Joséphin Péladan

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.

Showing an independent spirit, he founds with Stanislas de Guaita the Kabbalistic Order of Rosy Cross to which Papus, Erik Satie and Claude Debussy will be members.Pretexting a refusal of operative magic, he gets away from the group in 1891 to found the Order of Catholic Rosy Cross and aesthetic of the Temple and the Graal. Without false modesty, he asserts: "I conquered, with my talent, maybe my genius, the right of my full thought, entire, and before all. JI, for six thousand nights bravely loved French language; I can say anything in French. I am burgrave without vassalage."

Péladan had above all the religion of beauty, he wrapped with incense in an eastern mysticism. He aimed at taking the modern world's ugliness away.