, if even their names would have been pronounced! And the author of the ‘Hebrew Language Restored’, the illustrious Fabre d’Olivet, one of the modern thought most distinguished representative, the glory of nineteen century esotericism, was treated like an odd fool.

The Church, which rightfully believes in sorcerers can’t anymore refuse to acknowledge the theurgists. The failings in the teachings of the seminary must be corrected. The forces of darkness, in their ascetism and powers do not have the monopole of thaumaturgy; we must acknowledge the competencies of these pure esoteric sciences, not always obsessed with religion but also not kissing the devil’s private parts!

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One of the greatest mistake made by secular education, out of the desire to simplify, is the division of the human composite in two parts: body and soul. The good exotericists forget the most important part, the only one related to the idea of substance: the spirit. To confuse soul and spirit is the heavy mistake of our modern times; it is a contradiction.

Being a divine image, Man is of a triple nature: spirit, soul and body. Saint Thomas of Aquino is categoric on this and Saint Paul no less. Beware of mistaking soul and spirit, as their are essentially distinct! It it through spirit that we are connected to the divine world, our soul is related to the astral realm and the body to the material realm. This triplicity of Man is inherent in the enunciation of the mystery of incarnation. The Word, says our Catholic dogma, incarnates by taking a body and a soul similar to ours. What was found in this divine humanity? An abbreviation of the Word, taking place as a spirit, a soul and a body. Man-God is triple and he is dogmatically similar to Man, therefore, Man is of a triple nature.

The confusion between soul and spirit reveals a complete lack of knowledge of the science of pneumatology, and a clear negation of the intermediary world, the astral world, that is attached to matter through its inferior dynamisms and is attached to the spirit, as implementor of concepts through its mist subtle vibrations.

We will later review the degree of formal or substantial entity we need to accept within each of the three realms; what we can already says is that three levels of phenomena appear to us clearly delineated with their individual characteristics. To spirit, conception; to the soul, the emotional ripple; to the body the physical act.

This triple categorization seems to confuse soul and astral body. Esoteric Buddhism, which has pushed the analysis of the human composite to its outmost limits, recognizes seven elements:

Rupas and Jiva: the material body and vital force.

Linga Sharira: the astral body.

Kama Rupa: the animal soul.

Manas: the human soul.

Boudhi: spiritual force.

Atma: spiritual essence.

This septenary can be simplified into a ternary,

with these comprehensive attribution:

Rupa and Jiva: the body.

Linga Sharira, Kama Rupa and Manas: the soul.

Boudhi and Atma: the spirit.

It is perfectly logical to link to the material body, Rupa, the vital force, Jiva; to the soul Manas, the astral body, Linga, Sharira, which is the fluidic form of the material body and with the animal soul, Kama–Rupa, which is the seat of the sensitive emotions; and finally, to the spirit Atma, the divine emanation, to the spiritual force, Boudhi, which determines the psychical personality of each  human individuality.

Further more, when we will study, a little later, the most attractive hypothesis about the constitution of matter, we will see that we ought not to attach to much importance to these different divisions and that the triadic grouping of these phenomena cannot but lead, at the end, to the discovery of an indivisible Unity.

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When we elevate ourselves into the mystical metaphysics, we find a real topical analogy between the series of the kabbalistic Sephirot and the angelical hierarchy in our Christian beliefs. We know that the angelical hierarchy was established by the greatest doctor of the Church, Dionysus the Areopagite, and that it is presented as such, in an ascending manner:

The Third hierarchy

1. the Angels.

2. the Archangels.

3. the Principalities.

The Second hierarchy

4. the Powers.

5. the Virtues.

6. the Dominations.

The First hierarchy

7. the Thrones.

8. the Cherubs.

9. The Seraphs.

Now, here is delineated how Kabbalah classifies

and calls the forces from above, the pure ones:

The Third superior trinity

1. Yesod: Foundation.

2. Hod: Splendor.

3. Netzah: Victory.

The Second superior trinity

4. Tiphereth: Beauty.

5. Geburah: Strength.

6. Chesed: Love.

The First superior trinity

7. Binah: Intelligent action.

8. Chokmah: Infinite activity.

9. Kether: Infinite space.

All find their resolution into the 10th sephira, Malkuth: absolute life, alike the three angelical hierarchies which can be harbored within the ministerial Elohim of divine strength.

The Kabbalists, alike Saint Dionysus who may have known their research, placed the superior forces of the metaphysical realm in a scale corresponding to the three elements of the universal Being: the Principles, the Laws and the Facts.

These coincidences are important enough to be mentioned.

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Péladan will write one day, the ‘Amphitheatre of the Dead Sciences‘. From this wonderful dissection of this magistral anatomy, from this histology of the Abstract, this young magus, alone, will some day soon attempt, the necessary recognition will come out, indubitably, of the incomparable power, the colossal greatness of antique science.

Despite the infatuation of the modern scientists, despite their intolerable arrogance, when they speak about their ascension towards an indefinite progress, the person who has studied the past and its deep resources, within these vast catacombs-where one is terrified by  the amount of bones left-this person, without analyzing his impression, feels the intimate greatness of the old centuries, not only from a point of view of the works of the spirit, but by the excessive relationship our brilliant ancestors possessed with the natural forces.

And in this, we may go back a very long time ago, in the shadows of dead ages, passing through the ruins of Assyria and Chaldea, these primitive cradles of the movements of the spirit, these original oceans where all the swells of human thought took their births.

To speak only here of the most sacred of the exact sciences, Astronomy, I imagine the Sârs of these blessed countries, where even the shepherd themselves were familiar with the revolution of the stars during the silence of the nights.

Nowadays, people applaud the gifted calculator who knew how to predict the return of a comet, but who would have applauded the royal magus, who seeing, nineteen centuries ago, a strange meteor in the depth of the Eastern sky, understood it to be the sign of the birth of the Savior of the world and have set themselves on the road, carrying Frankincense, Gold & Myrrh to bring to his cradle the tribute of their love and adoration?

These lines would bring to some a snarky grin, but i would console myself with this quote from the Scriptures: ‘Stultorum infinitus es numerus.’ (the number of imbeciles is infinite).

(To be continued)

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Coming soon,

A Little Léonce de Larmandie Sampler – Part II

From ‘Magie & Religion’ – (1898)

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