How fin-de-siècle Paris became the locus for the most intense revival of
magical practices and doctrines since the Renaissance • Examines the
remarkable lives of occult practitioners Joséphin Peladan, Papus, Stanislas
de Guaïta, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Jules Doinel, and others • Reveals how
occult activity deeply influenced many well-known cultural movements, such
as Symbolism, the Decadents, modern music, and the “psychedelic 60s” During
Paris’s Belle Époque (1871-1914), many cultural movements and artistic
styles flourished--Symbolism, Impressionism, Art Nouveau, the Decadents--
all of which profoundly shaped modern culture. Inseparable from this
cultural advancement was the explosion of occult activity taking place in
the City of Light at the same time. Exploring the magical, artistic, and
intellectual world of the Belle Époque, Tobias Churton shows how a wide
variety of Theosophists, Rosicrucians, Martinists, Freemasons, Gnostics,
and neo-Cathars called fin-de-siècle Paris home. He examines the precise
interplay of occultists Joséphin Peladan, Papus, Stanislas de Guaïta, and
founder of the modern Gnostic Church Jules Doinel, along with lesser known
figures such as Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Paul Sédir, Charles Barlet, Edmond
Bailly, Albert Jounet, Abbé Lacuria, and Lady Caithness. He reveals how the
work of many masters of modern culture such as composers Claude Debussy and
Erik Satie, writers Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, and painters
Georges Seurat and Alphonse Osbert bear signs of immersion in the esoteric
circles that were thriving in Paris at the time. The author demonstrates
how the creative hermetic ferment that animated the City of Light in the
decades leading up to World War I remains an enduring presence and powerful
influence today. Where, he asks, would Aleister Crowley and all the
magicians of today be without the Parisian source of so much creativity in
this field? Conveying the living energy of Paris in this richly artistic
period of history, Churton brings into full perspective the characters,
personalities, and forces that made Paris a global magnet and which allowed
later cultural movements, such as the “psychedelic 60s,” to rise from the
ashes of post-war Europe.