Histoire

At the half of the 19th century a former abbot became very popular in western occultists circles through a certain numbers of works. That man, born Alphonse Louis Constant, went down in history under the name Eliphas Lévi. Around the same time, especially in England, begins the early stages of a new "science" called epistemology. It refers to, the field of sciences philosophy, or the theory of knowledge.

The 19th century has been influenced, particularly in France, by secularization of mentalities promoting "close" concerns to the detriment of "ultimate" concerns. 20th century kept going that way, it experimented the expansion of state intervention, technocracy and consequently an excessive specialization, partitioning thinking groups. In a segmented society, what shape can "culture" have, and what values does it convey?  Is it necessarily the reflection of a conservative standardization or on the contrary, a conglomeration of very dissimilar component?   And as a result: what is the form, the significance and the substratum of its counterculture?

Conspiracies (real ones) have always existed. Yet, conspiracy theories (often imaginary) appeared, during the French Revolution: their coming lines up with the end of monarchy and the secularization of our society.
The Illuminati, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Society of Jesus, Freemasonry, Rite of Strict Observance etc... created polemics, amalgams. Nowadays: Opus Dei, Illuminati or Scientology feed some newspaper where popular phantasmagoria goes beyond reality.

Stéphane François, political scientist, Didier Le Masson, specialist in German Freemasonry and Philipe Valode, author and historian, question themselves around that round table on reality and pregnancy of occultist ideas in the Nazi way of thinking.  Around Emmanuel Kreis,
- Is romanticism at the origin of the völkisch circles  (racial populism in Germany) who began the basis of Nazi mystic?
- Did high Nazi dignitaries knew occult groups such as the Black Order (Schwarzer Orden),

Occultists tried to make eschatology a science basing on a new history critic which was going give, on a new basis, the meaning of Johannine revelations.  Apocalypse gave a "reference code" to explain many troubled situations. It was present after almost all great traumatizes of western history, destruction inviting to speculate on signs. Henry Corbin, kept Ap. 21,1 "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth" for his analysis of Verus propheta comparing prophetical Sunnite and Shi'ite with the announced return of Christ. The same thought pattern is applicable to secular universe of Occultists who elaborated their theories appeal to a "subtle world", parent of  the "imaginal world" to give a meaning to trials which marked Europe at the threshold of the 19th century.

Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1909), poet and writer, is a Christian esotericist who influenced Papus, Stanislas de Guaita and René Guénon.
Keen by Victor Hugo and Fabre d'Olivet in his youth, draws from his philosophical and historical work the germs which led him to his future literary orientation, tainted with occultism.

Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), called the Sâr, is a French Occultist.
Novelist and essayist, he meets Léon Bloy and Paul Bourget and makes Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly enthusiast and preface his novel "Le Vice suprême" (1884), a strange book full of romanticism and occultism which shows the fight of secret forces working to destroy humanity, taking the opposite view of Zola's naturalism.