Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival

by Christopher McIntosh

Overview

This classic study of the French magician Eliphas Lévi and the occult revival in France is at last available again after being out of print and highly sought after for many years. Its central focus is Lévi himself (1810-1875), would-be priest, revolutionary socialist, utopian visionary, artist, poet and, above all, author of a number of seminal books on magic and occultism. It is largely thanks to Lévi, for example, that the Tarot is so widely used today as a divinatory method and a system of esoteric symbolism. The magicians of the Golden Dawn were strongly influenced by him, and Aleister Crowley even believed himself to be Lévi's reincarnation. The book is not only about Lévi, however, but also covers the era of which he was a part and the remarkable figures who preceded and followed him – the esoteric Freemasons and Illuminati of the late 18th century, and later figures such as the Rosicrucian magus Joséphin Péladan, the occultist Papus (Gérard Encausse), the Counter-Pope Eugène Vintras, and the writer J.-K. Huysmans, whose work drew strongly on occult themes. These people were avatars of a set of traditions which are now seen as an important part of the western heritage and which are gaining increasing attention in the academy. Christopher McIntosh's vivid account of this richly fascinating era in the history of occultism remains as fresh and compelling as ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438435565
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Series:	SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Christopher McIntosh is a faculty member at the Centre of the Study of Esotericism, University of Exeter, England. He is the author of The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment, also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 6

Preface 7

Introduction 11

Part 1 The Age of Unreason

1 The Rebirth of Magic 17

2 The Occult and the Revolution 34

3 Revolutionary Cults 44

4 The Beginnings of Popular Occultism 49

5 Magnetisers and Mediums 55

6 The Holy King 61

Part 2 Eliphas Lévi

7 The Early Years 73

8 The Radical 83

9 Enter Eliphas Lévi 96

10 The Magician 105

11 The Pundit 124

12 The Last Years 136

13 Eliphas Lévi: An Assessment 141

Part 3 Towards the Kingdom of the Paraclete

14 The Heirs of Eliphas Lévi 157

15 The War of the Roses 171

16 The Magical Quest of J.-K. Huysmans 177

17 Writers and the Occult 195

18 Satanists and Anti-Satanists 206

19 The Indian Summer of Occultism 219

Appendix A 225

Appendix B 226

Select Bibliography 228

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

"...one of the best English sources of information on this fascinating milieu." — Heathen Harvest

From the Publisher